Well I figure this list of people who didn't make top twenty is going to be controversial for some, so let's start with a biggie...
33. Ronald Reagan (1981-89)
PROS – détente with the USSR
CONS – AIDS, Reagonomics
Sigh. Yes, Ronald Reagan was very funny. His one liners are memorable. They also should not have defined a Presidency.
Some people may wonder why Ronnie is so low on my list. At the time of his death, PBS openly wondered if he would be added to Mount Rushmore. His détente with Mikhail Gorbachev directly led to the end of the Cold War, after years of escalating said Cold War. He paid reparations to Japanese Americans interned during the war, and was able to u-turn when his policies were unpopular, like social security cuts. Prescription drugs were regulated. Federal money was given to homeless shelters. There was a crack down on credit card fraud, voting protections for the elderly, the minimum drinking age, and he even raised the federal minimum wage. What could I possibly have against honest old Ronald Reagan?
- The repeal of the Mental Health Systems Act.
- The reduction in federal spending while at the same time increasing defence spending.
- The bloody War on Drugs and how it was played out. Changing drug conviction policy from the rehabilitative to the punitive destroyed individuals, families and entire communities. Mandatory prison sentences for possession of weed!
- Refusal to renew the Clean Air Act. Reagan did join up to the Montreal Protocol, but only after heavy badgering by Margaret Thatcher for him to do so. Yes, that’s right, Margaret Thatcher did some good in the world.
- The Iran/Contra debacle, and his on TV defence of his own actions. “A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions tell me that's true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not.” Debacle!
- Hiring Alan Greenspan. Although if you want a bit of amusement, read Alan Greenspan’s book where he completely whitewashes his own involvement in two financial recessions.
- The return of the death penalty
- His attempt to veto sanctions on apartheid South Africa
- The standardisation of jail sentences which led to longer and harsher sentencing for minorities on minor charges.
- The Secondary Mortgage Market. Thanks for 2008. Also the deregulation of saving accounts and mortgages, totally going to help the world economy. As will lifting regulation on the oil and gas prices.
- Reducing benefits against the national average income.
- Bringing in drug price competition through deregulation which led to the prices of necessary medicine skyrocketing.
- Trickle down economics don’t work. The entire basis of Reagonomics (tax cuts to the rich, will stimulate growth) was a financial policy built on sand, and which when stress tested in two major recessions, caused grievous harm internationally to the poorest workers and most vulnerable.
- The invasion of Grenada
- His AIDS denialism, backed up by blatant bigotry, led to the needless death of hundreds of thousands of young Americans. He was slow to act even his Surgeon General, Everet Koop, told him to. (Koop was a Christian fundamentalist himself, but he put the scientific facts before his own prejudices at a time when few in power would.) His denialism gave momentum to Thatcher’s denialism in the UK. Where here it took the work of mavericks like Norman Fowler and Michael Forsyth to win the Premier over to doing the right thing eventually, in America, it took celebrity shaming, with the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Angela Lansbury and Doris Day publicly pushing Reagan to commit funding towards AIDS research, however unwillingly. There are countless thousands of young vulnerable people who would be alive today if not for the belligerence of the American President on this subject.
Why was Ronald Reagan ranked so low? Frankly, he’s lucky so many of his predecessors were even worse.
32. Chester A Arthur (1881-85)
CONS – Chinese Exclusion Act
I remember months ago, when I started this, and I presumed Chester A Arthur was going to get an easy top twenty finish. A man with a tough hand who had done his country well, is how my memory recalled his Presidency. I wasn’t going to mention the Supreme Court ruling the Civil Rights Act unconstitutional, because Presidents cant control the Supreme Court unless they pack it full of unqualified cronies (perish the thought). I was looking towards the civil service reform, the abolition of the Conkling crony system (of which Arthur had once been a member) and the appointment of women to the federal civil service as evidence of Chester’s underrated Presidency. Or that we still use his standardised time zones, and the Naval College was founded under his tenure. And then he had to go and ruin it all by doing something stupid like the CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT. WTF? The Chinese Exclusion Act does what it says on the tin. It banned Chinese workers from coming to work in the United States, initially for a tenure of ten years, but future Presidents kept it an active law for half a century. It was the first law to actively ban immigration by nationality, which gave a disastrous precedent for the 20th Century. It allowed the government to turn the blind eye to open racism against Chinese American citizens, This directly led to a vast increase in racist attacks, including several massacres of Chinese American workers. It was a horrific, regressive, racist policy which continued on until the 1940s, causing in numerous pain and suffering. And for that, Arthur’s been booted down to here instead.
31. Grover Cleveland (1885-89, 1893-97)
PROS – modernisation of the US Navy
CONS – racism
"Suppose it be granted that Mr. Cleveland is a just man, and desires to protect colored citizens in the exercise of their constitutional rights. What is he, and what is any man in the Presidential chair, without the support of his party? As against his party, he is only as a feather against a whirlwind. In the hands of his party, Mr. Cleveland is as clay in the hands of the potter."
Frederick Douglass, 1888
Grover Cleveland was a non-interventionist who both withdrew from the Berlin Conference, and did little to stop the coup in Hawaii, despite being opposed to it. He ended plans to build a canal through Nicaragua to aid trade. He supported the Scott Act, which banned Chinese immigration, and further extended the Chinese Exclusion Act. He repealed voting reform aimed to protect voting rights. Not only that, he refused to use federal power when States started to abuse the 15th Amendment. He sent the troops in to end the Pullman Strike. He frequently spoke of Native Americans as being “diminished citizens”. His heavy use of the President veto (414 times in his first term alone) included the use of the veto on war pensions and disability payments. The Dawes Act broke up tribal land and allowed it to be sold to individuals. The Hatch Act improved plant growth through federal aide. The Panic of 1893 lost America nearly half of its gold reserve. Cleveland did officially end the Spoils System, and is best remembered as being the first non-consecutive two term President (until next year?). I said we wouldn’t take his creepy nature into count when judging his Presidency (but seriously, the man married his best friends daughter who saw him as something of a father figure, and whom he had told people he was going to marry when she was a small child) but his record in office is at best mediocre and at worst downright harmful, and he escapes the bottom ten solely through others being much worse.
30. Millard Fillmore (1850-3)
PROS – Stood up for Hawaii independence
CONS – Fugitive Slave Act
"God knows that I detest slavery, but it is an existing evil, for which we are not responsible, and we must endure it, and give it such protection as is guaranteed by the constitution, till we can get rid of it without destroying the last hope of free government in the world."
Millard Fillmore, making excuses for the Fugitive Slave Act, quoted in Millard Fillmore: Biography of a President (1959), by Robert J. Rayback, p. 252 and p. 271
Millard Fillmore, who became President when Zachary Taylor wasn’t murdered (just dead, they checked), had a controversy filled tenure in office. During it, he settled a decades long dispute with Portugal over trade, he sent trade emissaries to Japan, and he sent the Navy to block an attempted French annexation of Hawaii. Under his time in office, the Illinois Central railroad and the Sault Ste Maire canal were also built, and California joined the Union. This explains why the man who hired Brigham Young, and was behind two of the worst law decisions in American history, has managed to just avoid the bottom ten on this list. The Fugitive Slave Act meant that even if Southern slaves managed to reach free states, the federal law was that they were to be found, captured, and sent back to captivity. This was part of the larger Compromise of 1850, a fudge designed to appease abolitions and slave fans alike when California, Utah and New Mexico joined the Union, and was another in the long list of failed appeasement which led to the Civil War after much more suffering.
29. John Tyler (1841-5)
PROS – Vice Presidential precedent
CONS – Repealed the independent Treasury
"Tyler is a political sectarian of the slave-driving, Virginian, Jeffersonian school, principled against all improvement, with all the interests and passions and vices of slavery rooted in his moral and political constitution -- he is a slave-monger whose talents are not above mediocrity, and with a spirit incapapable of expansion to the dimensions of the station upon which he has been cast by the hand of Providence."
John Quincy Adams, who I suspect was not a great fan, in 1841.
John Tyler was contemporarily nicknamed His Accidency, for he only became President due to the thirty day drop that was William Henry Harrison. On Harrison’s death, Congress assumed it had the right to name a successor to a dead President, or that an emergency election should be called. It was John Tyler who decided that no, the sitting Vice President automatically becomes President on the death of the sitting President, and this controversial at the time precedent saved a lot of grief in the future. Trying not to rock the boat too much after torpedoing it, Tyler kept much of Harrison’s cabinet, the upshot of which is he was surrounded by men who didn’t like him and stonewalled him. Indeed, the Presidential veto was overridden for the first time in US history under Tyler. Texas was annexed in this time period, and the Oregon Exclusion Act was signed. This banned black people from settling in Oregon, with threat of corporal punishment until they left. There was also the Dorr Rebellion in Rhode Island, and the Treaty of Whangia gave America a (highly skewered in their favour) trade deal with China. One of the greater achievements of Tyler’s Presidency was the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, which settled the border between America and Canada.
28. Benjamin Harrison (1889-93)
PROS – Sherman Anti-Trust Law, tree planting
CONS – Massacre of Wounded Knee Creek, Hawaii, attitudes to the Chinese.
"Damn him! He is a cold-blooded, narrow-minded, prejudiced, obstinate, timid old psalm-singing Indianapolis politician!"
Theodore Roosevelt, 1890
Benjamin Harrison, who is ranked one spot below his grandfather (spoilers), sandwiched two terms by Grover Cleveland and is best remembered today, if at all, for a trio of terrible decisions. First, he extended the Chinese Exclusion Act. Second, he attempted to annexe the independent nation of Hawaii and set in motion the forced annexation and subjugation of the islands by America. Thirdly, the Massacre of Wounded Knee Creek, in which a series of bungled attempts to disarm the Lakota tribute led to a massacre in which 90 people were killed. Perhaps we can’t blame individual massacres for the President as the orders happened in the military itself, but we can blame him for the THIRTY ONE MEDALS OF HONOUR given out to the soldiers who carried out the massacre.
Given that is three separate suppressions of three different minorities, you might be wondering how Benjamin Harrison avoided the bottom ten. Bringing in disability pensions helped. The International Copyright Act, designed at the time to help writers and artists and not multinational corporations, was another positive step. Railway infrastructure spending will always get a nod from me. Tree planting and the creation of a national park (Sequioa) to preserve the environment will also get a lot of points. But the greatest achievement of the Harrison Administration was the success of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which prohibited unfair monopolies in business, protected labour rights, and was the start of the trustbusting era. This Act remains one of the most powerful the US government has at its disposal, and was used to split up Microsoft at the start of the 21st Century. All of this gave him a respectable (minus points) score in the end, though we are still side eyeing all the blatant racism and dog whistling.
27. William Henry Harrison (1841)
William Henry Harrison is the Canning Line, the President who didn’t have time to achieve anything. He died in thirty days, as the Simpsons song goes, the victim of pneumonia and better known for the myth he got his fatal illness by giving a long inauguration speech in the rain, than anything of his life. He had planned to re-establish the National Bank, and end the corrupt spoils system Andrew Jackson had put in place. He never achieved any of that, but he did find time to fall out with Henry Clay and refuse to bring back the Senate for a special session, suggesting we are not missing a great lost leader here. His placement in the top thirty comes down to how many of his fellow Presidents were godawful!
26. Herbert Hoover (1929-33)
PROS – Banning yellow dog contracts.
CONS – Mismanagement of The Great Depression
"I am firmly opposed to the government entering into any business the major purpose of which is competition with our citizens... for the Federal Government deliberately to go out to build up and expand... a power and manufacturing business is to break down the initiative and enterprise of the American people; it is the destruction of equality of opportunity amongst our people, it is the negation of the ideals upon which our civilization has been based."
Hebert Hoover, perfectly summing up the contradictions of Herbert Hoover, as quoted in Herbert Hoover, 1874-1964: Chronology - Documents - Bibliographical Aids (1971) Edited by Arnold S. Rice
Herbert Hoover, arguably, is one of the most tragic figures to have become President: a good man with terrible timing. As leader of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, and later the American Relief Administration, Hoover helped save the lives of millions of people from the effects of war, illness and famine. As a Cabinet member of the 1920s, he led flood relief plans, expanded international air travel and pushed for progressive policy. During World War Two, despite being an isolationist, Hoover raised charitable funds in the millions for several of the countries threatened by Nazism, including Finland and Poland. He was one of the first major figures in America to speak out against the Nazi treatment of the Jews. Post-WW2, he was a crucial ally to Harry Truman, and a key figurehead in the school meals programme in post-war West Germany, which protected four million children from starvation. In his late eighties, he was still helping Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy with his diplomatic links born over a century in Europe. He was absolutely one of the key political figures in 20th Century American history.
And also, for four years in the middle of all of this, he was a mediocre President. And that’s what we remember!
If Calvin Coolidge had great luck in getting to dodge just before the stock market crashed, Herbert Hoover made his on stage debut as leader at the worst possible moment. When the Wall Street Crash happened, Hoover… didn’t deal very well with it. Believing that local government and great men of charity would deal with the situation, he didn’t curb speculation, stuck to the gold standard, and relied on volunteerism. He also increased taxes and corporation tax while wages declined, which led to less spending, which made things worse, as they weren’t backed up by necessary spending.
Under Hoover, the Federal Farm Board was created to give a safety net to the agricultural industry and try to protect food prices. The Smoot Hawley Tariff Act aimed to protect US prices by forcing larger tariffs on foreign imports, though that led to the Great Depression going international faster. (The tariffs hit Britain and France, whose reactionary policies sent Australia and Asia into depression.) This led to import and export contraction, which led to more financial instability. The Glass Steagal Act attempted to prevent further instability by preventing the merger of commercial and investment banking, though the bill was only completed by the time Hoover was out of office. Hoover also, eventually, supported the Emergency Relief and Construction Act, which gave $300 million to emergency public construction projects aimed to boost employment and local finances. This was greatly expanded upon by his successor, and showed again that the Herbert Hoover of 1919 and the Herbert Hoover of 1950 knew the route out of the depression, but that the Herbert Hoover of 1929-33 was often unable or unwilling to act.
The Hoover Moratorium, which suspended German war reparations for a year in light of the depression, was a good move (though washed out by events in Germany soon after), the limit of eight hour working days on building construction for health and safety a move in the right direction, and there was great spending on railway construction. Herbert Hoover’s administration also banned the use of “yellow dog” contracts, one sided employment deals which gave the workers very low pay and also prohibited them from joining unions or trying to better their pay. The Norris-La Guardia Act not only banned these contracts, but banned the federal government from using the courts to block non-violent labour disputes.
Immigration wise, Hoover’s administration was a complete mess. His government forcibly deported 600, 000 natural born Americans to Mexico (a country they hadn’t been born in) as part of the Mexican American deportations and prosecutions scandal. He was a non-interventionist, which means he ended the occupation of Nicaragua, before he sent warships to El Salvador. He disarmed the country, which meant more spending was needed to re-arm the country. His caution on civil rights gave away ground to FDR to plant the Democrat party tanks on the lawn of civil rights, starting the voter shift that is evident today.
Herbert Hoover was, by and large, a man of great talent and skill, undone by his own Shakespearean inner flaws. He believed in involvement to improve the lives of the desperate. He also believed that the President did not have the authority to push for this, that it had to come from outside forces. This contradiction in belief made Hoover both an excellent public statesman and a below average President. Even as his tenure continued onwards to electoral annihilation, there was evidence that his administration saw the route forward, with some decisions here and there, detailed above, being germination points for the New Deal going forward. (Hoover incidentally, hated the New Deal. It was pushed by the President.) In later life, Hoover was far more forceful in telling Presidents to make the very decisions he had refused to in office himself, as age and experience eventually told him the flaws of his time in office. The fact that he suffered through this international contradiction, between inaction and intervention, suggests that the public theory that, had he been elected in 1933 instead, he’d have been a great President, is overblown. However, it can’t be discredited that Herbert Hoover was a man who achieved great things and helped millions in spite of being, not because he was, also briefly President of the United States of America.
25. Zachary Taylor (1849-50)
Another President who attempted to compromise over slavery, Zachary Taylor sneaks over the William Henry Harrison line through the success of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, where both the US and the UK promised not to conquer any of the central American countries. A success until it got ripped up, but Taylor also died before he could make any huge errors. Well, apart from compromising over slavery. And drinking cholera infected water.
24. James Madison (1809-17)
PROS – Infrastructure spending
CONS – Treatment of Native Americans.
James Madison ruined the American undefeated streak in wars at one of the first hurdles, by getting involved in the War of 1812 with the UK and seeing the White House burned to the ground. That a major victory in the war (New Orleans) happened after the peace treaty was signed, and gave a public platform to Andrew Jackson instead, seems to sum up this accident prone premiership. As we have been saying a lot in this part, Madison re-established the National Bank after a predecessor (Jefferson this time) got rid of it. He also vastly increased spending on the army and navy, which was probably a good thing given the multiple wars he was involved in at the time. There was the War of 1812, which stemmed out of American longing to have a go at the UK (quelled briefly by John Adams) but stemmed from the fact that the Brits and France (America’s ally) were at war in a little thing called the Napoleonic Wars. Unfortunately for Madison, he declared war just as Napoleon was on the wane, and the British were able to send more troops to America than anticipated, while dominating the naval map. History has charitably called this war result inconclusive, much like the Vietnam War a century and a half later. After this disastrous war, came the Second Barbary War, against Algeria and the pirates, which was comprehensibly won by the Americans. In the midst of all of this was the on-going war with the Native Americans, whose land James Madison committed to removing from them, and whose leaders were more sympathetic towards the British (enemy of my enemy). This led to the well known Battle of Tippecanoe, which was responsible for the assassination of a guy in Dallas who wasn’t even born then, if you believe in divination. Sounds a bit racist to me.
Elsewhere, Louisiana and Indiana were added to the Union. Madison, besieged by war, went for a protectionist tariff on American products. He also spent heavily on roads and canal building. One of the major issues during his tenure was the length of time it took crucial messages to get from Point A to Point B. Had the lines of communication been faster, the War of 1812 might not even have happened. The need for advanced infrastructure became clear.
23. James K Polk (1855-9)
PROS – Did everything he set out to do.
CONS – War with Texas
James K Polk’s reputation used to be as the forgotten President. Then it became the President with the catchy song (They Might Be Giants). Now it lingers between one of the underrated greats and a Jacksonian authoritarian. It is inarguable that Polk shaped the US as we now know it, committing to Manifest Destiny and linking up the country from sea to shining sea. It’s also inarguable these days he fought a deliberate war of conquest in Mexico to do so. The result of this war saw Texas become a US state, and New Mexico and California nabbed. Wisconsin and Iowa also joined the Union under Polk, and the Oregon territory was partitioned.
Polk’s downfall was on infrastructure. He vetoed the Rivers and Harbors Bill as he felt it unfairly favoured cities with harbours. Well, duh? Polk in general was against infrastructure spending as he viewed it as a threat to the Union. Despite that, he did re-establish the Independent Treasury and created the Department of the Interior.
22. Calvin Coolidge (1923-29)
PROS – Dawes Plan
CONS – Cold on civil rights, immigration
"You hear a lot of jokes every once in a while about 'Silent Cal Coolidge.' The joke is on the people who make the jokes. Look at his record. He cut the taxes four times. We had probably the greatest growth and prosperity that we've ever known. I have taken heed of that because if he did that by doing nothing, maybe that's the answer."
Ronald Reagan, completely missing the point in 1981.
Calvin Coolidge is not responsible for the people who idolized his time in Office and screwed up the economy in decades to come. However, when you note that his time as President ended in early 1929, and that the boom years his financial policy created ended in the Wall Street Crash later that year, you can’t say the man didn’t have incredible timing. Under Coolidge, there was regulation of the new radio networks, a reduction in the top rate of tax (from 58% to 46%), the introduction of Gift Tax, and rapid economic growth aided by a system overly negative to regulation. If you’ve seen this under Reagan and Bush II, you know the end result.
Coolidge’s big issue was his own views on the limits of the powers of Executive Office. He attempted to veto veteran pay on this basis. He spoke more tolerantly towards civil rights than his predecessor, but viewed the issue as a matter of states rights so did nothing to help matters. He opposed farming subsidies, and tried to stop federal flood control plans despite the major flood of the Mississippi River at the same time! He opposed Prohibition, but kept it. He ended US occupation of the Dominican Republic, and took the troops out of Nicaragua, before sending the troops back into Nicaragua. There was also the heroin ban, a major precedent in the punishment over rehabilitation approach the West has taken to drug problems, and helped create many of the problems in the first place.
There was also the Immigration Act of 1924, which prohibited ANY immigration to the US. This badly hurt American/Japanese relations at a crucial point in history, and came so soon after American aid arrived in the aftermaths of the Great Kanto earthquake. The failure of the Geneva Naval Conference in 1927 between the US, UK and Japan didn’t help matters for the next decade, either, despite the success of the earlier Washington Naval Treaty on reducing warships between the three nations. Although it is arguable who much stronger relations would have stood the irrevocable course to war: Russia and Germany had a peace treaty at one point afterwards, after all.
One large positive of Coolidge’s time in office was his granting of American citizenship to all remaining Native Americans who didn’t already have it. See, Cal, the executive does have the power!
The Public Buildings Act released money towards public infrastructure for the first time since Taft, and airline development was given rapid ascension. As was the construction of Mount Rushmore. He also pushed for the Kellogg-Briand Pact, an international treaty, signed by all the future combatants of World War Two, not to go to war with each other. It is very easy to mock this bit of paper, indeed, historians like Ian Kershaw already have. However, while it blatantly failed to avoid every single bit of war in the next 20 years, it did have the major countries agreeing on the principle of war crimes, which gave the pretext for the Nurnberg trials to punish the Nazis after the fact. The sudden death of Gustav Stresemann in 1929 was an incalculable loss to the world, although, as he would have been a major obstacle to the rise of Nazism, it is almost certain that, had Stresemann lived into the 1930s, Hitler would have had him killed. It was under the combined leadership of Coolidge and Stresemann that the Dawes Plan came into being. This not only successfully significantly reduced German war reparations, but gave the Germans an emergency loan to save their economy, and recognised their banks internationally once more. It stopped the Ruhr occupation crisis, nullified a potential immediate war in its tracks, and should have been the first step towards something greater.
Late in his time as President, Coolidge passed the Migratory Bird Conservation Act, one of the first wide reaching animal and environmental conservation policies since Roosevelt.
21. Thomas Jefferson (1801-9)
PROS – Pardoning those jailed under the Aliens and Seditions Acts
CONS – hypocrisy on slavery, Embargo Act
"The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of a free society."
Abraham Lincoln
"Your character in history may easily be foreseen. Your administration will be quoted by philosophers as a model of profound wisdom; by politicians, as weak, superficial, and shortsighted."
John Adams, in a letter to Jefferson (July 1813), published in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1903) Vol. 13, edited by Andrew Adgate Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, p. 301
"Thank Heaven, I have never hesitated to criticize Jefferson; he was infinitely below Hamilton. I think the worship of Jefferson a discredit to my country."
Theodore Roosevelt, former US President and full time professional US Presidential hater, to F. S. Oliver (August 8, 1906), quoted in Joseph Bucklin Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt and His Time Shown in His Own Letters: Volume II (1920), p. 23
"Thomas Jefferson survives!"
John Adam's inaccurate last words in 1826
A sure fire top ten pick, Tommy Jefferson being not in the top twenty is probably more controversial than my Reagan placing. But I have to be true to my system, and for me, the negatives of Jefferson are an anchor on the positives. First, in one major positive, Jefferson pardoned everyone who was jailed under John Adams dreadful Aliens and Seditions Acts. (I know that wasn’t that many people overall but still, it’s the principle of the matter.) He established the West Point cadet school, lowered the national debt and ended the whisky tax. Under Jefferson, the man of he who governs least governs well, the Louisiana Purchase was made, and the Lewis and Clark expedition explored the new territory.
Jefferson had been steadfast in his opposition to the previous government. This meant, when he took office, he dismantled the entire financial system because it had been set up by Alexander Hamilton. This my way or the highway approach to governing continued on all issues, but that would be a character issue not a leadership one.
However, Jeffersons time in office was besmirched by short termism and on the spur policies which actively harmed alleged other commitments of his government. His cuts to the Navy didn’t do much for his defence strategy (or his successors), and led to issues at sea with the Brits. He tried to solve this with the Embargo Act, an insane bit of self-sabotage based on a problem Jefferson had created. At the time, the Brits were at war with Napoleon, who had blocked off several of their naval routes. The British response was to press gang American sailors into the British army, a disreputable feat aided by Jefferson cutting down their sea defences. In response, to give time to build back up the Naval defence he had just slashed, Jefferson brought in the Embargo Act between the US and UK, which not only didn’t give them the needed time to undo his own damage, but badly damaged the US economy, blocking trade as it did with the Americans largest trade partner. (Also, note the younger Jefferson used this sort of example for justification of the American revolution thirty years earlier.)
This disaster went beyond the financial arena, as the repercussions took down the British government and stonewalled the multilateral intent to end slavery outright. In Britain, with Jefferson’s support, the under pressure government of William Grenville had sought to end the slave trade and slavery itself in the British Empire. Jefferson had banned importation of slaves, and announced intentions to go the whole hog, which fired up the British abolitionists. Against a pro-slavery parliament, Grenville succeeded in banning the trade, but then the Embargo Act happened. Jefferson also decided against banning domestic ownership of slaves, making his early decision little more than a band aid to tyranny. With their biggest supporter U-turning (don’t forgot Thomas Jefferson made his name on abolition causes in the 1770s, and when in office decided finances counted over human loss), the opposition party of Spencer Perceval and later Lord Liverpool came into office for nearly two decades.
But we can’t blame Thomas Jefferson for the suspension of habeas corpus and the Peterloo Massacre in the UK. We can however blame his lack of support for the independence of Haiti as being directly linked to his overall cowardice on the issue of slavery.
We can compare him to William Pitt the Younger, however, another famed Western leader who was known for his outspoken abolitionist views until he came into power, when he backed away from them, citing war and finance. Pitt was also strong on civil liberties and choice, until he was in power, too. They were contemporaries of each other.
And while all this was going on, he was having it off with one of his own slaves. Character flaw, not political legacy, but it links into his overall legacy of being a raging hypocrite, which is a red flag to a bull area for me, I’m afraid.
Under Jefferson, there was also the Barbary War with the pirates, which was directly won by the US Navy, whose prize was to be severely cut of course. Despite supporting removal when Governor, Thomas Jefferson aimed for a more diplomatic approach to the Native Americans, though he had assimilation in mind overall, and its arguable that they did much given results as soon as Jefferson was out of office.
His outgoing disgraced Vice President also shot dead his bitterest rival in a duel. I’ve heard of killing two birds with one stone, Tommy…
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