Census Best U.S. President from 1852-1896?

Who was the best U.S. President from 1852-1896, and why?




Franklin Pierce


James Buchanan


Abraham Lincoln


Andrew Johnson


Ulysses Simpson Grant


Rutherford Birchard Hayes


James Abram Garfield


Chester Alan Arthur


Benjamin Harrison


Stephen Grover Cleveland (22nd and 24th)

 

I kind of wish I did a poll just on the Presidents from Andrew Johnson to Grover Cleveland.

That sure would have been interesting

 

Not as interesting as a Tsar poll.

 

Garfield deserves a high ranking for being honorable.

 

Hating Mondays and loving lasagna.

 

I don't understand how anyone can think Harding is worse than Buchanan.

 

Alexander III fan, are ya?

(I didn't leave out that many since I was only focusing on the Empire era, but I included all the murdered ones because I found it amusing.)

 

My selection won regardless. No one rivals the Liberator.

 

Johnson is arguably at least as terrible as Harding. The guy turned back most of the promise of emancipation of black folks and the promise Lincoln gave in his final inaugural. He gave blanket pardons to unreconstructed confederates who then returned to their political positions in the South and threw many of the freed black folks out of political office and off of lands the U.S. had leased to them during and immediately after the Civil War. He paved the way for Jim Crow to ascend as the governing racial policy in the south for decades.

He was a bad, bad president.

Grant is more akin to Harding in that both were beset by corruption.

Now if we are staying with the "what they set out to accomplish" then it has to be Lincoln. Cleveland might be second.

 

No one gives enough credit to Arthur. Not one of the best presidents, but a solid one, certainly.

Still, Lincoln is the only choice here, obviously.

Johnson is up there with Harding and Jackson for terrible presidents. Bottom five at the very minimum.