Category US Presidents

“…every one admires Captain McKinley as one of the bravest and finest young officers in the Army.” This was written by Rutherford Hayes, 19th American president about a smart William McKinley who went on to become the 25th president of the country.

William McKinley was the last president to have served in the American Civil War. He was also the only one to have started the war as an enlisted soldier. He became a brevet major by the time the war ended. He became the Republican Party’s expert on various issues. In 1896, he ran as the Republican Party’s candidate for president and won.

McKinley’s Administration strived to develop and improve foreign policy. It did not care much about the prosperity of the country. It was a time when America was affected by the stalemate between Spanish forces and revolutionaries in Cuba. There was pressure on McKinley to call for a war. Though McKinley tried for a neutral intervention in April 1898, he later had to declare war after the Spanish blew up the U.S. battleship Maine in the harbour of Havana, Cuba.

What followed was a war that lasted 100 days. The United States destroyed the Spanish fleet, seized Manila in the Philippines, and occupied Puerto Rico. The war established the U.S. as a world power. McKinley was elected again in 1900. However, his second term ended tragically in September 1901; he was shot by Leon Czolgosz, a deranged anarchist.

He died eight days later and was succeeded by his vice president, Theodore Roosevelt.

Benjamin Harrison’s knowledge about politics dated back to a very young age. He was born into a political family. His great grandfather was a signatory of the Declaration of Independence. His grandfather was William Henry Harrison, the ninth president of the U.S. His father was a U.S. congressman. No wonder, Benjamin followed the path of his ancestors.

During the Civil War, Harrison served as an officer in the Union army. After the war, he resumed the career of a lawyer. He established himself as a prominent politician in Indiana. Though he lost the governorship of Indiana in 1876, he was elected to the United States Senate in 1881. Failures precede success and this held true for Harrison. He lost one presidential election to Cleveland, but was victorious in 1888.

As president, Harrison worked to pass the Sherman Antitrust Act. This law was passed to protect people from high prices charged by big companies who did not have competition. He also organized the first Pan American Congress in Washington in 1889 and established an information centre which later came to be known as the Pan American Union. By the end of his tenure, he had submitted a plan to annex Hawaii. This however, did not bear fruit immediately.

Though he was nominated again in 1892, Harrison was defeated by Cleveland. He spent his retirement years in Indianapolis and died of pneumonia in 1901.

Harrison was a much sought-after public speaker; a series of his lectures delivered at Stanford University was published in 1901 as Views of an Ex-President.

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Grover Cleveland, the 22nd president, was also the 24th president of the United States. Cleveland is also the only president to serve two terms that were separated by another president’s term. He was also the first Democrat elected after the Civil War.

Cleveland was against the idea of high taxes. He felt there shouldn’t be high taxes, or tariffs on goods brought in from other countries. Though he tried to reform the tariff laws, he failed at it. He also ordered an investigation into the lands held by the railroads and forced them to return 8,10,00,000 acres, something that made them very angry. In addition to this, Cleveland signed the Interstate Commerce Act, the first law attempting Federal regulation of the railroads.

Though Cleveland lost the 1888 election to Benjamin Harrison, he was back as president in 1892. The economy was in bad shape when he was sworn in for the second time. It got much worse during his tenure. The public perceived Cleveland as one of the most unpopular U.S. presidents, mainly because of these economic problems.

Let us now talk about Cleveland’s early years. He was born in New Jersey in 1837. After studies, Cleveland went on to become a lawyer. He was noted for his single-minded concentration upon whatever task he was given.

Later Cleveland became the mayor of Buffalo, New York, and then governor of the state.

In 1876, the Republicans nominated Rutherford B. Hayes for the president. He won through the Compromise of 1877, an agreement that officially ended the ‘Reconstruction’ by leaving the South to govern itself.

Hayes was accused of fraud during the election of 1876 against his opponent Samuel Tilden. At first it looked like Hayes had lost. He had fewer electoral votes than Tilden. However, several electoral votes were in dispute. Congress had to decide who these votes would go to. They picked Hayes. The Democrats from the southern states were not happy with this. They said Hayes and the Republicans had cheated. In order to work out a compromise, Hayes and the Republicans agreed that federal troops would be removed from the South. In return, the South agreed to accept Hayes as president. This signalled the end of the Reconstruction.

Hayes wanted to restore the trust of citizens in the government that was lost during the term of President Grant. During his tenure, Hayes implemented modest civil-service reforms. It was Hayes who vetoed the Bland-Allison Act of 1878 which sought to put silver money into circulation. Hayes insisted that the maintenance of the gold standard was essential to economic recovery. He also advocated equal education of African-American children.

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James Garfield, the 20th president of the United States was also shot dead, just like Abraham Lincoln. Garfield was elected as the president in 1881. He was an impactful leader and a worthy successor to Abraham Lincoln. But he did not rule America for more than 200 days.

James Garfield was born in Ohio in 1831. His father died when he was two. He was raised by his single mother and had a tough childhood. He drove canal boats to earn money for education.

James Garfield joined politics after graduating from Williams College, Massachusetts in 1856. Later, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Garfield repeatedly won re-election for 18 years, and became the leading Republican in the House before becoming the president.

During his tenure, Garfield wanted to make the U.S. economy stronger. He wanted to put an end to the spoils system. According to the spoils system, the members of the winning political party could get government jobs even if they weren’t qualified. Garfield was against this practice.

It was Charles J. Guiteau, an embittered attorney who shot the president on July 2, 1881, in a Washington railroad station. Garfield’s condition was fatal and after suffering much pain, he died from an infection and internal haemorrhage on 19 September, 1881, just six months after taking office.

Chester A. Arthur emigrated from Northern Ireland to the U.S. with his father. During his youth, Arthur taught in a school to pay for college. During the Civil War he was in charge of supplies and food for Union soldiers from New York. After the war, he worked as a lawyer and helped many African Americans get fair treatment which made him popular.

Chester A. Arthur became the president of the country all of a sudden, after President Garfield was brutally assassinated. He took the presidential oath on 19 September 1881 and was sworn in as the 21st President of America. At first many people believed that he was unworthy of the office due to his lack of experience in shaping public policy. But he proved them wrong. Want to know what happened during his tenure?

The Arthur Administration enacted the first general Federal immigration law. Arthur approved a measure, in 1882 excluding paupers, criminals, and lunatics from entering the country. He also surprised people by doing something that no one expected. He worked to do away with the spoils system. Before becoming the president, he had supported the spoils system that we talked about in the previous pages. It was also during his final year as president that the United States acquired a naval station at Pearl Harbour in the Hawaiian Islands. Pearl Harbour, as we all know holds a significant place in world history.

Arthur surely won a place in the hearts of his people. Mark Twain wrote of him, ‘It would be hard indeed to better President Arthur’s administration.’ In the Republican convention of 1884, his name was proposed again for the presidential nomination despite the fact that he was suffering from a fatal ailment of the kidneys.

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Abraham Lincoln needs no introduction; he is perhaps the most famous American president. He became the 16th president of the United States in 1861. In 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared the slaves within the Confederacy free forever.

America was torn apart when Lincoln took office. But he made sure that the country was reunited by the end of his term. He was elected as the president in 1860. Seven states had left the U.S. and had formed the Confederate States of America by the time he took office in 1861. Four more states- Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee- joined the Confederacy soon after. Lincoln said he would fight to save the Union and he did live up to his word.

The rift began when rebels fired on Port Sumter, a U.S. military base. The civil war lasted for almost four years. On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. After a long and tragic civil war, Robert E. Lee the Confederate general, surrendered to U. S. General Ulysses S. Grant in 1865.

Lincoln played an influential role in building the Republican Party into a strong national organization. He also successfully brought in many Democrats to the cause of the Union.

Abraham Lincoln was born into a poor Kentucky family. His childhood was tough; he did not receive any formal education. But he taught himself to read and write. His hard work did not go in vain. As a young man, Lincoln became a successful lawyer and was elected to the Illinois state legislature and then to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Lincoln was shot on 14th April, 1865 by John Wilkes Booth, a staunch advocate of slavery. He died the following day.

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James Buchanan’s term as the president was marked by conflict between the Northern states and the Southern states.

Northerners wanted to stop slavery from spreading to new parts of the country, while some others known as abolitionists wanted to end slavery forever. Southerners were of the opinion that the new states and territories should be able to choose whether to allow slavery or not.

Buchanan’s term began when a historic case was filed by Dred Scott. Scott was an enslaved African-American man who sought freedom for himself, his wife, and two daughters. However, the court ruled that enslaved people were property and not citizens. The court said that slaves remained slaves anywhere.

Buchanan’s endorsement of the court’s decision created uproar amongst the Northerners. He also joined with Southern leaders in attempting to admit Kansas to the Union as a slave state. He thereby angered not only the Republicans but also many Northern Democrats. This became a very serious issue and the problem continued till the end of his tenure. Buchanan was succeeded by Abraham Lincoln.

Buchanan never married and remains the only bachelor president of the United States.

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In 1852, the members of the Democratic Party could not come to a common consensus regarding the presidential candidate and in the end, they chose Pierce. Franklin Pierce was the 14th president of the United States.

His tenure was marked with personal tragedies unmatched by any other American president.

Pierce was born in New Hampshire in 1804. He entered politics after completing his law degree. At the age of 24, he was elected to the New Hampshire legislature. He went on to become the Speaker in two years.

Pierce was relatively young when he was elected as the president. But this did not assure him much cheer. A few weeks before his inauguration, eleven-year old Bennie, his only surviving child, died in a railroad accident. His wife Jane Pierce never fully recovered from the shock of this tragic episode. She had never approved his candidacy either. Pierce began his term as a sad and tired man.

Pierce signed into law the Kansas-Nebraska Act; the Act said that settlers in Kansas and Nebraska could choose whether or not to allow slavery. This Act undid the antislavery part of the Missouri Compromise of 1820. The Democratic Party didn’t support his re-election at the end of his tenure.

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After the death of Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore became the president of the United States.

Fillmore had a hard childhood; he was born into a poor family in New York and his education did not last for more than a year. As a child, he had to work every day in the farms to earn a living. Later in his teenage, he went on to become a cloth maker. Though he had little formal schooling, he rose from poverty by diligent study to become a successful attorney.

He had served in the New York state government before being elected as Taylor’s vice president in 1848. He was also a U.S. Congressman for years.

As the vice president, Fillmore was largely ignored by Taylor. But, after the death of Taylor in July 1850, Fillmore became the president. Upon becoming the president, Fillmore supported laws to let California enter the Union as a free state. Fillmore ran unsuccessfully for president again in 1856.

He then gave up politics and died on March 8, 1874.

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