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James Buchanan .................................................................. 16 Abraham Lincoln
Just two years into his presidency, Abraham Lincoln in 1863 issued the influential Emancipation Proclamation that declared freedom for slaves within the Confederacy. It was a bold move that defined Lincoln’s legacy — both as a person and a president.
For Lincoln to be in such a position of power was surprising in itself, especially considering his humble upbringing.
The son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Lincoln’s childhood and teenage years were full of hard work and struggles.
From his writings published by the White House Historical Association, Lincoln wrote:
“My mother, who died in my 10th year, was of a family of the name of Hanks. ... My father … removed from Kentucky to … Indiana, in my eighth year. … It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up.” The 16th President of the United States Born: 1809 Died: 1865 Served: 1861 to 1865
Before He Was President
Lincoln made money in his early years by working on a farm and splitting rails for fences. He progressed into a captain role in the Black Hawk War and spent eight years in the Illinois legislature.
He married Mary Todd and fathered four boys, only one of whom lived to maturity. In 1858 Lincoln lost to Stephen A. Douglas for Senator but in debating with him gained a national reputation that catapulted him into the Republican nomination for President in 1860.
Major Policy
Upon his presidential victory, Lincoln made clear his policy toward secession, calling it illegal and letting the South know that he was willing to use force to defend federal law.
As president, he built the Republican party into a strong national organization while rallying most northern Democrats to the Union cause. On Jan. 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
Lincoln achieved a great deal during his presidency, winning re-election in 1864. But it was his ability to transcend major challenges while still resonating with the American people that set him apart.
The message of his second inaugural address is now inscribed on one wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C. It reads: “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds.”
Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre in Washington by John Wilkes Booth on Good Friday, April 14, 1865 — a tragic end for a tremendously respected president.
With the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson became the 17th President of the United States, an old-fashioned southern Jacksonian Democrat of pronounced states’ rights views.
Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1808, Johnson grew up in poverty. He was apprenticed to a tailor as a boy, but ran away. He opened a tailor shop in Greeneville, Tennessee, married Eliza McCardle, and participated in debates at the local academy.
Entering politics, he became an adept stump speaker, championing the common man and vilifying the plantation aristocracy. As a Member of the House of Representatives and the Senate in the 1840’s and ’50’s, he advocated a homestead bill to provide a free farm for the poor man.
During the secession crisis, Johnson remained in the Senate even when Tennessee seceded, which made him a hero in the North and a traitor in the eyes of most Southerners. In 1862 President Lincoln appointed him Military Governor of Tennessee, and Johnson used the state as a laboratory for reconstruction. In 1864 the Republicans, contending that their National Union Party was for all loyal men, nominated Johnson, a Southerner and a Democrat, for Vice President.
After Lincoln’s death, President Johnson proceeded to reconstruct the former Confederate States while Congress was not in session in 1865. He pardoned all who would take an oath of allegiance, but required leaders and men of wealth to obtain special Presidential pardons.
By the time Congress met in December 1865, most southern states were reconstructed, slavery was being abolished, but “black codes” to regulate the freed men were beginning to appear.
Radical Republicans in Congress moved vigorously to change Johnson’s program. They gained the support of northerners who were dismayed to see Southerners keeping many prewar leaders and imposing many prewar restrictions upon Negroes.
The Radicals’ first step was to refuse to seat any Senator or Representative from the old Confederacy. Next they passed measures dealing with the former slaves. Johnson vetoed the legislation. The Radicals mustered enough votes in Congress to pass legislation over his veto–the first time that Congress had overridden a President on an important bill. They passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which established Negroes as American citizens and forbade discrimination against them.
A few months later Congress submitted to the states the Fourteenth Amendment, which specified that no state should “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
In March 1867, the Radicals effected their own plan of Reconstruction, again placing southern states under military rule. They passed laws placing restrictions upon the President. When Johnson allegedly violated one of these, the Tenure of Office Act, by dismissing Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, the House voted eleven articles of impeachment against him. He was tried by the Senate in the spring of 1868 and acquitted by one vote.
In 1875, Tennessee returned Johnson to the Senate. He died a few months later.
Ulysses S. Grant is the classic case of war hero turned president. In 1865, he led the Union armies to victory over the Confederacy in the Civil War as commanding general. Just a few years later, he was leading American policy as the commander-in-chief.
Whether in the military or the White House, Grant made it his mission to support the implementation of anti-slavery action and policy at every level.
Born in 1822, Grant was the son of an Ohio tanner and attended West Point — famously against his will. In the Mexican War he fought under Gen. Zachary Taylor. His diverse training and military experience enabled him to build relationships with some of the most prominent generals of his time.
Ulysses S. Grant
Before He Was President
At the onset of the Civil War, Grant worked in his father’s leather store in Galena, Ill. He transformed an underperforming volunteer regiment and was promoted to the rank of brigadier general of volunteers.
Upon taking over Fort Henry and attacking Fort Donelson in February 1862, Grant was promoted by President Abraham Lincoln to major general.
Other key wins during the war included Vicksburg, a key city on the Mississippi, and the breaking of the Confederate hold on Chattanooga.
On April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, the Confederacy surrendered — a key win for Grant and his war strategies.
Major Policy
Grant’s administration was marked by many social and governmental landmarks. He was also forced into taking on many scandals, including the Black Friday financial panic in 1869.
Some of his most important achievements included: • Under Grant’s leadership, the first transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Point, Utah. • On Sept. 24, 1869, Grant ordered a large sale of $4 million in gold in response to a financial panic set off by two railroad entrepreneurs, Jay Gould and James Fisk, Jr., cornering the gold market. • The Fifteenth Amendment was adopted under Grant’s leadership, stipulating that no state shall deprive any citizen of the right to vote because of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
After retiring from the Presidency, Grant became a partner in a financial firm and produced a memoir to pay off his debts. He died soon after completing the last page in 1885.
Rutherford B. Hayes
The future 19th president was born to a single mother in 1822. Rutherford Birchard Hayes’ father passed away a mere two months before his birth. With the lessons he learned from being raised by his mother, he would serve distinguished legal and military careers before winning one of the most contested elections in American history.
After graduating as valedictorian from Kenyon College in 1842, Hayes would pursue a law degree from Harvard Law School. He achieved his goals three years later and eventually began his own practice in Lower Sandusky, Ohio.
He saw the need to build his business and moved to a much busier area in Cincinnati. This move linked him with important Republicans due to his antislavery sentiments and incredible work ethic.
Before He Was President
Hayes put aside his law career to fight during the Civil War, where he would rise to the rank of major general. Republicans soon approached him to run for a seat in the House of Representatives while still in the army.
He was easily victorious in his campaign and entered Congress in 1865, where he would serve for two years before resigning and accepting the role as governor in Ohio, which lasted three years.
In 1876, Hayes was selected to run for the presidency against Democrat opponent, Samuel Tilden. Initially, the vote showed Rutherford Hayes lost by a mere 250,000 votes. However, controversy soon arose with contested electoral-college votes from Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina.
In 1877, Congress held a commission and put the election in the hands of eight Republicans and seven Democrats. Hayes emerged the victor and quietly took the oath of office in March 1877 in the Red Room of the White House.
Major Policy
With the victory, came the Compromise of 1877. It gave Southern Democrats at least one Cabinet post and a withdrawal of federal troops who oversaw the Reconstruction era in Louisiana and South Carolina.
While this was considered a step back in the strides for equal rights, Hayes remained vigilant in creating laws to protect black Americans.
Another challenge he faced was the Railroad Strike of 1877. Workers were walking from their posts to protest pay cuts. Riots ensued, and Hayes was tasked with deploying federal troops to calm the situation.
After his presidency, he advocated for children’s literacy, equal rights and prison reform until his death in 1893.
James Garfield was elected as the United States’ 20th President in 1881, after nine terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. His Presidency was impactful, but cut short after 200 days when he was assassinated.
He was born in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, in 1831. Fatherless at two, he later drove canal boat teams, somehow earning enough money for an education. He was graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts in 1856, and he returned to the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute in Ohio as a classics professor. Within a year he was made its president.
Garfield was elected to the Ohio Senate in 1859 as a Republican. During the secession crisis, he advocated coercing the seceding states back into the Union.
In 1862, when Union military victories had been few, he successfully led a brigade at Middle Creek, Kentucky, against Confederate troops. At 31, Garfield became a brigadier general, two years later a major general of volunteers.
Meanwhile, in 1862, Ohioans elected him to Congress. President Lincoln persuaded him to resign his commission. Garfield repeatedly won re-election for 18 years, and became the leading Republican in the House.
By a margin of only 10,000 popular votes, Garfield defeated the Democratic nominee, Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock.
As President, Garfield strengthened Federal authority over the New York Customs House, stronghold of Senator Roscoe Conkling, who was leader of the Stalwart Republicans and dispenser of patronage in New York. When Garfield submitted to the Senate a list of appointments including many of Conkling’s friends, he named Conkling’s arch-rival William H. Robertson to run the Customs House. Conkling contested the nomination, tried to persuade the Senate to block it, and appealed to the Republican caucus to compel its withdrawal.
But Garfield would not submit: “This…will settle the question whether the President is registering clerk of the Senate or the Executive of the United States…. shall the principal port of entry … be under the control of the administration or under the local control of a factional senator.”
Conkling maneuvered to have the Senate confirm Garfield’s uncontested nominations and adjourn without acting on Robertson. Garfield countered by withdrawing all nominations except Robertson’s; the Senators would have to confirm him or sacrifice all the appointments of Conkling’s friends.
In a final desperate move, Conkling and his fellow-Senator from New York resigned, confident that their legislature would vindicate their stand and re-elect them. Instead, the legislature elected two other men; the Senate confirmed Robertson. Garfield’s victory was complete.
In foreign affairs, Garfield’s Secretary of State invited all American republics to a conference to meet in Washington in 1882. But the conference never took place. On July 2, 1881, in a Washington railroad station, an embittered attorney who had sought a consular post shot the President.
Mortally wounded, Garfield lay in the White House for weeks. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, tried unsuccessfully to find the bullet with an induction-balance electrical device which he had designed. On September 6, Garfield was taken to the New Jersey seaside. For a few days he seemed to be recuperating, but on September 19, 1881, he died from an infection and internal hemorrhage
