Epilogue

During this era, two Presidents clearly stand above the rest: Washington for creating the Union and Lincoln for preserving it.

Despite notable failings, Andrew Jackson comes next, opening suffrage to the common man, attacking institutional corruption, paying off the federal debt, defending the Union against the Nullifiers who would end it.

His Tennessee protégé, James Knox Polk, is impactful for annexing Texas, fighting the Mexican War and acquiring the western lands that add parts or all of nine new states.

John Quincy Adams fights a single-handed battle against slavery after returning to the U.S. House two years after his presidency.

JQ’s father John, and his adversarial friend Jefferson, shape the ongoing debate between Federal authority and States’ Rights.

Madison is remembered for his Bill of Rights and Monroe for his Doctrine. Van Buren for mastery of patronage politics. Harrison for his sudden death and relinquishing the reins to “his Accidency,” the turncoat Tyler. Taylor for again proving the power of military fame as a path to the White House, before passing the torch to the anodyne Millard Fillmore.

Then come the absolute bunglers.

First the “Doughface” Franklin Pierce whose approval of the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, triggers the North-South conflicts in “bloody Kansas” that presage the Civil War.

Then Pierce’s successor, James Buchanan, who ranks at the very bottom of the list for trying to bully the Pro-Slavery Lecompton Constitution through Congress and then watching helplessly as southern secession becomes inevitable.

Perhaps a good summing up belongs to Ben Franklin glancing at Washington as the 1787 Convention closes:

The first man at the helm will be a good one.
Nobody knows what sort may come afterwards.

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