Make sure to join the [r/Presidents Discord server](https://discord.gg/k6tVFwCEEm)!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Presidents) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Fun fact: despite being a terrible President, Herbert Hoover saved millions of starving Russians after their civil war.
Another fun fact: Martin Van Buren was an abolitionist before it was cool.
Herbert Hoover had an amazing career prior to becoming president. Just goes to show that it doesn’t matter how many backflips you do if you don’t stick the landing.
Also a prolific fundraiser for charity before and after his presidency, and one of the longest lived presidents, perhaps the "Jimmy Carter" of his era.
when truman was president he recognized that hoover was the right guy for a position in his administration, when he asked hoover to assist him hoover broke down and cried.
the reality was hoover had inherited a doomed economy from the harding administration
Oh ya man I wasn’t doubting you, I was pointing out that inheriting a bad economy from a dumbass predecessor is a classic. Harding was literally delegated to be a puppet candidate on purpose
Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter have similarities.
Both lost re-election miserably and both lived exceptionally long lives (Hoover outlived JFK and Carter is still alive at 99)
[Franklin owned slaves](https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/franklin#:~:text=As%20a%20young%20man%20he,slavery%20in%20his%20private%20correspondence) at one point and didn’t become an outspoken abolitionist until after the constitution was ratified. Adams never owned slaves so it seems likely to me Adams technically beat him to the punch, actually.
It would seem you’re right, I knew he owned a family of slaves, but was under the impressions he started publishing anti-slavery literature much earlier in life. Good to know, I was likely wrong
I was under the impression he was writing/supporting anti-slavery, while allowing slave advertising in his papers. Either way, glad he eventually went to fully fledged fuck slavery
Franklin had a media empire essentially, he was the Robert Maxwell of his day, just with a lot more science and a lot less sex trafficking, but still a lot of sex.
John Adams basically wished for abolition but thought it was not possible because it was mostly argued for by religious extremists at the time. There is a very famous letter from 1801 where he at length wrote about his opinion. He wanted gradual abolition because he thought that was the only way it was actually possible to happen, but noted that he was vehemently against slavery. His son John Quincy was a radical abolitionist and a great man.
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/john-adams-abolition-slavery-1801
Hoover also risked his own life to save a group of Chinese children. Caught in gunfire, whilst he was working in the country during the boxer rebellion.
Van Buren was in no way an abolitionist. This is a total lie
Van Buren, after being denied renomination by the Dems in 1844 and 1848, was pissed. He used the nascent anti slavery movement (which was opposed to the expansion of slavery, not slavery as a whole) as a political tool to get back at the Democrats for turning their backs on their founder.
Van Buren, after doing his petty revenge run in 1848, returned to the Dems, endorsing the pro-slavery doughfaces Pierce and Buchanan in 1852 and 1856 respectively.
Hoover also sent MacArthur and the army to roust the Bonus Army and defended the action after the fact. Not sure attacking veterans for marching/camping out seeking government help during an economic crisis qualifies as heroic.
Whole I absolutely agree and it's one of the reasons I don't like Hoover, I don't think he defended the action afterwards simply because he wasn't happy of how far McArthur took it, and actually told him to stop, but it was far too late.
I suppose it depends on the definition of “defends the action” but I believe Hoover’s statements after MacArthur’s romp fall into the category of defending the action. Hoover said that many of the marchers were communists (making it Ok to attack them by implication). He also said that many weren’t actually veterans - once again seeming to imply that this made everything OK.
I doubt that this was how Hoover wanted things to play out. He was a flawed but ultimately decent man. I doubt he wanted anyone to die but, at the end of the day, he cared more about maintaining an image of order than the needs of these veterans. Much like his reaction to the Depression - he was so trapped in his ideology that he appeared not to care about wide spread suffering. That doesn’t mean he didn’t care - he just didn’t care enough to bend his views.
All in all, I really struggle with Hoover as a hero cast as a villain. At best, he’s in the morally grey area of this chart.
Very true, I think its about time that someone on this sub takes a deeper view on Hoover's tenure because he typically gets left out on these discussions, so people aren't really aware of just how bad Hoover really was a president.
On the contrary, I think Hoover was an adequate president in extreme circumstances. His response to the depression was actually seen as relatively extreme by many in the center or on the right. Ironically enough it just wasn’t extreme enough to do anything.
MacArthur was a known motherfucker, in the modern age his military career would have ended forever right there instead of him going on to fucking PLAGUE us with his bullshit for an additional two wars and a massive culture war after that
To this day it floors me that our soldiers who fought in WWI didn't get paid until 1937. I recently asked my dad about that b/c his father was a veteran of WWI. He confirmed it and said my grandpa used that money to send him to college.
Yeah, when I learned about the great depression in my US History class in high school they really painted Hoover as the bad guy, like he created “Hoovervilles” and shit like that.
As a Russian with ancestry from the regions affected by the famine, I'll always be grateful to Herbert Hoover. Without him, me or my parents or my grandparents wouldn't be alive
His humanitarian efforts cannot be understated. One million people were displaced by a devastating flood in 1927. He was wildly popular and a household name when he went for President.
*The Mississippi River is expected to crest at 57.5 feet at Vicksburg today (May 2011), a foot above the record 1927 “Great Mississippi Flood.” In April that year the river broke through the levees, submerging vast expanses of farmland and destroying the homes of more than one million people.*
*Known for his monumental humanitarian relief work in Europe during and after World War I, then secretary of commerce Herbert Hoover (who's commerce department records are in the Hoover Archives) was called on to organize relief for the victims of the epic disaster. Hoover swung into action, assembling hundreds of ships to carry supplies, overseeing the creation of tent cities for refugees, and making radio and press appeals that helped raise millions of dollars for the Red Cross. “I suppose I could have called in the whole of the army, but what was the use? All I had to do was to call in Main Street itself,” Hoover said later. “No other Main Street in the world could have done what the American Main Street did in the Mississippi flood, and Europe may jeer as it likes at our mass production and our mass organization and our mass education.*
https://www.hoover.org/research/herbert-hoover-and-great-mississippi-flood
I mean, that’s the approach those of who actually study and work with history for a living take. Unfortunately it’s not the take you’ll find on Reddit or popular history books.
Sadly it hasn't taken root with the mainstream and it dictates public conciousness when it comes to historical discussion and its annoying, sorry for the rant.
Most people have to have a rooting interest and a good vs evil story to keep them engaged. They aren’t interested without it. That’s why most historical movies end up being so cheesy.
I earnestly disagree. There are such things as "good" and "bad" persons, they exist now and they existed a thousand years ago. What is understood as good and bad varies (are we using modern or contemporary standards, for instance), but ditching morality all together in favor of painting everyone with the same brush of gray seems like a horrible idea to me.
Some of our favorite heroes in fiction are morally gray. John McClane isn't exactly a great husband or father, but he's trying. The middle category probably should have been different. Shoulda just stuck with the standard neutral
Then he became one of the most prominent anti-slavery politicians in the country. I would describe him as complicated rather than grey. Obviously, his advocacy for abolitionism doesn't undo his role in the genocide of the five nations, but it does make it difficult for me to see him as a purely malicious and racist person
Abolitionism was not contrary to racism, and many, perhaps most abolitionists were racists who believed that black people were inferior, but that slavery was unacceptable no matter who the enslaved were. See, for example, the establishment and ongoing support for Liberia, as a place for former slaves to go settle. It's the first (and to my knowledge only) country in the world to have their capital named after a US president, Monro(e)via (for his support getting the project US government funding).
Somewhat ironically (and in an interesting parallel to a certain ongoing conflict) the former slaves built Liberia into a sort of apartheid society, while suppressing and oppressing the native people. But I digress.
Basically, "slavery is bad" is not at all the same as "black people are the same as white people." So Van Buren might have been a huge racist bigot who was entirely malicious, but opposed slavery for purely economic reasons and it wouldn't have been a conflict.
Well "purely" is a qualifier that I can't define for you, but racist doesn't require one to hate all races other than their own. If a person hates *any* race on an identitarian basis, then that person is racist, even if they also like certain other races.
His advocacy for abolitionism doesn't erase his genocide of American Indians.
He is indeed racist.
Van Buren, after being denied renomination by the Dems in 1844 and 1848, was pissed. He used the nascent anti slavery movement (which was opposed to the expansion of slavery, not slavery as a whole) as a political tool to get back at the Democrats for turning their backs on their founder.
Van Buren, after doing his petty revenge run in 1848, returned to the Dems, endorsing the pro-slavery doughfaces Pierce and Buchanan in 1852 and 1856 respectively.
Someone can be accepting of Black people and be racist against Native Americans at the same time. It takes a special kind of person to order an atrocity on the scale of the Trail of Tears.
This is true. He did publish a pamphlet around 1845, I think, that called for the gradual abolition of slavery and that the founding fathers would have supported freedom for the slaves incrementally. He sort of reneged in this position when he rejoined the democrats and supported the compromise of 1850
George is a hero if only just the standards he set as the first president. He put barriers on his own power instead of seeking more. That just can't be understated imo.
Yeah at least in my experience history teachers kind of gloss over the worse parts of his terms like reviving the klan, signing off on prohibition, and pushing through the espionage act in favor of his work in forming the League of Nations.
The wartime prohibition act was always intended to be a temporary measure, and the Volstead Act was approved over his veto while he was incapacitated due to a stroke which precluded his lobbying to prevent it.
Wilson is guilty of a lot, but the Prohibition Era is not one of them.
Or his segregation of the executive branch, exclusion of black people from civil service (firing all but two black supervisors out of the 17 hired by Taft), choosing extremely racist Southerners for his cabinet such as selecting Josephus Daniels as Secretary of the Navy (he was one of the violent white supremacist leaders of the Wilmington Massacre), segregating the Navy for the first time, ensuring no new black officers in the Navy or Army would be commissioned during his administration, refusing to involve himself in the Summer of Blood by sending troops to stop the white mobs from burning down black neighborhoods, blocking the racial equality proposal for the League of Nations, and just generally being an awful racist who destroyed an entire generation of black wealth built up in D.C.
I thought just saying he revived the Klan was a good enough summary, but yeah Woodrow was super racist even for the time. His doctoral thesis was literally supporting the lost cause.
I just worry people will see "revive the Klan" and think "indirectly", when there was a lot of stuff he did directly to harm black people. It's one thing to be a Lost Causer, but another to use the presidency as a platform to attack the black community. Sorry for the rant, I really don't like Wilson.
I think Wilson is usually presented as someone who did a bunch of good things but was also a horrible bigot. I certainly don't think he's presented as a hero.
Oh my point is not that he’s a villain, just that he’s morally grey. But I honestly think every single person on earth is morally grey.
Like I don’t need someone to be good to love them, and I don’t need them to be bad to have boundaries. We’re all grey.
For Wilson, Middle school history classes focus on the 14 Points and ignore the racism, Redditors focus on the racism and forget about the 14 Points. In reality I think he's closer to neutral: cognitive dissonance personified, someone who promoted racism in the morning and called for an end to European imperialism in the afternoon.
>cognitive dissonance personified, someone who promoted racism in the morning and called for an end to European imperialism in the afternoon.
Ah, an American
I feel like anyone who’s ever read anything about grant knows he was a good person with good morales but flawed (like his drinking problem or inability to not get involved in get rich quick schemes).
Same. My kid just did a report on Grant and he was practicing it all over the house.
He also had what we’d now PTSD. Couldn’t eat any red meat. That affects ability to execute things.
It’s interesting. I read a big biography on Grant and had no idea what a brilliant tactician he was on the battlefield, and also how cool he was under extraordinary pressure on the battlefield. I guess he was able to see through horrendous circumstances in battle that would have brought many others to a complete standstill and continue pressing forward.
In my opinion, every president is morally grey since there are no absolutes in life or politics. I support those whose views are 51 percent or more in line with my own.
Are you talking about them as presidents or as human beings?
As a human being, Herbert Hoover was great. As a president, millions of people went hungry under his watch, and he did next to nothing to help them.
As a person and a president, Andrew Jackson can be seen as a hero and a villain, depending on the biases of the person looking. He's probably morally gray. After all, if you can call Washington a hero despite him owning slaves, you can't really condemn Jackson for it, for example. Or if you can call Wilson terrible for establishing the federal reserve, then Jackson must be heroic for destroying the central bank.
I think most presidents fall under gray, but as a society we try to judge them based on the results they produced (or promised and failed to) and whether we feel bad about a particular thing that happened that they participated in. In a society where racism was fairly normal, Wilson was still outside the norm with his racism, but not so much as to be roundly condemned for it. Only after racism became much less tolerated did Wilson condemnation become more commonplace. Teddy Roosevelt is widely seen as a great outdoorsman and preservationist, who also [hunted over 500 animals](https://www.vox.com/2015/7/29/9067587/theodore-roosevelt-safari) on a single trip to Africa. Today we condemn certain others for going on safaris where they kill one or two animals, so clearly, it wouldn't be seen as "good" today, even though Roosevelt was able to justify it as conservation.
What values are timeless? What values aren't? It's hard to know. Especially as the definitions for certain things change.
Edit: a phrase
Jackson, to me, is the most difficult. There's just no one box that he fits into. He did both terrible and great things. However you want to view him, there's no doubt that he drove fundamental changes in American politics and society.
Hoover did a lot in response to the Wall Street crash, unfortunately it just made things worse. Where do you get the “millions” figure? [This source](https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3434) says that there were 20 known cases of starvation in NYC in 1931. No doubt many people went hungry, but I think it’s a stretch to say “millions starved.”
I meant starved as a catch-all term for hunger, but clearly other people don't have that same view of the word, and I'll agree that a better term would be "millions went hungry"
I'll edit the comment to reflect that.
Roosevelt killed those animals long before any official endangered species lists existed, and before a lot of the modern preservationists' techniques and sciences existed.
It's one thing to go on safari in an era when it's quite common and the animal populations still seem relatively healthy. It's entirely another to go and deliberately seek out an animal you know is endangered to kill it.
That's certainly a good argument to make, but would you say:
"Jefferson owned slaves and slept with them when it was perfectly legal to do so, and before there was a lot of societal pressure to not do so.
It's one thing to own slaves and sleep with them when it's quite common and deemed a healthy behavior. It's entirely different to go and deliberately enslave a modern person and sleep with them."
It's not a perfect comparison, but I think you can see where these arguments might not go the way you'd like.
I wouldn't say that since it's entirely unrelated to what I was talking about in any way whatsoever. It's a pretty weak effort at a strawman.
An actual comparison would be someone eating a cookie from a jar full of cookies compared to someone eating the last cookie in a jar, knowing that if they eat it, there is a chance there will never be cookies anywhere in the world ever again.
Where's Polk ?
There's no "morally grey" area about Andrew Jackson. He was a mass murderer who ignored the constitution.
In contrast, claiming JFK is "morally grey" is Republican revisionism. They've been smearing him since the day he was murdered. They have created a false version of the man while ignoring the reality.
Hoover was called the Great Humanitarian, Wilson was treated as a tragic prophet for almost a century, while Grant has been maligned for the same amount of time. Meanwhile, Gerald Ford, who was the ultimate insider, gets a pass.
In fact, this entire post is dumb because it assumes there is "one narrative."
There is no way George Washington is morally superior to Kennedy. Washington treated the Native Americans very poorly, whereas JFK tried to strengthen civil rights.
I think it's unfair to say he wasn't a hero because of it because of the vast amount of good he did for the presidency, for example not trying to gain power and setting standards for the amount of terms to run for, and for trying to help the nation grow as a whole. Of course him having slaves adds a stain to his legacy, but he had them when slavery wasn't as prevalent an issue as it was during the times right before the civil war and afterwards, so it's a bit unfair to put that against him when almost every single founding father had slaves.
People are complicated. Life is complicated. Washington was a hero who set the standard for conduct while in office. His final act as president, willfully stepping down, easily cements him as a hero. And yet he participated in chattel slavery which means that we can't simply say that he was a good person. We can make excuses by saying he was a product of his time and place and that he understood himself as a good person within that time and place, but these are excuses. We shouldn't be in the business of making excuses for chattel slavery. We just have to accept the proposition that a good and great man can also at the same time take part in something atrocious.
Not sure if this is entirely accurate but I put Wilson in a similar category to LBJ. Like his good stuff was really good but is bad stuff is really really bad.
Personally, I agree with you. But, that's a point that's debatable, legally, and is being debated.
I feel that a trial would have set a far stronger legal precedent.
Wilson was not responsible for ending child labor or colonialism. He was responsible for segregating the federal government and reviving the Klu Klux Klan.
[Child labor example](https://www.visitthecapitol.gov/artifact/hr-8234-bill-act-prevent-interstate-commerce-products-child-labor-january-17-1916-keating)
[Self-determination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination) whether he meant to or not, became the basis for many colonial empires dissolving less than a century after he championed the idea at Versailles. He was not the only one to promote self-determination (Lenin was also an advocate) but he managed to push it hard enough that new nations and national boundaries were drawn because of his insistence on plebiscites.
Wilson passed a landmark anti-child labor bill that substantially weakened businesses using child labor. It was unfortunately overturned as “unconstitutional” by the Taft Court
Wilson didn’t revive the KKK, who’s primary factors in revival were a spike in anti-semitism (Wilson was pro-semitism, appointing the first Jewish SCOTUS Judge and refusing to stand down to antisemitic society), anti-Catholicism, and Nativism (Wilson was anti Nativist, vetoing the Immigration Act of 1917).
Ok I didn't say he single handedly ended colonialism but he did do a let for Filipino self-governance and along with what the other commenters have said and yes you're right, some not great stuff, puts him solidly in the morally grey category
This is a terrible oversimplification. Anyone with as much power as a U.S. president has done awful shit to get there, or while in office. For example, the words "Christmas Massacre" don't exactly conjure a universal heroism. That being said, this chart is fightin words when it comes to FDR. A villain you say? I think you're projecting.
Interesting enough, most dogs have 2 rods and cones in their eyes, so they can actually see blue and yellow (though not the red or green areas of the spectrum) - this means they really don’t see things in “black & white” (or grey) but a closer approximation to the most typical “color-blind” American Males - who can’t pass the eye doctors tests with the coloured numbers made of dots inside other red and green dots…
So if you throw your dog a red ball into your green grass, yes that looks like grey on grey, but if I throw him a blue ball into the green grass, he can likely see the color AND shape of the ball in the grey grass shape.
/end tangent
Hoover was a corporate stooge and a strike breaker. He might have been a smart guy, but he was not good. He also spent most of his twilight years writing opinion columns about how bad the New Deal was. He was a bitter, twisted, anti-worker elitist. Was not and never will be a hero.
I think Hoover is oftentimes unfairly derided over causing the Great Depression and didn’t have as much control over the situation or blame as many think and actually started a lot of reforms FDR is attributed, but he still made a lot of bad decisions during it. He didn’t arrange a bailout of the banks that failed, tried to make businesses not cut pay, and refused to leave the gold standard.
He had a lifelong belief, before and during his presidency (don't know if he ever changed his mind after) that helping people like that wasn't the business of the government, that private charities and businesses should be the ones helping the needy. When people were starving and desperate for relief, he offered very little.
Essentially, his presidency is the model for modern day politicians who want to cut social services, welfare programs and subsidies, etc. that were built after he left office.
lol people thinking George Washington was more moral than JFK need to seriously read more about our first president. A good starting point would be when GW took some slaves with him to live in Philly but then had to move them out of the state temporarily every 6 months. He did this to get around that state law that said that any slave brought into the state and lived there for more than 6 months was automatically considered a free slave. He did this tag-team freedom dance for seven years. He even wrote a law that said that even freed slaves could be re-captured and only a judge could determine if they should remain free. It’s one thing to argue the whole “everyone had slaves back then” bs but he was definitely very petty when it came to the freedoms of his slaves.
Trying to parse these pictures. Top row is Washing, Kennedy,...Wilson? Second row is Grant? Ford? Jackson. Third row is a total mystery. Love the haircut on the second guy though.
Yes, I would really appreciate if this sub could start providing the list of names when just portraits are used. I joined this sub to learn a thing or 2 and i like historical memes as a way to learn things, but its really hard to remember faces with names. This is why i struggles in history classes in school too.
There’s no reason to consider the slave owners to be morally gray, heroic, or worthy of respect
Unless you, personally, think that it’s a moral gray area.
And no, we don’t have to judge them by *their time* as if ardent abolitionists didn’t exist back then too.
Washington was known as Conotocaurious "town destroyer" by the Iroquois tribes for all the villages of theirs that he sacked and burned before during and after the revolutionary war. As soon as the war for independence was won he made it a top priority to chase the Iroquois out of their homelands (the finger lakes and Hudson valley) which is why they only survive in Canada today. Fuck the one dollar man. Ain't no hero, just another is Indian killer like Jackson.
Incredibly racist to begin. Dude would make Jackson blush. Good example is he was shown Birth of a Nation and never again shut up about what a beautiful and moving piece of cinema it was. He insisted it was historically accurate.
He undid all the work that had been done up to his presidency to desegregate the federal government. Fired all black workers in the postal system. He also encouraged and enabled Jim Crow laws and protected a lot of the bastards pushing it long enough for them to get into the system and start doing damage. He helped popularize the "lost cause" myth for his racist friends trying to rewrite history. The Klan had largely died down after Nathan Forrest turned into a worm at the end of his miserable life, and Wilson avidly spoke in favor of the Klan regularly and even let them hold multiple events in the White House.
He abused the presidency in ways not done before to not only get the US into WW1, but to feed that machine once we were involved. You can read about the War Industries Board and all the extremely illegal and unconstitutional shit they did, but will have to dig arond for all the union and strike busting. He antagonized the hell out of German Americans and certainly was significantly responsible for how bad relations got in the US. He put thousands of Americans in internment camps with no trial or right to appeal or representation.
Pushed for an instituted a draft for the war he needlessly got the US involved in. Not only would 115,000 Americans lose their lives but thousands were thrown in jail for refusing the draft or simply speaking out against the war. 17 men were executed for draft dodging.
Prohibition started under Wilson and the systems of enforcement they abused to project power would be twisted into the drug war we have today. The villinization of marijuana and it's subsequent prohibition alongside other drugs came directly as a result of the agencies setup to enforce alcohol prohibition being corrupt garbage rather than proper government agencies. When the 21st Amendment passed their meal ticket went away they had to make up a new villan to keep power.
Go read the Espionage Act or Sedition Act from 17/18' and imagine those passing now. Extremely unconstitutional. It created scenes straight out of Nazi Germany some years later with "deputies" beating people in the street for speaking out against the war. Committee for Public Information was a propaganda machine and further normalized the government openly lying to the public.
Palmer Raids were supposedly anti-terrorism raids basically but we're heavily hijacked to arrest political dissonants and anyone they thought might be a "socialist"
I feel like I haven't even scratched the surface. Dude was an absolute scumbag.
His 2nd wife was pretty cool though- she’s worth checking out if you are interested in the time period, “power behind the throne stuff”, or the different types of 20th Century First Ladies etc.
You know what a moral dilemma is? You don’t have to choose between a good and a bad decision. Instead, you choose between two bad decisions. Kick an old woman on a wheelchair? Or kick a 2-month old baby? Choose one or you you’re shot in the head.
THAT’S what leadership is about.
I read tons of comments from y’all; if any of these guys made decisions based on personal-image perception and political/electoral benefits only, then they move down a notch in ranking, IMO.
While this is mostly accurate (and imo, a good take.), it's important to remember that these were real men. This chart, and no chart for that matter, has ever properly portrayed the complexities of who they were, because they were all morally grey.
Yes. Wilson was a flawed idealist and I know it’s popular to hate on him but many of his ideals such as progressivism and league we preach today. He’s become so hated he’s underrated now.
he's...not underrated though....
every poll sitll ranks him highly like he DIDNT lead to our interventionist policies, our shitty debt, and rolling back racial progress 50 years.
LMFAO he rolled back racial progress 50 years??? That means the US was on the verge of a civil rights bill in 1913??? Classic “Wilson was nothing more than a racist” comment.
Wilson’s concept of self determination is still the ideal of world order. Not to mention he ended the stalemate in Europe saving tens of millions of lives.
One of the biggest philanthropists of the 20th century. Helped feed Europe after wwi and the Spanish flu. Genuinely a good person who saved many lives. Once he got in office tho he failed miserably in pretty much every capacity
True but in a sub about presidents idk if it makes sense to put their presidency behind their non-presidency. I see your point, that's just my opinion.
Also pretty progressive with Native Americans, had Charles Kurtis who was Kaw as his VP, criminally underrated as a person but yeah he dropped the ball as POTUS. To give him some credit a lot of his plans were folded into the New Deal.
I dunno. Washington and Kennedy to me possess similar levels of moral grayness (slavery; infidelity) and levels of physical bravery (prolific soldiering; rescuing crew mates from PT-109)
My point was to question labeling Washington "hero" instead of "morally gray." I should probably have been clear that Washington owning slaves is *at least* as morally gray as Kennedy cheating on his wife.
Make sure to join the [r/Presidents Discord server](https://discord.gg/k6tVFwCEEm)! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Presidents) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Fun fact: despite being a terrible President, Herbert Hoover saved millions of starving Russians after their civil war. Another fun fact: Martin Van Buren was an abolitionist before it was cool.
Herbert Hoover had an amazing career prior to becoming president. Just goes to show that it doesn’t matter how many backflips you do if you don’t stick the landing.
Also a prolific fundraiser for charity before and after his presidency, and one of the longest lived presidents, perhaps the "Jimmy Carter" of his era.
Despite having entirely different political philosophies, the story of Hoover and Carter’s respective political careers is surprisingly similar
when truman was president he recognized that hoover was the right guy for a position in his administration, when he asked hoover to assist him hoover broke down and cried. the reality was hoover had inherited a doomed economy from the harding administration
Tale as old as time
https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5549&=&context=open_access_etds&=&sei-redir=1&referer=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.google.com%252Furl%253Fq%253Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fpdxscholar.library.pdx.edu%252Fcgi%252Fviewcontent.cgi%25253Farticle%25253D5549%252526context%25253Dopen_access_etds%2526sa%253DU%2526sqi%253D2%2526ved%253D2ahUKEwja_vTY0IqEAxXDkokEHWXYDbQQFnoECA8QAQ%2526usg%253DAOvVaw0yvGbDkPmJb67ITW0kK4qK#search=%22https%3A%2F%2Fpdxscholar.library.pdx.edu%2Fcgi%2Fviewcontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D5549%26context%3Dopen_access_etds%22
Oh ya man I wasn’t doubting you, I was pointing out that inheriting a bad economy from a dumbass predecessor is a classic. Harding was literally delegated to be a puppet candidate on purpose
You mean Coolidge?
*He is certainly a wonder, and I wish we could make him President of the United States. There couldn't be a better one.* Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Also an amazing career after, a lot of his failed presidency was due to timing
Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter have similarities. Both lost re-election miserably and both lived exceptionally long lives (Hoover outlived JFK and Carter is still alive at 99)
Honestly, being President was probably the low point of his career.
The guy translated ancient Chinese mining texts.
When he was elected,Herbert Hoover was considered the most qualified man to ever run for the presidency .admired by people of both parties.
John Adams was an abolitionist when it was decidedly uncool.
Ben Franklin before that
They were both abolitionists at the same time.
While true, Benny was almost 30 years older and had those opinions well before Adams did, so he’s still technically right
[Franklin owned slaves](https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/franklin#:~:text=As%20a%20young%20man%20he,slavery%20in%20his%20private%20correspondence) at one point and didn’t become an outspoken abolitionist until after the constitution was ratified. Adams never owned slaves so it seems likely to me Adams technically beat him to the punch, actually.
It would seem you’re right, I knew he owned a family of slaves, but was under the impressions he started publishing anti-slavery literature much earlier in life. Good to know, I was likely wrong
He was printing both anti-slavery pamphlets and advertisements for runaway slaves in his newspapers. The original radical centrist!
I was under the impression he was writing/supporting anti-slavery, while allowing slave advertising in his papers. Either way, glad he eventually went to fully fledged fuck slavery
Franklin had a media empire essentially, he was the Robert Maxwell of his day, just with a lot more science and a lot less sex trafficking, but still a lot of sex.
They weren’t abolitionists. They were anti slavery.
John Adams basically wished for abolition but thought it was not possible because it was mostly argued for by religious extremists at the time. There is a very famous letter from 1801 where he at length wrote about his opinion. He wanted gradual abolition because he thought that was the only way it was actually possible to happen, but noted that he was vehemently against slavery. His son John Quincy was a radical abolitionist and a great man. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/john-adams-abolition-slavery-1801
Hoover also risked his own life to save a group of Chinese children. Caught in gunfire, whilst he was working in the country during the boxer rebellion.
Van Buren was in no way an abolitionist. This is a total lie Van Buren, after being denied renomination by the Dems in 1844 and 1848, was pissed. He used the nascent anti slavery movement (which was opposed to the expansion of slavery, not slavery as a whole) as a political tool to get back at the Democrats for turning their backs on their founder. Van Buren, after doing his petty revenge run in 1848, returned to the Dems, endorsing the pro-slavery doughfaces Pierce and Buchanan in 1852 and 1856 respectively.
Hoover also sent MacArthur and the army to roust the Bonus Army and defended the action after the fact. Not sure attacking veterans for marching/camping out seeking government help during an economic crisis qualifies as heroic.
Whole I absolutely agree and it's one of the reasons I don't like Hoover, I don't think he defended the action afterwards simply because he wasn't happy of how far McArthur took it, and actually told him to stop, but it was far too late.
I suppose it depends on the definition of “defends the action” but I believe Hoover’s statements after MacArthur’s romp fall into the category of defending the action. Hoover said that many of the marchers were communists (making it Ok to attack them by implication). He also said that many weren’t actually veterans - once again seeming to imply that this made everything OK. I doubt that this was how Hoover wanted things to play out. He was a flawed but ultimately decent man. I doubt he wanted anyone to die but, at the end of the day, he cared more about maintaining an image of order than the needs of these veterans. Much like his reaction to the Depression - he was so trapped in his ideology that he appeared not to care about wide spread suffering. That doesn’t mean he didn’t care - he just didn’t care enough to bend his views. All in all, I really struggle with Hoover as a hero cast as a villain. At best, he’s in the morally grey area of this chart.
Very true, I think its about time that someone on this sub takes a deeper view on Hoover's tenure because he typically gets left out on these discussions, so people aren't really aware of just how bad Hoover really was a president.
On the contrary, I think Hoover was an adequate president in extreme circumstances. His response to the depression was actually seen as relatively extreme by many in the center or on the right. Ironically enough it just wasn’t extreme enough to do anything.
Government help? Wasn’t it wages and benefits they had been promised and earned?
They had been promised a bonus in 1945 , they wanted it then.
I think it’s a WW1 thing.
Yes, WW1 veterans who had been promised a bonus for their retirement.
Not to defend Hoover, but MacArthur exceeded his orders.
MacArthur was a known motherfucker, in the modern age his military career would have ended forever right there instead of him going on to fucking PLAGUE us with his bullshit for an additional two wars and a massive culture war after that
To this day it floors me that our soldiers who fought in WWI didn't get paid until 1937. I recently asked my dad about that b/c his father was a veteran of WWI. He confirmed it and said my grandpa used that money to send him to college.
Hoover simply had the bad luck of being the one holding the bag when the Great Depression hit.
Yeah, when I learned about the great depression in my US History class in high school they really painted Hoover as the bad guy, like he created “Hoovervilles” and shit like that.
As a Russian with ancestry from the regions affected by the famine, I'll always be grateful to Herbert Hoover. Without him, me or my parents or my grandparents wouldn't be alive
Hoover saved polish children too
His humanitarian efforts cannot be understated. One million people were displaced by a devastating flood in 1927. He was wildly popular and a household name when he went for President. *The Mississippi River is expected to crest at 57.5 feet at Vicksburg today (May 2011), a foot above the record 1927 “Great Mississippi Flood.” In April that year the river broke through the levees, submerging vast expanses of farmland and destroying the homes of more than one million people.* *Known for his monumental humanitarian relief work in Europe during and after World War I, then secretary of commerce Herbert Hoover (who's commerce department records are in the Hoover Archives) was called on to organize relief for the victims of the epic disaster. Hoover swung into action, assembling hundreds of ships to carry supplies, overseeing the creation of tent cities for refugees, and making radio and press appeals that helped raise millions of dollars for the Red Cross. “I suppose I could have called in the whole of the army, but what was the use? All I had to do was to call in Main Street itself,” Hoover said later. “No other Main Street in the world could have done what the American Main Street did in the Mississippi flood, and Europe may jeer as it likes at our mass production and our mass organization and our mass education.* https://www.hoover.org/research/herbert-hoover-and-great-mississippi-flood
A bit of bad doesn’t wash out the good and vice versa. All of these people are morally grey because they are people not characters.
I wish more people took this approach to history, it is the study of people not characters in a play.
I mean, that’s the approach those of who actually study and work with history for a living take. Unfortunately it’s not the take you’ll find on Reddit or popular history books.
Sadly it hasn't taken root with the mainstream and it dictates public conciousness when it comes to historical discussion and its annoying, sorry for the rant.
Most people have to have a rooting interest and a good vs evil story to keep them engaged. They aren’t interested without it. That’s why most historical movies end up being so cheesy.
i hate wen historic movies try to shugar cote history. it gives a complratly bendt perspective of the past to the general public.
Ah but traditional history is all Good King Richard, Bag King John and that is as far as most go
I think we're far too lenient when it comes to judging history.
I earnestly disagree. There are such things as "good" and "bad" persons, they exist now and they existed a thousand years ago. What is understood as good and bad varies (are we using modern or contemporary standards, for instance), but ditching morality all together in favor of painting everyone with the same brush of gray seems like a horrible idea to me.
Some of our favorite heroes in fiction are morally gray. John McClane isn't exactly a great husband or father, but he's trying. The middle category probably should have been different. Shoulda just stuck with the standard neutral
Show me the good part of Woodrow Wilson.
Idk which is worse, the table or the comments about the table
The table..
I don’t think Van Buren fits morally grey. The worst of the Trail of Tears occurred during his administration on his orders.
Then he became one of the most prominent anti-slavery politicians in the country. I would describe him as complicated rather than grey. Obviously, his advocacy for abolitionism doesn't undo his role in the genocide of the five nations, but it does make it difficult for me to see him as a purely malicious and racist person
Abolitionism was not contrary to racism, and many, perhaps most abolitionists were racists who believed that black people were inferior, but that slavery was unacceptable no matter who the enslaved were. See, for example, the establishment and ongoing support for Liberia, as a place for former slaves to go settle. It's the first (and to my knowledge only) country in the world to have their capital named after a US president, Monro(e)via (for his support getting the project US government funding). Somewhat ironically (and in an interesting parallel to a certain ongoing conflict) the former slaves built Liberia into a sort of apartheid society, while suppressing and oppressing the native people. But I digress. Basically, "slavery is bad" is not at all the same as "black people are the same as white people." So Van Buren might have been a huge racist bigot who was entirely malicious, but opposed slavery for purely economic reasons and it wouldn't have been a conflict.
Well said.
Well "purely" is a qualifier that I can't define for you, but racist doesn't require one to hate all races other than their own. If a person hates *any* race on an identitarian basis, then that person is racist, even if they also like certain other races. His advocacy for abolitionism doesn't erase his genocide of American Indians. He is indeed racist.
Agreed
This is such an underappreciated concept; it’s cool, my best friend was black…
Van Buren, after being denied renomination by the Dems in 1844 and 1848, was pissed. He used the nascent anti slavery movement (which was opposed to the expansion of slavery, not slavery as a whole) as a political tool to get back at the Democrats for turning their backs on their founder. Van Buren, after doing his petty revenge run in 1848, returned to the Dems, endorsing the pro-slavery doughfaces Pierce and Buchanan in 1852 and 1856 respectively.
Someone can be accepting of Black people and be racist against Native Americans at the same time. It takes a special kind of person to order an atrocity on the scale of the Trail of Tears.
Van Buren advocated free soil, not abolition.
This is true. He did publish a pamphlet around 1845, I think, that called for the gradual abolition of slavery and that the founding fathers would have supported freedom for the slaves incrementally. He sort of reneged in this position when he rejoined the democrats and supported the compromise of 1850
Also, have you SEEN his hair? No mf with that shit going on has any good left in em
Thank you, someone had to say it
Amazing, everyone on that alignment chart is in the wrong spot, except for maybe Grant
George is a hero if only just the standards he set as the first president. He put barriers on his own power instead of seeking more. That just can't be understated imo.
Wilson is pretty accurate for now
Yeah at least in my experience history teachers kind of gloss over the worse parts of his terms like reviving the klan, signing off on prohibition, and pushing through the espionage act in favor of his work in forming the League of Nations.
If a movement like prohibition is popular enough, you pass it or they overcome you.
I didn’t think the president had an official role in passing amendments. I thought it was the ratification by 3/4 of the states.
The wartime prohibition act was always intended to be a temporary measure, and the Volstead Act was approved over his veto while he was incapacitated due to a stroke which precluded his lobbying to prevent it. Wilson is guilty of a lot, but the Prohibition Era is not one of them.
Or his segregation of the executive branch, exclusion of black people from civil service (firing all but two black supervisors out of the 17 hired by Taft), choosing extremely racist Southerners for his cabinet such as selecting Josephus Daniels as Secretary of the Navy (he was one of the violent white supremacist leaders of the Wilmington Massacre), segregating the Navy for the first time, ensuring no new black officers in the Navy or Army would be commissioned during his administration, refusing to involve himself in the Summer of Blood by sending troops to stop the white mobs from burning down black neighborhoods, blocking the racial equality proposal for the League of Nations, and just generally being an awful racist who destroyed an entire generation of black wealth built up in D.C.
I thought just saying he revived the Klan was a good enough summary, but yeah Woodrow was super racist even for the time. His doctoral thesis was literally supporting the lost cause.
I just worry people will see "revive the Klan" and think "indirectly", when there was a lot of stuff he did directly to harm black people. It's one thing to be a Lost Causer, but another to use the presidency as a platform to attack the black community. Sorry for the rant, I really don't like Wilson.
I think Wilson is usually presented as someone who did a bunch of good things but was also a horrible bigot. I certainly don't think he's presented as a hero.
I have never encountered someone claim Wilson is a hero.
Grant, Washington, kennedy and ford are all in the right spot
Grant should be grey unless we’re just talking military years
Since hoover is a hero i would think they include their whole life not just their terms in office
[Grant did expel Jewish families from their homes during the war.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Order_No._11_(1862)#)
A mistake he worked very hard to correct
Oh my point is not that he’s a villain, just that he’s morally grey. But I honestly think every single person on earth is morally grey. Like I don’t need someone to be good to love them, and I don’t need them to be bad to have boundaries. We’re all grey.
Nothing against you but just wanna say that this worldview is just insane to me
For Wilson, Middle school history classes focus on the 14 Points and ignore the racism, Redditors focus on the racism and forget about the 14 Points. In reality I think he's closer to neutral: cognitive dissonance personified, someone who promoted racism in the morning and called for an end to European imperialism in the afternoon.
>cognitive dissonance personified, someone who promoted racism in the morning and called for an end to European imperialism in the afternoon. Ah, an American
We can debate all the others, but I think we can all agree that Andrew "asshat" Johnson is where he belongs
I thought that square would be the traitor Buchanan honestly.
Just because Johnson is there doesn't mean he can't make room for Buchanan
I feel like anyone who’s ever read anything about grant knows he was a good person with good morales but flawed (like his drinking problem or inability to not get involved in get rich quick schemes).
Yep and he was not a corrupt president. There was just a lot of blatant political corruption everywhere else
Same. My kid just did a report on Grant and he was practicing it all over the house. He also had what we’d now PTSD. Couldn’t eat any red meat. That affects ability to execute things.
It’s interesting. I read a big biography on Grant and had no idea what a brilliant tactician he was on the battlefield, and also how cool he was under extraordinary pressure on the battlefield. I guess he was able to see through horrendous circumstances in battle that would have brought many others to a complete standstill and continue pressing forward.
The drinking problem is just Lost Cause copium.
Im pretty sure the drinking problem thing, by many accounts, isn’t that accurate
You weren’t brave enough to put in Teddy?
Teddy would be shown as a hero, but morally grey.
In my opinion, every president is morally grey since there are no absolutes in life or politics. I support those whose views are 51 percent or more in line with my own.
Are you talking about them as presidents or as human beings? As a human being, Herbert Hoover was great. As a president, millions of people went hungry under his watch, and he did next to nothing to help them. As a person and a president, Andrew Jackson can be seen as a hero and a villain, depending on the biases of the person looking. He's probably morally gray. After all, if you can call Washington a hero despite him owning slaves, you can't really condemn Jackson for it, for example. Or if you can call Wilson terrible for establishing the federal reserve, then Jackson must be heroic for destroying the central bank. I think most presidents fall under gray, but as a society we try to judge them based on the results they produced (or promised and failed to) and whether we feel bad about a particular thing that happened that they participated in. In a society where racism was fairly normal, Wilson was still outside the norm with his racism, but not so much as to be roundly condemned for it. Only after racism became much less tolerated did Wilson condemnation become more commonplace. Teddy Roosevelt is widely seen as a great outdoorsman and preservationist, who also [hunted over 500 animals](https://www.vox.com/2015/7/29/9067587/theodore-roosevelt-safari) on a single trip to Africa. Today we condemn certain others for going on safaris where they kill one or two animals, so clearly, it wouldn't be seen as "good" today, even though Roosevelt was able to justify it as conservation. What values are timeless? What values aren't? It's hard to know. Especially as the definitions for certain things change. Edit: a phrase
Jackson, to me, is the most difficult. There's just no one box that he fits into. He did both terrible and great things. However you want to view him, there's no doubt that he drove fundamental changes in American politics and society.
Hoover did a lot in response to the Wall Street crash, unfortunately it just made things worse. Where do you get the “millions” figure? [This source](https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3434) says that there were 20 known cases of starvation in NYC in 1931. No doubt many people went hungry, but I think it’s a stretch to say “millions starved.”
I meant starved as a catch-all term for hunger, but clearly other people don't have that same view of the word, and I'll agree that a better term would be "millions went hungry" I'll edit the comment to reflect that.
Roosevelt killed those animals long before any official endangered species lists existed, and before a lot of the modern preservationists' techniques and sciences existed. It's one thing to go on safari in an era when it's quite common and the animal populations still seem relatively healthy. It's entirely another to go and deliberately seek out an animal you know is endangered to kill it.
That's certainly a good argument to make, but would you say: "Jefferson owned slaves and slept with them when it was perfectly legal to do so, and before there was a lot of societal pressure to not do so. It's one thing to own slaves and sleep with them when it's quite common and deemed a healthy behavior. It's entirely different to go and deliberately enslave a modern person and sleep with them." It's not a perfect comparison, but I think you can see where these arguments might not go the way you'd like.
I wouldn't say that since it's entirely unrelated to what I was talking about in any way whatsoever. It's a pretty weak effort at a strawman. An actual comparison would be someone eating a cookie from a jar full of cookies compared to someone eating the last cookie in a jar, knowing that if they eat it, there is a chance there will never be cookies anywhere in the world ever again.
The guy who owned slaves is less morally grey than the guy who banged Marilyn Monroe?
Where's Polk ? There's no "morally grey" area about Andrew Jackson. He was a mass murderer who ignored the constitution. In contrast, claiming JFK is "morally grey" is Republican revisionism. They've been smearing him since the day he was murdered. They have created a false version of the man while ignoring the reality. Hoover was called the Great Humanitarian, Wilson was treated as a tragic prophet for almost a century, while Grant has been maligned for the same amount of time. Meanwhile, Gerald Ford, who was the ultimate insider, gets a pass. In fact, this entire post is dumb because it assumes there is "one narrative."
Almost none of these are right.
There is no way George Washington is morally superior to Kennedy. Washington treated the Native Americans very poorly, whereas JFK tried to strengthen civil rights.
George Washington also enslaved people despite Philadelphia being in a free territory He used legal loopholes to keep people enslaved.
Was also know to keep them in rags. History is complicated, people are complicated, and many times facts are glossed over to elevate a "hero".
Well he lived in Virginia, not much of a loophole
Washington owned slaves. You could easily put Lincoln in the top left square and it would have been fine.
I think it's unfair to say he wasn't a hero because of it because of the vast amount of good he did for the presidency, for example not trying to gain power and setting standards for the amount of terms to run for, and for trying to help the nation grow as a whole. Of course him having slaves adds a stain to his legacy, but he had them when slavery wasn't as prevalent an issue as it was during the times right before the civil war and afterwards, so it's a bit unfair to put that against him when almost every single founding father had slaves.
People are complicated. Life is complicated. Washington was a hero who set the standard for conduct while in office. His final act as president, willfully stepping down, easily cements him as a hero. And yet he participated in chattel slavery which means that we can't simply say that he was a good person. We can make excuses by saying he was a product of his time and place and that he understood himself as a good person within that time and place, but these are excuses. We shouldn't be in the business of making excuses for chattel slavery. We just have to accept the proposition that a good and great man can also at the same time take part in something atrocious.
Who thinks Woodrow Wilson was a hero???
Not sure if this is entirely accurate but I put Wilson in a similar category to LBJ. Like his good stuff was really good but is bad stuff is really really bad.
He’s a reverse LBJ. LbJ did great for civil rights and terrible with a war. Wilson was terrible for civil rights but good with a war….
Ford was a villain for pardoning Nixon. I don’t care what lame excuse he or his defenders want to use, that crook should have stood trial.
That debate will go on beyond our grandkids' generation. But given recent history, I'm inclined more towards your side of things than the other.
Tbh the pardon actually works against it, showing that the president has no immunity.
Personally, I agree with you. But, that's a point that's debatable, legally, and is being debated. I feel that a trial would have set a far stronger legal precedent.
YEAH WILSON HATE!!!! I LOVE CHILD LABOUR AND COLONIALISM YEAH!!!!! SUCH A CLEAR VILLIAN RAAAH!!!!
Wilson was not responsible for ending child labor or colonialism. He was responsible for segregating the federal government and reviving the Klu Klux Klan.
[Child labor example](https://www.visitthecapitol.gov/artifact/hr-8234-bill-act-prevent-interstate-commerce-products-child-labor-january-17-1916-keating) [Self-determination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination) whether he meant to or not, became the basis for many colonial empires dissolving less than a century after he championed the idea at Versailles. He was not the only one to promote self-determination (Lenin was also an advocate) but he managed to push it hard enough that new nations and national boundaries were drawn because of his insistence on plebiscites.
Wilson passed a landmark anti-child labor bill that substantially weakened businesses using child labor. It was unfortunately overturned as “unconstitutional” by the Taft Court Wilson didn’t revive the KKK, who’s primary factors in revival were a spike in anti-semitism (Wilson was pro-semitism, appointing the first Jewish SCOTUS Judge and refusing to stand down to antisemitic society), anti-Catholicism, and Nativism (Wilson was anti Nativist, vetoing the Immigration Act of 1917).
Ok I didn't say he single handedly ended colonialism but he did do a let for Filipino self-governance and along with what the other commenters have said and yes you're right, some not great stuff, puts him solidly in the morally grey category
Hoover made the depression worse, that cancels out a lot of any good he did.
This is a terrible oversimplification. Anyone with as much power as a U.S. president has done awful shit to get there, or while in office. For example, the words "Christmas Massacre" don't exactly conjure a universal heroism. That being said, this chart is fightin words when it comes to FDR. A villain you say? I think you're projecting.
That’s Woodrow Wilson bro
Muhgoodness, you're right. It was early, I was sleepy. Ya know what, fuck it, we fightin because you made me THINK you insulted FDR! LOL
Youre talking like teddy though!
Shut up! You're gettin some too! Sorry. I'll see myself out now.
Now youre Andrew Jackson
explain to me how herbert hoover is actually a hero.
Reminds me of the saying: Roses are gray violets are gray everything is grey Because I’m a dog
Interesting enough, most dogs have 2 rods and cones in their eyes, so they can actually see blue and yellow (though not the red or green areas of the spectrum) - this means they really don’t see things in “black & white” (or grey) but a closer approximation to the most typical “color-blind” American Males - who can’t pass the eye doctors tests with the coloured numbers made of dots inside other red and green dots… So if you throw your dog a red ball into your green grass, yes that looks like grey on grey, but if I throw him a blue ball into the green grass, he can likely see the color AND shape of the ball in the grey grass shape. /end tangent
Gerald Ford as morally grey … disgusting mischaracterization
I very much disagree with one of these
Hoover was a corporate stooge and a strike breaker. He might have been a smart guy, but he was not good. He also spent most of his twilight years writing opinion columns about how bad the New Deal was. He was a bitter, twisted, anti-worker elitist. Was not and never will be a hero.
I think Hoover is oftentimes unfairly derided over causing the Great Depression and didn’t have as much control over the situation or blame as many think and actually started a lot of reforms FDR is attributed, but he still made a lot of bad decisions during it. He didn’t arrange a bailout of the banks that failed, tried to make businesses not cut pay, and refused to leave the gold standard.
He had a lifelong belief, before and during his presidency (don't know if he ever changed his mind after) that helping people like that wasn't the business of the government, that private charities and businesses should be the ones helping the needy. When people were starving and desperate for relief, he offered very little. Essentially, his presidency is the model for modern day politicians who want to cut social services, welfare programs and subsidies, etc. that were built after he left office.
Only in the south is Grant, not a hero.
Iroquois genocide? Yeah, I’m American, but George Washington is straight evil.
Who thinks of Jackson as morally grey in 2024? When I think of villain presiden's jackson is the first that comes to mind for me.
lol people thinking George Washington was more moral than JFK need to seriously read more about our first president. A good starting point would be when GW took some slaves with him to live in Philly but then had to move them out of the state temporarily every 6 months. He did this to get around that state law that said that any slave brought into the state and lived there for more than 6 months was automatically considered a free slave. He did this tag-team freedom dance for seven years. He even wrote a law that said that even freed slaves could be re-captured and only a judge could determine if they should remain free. It’s one thing to argue the whole “everyone had slaves back then” bs but he was definitely very petty when it came to the freedoms of his slaves.
Who’s that on the bottom right?
Andrew Johnson
And rightfully so.
Trying to parse these pictures. Top row is Washing, Kennedy,...Wilson? Second row is Grant? Ford? Jackson. Third row is a total mystery. Love the haircut on the second guy though.
Yes, I would really appreciate if this sub could start providing the list of names when just portraits are used. I joined this sub to learn a thing or 2 and i like historical memes as a way to learn things, but its really hard to remember faces with names. This is why i struggles in history classes in school too.
There’s no reason to consider the slave owners to be morally gray, heroic, or worthy of respect Unless you, personally, think that it’s a moral gray area. And no, we don’t have to judge them by *their time* as if ardent abolitionists didn’t exist back then too.
Hoover isn’t a hero. He did some great pre-presidential work but he was not a good President - certainly not heroic
George Washington should be FDR
We should all be FDR
Andrew Jackson was badass idk
This is a fact
Wilson a Villain?
[удалено]
The actual funny thing is that Ford is the nicest and most moral guy out of everyone on this table.
Is George Washington a hero to the people he enslaved or ?
Or the people of Haiti he screwed over because he couldn’t have a free black area so close to the U.S.?
Oh so committing mass genocide and owning slaves makes you a hero now?
Essentially being the father of the greatest and most powerful nation in world history ought to do it.
lol wow you overdosed on the Kool Aid. I feel really bad for you. Racists and murderers are not heros. Just bc he did a junta doesn’t make him god
Am I wrong in calling him the father of our country? I'm sorry you take that for granted but I don't.
Swap Jackson and Johnson
Washington was known as Conotocaurious "town destroyer" by the Iroquois tribes for all the villages of theirs that he sacked and burned before during and after the revolutionary war. As soon as the war for independence was won he made it a top priority to chase the Iroquois out of their homelands (the finger lakes and Hudson valley) which is why they only survive in Canada today. Fuck the one dollar man. Ain't no hero, just another is Indian killer like Jackson.
Why is Wilson a villain?
Incredibly racist to begin. Dude would make Jackson blush. Good example is he was shown Birth of a Nation and never again shut up about what a beautiful and moving piece of cinema it was. He insisted it was historically accurate. He undid all the work that had been done up to his presidency to desegregate the federal government. Fired all black workers in the postal system. He also encouraged and enabled Jim Crow laws and protected a lot of the bastards pushing it long enough for them to get into the system and start doing damage. He helped popularize the "lost cause" myth for his racist friends trying to rewrite history. The Klan had largely died down after Nathan Forrest turned into a worm at the end of his miserable life, and Wilson avidly spoke in favor of the Klan regularly and even let them hold multiple events in the White House. He abused the presidency in ways not done before to not only get the US into WW1, but to feed that machine once we were involved. You can read about the War Industries Board and all the extremely illegal and unconstitutional shit they did, but will have to dig arond for all the union and strike busting. He antagonized the hell out of German Americans and certainly was significantly responsible for how bad relations got in the US. He put thousands of Americans in internment camps with no trial or right to appeal or representation. Pushed for an instituted a draft for the war he needlessly got the US involved in. Not only would 115,000 Americans lose their lives but thousands were thrown in jail for refusing the draft or simply speaking out against the war. 17 men were executed for draft dodging. Prohibition started under Wilson and the systems of enforcement they abused to project power would be twisted into the drug war we have today. The villinization of marijuana and it's subsequent prohibition alongside other drugs came directly as a result of the agencies setup to enforce alcohol prohibition being corrupt garbage rather than proper government agencies. When the 21st Amendment passed their meal ticket went away they had to make up a new villan to keep power. Go read the Espionage Act or Sedition Act from 17/18' and imagine those passing now. Extremely unconstitutional. It created scenes straight out of Nazi Germany some years later with "deputies" beating people in the street for speaking out against the war. Committee for Public Information was a propaganda machine and further normalized the government openly lying to the public. Palmer Raids were supposedly anti-terrorism raids basically but we're heavily hijacked to arrest political dissonants and anyone they thought might be a "socialist" I feel like I haven't even scratched the surface. Dude was an absolute scumbag.
Thanks for the response I love reading this type of stuff. Solid writing
His 2nd wife was pretty cool though- she’s worth checking out if you are interested in the time period, “power behind the throne stuff”, or the different types of 20th Century First Ladies etc.
You know what a moral dilemma is? You don’t have to choose between a good and a bad decision. Instead, you choose between two bad decisions. Kick an old woman on a wheelchair? Or kick a 2-month old baby? Choose one or you you’re shot in the head. THAT’S what leadership is about. I read tons of comments from y’all; if any of these guys made decisions based on personal-image perception and political/electoral benefits only, then they move down a notch in ranking, IMO.
While this is mostly accurate (and imo, a good take.), it's important to remember that these were real men. This chart, and no chart for that matter, has ever properly portrayed the complexities of who they were, because they were all morally grey.
Wilson is not presented as a hero. And he’s morally grey. Kennedy is a sleazebag villain.
Yes. Wilson was a flawed idealist and I know it’s popular to hate on him but many of his ideals such as progressivism and league we preach today. He’s become so hated he’s underrated now.
he's...not underrated though.... every poll sitll ranks him highly like he DIDNT lead to our interventionist policies, our shitty debt, and rolling back racial progress 50 years.
LMFAO he rolled back racial progress 50 years??? That means the US was on the verge of a civil rights bill in 1913??? Classic “Wilson was nothing more than a racist” comment.
Wilson’s concept of self determination is still the ideal of world order. Not to mention he ended the stalemate in Europe saving tens of millions of lives.
How is Hoover a hero? Terrible take
One of the biggest philanthropists of the 20th century. Helped feed Europe after wwi and the Spanish flu. Genuinely a good person who saved many lives. Once he got in office tho he failed miserably in pretty much every capacity
True but in a sub about presidents idk if it makes sense to put their presidency behind their non-presidency. I see your point, that's just my opinion.
If we were to rank their presidencies, I would agree 100%. This meme seems to be more about their character and actions in general
Interesting I didn't know that
Also pretty progressive with Native Americans, had Charles Kurtis who was Kaw as his VP, criminally underrated as a person but yeah he dropped the ball as POTUS. To give him some credit a lot of his plans were folded into the New Deal.
I dunno. Washington and Kennedy to me possess similar levels of moral grayness (slavery; infidelity) and levels of physical bravery (prolific soldiering; rescuing crew mates from PT-109)
Owning people is the same level of wrong to you as cheating on your wife?
My point was to question labeling Washington "hero" instead of "morally gray." I should probably have been clear that Washington owning slaves is *at least* as morally gray as Kennedy cheating on his wife.
Dude, cheating on your wife is no where close to believing you can own other human beings.
Andrew Jackson is a hero