Rating the United States Presidents - Click Here for other interesting Articles

• Highlights
  • Set an example of fairness, prudence and integrity
  • Temporarily moved the nation's capital to Philadelphia
  • Favored a position of neutrality in foreign conflicts
  • Nominated the first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Jay
  • Signed a bill establishing the first national bank, the Bank of the United States
  • Set up his own presidential cabinet
  • He signed the first United States copyright law, protecting the copyrights of authors. He also signed the first Thanksgiving proclamation, making November 26 a national day of Thanksgiving
  • Washington called in over 12,000 militiamen to Pennsylvania to dissolve the Whiskey Rebellion in one of the first major tests of the authority of the national government
  • Under Washington’s leadership, the states ratified the Bill of Rights, and five new states entered the union: North Carolina (1789), Rhode Island (1790), Vermont (1791), Kentucky (1792) and Tennessee (1796)
  • In 1795, Washington signed the “Treaty of Amity Commerce and Navigation, between His Britannic Majesty; and The United States of America,” or Jay’s Treaty, so-named for John Jay, who had negotiated it with the government of King George III. It helped the U.S. avoid war with Great Britain, but also rankled certain members of Congress back home and was fiercely opposed by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison
  • Washington’s administration signed two other influential international treaties. Pinckney’s Treaty of 1795, also known as the Treaty of San Lorenzo, established friendly relations between the United States and Spain, firming up borders between the U.S. and Spanish territories in North America and opening up the Mississippi to American traders. The Treaty of Tripoli, signed the following year, gave American ships access to Mediterranean shipping lanes in exchange for a yearly tribute to the Pasha of Tripoli
  • George Washington steped down after a second term even though it was constitutional for him to run for a third term.

2) John Adams Mass Federalist 1797 - 1881 ***

• Highlights
  • In November 1800, John Adams became the first president to reside in the White House
  • Adams took office in March 1797. Britain and France were at war, which directly affected American trade
  • In 1797, he sent a delegation to France to negotiate a treaty but the French refused to meet with the delegates, and the French foreign minister, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord (1754-1838), demanded a large bribe. Adams refused to deal with the French on these terms, and the bribery scandal, which became known as the XYZ Affair
  • An undeclared naval war broke out between the U.S. and France in 1798 and lasted until 1800 when a peace treaty was signed
  • Adams squandered his popularity by signing the Alien and Sedition Acts into law in 1798. Ostensibly written to protect American interests, the acts gave the government broad powers to deport “enemy” aliens and arrest anyone who strongly disagreed with the government
  • Developed the American Navy into one of the most powerful in the world
  • Adams had a pet alligator whule living in the white House. It was a gift from the Marquis Lafayette
  • Appointed Federalist judges to fill openings thus preventing the new president from filling the vacancies. this was known as "midnight appointments"
  • Admams and Thomas Jefferson both pass away on July 4, 1826

3) Thomas Jefferson Virginia Democratic-Republican 1801 - 1809 ****

• Highlights
  • Believed that the states should have most of the power
  • The first president to be inaugerated in Washington DC
  • A Democratic-Republican who thought the national government should have a limited role in citizens’ lives
  • Jefferson ran against Adams again in the presidential election of 1800, which turned into a bitter battle between the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans. Jefferson defeated Adams; however, due to a flaw in the electoral system, Jefferson tied with fellow Democratic-Republican Aaron Burr (1756-1836). The House of Representatives broke the tie and voted Jefferson into office
  • Jefferson was sworn into office on March 4, 1801; he was the first presidential inauguration held in Washington, D.C. (George Washington was inaugurated in New York in 1789; in 1793, he was sworn into office in Philadelphia, as was his successor, John Adams, in 1797
  • Reduces the national debt
  • Purchased of the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million in 1803
  • Jefferson then commissioned explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the uncharted land, plus the area beyond, out to the Pacific Ocean
  • Permits navy to fight pirates off the coast of North Africa
  • During his second term, Jefferson focused on trying to keep America out of Europe’s Napoleonic Wars (1803-15). However, after Great Britain and France, who were at war, both began harassing American merchant ships, Jefferson implemented the Embargo Act of 1807
  • The act, which closed U.S. ports to foreign trade, proved unpopular with Americans and hurt the U.S. economy. It was repealed in 1809 and, despite the president’s attempts to maintain neutrality, the U.S. ended up going to war against Britain in the War of 1812
  • Permits navy to fight pirates off the coast of North Africa
  • Ends British impressment of Us sailors by passing the Embargo Act of 1807, however this bill deeply hurts the US economy
  • Has aaron Burr arrested as a traitor
  • Fathers six chidren from a young slave named Sally Hemings

• Highlights
• In addition to impeding U.S. trade, Britain took U.S. sailors for its own navy and began supporting American Indians in battles against U.S. settlers
• Madison led the U.S. into the controversial War of 1812 (1812-15) against Great Britain because Britian was blocking ports, Impressing US sailors and providing arms to Native Americans.
• America was not ready for a war. Congress had not properly funded or prepared an army, and a number of the states did not support what was referred to as “Mr. Madison’s War” and would not allow their militias to join the campaign
• Trade stopped between the U.S. and Europe, hurting American merchants once again. New England threatened secession from the Union. The Federalists undermined Madison’s efforts; and Madison was forced to flee Washington, D.C., in August 1814 as British troops invaded and burned buildings, including the White House, the Capitol and the Library of Congress
• Once blamed for the errors in the war, Madison was eventually hailed for its triumphs

• Highlights
• In 1816, Monroe ran for president again, as a Democratic-Republican
• oversaw the major westward expansion of the U.S. and strengthened American foreign policy in 1823 with the Monroe Doctrine, a warning to European countries against further colonization and intervention in the Western Hemisphere
• When he was sworn into office on March 4, 1817, Monroe became the first U.S. president to have his ceremony outdoors and give his inaugural address to the public
• The new president and his family could not take up immediate residence in the White House, because it had been destroyed by the British in 1814. Instead, they lived in a home on I Street in Washington, until the rebuilt White House was ready for occupancy in 1818
• One issue Monroe had to contend with during his first term in office was deteriorating relations with Spain. Conflicts arose between the U.S. military in Georgia and pirates and Native Americans in the Spanish-held territory of Florida. In 1819, Monroe was able to successfully address the problem by negotiating for the purchase of Florida for $5 million, further expanding U.S. territories
• With all the expansion came significant money troubles. Speculators were borrowing large sums of money to purchase land to sell to settlers and banks were leveraging assets they did not have in order to loan the money. This, along with diminished trade between the U.S. and Europe, led to a four-year economic downturn, known as the Panic of 1819
• The Missouri Compromise soon followed, outlawing slavery in the Louisiana Territory above the parallel 36°30' north, excluding the state of Missouri. Although Monroe did not think Congress had the constitutional authority to impose such conditions on Missouri’s admission to the Union, he signed the Missouri Compromise in 1820 in an effort to avoid civil war
• Monroe addressed Congress in 1823 with what became known as his Monroe Doctrine, which in part developed out of his concern that European powers would want to re-establish Spanish control of South America
• The territory of Florida was given up by Spain for $5 million.
• In addition, Monroe continued to lead the U.S. in expanding westward across the continent. He helped build transportation infrastructure and laid the foundation for America to become a world power. Five states entered the Union during Monroe’s time in office: Mississippi (1817), Illinois (1818), Alabama (1819), Maine (1820) and Missouri (1821)
• Like Adams and Jeffereson, James Monroe also died on July 4th,

• Highlights
• In a study conducted in 2008, a fitness chain concluded that John Quincy Adams was the fittest president in American history, thanks to his habit of walking more than three miles daily and swimming in the Potomac River during his presidency
• He proposed a progressive national program, including federal funding of an interstate system of roads and canals and the creation of a national university. Critics, especially Jackson’s supporters, argued that such advancements exceeded federal authority according to the Constitution
• The Erie Canal was completed while Adams was in office, linking the Great Lakes to East Coast and enabling a flow of products such as grain, whiskey and farm produce to Eastern markets
• The only president to ever serve in the congress

• Highlights
• Jackson was the nation’s first frontier president, and his election marked a turning point in American politics, as the center of political power shifted from East to West
• A major battle between the two emerging political parties involved the Bank of the United States, the charter of which was due to expire in 1832. Andrew Jackson and his supporters opposed the bank, seeing it as a privileged institution and the enemy of the common people, Under Jackson the national bank was abolished
• Though in principle Jackson supported states’ rights, he confronted the issue head-on in his battle against the South Carolina legislature, led by the formidable Senator John C. Calhoun. In 1832, South Carolina adopted a resolution declaring federal tariffs passed in 1828 and 1832 null and void and prohibiting their enforcement within state boundaries. While urging Congress to lower the high tariffs, Jackson sought and obtained the authority to order federal armed forces to South Carolina to enforce federal laws
• Relocated Native Americans to reservations marching them across country in what is know as the Trail of Tears.
• Arkansas and Michigan joined the Union
• Jackson survived an assassination attempt on January 30, 1835, beating his would-be assassin, Richard Lawrence, with his walking cane

• Highlights
• The first president to be born a citizen of the United States and not a British subject
• Soon after Van Buren took office in 1837, however, the nation was gripped by a financial panic, caused partially by the transfer of federal funds from the now-defunct Bank of the United States to state banks
• The failure of hundreds of banks and businesses and the burst bubble of wildland speculation in the West dragged the country into the worst depression of its history, and Van Buren’s continuation of Jackson’s deflationary money policies did little to improve the situation
• In addition to the Panic of 1837, Van Buren was also hurt by a long, costly war fought during his administration with the Seminole Indians of Florida
• His nickname of "Old Kinderhook" was shortened to OK. President Jackson used this abbreviation on official documents. OK becomes the most common used word in the world

• Highlights
• The first Whig to be elected president
• Served just one month in office before dying of pneumonia, becoming the first president to pass away while serving in office
• His tenure, from March 4, 1841, to April 4, 1841
• He was the oldest U.S. president until Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) was elected in 1980 at age 69

• Highlights
• He assumed office after the death of President William Henry Harrison
• In 1842, Letitia Tyler suffered a second stroke and died at age 51, becoming the first president’s wife to pass away while her husband was in the White House
• In 1844, John Tyler became the first president to marry while in office when he wed Julia Gardiner (1820-89), a wealthy New Yorker 30 years his junior
• Julia Tyler is the architect of the presidential anthem Hail to the Chief
• tyler is the father of 16 children, making him the father of more offspring than any other president.
• The couple went on to have seven children. With a total of 15 offspring from his two marriages, Tyler fathered more children than any other U.S. president in history
• At 51 years old, the man dubbed “His Accidency,” was younger than any previous president. (The ambiguity surrounding the order of succession issue was officially clarified with the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified in 1967 and states that if the president dies or resigns, the vice president becomes president
• The president was disavowed by the Whigs, who in 1843 tried–but failed–to impeach him
• In 1841, he signed the Pre-Emption Act, which spurred Western settlement by allowing a person to stake a claim on 160 acres of public land and purchase it from the government
• In 1842, Tyler’s administration ended the Seminole War in Florida and settled a dispute between the U.S. and British North American colonies over boundary issues (including the Maine-Canada border) with the Webster-Ashburton Treaty
• In 1844, the U.S. signed the Treaty of Wanghia with China, giving America access to Asian ports
• In March 1845, shortly before Tyler left office, he signed a bill annexing Texas (which officially joined the Union as the 29th state in December of that year). On his final full day as president, Tyler signed a bill making Florida the 27th state

• Highlights
• As President he oversaw the largest territorial expansion in American history— over a million square miles of land—acquired through a treaty with England and war with Mexico
• At the end of his single term, Polk had literally reshaped the nation, fulfilling the American spirit of manifest destiny
• Texas joined the country as the 28th state during his first year in office
• Following a controversial two-year war, Mexico ceded New Mexico and California to the United States
• The Polk Administration also achieved its major economic objectives by lowering tariffs and establishing an independent Federal Treasury
• The United States acquired more than a million square miles of western territory and extended its boundary to the Pacific Ocean under President Polk’s presidency
• In 1841, he signed the Pre-Emption Act, which spurred Western settlement by allowing a person to stake a claim on 160 acres of public land and purchase it from the government
• True to his campaign pledge to serve only one term, Polk left office and returned to Tennessee in March 1849, having accomplished all he set out to do
• In many ways Polk’s critics had been correct when they warned of the dangers of expansion. Texas annexation led to a contentious war with Mexico which even in its own time was unpopular and hotly contested as imperialistic and incompatible with democratic ideals
• The new territories inflamed sectional tensions between Slave States and Free States, and ultimately hastened the coming of the Civil War

• Highlights
• Taylor entered the White House at a time when the issue of slavery and its extension into the new western territories (including Texas) had caused a major rift between the North and South
• Though a slaveholder, Taylor sought to hold the nation together–a goal he was ready to accomplish by force if necessary–and he clashed with Congress over his desire to admit California to the Union as a free state
• In early July 1850, Taylor suddenly fell ill and died
• The emergence of the antislavery Free Soil Party had intensified southerners’ fears that the abolitionist North would gain control of Congress, and they saw slavery’s extension in the West as the only way of maintaining a balance
• By 1848 he had come to oppose the creation of new slave states
• In February 1850, after some incensed southern leaders threatened secession, Taylor angrily informed them that he personally would lead the army if it became necessary in order to enforce federal laws and preserve the Union
• He became increasingly unwilling to appease southern slave owners and opposed a compromise bill proposed by Henry Clay that would combine California’s admission to the Union with the abolition of the slave trade in Washington, D.C. (supported by abolitionists), and a strong fugitive slave law (supported by southerners) while allowing New Mexico and Utah to be established as territories
• True to his campaign pledge to serve only one term, Polk left office and returned to Tennessee in March 1849, having accomplished all he set out to do
• Taylor’s brief time in the White House was also marred by a financial scandal involving several members of his administration, including Secretary of War George Crawford
• On July 4, 1850, Zachary Taylor attended a ceremony at the unfinished Washington Monument; temperatures were blistering, and he reportedly ate only raw vegetables, cherries and milk. He took ill with violent stomach cramps the following day and died on July 9 of acute gastroenteritis

• Highlights
• Born in New York State
• Zachary Taylor died on July 9, 1850, and Fillmore became the nation’s 13th president
• Adopted that September, the Compromise of 1850 would define Fillmore’s presidency. California was admitted to the Union as a free state, while New Mexico was granted territorial status
• The slave trade in Washington, D.C., was abolished, while a strong Fugitive Slave Act put federal officers at the disposal of slave owners seeking their runaway slaves
• fillmore is the last Whig president

• Highlights
• Two months before he took office, Pierce and his family were in a train wreck on the way from Boston to Concord
• Though Pierce and his wife were barely injured, their 11-year-old son, Bennie, was killed. He was the third of their sons to die before reaching adulthood, and Pierce’s wife Jane never fully recovered from the loss
• He takes the oatch of office by placing his right hand over a law book. He feels he is unworthy of taking a biblical oath
• When Franklin Pierce took office, the nation was enjoying an era of great economic prosperity and relative tranquility
• In late 1853, at the urging of Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, Pierce authorized the U.S. minister to Mexico, James Gadsden, to negotiate the purchase of territory seen as vital for a proposed railroad line that would link the South with the Pacific Coast
• After Spanish authorities in Havana seized the U.S. vessel, Black Warrior, in February 1854, the Pierce administration and ministers from Spain, France and Britain concluded the secret Ostend Manifesto, which stated that if the United States determined that Spanish possession of Cuba was a security threat, it was justified in taking the island by force. The manifesto became public that fall, inspiring protest from the emerging Republicans
• In 1854, President Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which created two new territories and allowed settlers to determine whether they would enter the Union as free states or slave states
• "Bleeding Kansas". The greatest tensions of Franklin Pierce’s presidency–and, ultimately, his downfall–can be attributed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, proposed by Senator Stephen Douglas in early 1854. The bill formally organized Kansas and Nebraska into territories, opening them to settlement and railroad building; it also repealed the ban on slavery in Kansas mandated by the Missouri Compromise in 1820, declaring that the citizens of each territory–not Congress–had the right to choose whether the territory would allow slavery (a concept Douglas called “popular sovereignty”). Pierce’s support helped push the Kansas-Nebraska Act through Congress, while shared opposition to the bill led a coalition including antislavery Democrats, Free Soilers and former Whigs to form the new Republican Party
• Kansas soon became a battleground for sectional tensions, as thousands of so-called “border ruffians” streamed in from Missouri to elect a proslavery legislature in March 1855, making a mockery of popular sovereignty. When antislavery settlers in Kansas formed a rival government and sought admission to the Union as a free state, violence broke out between these Free Staters and their proslavery opponents
• He favored federal support for the building of a transcontinental railroad and opened markets abroad, restoring diplomatic relations with Mexico and urging trade with Japan
• For his ineptitude in handling the “Bleeding Kansas” situation, Pierce was denied the Democratic presidential nomination in 1856 in favor of James Buchanan

• Highlights
• Buchanan is the only U.S. president who never married. In 1819, he was engaged to Ann Coleman (1796-1819), the daughter of a wealthy Pennsylvania manufacturer; however, the wedding was called off that same year
• In the general election, Buchanan maintained that slavery was an issue to be decided by individual states and territories, while his Republican challenger, John Fremont (1813-1890), an explorer and U.S. senator from California, asserted that the federal government should ban slavery in all U.S. territories
• Buchanan further rankled Northerners by supporting the Lecompton Constitution, which would have allowed Kansas to become a slave state. (It was later voted down, and Kansas joined the Union as a free state in 1861
• On December 20, 1860, in response to Lincoln’s victory, South Carolina seceded from the Union. By the time of his inauguration on March 4, 1861, six more states–Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas–had also seceded and formed the Confederate States of America
• Buchanan asserted that states did not have the right to secede; however, he also believed he had no constitutional power to stop them. In the end, he left the slavery crisis to be resolved by the Lincoln administration. He reportedly told his successor, “If you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to Wheatland [his estate near Lancaster, Pennsylvania], you are a happy man.”

• Highlights
• His Emancipation Proclamation paved the way for slavery’s abolition, while his Gettysburg Address stands as one of the most famous pieces of oratory in American history
• By the time Lincoln was inaugurated as 16th U.S. president in March 1861, seven southern states had seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America
• To his credit. He surprised many when he proved to be a capable wartime leader, learning quickly about strategy and tactics in the early years of the Civil War, and about choosing the ablest commanders
• During the war, Lincoln drew criticism for suspending some civil liberties, including the right of habeas corpus, but he considered such measures necessary to win the war
• Shortly after the Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg), Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which took effect on January 1, 1863, and freed all of the enslaved people in the rebellious states not under federal control, but left those in the border states (loyal to the Union) in bondage
• Though Lincoln once maintained that his “paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery,” he nonetheless came to regard emancipation as one of his greatest achievements and would argue for the passage of a constitutional amendment outlawing slavery (eventually passed as the 13th Amendment after his death in 1865)
• In November 1863, Lincoln delivered a brief speech (just 272 words) at the dedication ceremony for the new national cemetery at Gettysburg. Published widely, the Gettysburg Address eloquently expressed the war’s purpose, harking back to the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence and the pursuit of human equality. It became the most famous speech of Lincoln’s presidency, and one of the most widely quoted speeches in history
• In his second inaugural address, delivered on March 4, 1865, Lincoln addressed the need to reconstruct the South and rebuild the Union: “With malice toward none; with charity for all.”

• Highlights
• Johnson focused on quickly restoring the Southern states to the Union. He granted amnesty to most former Confederates and allowed the rebel states to elect new governments. These governments, which often included ex-Confederate officials, soon enacted black codes, measures designed to control and repress the recently freed slave population
• In 1866, Johnson vetoed the Freedmen’s Bureau bill and the Civil Rights bill, legislation aimed at protecting blacks
• February 1868, the House of Representatives voted to impeach Johnson. Among the 11 charges, he was accused of violating the Tenure of Office Act by suspending Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (1814-1869), who opposed Johnson’s Reconstruction policies. That May, the Senate acquitted Johnson of the charges by one vote

• Highlights
• Grant entered the White House in the middle of the Reconstruction era, a tumultuous period in which the 11 Southern states that seceded before or at the start of the Civil War were brought back into the Union
• Grant signed legislation aimed at limiting the activities of white terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan that used violence to intimidate blacks and prevent them from voting
• In addition to focusing on Reconstruction, Grant signed legislation establishing the Department of Justice, the Weather Bureau (now known as the National Weather Service) and Yellowstone National Park, America’s first national park. He also tried, with limited success, to improve conditions for Native Americans
• Grant’s administration made strides in foreign policy by negotiating the 1871 Treaty of Washington, which settled U.S. claims against England stemming from the activities of British-built Confederate warships that disrupted Northern shipping during the Civil War. The treaty resulted in improved relations between the United Kingdom and the United States
• During Grant’s second term, he had to contend with a lengthy and severe depression that struck the nation in 1873 as well as various scandals that plagued his administration
• Ulysses Grant’s time in office was marked by scandal and corruption, although he himself did not participate in or profit from the misdeeds perpetrated by some of his associates and appointees
• Another major scandal was the Whiskey Ring, which was exposed in 1875 and involved a network of distillers, distributors and public officials who conspired to defraud the federal government of millions in liquor tax revenue

• Highlights
• As president, Hayes ended Reconstruction within his first year in office by withdrawing federal troops from states still under occupation
• The Republicans who had opposed Hayes’ candidacy at the party convention were even more frustrated by the president’s plans for civil service reform, which focused on ending patronage in favor of appointing civil servants based on merit

• Highlights
• Sworn in as the 20th U.S. president in March 1881 and died in September of that same year from an assassin’s bullet, making his tenure in office the second-shortest in U.S. presidential history
• After being shot, Garfieldlingered in bed for two weeks without a declaration of inability, while the attorney General ran the gorevnment.
• After nearly four months of political wrangling and maneuvering, Garfield sought to finally move forward with his agenda for civil service reform and other initiatives. However, a disgruntled attorney who was refused a political appointment changed all that. On July 2, 1881, Charles Guiteau (1841-82) fired two shots at Garfield while the president was en route to a Williams College reunion

• Highlights
• became president after the assassination of President James A. Garfield
• In 1882 he displayed surprising independence when he vetoed an $18 million rivers and harbors bill that contained ample funds for projects that could be used for political patronage
• In 1882, soon after vetoing a bill that would have suspended Chinese immigration to the United States for 20 years, Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), which reduced the suspension to 10 years
• Arthur recommended appropriations that would later help to transform the United States Navy into one of the world’s great fleets
• In January 1883, he signed the Pendleton Civil Service Act, landmark legislation mandating that certain federal government jobs be distributed based on merit rather than political connections

• Highlights
• Cleveland was involved in a paternity case in which he admitted that he had paid child support in 1874 to a woman who claimed he was the father of her child
• Cleveland continued the policy of his predecessor, Chester Arthur (1830-86), in basing political appointments on merit rather than party affiliation
• Cleveland distinguished himself as one of the few truly honest and principled politicians of the Gilded Age

• Highlights
• Won an electoral majority while losing the popular vote by more than 100,000 to Democrat Grover Cleveland
• Signed into law the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890), the first legislation to prohibit business combinations in restraint of trade.
• Passed the sherman silver Purchase Act of 1890
• A deeply religious man—he was an elder in the Presbyterian church for 40 years
• In February 1893, after an American-led coup toppled Queen Liliuokalani in the Hawaiian Islands, Harrison placed a treaty of annexation before the Senate, but Democrats blocked ratification for the remainder of Harrison’s term.
• Many Americans, particularly farmers, viewed the Republican-controlled White House and Congress as wasteful and too closely aligned with the nation’s wealthy elite.
• He was the last Civil War general to serve as president
• Enacted the very high McKinley Tariff in 1890 and made the surplus in the treasury vanish in a massive spending spree

• Highlights
• Distinguished himself as one of the few truly honest and principled politicians of the Gilded Age
• Early in Cleveland’s second term the United States sank into the most severe economic depression the country had yet experienced. Cleveland believed that the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890—which required the secretary of the treasury to purchase 4.5 million ounces of silver each month—had eroded confidence in the stability of the currency and was thus at the root of the nation’s economic troubles. He called Congress into special session and, over considerable opposition from Southern and Western members of his own party, forced the repeal of the act. Yet the depression only worsened
• Apart from assuring a sound—i.e., gold-backed—currency, he insisted the government could do nothing to alleviate the suffering of the many thousands of people who had lost jobs, homes, and farms. His popularity sank even lower when
• he Pullman Strike in 1894. Cleveland sent federal troops to Chicago to quell violence at George M. Pullman’s railroad car facility, despite the objections of Illinois Gov. John P. Altgeld. The strike was broken within a week, and the president received the plaudits of the business community. However, he had severed whatever support he still had in the ranks of labour.
• At the tumultuous Democratic convention in 1896, the party was divided between supporters of Cleveland and the gold standard and those who wanted a bimetallic standard of gold and silver designed to expand the nation’s money supply. When William Jennings Bryan delivered his impassioned Cross of Gold speech, the delegates not only nominated the little-known Bryan for president but also repudiated Cleveland—the first and only president ever to be so repudiated by his own party.
• Cleveland remains the most conservative Democrat to have occupied the White House since the Civil War.

• Highlights
• In 1898, McKinley led the nation into war with Spain over the issue of Cuban independence; the brief and decisive conflict ended with the U.S. in possession of Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam
• After the U.S. battleship Maine exploded in Havana’s harbor in February 1898, McKinley asked Congress for the authority to intervene in the conflict; a formal declaration of war came on April 25
• McKinley’s support for the Dingley Tariff strengthened his position with organized labor, while his generally business-friendly administration allowed industrial combinations or “trusts” to develop at an unprecedented rate
• McKinley’s administration also pursued an influential “Open Door” policy aimed as supporting American commercial interests in China and ensuring a strong U.S. position in world markets
• In 1900, McKinley backed up this policy by sending American troops to help put down the Boxer Rebellion, a nationalist uprising against foreign intervention in China
• At the Pan-American Exposition, McKinley was standing in a receiving line when an unemployed Detroit mill worker named Leon Czolgosz shot McKinley twice in the chest at point-blank range. Czolgosz, an anarchist, later admitted to the shooting and claimed to have killed the president because he was the “enemy of the people.” He was executed in October 1901
• Re-elected in 1900, McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist in Buffalo, New York, in September 1901

• Highlights
• Confronted the bitter struggle between management and labor head-on and became known as the great “trust buster” for his strenuous efforts to break up industrial combinations under the Sherman Antitrust Act
• a dedicated conservationist, setting aside some 200 million acres for national forests, reserves and wildlife refuges
• Roosevelt won a Nobel Peace Prize for his negotiations to end the Russo-Japanese War and spearheaded the beginning of construction on the Panama Canal
• He was the first president ever to entertain a black man in the White House - Booker T Washington
• Roosevelt’s “Square Deal” domestic program included a promise to battle large industrial combinations, or trusts, which threatened to restrain trade
• Roosevelt set aside almost 200 million acres–almost five times as much land as all his predecessors combined–for national forests, reserves and wildlife refuges
• He believed that America should “speak softly and carry a big stick” in the realm of international affairs and that its president should be willing to use force to back up his diplomatic negotiations
• In 1903, he helped Panama secede from Colombia in order to facilitate the beginning of construction on the Panama Canal, which he later claimed as his greatest accomplishment as president
• After several European nations had attempted to forcibly collect on debts owed to them by Latin American nations, Roosevelt issued a “corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine stating that the United States would bar foreign intervention in Latin America and act to police the hemisphere, ensuring that countries paid their international debts
• By the end of his presidency, he had transformed the U.S. Navy into a major international force at sea
• He also reached an agreement with Japan that traded diplomatic recognition of that country in return for Japan’s acceptance of the ongoing U.S. presence in the Philippines

• Highlights
• Taft weighed as much as 300 pounds at times during his presidency
• Though he was initially active in “trust-busting,” initiating some 80 antitrust suits against large industrial combinations–twice as many as Roosevelt–he later backed away from these efforts, and in general aligned himself with the more conservative members of the Republican Party
• In 1909, Taft’s convention of a special session of Congress to debate tariff reform legislation spurred the Republican protectionist majority to action and led to the passage of the Payne-Aldrich Act, which did little to lower tariffs. Though more progressive Republicans (such as Roosevelt) expected Taft to veto the bill, he signed it into law and publicly defended it as “the best tariff bill that the Republican Party ever passed
• In another key misstep where progressives were concerned, Taft upheld the policies of Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger, and dismissed Ballinger’s leading critic, Gifford Pinchot, a conservationist and close friend of Roosevelt who served as head of the Bureau of Forestry. Pinchot’s firing split the Republican Party further and estranged Taft from Roosevelt for good
• Taft’s achievements, included his trust-busting efforts, his empowering of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to set railroad rates, and his support of constitutional amendments mandating a federal income tax and the direct election of senators by the people (as opposed to appointment by state legislatures)
• By 1912, Roosevelt, dissatisfied with Taft’s presidency, had formed his own Progressive Party, splitting Republican voters and handing the White House to the Democrat Woodrow Wilson
• Nine years after leaving office, Taft achieved his lifelong goal when President Warren Harding appointed him chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
• Told Woodrow Wislon befire parting the white House, I am glad to be going - this is the loneliest place in the world."

• Highlights
• Led his country into World War I and became the creator and leading advocate of the League of Nations, for which he was awarded the 1919 Nobel Prize for Peace.
• Wilson was the first US President to set foot in Europe
• Maintained a scandal free administration
• During his second term the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women the right to vote, was passed and ratified.
• He suffered a paralytic stroke while seeking American public support for the Treaty of Versailles (October 1919), and his incapacity, which lasted for the rest of his term of office, caused the worst crisis of presidential disability in American history.
• He won his first victory with passage of the Underwood-Simmons Tariff (1913), which reduced duties on imports for the first time in 40 years.
• In May of 1913 the United States recognized China as a republic, one of the first nations to do so
• At 12:45 on March 15, 1913, wilson became the first president to hold a White House press conference.
• The 16th amendmentwas ratified providing Congress the power to tax
• Accompanying the new tariff, to offset lost revenues, was an income tax, which was permitted under the recently adopted Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
• Wilson’s second victory came when, after months of complicated debate and bargaining over banking and currency reform, Congress in 1913 passed the act creating the Federal Reserve System, which remains the most powerful government agency in economic affairs.
• A third victory came with passage of the Clayton Antitrust Act (1914), which strengthened existing laws against anticompetitive business actions and gave labour unions relief from court injunctions.
• Wilson also nominated Brandeis to a justiceship on the Supreme Court and successfully fought for his confirmation in the Senate. Brandeis, who served until 1939, was the first Jewish justice and became a major force on the Supreme Court.
• Wilson’s first term also had an ugly side. Despite his Southern birth and upbringing, the president held racial views that mirrored the then prevailing indifference of white Northerners toward injustices meted out to African Americans. Several of Wilson’s cabinet members were Southerners, however, and they demanded that segregation be introduced into the federal government. Wilson permitted such efforts to go forward.
• In a similar vein, the numbers and percentages of African Americans in the federal workforce were sharply reduced
• The only move Wilson made toward improving race relations came in July 1918, during his second term, when he eloquently but belatedly condemned lynching.
• On May 7, 1915, when a U-boat sank the British liner Lusitania, killing more than 1,100 people, including 128 Americans, the war came home with a vengeance.
• January 22, 1917 he gave a stirring speech in which he called for a “peace without victory” and pledged to establish a league of nations to prevent future wars.
• The Germans rendered Wilson’s peace efforts moot by unleashing their submarines on February 1. For the next two months Wilson agonized over how to respond. Public opinion remained divided and uncertain, even after publication of the Zimmermann Telegram, a secret communication by the German foreign secretary that offered Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona to Mexico in return for going to war against the United States.
• On April 2, 1917, he went before Congress to ask for a declaration of war so that the United States could strive to fulfill his injunction that “the world must be made safe for democracy.”
• Wilson proved to be a surprisingly effective war president. Recognizing what he did not know, he delegated military decisions to professional soldiers, particularly Gen. John J. Pershing, who commanded the American Expeditionary Force in France
• Careful planning also ensured the success of the Selective Service Act (see Selective Service Acts), which became law in May. This helped to raise the strength of the armed forces to five million men and women, two million of whom reached France by the war’s end. The boost given to the Allies by American money, supplies, and manpower tipped the scales against the Germans, who sued for peace and laid down their arms with the Armistice of November 11, 1918.
• Wilson made the controversial decision to go in person to the Paris Peace Conference, where he spent seven months in wearying, often acrimonious negotiations with the British, French, and Italians.
• The final product, the Treaty of Versailles, was signed on June 28, 1919.
• On October 2, 1919, Wilson suffered a massive stroke that left him partially paralyzed on his left side. His intellectual capacity was not affected, but his emotional balance and judgment were badly impaired.
• His wife, Edith, controlled access to him, made decisions by default, and engineered a cover-up of his condition, which included misleadingly optimistic reports from his doctors.
• Twice, on November 19, 1919, and March 19, 1920, the Treaty of Versailles failed to gain the two-thirds vote necessary for ratification. Later, under Warren G. Harding, Wilson’s Republican successor, the United States made a separate peace with Germany, something Wilson had believed “would place ineffable stain upon the gallantry and honor of the United States.” The United States never joined the League of Nations.
• Vetoed the Volstead Act - "to prohibit intoxication beverages" - his veto was overridden
• Wilson did not consider the races equal and had no intention of equalizing them under the law
• Wilson suffered a thrombosis, an ischemic stroke, a clot in the artery of the brain
• Wilson's wife, Edith, determined what matters should come before the President and when. She filtered every issue that required presidential action. She did not become the first female president but she came close.

• Highlights
• Harding’s presidency was overshadowed by the criminal activities of some of his cabinet members and other government officials, although he himself was not involved in any wrongdoing.
• The first American president to visit Alaska, which had been a territory since 1912 and would achieve statehood in 1959.
• Once in office, Warren Harding followed a predominantly pro-business, conservative Republican agenda. Taxes were reduced, particularly for corporations and wealthy individuals; high protective tariffs were enacted, and immigration was limited.
• Harding signed the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, which streamlined the federal budget system and established the General Accounting Office to audit government expenditures.
• Introduced the highest tariffs in American history
• Harding also nominated ex-president Taft as the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. To date, Taft is the only former chief executive to have held this position.
• Known as the Teapot Dome Scandal, Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall (1861-1944) rented public lands to oil companies in exchange for gifts and personal loans. (Fall was later convicted of accepting bribes and spent less than a year in prison.)
• Harding himself allegedly had extramarital affairs and drank alcohol in the White House, a violation of the 18th Amendment.
• In the summer of 1923, Warren Harding embarked on a cross-country tour of the United States to promote his policies. During the trip, the 57-year-old president became sick, and on August 2 he died of what was likely a heart attack (no autopsy was conducted) at a San Francisco hotel.

• Highlights
• Became president after the death of Warren Harding
• He inherited an administration mired in scandal. Cautiously, quietly, and skillfully, Coolidge rooted out the perpetrators and restored integrity to the executive branch.
• Coolidge captured the prevailing sentiment of the American people in the 1920s when he said, “The chief business of the American people is business.”
• Ran a pro-business administration
• Believing strongly that reducing taxes for the rich was the best way to expand the nation’s wealth.
• He held that, as the rich invested funds that otherwise would have been taken away in taxes, new businesses would form and older enterprises would expand and that the result would be more jobs and greater national production.
• Congress sharply reduced income taxes and estate taxes.
• Twice Congress passed the McNary-Haugen bill, calling for the federal government to purchase surplus crops. Twice (1927 and 1928) Coolidge vetoed it, and The economic woes of American farmers persisted well into the following decade.
• Coolidge adamantly opposed U.S. membership in the League of Nations,
• Two of its members received the Nobel Prize for Peace. In 1925, Vice President Charles G. Dawes won the prize for his program to help Germany meet its war debt obligations, and Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg won it in 1929 for his role in negotiating the Kellogg-Briand Pact, a multinational agreement renouncing war as an instrument of national policy.

• Highlights
• His administration proved unable to alleviate widespread joblessness, homelessness, and hunger
• The stock market cash of 1929 plunged the country into the worst economic collapse in its history.
• The nation’s economy failed to respond to Hoover’s initiatives. As the Depression worsened, banks and other businesses collapsed and poverty stalked the land
• Demands rose for greater government action, especially direct relief payments to the most impoverished of the millions of unemployed. Believing that a dole would prove addictive, sapping the will of Americans to provide for themselves, Hoover adamantly opposed direct federal relief payments to individuals.
• Hoover also furthered the long-held Quaker interest in prison reform, alleviating prison overcrowding by building new penitentiaries and work camps, expanding educational opportunities for prisoners, and increasing the number of prisoners placed on parole.
• He also supported RFC loans to states for relief purposes, though this modest program did little to alleviate suffering or to stimulate economic recovery.
• largely ineffectiv was Hoover’s attempt to defuse international tensions by promoting disarmament negotiations at the London Naval Conference of 1930.
• Quaker pacifism undoubtedly spurred Hoover’s interest in the arms race and international disarmament, but, like his relief schemes on the home front that could hardly suppress or contain the Depression, these efforts failed to reduce world tensions or to prevent Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931.
• In 1930 he signed into law (against the advice of many leading economists) the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which raised many import duties so high that foreign countries could not sell goods in the United States; as a result, those countries could not—or would not—purchase American goods at a time when the need for sales abroad had never been greater.
• 1932, when Hoover authorized General Douglas MacArthur to evict from Washington, D.C., the Bonus Army

• Highlights
• In August 1921, while Roosevelt was on vacation at Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Canada, his life was transformed when he was stricken with poliomyelitis. He suffered intensely, and for some time he was almost completely paralyzed.
• Famous quote, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
• Led the country through the Great Depression and World War II
• Expanded government powers by complementing The New Deal programs in which his administration presented Congress with a broad array of measures intended to achieve economic recovery, to provide relief to the millions of poor and unemployed, and to reform aspects of the economy that Roosevelt believed had caused the collapse.
• Roosevelt’s regular national radio broadcasts became know ans “fireside chats”
• Roosevelt asked Congress to pass additional New Deal legislation—sometimes called the “Second New Deal”—in 1935. The key measures of the Second New Deal were the Social Security Act, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and the Wagner Act.
• To make the court more supportive of reform legislation, Roosevelt proposed a reorganization plan that would have allowed him to appoint one new justice for every sitting justice aged 70 years or older.
• Roosevelt extended American recognition to the government of the Soviet Union, launched the Good Neighbor Policy to improve U.S. relations with Latin America
• When World War II broke out in Europe in September 1939, Roosevelt called Congress into special session to revise the neutrality acts to permit belligerents—i.e., Britain and France—to buy American arms on a “cash-and-carry” basis
• In 1940 the Democrats had nominated Roosevelt for a third term, even though his election would break the two-term tradition honored since the presidency of George Washington.
• In March 1941, after a bitter debate in Congress, Roosevelt obtained passage of the Lend-Lease Act, which enabled the United States to accept noncash payment for military and other aid to Britain and its allies.
• When Japan joined the Axis powers of Germany and Italy, Roosevelt began to restrict exports to Japan of supplies essential to making war.
• Throughout 1941, Japan negotiated with the United States, seeking restoration of trade in those supplies, particularly petroleum products. When the negotiations failed to produce agreement, Japanese military leaders began to plan an attack on the United States.
• The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, destroying or damaging nearly the entire U.S. Pacific fleet and hundreds of airplanes and killing about 2,500 military personnel and civilians
• On December 8, at Roosevelt’s request, Congress declared war on Japan; on December 11 Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.
• Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill, (the “Big Three”) met at the Yalta Conference in Crimea, U.S.S.R., in February 1945
• At Yalta, Roosevelt secured Stalin’s commitment to enter the war against Japan soon after Germany’s surrender and to establish democratic governments in the nations of eastern Europe occupied by Soviet troops.
• Stalin kept his pledge concerning Japan but proceeded to impose Soviet satellite governments throughout eastern Europe.
• Early in April 1945 he traveled to his cottage in Warm Springs, Georgia—the “Little White House”—to rest. On the afternoon of April 12, while sitting for a portrait, he suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage, and he died a few hours later.

• Highlights
• Took office April 12, 1945 after the death of President Franklin Delana Roosevelt
• Led his country through the final stages of World War II and through the early years of the Cold War
• Sent U.S. forces to turn back a communist invasion of South Korea
• While in Potsdam Truman received word of the successful test of an atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico, and it was from Potsdam that Truman sent an ultimatum to Japan to surrender unconditionally or face “utter devastation.”
• When Japan did not surrender and his advisers estimated that up to 500,000 Americans might be killed in an invasion of Japan, Truman authorized the dropping of atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9), killing more than 100,000 men, women, and children
• Japan surrendered on August 14, and the Pacific war ended officially on September 2, 1945
• Truman put the world on notice through his Truman Doctrine that the United States would oppose communist aggression everywhere
• Later in 1947 the president backed Secretary of State George Marshall’s strategy for undercutting communism’s appeal in western Europe by sending enormous amounts of financial aid (ultimately about $13 billion) to rebuild devastated European economies
• Both the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program) achieved their objectives, but they also contributed to the global polarization that characterized five decades of Cold War hostility between East and West
• Congress passed the Taft-Hartley bill over Truman's veto
• The Fair Deal included proposals for expanded public housing, increased aid to education, a higher minimum wage, federal protection for civil rights, and national health insurance
• In 1949 Chinese communists finally won their long civil war, seizing control of the mainland
• the Soviet Union successfully tested a nuclear bomb, ending the nuclear monopoly enjoyed by the United States since 1945
• Truman faced down the Soviet threat to Berlin in 1948 with a massive airlift of food and supplies to sustain the noncommunist sectors of the city
• In 1950 he authorized development of the hydrogen bomb in order to maintain an arms lead over the Soviets
• In June 1950 military forces of communist North Korea suddenly plunged southward across the 38th parallel boundary in an attempt to seize noncommunist South Korea.
• Truman did not ask Congress for a declaration of war, and he was later criticized for this decision. Instead, he sent to South Korea, with UN sanction, U.S. forces under Gen. Douglas MacArthur to repel the invasion
• the Americans were pushed back to the southern tip of the Korean peninsula before MacArthur’s brilliant Inchon offensive drove the communists north of the 38th parallel. South Korea was liberated, but MacArthur wanted a victory over the communists, not merely restoration of the status quo
• U.S. forces drove northward, nearly to the Yalu River boundary with Manchuria. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops then poured into North Korea, pushing the fighting once again down to the 38th parallel
• When MacArthur insisted on extending the war to China and using nuclear weapons to defeat the communists, Truman removed him from command—a courageous assertion of civilian control over the military
• The war, however, dragged on inconclusively past the end of Truman’s presidency, eventually claiming the lives of more than 33,000 Americans and leaving a residual bitterness at home
• As the nation’s second “Red Scare” (the fear that communists had infiltrated key positions in government and society) took hold in the late 1940s and early ’50s, Truman’s popularity began to plummet. In March 1952 he announced he was not going to run for reelection
• Later presidents, regardless of political party, looked back on him fondly, admiring his willingness to take responsibility for the country (as a sign on his desk read, “The Buck Stops Here!”
• Truman did issue an executive order (9981) that desegregated the military, and he was noted for appointing African Americans to high-level positions

• Highlights
• Had been supreme commander of the Allied forces in western Europe during World War II
• The needs of an expanding population (which grew from 155 million to 179 million during the Eisenhower era) and the country’s overseas commitments caused budget deficits during five out of eight years
• The minimum wage was increased to $1 per hour; the Social Security System was broadened; and in the spring of 1953 the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was created
• Eisenhower and his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, worked hard at achieving peace by constructing collective defense agreements and by threatening the Soviet Union with “massive retaliatory power”
• The president was able to negotiate a truce for the Korean War in July 1953
• In September 1954 Eisenhower and Dulles succeeded in creating the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) to prevent further communist expansion. It was composed of the United States, France, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, and Pakistan
• NATO was strengthened in 1955 by the inclusion of West Germany.
• A heart attack in September 1955 and an operation for ileitis in June 1956 raised considerable doubt about Eisenhower’s ability to serve a second term. But he recovered quickly
• Eisenhower was the first president to serve with three Congresses controlled by the opposition party
• The election campaign of 1956, however, had been complicated by a crisis in the Middle East over Egypt’s seizure of the Suez Canal. The subsequent attack on Egypt by Great Britain, France, and Israel and the Soviet Union’s support of Egypt prompted the president to go before Congress in January 1957 to urge adoption of what came to be called the Eisenhower Doctrine, a pledge to send U.S. armed forces to any Middle Eastern country requesting assistance against communist aggression
• The U.S. Supreme Court, on May 17, 1954, declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka)
• In September 1957 Eisenhower dispatched 1,000 federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to halt an attempt by Gov. Orval E. Faubus to obstruct a federal court order integrating a high school
• On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, the first man-made satellite to orbit the Earth
• Americans were stunned by the achievement, and many blamed Eisenhower for the administration’s insistence on low military budgets and its failure to develop a space program
• He traveled over 300,000 miles (480,000 km) to some 27 countries in his last two years of office, a period historians have termed the era of “the new Eisenhower.” His masterly use of the new medium of television—holding regularly televised news conferences and participating in high-profile motorcades in foreign capitals around the world—and his exploitation of the advent of jet travel captivated the public and led some scholars to term Eisenhower the first of the imperial presidents
• when a U-2 reconnaissance plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers of the United States was shot down over the U.S.S.R. in May 1960, Khrushchev scuttled the talks and angrily withdrew his invitation to Eisenhower to visit the Soviet Union
• In January 1961, during the last weeks of the Eisenhower administration, the United States broke diplomatic relations with Cuba, which for two years had been under the control of Fidel Castro

• Highlights
• Secured such achievements as the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty and the Alliance for Progress
• He was the youngest man and the first Roman Catholic ever elected to the presidency of the United States
• Famous quote, "ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country"
• In the last year of the Eisenhower presidency, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had equipped and trained a brigade of anticommunist Cuban exiles for an invasion of their homeland. The Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously advised the new president that this force, once ashore, would spark a general uprising against the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro. But the Bay of Pigs invasion was a fiasco; every man on the beachhead was either killed or captured
• Khrushchev ordered a wall built between East and West Berlin and threatened to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany. The president activated National Guard and reserve units, and Khrushchev backed down on his separate peace threat
• In October 1962 a buildup of Soviet short- and intermediate-range nuclear missiles was discovered in Cuba. Kennedy demanded that the missiles be dismantled; he ordered a “quarantine” of Cuba—in effect, a blockade that would stop Soviet ships from reaching that island. For 13 days nuclear war seemed near; then the Soviet premier announced that the offensive weapons would be withdrawn.
• Ten months later Kennedy scored his greatest foreign triumph when Khrushchev and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan of Great Britain joined him in signing the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty
• Kennedy’s commitment to combat the spread of communism led him to escalate American involvement in the conflict in Vietnam, where he sent not just supplies and financial assistance, as President Eisenhower had, but 15,000 military advisers as well
• his two most cherished projects, massive income tax cuts and a sweeping civil rights measure, were not passed until after his death
• In May 1961 Kennedy committed the United States to land a man on the Moon by the end of the decade, and, while he would not live to see this achievement either, his advocacy of the space program contributed to the successful launch of the first American manned spaceflights
• if the first family had become American royalty, its image of perfection would be tainted years later by allegations of marital infidelity by the president (most notably, an affair with motion-picture icon Marilyn Monroe) and of his association with members of organized crime.
• On Friday, November 22, 1963, he and Jacqueline Kennedy were in an open limousine riding slowly in a motorcade through downtown Dallas. At 12:30 pm the president was struck by two rifle bullets, one at the base of his neck and one in the head. He was pronounced dead shortly after arrival at Parkland Memorial Hospital

• Highlights
• Johnson was elected vice president in 1960 and acceded to the presidency in 1963 upon the assassination of Pres. John F. Kennedy
• Signed into law the Civil Rights Act (1964), the most comprehensive civil rights legislation since the Reconstruction era
• Among its provisions were a prohibition of racial segregation and discrimination in places of public accommodation, a prohibition of discrimination by race or sex in employment and union membership, and new guarantees of equal voting rights.
• The Great Society program, beginning with the Civil Rights Act and continuing with other important measures passed during Johnson’s second term, was the most impressive body of social legislation since the New Deal
• It encompassed measures designed to fight the “war on poverty,” including legislation establishing the Job Corps for the unemployed and the Head Start program for preschool children; new civil rights legislation, such as the Voting Rights Act (1965), which outlawed the literacy tests and other devices used to prevent African Americans from voting; and Medicare and Medicaid, which provided health benefits for the elderly and the poor, respectively
• involvement in the war in Vietnam, which had begun during the Eisenhower administration and was accelerated by President Kennedy
• In early August 1964, after North Vietnamese gunboats allegedly attacked U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin near the coast of North Vietnam without provocation
• Congress overwhelmingly passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized the president to take “all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.
• In effect, the measure granted Johnson the constitutional authority to conduct a war in Vietnam without a formal declaration from Congress
• Despite his campaign pledges not to widen American military involvement in Vietnam, Johnson soon increased the number of U.S. troops in that country and expanded their mission
• By the end of 1965 the number of military personnel in the country had reached 180,000
• The number increased steadily over the next two years, peaking at about 550,000 in 1968
• American casualties gradually mounted, reaching nearly 500 a week by the end of 1967. Moreover, the enormous financial cost of the war, reaching $25 billion in 1967, diverted money from Johnson’s cherished Great Society programs and began to fuel inflation
• life for the nation’s poor, particularly African Americans living in inner-city slums in the North, failed to show significant improvement
• Beginning in the mid-1960s, violence erupted in several cities, as the country suffered through “long, hot summers” of riots or the threat of riots—in the Watts district of Los Angeles (1965), in Cleveland, Ohio (1966), in Newark, New Jersey, and Detroit, Michigan (1967), in Washington, D.C. (1968), and elsewhere
• On January 23, 1968, the American intelligence-gathering vessel USS Pueblo was seized by North Korea; all 80 members of the crew were captured and imprisoned. Already frustrated by the demands of the Vietnam War, Johnson responded with restraint but called up 15,000 navy and air force reservists and ordered the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise to the area. The Pueblo crew was held for 11 months and was freed only after the United States apologized for having violated North Korean waters; the apology was later retracted
• after the seizure of the Pueblo, the Tet Offensive by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces in South Vietnam embarrassed the Johnson administration and shocked the country. Although the attack was a failure in military terms, the news coverage—including televised images of enemy forces firing on the U.S. embassy in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), the South Vietnamese capital—completely undermined the administration’s claim that the war was being won and added further to Johnson’s nagging “credibility gap.”
• On March 31, 1968, Johnson startled television viewers with a national address that included three announcements: that he had just ordered major reductions in the bombing of North Vietnam, that he was requesting peace talks, and that he would neither seek nor accept his party’s renomination for the presidency

• Highlights
• Nixon garnered Southern support by promising to appoint “strict constructionists” to the federal judiciary, to name a Southerner to the Supreme Court, to oppose court-ordered busing, and to choose a vice presidential candidate acceptable to the South
• Nixon's administration undertook a number of important reforms in welfare policy, civil rights, law enforcement, the environment, and other areas
• Nixon’s administration instituted so-called “set aside” policies to reserve a certain percentage of jobs for minorities on federally funded construction projects—the first “affirmative action” program
• Although Nixon opposed school busing and delayed taking action on desegregation until federal court orders forced his hand, his administration drastically reduced the percentage of African American students attending all-black schools
• Funding for many federal civil rights agencies, in particular the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), was substantially increased while Nixon was in office
• Nixon proposed legislation that created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
• His revenue-sharing program, called “New Federalism,” provided state and local governments with billions of federal tax dollars
• Nixon’s New Economic Policy, announced in August 1971 produced temporary improvements in the economy by the end of 1972, but, once price and wage controls were lifted, inflation returned with a vengeance, reaching 8.8 percent in 1973 and 12.2 percent in 1974
• Nixon gradually reduced the number of U.S. military personnel in Vietnam
• In the spring of 1970, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces attacked North Vietnamese sanctuaries in Cambodia, which prompted widespread protests in the United States
• One of these demonstrations—at Kent State University on May 4, 1970—ended tragically when soldiers of the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of about 2,000 protesters, killing four and wounding nine
• After intensive negotiations between National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese Foreign Minister Le Duc Tho, the two sides reached an agreement in October 1972, and Kissinger announced, “Peace is at hand.” But the South Vietnamese raised objections, and the agreement quickly broke down
• a new agreement was finally reached in January 1973 and signed in Paris. It included an immediate cease-fire, the withdrawal of all American military personnel, the release of all prisoners of war, and an international force to keep the peace
• For their work on the accord, Kissinger and Tho were awarded the 1973 Nobel Prize for Peace (though Tho declined the honor)
• Nixon’s most significant achievement in foreign affairs may have been the establishment of direct relations with the People’s Republic of China after a 21-year estrangement
• Nixon’s visit to China in February–March 1972, the first by an American president while in office, concluded with the Shanghai Communiqué, in which the United States formally recognized the “one-China” principle—that there is only one China, and that Taiwan is a part of China
• May 1972 Nixon paid a state visit to Moscow to sign 10 formal agreements, the most important of which were the nuclear arms limitation treaties known as SALT I
• The Basic Principles of U.S.-Soviet Relations, summarizing the new relationship between the two countries in the new era of détente
• After the 1973 Arab-Israeli war (the “Yom Kippur War”), Kissinger’s back-and-forth visits between the Arab states and Israel (dubbed “shuttle diplomacy”) helped to broker disengagement agreements but did little to improve U.S. relations with the Arabs
• The Watergate scandal stemmed from illegal activities by Nixon and his aides related to the burglary and wiretapping of the national headquarters of the Democratic Party at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C.
• The five men involved in the burglary, who were hired by the Republican Party’s Committee to Re-elect the President were arrested and charged on June 17, 1972
• In the days following the arrests, Nixon secretly directed the White House counsel, John Dean, to oversee a cover-up to conceal the administration’s involvement
• Nixon also obstructed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in its inquiry and authorized secret cash payments to the Watergate burglars in an effort to prevent them from implicating the administration
• In February 1973 a special Senate committee—the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, chaired by Sen. Sam Ervin—was established to look into the Watergate affair
• In televised committee hearings, Dean accused the president of involvement in the cover-up, and others testified to illegal activities by the administration and the campaign staff
• In July the committee learned that in 1969 Nixon had installed a recording system in the White House and that all the president’s conversations in the Oval Office had been recorded
• When the tapes were subpoenaed by Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor appointed to investigate the Watergate affair, Nixon refused to comply
• In a series of episodes that came to be known as the Saturday Night Massacre, Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox, and Richardson resigned rather than comply
• Nixon then fired Richardson’s assistant, William Ruckelshaus, when he too refused to fire Cox. Cox was finally removed by Solicitor General Robert Bork, though a federal district court subsequently ruled the action illegal
• Amid calls for his impeachment, Nixon agreed to the appointment of another special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, and promised that he would not fire him without congressional consent. After protesting in a news conference that “I am not a crook,” Nixon released seven of the nine tapes requested by Cox, one of which contained a suspicious gap of 18 and one-half minutes
• Although damning, the tapes did not contain the “smoking gun” that would prove that the president himself ordered the break-in or attempted to obstruct justice
• The House Judiciary Committee had already voted to recommend three articles of impeachment, relating to obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and failure to comply with congressional subpoenas
• On August 5, in compliance with the Supreme Court’s ruling, Nixon submitted transcripts of a conversation taped on June 23, 1972, in which he discussed a plan to use the Central Intelligence Agency to block the FBI’s investigation of the Watergate break-in. The smoking gun had finally been found
• Faced with the near-certain prospect of impeachment by the House and conviction in the Senate, Nixon announced his resignation on the evening of August 8, 1974, effective at noon the next day
• Nixon would soon be forced to resign in disgrace in the worst political scandal in United States history

• Highlights
• Succeeded to the presidency on the resignation of President Richard Nixon, under the process decreed by the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution, and thereby became the country’s only chief executive who had not been elected either president or vice president
• One of Ford’s early acts as president was the announcement of a conditional amnesty program for those who had evaded the draft or deserted during the Vietnam War
• On September 8, 1974, Ford pardoned Nixon “for all offenses against the United States” that he had committed “or may have committed” while in office
• Ford annoyed members of his own party by naming Nelson A. Rockefeller, both a party liberal and a representative of the so-called “Eastern establishment,” as his vice president
• Ford’s administration attempted to cope with the high rate of inflation, which he inherited from the Nixon administration, by slowing down the economy. The result was a very severe recession in 1974–75, which succeeded in lowering inflation but at the cost of an unemployment rate that rose to nearly 9 percent
• Despite his WIN (Whip Inflation Now) program, he could do little to stop the country’s economic problems
• Uring the final days of the Vietnam War, in March 1975, Ford ordered an airlift of some 237,000 anticommunist Vietnamese refugees from Da Nang, most of whom were taken to the United States
• Twice in September 1975, Ford was the target of assassination attempts. In the first instance, Secret Service agents intervened before shots were fired; in the second, the would-be assassin fired one shot at Ford but missed by several feet

• Highlights
• Carter pardoned all Vietnam War draft evaders on his second day in office
• His administration established the U.S. Department of Energy and the Department of Education
• By the end of his administration, he could claim an increase of nearly eight million jobs and a decrease in the budget deficit
• Inflation and interest rates were at near record highs, and efforts to reduce them caused a short recession
• Inflation had increased from 6 percent to more than 12 percent since his first year in office, and unemployment and interest rates were also high
• His expansion of the national park system included protection of 103 million acres of Alaskan lands
• To increase human and social services, he created the Department of Education, bolstered the Social Security system, and appointed record numbers of women, blacks, and Hispanics to Government jobs
• In the Middle East, through the Camp David agreement of 1978, he helped bring amity between Egypt and Israel
• He succeeded in obtaining ratification of the Panama Canal treaties
• He established full diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China and completed negotiation of the SALT II nuclear limitation treaty with the Soviet Union
• The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan caused the suspension of plans for ratification of the SALT II pact
• In response to the invasion, Carter escalated the Cold War by ending détente, imposing a grain embargo against the Soviets, enunciating the Carter Doctrine, and leading the multinational boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow
• On November 4, 1979, a mob of Iranian students had stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and taken the diplomatic staff there hostage
• The revolutionary government of Iran refused to surrender 52 American hostages
• Attempted a failed military operation to rescue American hostages in Iran
• Americans suffered from brutal in?ation and unemployment
• An energy crises lead to long lines at gas stations throughout the country
• Iran finally released the 52 Americans the same day Carter left office

• Highlights
• “The Great Communicator”
• His policies have been credited with contributing to the demise of Soviet communism
• Reagen ran on a platform promising steep tax cuts, increased defense spending, a balanced budget, and a constitutional amendment to ban abortion
• Reagan’s presidency began on a dramatic note when, after the inaugural ceremony, he announced at a luncheon that Iran had agreed to release the remaining American hostages
• On March 30, 1981, a deranged drifter named John W. Hinckley, Jr., fired six shots from a .22-calibre revolver at Reagan as he left a Washington, D.C., hotel. One of the bullets entered Reagan’s chest, puncturing a lung and lodging one inch from his heart; another critically wounded Press Secretary James Brady
• On August 1981, 13,000 members of the national union of air traffic controllers, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO)—one of the few unions to endorse Reagan in the 1980 election—walked off their jobs, demanding higher pay and better working conditions
• As federal employees, the PATCO members were forbidden by law to strike
• Reagan, on the advice of Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis, refused to negotiate and gave them 48 hours to return to work. Most of the striking controllers ignored the ultimatum and were promptly fired
• Following the so-called “supply-side” economic program he propounded in his campaign, Reagan proposed massive tax cuts—30 percent reductions in both individual and corporate income taxes over a three-year period
• At the same time, he proposed large increases in military expenditures ($1.5 trillion over a five-year period) and significant cuts in “discretionary” spending on social-welfare programs such as education, food stamps, low-income housing, school lunches for poor children, Medicaid (the major program of health insurance for the poor), and Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC
• The results of his economic program, which became known as Reaganomics, were mixed. A severe recession in 1982 pushed the nation’s unemployment rate to nearly 11 percent, the highest it had been since the Great Depression. Bankruptcies and farm foreclosures reached record levels. The country’s trade deficit increased from $25 billion in 1980 to $111 billion in 1984
• The huge increases in military spending, combined with insufficient cuts in other programs, produced massive budget deficits, the largest in the country’s history; by the end of Reagan’s second term, the deficits would contribute to a tripling of the national debt, to more than $2.5 trillion
• In order to address the deficit problem, Reagan backed away from strict supply-side theories to support a $98.3 billion tax increase in 1982. By early 1983 the economy had begun to recover, and by the end of that year unemployment and inflation were significantly reduced; they remained relatively low in later years
• Economic growth continued through the remainder of Reagan’s presidency, a period that his supporters would hail as “the longest peacetime expansion in American history.”
• After the administration and Congress reduced regulations governing the savings and loan industry in the early 1980s, many savings institutions expanded recklessly through the decade and eventually collapsed, requiring bailouts by the federal government that cost taxpayers some $500 billion
• During his tenure in office, Reagan appointed more than half the federal judiciary and three new justices of the Supreme Court: Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court, Anthony Kennedy, and Antonin Scalia. He also elevated William Rehnquist to chief justice in 1986 upon the retirement of Warren Burger
• When he entered office in 1980, Reagan believed that the United States had grown weak militarily and had lost the respect it once commanded in world affairs. Aiming to restore the country to a position of moral as well as military preeminence in the world, he called for massive increases in the defense budget to expand and modernize the military and urged a more aggressive approach to combating communism and related forms of leftist totalitarianism
• In a memorable speech in Florida, he denounced the Soviet Union as “an evil empire” and “the focus of evil in the modern world.”
• A significant component of Reagan’s military buildup was his 1983 proposal for a space-based missile defense system that would use lasers and other as-yet-undeveloped killing technologies to destroy incoming Soviet nuclear missiles well before they could reach their targets in the United States. The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), dubbed “Star Wars” after the popular science-fiction movie of the late 1970s
• In later years, however, former Soviet officials cited SDI as a factor in the eventual collapse of their country, for it showed that the Soviet Union was politically unprepared for and economically incapable of competing in a new arms race with the United States, especially one led by someone as unrelenting as Reagan
• Reagan and Gorbachev met for the first time in November 1985, in Geneva, to discuss reductions in nuclear weapons
• Following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982, Reagan dispatched 800 Marines to join an international force to oversee the evacuation of Palestinian guerrillas from West Beirut
• On the morning of October 23, 1983, a suicide bomber drove a truck laden with explosives into the Marine compound at the Beirut airport, killing 241 Marines and wounding 100 others
• In the Caribbean island nation of Grenada, Prime Minister Maurice Bishop was deposed and executed in a bloody coup by radical elements of his leftist New Jewel Movement. Less than a week later, and only one day after the bombing of the Marine compound in Lebanon, Reagan ordered an invasion, which he justified as necessary to prevent the country from becoming a dangerous Soviet outpost and to protect American students at the medical school there
• In January 1986 Reagan announced the imposition of economic sanctions on Libya and froze the country’s assets in the United States, charging the Libyan government of General Muammar al-Qaddafi with sponsoring acts of international terrorism
• On April 5, two people, including an American serviceman, were killed by a bomb explosion in a discotheque in West Berlin. Blaming Libya, the United States carried out retaliatory bombing raids on “terrorist-related targets” in Libya on April 14–15, including an attack on Qaddafi’s residential compound in Tripoli
• In keeping with Reagan’s belief that the United States should do more to prevent the spread of communism, his administration expanded military and economic assistance to friendly Third World governments battling leftist insurgencies, and he actively supported guerrilla movements and other opposition forces in countries with leftist governments. This policy, which became known as the Reagan Doctrine, was applied with particular zeal in Latin America
• In Nicaragua, following the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional; FSLN) in 1979, the Sandinista government strengthened its ties to Cuba and other countries of the socialist bloc, a move that the Reagan administration regarded as a threat to the national security of the United States
• In 1981 Reagan authorized $20 million to recruit and train a band of anti-Sandinista guerrillas, many of whom were former supporters of Somoza, to overthrow the Sandinista government. Numbering about 15,000 by the mid-1980s, the “Contras,” as they came to be called, were never a serious military threat to the Sandinistas
• In early November 1985, at the suggestion of the head of the National Security Council (NSC), Robert (“Bud”) McFarlane, Reagan authorized a secret initiative to sell antitank and antiaircraft missiles to Iran in exchange for that country’s help in securing the release of Americans held hostage by terrorist groups in Lebanon. The initiative directly contradicted the administration’s publicly stated policy of refusing to negotiate with terrorists or to aid countries
• A portion of the $48 million earned from the sales had been diverted to a secret fund to purchase weapons and supplies for the Contras in Nicaragua
• The diversion was undertaken by an obscure NSC aide, U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, with the approval of McFarlane’s successor at the NSC, Rear Admiral John Poindexter
• In response to the crisis, by this time known as the Iran-Contra Affair, Reagan fired both North and Poindexter and appointed a special commission, headed by former senator John Tower of Texas (the Tower Commission), to investigate the matter
• North and Poindexter were convicted on charges of obstructing justice and related offenses, but their convictions were overturned on appeal, on the ground that testimony given at their trials had been influenced by information they had supplied to Congress under a limited grant of immunity
• Reagan accepted responsibility for the arms-for-hostages deal but denied any knowledge of the diversion

• Highlights
• He presided over the invasion of Panama and the Gulf War, ending the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in the latter conflict
• Bush negotiated and signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, which created a trade bloc consisting of the United States, Canada and Mexico
• Bush reneged on a 1988 campaign promise by enacting legislation to raise taxes to justify reducing the budget deficit
• He championed and signed three pieces of bipartisan legislation in 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Immigration Act and the Clean Air Act Amendments
• He also appointed David Souter and Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court
• After extensive negotiations, Gorbachev agreed to allow a reunified Germany to be a part of NATO, and Germany officially reunified in October 1990 after paying billions of marks to Moscow
• In July 1991, Bush and Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) treaty, in which both countries agreed to cut their strategic nuclear weapons by 30 percent
• In January 1993, Bush and Yeltsin agreed to START II, which provided for further nuclear arms reductions on top of the original START treaty
• After Panamanian forces shot a U.S. serviceman in December 1989, Bush ordered the United States invasion of Panama, known as "Operation Just Cause"
• American forces quickly took control of the Panama Canal Zone and Panama City. Noriega surrendered on January 3, 1990, and was quickly transported to a prison in the United States
• Faced with massive debts and low oil prices in the aftermath of the Iran–Iraq War, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein decided to conquer the country of Kuwait, a small, oil-rich country situated on Iraq's southern border
• At Bush's insistence, in November 1990, the United Nations Security Council approved a resolution authorizing the use of force if Iraq did not withdraw from Kuwait by January 15, 1991
• Bush convinced Britain, France, and other nations to commit soldiers to an operation against Iraq. He won important financial backing from Germany, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates
• Despite the opposition of a majority of Democrats in both the House and the Senate, Congress approved the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 1991
• On February 23, coalition forces began a ground invasion into Kuwait, evicting Iraqi forces by the end of February 27
• A March 1991 Gallup poll showed that Bush had an approval rating of 89 percent, the highest presidential approval rating in the history of Gallup polling
• The Bush administration, along with the Progressive Conservative Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, spearheaded the negotiations of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico. In addition to lowering tariffs, the proposed treaty would affect patents, copyrights, and trademarks
• The U.S. economy had generally performed well since emerging from recession in late 1982, but it slipped into a mild recession in 1990. The unemployment rate rose from 5.9 percent in 1989 to a high of 7.8 percent in mid-1991
• In a statement released in late June 1990, Bush said that he would be open to a deficit reduction program which included spending cuts, incentives for economic growth, budget process reform, as well as tax increases
• Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 into law in July 1990
• In August 1990, Bush signed the Ryan White CARE Act, the largest federally funded program dedicated to assisting persons living with HIV/AIDS
• Bush also signed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 in response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill
• Bush was popular throughout most of his presidency. After the Gulf war concluded in February 1991, his approval rating saw a high of 89 percent, before gradually declining for the rest of the year, and eventually falling below 50 percent according to a January 1992 Gallup poll.[256][257][258] His sudden drop in his favorability was likely due to the early 1990s recession

• Highlights
• Signed a law that forced welfare recipients to try to find work
• Oversaw the country’s longest peacetime economic expansion
• In 1998 he became the second U.S. president to be impeached; he was acquitted by the Senate in 1999
• His attempt to fulfill a campaign promise to end discrimination against gay men and lesbians in the military was met with criticism from conservatives and some military leaders—including Gen. Colin Powell, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In response, Clinton proposed a compromise policy—summed up by the phrase “Don’t ask, don’t tell”—that failed to satisfy either side of the issue
• linton had promised during the campaign to institute a system of universal health insurance. His appointment of his wife to chair the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, a novel role for the country’s first lady, was criticized by conservatives, who objected both to the propriety of the arrangement and to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s feminist views
• They joined lobbyists for the insurance industry, small-business organizations, and the American Medical Association to campaign vehemently against the task force’s eventual proposal, the Health Security Act. Despite protracted negotiations with Congress, all efforts to pass compromise legislation failed
• Clinton’s first term was marked by numerous successes, including the passage by Congress of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which created a free-trade zone for the United States, Canada, and Mexico
• Clinton also appointed several women and minorities to significant government posts throughout his administration, including Janet Reno as attorney general, Donna Shalala as secretary of Health and Human Services, Joycelyn Elders as surgeon general, Madeleine Albright as the first woman secretary of state, Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the second woman justice on the United States Supreme Court, and Cheryl Shavers as undersecretary of commerce for technology at the U.S. Department of Commerce
• During Clinton’s first term, Congress enacted a deficit-reduction package—which passed the Senate with a tie-breaking vote from Gore—and some 30 major bills related to education, crime prevention, the environment, and women’s and family issues, including the Violence Against Women Act and the Family and Medical Leave Act
• In January 1994 Attorney General Reno approved an investigation into business dealings by Clinton and his wife with an Arkansas housing development corporation known as Whitewater. Led from August by independent counsel Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater inquiry consumed several years and more than $50 million but did not turn up conclusive evidence of wrongdoing by the Clintons
• When the Republican party gained a majority in both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years. A chastened Clinton subsequently tempered some of his policies and accommodated some Republican proposals, eventually embracing a more aggressive deficit-reduction plan and a massive overhaul of the country’s welfare system while continuing to oppose Republican efforts to cut government spending on social programs
• linton’s initiatives in foreign policy during his first term included a successful effort in September–October 1994 to reinstate Haitian Pres. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been ousted by a military coup in 1991
• In 1993 he invited Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat to Washington to sign a historic agreement that granted limited Palestinian self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho
• Clinton was handily reelected in 1996, buoyed by a recovering and increasingly strong economy
• Strong economic growth continued during Clinton’s second term, eventually setting a record for the country’s longest peacetime expansion
• By 1998 the Clinton administration was overseeing the first balanced budget since 1969 and the largest budget surpluses in the country’s history
• The vibrant economy also produced historically high levels of home ownership and the lowest unemployment rate in nearly 30 years
• In 1998 Starr was granted permission to expand the scope of his continuing investigation to determine whether Clinton had encouraged a 24-year-old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, to state falsely under oath that she and Clinton had not had an affair
• Clinton repeatedly and publicly denied that the affair had taken place. His compelled testimony, which appeared evasive and disingenuous even to Clinton’s supporters (he responded to one question by stating, “It depends on what the meaning of the word is is”), prompted renewed criticism of Clinton’s character from conservatives and liberals alike
• On the basis of Starr’s 445-page report and supporting evidence, the House of Representatives in 1998 approved two articles of impeachment, for perjury and obstruction of justice
• Clinton was acquitted of the charges by the Senate in 1999. Despite his impeachment, Clinton’s job-approval rating remained high
• In foreign affairs, Clinton ordered a four-day bombing campaign against Iraq in December 1998 in response to Iraq’s failure to cooperate fully with United Nations weapons inspectors (the bombing coincided with the start of full congressional debate on Clinton’s impeachment)
• In 1999 U.S.-led forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) conducted a successful three-month bombing campaign against Yugoslavia designed to end Serbian attacks on ethnic Albanians in the province of Kosovo
• He spent the last weeks of his presidency in an unsuccessful effort to broker a final peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians
• Shortly before he left office, Clinton was roundly criticized by Democrats as well as by Republicans for having issued a number of questionable pardons, including one to the former spouse of a major Democratic Party contributor

• Highlights
• Narrowly won the 200 electorl vote over Al Gore.
• Passed a 1.35 billion dollar tax cut.
• Said that he looked into Putin's eyes and been able to "get a sense of his soul", describing him as "trustworthy."
• Putin subsequently invaded the country of Georgia.
• Led response to September 11th terrorist attacks in 2001.
• Bush ordered a massive bombing campaign against Afghanistan, which began on October 7, 2001.
• Formed a cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security, which began operating on January 24, 2003.
• In October, 2001 passed the USA Patriot Act
• The United States began transferring captured Taliban fighters and suspected al-Qaeda members from Afghanistan to what became a special prison complex at the country’s permanent naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
• The prison complex at Guantánamo became the focus of international controversy in June 2004, after a confidential report by the International Committee of the Red Cross found that significant numbers of prisoners had been interrogated by means of techniques that were “tantamount to torture.”
• The prison complex at Guantánamo became the focus of international controversy in June 2004, after a confidential report by the International Committee of the Red Cross found that significant numbers of prisoners had been interrogated by means of techniques that were “tantamount to torture.”
• n June 2006 the U.S. Supreme Court, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, declared that the system of military commissions that the administration had intended to use to try selected prisoners at Guantánamo on charges of war crimes was in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which governs American rules of courts-martial.
• Later that year, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, which gave the commissions the express statutory basis that the court had found lacking; the law also prevented enemy combatants who were not American citizens from challenging their detention in the federal courts.
• Bush and other officials frequently warned that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, that it was attempting to acquire nuclear weapons, and that it had long-standing ties to al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.
• In his State of the Union address in January 2003, Bush announced that Iraq had attempted to purchase enriched uranium from Niger for use in nuclear weapons. The subsequent determination that some intelligence reports of the purchase had relied on forged documents complicated the administration’s diplomatic efforts in the United Nations.
• 2003 initiated Iraq war called Operation Iraqi Freedom.
• In the wake of the invasion, hundreds of sites suspected of producing or housing weapons of mass destruction within Iraq were investigated. As the search continued without success into the following year, Bush’s critics accused the administration of having misled the country into war by exaggerating the threat posed by Iraq.
• In 2004 the Iraq Survey Group, a fact-finding mission comprising American and British experts, concluded that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction or the capacity to produce them at the time of the invasion, though it found evidence that ?addam had planned to reconstitute programs for producing such weapons once UN sanctions were lifted.
• In the same year, the bipartisan 9-11 Commission (the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States) reported that there was no evidence of a “collaborative operational relationship” between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
• Saddam, who went into hiding during the invasion, was captured by U.S. forces in December 2003 and was executed by the new Iraqi government three years later.
• stabilizing the country after the invasion proved difficult. From May 1, when Bush declared an end to major combat in Iraq, to the end of December 2003, more than 200 U.S. soldiers were killed as a result of attacks by Iraqis.
• During the next four years the number of U.S. casualties increased dramatically, reaching more than 900 in 2007 alone.
• By the fifth anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2008, some 4,000 U.S. soldiers had been killed. As the death toll mounted, Bush’s public-approval ratings dropped, falling below 30 percent in many polls.
• Passed the President's Emergency Plan or AIDS Relief. The program was widely praised in the United States, even by Bush’s critics, and generated enormous goodwill toward the Bush administration in Africa.
• During his presidency NATO gained seven new members: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.
• In 2002 the U.S. economy continued to perform poorly, despite having recovered from a recession the previous November. Widespread corporate accounting scandals, some of the largest corporate bankruptcies in U.S. history, and fears over war and terrorism all contributed to consumer uncertainty and a prolonged downturn in the financial markets.
• With both houses of Congress under Republican control, Bush secured passage of a second tax cut of $350 billion in May 2003.
• In January 2002 Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act, which introduced significant changes in the curriculum of the country’s public elementary, middle, and high schools and dramatically increased federal regulation of state school systems.
• In December 2003 Bush won Congressional approval of the Medicare Modernization Act (MMA), a reform of the federally sponsored health insurance program for elderly Americans.
• ush defeated Kerry with a slim majority of the electoral and popular vote, and the Republicans increased their majorities in both the House and the Senate.
• Bush did sign a measure that authorized the construction of a 700-mile (1,127-km) fence along the U.S.-Mexican border.
• The continued lack of progress in the Iraq War, a series of corruption scandals involving prominent Republican politicians, and the administration’s poor response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and surrounding areas in August 2005 helped the Democrats win control of both houses of Congress in the midterm elections of November 2006.
• During his second term Bush appointed two Supreme Court justices: John G. Roberts, Jr. (confirmed as chief justice in 2005), and Samuel A. Alito, Jr. (confirmed in 2006).
• Later in 2008 the economy was threatened by a severe credit crisis, leading Congress to enact a controversial Bush administration plan to rescue the financial industry with up to $700 billion in government funds (see Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008).

• Highlights
• He was the first African-American president in U.S. history
• As president, Obama's first-term actions addressed the global financial crisis and included a major stimulus package to guide the economy in recovering from the Great Recession, a partial extension of George W. Bush's tax cuts, legislation to reform health care, a major financial regulation reform bill, and the end of a major U.S. military presence in Iraq
• Refused to send weapons to Ukraine when Russia armed separatists in the Donbas region and even after Russia seized Crimea.
• Promised that if the Syrian dictator, Bashar al-assad used chemical weapons, he would be crossing a "red-line" that would trigger US military intervention. Instead, Secretary of state John Kerry, had negotiated an agreement with Russia that promised that Assad would destroy all his chemical weapons. He didn't.
• Obama appointed Supreme Court justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, the former being the first Hispanic American on the Supreme Court
• He ordered Operation Neptune Spear, the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, who was responsible for the September 11 attacks
• He ordered military involvement in Libya in order to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1973, contributing to the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi
• In his second term, Obama took steps to combat climate change, signing the Paris Agreement, a major international climate agreement; and an executive order to limit carbon emissions
• Passed Affordable Care act in 2010. The law was unpopular. Its promises if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, if you like your insurance you can keep your insurance - were quickly broken,
• He negotiated a nuclear agreement with Iran
• Obama promoted inclusion for LGBT Americans, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to publicly support same-sex marriage
• Russia annexed Crimea and infiltrated eastern Ukraine.

• Highlights
• On December 6, 2017, Trump became the only president to keep his promise by recognizing jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
• Trump had made "history" by moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to the contested Holy City of Jerusalem in 2018.
• Trump became the first president to meet with the leader of North Korea. A few months after the summit, in July 2018, North Korea released the remains of fifty-five americans lost in the war, near the sixty-fith aniversary of its end.
• In February 2019 Trump held a second summit with Kim Jong-un. they met again at the demilitarized zone in June. Trumps willingness to answer threats with counterthreats of fire and fury had worked. Kim Jung-un came to the negotiating table and never returned to the missle-testing and nuclear threats during the remainder of the Trump administration.
• Cancelled the construction of the Nord stream 2 pipeline, which was to carry natural gas from russia to Germany
• Expelled sixty russian officials from the United States following the poisining of a former Russian spy in Great Britain
• Dropping out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear forces treaty following Russia's continued violations
• Detered russian agressian by killing more than 100russian soldiers in a military engagement in Syria.
• the only administration in the 21st century during which Russia did not attempt to redraw international borders by force.
• largest military increase in funding since the reagen administration.
• Established a new sixth branch of the military - the Space Force
• Killed the most wanted terrorist in the world Abu Bakr Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS
• Killed the most notorious terrorist in the world, the leader of Iranian Quds force, Qasem Soleimani.
• During COVId, President Trump's decesion to suspend travel from China saved countless American lives.
• Cut taxes and regulations.
• Presided over the lowest unemployment rate ever recorded for Aferican Americans. the median income for Aferican Americans gtew by 15.4%.
• Secured the border.
• Froze $6 billion in Iranian oil revenues through sanctions limiting Iran's ability to fund the terrorist group Hamas
• Revived the economy
• Unleashed American energy
• Appointed 3 justices who all voted to overturn Roe vs Wade and return the question of abortion to the states.

• Highlights
• During the early days it was clear that all focus was placed on vaccines, deemphasizing the development of therapeutics and lifesaving medicine.
• the government stopped purchasing COVID tests, and when shortages emerged they attempted to run testing out of Washington DC, and was forced to purchase tests from China with taxpayers dollars.
• Started the Green New Deal which stiffened energy production
• Higher Taxes
• Curtailing American energy production,
• A disastrous withdrawal from Afghanastan
• High inflation leading to recession
• Bank Failures
• Global trouble spots have multiplied on his watch:
• China and Russia form an alliance
• russia invades Ukraine
• Iran using drones to kill American contract workers in Syria
• North Korea tests missles
• released 6 billion dollars in frozen Iranian oil revenues. In exchange for releasing the money, Iran agreed to let five imprisoned Americans return home.
• Hamas launches attacks against Israel exposeing deficiencies in Israeli intelligence, while raising questions about what the U.S. is getting in return for the time spent building surveillance capabilities and partnerships in the volatile Middle East.
• Iran is the driving force behind Hamas, supplying the terror group with weapons and money. Hamas does not have weapon-making capability.
• A self proclaimed devout Catholic embracong unlimited abortion
• Failed to enforce US immigration laws
• Cut and ran from Afghanastan
• 36% rise in fatal drug overdose
• High mortgage rates
• High food prices
• Withdrew from the race for re-election under pressure from the Democratic party due to cognitive difficuties
• Three Americans freed from Russia release was secured in a deal whose size and complexity have little precedent in the post-Soviet era. The deal involving seven countries was a diplomatic victory for President Biden