A Great President or Looking at the Failures - Essay Example

 A great president is one who when judged by standards like accomplishments, integrity, crisis management and political skills, stands apart from the rest. What separates good presidents from the best presidents is the strong leadership skill found in them in times of crisis. For instance, Abraham Lincoln issued his proclamation of amnesty and reconstruction in 1863. But unfortunately, Presidents Andrew Johnson and Ulysses A. Grant failed to make it successful because of their inadequate leadership. Lincoln was determined to keep the Union together, even if it meant forming a government with his political rivals. It was this political acumen and leadership that set Lincoln apart from Andrew Johnson, and Ulysses S. Grant. One of the biggest challenges Lincoln faced in the beginning of his presidency was the Southerners’ secession from the Union. The Southerners, who were supporters of slavery, did not trust Lincoln and his policies to stop the expansion of slavery. Lincoln thought that secession was illegal, and he was willing to go to war if necessary, to defend the Union. When South Carolina’s men fired on the Union troops at Fort Sumter, it was the beginning of the Civil War. Lincoln called for 75,000 men to put down the rebellion. In 1860, Lincoln inducted into his cabinet, several of the men against whom he had run for the Republican nomination for president. Lincoln did not have much political experience, so he needed experienced people in his government. He appointed former New York Senator, William H. Seward, as Secretary of State and Salmon P. Chase, a Radical Republican, as Secretary of the Treasury. Later, he nominated Chase to be the Chief Justice of the United States. Between 1861 and 1865, Lincoln was determined to keep the Union together, and to accomplish this, he nominated the best politicians to his cabinet, even though he disagreed with them on some issues. President Lincoln kept George B. McClellan, an outspoken critic of his administration, in command of the Eastern Army, including Virginia. However, in 1862, McClellan was dismissed from office not because he disliked Lincoln, but because of his failure in the battlefield. He did not pursue the army of Northern Virginia after General Robert E. Lee had surrendered, which could have ended the war in the East. Slavery was one of the most controversial issues during Lincoln’s presidency. In a letter written to New York journalist Horace Greeley in 1862, Lincoln wrote that his presidency’s principal goal was to preserve the Union at all costs. In January 1863, pressurized by the abolitionists and more extreme members of the Republican Party, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation declaring freedom from slavery in the regions controlled by the Confederates. In the Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863, Lincoln did not actually refer to slaves in the address, but he used a line that said, “…The Nation was found on a principal of quality”, and, at the end, he talks about “…the new birth of freedom”, and that almost meant the abolition of slavery. In December 1863, anticipating a Union victory in the Civil War and looking for restoration of government, Lincoln issued his proclamation of amnesty and reconstruction. Republican Congressmen, members of his own party, attacked his reconstruction plan with the Wade-Davis bill. Nevertheless Lincoln ended the war and began planning for Reconstruction. In January 1865, after winning his second term for the presidency, Lincoln pushed Republicans in Congress to pass the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The states ratified it later that year, after Lincoln was assassinated. The Amendment proclaimed the abolishment of slavery, and it was the first time that the word slavery appeared in the Constitution since it was drafted in 1787. When Johnson was given the Republican ticket for the election of 1864, no one, not even Johnson himself, expected he would ever become the President of the United States. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated, and Johnson became the President of the United States. Johnson and the Radical Republicans in Congress did not get along, and, therefore, could not work together to build a Reconstruction program to the satisfaction of everyone. Since Johnson was from the South, the Radical republicans did not trust him. The Radicals believed that Johnson was unqualified and unreliable politically, especially when he started to support white Southerners’ programs like taking back Confederate officers to the Union, which seemed to be radically different from Lincoln’s Reconstruction policies. Reconstruction failed during Johnson’s policy because after both Houses of Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which “guarantees the equal protection of the laws”, Johnson opposed it, and campaigned actively preventing the southern states to ratify the amendment, and, consequently, the American people lost their confidence in Johnson’s leadership. In retaliation, the Radical Republicans, passed a plan to “curb the President’s power” that placed the South under military rule, and the federal Tenure Office Act, prohibiting Johnson from removing any Cabinet member from office. When he removed the Secretary of War from office, the Republicans claimed that Johnson broke the law, and impeached him. This impeachment was unconstitutional since Johnson had not actually broken the rule of Article II, Section 4, of the Constitution. Johnson was tried, but was not removed from office because the Senate could not generate 2/3 of the votes. Ulysses S. Grant, though one of the best Generals during the Civil War, was unqualified politically to be the President of the U.S. Even though, Grant was not implicated in the scandals that marked his presidency, they contributed to the failure of reconstruction and his administration. The Reconstruction Act was passed in 1867, and Grant took office, for the first time, in 1869. Reconstruction was dependent upon the power of the federal government to enforce the law, including the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Grant needed to have the support of Congress, which essentially meant, the support of the American people. But, the scandals of his wife's participation in the manipulation of the gold market, and New York’s Tweed Ring political corruption, made the Americans lose confidence in Grant’s presidency. Confidence in Reconstruction began to wane during Grant’s first term, and during his second term in 1873, there was panic and depression, when many laborers lost their jobs. Grant failed to get his cabinet to generate a system of national employment. Preoccupation with economy brought the end of Reconstruction, as Americans were not prepared to support it. Looking at the failures of both Johnson and Grant, it can be said that President Abraham Lincoln was one of the greatest presidents of the United States of America. He faced conflicts every single day of his presidency, which he handled efficiently. Probably if he had survived in 1865, Reconstruction would have been much more successful. Unfortunately, Reconstruction was left to his predecessors, Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant, and it failed because they provided inadequate leadership, Johnson by opposing the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and Grant by not challenging any of the decisions taken by the Congress. Lincoln's determination to bring the Union together and his bold opposition to slavery are undoubtedly his greatest contributions to the history of America. Read More