1-sentence biography of every U.S. president, auto-summarized from Wikipedia using Sumy.
In February and March 2009, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made separate overseas trips to announce a "new era" in U.S. foreign relations with Russia and Europe, using the terms "break" and " reset " to signal major changes from the policies of the preceding administration.
[93] Bush and the Republican platform included a strong commitment to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, [94] support for the USA PATRIOT Act , [95] a renewed shift in policy for constitutional amendments banning abortion and same-sex marriage , [94][96] reforming Social Security to create private investment accounts, [94] creation of an ownership society , [94] and opposing mandatory carbon emissions controls.
[78] The policy was developed as a compromise after Clinton's proposal to allow gays to serve openly in the military met staunch opposition from prominent Congressional Republicans and Democrats, including Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Sam Nunn (D-GA).
George H. W. Bush (born 1924), 41st President of the United States (1989–1993) George W. Bush (born 1946), 43rd President of the United States (2001–2009), eldest son of George H. W. Bush
These views were exacerbated by the fact that Reagan's economic regimen included freezing the minimum wage at $3.35 an hour, slashing federal assistance to local governments by 60%, cutting the budget for public housing and Section 8 rent subsidies in half, and eliminating the antipoverty Community Development Block Grant program.
Carter wrote: "As you know, the United States is one of the few countries, along with nations such as Saudi Arabia, China, and Cuba, which still carry out the death penalty despite the ongoing tragedy of wrongful conviction and gross racial and class-based disparities that make impossible the fair implementation of this ultimate punishment.
Following his graduation in 1935 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics, he turned down contract offers from the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers of the National Football League to take a coaching position at Yale and apply to its law school.
At the end of his term of office as vice president in January 1961, Nixon and his family returned to California, where he practiced law and wrote a bestselling book, Six Crises , which included coverage of the Hiss case, Eisenhower's heart attack, and the Fund Crisis, which had been resolved by the Checkers speech.
Ho Chi Minh declared that the only solution was a unilateral withdrawal by the U.S. [179] Corrected military estimates released in March indicated a greater number of enemy-initiated actions between February 1966 and 1967; this exemplified the unreliability of information coming from the ground in Vietnam; similar discrepancies existed in measuring the movement of supplies and forces from North to South and assessing Vietcong manpower.
Travell kept a "Medicine Administration Record," cataloguing Kennedy's medications: "injected and ingested corticosteroids for his adrenal insufficiency; procaine shots and ultrasound treatments and hot packs for his back; Lomotil, Metamucil, paregoric, phenobarbital, testosterone, and trasentine to control his diarrhea, abdominal discomfort, and weight loss; penicillin and other antibiotics for his urinary-tract infections and an abscess; and Tuinal to help him sleep.
He elaborated, "we recognize the imperative need for this development ... the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist ... Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
This and other events, such as the revelation that British atomic bomb scientist Klaus Fuchs was a spy, led current and former members of HUAC, including Congressman Nixon of California and Karl Mundt of South Dakota, to decry Truman and his administration, especially the State Department, as soft on communism.
[3] In his first hundred days in office, which began March 4, 1933, Roosevelt spearheaded major legislation and issued a profusion of executive orders that instituted the New Deal—a variety of programs designed to produce relief (government jobs for the unemployed), recovery (economic growth), and reform (through regulation of Wall Street, banks and transportation).
p. 396 ^ Lastrapes, William D.; Selgin, Grorge (December 1997), "The Check Tax: Fiscal Folly and The Great Monetary Contraction" (PDF) , Journal of Economic History 57 (4): 859–78, doi : 10.1017/S0022050700019562 ^ Lekachman, Robert (1966), The age of Keynes , Random House, p. 114, retrieved May 26, 2009 ^ Friedrich, Otto (February 1, 1982).
A few days later, on June 6, 1924, Coolidge delivered a commencement address at Washington, D.C.'s Howard University , in which he thanked and commended African-Americans for their rapid advances in education and their contributions to U.S. society over the years, as well as their eagerness to render their services as soldiers in World War I , all while being faced with discrimination and prejudices at home:
Civil rights and immigration[ edit ] Harding addresses the segregated crowd in Birmingham, October 26, 1921Harding initially seemed inclined to do no more for African Americans than had past Republican presidents; he asked cabinet officers to find places for blacks in their departments.
Wilson, in turn, included in his draft platform a plank that called for all work performed by and for the federal government to provide a minimum wage, an eight-hour day and six-day workweek, health and safety measures, the prohibition of child labour, and (his own additions) safeguards for female workers and a retirement program.
No foreign affairs controversy tested Taft's statesmanship and commitment to peace more than the subsequent uprising in Mexico against the authoritarian regime of the aging Díaz, which had attracted billions in capital investment for economic development, much of it from the U.S. [86] Anti-regime (and anti-American) riots began in 1910 and were reported by Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson to Knox, who failed to pass the information on to the President.
The very citadel of spoils politics, the hitherto impregnable fortress that had existed unshaken since it was erected on the foundation laid by Andrew Jackson, was tottering to its fall under the assaults of this audacious and irrepressible young man... Whatever may have been the feelings of the (fellow Republican party) President (Harrison) – and there is little doubt that he had no idea when he appointed Roosevelt that he would prove to be so veritable a bull in a china shop — he refused to remove him and stood by him firmly till the end of his term.
The “priests” are Hanna (in green) and Congressman Charles H. Grosvenor (red); H. H. Kohlsaat is the page holding the robe.The bosses still hoped to deny McKinley a first-ballot majority at the convention by boosting support for local favorite son candidates such as Quay, New York Governor (and former vice president) Levi P. Morton , and Illinois Senator Shelby Cullom .
[74] Each of the other candidates had hindrances to his nomination: Bayard had spoken in favor of secession in 1861, making him unacceptable to Northerners; Butler, conversely, was reviled throughout the South for his actions during the Civil War ; Thurman was generally well liked, but was growing old and infirm, and his views on the silver question were uncertain.
Historian George H. Ryden's research indicates Harrison played a key role in determining the status of this Pacific outpost by taking a firm stand on every aspect of Samoa conference negotiations; this included selection of the local ruler, refusal to allow an indemnity for Germany, as well as the establishment of a three power protectorate, a first for the U.S..
[74] Each of the other candidates had hindrances to his nomination: Bayard had spoken in favor of secession in 1861, making him unacceptable to Northerners; Butler, conversely, was reviled throughout the South for his actions during the Civil War ; Thurman was generally well liked, but was growing old and infirm, and his views on the silver question were uncertain.
Arriving in Washington, D.C. on September 22, Arthur's oath of office was replicated, this time before Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite , to assure procedural compliance He initially took up residence at the home of Senator John P. Jones , pending significant remodeling at the White House that he ordered; this included the addition of an elaborate fifty-foot glass screen made by Louis Comfort Tiffany .
That Crédit Mobilier was a corrupt organization had been a secret badly kept, even mentioned on the floor of Congress, and editor Sam Bowles wrote at the time that Garfield, in his positions on committees dealing with finance, "had no more right to be ignorant in a matter of such grave importance as this, than the sentinel has to snore on his post".
President Andrew Johnson , who succeeded to office following Lincoln's assassination, to the contrary wanted to readmit the seceded states quickly without first ensuring that they adopted laws protecting the newly freed slaves' civil rights; he also granted pardons to many of the leading former Confederates.
Clockwise from lower left: Graduated at West Point 1843; Chapultepec 1847; Drilling his Volunteers 1861; Fort Donelson 1862; Shiloh 1862; Vicksburg 1863; Chattanooga 1863; Commander-in-Chief 1864; Lee's Surrender 1865Johnson favored a lenient approach to Reconstruction, calling for an immediate return of the former Confederate states into the Union without any guarantee of African American citizenship.
Other early 20th-century historians, such as John Burgess , Woodrow Wilson (who later became president himself) and William Dunning , all Southerners, concurred with Rhodes, believing Johnson flawed and politically inept, but concluding that he had tried to carry out Lincoln's plans for the South in good faith.
The mid-term elections in 1862 brought the Republicans severe losses due to sharp disfavor with the administration over its failure to deliver a speedy end to the war, as well as rising inflation, new high taxes, rumors of corruption, the suspension of habeas corpus, the military draft law , and fears that freed slaves would undermine the labor market.
The acquisition of Cuba ... ; the construction of a Pacific Railroad ... ; a Mexican protectorate, the international preponderance in Central America, in spite of all the powers of Europe; the submission of distant South American states; ... the enlargement of the Navy; a largely increased standing Army ... what government on earth could possibly meet all the exigencies of such a flood of innovations?
[152] Historian Kenneth Nivison, writing in 2010, takes a more favorable view of Pierce's foreign policy, stating that his expansionism prefaced those of later presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt , who served at a time when America had the military might to make her desires stick.
Millard Fillmore during the Civil WarFillmore was not himself anti-Catholic – his daughter Mary had attended a girls' Catholic boarding school for a year [36] and he contributed to the construction of St. Joseph Cathedral in Buffalo [37] – but at this time, the American Party was the only alternative for non-Democrats who were not militantly anti-slavery.
Negotiations were held with Britain that resulted in the landmark Clayton–Bulwer Treaty.
74 Issue 3, pp 199–216 ^ In January 1848, the Whigs won a House vote attacking Polk in an amendment to a resolution praising Major General Taylor for his service in a "war unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President of the United States".
When the text of the treaty was leaked to the public, it met political opposition from the Whigs, who would oppose anything that might enhance Tyler's status, as well as from foes of slavery and those who feared a confrontation with Mexico, which had announced that it would view annexation as a hostile act by the United States.
Results by county explicitly indicating the percentage of the winning candidate in each county.Although Harrison had come from a wealthy, slaveholding Virginia family, in this campaign he was promoted as a humble frontiersman in the style of the popular Andrew Jackson .
Items on which he did not achieve success included settling the Maine - New Brunswick boundary dispute with Great Britain, gaining settlement of the U.S. claim to the Oregon Country , concluding a commercial treaty with Russia , and persuading Mexico to sell Texas .
When the Spanish minister demanded a "suitable punishment" for Jackson, Adams wrote back, "Spain must immediately [decide] either to place a force in Florida adequate at once to the protection of her territory ... or cede to the United States a province, of which she retains nothing but the nominal possession, but which is, in fact ... a post of annoyance to them.
[7][77][78][79][80] Russell Kirk , however, sees Adams as a flawed conservative who was imprudent in opposing slavery.
In addition to the acquisition of Florida, the landmark Treaty of 1819 secured the border of the United States along the 42nd Parallel to the Pacific Ocean and represented America's first determined attempt at creating an "American global empire".
Madison hurriedly called on Congress to put the country "into an armor and an attitude demanded by the crisis," specifically recommending enlarging the army, preparing the militia, finishing the military academy, stockpiling munitions, and expanding the navy.
" After he was checked by the doctor, a family member and a friend offered words of hope that he was looking better to which Jefferson impatiently replied, "Do not imagine for a moment that I feel the smallest solicitude as to the result," at which point he calmly gave directions for his funeral, forbidding any sort of celebration or parade.
513–37 ^ Arthur Meier Schlesinger, ed.
Yet his constant reiteration of the point that well-disciplined professional soldiers counted for twice as much as erratic militias (clearly demonstrated in the rout at Camden , where only the Maryland and Delaware Continentals under Baron DeKalb held firm), helped overcome the ideological distrust of a standing army.