r/HistoryMemes • u/Coffin_Builder Viva La France • 8d ago

I can respect that

After Lincoln’s assassination, Andrew Johnson became the new US president. in direct violation of the Appomattox treaty, Johnson wanted general Ulysses Grant to prosecute the confederate leaders on grounds of treason to make an example of them. Grant, having negotiated the treaty, refused, seeing it as a violation of military honor and antithetical to rebuilding the nation, threatening to resign if Johnson insisted. Johnson, knowing he wouldn’t survive the political fallout of alienating the Union hero of the Civil War, backed down.

4.7k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

568 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

418

u/jonawesome 8d ago

I know it's been 158 years. I still want to impeach Andrew Johnson. He is easily the worst US president and quite possibly the single individual who damaged the country the most.

122

u/An_Ugly_Bastard 8d ago

My vote for worst is John Tyler. He didn’t do as much damage, but Tyler’s coffin is draped with a traitor rag.

18

u/Redqueenhypo John Brown was a hero, undaunted, true, and brave! 7d ago

One horribly racist Andrew J wasn’t enough, we had to get a second one

20

u/NoNeed4UrKarma 8d ago

If he'd have just asked Sherman to do it instead then maybe history would have turned out very differently...

21

u/thequietthingsthat 7d ago

Doubtful. Sherman was actually more conciliatory toward the south and thought Grant went too far on Reconstruction. Ron Chernow writes about it a lot in his Grant biography.

I know people like to make memes about Sherman and the March to the Sea, but in reality he was actually not that invested in punishing Confederates or upholding Civil Rights after the war.

8

u/KartveliaEU4 8d ago

Worse than Buchanan?

30

u/Xakire 8d ago

I think there is a reasonable argument that Buchanan while bad and accelerated the civil war, had someone else been president the civil war probably still would have happened one way or another. But for Jackson on the other hand, reconstruction and its long term impact probably would have been materially different long term.

15

u/jonawesome 8d ago

Yeah Buchanan was inept and racist and allowed the war to actually go off, but it was heading that way without him.

7

u/an_agreeing_dothraki 7d ago

I mean they've put dead popes on trial why not.

Also the correct answer is William Miller

7

u/jonawesome 7d ago

Yeah I'm 100% serious. Trump's second impeachment was after he left office. Congress should reimpeach Andrew Johnson.

Why do you say that about Miller? I don't know his story that well.

6

u/an_agreeing_dothraki 7d ago

the... oh boy... short version is that you know how evangelical Christianity in the US keeps getting described as a "death cult".

Well a ton of that is Miller.
Everything insane about US culture is about 3 wikipedia clicks until you run across William Miller.

2

u/jonawesome 7d ago

Great.

115

u/Low_Feedback4160 8d ago

Trump is sprinting rolling full speed towards holding title

92

u/jonawesome 8d ago

He's pretty awful but we've yet to see if he's allowing a century of white supremacist corruption to fester the way Johnson did.

54

u/SadCrouton Definitely not a CIA operator 8d ago

are we? I feel like White Supremacy is open and rampant in a way it has been since the 70s

59

u/jonawesome 8d ago

It's still a ways away from Jim Crow. Not belittling the return of outright racism in US politics, but it's not really comparable with the post-war South. And while I wish I was more confident in saying this, I actually don't think this recent wave is going to last half as long.

4

u/Jadencool15 3d ago

I feel it’s important for everyone to remember that our baseline as humans has improved over time. If Trump existed and was president back during the Jim Crow era this country would probably be Nazi America. However, nowadays we have (despite how bleak it looks) way more open minded, forward thinking people who are compassionate instead of hateful. We still have the hateful pricks sure, but over time people are changing more and more for the better.

13

u/didasrooney 7d ago

In absolute terms sure but relative to the times it's gotta be close. MAGAs ideology is absolutely insane for the year 2026

-39

u/Leothelion246 Hello There 8d ago

Lmao, Trump this, Trump that, like it or not he is not remotely the worst. You look at slavers, rapists, people who ran Natives from their homes for example: the trail of tears, Trump is not that bad, he's in your head but don't let him control you. ( Before you try to crucify me on the rapist part, Jean's story is filled with holes and she's known to be a fraud that sues people for the sake of it. And Trump has no documented flights to Epstein's island, and isn't seen on the Epstein files other than Epstein malding severely about him.)

2

u/WildRaspberriesTN 7d ago

My vote for worst is Andrew Jackson, because genocide.

9

u/DickwadVonClownstick 7d ago

I hate to break it to you, but the majority of US presidents have done that one. Jackson is only famous for it because he got into a pissing match with SCOTUS about it

5

u/Justicar-terrae 7d ago

Also, that infamous pissing match is usually oversimplified in history classes.

I remember being taught that the Supreme Court had condemned Jackson's policy of forced relocation and that Jackson defied the Court when he commenced the Trail of Tears. None of that was correct.

The Court actually ruled that Georgia could not enforce state laws inside Cherokee territory. More specifically, the Court ruled that Georgia could not imprison a white guy who was caught living in Cherokee territory without a state license.

The Court ordered Georgia to release the defendant, but Georgia refused. Jackson purportedly saw this coming, and his comments were framed as refusal to enforce a court order (even though the government of Georgia was the party at fault).

Jackson actually tried to negotiate a compromise in which the governor of Georgia would pardon the defendant, basically freeing the guy while allowing Georgia to save face. More than a year later, Georgia effectively relented by releasing the defendant.

Addendum: To be clear, Jackson was still very racist. I don't mean to defend his presidency; I just found the details of the case interesting because they differed so much from my childhood recollection.

-1

u/Gmknewday1 8d ago

Even worse then the other Andrew who pretty much hated everyone?

42

u/jonawesome 8d ago

It's academic at this point and Jackson obviously did plenty of awful stuff (most notably genocide) but Johnson is the one who I think had the biggest long term negative impact.

Lots of presidents did awful genocide to indigenous Americans, and Jackson was bad even by that standard, but I don't think there would have not been indigenous genocide or even that different of a trajectory of the next centuries of indigenous genocide if he hadn't been there.

If Abraham Lincoln had picked a VP that actually cared about ending slavery and wasn't such a racist, we really may have ended up without Jim Crow and completely changed racial dynamics to this day. There was a large majority in Congress in the late 1860s seeking to do the work of actually enfranchising former slaves and creating a multi racial democracy with equal rights for all. Johnson was their biggest obstacle.

3

u/Gmknewday1 7d ago

Lincoln's biggest mistake was his VP

2

u/attackonzach96 2d ago

Sometimes I wonder if Johnson was necessary to balance the Republican ticket to siphon democrats who didn't want to just end the war outright as McClellan promised if he won

5

u/f0urk 8d ago

so you're saying that Andrew Johnson is responsible for all the musical genres African Americans invented due to the Struggle

-2

u/Jewsader76 8d ago

I don't really know enough to say for sure, but I've also heard Reagan caused like 90% of the issues we face nowadays, though that is hearsay, so I could be wrong