Who Is Your Favorite U.S. President?

[??????????]

I am coming to believe that my favorite president is........


James Buchannan



Best President overall though was Jefferson Davis.

[??????????]

Why would I joke?  

[??????????]

He did not try and stop the southern states from seceding. He was upholding the constitution by allowing them to leave.

[??????????]

Well ok I guess you (being a states rights kinda guy) would like that but he said the situation with slavery in territories wasn't a big deal. The Dread Scott ruling was then reached saying that slaves were considered "property rights." He did little to discourage that because, as I stated earlier, he didn't think it was of much importance. As a result, the Civil War began. He was a terrible President.

He was just staying in accordance with the constitution.

[??????????]

He wasn't doing what was right for his country.

By your interpretation. If a state wishes to leave the union voluntarily the federal govt IMHO has no real authority to stop them.

[??????????]

I think it goes by most people's interpretation. Listen, I know southerners are VERY proud of their heritage and I'm glad to see it. BUT what Buchanan allowed was not for the good of our country. It led to the worst division this nation ever saw.

I do not try to re-fight the war in my posts. I just believe that virtually none of the issues of the war were really ever settled. They were mostly swept under the rug and buried by the propaganda machine called the Northern school system of the time. Looking back we in some ways did benefit from the division as we came out of it economically stronger. But I hate to see how many constitutional pillars we had to destroy to get there. Lincoln was not a uniter but a divider. His radical stances directly caused the war and he should shoulder the majority of the blame. Listen, the war was inevitable (just like PBrunsel defends Hoover by saying the Depression was inevitable) it feel on Buchanan to make the decision on what to do. He simply allowed the constitution to work its' magic.

[??????????]

Work its' magic? By causing the worst war in our nation's history? I think  the Civil War should be put behind us. We are all Americans, whether we are northerner or southerner, west coast or east coast, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. I don't want you to put your heritage behind you but I wish you would put the bitter feeling you have towards the north behind you.

On a seperate note, can we atleast agree that Reagan was our second best President?

I absolutely hold no bitterness towards the north. I mostly like northerners with a few exceptions to a few elitists. Like I said before though the war was inevitable no matter who was president, though I must say that Lincoln was so radical it pushed it over the edge. I just like debating the politics of states rights as mostly the issue was never really settled and it's fair to debate.

Reagan was a great president as well as Nixon (knowing I'll get flamed for that).

[??????????]

I guess at the time it was a radical notion that nobody should be allowed to own another human being.  And Lincoln did not even propose the immediate end of slavery, but what amounted to a slow strangulation of it by refusing to allow it to expand.

His main goal was to preserve the union, not end slavery.

The post Civil War period was handled poorly, when the north first took a punitive attitude toward the south, and then abandoned reconstruction.  Blacks in the south lived a terrible life under these conditions, and the treatment of blacks in the south during the period from the 1870s through the 1960s is one of the darkest stains on our history.

That is why the term "state's rights" has such a sinister meaning for blacks.  It was used to defend treatment of blacks that was unquestionably prohibited by the constitution.  I believe in principal in state's rights, but WITHIN the confines of the constitution.

Although I am a northerner, I have found northern hypocrisy on the race issue to be breathtaking.  Northerners like to condemn southerns for their treatment of blacks, but it is really only marginally different in the north.

The north is structured differently than the south, with greater economic segregation and smaller political units.  Therefore, it is much more common in the north for blacks to live in completely different political jurisdictions, and school districts, than in the south.  Segregationist laws that were enacted in the south to keep the races apart were never really needed in the north to get the same effect.  So while southerners have had to acclimate themselves to a black presence in their towns and schools on an integrated basis, white northerners, for all their protestations of liberalism, have for the most part never had to acclimate to much of a black presence in their own towns and schools.  And when they have been asked to, the reaction has sometimes been violent.  So I don't think northerners are in much of a position to lecture southerners on race issues.

My favorite presidents are Lincoln, TR Roosevelt, FD Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower and Reagan.

I agree with everything you say there with the exception of the whole states rights thing. Northerners in general have always had a frictional relationship with blacks and immigrants. Before the war southerners were accepting of blacks and their role and immigrants were welcomed in the south.

[??????????]

States-Rights - I agree with state's rights within the constitution.  But I don't think state's rights should consist of a state choosing to deny some of its citizens the right to vote, as was the case in the south for decades.

I don't trust the federal government on most things, and generally prefer to have things other than national defense run at the state or local level.

I think the term states rights needs to be seperated from inequality. As states rights is a fundamental issue in the constitution.