Atlas ranks the presidents -- week 9 (WORST OF THE WORST)

[Wikipedia delenda est]

1. Theodore Roosevelt
2. Chester A. Arthur
3. Benjamin Harrison
4. James Garfield
5. William Howard Taft
6. William McKinley
7. Rutherford B. Hayes
8. Grover Cleveland

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

   1. Theodore Roosevelt
   2. William Howard Taft
   3. Benjamin Harrison
   4. Chester Alan Arthur
   5. James Abram Garfield
   6. William McKinley
   7. Stephen Grover Cleveland
   8. Rutherford Birchard Hayes

Arthur was so bad he ended decades of Republican rule.

That's a pretty dubious assertion, considering the last two elections were very close and the Republican nominee (not Arthur) was widely disliked and suspected.

[NewYorkExpress]

1. Theodore Roosevelt (Roosevelt was the first President to envision a role for the United States on the World stage, and his mediation to end the Russo-Japanese war earns him extra bonus points)

2. William Howard Taft (Widely viewed as Roosevelt's heir, what's little known about Taft, is that he was more of a trustbuster than his protege)\

3. Chester Alan Arthur (Ending the Spoils System gets Arthur some credit in my book, even if Arthur's motives weren't really pure)

4. William McKinley (Winning the Spanish American War gets McKinley this spot- even if almost all of it was Teddy Roosevelt's doing)

5. Grover Cleveland (Cleveland's interesting, in that's he's the only President to serve two non-consecutive terms. His problem is he really didn't do anything in office.)

6. James Garfield (Like William Harrison, Garfield is hard to rate because his time in office is so short. At least he served longer than thirty one days)

7.  Benjamin Harrison (It takes a special kind of bad to lose to the guy who you beat four years earlier, right? Not necessarily. Like Cleveland, Harrison's problem is that he didn't do anything in office)

8. Rutherford Hayes (Hayes gets special vitriol from me for ending Reconstruction-as far as I'm concerned, the South never should have been let back into the Union.)

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Look, this is my very biased list

1. James Garfield

(big gap)

2. Unironically Rutherford Hayes

3. Theodore Roosevelt, although I am not able to like him as a person

4. Benjamin Harrison

5. Chester Arthur

6. Grover Cleveland. He is an interesting case.

7. William Howard Taft

8. William McKinley

Probably positions 4 to 7 are interchangeable.

8. Rutherford Hayes (Hayes gets special vitriol from me for ending Reconstruction-as far as I'm concerned, the South never should have been let back into the Union.)

Then I suggest you to direct special vitriol to President Lincoln (who wanted to readmit Southern states into the Union) and to President Grant (during whose term Reconstruction ended in most Southern states).

By the way, what do you think should have happened to the South? Have it returned to territory status?

[NewYorkExpress]

Look, this is my very biased list

1. James Garfield

(big gap)

2. Unironically Rutherford Hayes

3. Theodore Roosevelt, although I am not able to like him as a person

4. Benjamin Harrison

5. Chester Arthur

6. Grover Cleveland. He is an interesting case.

7. William Howard Taft

8. William McKinley

Probably positions 4 to 7 are interchangeable.

8. Rutherford Hayes (Hayes gets special vitriol from me for ending Reconstruction-as far as I'm concerned, the South never should have been let back into the Union.)

Then I suggest you to direct special vitriol to President Lincoln (who wanted to readmit Southern states into the Union) and to President Grant (during whose term Reconstruction ended in most Southern states).

By the way, what do you think should have happened to the South? Have it returned to territory status?

Treat them as lower than territory status. They wouldn't be worth the dirt off my shoes.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

8. Rutherford Hayes (Hayes gets special vitriol from me for ending Reconstruction-as far as I'm concerned, the South never should have been let back into the Union.)

Then I suggest you to direct special vitriol to President Lincoln (who wanted to readmit Southern states into the Union) and to President Grant (during whose term Reconstruction ended in most Southern states).

By the way, what do you think should have happened to the South? Have it returned to territory status?

Treat them as lower than territory status. They wouldn't be worth the dirt off my shoes.

What is lower than territory status? How can something like that be governed?

[RINO Tom]

Fighting the Civil War to then not keep the Union together ... riiiiight lol.  I’ll edit this with my ranking in a bit.

[OSR stands with Israel]

1. Teddy Roosevelt
2. William McKinley
3. Grover Cleveland
4. James Garfield
5. Chester Arthur
6. Benjamin Harrison
7. William Howard Taft
8. Rutherford Hayes

[NewYorkExpress]

Fighting the Civil War to then not keep the Union together ... riiiiight lol.  I’ll edit this with my ranking in a bit.

No, it's fight the Civil War to punish the South. There's no reason they should be allowed to remain states, but there's no reason they should be allowed to leave.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Fighting the Civil War to then not keep the Union together ... riiiiight lol.  I’ll edit this with my ranking in a bit.

No, it's fight the Civil War to punish the South. There's no reason they should be allowed to remain states, but there's no reason they should be allowed to leave.

Do you have knowledge of any contemporary of the Civil War who thought in this way about the South?

[NewYorkExpress]

Fighting the Civil War to then not keep the Union together ... riiiiight lol.  I’ll edit this with my ranking in a bit.

No, it's fight the Civil War to punish the South. There's no reason they should be allowed to remain states, but there's no reason they should be allowed to leave.

Do you have knowledge of any contemporary of the Civil War who thought in this way about the South?

The way the Radical Reconstructionists treated the South makes me think at least some of them felt that way... 

[Alcibiades]

1. Theodore Roosevelt
2. James A. Garfield
3. Benjamin Harrison
4. Chester A. Arthur
5. Rutherford B. Hayes
6. William Howard Taft
7. Grover Cleveland
8. William McKinley

[The Ex-Factor]

1. Theodore Roosevelt
2. James Garfield
3. Benjamin Harrison
4. Grover Cleveland
5. William Howard Taft
6. Rutherford Hayes
7. William McKinley
8. Chester Arthur

[SWE]

Garfield
Arthur
Taft
Roosevelt
Harrison
Cleveland
Hayes
McKinley

[Mr. Smith]

T. Roosevelt
Taft
Arthur
B. Harrison
Garfield
McKinley
Cleveland
Hayes

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Fighting the Civil War to then not keep the Union together ... riiiiight lol.  I’ll edit this with my ranking in a bit.

No, it's fight the Civil War to punish the South. There's no reason they should be allowed to remain states, but there's no reason they should be allowed to leave.

Do you have knowledge of any contemporary of the Civil War who thought in this way about the South?

The way the Radical Reconstructionists treated the South makes me think at least some of them felt that way...  

So-called liberal here literally advocating what can best be described as a combination of imperialism and mass disenfranchisement lmao.

EDIT: you realize what this means for freed slaves, don't you?

[RINO Tom]

Fighting the Civil War to then not keep the Union together ... riiiiight lol.  I’ll edit this with my ranking in a bit.

No, it's fight the Civil War to punish the South. There's no reason they should be allowed to remain states, but there's no reason they should be allowed to leave.

Do you have knowledge of any contemporary of the Civil War who thought in this way about the South?

The way the Radical Reconstructionists treated the South makes me think at least some of them felt that way... 

Then I suggest you read up on them ... the Radical Republicans were a loose coalition that had just about nothing in common except for believing that former Confederate officials and leaders should not hold political office due to having committed treason.  They ranged from progressive reformers who sought to better the lives of Freedmen to religious moralists who feared the wrath of God on America and believed in divinely inspired punishment for traitors to shills for Northern business interests who wanted to keep Southern competition out of the way for a while longer.  None of them wanted the South to become either a colony or, even worse, its own nation.  Even after the Civil War, most Northerners still saw it as a war strictly fought to keep the Union together and saw the eradication of slavery as the icing on the cake.

Anyway, here are my rankings, again with an effort to take a more "historical" view that is as void of my contemporary ideology as is possible:

1. Theodore Roosevelt (R-NY)
2. William McKinley (R-OH)
3. Grover Cleveland (D-NY)
4. William Howard Taft (R-OH)
5. Rutherford B. Hayes (R-OH)
6. James Garfield (R-OH)
7. Chester A. Arthur (R-NY)
8. Benjamin Harrison (R-IN)

My Thoughts
- Roosevelt and McKinley stand out for me.  Given his MASSIVE role in bringing us into the modern era and redefining the Presidency, I have to put TR as #1, but McKinley is a clear #2 for me.
- Cleveland, though I think he is perhaps overrated, seems to be the clear #3, mostly due to unremarkable competition.
- Taft is kind of the default #4, as everyone below him was just so bland in his efforts (or lack thereof) to leave a real Presidential legacy.
- I don't believe Hayes' Presidency should be so heavily weighted by the decision to end Reconstruction ... how was he to know if a Democratic President wouldn't just do the same thing?  Though I'm sure the forum finds it controversial, his decision to maintain law and order during the railroad strikes also set a precedent of the federal government restoring order in times of (admittedly subjective) anarchy ... this carries the good (Brown v. Board) and bad (according to Democrats, President Trump's current initiatives) with it, but it IS significant and was bold.
- The bottom three are pretty much nobodies.  I actually really like Harrison (and I like that his statue is everywhere in Indiana, haha), but the fact is he was one of the least effective Presidents ever.  Arthur was nearly as bad but with less clear negligence, and Garfield goes above them due to being impossible to judge.

[StateBoiler]

Where is this fiction coming from that Rutherford B. Hayes literally ended Reconstruction? Yeah, he got to be president instead of Tilden, and that ended Reconstruction, but the hard negotiating that went on and how it went down had almost nothing to deal with Hayes the individual. To put in Alfred Hitchcock terms Hayes was the MacGuffin in the episode. President was important but Congress called the shots in this era, the president was not someone that can rule by dictate and his party would follow lockstep behind him.

[Alcibiades]

Where is this fiction coming from that Rutherford B. Hayes literally ended Reconstruction? Yeah, he got to be president instead of Tilden, and that ended Reconstruction, but the hard negotiating that went on and how it went down had almost nothing to deal with Hayes the individual. To put in Alfred Hitchcock terms Hayes was the MacGuffin in the episode. President was important but Congress called the shots in this era, the president was not someone that can rule by dictate and his party would follow lockstep behind him.

Exactly. Hayes had his hands tied by a Democratic Congress and enthusiasm for Reconstruction was waning among Republicans. Hayes personally was, by the standards of the time, a fairly strong supporter of civil rights. Reconstruction would have ended under pretty much any president at the time.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Garfield
Arthur
Taft
Roosevelt
Harrison
Cleveland
Hayes
McKinley

Why the dislike for Roosevelt?  I would think as a socialist he would be one of your favorite presidents for decisively moving to break up monopolies and dilute the power of American oligarchs.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Garfield
Arthur
Taft
Roosevelt
Harrison
Cleveland
Hayes
McKinley

Why the dislike for Roosevelt?  I would think as a socialist he would be one of your favorite presidents for decisively moving to break up monopolies and dilute the power of American oligarchs.

Why would a socialist like Roosevelt for saving capitalism?

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Where is this fiction coming from that Rutherford B. Hayes literally ended Reconstruction? Yeah, he got to be president instead of Tilden, and that ended Reconstruction, but the hard negotiating that went on and how it went down had almost nothing to deal with Hayes the individual. To put in Alfred Hitchcock terms Hayes was the MacGuffin in the episode. President was important but Congress called the shots in this era, the president was not someone that can rule by dictate and his party would follow lockstep behind him.

Yes. Also, it's not like there were much better alternatives on the civil rights front, since President Tilden very likely would have given White Southerners all they wanted enthusiastically, and other alternative was an indefinitely long constitutional crisis.
If anything I think Grant is more to blame for the Compromise of 1877 and for the end of Reconstruction than Hayes, if that makes sense.

[Roll Roons]

1. TR
2. McKinley
3. Taft
4. Arthur
5. Hayes
6. Cleveland
7. Harrison

Not fair to rank Garfield. This was also difficult, but for a different reason than the previous set. In that case, several of them were actively terrible, but aside from Teddy, pretty much all the presidents in this era were just mediocre and unremarkable.

[StateBoiler]

I'm having a hard time ranking these.

1. T. Roosevelt - if Andrew Jackson came around in 1900, I feel he would be Teddy
2. McKinley
3. Taft - always kind of thought he was underrated due to Teddy dominating the scene
4. Arthur - spoils system reform
5. Cleveland

3-way tie for 6th for nothing distinguishable about them between Hayes, Harrison, and Garfield.

[ScottieF]

Theodore Roosevelt
William Howard Taft
Chester Arthur
Benjamin Harrison
James Garfield
Grover Cleveland
William McKinley
Rutherford Hayes