In August 1864 if the list of the top 16 presidents were released, one month before Abraham Lincoln was re-elected, Lincoln would have placed #16 on that list.
In early August of 1864, President Lincoln was despised by many who were tired of three bloody years of war with over 300,000 dead on the Union side and another 250,000 on the Confederate side. Lincoln, himself, knew he was headed towards a major electoral defeat. The Democrats hated him and ran George B. McClellan, Lincoln's nemesis who was twice chosen as commander of the Army of the Potomac by Lincoln and twice removed by Lincoln. They considered Lincoln to be a tyrant, who singlehandedly revoked habeas corpus, illegally raised an income tax, and even expelled a Democratic Congressman, Clement Vallandingham, to Canada for disagreeing with him. Lincoln was the dictator who didn't respect the rights of the American people, spying on them and holding secret trials of his enemies.
The Republicans wanted someone else who could bring a quick end to the war, regardless of the result. The South simply couldn't be conquered with an intractable foe who out-thought the Northern leaders every step of the way despite having far inferior numbers and resources. After all, Lincoln had appointed a long line of failed commanders who were novices next to Robert E. Lee, hero of the Confederacy. Even his current chosen leader, General Ulysses S. Grant, had failed to dislodge Lee from Petersburg, losing 60,000 troops in a single month, including 12,000 alone in 15 minutes during a frontal charge at Cold Harbor. Union soldiers were so demoralized that they pinned their names onto their uniforms so they could be identified after they had died. One soldier's diary was even recovered at Cold Harbor where the last entry written that day was, "Today, I was killed."
Lincoln was a failed president, destined to go down in history as the worst president in American history.
Does any of this sound at all familiar? Any feelings of déja vu?
So what changed for Lincoln? In September of 1864, General William Tecumseh Sherman took Atlanta, the first major break in the stalemate that had cost tens of thousands of lives that summer. The unexpected victory suddenly gave hope to the North that the war could actually be won. The surge in Union forces, composed of three armies, the Armies of the Ohio, the Cumberland, and the Tennessee, soundly defeated Confederate General John Bell Hood and forced him into retreat. Lincoln, propelled by a huge turnout by Union soldiers themselves, won re-election handily, this despite his own party having turned against him and demanding he end the war at all costs, believing victory to be impossible just a month before.
A few months later, Grant's army finally starved out Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and forced him to abandon Petersburg and Richmond. The end was near. After a chase, federal cavalry finally boxed in Lee's army at Appomattox Courthouse, where Lee finally surrendered, for the most part ending the Civil War.
For winning the war and freeing three million people in bondage, Lincoln has catapulted to the top of the list. But ironically at the time, Lincoln would have ranked right at the bottom. History has a way of taking perspective after a few decades after seeing the long-term effects of a president's policies.
Decades from now, Jimmy Carter will continue to plummet as his policies led from disaster to disaster, from Iran to Afghanistan to the misery index. Reagan's will continue to rise even though he was also despised by half the country when he left office, his major contribution being the toppling of the Soviet empire. Bill Clinton will also head downwards as his presidency will be seen as entirely irrelevant, having done nothing in his eight years in office but allow the seeds of al Qaeda to grow through his inaction. If you believe I'm being partisan about Clinton, so be it. But only eight years removed from his tenure, can anyone here name even one noteworthy thing he did in his entire eight years in office to even be considered on the list? I can. He passed welfare reform, which has promptly been undone by Obama's stimulus package.
With George W. Bush having effectively freed 50 million people in two countries and having defeated al Qaeda in Iraq and prevented terrorist attacks in this nation, we will see where he stands a few decades from now. I have a feeling that, like Lincoln, he will be moving upwards on the list considerably. I agree that we are far too close to the now former president to judge him, historically, without the prism of partisan politics.
