If you have watched the news lately you might have noticed that history education has become a cultural battlefield. Arguments over which or whose history should be taught in the education system, K-12 all the way through college, have become political weapons used to gain a leg up in the culture wars. A lot of this has stemmed from the publication of The 1619 Project, a set of essays published by The New York Times that sought to explore American history by placing enslavement and the achievements of Black Americans at the center. It led to a conservative rebuttal in the form of The 1776 Project which attempted to restore the traditional heroes of American history, many of whom are presidents, back to their “proper” place: front and center.
Placing Presidents on a pedestal
The problem with this traditional narrative is that our society ends up treating the president as if he was an infallible God-like figure. This deification of the president leads to a multitude of problems both historically and contemporarily. Historically, presidential history is boiled down to focus on just a few presidents and their good deeds. We often ignore presidents who have been deemed boring or inconsequential. In school we are taught the major milestones of American history, usually chronologically, with Presidential elections serving as markers. This type of history often leads folks to think that the American story is one of steady progress towards perfection. A byproduct of this framing is that the presidents become wise sages who shepherd the nation to her destiny, at the expense of others whose stories are either overlooked or actively erased. Take Mount Rushmore for example. That mountain, known as T?u?kášila Šákpe, or Six Grandfathers Mountain, had been sacred to the Indigenous people of the Great Plains. But once gold was discovered in the 1870s, the United States broke an earlier treaty guaranteeing the Lakota exclusive rights to the Black Hill Mountains and took the mountain. By the 1920s, the formerly sacred Indigenous mountain would have the faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt carved into stone like the Greek and Roman gods of yore. The presidents were deified and a spiritual space for Indigenous people was erased.
This depiction of presidents as omnipotent sages affects today’s world as well. Viewing the president as some mythic figure makes it difficult to have critical and constructive conversations about their decisions and actions, something that is vital in a healthy democratic society.
The impact of Presidents Day
President’s Day is traditionally the day of the year where we pause to reflect on the forty-five men (so far) who have served their nation as the chief executive. At Conner Prairie we host a free day where people come and talk to interpreters portraying various presidents, play various presidential themed games, and join in a surprise birthday party for George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. While it’s a popular day, we are also guilty of propagating this sanitized view of the presidents. Many of our activities are lighthearted spins on presidential myths or lore, such as Taft’s Tub Toss, where guests throw rubber ducks into a bathtub shaped target based on the myth of William Howard Taft being stuck in a bath. These games, while fun, don’t really offer a way to explore the nuances of the presidents, something that is needed to better understand American history and the present day.
But if we take these men off the pedestals of our own making, we find they are a lot like us… human. They lived and died just like us. They experienced highs and lows, succeeded and failed, and made decisions both good and bad. While it is perfectly fine to celebrate the achievements of our presidents, we mustn’t be afraid to look at the bad. It isn’t to denigrate the presidents or the nation, but instead to look at the truth of both them as elected officials and who we are as a nation.
The 1850 Fugitive Act
There are obvious instances of the failures and bad decisions by presidents, the most glaring being that twelve presidents enslaved people at some point in their lives, many of whom admitted the evilness of slavery. Thomas Jefferson wrote that slavery was a “moral and political depravity” and a “hideous blot.” Aside from these transgressions, other decisions presidents make that are not part of our historical memory deserve to be resurfaced and discussed.
For example, bills passed by Congress must be signed into law by the President, and the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act was no different. This law compelled northerners to assist southern enslavers in retrieving enslaved people who managed to flee their enslavement. It also paid judges who returned people to enslavement $10, and if they ruled a person free their pay decreased to $5. It proved to be a massively unpopular bill in the North, but was signed into law by a northern president, Millard Fillmore.
Millard Fillmore had been elected as Zachary Taylor’s vice-president, but became president following Taylor’s death in July 1850. Just two months later Fillmore signed the Fugitive Slave Act. Why did Fillmore, who opposed slavery, sign a bill that seemed to only benefit southern enslavers? Politics. If the South did not receive a stronger fugitive slave law, they would secede from the Union. Fillmore, a Whig, also believed that the legislative package the Fugitive Slave Act was a part of, the Compromise of 1850, could serve as a unifier for the Whig party as a national platform. For Fillmore, the Fugitive Slave Act had nothing to do with the morality of slavery and whether it constituted creating a “more perfect Union” but instead had everything to do with political gain and power.
While the Fillmore incident is clearly a blemish on presidential history, there are also scenes and events that look good on the surface but might have happened for reasons that aren’t so clear. For example, President Eisenhower’s use of federal force to enforce integration at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Brown V. Topeka Board of Education
Some backstory - The United State Supreme Court had ruled in the 1954 case Brown v. Topeka Board of Education that school segregation was illegal. In 1957, nine Black students registered for classes at Central High School and Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus called in the National Guard to prevent the students from entering and attending class. In response, President Eisenhower called in the military to escort the students and ensure their safety. This is a win for Ike, but his reasoning might be different than what one may think. Eisenhower’s decision had nothing to do with integration. He admitted as much in his personal notes during the standoff when he wrote “Troops – not to enforce integration but to prevent opposition by violence to order of court.” In a press release featuring the text of a telegram Eisenhower sent to Faubus he wrote that “when I became President, I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. The only assurance I can give you is that the Federal Constitution will be upheld by me by every legal means at my command.”
Eisenhower obviously made the right decision in sending troops to enforce the law, regardless of his reasoning, but it is important to note his reasons were more political calculations than concern for civil rights.
These are just two examples of the multitudes of stories that could be told. Stories like, Woodrow Wilson resegregating jobs in the federal government, Andrew Johnson issuing blanket pardons to former high-level Confederates, Rutherford B. Hayes agreeing to pull the federal army out of the South to ensure his election, which leads to massive increases in racial violence and the introduction of Jim Crow laws. Again, this isn’t to criticize America or its presidents but to be honest about the past and the men who have been elected to the presidency. Acknowledging the faults and mistakes of these men, allows us to make better decisions in the present.
Sources
Amy McKeever, “The heartbreaking, controversial history of Mount Rushmore,” National Geographic, October 28, 2020, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/the-strange-and-controversial-history-of-mount-rushmore.
Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, September 10, 1814, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-07-02-0471.; Thomas Jefferson to William Short, September 8, 1823, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-3750.
“Millard Fillmore – Key Events,” Miller Center, University of Virginia, https://millercenter.org/president/millard-fillmore/key-events.
Notes, Dwight D. Eisenhower on use of troops in Little Rock, undated, DDE's Papers as President, Administration Series, Box 23, Little Rock, Arkansas (2), https://assets.speakcdn.com/assets/3053/dde-troops-to-arkansas.pdf.
Press release, President Eisenhower’s telegram to Governor Faubus, September 5, 1957, Kevin McCann Collection of Press and Radio Conferences and Press Releases, Box 20, September 1957; NAID #12237650, https://assets.speakcdn.com/assets/3053/press-release-dde-telegram-to-faubus.pdf.