Forgotten Presidents

By Rian Shah, 2nd Year History and Spanish

Zachary Taylor. Millard Filmore. Chester Arthur. These men all held what is often thought of as being the most powerful position in the world. However, over time their stories and legacies have become virtually unknown, and simply become names remembered from a song in The Simpsons or to remember for Sporcle quizzes.

With the passage of time causing once celebrated achievements to fade into either irrelevance or under-recognition, certain Presidents continue fading from general memory. Today my aim is to briefly analyse the legacies of two of the Presidents and discuss whether they deserve wider recognition.

Zachary Taylor was one of the most beloved figures of his time thanks to his elite generalship in the Mexican-American war. He was elected President in 1850, but served a mere 16 months before his death in office. A slaveholding southerner whose daughter had married the leader of the future Confederates, many anticipated his Presidency to continue in the appeasing manner of his predecessors, John Tyler and James Polk. However, ‘Old Rough and Ready’ was a firm believer in the union and took a hard stance on the polemical issue. He was fundamentally an apolitical man, which makes his rise to the highest political role in the country, and the fact he did take strong stances in office, even more interesting.

Taylor vehemently opposed the Compromise of 1850, which aimed to admit California as a free state, but expand slavery into Utah and New Mexico. It also sought to further punish escaped enslaved peoples. Taylor even passionately stated that he’d hang seceders ‘with less reluctance’ than he had hanged deserters and spies in Mexico. His last act of state was to help limit the narcissistic ‘Manifest Destiny’ by signing the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, which reduced American control over the building of a canal across Nicaragua. His successor, Millard Filmore, took a softer stance on the slavery, agreeing to the Compromise of 1850 and thus the Fugitive Slave Act, helping to propel the country closer to Civil War. Taylor’s ever hardening views mean there is a strong argument to be made that he should be recognised similarly to the likes of JFK and James Garfield, as a ‘what if?’ President.

Overall, the legacy of Zachary Taylor is complex as he did own enslaved peoples, and some believe he was mostly ineffective. Especially given how much time has passed, a President that could potentially have sped up the ending of slavery had he not died clearly doesn’t capture the hearts of many. However, it seems that his contributions and eventual stances merit at least slightly more recognition.

Onto a second forgotten President, Chester A. Arthur. Arthur served from 1881 to 1885 and is mostly just remembered for his incredible mutton chops. If you search his name up, the first YouTube video of his is titled, ‘The Most Forgettable President.’ Poor Arthur.

However, he deserves more recognition. He served as President in a tumultuous time, with ‘Reconstruction’ of the American South over and the promising James Garfield murdered. People worried when he rose from Vice-president to the White House, as he was deemed unsuitable for the job, but he ultimately had a successful Presidency. Arthur had benefitted from the spoils system (also known as patronage; people being rewarded for campaigning for a party with jobs) in his earlier political career, but became a firm opponent to it when he rose to the Presidency. This enraged a faction called the Stalwarts and was a key reason he lost the Republican nomination in 1885. Arthur supported and signed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883, which established a fundamental modern feature of American politics, as it meant that political appointments had to be based on merit and not cronyism. Arthur did eventually begrudgingly pass the Chinese Exclusion Act, after vetoing a stronger version of it. This banned Chinese labour immigration to the US for 10 years, as a result of anti-Chinese sentiment. It was a case of the classic, ‘They’re taking all our jobs,’ tripe.

Arthur signed this as a compromise, as the initial act he vetoed demanded 20 years of exclusion, but it still acts as a stain on his legacy. However, it is clear that 'The Dude President’ was a man of integrity. He was an ardent abolitionist, even fighting as a lawyer to aid African Americans. He was fighting a terminal diagnosis towards the end of his Presidency and still continued passionately in his work. Overall, Arthur is mostly forgotten due to his, as the Simpsons state, ‘mediocrity’ compared to the likes of Washington and Lincoln, and this is compounded by the vast amount of time that has passed. After over one hundred years, it is the incredible or the incredibly awful that are remembered. Nonetheless, it does seem that his legacy deserves further praise and recognition.

The sheer number of humans that have lived on this planet means that inevitably people will be forgotten. Harry S. Truman, the man who deployed nuclear bombs to end a world war, is predicted to be forgotten to the same extent as William Mckinley, who most people have never even heard of, by 2040. Whilst there are obviously further forgotten groups that receive much less recognition in this brutal and forgetful world, hopefully this article has helped a few people to develop a slight interest in these Presidents who made tangible contributions to the world. However, the fact that well over the majority of people couldn’t say a single fact about some Presidents should be a comfort. A majority of people are all but forgotten a century or two after their deaths, so enjoy your life while it lasts.