Items20The creator’s order
  1. 1John AdamsJohn AdamsFree speech: Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 during an undeclared naval war with France. The Sedition Act made it a crime to publish 'false, scandalous and malicious' writing against the government, and was used to prosecute Republican newspaper editors and a congressman, Matthew…0i
  2. 2Thomas JeffersonThomas JeffersonBorn 13 Apr 1743A split record. Jefferson pardoned everyone convicted under the Sedition Act and let it expire, and his Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, written earlier, shaped the First Amendment's approach to church and state. As president, though, he encouraged state prosecutions of hostile Federalist…0i
  3. 3Andrew JacksonAndrew JacksonBorn 15 Mar 1767Due process and equal protection, at their worst. Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and pressed forced removals of the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw and others, culminating in the Trail of Tears, after the Supreme Court in Worcester v Georgia had upheld Cherokee sovereignty. His…0i
  4. 4Abraham LincolnAbraham LincolnBorn 12 Feb 1809Emergency powers in their sharpest form. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus without Congress in 1861, ignored Chief Justice Taney's ruling against it in Ex parte Merryman, and allowed military trials of civilians, later condemned by the Supreme Court in Ex parte Milligan; thousands were detained and…0i
  5. 5Ulysses S. GrantUlysses S. GrantBorn 27 Apr 1822Grant used federal power to protect the rights of formerly enslaved people as no president would again for nearly a century. He signed the Enforcement Acts and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, created the Justice Department in 1870, and suspended habeas corpus in nine South Carolina counties to break…0i
  6. 6Woodrow WilsonWoodrow WilsonBorn 28 Dec 1856Wilson's wartime record is among the worst for free speech: the Espionage Act of 1917 and Sedition Act of 1918 led to around 2,000 prosecutions, including Eugene Debs's ten-year sentence for an anti-war speech, and the Post Office barred radical publications from the mails. The Palmer Raids of 1919…0i
  7. 7Warren G. HardingWarren G. HardingBorn 2 Nov 1865Usually ranked near the bottom for scandal, Harding looks better through this lens. He commuted Eugene Debs's sentence in 1921 and invited him to the White House, released most of the other political prisoners held under Wilson's wartime laws, and in a 1921 speech in Birmingham, Alabama, called for…0i
  8. 8Franklin D. RooseveltFranklin D. RooseveltBorn 30 Jan 1882Executive Order 9066 of February 1942 authorised the removal of around 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of them American citizens, from the West Coast to incarceration camps, without charge or hearing. The Supreme Court upheld it in Korematsu in 1944, a decision now repudiated. Roosevelt…0i
  9. 9Harry S. TrumanHarry S. TrumanBorn 8 May 1884Truman ordered the desegregation of the armed forces and fair employment in the federal service in 1948, and commissioned the report To Secure These Rights, the first presidential civil rights programme. He also vetoed the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950, which Congress passed over his veto.…0i
  10. 10Dwight D. EisenhowerDwight D. EisenhowerBorn 14 Oct 1890Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock in 1957 to enforce school desegregation, the first federal troops sent to the South to protect Black citizens' rights since Reconstruction, and signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957. He appointed Earl Warren and William Brennan to the Supreme Court.…0i