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Nick Ragone, JD (Jersey City, NJ) graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center and the Eagleton Institute of Political Science at Rutgers University, is the author of The Everything American Government Book, Essential American Government, and President's Most Wanted: The Top Ten Book of Extraordinary Executives, Colorful Campaigns, and White House Oddities. He has written on recent presidential history and current events for US News & World Report and the Star-Ledger, and has appeared on CBS Early Show, Fox News, CNBC, ABC News, and Fox Business.

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PRESIDENTIAL LEADERSHIP

Prometheus Books

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...........................................................9FOREWORD by Ali Velshi....................................................11INTRODUCTION..............................................................131. Washington Puts Down the Whiskey Rebellion.............................172. Thomas Jefferson Purchases the Louisiana Territory.....................333. Andrew Jackson Rejects Nullification...................................474. Lincoln Signs the Emancipation Proclamation............................675. Teddy Roosevelt Builds the Panama Canal................................896. Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations...............................1117. Franklin Roosevelt and the Lend-Lease Program..........................1298. Truman Drops the Bomb..................................................1559. Truman Fires MacArthur.................................................17310. Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Race to the Moon.........................18711. Lyndon Johnson and Civil Rights.......................................20712. Richard Nixon Visits China............................................22513. Ford Pardons Nixon....................................................24114. Reagan and the Evil Empire............................................25715. Barack Obama Takes On Healthcare Reform...............................271AFTERWORD.................................................................283NOTES.....................................................................285INDEX.....................................................................325

Chapter One

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint. —Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Paper No. 15. A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. —Thomas Jefferson, 1786

In the summer of 1794, an angry mob of seven thousand people gathered outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to convene an ad hoc "convention" of sorts to determine their responses to the federal government's attempts to collect the taxes imposed on distilled spirits. Tensions between distillers and the government had been on the rise in western Pennsylvania since 1791 when the whiskey tax was first instituted. There had been intermittent bursts of violence every time federal agents tried to collect tax revenues from the distillers, and by July of 1794, many in the government feared that mass violence, insurrection, and even the overthrow of the capital in Philadelphia was imminent. At the prodding of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, President George Washington summoned thirteen thousand armed militia from neighboring states and personally led the effort to put down the rebellion. It was a defining moment for the young Republic—its first constitutional crisis—and would remain the largest domestic disturbance until the Civil War some sixty-five years later.

* * *

Armed resistance and protest was not uncommon during the early years of the Republic. There had been minor uprisings throughout the thirteen colonies immediately following the Revolutionary War, the largest and most serious being "Shays's Rebellion" of 1786, where one thousand armed protesters in central Massachusetts surrounded the capital in search of debt relief and tax fairness from the local courts. A private army was formed to put down the rebellion—which it easily did—but the prospect of having to organize private armies to defeat future insurrections convinced political leaders that the Articles of Confederation were simply not tenable as a governing charter.

Shays's Rebellion highlighted the weakness in the loose confederation approach. In the summer of 1787, the second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia with the intent to amend the Articles of Con federation, which favored a weak central government and reserved great powers to the states. The Founding Fathers decided to scrap the articles altogether, and instead wrote a new charter for the United States, which was ratified the following summer. The hope was that a new constitution with a strong central government would bring greater stability and cohesion to the fledgling country.

George Washington was unanimously selected as the first president of the United States under the newly ratified Constitution, in part because he was universally regarded as the most capable and trustworthy person to guide the new country through its formative years. Nobody was quite certain how a strong chief executive—something the Articles of Confederation did not have—would relate to Congress and the states, or how his powers would be interpreted and used. In many ways, the political establishment was counting on Washington to carefully and deliberately define the position and the office. Their logic was simple if not unassailable: if there was one person who could strike the right balance between respecting popular sovereignty and providing firm authority, it was George Washington.

The Whiskey Rebellion was the first test for President Washington and the new Republic. It was particularly complicated because the crisis represented not only a physical threat—for a brief time, an assault on the capital was a real possibility—but an intellectual one as well. Was it the duty of a responsive government to simply accede to the protestors' demands and repeal the tax? Did the president need the assent of Congress to raise an army and put it down? Would an aggressive reaction from the federal government pose a threat to liberty itself? Nobody really knew for certain. Antifederalists—those who supported a weak central government—had one point of view, federalists held another, and many farmers and merchants throughout the colonies sympathized with the rebels. The president's own cabinet was split on the issue while Congress was preoccupied with other matters. This was Washington's decision alone, and with it rested the fate of the country.

Hamilton's Tax

Many historians consider Alexander Hamilton the father of the US economy, and with good reason: as the nation's first treasury secretary, Hamilton helped found the first National Bank, established the United States Mint, created a national system of tax collectors, promoted a stable paper currency, and generally transformed what had been a regional, disorganized financial system under the Articles of Confederation into a rigorous and highly structured national economy.

He did it, in part, because he could. Hamilton was a brilliant political philosopher and financial theorist with few equals. Given that President Washington's first order of business was to stabilize the economy (in order to quell any lingering domestic unrest as well as protect the country from foreign encroachment), Hamilton was given free rein to reshape commerce—and create the institutions necessary to do it—to his liking. It was an...