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Before I share this inevitably dismal list, here are the ground rules used compiling what is nothing less than a catalog of calamity.First, having answered a question of very similar nature and magnitude several months ago, What is the single greatest achievement of each of the US presidents?, I resolved to keep each failure as succinct as possible. I will leave it to you to judge my success in that regard—the temptation to extended exegesis is strong.As in that previous answer, some over-simplifications are inevitable. This list represents my humble attempt to distill the grand sweep of US History and evaluate the presidential failures with an enduring impact.Of course, a few Presidents were so awful that it is hard to pick just one and many of you will disagree vigorously with my choices. I cherish the study of history because this is so.My intention here is to avoid enumerating failures that happened simply because they were President at the time of an event. My methodology was to choose a failure in which they were the prime actor or where they were in a singular position to act, yet failed to do so.Lastly, implicit in the question, or at least my interpretation is the selection of a failure during their Presidency. There are some doozies that would make the list if you cast the net outside the boundary of their time in office.George WashingtonSigning the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793. While in the view of many historians George Washington was internally conflicted over slavery, it was a profound failure that he would endorse this first of many odious slave-holder protection laws. This act became the scaffolding upon which more famous later Federal laws would be hung and was a harbinger of an approaching civil war that would fully erupt less than 70 years later.John AdamsPromoted the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts which headline most lists of the worst things in American History. But Adams’ vigor and rancourous language in their pursuit had consequences that rise to the very top of his personal naughty list: the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. A straight line can be drawn between those resolutions and the rise of the Nullification Doctrine with all the mischief that entailed. If the 19th Century political dysfunction that produced the Civil War can be termed “mischief.”Thomas JeffersonImperiled the continued existence of the United States by pursuing a “Gunboat Navy”. Jefferson took this course in spite of the evidence that American made frigates were actually capable vessels that could offset some of Britain’s vast numerical naval superiority. The young republic paid the price in the War of 1812 when Washington D.C. burned, in part because of British naval dominance.James MadisonSought and obtained the declaration of war on Great Britain that resulted in the War of 1812 for which the nation was radically ill-prepared. The idea was to quickly grab Canada while Britain was otherwise occupied with that Napoleon fellow, but the idealized militia forces did not work out so well. The nation survived largely because privateers—pirates operating under color of law—acquitted themselves far better than could have ever been expected.James MonroeFailed to leverage the Era of Good Feelings and implement the anti-partisan ideals of Washington's Farewell Address. The Monroe administration was the only time in our nation's history where partisanship did not dominate the political discourse. The Federalists were in disarray and Monroe was eager to see the decline of the parties but continued to oppose the appointment of Federalists fearing backlash from Republicans. Had he pressed forward with his stated anti-partisan beliefs, the United States could have been purged of the partisanship that constrains her to this day.John Quincy AdamsFailing to respond to the rise of the Second Party System. Because of his insistence on remaining above the political fray, Adams was unable to overcome the unfair corruption tarnish of the 1824 election. Because Adams failed to appreciate the looming threat, the United States turned to a demagogue who would exacerbate the ugliest trends of the nation and ensure that factional strife would metastasize.Andrew JacksonLeaving the banking system in a broken state that led to the Panic of 1837. Often forgotten by Americans, the panic touched off a severe seven-year depression that saw the same sort of traumas that are more familiar from the Great Depression that would follow a century later.Martin Van BurenWhile most related events are commonly associated with his predecessor, it was Van Buren who presided over some of the worst events of the Indian Removals. Van Buren was Jacksonian in spirit as well as political affiliation.William Henry HarrisonDrank the water.Seriously.He was famously a one month President and the story is often told about his long inaugural speech on a cold day with no coat. But, the best recent thinking on his death is that the infection from which he died came from ingesting the unsanitary water in Washington D.C. Less famously, presidents Polk and Taylor both also had serious issues so perhaps we are just lucky there were not more dead Presidents. If you are someone like me who thinks that a full-term Harrison presidency would have been a good one, then drinking the water was a serious failure indeed. Doubly so when you consider the dumpster fire which was his successor’s administration.John TylerManaged to be so uniformly unpopular with partisans on both sides of the aisle that he became the first sitting President to be subject to formal impeachment proceedings. He was so profoundly divisive in office that he would only be embraced by his nation in death: the Confederate States of America buried him with full honors.James K. Polk“Napolean of the Stump” was promiscuous in fomenting conflict with other nations so as to acquire new territory by force. While actually going to war with Mexico to accomplish the largest land grab in American history is the most notorious, Polk was even willing to risk war with Great Britain in order to acquire the Oregon Territory. While these shenanigans would typically land on most lists of Presidential accomplishments, in reality, they are another profound failure in the United States living up to the ideals she espouses.Zachary TaylorTaylor’s few months in office were dominated by the rising passions over slavery. As a war hero and slaveholder who opposed the expansion of slavery into new states, Taylor was uniquely positioned to preserve the Union, but due to his lack of political instincts arguably managed to accelerate the divisions that lead to war.Millard FillmoreFillmore supported and signed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 in a vain effort to prevent the secession of the Southern states. While the Act cooled the immediate secessionist impulse, it also angered the growing abolitionist sentiment in the North who felt more imposed upon than ever by the nation’s “peculiar institution”. The Act became a constant irritant that split the Whig party leading to the election of and even less adept compromiser from the Democratic Party, Franklin Pierce.Franklin PierceSigned and supported the Kansas–Nebraska Act which on its face was slavery neutral because it allowed citizens of the territories to decide the slavery question for themselves. In practice, this ramped up the tensions to new levels resulting in armed conflicts between citizens on both sides of the question. In a real sense, it could be said that Bleeding Kansas was the first set of battles of the Civil War.James BuchananBuchanan’s greatest failure was failing to do SOMETHING. If Buchanan had done anything at all to prevent the coming apocalypse known as the United State’s Civil War, perhaps his consensus vote of being the worst President in US history could have been avoided. It appears that Buchanan was little more than a bench warmer for Lincoln who for better or worse would deal with the ugly reality of the divisions that had plagued the Union from its beginning. The sad reality is that while Buchanan seems like a capable intelligent guy, he did not step up and try something new instead giving in to the inevitability of the coming civil war.Abraham LincolnSelecting Andrew Johnson as his Vice-President for his perceived benefits in Lincoln’s second election campaign. It should be observed that it was a decision that was not entirely Lincoln's, but he went along with the selection designed to help win border states.Andrew JohnsonAlmost single-handedly squandered the spilled blood of the Civil War by thumbing his nose at Congress and going his own way. Famously, this led to the first impeachment of an American President which, while well earned, ended with his retaining the office by a one-vote margin in the Senate trial.Ulysses S. GrantFailed to control political appointees who created a tapestry of money and political scandals against which most other presidential administrations are measured. While it seems that Grant did not pocket the ill-gotten gains, the world would forget his bold progressive agenda that presaged the coming progressive era and instead remembers the corruption which always swirled around him.Rutherford B. HayesParticipated in the Compromise of 1877 setting the stage for the end of reconstruction and the rise of the Jim Crow era.James A. GarfieldHiring a personal friend as his physician rather than someone who was up to speed on the work of Joseph Lister. Lister’s work was widely known in the United States and had sterile technique been used to explore his bullet wounds, Garfield might well have survived to finish his term of office.Chester A. ArthurSigned the Chinese Exclusion Act into law. The law remains the only law in United States history to ban immigration based solely on ethnicity. The odious statute would not be repealed until 1943.Grover ClevelandVeto mania. Cleveland’s first term is second to no other single term of any president and was only exceeded by the sum of those in the four consecutive terms of FDR. His veto count more than doubled the number of combined vetoes of ALL previous Presidents.Benjamin HarrisonSupported and signed into law the McKinley Tariff which increased tariffs on goods an average of 50%. These tariffs greatly increased the federal revenues leading to more expansive federal spending. Neither the burgeoning federal budget nor the rapid increase in the cost of goods proved popular resulting in an otherwise fairly successful president losing the race for a second term.Grover Cleveland (again)Openly campaigned against legislation that would have strengthened voting rights protections for Black Americans known as the Lodge Bill.William McKinleyFailed to avoid war with Spain in spite of extensive efforts to negotiate a peaceful compromise. War having been declared by Congress against his wishes, McKinley oversaw its prosecution demonstrating personal integrity that earned him reelection.Theodore RooseveltStarted us on the downward slippery slope to the Imperial Presidency. In order to get what he wanted, Roosevelt constantly went around Congress by issuing executive orders and wielding his power as Commander-in-Chief in an expansive way that should still give small “d” democrats serious concerns regardless of whether a red or blue jersey occupies the Oval Office.William Howard TaftFailed so profoundly at bridging between the Conservative and Progressive wings of his own Republican Party that he precipitated a party split that lost him reelection and brought Woodrow Wilson and the Democrats to power.Woodrow WilsonAllowed his cabinet appointees to segregate their departments based on race and though he spoke against lynchings and the resurgent Klu Klux Klan, he used nothing but words in opposition and is generally considered an overt bigot today.Warren G. HardingPresided over one of the most iconic corruption scandals in American history, the Teapot Dome scandal. This scandal saw the first cabinet-level official do jail time for official misdeeds. Unlike his appointees, because of Harding’s timely death, the scandal only tainted his legacy and not his life.Calvin CoolidgeFailed to leverage the Bully Pulpit and lead. By most accounts, Coolidge is an underrated President but lacked the instincts for inspirational leadership that many of his contemporary Presidents were so famous for. Unsurprisingly, Coolidge quickly faded from view as a significant player in American history remembered mostly for his terse statement regarding his choice to not run again for the office.Herbert HooverAmidst the onset of the Great Depression, Hoover signed the Republican-led Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act significantly increasing tariffs. These increased tariffs resulted in retaliatory tariffs from other nations and contributed to the calamitous downward spiral of international trade and the global economy.Franklin D. RooseveltArguably did more than any other President to accrete excessive power in the Chief Executive. Most notably, he made a serious attempt to sidestep the judiciary with his Supreme Court expansion plan popularly known as the Court Packing Plan.Harry S. TrumanThough he proposed it, he failed to garner enough support to pass a National Healthcare Bill. Truman himself thought of this as his greatest failure.Dwight D. EisenhowerOrchestrated the 1953 Iranian coup d'état which overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh. The geopolitics of this was complex, but Mosaddegh was quite popular with the voters, and thus when the coup became publically known trust of the United States in the region was permanently ruptured.John F. KennedyAllowed his election rhetoric to influence his decision to go forward with the Eisenhower administration’s plan for yet another coup, this time in Cuba. This was, of course, the infamous Bay of Pigs Invasion which ended in disaster. The global embarrassment caused Kennedy to feel compelled to assert American power elsewhere and chose to draw the line in a soon to be significant place: Vietnam.Lyndon B. JohnsonDrastically escalated United States military involvement in Vietnam. This ultimately led to his inability to obtain his party’s nomination because of the internal rupture caused by his war policy.Richard NixonAllowed his paranoia to ruin his Presidency and push the nation into one of its most troubling crises. The various dirty tricks that came out of the Nixon White House were so numerous that it was perhaps inevitable that something would be exposed. This something would become known as the Watergate scandal, which resulted in Nixon becoming the only President in American history to resign from office.Gerald FordWas ineffective in responding to one of the worst economic crises in United States History. Ford’s notorious WIN Campaign led to widespread ridicule that was likely a contributor to his loss in his campaign to win an elected term.Jimmy CarterFailed to unify the Democratic Party factions resulting in a party split that saw him nearly lose the nomination to Ted Kennedy. The party disunity coupled with his legendary inability to communicate a clear, consistent message could not have come at a worse time as he would lose reelection to one of the most talented communicators in US history.Ronald ReaganPresided over the rampant malfeasance and misfeasance that is known as the Iran–Contra affair. Reagan suffered the most radical decline in popularity for an American President dropping from a 67% approval rating to 46% in a mere week. In subsequent testimony, Reagan made extensive claims to not remember involvement in the covert activities. His astounding lack of recollection left people to speculate years later, after Reagan’s announcement of an Alzheimer’s Disease diagnosis, whether he was actually in control of what was transpiring in the White House in his second term.George H. W. BushReneging on his promise during his successful 1988 Presidential campaign to ”Read my lips: no new taxes.” Bush had never been a favorite of the conservatives and when he signed on to tax increases in 1990, his historic high popularity vanished quickly. The New York Post perhaps captured the sentiment most succinctly in their headline: “Read my lips: I lied!”Bill ClintonEngaged in an affair with a White House intern that lead to impeachment. Though he was acquitted on a partisan basis, the scandal, along with a simmering stew of various other charges of sexual misconduct, are increasingly viewed in a negative light and will likely forever tarnish his reputation.Insufficient time has elapsed to put subsequent Presidents into a proper historical context though each certainly had candidate failures worthy of this list.

Here's an interesting account of the Korean War that might throw some light on it for you:“The Korean War itself grew out of U.S. refusal to allow a genuine self-determination process to take root. The Korean people were exuberant in August 1945 with their new freedom after being subjected to a brutal 40-year Japanese occupation of their historically undivided Peninsula. They immediately began creating local democratic peoples’ committees the day after Japan announced on August 14 its intentions to surrender. By August 28, all Korean provinces had created local peoples’ offices and on September 6 delegates from throughout the Peninsula gathered in Seoul, at which time they created the Korean People’s Republic (KPR).“The United States had a different plan for Korea. At the February 1945 Yalta conference, President Roosevelt suggested to Stalin, without consulting the Koreans, that Korea should be placed under joint trusteeship following the war before being granted her independence. On August 11, two days after the second atomic bomb was dropped assuring Japan’s imminent surrender, and three days after Russian forces entered Manchuria and Korea to oust the Japanese as was agreed to avoid further U.S. casualties, Truman hurriedly ordered his War Department to choose a dividing line for Korea. Two young colonels, Dean Rusk (later to be Secretary of State under President’s Kennedy and Johnson during the Vietnam War) and Charles H. Bonesteel, were given 30 minutes to resolve the matter. The 38th parallel was quickly, and quietly, chosen, placing the historic capital city of Seoul and 70 percent, or 21 of Korea’s 30 million people in the "American" southern zone. This was not discussed with Stalin or any other political leaders in the U.S. or among our allies. Surprisingly, Stalin agreed to this "temporary" partition that meant the Russians already present in the country would briefly occupy the territory north of the line comprising 55 percent of the peninsular land area. On August 15, the United States Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK) was formed and on September 8, 72,000 U.S. troops began arriving to enforce the formal occupation of the south.“The Korean People’s Republic officially formed just two days prior to the first arrival of U.S. forces was almost immediately shunned by the U.S. who decided its preference was to stand behind conservative politicians representing the traditional land-owning elite. The U.S. helped in the formation on September 16 of the conservative Korean Democratic Party (KDP), and brought Syngman Rhee to Korea on General MacArthur’s plane on October 16 to head up the new party. Rhee, a Korean possessing a Ph.D. from Princeton (1910) and an Austrian wife, had lived in the United States for more than 40 years. To his credit he had detested the Japanese occupation of his native country, but he hated the communists even more. Just before Rhee arrived to begin efforts to consolidate his power in the south, long-time resistance fighter Kim Il Sung returned from exile to begin his leadership in the Russian occupied north. As a guerrilla leader Kim had been fighting the Japanese occupation of China and Korea since the early 1930s.“Rhee and his U.S. advisers quickly concluded that in order to build their kind of Korea through the KDP they must definitively defeat the broad-based KPR. While Kim, with the support of the Russian forces in the north, was purging that territory of former Japanese administrators and their Korean collaborators, the USAMG was actively recruiting them in the south. In November the U.S. Military Governor outlawed all strikes and in December declared the KPR and all its activities illegal. In effect the U.S. had declared war on the popular movement of Korea south of the 38th Parallel and set in motion a repressive campaign that later became excessively brutal, dismantling the Peoples’ Committees and their supporters throughout the south.“In December 1945 General John R. Hodge, commander of the U.S. occupation forces, created the Korean Constabulary, led exclusively by officers who had served the Japanese. Along with the revived Japanese colonial police force, the Korean National Police (KNP), comprised of many former Korean collaborators, and powerful right-wing paramilitary groups like the Korean National Youth and the Northwest Youth League, the U.S.Military Government and their puppet Syngman Rhee possessed the armed instruments of a police state more than able to assure a political system that was determined to protect the old landlord class made up of rigid reactionaries and enthusiastic capitalists.“By the fall of 1946, disgruntled workers declared a strike that spread throughout South Korea. By December the combination of the KNP, the Constabulary, and the right-wing paramilitary units, supplemented by U.S. firepower and intelligence, had contained the insurrections in all provinces. More than 1,000 Koreans were killed with more than 30,000 jailed. Regional and local leaders of the popular movement were either dead, in jail, or driven underground.With total U.S. support Rhee busily prepared for a politically division of Korea involuntarily imposed on the vast majority of the Korean people. Following suppression of the October-December insurrection, the Koreans began to form guerrilla units in early 1947. There were sporadic activities for a year or so. However, in March 1948, on Korea’s large Island, Cheju, a demonstration objecting to Rhee’s planned separate elections scheduled for May 1948 was fired upon by the KNP. A number of Koreans were injured and several were tortured, then killed. This incident provoked a dramatic escalation of armed resistance to the U.S./Rhee regime.“The police state went into full force, regularly guided by U.S. military advisors, and often supported by U.S. military firepower and occasional ground troops. On the Island of Cheju alone, within a year as many as 60,000 of its 300,000 residents had been murdered, while another 40,000 fled by sea to nearby Japan. Over 230 of the Island’s 400 villages had been totally scorched with 40,000 homes burned to the ground. As many as 100,000 people were herded into government compounds. The remainder, it has been reported, became collaborators in order to survive. On the mainland guerrilla activities escalated in most of the provinces.“The Rhee/U.S. forces conducted a ruthless campaign of cleansing the south of all dissidents, usually identifying them as "communists," though in fact most popular leaders in the south were socialists unaffiliated with outside "communist" organizations. Anyone who was openly or quietly opposed to the Rhee regime was considered suspect. Therefore massive numbers of villagers and farmers were systematically rounded up, tortured, then shot and dropped into mass graves. Estimates of murdered civilians range anywhere from 200,000 to 800,000 by the time the hot war broke out in June 1950.The hot war allegedly began at Ongjin about 3 or 4 A.M. (Korean time) June 25, 1950. Just how the fighting started on that day depends on one’s source of information. It is mostly irrelevant, since a civil and revolutionary war had been raging for a couple of years, with military incursions routinely moving back and forth across the 38th parallel”.The Korean war was a rehearsal for the Vietnam war in almost every respect, except that we hung onto the South in Korea and have been able – at the point of 37,000 US guns – to control the narrative there. We lost the war in Vietnam and have found it more difficult to control that narrative.I moved into the men's graduate student dorm in the Winter of 1967. I was warmly hosted at many of the student's families' homes. Most parents were upper middle class, since Korea was still far too poor to afford the educational opportunities available today. Street beggars were everywhere.My student friends would have been 10-12 years old when the war ended, yet their accounts jibed with their parents': they regarded the Northern troops as liberators and spoke with horror of the USAF firebombing of their homes and the rapes and murders we perpetrated.: See A Forgotten Holocaust: US Bombing Strategy: http://www.japanfocus.org/-Mar.... WE may have forgotten the holocaust, thanks to our media's filter system, but the Koreans certainly have not.For an accurate, well-documented account of that war, read 'The Hidden History of the Korean War, 1950-1951, by IF Stone. http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-H.... Stone was the pre-eminent investigative reporter of that era and his research is impeccable.To understand how this narrative has been sustained for over 50 years read 'The Propaganda Model: An Overview, by David Cromwell', free at Page on www.chomsky.info.Like Vietnam: "For most Vietnamese — in the South as well as the North — the end was not a time of fear and flight, but joy and relief. Finally, the much-reviled, American-backed government in Saigon had been overthrown and the country reunited. After three decades of turmoil and war, peace had come at last. The South was not united in accepting the Communist victory as an unambiguous “liberation,” but there did remain broad and bitter revulsion over the wreckage the Americans had brought to their land. Indeed, throughout the South and particularly in the countryside, most people viewed the Americans not as saviors but as destroyers. And with good reason. The U.S. military dropped four million tons of bombs on South Vietnam, the very land it claimed to be saving, making it by far the most bombed country in history. – Christian Appy, Professor of history at the University of MassachusettsDuring the Korean War of 1950-53, the U.S. dropped 635,000 tons of bombs and 32,000 tons of napalm, mostly on North Korea.7 And from 1961 to 1972, American aircraft dropped approximately one million tons of bombs on North Vietnam, and much more on rural areas of South Vietnam -- approximately 4 million tons of bombs, 400,000 tons of napalm, and 19 million gallons of herbicides.8 On a per capita basis, Laos, with its much smaller and dispersed population, may have suffered a yet higher rate of aerial bombardment during 1964-73 – “nearly a ton for every person in Laos,” according to the New York Times.9 The late Fred Branfman, who learned Lao and worked with refugees displaced in the country in 1967-69, was one of the first to publicize the human toll of that secret U.S. bombing, in his 1972 Voices from the Plain of Jars: Life under an Air War. Branfman’s book was reprinted in 2013, with a foreword by Alfred W. McCoy that terms the Laos campaign “history’s longest and largest air war.”.But in 2000, just as High did for Laos eight years later, the Phnom Penh Post reported a new Cambodia total, a dramatic upward revision: “The [data] tapes show that 43,415 bombing raids were made on Cambodia dropping more than 2 million tons of bombs and other ordinance.”14 This figure had significant implications for the continuing work to clear the Cambodian countryside of the still widespread, deadly unexploded ordnance (UXO), as well as for a historical understanding of the wartime humanitarian and political impact of the US carpet bombings.Our 2006 article, “Bombs over Cambodia,” using the same database and analysis, calculated a figure of 2.7 million tons dropped on Cambodia in 1965-75.15 Our estimate, published in the Canadian magazine The Walrus, and in 2007 in The Asia-Pacific Journal, was widely quoted.16 – Making More Enemies than We Kill? Calculating U.S. Bomb Tonnages Dropped on Laos and Cambodia, and Weighing Their Implications 我々は殺すよりも多くの敵を産み出してきたのだろうか ラオス、カンボジアに投下された爆弾のトン数とその意味を考える | The Asia-Pacific JournalBrian WillsonPosted August 23, 2010 at 9:16 am | PermalinkBibliography sourcing Korean history and US Intervention:Alexander, Col. Joseph H., Don Horan, and Norman C. Stahl. The Battle History of the U.S. Marines: A Fellowship of Valor (New York: Harper Perennial, 1997).Arbuthnot, Felicity. “Allies Deliberately Poisoned Iraq Public Water Supply in Gulf War,” Sunday Herald (Scotland), Sunday, September 17, 2000.Bailyn, Bernard. Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986).Bamford, James. Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency From the Cold War Through the Dawn of a New Century (NY: Doubleday, 2001).Bard, Mitchell G. 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I rank Jefferson as our sixth greatest president. He moderated, but did not dismantle, the Federalist policies of Washington and Adams. He cut federal spending, cut the number of federal office holders, cut military spending, and cut the national debt nearly in half (from $87 million to $57 million). All internal taxes were abolished (the government raised revenue through tariffs). He allowed the states to take the lead on domestic affairs. He made it easy for farmers to buy land. He established the United States Military Academy at West Point. He ended the landowner requirement for white men to vote, establishing universal white male suffrage. Many social conventions relating to class, such as bowing to the rich, ended with the spirit of Jefferson.He also dealt with the Barbary Pirates. These states were a part of the Ottoman Empire, and are now Algiers, Tunis, Morocco, and Tripoli (Libya). The Barbary economy was largely reliant on the kidnapping of slaves from trans-Atlantic ships and European villages. Historians now estimate that about 1.5 million Europeans and Americans were enslaved by the Barbary Pirates between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. As a part of the British Empire, the American colonies were protected from the pirates. After independence had been secured, however, American ships fell victim to these predatory attacks. In the mid-1780s, America’s two chief diplomats, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, met an envoy from Tripoli in London. They asked to know by what right had the Barbary States in attacking Americans. The US had not participated in the Crusades. It had done nothing to Islam. Jefferson later told the State Department the dignitary mentioned that only a paid tribute could protect America’s sailors from attack. During the Washington and Adams Administrations, about 20% of the Federal Budget went to paying the Barbary States this tribute. That changed once Jefferson was in office. Within days of his March 1801 Inauguration as the third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson ordered a naval and military expedition to North Africa, without the authorization of Congress, to put down the regimes involved in slavery and piracy. The war was the first in which the US flag was carried and planted overseas; it saw the baptism by fire of the US Marine Corps (whose anthem boasts of action on “the shores of Tripoli”)However, his greatest accomplishment was the Louisiana Purchase. The story of the Louisiana Purchase is one of strength, of Jefferson’s adaptability, and of his determination to seize the territory from France, doubling the size of the US and turning the United States into a continental power. A weaker politician may have bungled the acquisition, but Jefferson had a lifetime of experience to face off against Napoleon in the Louisiana Crisis. Less than a month after Jefferson’s 1801 inauguration, Spain gave France more than half of her North American colonies, a territory that stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains. First Consul Bonaparte sought to establish a great empire in North America. President Jefferson could not allow this. It was one thing to have the weak Spanish Empire control a large neighboring territory. It was quite another to have France, a superpower ruled by the greatest military mind of modern history, govern it. Jefferson threatened to marry the United States to Britain, the country he hated most, in resistance to Napoleon. He was most nervous about France controlling New Orleans, which possessed a port that was critical to US trade. Jefferson sent James Monroe with a team to Paris in order to negotiate the American acquisition of New Orleans. Two factors played into America’s favor. First, Napoleon could not tolerate the threat of an Anglo-American alliance. Jefferson’s bluff terrified the most powerful man in the world. Second, the French colony of Haiti, which was key to Napoleon’s North American Empire, had risen up in a slave rebellion (this was partly inspired by the Declaration of Independence). Since France was at the brink of war with Britain, Napoleon could not afford to tie up troops in Haiti. The Louisiana territory had become a liability. Monroe and his team met with French Foreign Minister Talleyrand, a master of geopolitics. Talleyrand notified the Americans of Napoleon’s desire to sell their country the entire Louisiana territory for $15 million dollars, or three cents an acre. Jefferson was notified on July 3, 1803. The deal was announced the next day. The president and the American people were stunned with excitement. But many questioned whether the Constitution allowed Jefferson to acquire land. However, Secretary of State James Madison, who wrote the Constitution, said it was legal. That was all the encouragement Jefferson needed. He considered adding an amendment to the Constitution that would allow the acquisition of territory, but he did not have the time. News came that Napoleon was having second thoughts about selling so much land. Jefferson quickly pushed the treaty through the Senate. Using Hamiltonian methods, he cared less about the Constitution than doing what was best for the United States. Napoleon excitedly proclaimed his pleasure with the deal. Even if France lost the war, he had developed an ace in the hole. He helped turn America into a continental power, and one day the United States would grow to overpower Britain. There were negative consequences to the Louisiana Purchase, however. The territorial acquisition allowed the US to continue its expansion westward at the expense of the Native Americans. Furthermore, the seeds of the Civil War were partly sown in this expansion. Thomas Paine wrote Jefferson that the Louisiana Purchase offered a new beginning for the American nation; slavery could be outlawed in the new territory, containing the institution to the Deep South. Jefferson mistakenly believed that allowing slavery to expand would de-concentrate and weaken the system. He allowed slaves to be imported into New Orleans, crushing Paine’s hopes. Nevertheless, Jefferson’s doubling the size of the country is among his foremost achievements. If not for him, the United States may have remained a skinny nation on North America’s east coast, far from the superpower that it is today.Next, Jefferson sent Louis and Clark on their expedition westward. Shortly after the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson wrote to Meriwether Lewis to assemble a team to explore the territory recently acquired by the US. That team included William Clark and forty other individuals (including a young Native American woman named Sacagawea, who would act as a guide). Jefferson described the mission as a “ journey… to undertake for the discovery of the course and source of the Mississippi, and of the most convenient water communication from thence to the Pacific.” Jefferson did all he could to control the mission. He wrote detailed instructions, offered council, and worried over details. His explorers pushed a path through the great American wilderness and mastered a continent. They sent Jefferson a collection of artifacts, including the skins and skeletons of antelope, weasels, and wolves, and many interesting plants. The journey fascinated the public. Unfortunately, Lewis and Clark never found the fabled Northwest Passage, which was said to be a continuous navigable waterway between the Atlantic and the Pacific. What the expedition finally found was not the path between the oceans but an incredible story of adventure. By the time President Jefferson sent the captains on their way, the US already had its Constitution, but not an epic. It had its government, but not an identity. Lewis and Clark helped invent one.No presidency is perfect (except maybe Polk). Jefferson’s biggest failure was the Embargo, where he severed trade with Britain and France as a way to punish them for impressing American sailors in the Napoleonic Wars. This led to a recession that ruined Jefferson’s second term. However, the Louisiana Purchase remains the most important legacy of Jefferson’s presidency, and he is the best president between Washington and Lincoln.