Showing posts with label United States House of Representatives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label United States House of Representatives. Show all posts
Monday, September 12, 2011
6.John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams (i/ˈkwɪnzi/; July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848) was the sixth President of the United States (1825–1829). He was also an American diplomat and served in both the Senate and House of Representatives. He was a member of the Federalist, Democratic-Republican, National Republican, and later Anti-Masonic and Whig parties. Adams was the son of former President John Adams and Abigail Adams. As a diplomat, Adams was key to many international negotiations, such as the Treaty of Ghent which ended the War of 1812. As Secretary of State, he negotiated with England America's northern border with Canada, negotiated with Spain the annexation of Florida, and formulated the Monroe Doctrine. Historians agree he was one of the greatest diplomats and secretaries of state in American history.[2][3]
As president, he proposed a program of modernization and educational advancement which was intended to achieve national greatness through economic growth and a strong federal government. He was able to enact part of his agenda, while paying off much of the national debt.[4] He was stymied by a congress controlled by his enemies, and his lack of patronage networks helped politicians eager to undercut him. He lost his 1828 bid for re-election to Andrew Jackson. In doing so, he became the first President since his father to serve a single term.
Adams is best known as a diplomat who shaped America's foreign policy in line with his ardently nationalist commitment to America's republican values. More recently Howe (2007) portrayed Adams as the exemplar and moral leader in an era of modernization when new technologies and networks of infrastructure and communication brought to the people messages of religious revival, social reform, and party politics, as well as moving goods, money and people ever more rapidly and efficiently.[5]
Adams was elected a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts after leaving office, the only president ever to be so, serving for the last 17 years of his life with far greater success than he had achieved in the presidency. Animated by his growing revulsion against slavery,[6] Adams became a leading opponent of the Slave Power and argued that if a civil war ever broke out the president could abolish slavery by using his war powers, a correct prediction of Abraham Lincoln's use of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. Adams predicted the Union's dissolution over the slavery issue, but said that if the South became independent there would be a series of bloody slave insurrections.
by Wikipedia
20.James A. Garfield
James Abram Garfield (November 19, 1831 – September 19, 1881) served as the 20th President of the United States, after completing nine consecutive terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. Garfield's accomplishments as President included a controversial resurgence of Presidential authority above Senatorial courtesy in executive appointments; energizing U.S. naval power; and purging corruption in the Post Office Department. Garfield made notable diplomatic and judiciary appointments, including a U.S. Supreme Court justice. Garfield appointed several African Americans to prominent federal positions. Garfield, the scholar President, successfully managed a national debt crisis without having to call a special session of Congress.
Garfield was a self-made man who came from a modest background, having been raised in obscurity on an Ohio farm by his widowed mother and brothers. Garfield ambitiously worked his way doing manual labor jobs to obtain and finance his education. Achieving his goal in 1856, Garfield graduated from Williams College, Massachusetts. A year later, Garfield entered politics as a Republican, after campaigning for the party's antislavery platform in Ohio. He married Lucretia Rudolph in 1858, and in 1860 was admitted to practice law while serving as an Ohio State Senator (1859–1861). Garfield opposed Confederate secession, served as a Major General in the Union Army during the American Civil War, and fought in the battles of Shiloh and Chickamauga. He was first elected to Congress in 1863 as Representative of the 19th District of Ohio.
Throughout Garfield's extended Congressional service after the Civil War, he fervently opposed the Greenback, and gained a reputation as a skilled orator. He was Chairman of the Military Affairs Committee and the Appropriations Committee and a member of the Ways and Means Committee. Garfield initially agreed with Radical Republican views regarding Reconstruction, then favored a moderate approach for civil rights enforcement for Freedmen. In 1880, the Ohio legislature elected him to the U.S. Senate; in that same year, the leading Republican presidential contenders – Ulysses S. Grant, James G. Blaine and John Sherman – failed to garner the requisite support at their convention. Garfield became the party's compromise nominee for the 1880 Presidential Election and successfully campaigned to defeat Democrat Winfield Hancock in the election.
Garfield's presidency lasted just 200 days—from March 4, 1881, until his death on September 19, 1881, as a result of being shot by assassin Charles J. Guiteau on July 2, 1881. Only William Henry Harrison's presidency, of 32 days, was shorter. Garfield was the second of four United States Presidents who were assassinated. President Garfield advocated a bi-metal monetary system, agricultural technology, an educated electorate, and civil rights for African Americans. He proposed substantial civil service reform, eventually passed in 1883 by his successor, Chester A. Arthur, as the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act.
by Wikipedia
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