Presidents

He was known as a poor communicator who fueled trade wars and exacerbated the Depression.

Though politically gifted, he will forever be associated with the Watergate scandal and his resignation.

He was president for all of 30 days after contracting pneumonia during his interminable inaugural.

Serving right after Andrew Johnson, he presided over an outbreak of graft and corruption, but had good intentions.

He was a stalwart defender of slavery who abandoned his party's platform once he was president.

He backed the Compromise of 1850 that delayed the Southern secession by allowing slavery to spread.

His fervor for expanding the borders—thereby adding several slave states—helped set the stage for the Civil War.

He survived impeachment after opposing Reconstruction initiatives including the 14th amendment.

He was an ineffectual and indecisive leader who played poker while his friends plundered the U.S. treasury.

He refused to challenge either the spread of slavery or the growing bloc of states that became the Confederacy.

"I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis.

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

"The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave.

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever. . ."

"No Man is justified in doing evil on the grounds of expedience."

"It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes."

"The history of liberty is a history of the limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it."

"When even one American is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all of Americans are in peril."

"No president who performs his duties faithfully and conscientiously can have any leisure."

"How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?"

"And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do foryour country."