Presidential reputations rarely stay fixed. As government records are declassified, personal papers become public, and historians gain access to new evidence, many presidents are viewed differently than they were during their own lifetimes.
Some leaders once celebrated for military victories, economic growth, or political skill have since faced much harsher scrutiny over policies that caused widespread suffering, expanded executive power, violated civil liberties, or inflicted lasting harm on vulnerable populations. In many cases, those actions were debated at the time but have been judged more critically through the lens of additional historical evidence and changing societal values.
History is rarely as simple as hero or villain. Most presidents leave behind complicated legacies that include both significant achievements and deeply controversial decisions. Yet a handful continue to stand out because historians, biographers, and the public remain divided over the human cost of their actions.
Here are 12 U.S. presidents whose legacies have become far more complicated as new evidence and historical scholarship have emerged.
Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson was the author of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, a document dedicated to the pursuit of freedom, yet he did not grant it to all in his life. The article by The British Academy on Annette Gordon-Reed’s extensive research on Jefferson uncovered his illicit relationship with Sally Hemings, an enslaved teenager of Monticello, which may have lasted for four decades. In 1994, the film Jefferson in Paris was released, based on Madison Hemings’s memoir, in which he openly claimed to be Jefferson’s son.
The biography also detailed Jefferson’s extramarital relations with Hemings, and the mixed-race children fathered in the union. DNA testing eventually verified that Hemings’ descendants were part of Jefferson’s family line. The debate over Jefferson’s role in Hemings’s life has only gotten more intense in recent years, as a result of continued biographical research into their correspondence. While Jefferson spoke of “unalienable rights” as if all men were equal, he enslaved 607 people at one time or another over the course of his life.
Andrew Jackson
Jackson’s sculpted face on the front of the U.S. $20 bill has become iconic but so has his cruel treatment of Native Americans. The Washington Post’s Presidential coverage shows how Jackson’s removal of 46,000 Native Americans from their lands in 1830 exceeded any previous deportation efforts.
The Trail of Tears, during which more than 4,000 Cherokee died of disease and exhaustion, was Jackson’s direct result. Indigenous historians agree that Jackson’s vision of American democracy was not for all people, but only for the white settlers who could take their land and create new states. The cruelty of Jackson and his policies is not only evident in the way they were formulated, but also in the tactics employed to ensure there was no resistance. The U.S. Army was ordered to “convoy” Native Americans to Utopia. Native American and Indigenous studies have only continued to posthumously demonize Jackson as an Indian killer and exploiter of human misery.
Woodrow Wilson
Wilson’s long legacy as a renowned political thinker who helped rebuild the world order after World War I became much less flattering after his death. Research in the archives of the National Library of Medicine and Springer details Wilson’s major steps backward in racial equality and inclusion when he re-segregated federal offices on March 3, 1913. By 1913, all Black federal officeholders were forced out or downgraded to lower positions as a matter of “efficiency” under Wilson’s administration.
As president of Princeton and governor of New Jersey, Wilson showed his racist side, and as president of the United States, he oversaw the institutional racism within government agencies. Wilson also enacted domestic policies that turned the Espionage and Sedition Acts against those who sought to protest and oppose the United States’ participation in World War I, with thousands arrested as a result. He was the president who enabled the first large-scale U.S. political imprisonment, as detailed in later political and social histories. Wilson’s cruelty was systemic, cold, and calculated because he believed that oppression was for the greater good. These policies of social control are scrutinized and found to be much more unforgivable after his death than they were when he was alive.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
His fireside chats with American citizens, signature cigar, and New Deal policies made FDR one of the most popular presidents in American history; yet, on February 19, 1942, he made a decision that was one of his cruelest deeds. By signing Executive Order 9066, Roosevelt took upon himself the authority to exile more than 120,000 Japanese Americans from their homes.
Two-thirds of them were U.S. citizens who were imprisoned in desert camps and lost their livelihoods, their freedom, and their homes for years. Statistics on internment compiled by Fiveable show how many innocent Americans suffered from Roosevelt’s drastic measure, which would never have been allowed for other ethnicities. Conditions of the camps were deplorable, and as time went by, many began to show the mental and physical effects of having one’s life turned upside down on such a scale. Roosevelt is revered and romanticized for his role in the U.S. victories in World War II, but this episode of his presidency reveals a darker side to his political calculations of “national security.”
Theodore Roosevelt
Teddy Roosevelt’s policies at home were progressive, and his environmental conservation efforts demonstrated foresight. In his foreign policy, however, Roosevelt had a more brutal streak.
According to the article by Engelsberg Ideas, Roosevelt admonished Californian Republicans who disparaged Japan in a diplomatic note from Washington, but he also refused to build a navy capable of defending the Pacific Coast. It was, as historians would argue, only a matter of time before Roosevelt’s bluff was called, but until then, the native population was left to fend for itself. Roosevelt’s treatment of Native Americans also had a starkly contrastive policy of clearing the land for white settlers who “needed more space” to prosper. This starkly cruel attitude to some of the country’s minority populations is a dark side of Roosevelt’s legacy that was revisited after his death.
Harry S. Truman
Truman inherited Roosevelt’s legacy and the Pacific War. The Potsdam Declaration of July 26, 1945, gave Japan 72 hours to surrender or face “prompt and utter destruction,” but they did not. Truman authorized the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Nagasaki three days later.
The combined death toll was over 200,000 people, most of them civilians. This decision was controversial even among his contemporaries and has remained so, with many historians still researching Truman’s motivations. Was it a necessary evil to end the war as quickly as possible, or was it a display of cruelty to force the Japanese surrender? Truman’s decision and the atomic era it inaugurated have caused a more cynical evaluation of the “Hitler of the Carpathians” posthumously than when he was alive.
Ulysses S. Grant
Grant won the Civil War and emancipated enslaved peoples of the Confederacy, but as a general, he was also guilty of inflicting suffering on innocent people in Southern towns. Posthumous historiography and biographies of Grant reveal that his victory did not come cheaply for the civilian population that was largely caught in the crossfire. His presidency was also plagued by corruption investigations and bailouts of friends caught in scandal, including the Crédit Mobilier and the Whiskey Ring.
The letters, reports, and reminiscences of Grant also revealed him to be rather hot-tempered and quick to use disciplinary corporal punishment against his troops, which his contemporaries considered cruel. This cruelty towards soldiers and civilians was more ideological after the war, as Grant believed that he had won the war for the nation as a whole and was justified in exacting full retribution from a vanquished foe. The rehabilitation of Grant’s image has also helped exonerate him of his posthumously discovered cruelty during his lifetime.
Herbert Hoover
The Great Depression happened during Hoover’s presidency, and while he was helping to coordinate the collection of food relief from private charities, his ideological attachment to free-market capitalism and small government made him look more like a bystander than a leader.
As the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History reports, by 1932, more than a quarter of the workforce was unemployed, yet Hoover refused direct government subsidies and handouts. He ordered the National Guard to “disperse [e] the Hoovervilles,” giving no thought to the families who lost their jobs and homes in the economic crisis. While Hoover may not have been a poor president, he was an unwilling one, and his posthumous image has suffered as a result of his inaction.
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Johnson was both the creator of the Great Society and the warrior who pushed through the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act with an iron will. Robert A. Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 3: Master of the Senate, tells the sordid story of Johnson’s ascent to power and his mastery of political manipulation and coercion.
Caro shows a man who cornered his senatorial colleagues in toilets and loomed over his aides during discussions. Johnson was known to threaten his opponents’ political careers unless they complied with his demands. He secured the laws passed, and the statistics on his near-perfect voting record demonstrate just how much power he wielded over his Senate colleagues. After his death, his cruelty towards those he saw as enemies was seen as a moral stain on his otherwise righteous reform agenda.
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon remains one of the most enigmatic U.S. presidents and one of the most ruthless. Posthumously, the White House tapes were released, which revealed his true cruelty and vindictiveness to a nation in shock.
As Politico reported, the documents included a litany of racial, anti-Semitic, and openly aggressive pronouncements and orders given to loyal White House staffers. Nixon was spying on his political opponents, and he instructed them to do the same to him. While Watergate and his resignation were the end of Nixon’s presidency, the posthumous revelations were far more chilling for a country still processing how he had been allowed to get so far and remain in power for so long.
John F. Kennedy
Kennedy has long been a public figure idolized for his glamour and oratorical brilliance, but decades after his death, historians found more than one dark secret he was trying to hide from his public.
According to History Extra, among the records released after his death were scores of evidence showing Kennedy’s serial infidelity. His conquests included interns, reporters, and women who would otherwise never have had the power to say no. His foreign policy administration, too, was far more aggressive and reckless than historians would have liked. The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs disaster nearly cost the world a nuclear war, and Kennedy would not have been on the “winning” side. Kennedy’s cruelty was not public, but rather very private and hidden.
James Buchanan
Prior to the American Civil War, Buchanan had consistently been regarded as one of the worst U.S. presidents, being hopelessly inept at a crucial time in American history. History.com details his principled stance of not being able to enforce the federal ban on secession, and by the time Lincoln took office, seven states had already seceded. When slavery started to expand in the territories and the newly admitted state of Kansas, Buchanan failed to stop it.
As a result of his stance of not upsetting Southern loyalists and Vice President Breckinridge, Buchanan’s passivity cost the country millions of lives in the Civil War that followed him.
Franklin Pierce
The 14th U.S. president was as inept as Buchanan if not more so, as he also enforced policies that directly or indirectly perpetuated the expansion of slavery and Southern ideology in U.S. politics. The National Archives confirms that Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed settlers to vote on whether they wanted to allow slavery in new territories.
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The act ignited a decade of fighting in Kansas, known as “Bleeding Kansas,” as pro-slavery and anti-slavery advocates armed themselves and started to “decide” the status of slavery in their state by force. Pierce was cruel in his decision not to take sides against a pro-slavery administration, thereby passively helping to keep people enslaved.
Warren G. Harding
Harding was one of the most scandal-plagued U.S. presidents, but these scandals were only made public after his death. The Teapot Dome Scandal, which led to the destruction of the Harding presidency and exposed government officials accepting bribes in exchange for oil rights, was one of the most egregious corruption cases in American history.
Yet, Harding’s personal life has a secret that was also kept from his family and the country: his love life. He had multiple affairs during his term, and during his presidency, he paid mistresses out of pocket to keep them from blackmailing him. These checks to women became public, and Harding is now remembered for his cruelty towards his own wife and family, and as a symbol of Washington, D.C., corruption.
George Washington
The first president of the United States has always been known as the “father of the nation,” but he was not so for all the people within the territory. George Washington’s Mount Vernon archives reveal that the U.S. general and president enslaved more than 300 people during his lifetime. While he freed some of his slaves in his will, he also manhunted those who escaped his ownership, like Ona Judge.
Judge had been his body servant for years, and when she fled, Washington tried to recapture her even while he was president. This is a cruelty so heinous that it is kept as an uncomfortable historical fact about Washington’s life. This cruelty, hidden by his later public image, is only uncovered after his death.
Calvin Coolidge
Calvin Coolidge is known as a frugal president who trimmed fat out of the government’s budget. As the documentary sources on his presidency reveal, he was an advocate for allowing businesses and industries to operate independently and leave the government alone. The result was a near 35% reduction in government spending between 1921 and 1928, low unemployment, and high middle-class prosperity.
The hidden cruelty behind Coolidge’s economic performance is revealed only decades later in more balanced economic statistics. Coolidge’s blind nonintervention in the affairs of the agricultural sector left farmers to their own devices while industry prospered. His ideological stubbornness led to the demise of Congress’s McNary-Haugen Farm Relief Bill, which would have at least helped farmers obtain better prices for their produce by subsidizing exports. Agriculture could not keep up with urbanization, and by the time of the Great Depression, rural communities were much poorer than cities, having never received a government bailout. Coolidge’s hands-off policies were responsible for this negligence.
Benjamin Harrison
President Harrison presided over a prosperous and expanding nation in the U.S. context, which can easily be measured by historical performance statistics. In office, his federal budget reached $1 billion for the first time, and the country saw the largest land expansion since 1853, according to the U.S. National Archives. The federal land preservation programs, Navy expansion, and westward expansion all demonstrate good governance and presidential leadership.
The posthumous reassessment of Benjamin Harrison’s presidency by the likes of Heather Cox Richardson and Clay Jenkinson, though, shows a much darker side to his policies. His administration’s Native American land grabs, especially in South Dakota, and the near-total absence of federal oversight of U.S. settlers are considered a contributing factor to the Wounded Knee Massacre. There, U.S. troops killed hundreds of Indigenous men, women, and children with repeating rifles. The historian Douglas E. Roth shows a U.S. government hand in provoking the Massacre, thus tarnishing Harrison’s progressive reputation.
George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush, who recently passed away, has long been lauded as a decent and principled man who lacked an ugly or aggressive side. Recent scholarship, historiography, and historical reporting of his time in office and before reveal a different picture.
The posthumously seen cruelty of Bush the elder has been interpreted by many in different ways: the 1988 presidential campaign’s reliance on racially coded political messages to demonize opponents (infamously, the “Willie Horton” ad), the Gulf War’s “Highway of Death” slaughter and bombing of Amiriyah shelter, which killed 409 civilians and was called by critics a war crime, Bush the elder’s AIDS inaction at a time when the crisis was growing: he gave only one speech on AIDS throughout his presidency and was met with widespread outrage in the gay community. Bush’s restraint was turned on him in hindsight as a crueler, more vicious form of quiet violence against Black Americans, Kurds, gay men, and other vulnerable populations.
William McKinley
McKinley’s time as president is associated with economic growth and prosperity, but his Pacific policies reveal his crueler and more aggressive side. In May 1898, the U.S. president ordered a full-scale mobilization in the Pacific Ocean, which came to be known as the Spanish-American War. As a result of this decision, which was a victory for the United States, Hawaii and the Philippines were added to the U.S. portfolio, according to the Miller Center.
McKinley’s speeches about U.S. intervention in the Pacific claimed that the U.S. was ushering in “benevolent assimilation,” but McKinley is now seen as having helped start the Philippine-American War, which killed more than 200,000 Filipino civilians. As the same source points out, the McKinley presidency marked a major turning point in U.S. democracy, which was associated with overseas colonialism and the violent suppression of independence and freedom-seeking movements. McKinley’s cruelty as a leader in the Pacific is posthumously attributed to his secret admirer, Theodore Roosevelt, whose entire reputation was later rehabilitated.
James K. Polk
President Polk added more than a million square miles to the U.S. territory, but these territorial gains were not achieved without a human cost, which became much clearer after his death.
As detailed by the Miller Center, Polk’s quest for more land resulted in the Mexican American War that killed more than 13,000 Americans and tens of thousands of Mexicans. The Polk administration also supported, like its predecessors, the forced removal of Indigenous populations from their ancestral lands in order to clear the way for settlers. As with his predecessors, Polk is remembered as an ambitious and single-minded politician; however, his cruelty was revealed after his presidency as an indifference to the human cost.
The Takeaway
History rarely leaves reputations untouched. As new evidence emerges and society reevaluates the past through modern ethical standards, even the nation’s most celebrated presidents can appear in a different light.
Recognizing these darker chapters doesn’t erase their accomplishments, but it does remind us that leadership is rarely simple. A fuller understanding of history requires acknowledging both the achievements that shaped America and the decisions that left lasting human consequences.
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- 12 Brutal Truths Behind Why America’s Real History Still Gets Denied
- The history of 14 popular English sayings that don’t seem to make sense
- Black History Month is reframing how history is told
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