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The Forgotten Presidents Who Broke America

Long before Bush, Nixon, or Reagan ever stepped into the Oval Office, four lesser-known presidents laid the groundwork for some of the darkest chapters in American history. This episode takes a hard look at James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, Millard Fillmore, and Andrew Johnson—names that history class skimmed over, but whose failures echo through generations. We examine how Fillmore’s support of the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act emboldened slaveholders and escalated tensions between North and South. Then, we dive into Pierce’s disastrous Kansas-Nebraska Act and the ensuing violence known as “Bleeding Kansas.” Both men failed to preserve peace—or take a moral stand—when the nation needed it most. Arguably the most inept president in U.S. history, Buchanan sat idly as Southern states seceded and the country careened toward civil war. His endorsement of the Dred Scott decision and refusal to confront slavery not only deepened the divide but made conflict nearly inevitable. After Lincoln’s assassination, Johnson—a Southern Democrat and Lincoln’s accidental VP—took the reins. His open hostility to civil rights and Reconstruction gutted the fragile progress made after the Civil War. He vetoed the Freedmen’s Bureau Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and he empowered ex-Confederates to regain political control, paving the way for Jim Crow. These men weren’t just products of their time—they were active enablers of division, violence, and regression. While history often forgets them, their legacies still shape the struggles for justice and equality in America today. Listen as we resurrect the names no one remembers—because forgetting them is how we keep repeating the same mistakes. 🎙️ Subscribe to Red, White, & Bruised for more brutally honest takes on America’s political past, present, and future.

Chapter 1

Vanishing Acts: Why These Presidents Are Erased

Ryan Haylett

Why is it that when we talk about the presidents who broke America, the names Buchanan, Pierce, Fillmore, and Johnson barely even register?

Ryan Haylett

You ask the average person on the street to name a president between Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, and you’ll get a blank stare.

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Maybe someone throws out

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“uh, Harrison?”

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but then it’s crickets. These guys are like the Bermuda Triangle of American memory—stuff goes in, never comes out.

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But here’s the thing: these are not just forgettable, boring presidents. Their decisions—collectively—pushed the country right to the edge of civil war and systemic collapse.

Ryan Haylett

And yet, we act like they’re just filler between the “real” presidents.

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Why? Because if we actually remembered what they did, we’d have to face some pretty uncomfortable truths about how fragile this whole American experiment really is.

Ryan Haylett

It’s easier to blame the collapse on “inevitable” forces or just skip to Lincoln, the guy who supposedly fixed everything.

Ryan Haylett

I’ll tell you, I was digging into Andrew Johnson’s presidency—just trying to get a handle on how Reconstruction went so sideways. And I thought, “There’s this whole layer of rot in the system that we just sweep under the rug."

Ryan Haylett

We love to talk about the Founders, or the big heroes, but the people who actually broke the country? We erase them, because it’s easier than admitting how much damage a single leader—or a string of them—can do when nobody’s paying attention.

Chapter 2

Bad Decisions, Broken Nation

Ryan Haylett

Let’s talk about the choices of these presidents. Do you want to see a masterclass in how to break a country? Look at the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott decision, and the Fugitive Slave Act

Ryan Haylett

—these weren’t just “oopsies.” These were deliberate moves that poured gasoline on a country already on fire.

Ryan Haylett

Franklin Pierce. He signs the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allows the new territories to decide for themselves if they want slavery.

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Sounds democratic, right?

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Except it repealed the Missouri Compromise, which had kept a lid on slavery's expansion thing for decades.

Ryan Haylett

Suddenly, you’ve got pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers flooding into Kansas, and the place turns into a war zone—Bleeding Kansas.

Ryan Haylett

Pierce, instead of stepping in to stop the violence or defend free elections, backs the pro-slavery side. He even sends in federal troops to break up the anti-slavery government.

Ryan Haylett

Authoritarianism...

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1854 style.

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Then you’ve got James Buchanan, who comes in and thinks he can “let the people decide” on slavery, but only if those people are the ones stuffing ballot boxes and writing fake constitutions.

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He supports the Lecompton Constitution in Kansas, which was a pro-slavery scam, and ignores all the evidence of fraud.

Ryan Haylett

He’s so desperate to appease the South that he ends up splitting his own party and making civil war almost inevitable.

Ryan Haylett

And let’s not forget, Buchanan actually nudged the Supreme Court to go big on the Dred Scott decision, which denied citizenship to Black people and said Congress couldn’t ban slavery in the territories.

Ryan Haylett

That’s not just bad judgment—that’s actively making things worse.

Ryan Haylett

And then there’s Millard Fillmore, who signs the Fugitive Slave Act as part of the Compromise of 1850. This law basically turns every free state into hunting grounds for slave catchers.

Ryan Haylett

Fillmore says he’s just enforcing the law, but the reality is, he’s enforcing a system that drags escaped slaves

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—and even free black people—

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back into bondage, no questions asked. It’s hard to overstate how much that radicalized the North and made compromise impossible.

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So here’s the question: what if these guys had actually confronted slavery and violence head-on, instead of dodging responsibility or trying to keep everyone happy?

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What if they’d said, “No, we’re done”? Would we have avoided the bloodbath that followed? I don’t know, but it’s hard not to think the country would look a whole lot different if even one of them had shown a spine.

Chapter 3

Reconstruction, Resistance, and the Long Shadow of Johnson

Ryan Haylett

Now, let’s go to Andrew Johnson. The Civil War ends, Lincoln’s assassinated, and Johnson steps in. And what does he do?

Ryan Haylett

He tries to roll back everything the war was fought for. He vetoes the Civil Rights Act of 1866—literally the first law to define citizenship and equal rights for Black Americans.

Ryan Haylett

The reigns of white supremacy are in full use.

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Johnson believes black people aren’t “qualified” to be citizens. He says states should have the right to discriminate, and he’s especially grossed out by the idea of interracial marriage.

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He is not subtle about his racism.

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Congress steps in and says, “Nope, not happening.” They override his veto, but Johnson keeps fighting them every step of the way.

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Meanwhile, Southern states start passing "Black Codes".

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Laws designed to keep freed people as close to slavery as possible. And when Congress tries to enforce real change, Johnson keeps vetoing, dragging his feet, and basically daring them to impeach him. Which, eventually, they do.

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The backlash is brutal.

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You get the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, the birth of Jim Crow, and a wave of violence that undoes most of the progress made during Reconstruction.

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Black Americans win office, build schools, and try to exercise their rights, but the resistance is relentless.

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Unfortunately, you can still see the echoes of Johnson’s sabotage today

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Every time there’s a fight over voting rights, or when people talk about “states’ rights” as a cover for discrimination, that’s the same playbook.

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It’s wild to think about how much of this was set in motion by one president’s refusal to accept equality as a basic principle. And yet, we barely talk about Johnson except as the guy who got impeached. The long shadow of his presidency is everywhere, but we act like it’s ancient history.

Chapter 4

Uncovering Forgotten Roots

Ryan Haylett

So, why does any of this matter now? Because the political ideologies and social norms from the eras of Buchanan, Pierce, Fillmore, and Johnson didn’t just vanish—they’re still baked into the system.

Ryan Haylett

The idea that you can “compromise” on human rights, or that states should get to decide who counts as a citizen, or that it’s better to keep the peace than confront injustice—those are all legacies of this era.

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And it wasn’t just the presidents.

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You had movements like the Know-Nothings, the Republican Party, the collapse of the Whigs, and a whole cast of characters, radical abolitionists, pro-slavery fire-eaters, and everyone in between, pushing the country toward instability.

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The violence in Kansas, the split in the Democratic Party, the birth of Jim Crow after Reconstruction—these weren’t just random events.

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They were the result of choices, of people refusing to deal with the root problems.

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If we want to actually understand how America got so divided—and why some of these wounds never really healed—we have to stop skipping over the ugly parts. We need to teach this stuff, not just as a list of names and dates, but as a warning.

Ryan Haylett

Talk about the failures as much as the successes, and stop pretending that the system is unbreakable. Because, as we’ve seen, it’s not.