I mean, the argument could be made that some future Presidents didn't own slaves, but created the conditions to make a lot more slaveowners prosper elsewhere. Fuck, I'm gonna stop thinking on this one.
These guys almost certainly have investments in private prisons, I have no doubt about that. While it's not quite the same as outright owning a person, they own shares in companies that preside over and profit from ongoing slavery to this day. Our modern financial system has done a bang up job of obfuscating slavery by making it too abstract for most people to notice, but today's policing and prison institutions are direct descendants of yesterday's escaped slave patrols and plantations.
I think Jefferson is an underrated contender here. The Louisiana Purchase set the stage for a lot of the subsequent acts of expansion/colonization/genocide. Maybe it's a naive view of history; some degree of expansion is probably inevitable, but it's possible that American expansion could have been slowed/reduced if they had more resistance from other European powers near the start (i.e. if they had to fight France to expand westward instead of getting carte blanche from them). There was not-insignificant opposition to the purchase and Jefferson had a role in pushing in favor of it, so perhaps you could argue that Jefferson has a significant responsibility in driving American colonialism and making it so powerful today. I think you could make an argument that he had a particularly harmful role in how he shaped early US history based on that (and of course due to the slave-owning and protecting slavery that most other early presidents did as well).
Johnson
Jackson
Bush jr.
Truman
Reagan
... Maybe Trump here? Feels like Bush sr. should be up here somewhere too.
You know how bad US presidents are when someone can make a reasonable list of the 5 worst but Nixon and a bunch of slaveowners didnt make the cut
Every slaveowner beats him out so I doubt he even makes the top 10.
I mean, the argument could be made that some future Presidents didn't own slaves, but created the conditions to make a lot more slaveowners prosper elsewhere. Fuck, I'm gonna stop thinking on this one.
There's also definitely an argument that Trump would own slaves if it were still legal (Biden falls under this category too).
These guys almost certainly have investments in private prisons, I have no doubt about that. While it's not quite the same as outright owning a person, they own shares in companies that preside over and profit from ongoing slavery to this day. Our modern financial system has done a bang up job of obfuscating slavery by making it too abstract for most people to notice, but today's policing and prison institutions are direct descendants of yesterday's escaped slave patrols and plantations.
I think Jefferson is an underrated contender here. The Louisiana Purchase set the stage for a lot of the subsequent acts of expansion/colonization/genocide. Maybe it's a naive view of history; some degree of expansion is probably inevitable, but it's possible that American expansion could have been slowed/reduced if they had more resistance from other European powers near the start (i.e. if they had to fight France to expand westward instead of getting carte blanche from them). There was not-insignificant opposition to the purchase and Jefferson had a role in pushing in favor of it, so perhaps you could argue that Jefferson has a significant responsibility in driving American colonialism and making it so powerful today. I think you could make an argument that he had a particularly harmful role in how he shaped early US history based on that (and of course due to the slave-owning and protecting slavery that most other early presidents did as well).
Wilson should be in the top 5 for sure.