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Grade James Garfield’s Non-Presidential Life:Many times, a president makes as much, if not more, of an impact outside of the White House than inside. In other cases, presidents have unremarkable public lives outside of the Oval Office. In this category, your job is to evaluate how much of an impact on America (positive, negative, or neutral) a president had both prior to and after assuming the presidency. Be sure to describe the president’s background, career, and accomplishments when evaluating their non-presidential contributions.

Grade James Garfield’s Foreign Policy:Foreign policies include all legislation, political agendas, attitudes, and activities relating to the United States’ relations with other countries and international organizations. This area includes issues relating to diplomacy, statecraft, military and warfare, foreign trade and agreements, alliances with foreign powers, and activities relating to international organizations. Like domestic policies, this is a sweeping category and one that should be given considerable attention while grading your presidential report card

Grover Cleveland’s Overall Grade As President:After you have evaluated the president in each category, you will be asked to assign an overall grade. In the feedback for this category, you will need to justify which qualities and categories you found to be the defining aspect or aspects of the presidency. This is not an exercise to just average out the total grades from the other categories; instead, you need to provide greater weight to categories that helped define that particular person’s presidency. While this is a subjective exercise, you do need to give answers that are justifiable, both in the grade that you assign and in terms of what you prioritize for the overall grade. Make sure to provide lots of evidence to support your decision.

In 1960, a non-violent protest to desegregate a Woolworth’s store became known as [BLANK-1]. Led by young college students, this protest was quite typical of the type of social action taken by America’s youth during the decade.

Betty Friedan and Simone de Beauvoir were important figures of [BLANK-1], which focused more on social and economic rights rather than legal rights.

The Election of 1884 largely became a battle of personal character between the candidates, the Republican James G. Blaine and the Democrat Grover Cleveland. Blaine had been associated with several political scandals while Cleveland had fathered a bastard child with Maria Halpin (by rape, according to the mother of the child who Cleveland ultimately had placed in an insane asylum). A popular campaign refrain was “ma, ma, where’s my pa? Gone to the White House, ha-ha-ha.” Voters ultimately decided in favor of Cleveland in a close election that hinged on his home state of New York. Cleveland admitted an illicit relationship with Halpin (but fell short of claiming the child was his and outright denying the rape claim) and voters claimed to appreciate his honesty in personal affairs more so than Blaine’s denial of political corruption. Blaine’s connection to an anti-Catholic campaign slogan criticizing the Democratic party of poor morals, connection to the Civil War, and to Catholic immigrants also helped sink his campaign. The slogan, [BLANK-1], led many Irish immigrants in New York to vote for Cleveland, ultimately swaying the election. Cleveland’s personal scandals did not end with his election. In 1886 he married Frances Folsom in the White House, becoming the first sitting president to marry. The 21-year-old Frances was 28 years younger than the president on their wedding day. The age gap was further complicated by the fact that she had been his law partner’s daughter whom he had known since she was an infant; when her father died when she was 11, Cleveland became her legal guardian and he helped raise her from that point forward. Rumors also abounded that Cleveland beat women, however, Frances maintained throughout her life that this was not true.

Repeating a litany of lies and distortions by the sitting President of the United States, Donald Trump, on January 6, 2021 thousands of right-wing protestors stormed the U.S. Capitol Building in an attempt to [BLANK-1] and prevent the certification of the 2020 election which had seen Joseph Biden defeat the incumbent Trump. Without any evidence, Trump had claimed widespread election fraud and earlier that morning had urged his followers to “fight like hell. If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” His supporters then invaded the Capitol Building (the first invasion of the building since the British had sacked Washington D.C. during the War of 1812 more than 200 years before), attacked the Capitol Police and D.C. Metropolitan Police, and called for the execution of Vice-President Mike Pence (who had agreed to authenticate the results of the free-and-fair election and refused to abide by a fake electors conspiracy put forward by Trump). 150 police officers were injured, one officer was killed by repeated beatings with a fire extinguisher, another suffered a heart attack from being shocked by his own stun gun, and one Capitol invader was shot and killed by police while attempting to break into the House chamber. Donald Trump would be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors against the United States around a month later, but fell short of being removed from office by the Senate.

Angel Island, El Paso, and Ellis Island are all examples of [BLANK-1].

In 1892, [BLANK-1] originated from a strike at one of Andrew Carnegie’s steel mills in Pennsylvania, and was representative of the clashes between capital and labor during the Second Industrial Revolution and Gilded Age. On July 6, 1892, Pinkerton Agents opened fire on strikers in an effort to break the strike; the result was 11 deaths and dozens of serious injuries. The incident enabled state and federal authorities to intervene on the side of capital (Carnegie) and was a major blow to workers’ rights and unions.

In [BLANK-1], Robert and Helen Lynd’s 1929 sociological study of Muncie, Indiana, the husband-and-wife team concluded that new leisure activities, forms of entertainment, and America’s increased emphases on consumption had taken its toll on America’s democracy. These authors determined that the American public was largely uninformed and uninterested in political matters, preferring entertainment and consumer comforts to politics as a public focus. Democracy (requiring an informed public to succeed) was being undermined by American apathy and stupidity.