"Who are the biggest scoundrels in American history?" Topic

My nominations:

1) Jamie Wilkinson
2) Aaron Burr

Feel free to add more.

Aaron Burr was the first name that came to mind when I saw the title of your post.

Winston, I was going to suggest that you add "no longer living," to prevent turning the Dog House into a cyber Black Hole of Calcutta, with hundreds of our members incarcerated, but I see I'm too late.

Grelber

Richard Nixon?

Huey Long?

Joseph McCarthy?

John Tyler

Grelber, adults who have been here a few years know what they are doing.
Let them stomp on the land mines if they wish.

Besides, the DH has been empty for far too long. Just as there must always be a Stark in Winterfell, it is unnatural to have an empty DH.

Soapy Smith

J. Edgar Hoover, nuff said. Read any bio on him.

The guys that met at Jekyll Island…

Daniel Sickles: Union corps commander at Gettysburg, politically appointed, got his corps shot up, stole the money for his own memorial bust, shot dead his wife's lover in sight of the White House, hired slick lawyers to get him off using the first temporary insanity plea in U.S. history, took a prostitute to meet Queen Victoria, etc.

link

George Washington. Rebelled against the King to whom he'd sworn an oath. All because he wanted to steal and sell land from the Indians which the British had protected by treaty. He then had the front to talk about rights of man. Presumably the "Inalienable rights" to steal the land of others.

He set a precedent which many others followed. A true scoundrel.

Aaron Burr, Andrew Jackson, Joe McCarthy

"which the British had protected by treaty." Right. It was under the British that the entire eastern seaboard was taken from Native Americans.

J Edgar Hoover, a good choice.

Leopold Jefferson. He was a 6 foot, 6 inch Southerner who collaborated with the Republicans, earning the Southerns' label "scalawag".

Afterall it was a 1848 labor and then post-ACW term. Aaron Burr couldn't have been one… Americans hadn't invented them yet.

But yeah, Sickles is certainly one, though not as tall.

It was under the British that the entire eastern seaboard was taken from Native Americans

Chokes on scone and clotted cream with babies brains.

Er, Dutch, Swedish, Spanish (working south)? Chuck in a few Germans.

Mebbe, leetle bit Franchee too?

Also, there was no such thing as a 'British' until the Union of Crowns in 1707, so most of those colonies you might be thinking about were English, albeit populated by settlers of diverse origin.

The fact of the 'British' colonies that existed in 1763 doesn't contradict the attempt to prevent further conflict with the indigenous peoples in the trans-Appalachian hinterland, conflict for which the British would have to pay in terms of defence costs and diplomacy (and the settlers in blood). We know how willing the enrepreneurial class in the colonies (including the very people speculating in trans-Appalachian land) were to share in those defence costs.

"But yeah, Sickles is certainly one, though not as tall."

Sickles didn't have a leg to stand on. He was always in a pickle.

Major William J Scalawag. 1811-1874 Of the Bostan Scalawags.

William Tecumseh Sherman.

John Chivington (of Sand Creek Massacre infamy).

William Westmoreland.

Robert E Lee. Violated his oath as a U.S. officer and joined a rebellion against his country. Should have hanged him after the war.

James Madison, faked his country into an ill-concealed land grab of a was but got his arse kicked whilst the economy was crippled and the country nearly fragmented

@Sloppypainter – I don't think he violated it. He resigned from the US Army first.

Nathan Bedford Forrest. At *best* couldn't control his men, then went on to found the KKK.

Randolph Hearst, creator of "Yellow Journalism" that drew the US into an expansionist war with Spain.

The only "scalliwags" anywhere, any time are those who like to play the "Let's you and him fight!" game. That is, create dissent and animosity for no other reasons than the schadenfreude they want to stir up. This is especially true in a place where people meet for a pleasant social atmosphere and to discuss favored topics like their hobbies and common intersts. The scalliwags want to ruin this and see other people get angry and force them into ooutrageous and impolite statements.

Don't take the bait.

John Wilkes Booth

The Rosenburgs

Oooh, I second Booth. Where's Benedict Arnold?

Hmm long list. Several of the Kennedy clan, Benedict Arnold, Alger Hiss.

George McClellan

George Custer

Ned Almond

Definitely Andrew Jackson makes the top of my list.

William Hull
Horatio Gates
James Wilkinson
John Floyd
Simon Cameron

Hull was just criminally incompetent and a coward.
The others were also venal, Wilkinson amazingly so.

An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.

– Simon Cameron

Interesting how many people are naming Nixon – Nixon was far from the most corrupt, he just got caught. Kennedy was far worse, in both his personal and public lives.

LBJ
Emperor Norton
John Daly
William Tweed
Woodrow Wilson

And that guy who invented infomercials

Nixon was not a crook. Just ask him.

Another vote for Wilkinson.

Maybe 'scalawag' isn't the same as 'scallywag' over here. 'Scallywag' certainly implies 'lovable' (as in 'lovable rogue'?) Not admirable, not necessarily forgivable but not entirely beyond the pale either – unless he's a 'scally' nicking the lead off your roof.

Some of the names quoted so far are downright bad hats, evil sh!ts and barstewards. I suppose it's a matter of gradation.

As a result of Gore Vidal's case for the defence, I can't help but have a soft spot for Aaron Burr.

Christopher Columbus
Andrew Jackson – Trail of Tears
Henry Laurens Dawes author of the Dawes Act, biggest land swindle in US History
Major Samuel M. Whitside commander at the Wounded Knee Massacre

Can I recommend a book called "The Trial of Henry Kissinger" by Christopher Hitchens? :

link

Covering his role from 1969 to 1977 in collusion with the likes of Nixon and Ford and the rest of the criminal crew in the CIA.

Plus "Rogue State" by William Blum for a few more suspects over a much longer period? Reagan, Caspar Weinberger, Oliver North and the new set of war criminals toperating during the 1980s.

link

Woodrow Wilson
Robert Byrd

DM

Woodrow Wilson
Whole Kennedy clan
Benedict Arnold
Sickles, McClellan, Sherman

Oh, please add anyone who thought firing on Fort Sumter was a good idea.

Another vote for Richard Milhouse Nixon
his VP Spiro Agnew
Haldeman
G. Liddy
George Schultz
Edwin Meese
Donald Rumsfield
and the list just from fairly recent history is just too long.

If we include all of American history, we also have very long list off rapscallions, slimeballs, nincompoops, scallawags, and very vicious violent scum.

Kevin Murray

Jamie Wilkerson? the 4th kid on Malcolm In the Middle?

Aldrich Ames

Rules lawyers who are constantly wrong about rules and then decry you as a rules lawyer when you have to challenge their wrongness.

And Johnny Cochrane

Joe McCarthy

Joe McCarthy and Nixon get votes because the liberal press
hated them.

While most of the time I get good information from TMP, there are often times like in this thread where people are going on and on about something they know nothing about. Nobody has defined what they're talking about. Yet members are happy to just keep throwing out all sorts of names of people they don't like.