Worst Americans ever?

In response to this article, a compilation of the 10 Worst Britons of all time by the BBC History Magazine, Alexandra of All Things Beautiful has thrown down the gauntlet and asked for nominees for the worst Americans of all time. I’ll take up the challenge but I want to comment on the list of worst Britons.

I found the list frivolous. There’s a Christian saint on the list, for goodness sake, and he’s on the list for opposing what another on the list (King John) is on the list for supporting: a strong centralized government. I won’t go through their list systematically but it’s pretty obvious that this is a list compiled with axes to grind. I could name half a dozen worse Britons off the top of my head (but since they’re heroes to many Britons the list probably wouldn’t go over too well).

How does one compile such a list without resorting to ax-grinding? I don’t think it’s possible. The best you can hope for, I suppose, is goring lots of people’s oxes equally.

There are some potential candidates who, I frankly think, don’t belong. Benedict Arnold, for example, wasn’t so much a bad American as a good Englishman. Jane Fonda is too easy a target. What else would you expect of a washed-up starlet? The people deserving of castigation with respect to her are those who cast her as Mother Courage.

So here, in no particular order, is my list.

• Jefferson Davis

  He heads up my traitor list. There is nothing so sad as an internecine war and he kept the American Civil War going for far too long for an evil cause. I don’t have the heart to put Robert E. Lee, IMO the most tragic figure in American history, into this category.

• William Tecumseh Sherman

  I know he probably ended the Civil War. But the tactics of his Army of the West (one of my great-great-grandfathers was an officer under him) were too darned cruel setting the stage for generations of resentment.

• John Wilkes Booth

  He assassinated Lincoln, the greatest of Americans.

• John Wayne Gacy

  He heads up my serial murderers section. He raped and murdered 33 young men and boys and who knows how many more. A ghastly human being. Dr. H. H. Holmes would be a good candidate for this category, too.

• Ken Lay

  For wholesale creation of misery it would be hard to match the former Enron CEO.

• William J. Simmons

  Founder of the Klu Klux Klan.

• George Lincoln Rockwell

  Founder of the American Nazi Party.

• Timothy McVeigh

  American terrorist.

• Joseph Kennedy

  Yes, the father of John F., Robert, and Teddy. But not for that. He was a sharp trader, an unfaithful husband, and during his ambassadorship to the UK he, uh, didn’t look out for the best interests of the country.

• Walter Duranty

  I don’t know which I’m more bitter about: his whitewashing of Stalin or the Pulitzer Prize he received for doing it.

The list could go on and on. Aldrich Ames (sold U. S. secrets to the Soviets). Alger Hiss (Roosevelt advisor and Soviet agent; drafter of the UN Charter). I’ll stop here before I blow a gasket.

UPDATE: BWP, MWT has a list that I think is a tad long on the partisan squabbling but has one nominee that should have occurred to me (in the horror in the name of religion section): Jim Jones.

ANOTHER UPDATE: And, on the British list, where’s Sawney Bean? Or Dr. Harold Shipman? The Ripper was a piker.