Grant and Harding may have been inept and tolerated corruption if not corrupt themselves, but they also made serious efforts to support civil rights laws (remember the Democrats were the party opposed to civil rights until the second half on the 20th century – until then, most Blacks were Republicans). Jackson may have supported a well established policy of forcing Indians to relocate away from population centers, but his policies in what is known as the Jacksonian era led to opening up political participation to a wide range of Americans including Jews. American was arugably moving towards developing an aristorcracy until Jackson shook things up. That the Democrats under Jackson significantly included the working class led in the long run to opening the way for Blacks to eventually join the system (though that was clearly not his intent), and by opening up the political system to the proletariat the US avoided the severe class-based divisions found in Britain. For all your criticism of Pierce and Buchanan, as well as Jackson, that by acting in ways that postponed the Civil War, they significant increased the liklihood of a Union victory – if the civil war has begun 30 years earlier, before railroads, with only muzzle loaders, and with the northern states not have pulled way ahead of the south in terms of industrial capacity, the outcome might have been very different, and the presidents from Jackson through Buchanan all worked to prevent the civil war. It should be noted that support for tariffs has wide support in the past, usually among the “liberals” favoring protecting jobs rather than “conservaties” who see free trade as promoting economic development.
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