In [url=]this thread, over whether history will account GWB the worst POTUS, Captain Carrot argues (at post #45) that Buchanan was the worst POTUS because he saw the Civil War coming and did nothing effective to prevent it. I’ve encountered that meme here several times before, but it always leaves me wondering: What could Buchanan have done?
Well, for one, he could have attempted to nip it in the bud. Sure, it might not have worked.
The South spent the antebelum years whipping themselves into some kind of tard-rage. They kept assuring each other that the Northerns were all vicious, monsterous cowards and blah blah blah. Overall, the North didn’t give a rat’s patootie abut the South; they were thinking about expanding west, making money, and so on. It was one of those cuirious one-way hatreds. The fact that the growing North made it impossible for the South to simply dominate government was another issue, albeit one they didn’t admit. They’d come to view the Presidency and the machinery of government as a sort of divine right, and if they couldn’t have it at all times and places they’d leave. Well, first they kept employing unpleasnt political tricks ot keep power. But that only worked for so long.
Eventually, the South decided that either Northerners had to knuckle under, or they’d leave. Northerners said, “piss off!” realistically, the north and the Old Northwest were very diferent sections, but over the years the South’s continued jerkishness (see: Bleeding Kansas) had pissed off a huge number of people. The South made Abolition into a political powerhouse.
Buchanon could have done something about this. He might not have succeeded, and he would have had to start very early in his Presidency. In 1856, it was no means certain that the Civil War would happen.
But he was initially beholden to Southern interests and perhaps did not want to see it until it was too late. Avoiding the idiotic Dred Scott decision (1857) would have been a start. Historians accept that Buchanon excercised some deeply inappropriate influence to make the decision to Southerner’s liking.
Another would have been breaking up the various secession camps. The South armed well before the Civil War, with impromptu volunteers forming militias pretty well for blatantly treasonable pruposes.
A third action would have been to remove arsenals and treasuries from the South.
When Zachery Taylor was president there was bitching from the South because he urged the settlers in California and New Mexico to draft thier own constitutions and apply for statehood, bypassing the territorial stage. This meant they were unlikely to accept slavery. In 1850 or so there was talk of succession again. He held a congressional session where he flat out shouted to the South Carolina representatives if they succeed he’ll have more soliders in that state in a month then they have people. He said he’ll hang every rebelling Southerner with no more remorce when he hanged deserters and spies in Mexico.
The South shit it’s pants.
James Buchanan simpathiesd with the South and despite pledgeing in his oath of office to preserve the Union, his inaction wasn’t an act of a weak and ineffectial leader, it was downright treason. By far the worst president we’ve ever had.
James Buchanan was that most loathsome of individuals, a pro-slavery northerner. His administration was corrupt and incompetent and craven in appeasing the South, trying to ram the grossly fraudulent Lecompton Constitution through Congress to admit Kansas as a slave state. There are few roles that I less wish to assume than that of SDMB defender of James Buchanan.
But on the issue of “failing to prevent the Civil War”, I’ve defended Buchanan before, and I will do so again.
The South seceded because of the election of Abraham Lincoln, a man whom Buchanan opposed. There is nothing Buchanan could have done to prevent this. He could have ranted like Andrew Jackson, who threatened to hang John Calhoun “as high as Haman”. He could have ranted like Zachary Taylor, who was relieved from delivering on his threats by his timely death. It wouldn’t have mattered. The cotton states weren’t going to stick around to experience a Lincoln presidency.
Some partisans shift ground and argue that Buchanan’s vice wasn’t in failing to prevent the Civil War, but in failing to launch it once South Carolina seceded. This charge is at least arguable. Buchanan certainly could have reacted more forcibly to secession–as it was, the Southern militias seized federal customs houses, revenue cutters, military bases, post offices, and other federal property without firing a shot. They didn’t get the crown jewels–the coastal forts of which Fort Sumter was the most prominent–but they got a great deal else.
But so what? Would the North have benefited from launching the war three months earlier, over trivial provocations, under a lame-duck administration? I’m not seeing the advantage here.
Please elaborate. The Dred Scott decision was a Supreme Court decision. As abominable as it is, how is it Buchanan’s fault?
Freddy the Pig, you know your stuff and I certainly won’t take the position that the Civil War wasn’t inevitable, but I certainly will argue Buchanan helped the Southern cause. He could have prepared the military. He could have prepared the federal customs houses, revenue cutters, military bases and post offices. He could have made all matter of contingency plans, but he didn’t because he didn’t want to prepare the North for the war they’d be fighting.
Buchanan deserves his reputation. In the midst of the greatest crisis this country ever faced, he waffled and did nothing for five months. It wasn’t even a real matter of principle; Buchanan said that he felt the South Carolina secession was illegal and the American forts should not be surrendered. He just did nothing to act on this belief. He said Congress could try to solve the problem if it wanted and Lincoln could handle it when he was inaugurated. Buchanan’s attitude essentially was that the problem wasn’t his fault so why should he get involved in it? The answer of course was that he was the President of the United States and it was his job to address crises like this regardless of whose fault it was.
I don’t know if Buchanan could have prevented the Civil War (did he support or oppose the Crittenden Compromise?), but my main beef with the man is that he deliberately chose to do nothing to prevent the secession of the southern states. His argument was along the lines of “Secession is illegal, but there is nothing the president can do to prevent it”. Talk about a cop-out. Can you imagine Andrew Jackson or Harry Truman taking that attitude?
Secession wasn’t a trivial provocation. It was the same reason used to justify the fighting when it eventually started. As for the benefits of an earlier forceful response, Buchanan handed the seceeding states a five month breathing period to get organized (during which he did no organizing himself). By the time Lincoln was inaugurated, seven states had had time to secede, form a government, start organizing a military, and generally make plans. It would have been a lot more difficult for them to have done any of this effectively if they had been under attack during this same period.
If Buchanan sat on his hands so did Lincoln, who at first did nothing but employ a “strategy of masterly inactivity” i.e, refusing to concede secession, but avoiding initiating hostilities. Also remember that the rebel secessions came in two stages: the ones that left after Lincoln’s election, and the second wave of states such as Virginia that left after the Union finally did resort to force- exactly what many had feared. And the federal government had very little force to use in late 1860/early 1861. The standing army was small and mostly stationed on the frontier. The only way to raise an army of any size at the time was to call out the state militias- and before Fort Sumter the political capital simply wasn’t there. Lincoln didn’t have the mandate to go to war until the rebels shot first.
No, the reason for fighting was secession plus the attack on Fort Sumter. To come in with guns blazing the minute the Charleston convention voted an ordinance of secession would have been a political disaster–most likely, all fifteen slave states would have seceded.
Not much to add to Lumpy’s post on this score, but to observe that Lincoln was willing to temporize even further–if the South would have allowed him to resupply Fort Sumter, he still wouldn’t have called for troops in April 1861. Given the state of Northern public opinion, it was important to have exhausted every possible avenue toward peace, and to have the other side launch the first attack.
Lincoln didn’t start shooting immediately. But he didn’t drag things out. The war began five weeks after he took office. Buchanan had dragged things out to no purpose for five months. Lincoln realized that the situation was not going to go away on its own and started taking some decisive actions even though they risked war and further secessions.
I’ve read at least one historian who claims that Lincoln’s policies in the first weeks of his administration were a failure. But he was mistaken - he was attributing a false goal to Lincoln. He claimed that Lincoln should have been working to keep the peace and keep as many states as possible in the union. But that was never Lincoln’s goal - his goal was to restore all of the union, including the states that seceded before he took office. If he had to make a choice between letting one state secede without challenge and keeping the other thirty-two in the union and fighting a war to force that state back into the union even at the cost of ten other states joining in secession, he would chose the former.
The legal issues, as they often are, were murkier. But there were people in 1860 who argued to Buchanan (and then Lincoln) that there were laws on the books that gave the President the legal authority to call forth and deploy troops. If the will had been there, the backing could have been found.
Buchanan was waiting for a solution to come along that everyone would be able to agree upon. But no such solution existed. Lincoln saw this and chose a side.
Buchanan lobbied the Court when he was President-elect to get them to make the decision they did.
Just got back in. The Amazing Cap’n here is right, although I would use the word “bribe” more than “lobby”. There was definitely some implicit quid pro quo on the table, albeit not in cash. What made it worse is that the decision was not just partisan, it was blatantly unConstitutional (yes, I know, the SCOTUS theoreticall decides what the Constitution says). Read it if you like - the Supremes were trying to build-in racism in permanently.
Buchanan left office believing he *had * staved off a civil war. And, in fact, none started during his administration. It does look inevitable in hindsight, sure, and his actions do look now like they contributed to that inevitability, but “nobody could have known” that at the time.
I’m not so sure of that. Read his farewell speech. He shocked the South by explicitly warning them against secession. That doesn’t sound like a man who believed he’d really fixed things.
He was warned that he was “sitting in a volcano” and by the time he realized Lincoln was likely to be elected he told people that “I’m the last president of the United States”.
He also said that “history will vindicate my memory”, as I just became a history teacher (Part time and a very unlikely history for me that I should tell some day) I think I can have some say on that…
Forget it Old Buck.
The ultimate defense for Buchanan against a charge of implicit treason is the paucity of Republican calls for a different course. William Seward, the most influential Republican other than Lincoln himself, spent the winter of 1860-61 seeking compromise (naively) which would restore the Union, and even voted for the infamous “Corwin Amendment”, which would have guaranteed slavery against federal interference forever. Why wasn’t Seward demanding an attack on Charleston?
Horace Greeley, the influential editor of the New York Tribune, wrote that “If the Cotton States become satisfied that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go . . . We hope never to live in a Republic wherein one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets.”
Charles Sumner, as staunchly anti-slavery as anyone on the planet, wrote that “If the secession can be restrained to the Cotton States, I shall be willing to let them go . . . we must avoid civil war.”
If Republicans were this divided, why expect more of Buchanan?
When I saw the thread title I thought, “Jeez, they’re blaming everything on Pat Buchanan these days.”
Pat as President would probably not only have encouraged secession, but tried to bring D.C. into the Confederacy as well. 
What has become fascinating to me about the Civil War is the divisiveness that it inspired, over so many issues, especially slavery.
That was only a mere 150 plus years ago. By historical reckonings, it is a very young occurence, as is the entirety of America’s inception, really.
If you compare the issues of that day to the ones we face right now, in many ways, we seem more united than before, and yet, shit still feels the same.
It’s crazy that the slavery-supporting Democratic Party is now the minority/working man Party (in theory) and that the Republican Party that Lincoln represented is so far and away from their ideals that appealed to common folk that it’s appalling.
In other words, meet the New Boss, same as The Old Boss…
But it never fails to fascinate, I tell ya…