Sure. As pointed out, however, the Dred Scott decision wasn’t about compromise, it was about the South imposing their laws on the North.
Agreed.
However, I don’t think the Dred Scott case is a significant issue here because while Buchanan did intervene on the wrong side of the issue, it’s not like his intervention significantly impacted the outcome. (Buchanan’s interest was in having the pro-slavery verdict that he already knew was coming anyway be as wide-sweeping and as unanimous as possible, in the hopes of removing the issue from the political realm.)
Bottom line for this OP: if Buchanan had not intervened in the case, history would likely not have been significantly different.
Bravo! I loved it.
I think there’s very little chance he was right. My understanding is that if a government has the authority to declare something is illegal it also has the authority to enforce the law.
And the use of military force is a valid power of national governments. Nobody in 1860 was arguing that the United States had not had the authority to declare a war in 1812 or 1848.
Buchanan’s problem was a lack of will not a lack of legal authority.
Buchanan believed that the federal government did not have the power “to coerce a state into submission” (and he believe that the power, if it existed, would have to rest with Congress).
His reasoning was informed by, for example, the fact that the Constitutional Convention had apparently considered (but rejected) “authorizing an exertion of the force of the whole against a delinquent State.” A provision which was rejected, perhaps, because, as Madison put it: “The use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.”
The idea that authorizing force by the federal government against the states was considered and rejected is legitimate (if not definitive) evidence about what powers were actually granted (at least, I think, as a matter of “legislative intent”).
The problem, of course, is that it leaves no remedy (other than a judicial one, but of course compliance there is also voluntary) for a state’s violation of the constitution – a problem that would extend far past secession to any of the things prohibited to the states under the constitution. There may be (and likely are) constitutional violations that have no remedy, but surely it can’t apply so broadly.
Not to hijack the thread, but the Scalia et al line of thought reject this sort of inference and IMHO for good reasons, but I’ll hold off on a full throated defense to allow the thread to grow.
The question had come up in 1833 when South Carolina had tried to nullify the 1828 and 1832 Tariffs, and Congress instead passed Andrew Jackson’s Force Act to compel compliance. It was never tested (Congress passed a revised tariff and SC backpedaled on nullification quickly) but the precedent for at least a legislative response was set.
The idea of secession was a legitimate viewpoint at the time. Many state, including New England states in the 1810s had discussed it. I know it is unpopular today, but at that time it was a very legitimate argument, IMHO.
The argument that it was illegal but that there was no power to enforce it against seceding states seems to be to be nitpickery. I would assume that it would be based on the idea that the federal government is one of limited powers, and if you read throughout the Constitution there is no power for the federal government to compel seceding states to remain, therefore force is not permitted.
But Lincoln addressed that in his speech about the Constitution not being a suicide pact. That all of the laws, save one, be lost because of such a rigid approach.
So, it was a legitimate legal point if we were in a law school classroom, but to have a perpetual union it was silly. And that is in part why Buchanan gets his poor rating in history.
Though difficult to guess what might have been, Buchanan’s influence in the Dred Scott case was decisive. It not only spurred on the development of Abolitionism and Republicanism, but stretched into extremely dangerous political water. Buchana, of course, never realized the impact of what he had done as far as I can determine.
The reason is that the Dred Scott decision we read today is not the one originally decided upon by the SCOTUS. Originally the decision would have been a milquetoast non-decision. Dred Scott, the man, would have been remanded to slavery as the court intended to allow the lower-court decision to stand. Taney, and Buchanan, wanted to issue a much more… comprehensive decision. However, they needed political cover by getting at least one Northern-born Justice to agree. Buchanan, a Pennsylvanian himself, managed to sway Justice Grier. Justice Nelson came over, too although I am not certain of the circumstances.
The decision that Taney changed over to presented a very, very different view of human rights or even basic decency and sanity, and represents one of the worst stains on the man’s honour. We should remember, however, that it would not have happened without a strain of ugly selfishness and blindness on the part of several other men, without seeing the great crime as being any less. In the original plan, Dred Scott might have remained in bondage. In his revision, Taney unequivocally tried to permanently bar all African-Americas, everywhere and every-when, from equality regardless of what any other Americans past or present might think of it. At a time when even many anti-slavery Americans were hoping that the Supreme Court might help work out a compromise, Taney twisted history, law, and the Constitution itself in order to declare White Supremacy the law of the land everywhere as well as hamstring the general welfare of the United States in favour of the good of slaveholders. The Dred Scott decision alone didn’t cause the fires of civil war, but Taney and Buchanan did a fine job of spreading kerosene and matches, with no apparent appreciation of the consequences.
I’ve not commented much on the thread topic, since I don’t know very much about that period, but I’ve found the discussion very interesting. Thanks all!
The Dred Scott decision was the culmination of a pattern of slave states seeking federal support of slavery. Which was a really dumb strategy. By demanding the federal government support slavery, slave owners were building up the idea that slavery was something the federal government had authority over. If they successfully argued that the federal government had the authority to enact laws that were for slavery, they were also arguing the federal government had the authority to enact laws that were against slavery. The southern states would have been a lot smarter to work on going the opposite way and arguing that slavery was completely a states issue and the federal government had no authority to enact any laws which effected slavery.
Yeah, I think Wilson was far worse than Buchanan. Wilson was just as much of a racist, but being of a later generation should have known it was wrong. Wilson deliberately got us into a useless war, which caused the horrors of WW2 and the Holocaust. Not to mention causing the deaths of 50-100K American service men.
It is my theory that without American intervention in the Great War, it would have ground to a stalemate and a better President could have brokered a peace deal, thus preventing WW2.
Most men in Buchanans shoes would have been just as bad. It was a really bad time to be a mediocre President. Only a great man like Lincoln could have risen above.
Just because there’s a problem doesn’t mean there has to be a solution.
In theory it could be that the terms of the constitution did not allow for secession, but that there was no remedy for a state violating the constitution, via secession or any other manner. If a state did this, then they would be effectively backing out of the union, and they would have to think long and hard as to whether whatever issue they had was worth dissolving the union, but if they did, then that was that.
ISTM that over the course of the history of the US, there’s been an evolving view of the US, from being independent states who came together to form a union, to one country with anachronistic local (state) government divisions. So for us today, the idea that a state was sovereign and could bail out of the US seems bizarre, as does the idea that the federal government couldn’t intervene militarily. It’s as if any random guy could declare himself a Sovereign Citizen and reject government control. But the states predated the federal government and had sovereign rights at that time, and the possibility that they maintained enough independence to bail out of the union without repercussion seems open. To be clear, bailing out of the union was unconstitutional, since there was no clause in the constitution permitting it, and doing this would be in violation of the terms of the constitution, but since there was also no clause giving the federal government enforcement rights, it would seem at least unsettled whether this could be legally done.
ISTM that there are analogous situations in a lot of treaties, where there no consequences specified for one party simply abrogating the entire treaty, and we don’t just assume that military force is automatically implied.
One issue that may come into play:
Secession had been threatened for so long, not only by the South over slavery but also by the Hartford Convention in 1814 and Northern abolitionists pre-Civil War and as mentioned above by SC over tarrifs. Is there any reason that Buchanan should have taken the threats from the South seriously? So here is Buchanan in late December 1860 and he hears South Carolina has seceded. Congress was debating the Crittenden Compromise which, if passed, would have probably resolved any immediate secession issues. The Compromise died on New Year’s Eve 1860.
And remember that the House was controlled by Republicans and Senate by the Democrats so any legislation needs to satisfy both sides. Good luck with that. Buchanan sent the Star of the West to resupply Fort Sumter right after South Carolina demand the US withdraw from the fort so in this way you could say Buchanan’s actions did start the Civil War as after the Star was fired on there was no going back, no compromise was to be had.
I suppose you could also say that Poland started World War II by living in a country that Hitler wanted to invade.
The Civil War didn’t start because of anything the United States did. The war started when the Confederates deciding to attack an American fort. The Confederates can argue (wrongfully in my opinion) that the fort should have been given to them. But somebody having something you want isn’t a declaration of war. Attacking somebody because they have something you want is a declaration of war.
That first part is ridiculous and a clear misrepresentation of what I said. Are you seriously Godwinizing this thread comparing people living in a country that was invaded to a country that escalated a situation without a clear idea of the reprecussions? You should have read the context I was putting it in
Buchanan’s actions did start the Civil War as after the Star was fired on there was no going back, no compromise was to be had.
It’s like when you taunt a bully and he hits you. You may not have intended to start the fight but in your way you took actions that led to the fight although he (technically and legally) started the fight.
And about the Star of the North incident know the South Carolinians fired on the ship not the fort. It was THAT action (by the southerners) that changed the situation from a war of words into a shooting war. My claim that Buchanan’s actions started the Civil War was because his sending the Star could have two bases:
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Rather than negotiation, he created a situation where the South would have to take action or lose face. In other words he forced their hand to see if they were willing to go to war over secession. And when the shore batteries opened up on the Star, South Carolina showed they were prepared to start a war over it. I tend to discount this since he had no follow up plan unlike Lincoln who did the exact same thing. Some have argued that Lincoln, knowing the Carolinians would fire on a supply ship, repeated Buchanan’s act so that when the resupply ship and fort were fired upon he could declare the CSA in rebellion.
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IMO more likely, Buchanan never thought they would fire on the ship. Regardless of this, this decision set into motion a chain of events that directly led to the start of the Civil War as a war of bullets and not words.
I stand by what I said.
Buchanan’s actions did not start the Civil War. Nor did Lincoln’s actions.
The Confederates started the Civil War by attacking the United States. Which is essentially no different than how Germany started WWII in Europe by attacking Poland or Japan started WWII in Asia by attacking China.
I wonder about the last part. The Star of the West was fired upon on January 9. I don’t know how significant the event was viewed at the time, but no further action is taken until April. Indeed, as I understand it, Lincoln offered to trade Fort Sumter for Virginia’s agreement not to secede as late as March. Even in April, there still seems to be an obvious concern (for both Lincoln and Davis) that any escalation of the situation would have bad PR consequences (suggesting to me that many people still thought that the situation had not been irredeemably escalated).
I happen to think that even the bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter could have been walked away from if the respective sides were not interested in armed conflict – it would end up as the type of “border skirmish” that is often overlooked in world history. But even if that’s not true, it certainly seems like compromise was available until April.
Compromise might have been an option up until Jefferson Davis decided to use force. This was a politically-astute move; even at the time there were many fence-sitters in the South and others who straight didn’t want secession, and they were forced into the game, as it were. Likewise, many believed that, given a few more months, people would get restless and tire of Secession and go right back to the Union. In that sense, it was a brilliant move, for Davis then received Virginia and almost all the South. Events were out of Buchanan’s hands long before that.
That said, Buchanan could have made more effective moves even at the time had he wished to do so. He could have more effectively re-armed, or at least begun that process. He could have communicated quietly with Abraham Lincoln, something which today is considered quite normal (current political jab left unsaid). He could have been much more resolute and active in shoring up the loyalty of the border states, and it was not a foregone conclusion that astute diplomacy might have defused the crisis.
This is not to say that all of his decisions were bad ones - he allowed the garrison at Moultrie to move to Fort Sumter. However, much as with his long career, he made a habit of not doing anything and taking no very great responsibility for anything. And that was, let us remembered, following four years of the same meek surrender to whatever fresh demands plantation masters could come up with.
I don’t think there was any possibility of a compromise being worked out to avoid a war. The two sides had firm goals that couldn’t be reconciled. The Confederate states wanted to be an independent country and there was no offer or promise the United States could make that would induce the southerners to voluntarily rejoin the United States. The United States wanted the southern states back in the United States and would not accept any compromise that fell short of that.
I think it was a major mistake for Davis to take the initiative in starting the war. Once they had declared independence, the Confederates benefitted more that the Americans by the status quo. Davis should have sat back and forced Lincoln to be the one who declared war.