Admittedly, I don’t have a cite handy, but my recollection is that the border states of North Carolina and Virginia didn’t secede because they were being required to send troops. Their secession was based on the idea that any troops were being sent. These states were willing to stay in the Union but wanted the right of secession to be explicitly recognized by the federal government allowing the secession of the southern states who had already left the Union. Lincoln would not agree to this - he wanted all of the states to return back to the Union and would not accept any secession and he was willing to use military force if necessary.
shrug Depends on your definition of ‘scoundrel’ and how much you want to pick nits. Whether or not he was a ‘scoundrel’ is moot…he ranks (IMHO) as one of the worst presidents, and several notches above GW. While I don’t lay the blame for the entire Civil War at his feet, he did nothing…NOTHING…to prevent or even alleviate one of the bloodiest episodes in our history. The man was scum IMHO and hopefully is roasting away these many years in a (non-existent) hell.
-XT
Three reasons why this isn’t worth the time: 1) Poll by The Nation, 2) Nixon is in the top 5, 3) Carter is not.
Onward to more important things. Like pondering the wood grain in my desk.
From a Southerner: Buchanan’s lily-livered cowardice literally almost tore the United States to shreds. There almost wasn’t a United States history after that fiasco. Buchanan was far and away the worst president.
I vote for Wilson, also based on what I read in “Lies My Teacher Told Me.”
He undid decades of work on race relations with his openly racist policies, sparking the greatest surge in anti-black violence since the Reconstruction, returned segregation to the White House and heavily publicized “Birth of a Nation,” a hugely popular glorification of racism.
Also I spit on him 1,000 times for everything he ever did to Latin America. In many ways he set the precedent for screwing with Middle and South America by installing oppressive government regimes.
And then also according to the book, Wilson’s presidency was the closest the U.S. ever came to being a police state. Pretty much despicable all around.
Considering that Arthur Zimmerman, the German Foreign Minister, admitted in two different speeches that he had sent the telegram in question, I rather doubt it was falsified.
(Cite: Zimmermann Telegram - Wikipedia)
I’m gonna’ go with Dubya. John Dean, who did time for obstructing justice during the Nixon era, has written a book about George W. Bush, and the title of his book is “Worse Than Nixon.” Pretty much says it all, for me.
I’m dumbfounded at the abuse being heaped on James Buchanan. Blaming Buchanan for the Civil War is equivalent to blaming Clinton because George W. Bush was elected on his watch.
As a pro-slavery Northerner, James Buchanan was indeed an unsavory individual. He was pro-slavery by conviction, not by birth. He supported the odious and fraudulent Lecompton Constitution, which would have admitted Kansas into the Union as a slave state.
But these actions didn’t cause secession, and they didn’t cause the Civil War. Rather, they were an unsuccessful (and morally dubious) attempt to forestall it.
Once the lower South seceded—because of the election of a man from the opposite party, whom Buchanan opposed—what should Buchanan have done? Should he have anticipated Lincoln, calling for troops on the day that South Carolina seceded, and launching the Civil War four months earlier? This would have provoked the same stampede to secession in December that it did in April; and without the moral onus on the South for firing on Fort Sumter, it might have provoked the border states to secede as well.
Furthermore, it would have saddled the Union with a power transition three months into the war, forcing Lincoln to inherit an ongoing war before he had even had time to set up his administration.
No Republican at the time censured Buchanan for not launching immediate war—even Lincoln waited six weeks after taking office to commence warfare, and when he did so he maneuvered the South into firing the first shot. Rather, Republicans were relieved that Buchanan didn’t sanction secession by unilaterally withdrawing from the Southern forts, and he deserves credit for that, at least.
[shrug] So make the case for Carter.
And some of the title cards used in BOAN were quotes taken (with attribution) from Wilson’s A History of the American People. I guess there was some mutual admiration between Wilson and D.W. Griffith (or between Wilson and Thomas Dixon, Jr., author of the novel on which the film was based).
Buchanan is blamed because regional tensions had been building for decades, and before him men like Henry Clay and Daniel Webster worked out compromises to delay war. James Buchanan did absolutely jack-shit to soothe the divide between slaveholders and abolitionists, and in many cases aggravated already seething rage against the North. The Lecompton Constitution was not an attempt to forestall war; by promoting slavery over the objections of the majority of the citizens in Kansas, Buchanan fueled further development of racial and regional divides. It wasn’t called ‘Bleeding Kansas’ for nothing.
If Bush’s election had been building up since WWII, and prominent Congressmen under Reagan and Bush Sr. had been working against it, and Clinton had championed the governor of Texas, then there might be a comparison between Clinton and Buchanan.
The secession crisis happened during Buchanan’s administration. He was the President of the United States; he should have done something more about the biggest crisis to ever hit America than sit and pout in the Oval Office.
I thought Reagan was the most destructive in the long run.
Created huge debts, expanded the military as the Soviet Union was winding down, prolonging the cold war, gave away a lot to corporations at the expense of the public, wreaked havoc on many long term public programs like the national parks and aid. Bush does seem to top him in all categories, however.
What did Buchanan do to aggravate rage against the North? He was pro-Southern.
Of course it was. It was an attempt to convince Southerners to support the Union by admitting another slave state. It antagonized the North, of course, but any course of action would have antagonized one side or the other.
Buchanan didn’t champion Lincoln.
But what?
I’m shocked by the anti-Wilson rhetoric. Yes, he was a racist scumbag, yes he accepted the southern racist version of Reconstruction, but he wasn’t the guy characterized by his quotations from BOAN. In point of fact, he detested that movie, felt he had been tricked by the manner in which his quotes were presented, and blocked it from being shown during the war. He had W.E.B. DuBois actively campaigning for him!
That doesn’t make Wilson palatable by any means; merely less repulsive that characterized in this thread. As for getting us into World War 1, the wave of anger throughout America in the wake of the sinking of the Lusitania was what got us into the war - I have a book of political cartoons from the time, and there are pages and pages of them blasting Wilson for not declaring war immediately. Think about it - the Germans sank a *passenger ship * and killed 1200 people, including over a hundred children. If terrorists were to do this today, what would our reaction be? Damn straight we got into that war.
On Wilson’s plus side, among many other things, he created the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Reserve, the foundations of our current economic system. How many presidents have done something like that? His Fourteen Points and League of Nations proposal were the initial concepts that the UN and most modern diplomacy are built upon today. His support was what helped pass Women’s Suffrage for crying out loud! For these reasons Wilson is consistently ranked as one of the ten best presidents.
What’s really crazy is that I’m the one defending him - I hate Wilson! His contributions to the League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles might have been innovative, but they were also shortsighted and ultimately led to World War 2. He was still a racist, and worst of all, he didn’t even serve out his last term - he had a stroke, collapsed, and instead of stepping down, rumor has it he let his wife actually run things for him. That’s just irresponsible. But he belongs nowhere near the ranking of ‘worst’.
As further elaboration on this, the Lecompton Constitution didn’t cause Bleeding Kansas; it resulted from it. The cause of Bleeding Kansas was the Kansas-Nebraska Act, supported and signed into law by another pro-slavery Northerner, Franklin Pierce.
The more general charge of being a pro-slavery Northerner who cravenly appeased the South can be laid with equal force upon Millard Fillmore and Pierce, so on those grounds Buchanan can’t be worse than a three-way tie for worst President.
Seems I was incorrect (not exactly the first time 
). I always thought there was more controversy concerning the Zimmerman telegram than appearently there was.
Regardless, I still put Wilson on the short list of ‘worst American presidents’.
-XT
Not a partisan bone in your body I expect. BTW…I’ve never seen Reagan on any of the worst of lists…usually quite the opposite. Unlike the other presidents named (though I haven’t seen Johnson on any worst of lists either so maybe my own choice is a bit partisan, ehe?). Why do you suppose that is?
Thats a rather, er, interesting list of Reagans faults there. And a rather intersting interperation of history. 
I’m sure there are some conservative Republicans foaming at the mouth that you could mention Bush II and Reagan in the same sentence. However, for my part, I have no doubts you could name 3 other Republicans to take the bottom 5 spots…no sweat, ehe?
-XT
Lily? Pout? You guys just don’t like him 'cuz he was gay!
d&r
Er, if you’re trying to defend him, maybe you ought to ix-nay on his ontempt-kay for the Onstitution-Kay…
A “passenger ship” carrying munitions in a war zone makes itself a legitimate target.