The Presidents #15: James Buchanan

[Ardent15]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Buchanan

Discuss him and his Presidency.

[Zomby Woof]

1. In over his head

[jkirch]

14. Stephen Foster campaigned for him.

Wrote a campaign song, too.

[Jack Rabbit]

2. Well, his main argument as he left office was . . .

. . . that the South had no right to secede and the federal government had no right to stop them.

However it turned out, he was bound to be on the wrong side of history.

[Art_from_Ark]

3. I disagree

The Union remained intact under Buchanan and in all likelihood would have remained intact if his Vice President, John Breckenridge, who had strong support in the South, had been elected in 1860. Slavery was on its way out, peacefully, in most of the rest of the civilized world, and an end to slavery without violence and the disastrous Reconstruction period that followed might have had a much different outcome in the South than the subsequent 90+ years of repression, segregation, lynchings, Jim Crow laws, etc., that lasted well into the 1960s.

[Odin2005]

13. The southern Elites would have never given up slavery without a fight.

They made it part of their identity. And at the same time Northern industrialists were getting impatient at the Southern Elites pushing policies (like low tariffs) that were bad for industrialization.

[depakid]

17. It is interesting to speculate on how long slavery would have lasted

Americans haven't exactly been known for following trends set in civilized nations.

To wit: firearms policies and the death penalty.

My speculative opinion is that the Civil war was inevitable based on westward expansion and the addition of new territories.

[Art_from_Ark]

18. It might have been inevitable

Of course, slavery as an institution was not sustainable in the drier areas of the West, and even in Southern areas like northwest and north-central Arkansas it was almost unknown because it just was not practicable. My point is that if Breckenridge had been elected President in 1860, with great support in the South, things could have been different. Of course, there were hot-heads on both sides that might have prevented a peaceful resolution.

But a peaceful resolution would, in the end, have been much more desirable. The Civil War resulted in more than 600,000 deaths, millions of other lives ruined, and billions of dollars in destruction (99% of that in the South). If Lincoln had survived, what would he have been able to accomplish in the South? The South hated him, especially after it became known that he considered the burning of Georgia to be a "Christmas gift". His successor, Andrew Johnson, a Southern Democrat, might have been able to heal Southern wounds a little better, but he was thwarted by the extremists in the Republican Party, most notably Edwin Stanton, who in all likelihood was involved in the Lincoln assassination. Johnson likely suspected that, and tried to fire Stanton, and was himself impeached for his efforts.

"Reconstruction" was more like "Retribution". Essentially, the (Northern) carpetbaggers and (Southern) scalawags succeeded in destroying what was left of the Southern economy (thereby ensuring that the South would not "rise again"). And the old slavery system was eventually replaced by something that wasn't much better, the sharecropping system. Only this time, freed slaves were competing with white dirt farmers for the right to work on rich men's land for subsistence wages. Once the North agreed to pull occupying forces out of the South in the wake of the tainted election of 1876, then the fate of the freed slaves and their descendants as 2nd class citizens in the South was sealed for the next 90 years or so.

[jsmirman]

25. Oh, now reading this you are a pure Southern propagandist

You should be ashamed of writing that trash about Andrew Johnson, one of the most despicable (if not the most despicable) men to ever hold the Presidency.

You've been steeped in BS and brewed to a foul tasting bile.

Your portrait of Lincoln is also inaccurate. Your contention about Stanton is pure fabulism.

Reconstruction had good ideas and bad ideas and a lot of bad execution.

But the fact that you would favor Johnson's "vision" for the process fills me with disgust.

As noted in my other, more polite post to you, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about with regard to Breckinridge.

I don't know if you've hunted down these untruths on your own or if there's someone you have a real bone to pick with who fed you loads and loads of bull as your active imagination conjured up this historical horse pucky.

I'm sorry, but this aggression simply will not stand.

[Dr Morbius]

26. There's another factor you've overlooked.

There was massive upheaval after the Dred Scott decision (1857). It was mainly opposition to the Dred Scott decision which gave the Republican party a head of steam. The GOP formed before this; their first national election was 1856 (which they lost to Buchanan). But public outrage over Dred Scott - flaring throughout all the northern states - made conflict inevitable.

Edwin Stanton had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the Booth conspiracy. I've been reading the history of the civil war from all angles for many years; there's nothing whatsoever to this.

And those Republican "extremists" were the folks who brought us the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution. They held the "extreme" view that slavery was a great evil which needed to be eliminated. One century's extremists are the next century's conservatives, n'est ce pas?

[Zomby Woof]

30. The Emancipation Proclamation?

That was Lincoln's centrist ethos in action. It neither appeased his left, who wanted complete abolition immediately, or the right, who wanted slavery left alone. The EP explicitly left slavery alone in the union border states where it remained legal, and where it called for abolition - the states "in rebellion" - he had no political authority. It was pure political gamesmanship, shoring up his authority as commander-in-chief, and allowing him to alter the rationale for the war beyond maintaining the union. Britain, who had toyed with the idea of aiding the Confederacy, but had never given it much effort, was to officially abandon the idea, tenuous as it was.

Don't forget the 15th amendment, granting African-American men suffrage. Unfortunately, women once again were bypassed, putting off universal suffrage for another 50 years. And people think healthcare reform has been a slow process.

[jsmirman]

24. Oh, HELL no

My senior thesis at Yale was about the Breckinridge Democrats.

I can't speak authoritatively about them throughout the South, but there's a chance you won't encounter someone who can speak more authoritatively about the Breckinridge Democrats of Mississippi.

I spent seven years studying them.

They were 100% the party of secession.

But they were not just the party of secession, they were the party of aggressive territorial expansion and land grabs and most specifically, the party of the "owns slaves but wants what that big plantation owner's got." That's the reason that one of (iirc) the five (may have been four) planks of the Mississippi Breckinridge Dems' platform was expansion into Cuba.

The big planters living in the rich and fertile Delta didn't need new land. They were doing just fine where they were. These folks did NOT want secession, were the ones more likely to pursue politics that *might* eventually - and I mean eventually - lead to the non-expansion of slavery and an ultimate transition away from slavery - and THIS is where you found the Bell Unionists.

Honestly, as I write this, I think I can confidently say that you're wrong wrt the whole South.

Bell Unionists wanted, as you would expect, Union, and Breckinridge was the party that would accept no compromises, no agreements for restraint in expansion made with the North, etc.

I also think that on the whole it sounds like you've been told a lot of inaccurate falsehoods.

Btw, it's BRECKINRIDGE not Breckenridge, but you're more than forgiven for that mistake, as my thesis, which posited the emergence of a new market class in Mississippi that would push for secession and was very well received by noted scholar John Wesley Blassingame, only received an A-, as I made the very same spelling mistake THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE PAPER.

Sadly, I never actually met Blassingame before his death, and never had the opportunity to thank him for all the other kind and laudatory comments he made in my thesis review. I still have those comments in my bound copy.

[Ter]

28. Well, many agree with him

A million dead is an awful price to pay for preserving the Union. If it happens again in the future, let them go. I am not going to war against my brothers.

[The_Commonist]

4. Our first gay president.

Although there is, of course, some debate over that.
Quite a smart and talented fellow, who should never have been president.
And he REALLY wanted it...

[Sebastian Doyle]

8. Oh that's just ridiculous speculation

Everybody knows that homosexuals didn't exist until the Village People invented them in the 1970s.

[Arkana]

10. Purely speculation, though there's no doubt

that Buchanan was viewed as "effeminate" by his contemporaries.

[tledford]

11. And lived with his male lover.

http://webspace.webring.com/people/rb/bounty682/contro.html

John Updike wrote an really fascinating novel spinning off on the possibilities, written from the standpoint of a penny-ante historian: http://www.amazon.com/Memories-Ford-Administration-John-Updike/dp/0449912116/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270158294&sr=1-2

Also a play, "Buchanan Dying."

[Arkana]

15. His male lover who also happened to become Vice President of the United States.

William Rufus de Vane King.

There are several references in assorted accounts from men that knew them to "Buchanan and his wife", or "Aunt Fancy and Aunt Nancy".

[PVnRT]

5. Damn near the worst President ever

[Ishoutandscream2]

6. Only president from Pennsylvania

That still blows my mind.

[argonaut]

7. Pretty much the worst ever. nt

[WI_DEM]

9. played his fiddle while the union burned.

[Odin2005]

12. Worst. President. Ever.

Even worse than Reagan and W. Sat back and did nothing while the South was engaging in treason.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

16. W's only competition for worst prez. (But Bush wins)

[loyalsister]

19. John Tyler presents health competition

Being a part of the confederate congress surely was worse than any thing Buchanan did or didn't do.

[WI_DEM]

21. True Tyler and his wife were out and out traitors to the union cause.

[loyalsister]

22. He died before he could face trial

If not he actually may have been convicted. There was no gray area. What he did was treason.

[Zomby Woof]

29. W's great-uncle Franklin Pierce gives him a run for his money

Pierce is every bit as bad, or worse, than either Buchanan or Andrew Johnson. Bush II certainly is down there with him.

He's related to Franklin Pierce by way of his mother, Barbara Pierce Bush.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

20. No one ever saw James Buchanan and his "sister" in the same room together. Oh wait my bad.

I was thinking of Pat Buchanan.

[jsmirman]

23. Deserving of his lofty ranking

always clocks in right near the absolute bottom.

A feckless turd.

[skipos]

27. He wasn't married so his niece became "first lady." The title stuck. nt