James Buchanan

James Buchanan by Jean H. Baker

Tier 4

I can never decide who was worse – Buchanan or Andrew Johnson. It’s a great contest. It’s like the Michael Jordan versus Lebron James debate of awful presidents. I don’t think I’ll ever fully decide. I mostly dislike the debates about the best or worst president (or actor, musician, or athlete). The job is too complicated, and it’s changed too much over the years. Suffice it to say, they don’t get worse than Buchanan.

This book doesn’t quite get my lowest grade because Buchanan is undeniably fascinating. He wasn’t merely bad or inept, he was actively harmful. He did everything in his power to position the South well for the coming war. Imagine that. Imagine a president who actively works to help a group of insurrectionists. It’s almost unthinkable.

Unfortunately, I think Jean Baker could’ve done more with the material. As I mentioned in my post on Franklin Pierce, bad presidents are fascinating and deserve exhaustive biographies. They shape the nation every bit as much as a great president and, in some instances, more.

Buchanan was a lifelong politician who entered office as one of the most experienced and qualified individuals ever to be elected. Let this be a lesson to everyone who loves to laud experience as a key to a successful presidency. He was often put forth as a candidate for the presidency from the 1840s onward, finally securing the nomination over Franklin Pierce in 1856. The shattered remnants of the Whig party had coalesced around two new parties – the xenophobic Know Nothings, led by former president Millard Fillmore, and the antislavery Republican Party, led by John C. Fremont. Buchanan easily defeated both challengers, carrying the South except for Maryland and several Northern states.

Part of the reason he was nominated and later elected was that he was outside the United States for some years and, as such, stayed away from the mounting domestic tension over slavery. But once back, he made it known where he stood – with the racists.

He filled his cabinet with Southerners, supported states’ rights (always code for slavery), and even believed that secession was legally within the right of Southern states. That last one is particularly remarkable coming from the President of the United States.

But he didn’t stop there. While president-elect, the Supreme Court was ruling on the infamous Dredd Scott v. Sandford case. This is easily the worst decision in the history of the Supreme Court. They not only ruled against Dredd Scott, but stated that black people couldn’t be citizens and, as such, were not entitled to any of the rights enumerated in the US Constitution. Brutal. Despicable. Overtly racist. You might be wondering what this has to do with the then-president-elect Buchanan. Well, he kept up regular correspondences with at least two of the justices and influenced one of them, Associate Justice Robert Cooper Grier, to join the Southern majority. According to Baker, even at the time, this was seen as a horrific overstep.

Yes, that is all horrible, but perhaps his economic policies were sound. Nope. He was terrible in that arena as well. A strict laissez-faire capitalist, he decided against any intervention in the Panic of 1857. The details of this episode are sorted, but let’s just say that Buchanan’s decision not to step in was likely the wrong one and seemed predicated mainly on helping the South. The industrial North felt the economic downturn the hardest, and it appears that Buchanan welcomed this.

I covered Bleeding Kansas in my post on Pierce, but again, Buchanan sided with the pro-slavery faction there and tried to jam through the absurd, racist Lecompton Constitution. He went so far as to bribe Senators with cash to get this constitution passed, and it still failed in the House. Incompetent leadership in an attempt to push through objectionable legislation – James Buchanan in a nutshell.

There were many other failures during his presidency, but the real feather in his cap came after Lincoln’s election. Buchanan kept his pledge not to seek a second term and did nothing as his party splintered into a Northern and Southern faction. Lincoln won the presidency by carrying the Northern states, and a group of Southern states immediately began to discuss secession. Basically, it doesn’t get much worse than that for a sitting president.

Now, what is one to do in that situation? Well, one could do the opposite of what Buchanan did at every step and be in pretty good shape. He refused to reinforce Southern bases, did nothing when Fort Sumter was captured by traitors, and refused to alter his pro-South cabinet. He even allowed his disgraced, pro-secession, traitorous Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, to essentially supply the future Confederacy with arms and ammunition.

At one point, he sent a ship to reinforce Fort Sumter but forgot to tell the commanding officer at Fort Sumter they were coming, which resulted in no covering fire for the ship. The ship had to retreat, and upon returning to the North, Buchanan gave up and began to contemplate surrounding Fort Sumter.

He proposed an amendment to codify slavery and gave a rambling speech to Congress where he said the South shouldn’t secede but that the federal government couldn’t stop them, and then blamed the North for all the tension regarding slavery. I can’t imagine a worse way to handle the situation.

In the end, six states seceded while he was still president, and he handed Lincoln the disaster he had caused. Luckily it was Lincoln, and next week I’ll be discussing him.

Baker’s book isn’t bad, but it isn’t good either. She works to show you that Buchanan wasn’t some senile old fool as he’s so often portrayed but rather a calculating politician who covered himself in shame as president. This is undoubtedly the correct tact, and I’m glad she didn’t try to absolve him, but I think there was more to discuss here.