In the decades leading up to the American Civil War, the nation experienced crisis after crisis as politicians endlessly debated and citizens took arms against each other to settle political problems. The presidents that followed Zachary Taylor either did nothing to slow the slide to war or actually made the problems facing the United States worse. Presidents Fillmore and Pierce were failures by almost any stretch, but only James Buchanan has fared worse in the eyes of historians.
The Antebellum Slavery Crisis
Elected in 1856, Buchanan inherited a country that was tearing itself apart. The pro-slavery movement relentlessly fought the abolitionist movement in the northern states, and the rhetoric between regional politicians grew increasingly heated. The Fugitive Slave Act was creating a crisis within government itself as some places refused to enforce the Act. Franklin Pierce was elected prior to Buchanan partly because he was friendly to the Southern cause and would rigorously enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. While the South was happy, it made things worse. Pierce received death threats like this line from Boston: “To the chief slave catcher of the United States. You damned, infernal scoundrel, if I only had you here in Boston I would murder you.“1Pierce also supported the repeal of the Missouri Compromise which had banned slavery from the Western states, angering Americans in the North and West.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed after long debate and attempts to compromise, essentially upholding the status quo by creating a free Nebraska and a slave-holding Kansas. When Buchanan arrived on the scene, the government was paralyzed by sectionalism. President Buchanan is often seen as meek and mild-mannered when dealing with domestic issues.
It was clear from the start that he would prefer to deal with foreign affairs. In fact, Buchanan had two stints in diplomacy, first as Minister to Russia from 1832-1834 and then as Minister to England from 1853-56. He hoped to put the Kansas-Nebraska issue out of sight and mind and focus the nations’ attention on expansion. More than anything Buchanan wanted to be a foreign policy president, with his eye on expanding into Cuba and Mexico. Mexico was undergoing yet another internal conflict at the time and the President proposed establishing a military province in Northwestern Mexico to “protect” the Mexicans and punish Indians there for cross-border raids against Americans.
To him, it was logical that the course of national expansion would lead south, since Britain held Canada and it would be folly to risk war with them. While this made sense, many in America saw it as a chance to add slave states. He was accused of pandering to the Southern states. In response, Buchanan accused the Republicans of being traitors for their support of abolitionists, claiming they were fueling violent extremists like John Brown.
Republicans vs Buchanan
Once the Republicans took control of the House in 1858, they opened investigations into Buchanan’s administration, looking for corruption and finding ample evidence of misdeeds. This discovery further weakened an already unpopular Buchanan administration, perhaps weakening the office of President as well. Jean Baker writes in her bookJames Buchanan that “Buchanan’s Union…seemed to most nineteenth century Americans a republic of contradictions-a free nation for whites with slavery for all blacks in the territories and, according to the Dred Scott decision, in the future even in non-slaveholding states.”2
A more adept politician may have been able to soothe some of the tensions between North and South, but Buchanan proved to be generally unfit for his post. During the crucial four years of his Presidency, Buchanan either ignored domestic politics altogether or out-right supported the claims of the South, only furthering the rift between countrymen. As a result, he gave America a giant shove toward the rocky cliff ledge of civil war.
1 Roy Franklin Nichols. Franklin Pierce: Young Hickory of the Granite Hills (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1931): 361
2 Jean Baker, James Buchanan. (New York: NY, Times Books, 2004): 117.
