Oddly enough, my first real impression of James Buchanan came from the book on Andrew Jackson. In that book, the author mentions that Buchanan had a high, nasally voice which Henry Clay, famous compromiser and eminent politician, loved to mimic behind his back. Classic! I love hearing little tidbits like that because it makes history so current, don’t you think? I mean what’s more universal than making fun of other people?
Obviously since Jackson, I’ve run across Buchanan quite a bit and can see his influence as a senator from Pennsylvania, the Secretary of State under Polk and even the Ambassador to Great Britain (which I will cover later) pervade numerous presidential biographies. What interests me the most is the fact that Buchanan is regularly listed in the Top Five Most Hated Presidents. Whoa—I already know that Buchanan was the president right before the Civil War but what on earth did he do to fall so low? The author, Jean Baker of James Buchanan: American Presidents Series (Times Books: New York, 2004), weighs in on this circumstance as well. “Four years later Buchanan left the presidency in disgrace, condemned by Republicans, vilified by northern Democrats and dismissed even by the southerners whom he had tried so hard to please and whose personal affection he craved” (p. 2). She then follows that up with “By ever measure except his own—whether that of his contemporaries or historians—Buchanan was an abysmal failure as chief executive” (p.3).
I have a couple of good friends from Pennsylvania that keep asking me about Buchanan and what kind of president he was. I am sad to say that it does not look too hopeful but let’s find out if the critics are correct about James Buchanan.
He was born in 1790 to a family who owned a local trading post in southern Pennsylvania. James was the oldest son of eleven and had an undisputed position of power within the family. There is not much information about James’ upbringing and childhood but in 1807, he was sent to Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA. He was known for being a follower rather than a leader and was even expelled from school because he was a part of a gang of unruly, drunken boys. “It was not the expulsion that is surprising, but rather Buchanan’s insistence in his unfinished autobiography that he was not ‘dissipated’ himself, but had drunk, roistered, and disturbed in order to be considered ‘a clever and spirited youth.’” (p. 13). Through his family connections, he was eventually reinstated but he harbored a hatred for Dickinson ever afterward.
After graduation, he promptly moved to Lancaster, PA and took up law. “Even as a neophyte, James Buchanan sought high-profile cases that brought prominence, more clients, and larger fees in a circular process that made him, before he was thirty-five, one of the best-known lawyers in southern Pennsylvania” (p. 16). Even though his law career was blossoming, Buchanan was drawn to politics and in 1814 was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly as a Federalist.
Then in 1820 his political career began in full with the first of five consecutive terms in the United States Congress (he was elected right after the Missouri Compromise was passed). During this time, his political leanings began to favor the ascendant Democratic Party under Andrew Jackson while his political friendships veered toward the South. His pro-southern leanings would eventually color his entire presidency and would become an issue in the incipient Civil War. He would remain a politician who fervently believed in states’ rights and a strict construction of the Constitution.
In 1831, he retired to private life. He was not married or financially in need but he proposed to work for the Democrats on the sidelines and to resurrect his successful law practice. “Yet he remained politically ambitious and hoped to be on the rise again after his ten years in Congress” (p. 30). His retirement was not of long duration for in 1832, Jackson nominated him as Ambassador to Russia. After much hesitation, he accepted the position but was only in St. Petersburg for about a year and half.
Upon his return, he began another long stint, intermittently from 1834 to 1852, in Congress but this time in the upper house, the Senate. Slavery was slowly becoming a more pressing issue and James Buchanan had his own ideas on it. “Quietly opposed to the institution in theory for reasons he never explained, he believed it the nations’ weak link, not because it was inhumane, but rather for its potential to destroy the Union” (p. 33). In a rather brilliant political move, he turned down Martin Van Buren’s offer of the Attorney General position and remained in the Senate to propound his views. “Throughout his years in the Senate he held fast to two popular principles: manifest destiny and states’ rights” (p. 34).
“Through hard work, party loyalty, and residence in the second most populous state in the Union, Buchanan advanced in stature and position, moving up the committee ladder to ever more important positions and even more national notoriety. He was appointed to the Judicial Committee, the Committee on the District of Columbia, and eventually the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It was as a member of the latter that he became best known and made his most significant contributions to the future of the nation” (p. 34).
Under Polk’s administration, Buchanan was made Secretary of State. Although this is a very prestigious position, Buchanan, very clearly, played second fiddle to Polk on the foreign affairs front. Polk conducted the war and while he pulled Buchanan’s strings, the United States added more territory from Mexico, including Texas, California and pretty much all the areas in between.
Since Polk did not run for reelection, Buchanan was essentially out of a job in 1849 and he returned to his house, Wheatland, in Lancaster, PA. He was offered a Supreme Court position at one point and vacillated terribly until he finally came to the conclusion that it would damage his chances of being President of the US. No one had gone from the judicial to the executive branches in the history of the country before. He was getting older and so he became more open about his dreams of the presidency. “Fifty-eight years old in 1849, Buchanan had spent the best years of his life in public office. During that time he changed from energetic party enthusiast into an overweight, ambivalently ambitious politician…With his tilted head, protruding stomach, proportionally diminutive lower body, and heavily lidded eyes, one sometimes shut, he resembled an erect, two-footed tyrannosaur” (p. 46-7).
In 1852, his named was bandied about as president at the Democratic National Convention but he eventually lost to the dark horse candidate, Franklin Pierce. Pierce, as President, generously offered Buchanan the Ambassadorship to Great Britain. Another series of vacillations ensued but in the end, Buchanan decided in favor of this esteemed station and made his way to London during an extremely volatile period in US history.
Even though he was abroad, Buchanan did manage to stir up a little trouble there as well. Along with the US Ambassadors to Spain and France, Buchanan signed the Ostend Manifesto which stated that the US had the right to take Cuba, over every objection. It was so incendiary that Pierce quietly acted as if he never received it but it was unearthed by the media years later and people howled in protest.
Ok, we’ve made it to 1856. Buchanan won the Democratic nomination for president over Stephen Douglas, Senator of Illinois, mainly because he was abroad during Pierce’s presidential debacles. On the flip side, the Whigs had slowly winked out of existence since Fillmore’s presidency and in 1856, they were split into several different factions, including the Know-Nothing (American) Party, the Republicans, and a very, watered-down version of the Whigs. The Know-Nothings nominated former President Millard Fillmore while the newly-organized Republican Party nominated John C. Fremont, governor of California and adventurer. Buchanan won but not in a landslide. The American people should have taken notice of all the votes that Fremont and the Republicans received.
How do I begin to tell of the problems with the Buchanan presidency? Since there are so many I’ve decided just to list them out.
1. Dred Scott vs Sandford: After his election but before his inauguration, Buchanan used his influence to shape the outcome of the Dred Scott case by pressuring a Pennsylvania justice to change his vote. The Supreme Court eventually ruled that Dred Scott, a free black man, could be sold into slavery were he to venture into the South. In fact, they stated that blacks had no rights whatsoever, thereby sounding the death knell of the Missouri Compromise. “Without Buchanan’s encouragement, Grier, the only northerner to join in Taney’s [the Chief Justice] decision, might not have joined the others” (p. 86).
2. Patronage: As stated in other blogs, patronage was a Big Deal for any president. If used properly, it was a great way to reward loyalty and gain votes and successful patronage appointments would almost guarantee an easy time for any president. However (and you knew there would be an ‘however’), Buchanan did not successfully use his patronage to endear himself to his followers. Not only did a disproportionately-large number of northern Democrats find themselves out of a job and other southern Democrats stepping into them, but Buchanan fired any Democrat that had ties to Pierce or to Stephen Douglas. Buchanan’s heavy-handed handling of his patronage opportunities would deal a severe blow to the Democratic Party.
3. The Cabinet: Sigh. Buchanan’s sheer inability to find a workable cabinet is startling, even after he had spent decades of his life in political circles. “In the end Buchanan’s cabinet selections proved a disaster. To choose, as he did, four members from the future Confederacy and three northern Democrats who, like Buchanan, were doughfaces was an insult to the North” (p. 79). It didn’t help that his vice president, Lewis Cass, was practically too old to function and the others all shared the same southern ideas and values. It wouldn’t help either that most of his cabinet would be involved in major governmental corruption scandals on a huge scale. “Certainly his cabinet officers were among the most corrupt in American history” (p. 114).
4. The Panic of 1857: After Buchanan’s inauguration, banks began to fold in an effort to call in unrecoverable loans, while land values and jobs disappeared. This Panic would hit the North hardest of all since the South, at that time, was agriculturally self-sufficient.
5. The Deficit: “Despite his plans for a balanced budge, Buchanan left Lincoln a deficit of over $17 million” (p. 90).
6. Kansas: Ooohhh, this political issue was a whopper. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, during Pierce’s presidency, gave Kansas and Nebraska the option, as new states, to choose whether they wanted to have slavery or not (even though both were above the Missouri Compromise line.) Nebraska was immediately seen as a free state but Kansas was desired by the South even though Kansans themselves wished to be free. Bloody chaos ensued along with rigged elections, phony government, and an unfair constitution touting pro-slavery restrictions over the popular majority. Buchanan did help matters when he stubbornly refused to throw out the Lecompton (proslavery) government and he feverishly worked to have Kansas’s “constitution” slammed through Congress. Even though Buchanan and his sketchy cabinet used immense amounts of lobbying and even bribery to secure the vote, it was dismissed in the House of Representatives. Another vote was held in Kansas, a fair vote this time, and the overwhelming majority of Kansans stated that they wished to be free state. In an effort to look on the bright side, Buchanan merely claimed that the violence in Kansas was now over, thanks to him. “With the insouciance that often marked his failures, he noted his pleasure that the excitement over slavery in Kansas had been resolved” (p. 105).
7. The Democratic Party Split: The split in the Democratic Party would not be noticeable until the presidential convention in 1860 but already Buchanan was sowing the seeds of discord within his own party. With his obvious reliance on southern Democrats, his contempt of northern Democrats became every day more apparent. Not only did he find most Northerners too radical but he did not like to reward loyal Democrats because they were followers of Douglas and Pierce. Pierce was a political has-been at this juncture but Stephen Douglas was at the top of his game and the treatment that he would receive from Buchanan, a fellow Democrat, aided the final split.
8. Use of Imperial Powers: Buchanan, during his presidency, used his presidential powers almost indiscriminately. At one point, he wanted Cuba so much (as another slave state) that he nearly forced Congress to vote him the funds to buy it. He also wanted more of Mexico and even sent a squadron of the US Navy down to Paraguay on a supposed insult.
9. Ignorance of Secession: Throughout his presidency, Buchanan simply ignored the idea that the South, his friends, might actually stick to their word and secede from the Union. When secession became a very real issue in 1860, Buchanan famously vacillated some more and finally issued a statement saying that he could not force anyone to stay in the Union. “While northern Republican newspapers complained that he brought dishonor to the nation and should be impeached, the New York Senator William Seward, soon to be Lincoln’s secretary of state, observed that what Buchanan espoused was that no state had a right to secede unless it wanted to and that the government must save the Union unless someone opposed it” (p. 128). In the months before Lincoln was inaugurated, Buchanan did absolutely nothing to halt the flow of various states that seceding right before his eyes. “In fact Buchanan’s failing during the crisis over the Union was not inactivity but rather his partiality for the South, a favoritism that bordered on disloyalty in a officer pledged to defend all the United States…In his betrayal of the national trust, Buchanan came closer to committing treason than any other president in American history” (p. 142).
The Democratic National Convention of 1860 split into three separate groups, none of them nominating Buchanan. After Lincoln’s inauguration and the dissolution of the Union, he retired to his home at Wheatlands but maintained a strictly pro-Union stance. Buchanan spent his last days trying to vindicate his presidency with an interesting and biased, yet unfinished autobiography. He died of pneumonia at the age of 77.
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