redlightning
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Find a way for US President James Buchanan to resolve peacefully the Secessionist Crisis by keeping the Union intact and prevent the conflict in the Civil War.
AHC: President James Buchanan Prevents the American Civil War
- Thread starter redlightning
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He did care. Unfortunately the only solution he could think of was appeasement of the South, and by 1860 the North had got fed up with doing that.
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Allan Nevins has argued that "the last good chance of averting secession and civil strife was perhaps lost in 1857" with Buchanan's yielding to southern pressure on Lecompton. https://web.archive.org/web/2008060...om/articles/magazine/ah/1956/5/1956_5_4.shtml It is certainly true that after Buchanan's unsuccessful attempt to ram admission of Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution through Congress, the Democrats were hopelessly split, and a Republican victory in 1860 was very likely--which meant that secession of at least the Deep South was very likely. It can be argued that for Buchanan to have insisted on the submission of the Lecompton Constitution to the voters of Kansas would have been just as fatal to party unity because it would have alienated southern Democrats as much as his OTL policy did northern ones. However, as I noted in an old soc.history.what-if post, Kenneth Stampp argued to the contrary in his book on 1857:
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https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/LRuzFWfhRic/HMFfkVWv7HsJ
Kenneth M. Stampp in *America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink* (all quotes in
this post are from that book, unless otherwise indicated) argues that before
the Buchanan administration made its support for Lecompton clear, Southern
opinion was by no means unanimous on the matter. Yes, there were threats
that if Lecompton were defeated because of failure to submit the entire
constitution for ratification, the Union would be in danger, but:
"Nevertheless, Southerners, in their reaction to the Lecompton constitution,
as in their reaction to the Kansas territorial election, were not nearly as
united as Northerners. Some doubted that the fate of the South depended upon
the future of slavery in Kansas; others had no taste for the tactics of the
Lecompton convention. Whig Congressman John A. Gilmer of North Carolina
believed that slavery would have only a brief and feeble life in Kansas in
any case; and Governor Thomas Bragg opposed any drastic measures if the
constitution should be rejected. Governor Wise of Virginia, in a public
letter to the *Enquirer,* took issue with Senator Hunter and called on
Congress to demand a vote on the Lecompton constitution before admitting
Kansas to statehood.
"The southern press also had its prominent dissenters. In support of Wise,
the Richmond *Enquirer* asked whether it was 'in accordance with Democratic
principles that the will of a minority should control . . . Can it be claimed
that a Constitution expresses the wishes and opinion of *the people* of
Kansas, when there are thousands of those people who have never voted even
for the men who framed it?' In the Deep South the New Orleans *Picayune*
conceded that the free-state party had a commanding majority and argued that
southern interests could not be advanced by 'continuing to urge a lost
cause.' To attempt to protect slavery 'by artifice, or fraud, or denial of
popular rights' would be 'a grave blunder in policy, and a fatal error in
principle.' If Kansas were lost to the South, 'let us at least preserve
dignity and honor to the end.' The Louisville *Democrat*, showing no sympathy
for the many proslavery Kentuckians in the Lecompton convention, could think
of no reason for refusing to submit the constitution other than a fear that
the people would reject it. 'The policy proposed is a most infallible way to
make Kansas . . . not only a free State, but a violent anti-slavery State--a
shrieking State after the model of Massachusetts. Such a policy would fill
the Black Republicans with ecstacy.'" (pp. 280-281)
It was only *after* Buchanan made it clear that he was backing Lecompton
(through editorials in the administration organ, the Washington *Union*) that
"most southern critics of the Lecompton convention fell into line and agreed
that the slavery issue had been fairly presented to the Kansas voters." For
the Richmond *Enquirer* the switch was obviously painful; it said that it
still believed that it would have been better to submit the entire
constitution for ratification, but it urged critics of Lecompton to accept
the President's policy in order to avoid "a renewal of civil strife in
Kansas, and increasing the bitterness of the sectional conflict."
Note by the way that in 1857 Douglas was not the great bugbear of the
southern Democrats. When he argued after *Dred Scott* that the people of the
territories could still in practice keep slavery out by failing to pass laws
to protect it, there was (contrary to popular belief, which, as so often,
reads *later* sentiments back into an earlier time) actually more praise for
that stance from the South than condemnation. Jefferson Davis after all said
the same thing:
"If the inhabitants of any Territory should refuse to enact such laws and
police regulations as would give security to their property . . . it would be
rendered more or less valueless. . . In the case of property in the labor of
man . . . the insecurity would be so great that the owner could not
ordinarily retain it . . . The owner would be practically debarred . . . from
taking slave property into a Territory. . . . So much for the oft-repeated
fallacy of forcing slavery upon any community . . ." (Quoted in Avery
Craven, *The Coming of the Civil War*, Phoenix Book edition 1966, p. 395)
It was only after Douglas broke with Buchanan on Lecompton that Southerners
became violently opposed to him (and suddenly discovered that his "Freeport
Doctrine," which he had actually expressed long before the debates with
Lincoln, was heretical.) If Buchanan had come out against Lecompton,
Douglas's opposition would attract no special notice; virtually all Northern
Democrats and a considerable number of Southerners would after all follow
Buchanan in that event. In that case, Douglas would still not be the first
choice of most southern Democrats for the Presidency, but his nomination
would probably not be considered so bad as to be sufficient cause for
splitting the Democratic party by any but the most extreme Southerners.
Conversely, he would not be such a hero to *northern* Democrats, and as in
1856 many of them might eschew him in 1860 for a less controversial
candidate.
As of 1857, the Democratic party was in reasonably good shape in the North.
In two states which Fremont had carried in 1856--Wisconsin and Ohio--it came
very close to winning the gubernatorial races. In Pennsylvania, the Democrat
William F. Packer easily defeated Republican David Wilmot for governor. I
don't think there is any doubt that Lecompton and the Buchanan-Douglas split
helped pave the way for the Democratic defeats of 1858 and 1860 and therefore
for the ACW. This is not just retrospective wisdom, btw. Many people saw it
at the time. At the end of 1857 the Louisville *Democrat* argued that "The
South never made a worse move" and that "A blunder, it is said, is worse than
a crime; but this is both a blunder and a crime. . . It is calculated to
break down the only national party in one section of the Union. A contest
for President purely sectional will be the result, and we know how that will
end; and then the object of the disunionists will be near its
accomplishment." (p. 330)
Stampp concludes (p. 330):
"Could all of this have been avoided--would the course of the sectional
controversy have been significantly altered--if Buchanan had remained true to
his pledge and demanded the submission of the whole Lecompton constitution to
the voters of Kansas? This is a question no historian can answer. It is
doubtful that a firm stand by Buchanan would have resulted in southern
secession, because the provocation would not have been sufficient to unite
even the Deep South behind so drastic a response. Nor would it have been
sufficient to produce a major split in the national Democratic party.
Accordingly, without a divided and demoralized national Democracy, Republican
success in the elections of 1858 and 1860 would have been a good deal more
problematic." (Stampp might have added that Buchanan's policies helped the
Republicans not only by splitting the Democratic party but by making Seward's
and Lincoln's allegations of a conspiracy to nationalize slavery seem a lot
more plausible. Indeed, I am not certain that the "Irrepressible Conflict"
and "House Divided" speeches would even have been made if Buchanan had come
out against Lecompton.)
Thus far Stampp's conclusion seems similar to Nevins' [1] but the next
paragraph (pp. 330-1) introduces a note of caution:
"Yet, contrary to the optimists of 1857, removing the Kansas question from
national politics, although eliminating a serious irritant, would not have
assured a lasting settlement of the sectional conflict. The possibilities fo
other crises over slavery were far too numerous. Sooner or later, any one of
them, like Lecompton, might have disrupted the Democratic party" and as in
1860 led to the election of a "Black" Republican and subsequent secession.
True enough, but who knows? If the Republicans had lost in 1860 and whatever
Democrat won that year avoided anything to unnecessarily agitate the slavery
issue, it is possible that by 1864 or 1868 or whenever the Republicans
finally would get in control of the White House. they would have become so
much more conservative that their victory would not have been considered
sufficient cause for secession, even in the Deep South.
[1] One respect in which Stampp differs from Nevins: he rejects the idea
that Buchanan was controlled by a southern cabal. "The conclusion seems
warranted that Buchanan's policy, while pleasing to most Southerners, was
nevertheless *his* policy, not one forced upon him by others." (p. 285) And
one also cannot say that Buchanan's Lecompton decision was a sign of
Buchanan's inability to resist pressure; after all, there was plenty of
pressure on him by *northern* Democrats to stand by his commitment to full
submission of the constitution to the Kansas voters. (p. 284)
BTW, for an argument that James Buchanan's greatest blunder during the "secession winter" was not being too passive but on the contrary (for a few crucial days) too activist, see
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/05/james-buchanans-activist-blunder/
POD: Buchanan unequivocally orders Anderson, "We've got an informal truce, stay put at Moultrie unless actually fired on, no matter how much danger you think you're in." Anderson and his men remain at Moultrie instead of escaping to Sumter, and there is no "Star of the West" incident.
What then? Freehling argues:
"But the question remains: Wouldn't the six other Lower South states have joined South Carolina in January in any case, even if Buchanan had prolonged his December stall on military intervention? Probably. In Florida and Mississippi, the military excitements could have only fattened the secessionists already huge majorities. But elsewhere, the aftermath of Buchanan's Star of the West decision just may have deflected the verdict. Especially in closely contested Georgia and Louisiana, public uproars may
have boosted the secessionists to their razor-thin victories.
"The history that did not happen must remain uncertain. But the history that did happen clarifies why secessionism survived its early southern doubters..."
(Personally, I doubt that the defeat of the immediate secessionists in Georgia and Louisiana would make that much difference. Even if the immediate secessionists had narrowly lost they would still be a majority when combined with those who would insist on secession unless the North made concessions it was very unlikely to make. So the difference between the immediate secessionists and the so-called cooperationists would probably just be the difference between Secession Now and Secession Later.)
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/05/james-buchanans-activist-blunder/
POD: Buchanan unequivocally orders Anderson, "We've got an informal truce, stay put at Moultrie unless actually fired on, no matter how much danger you think you're in." Anderson and his men remain at Moultrie instead of escaping to Sumter, and there is no "Star of the West" incident.
What then? Freehling argues:
"But the question remains: Wouldn't the six other Lower South states have joined South Carolina in January in any case, even if Buchanan had prolonged his December stall on military intervention? Probably. In Florida and Mississippi, the military excitements could have only fattened the secessionists already huge majorities. But elsewhere, the aftermath of Buchanan's Star of the West decision just may have deflected the verdict. Especially in closely contested Georgia and Louisiana, public uproars may
have boosted the secessionists to their razor-thin victories.
"The history that did not happen must remain uncertain. But the history that did happen clarifies why secessionism survived its early southern doubters..."
(Personally, I doubt that the defeat of the immediate secessionists in Georgia and Louisiana would make that much difference. Even if the immediate secessionists had narrowly lost they would still be a majority when combined with those who would insist on secession unless the North made concessions it was very unlikely to make. So the difference between the immediate secessionists and the so-called cooperationists would probably just be the difference between Secession Now and Secession Later.)