No James Buchanan

James Buchanan was nominated by the Democratic Party in the 1856 Presidential election.
Suppose Buchanan was not nominated.
Who is the 1856 Democratic Presidential candidate?
 
Pierce had little support outside the South after the violence in Kansas. The obvious alternative was Douglas, but (1) northern Democrats, while they realized they would have to defend the Kansas-Nebraska Act, might still be reluctant to nominate someone as closely associated with it as Douglas, and (2) southern Democrats were worried by the association of Douglas with "squatter sovereignty." The Democrats were therefore likely to look for another candidate. Lewis Cass was too old. One possibility was former (and future) governor of New York Horatio Seymour (he took himself out of the running in OTL, but might not have done so if Buchanan was not in the race). Or it could have been someone else--as 1844 and 1852 show, the Democrats had a tendency to nominate "dark horse" candidates in that era.

Because he was such a failure as president, we tend to forget that Buchanan was in some ways the ideal candidate for the Democrats in 1856. He had been out of the country when the Kansas-Nebraska bill was passed; in contrast to the brash Douglas, he had the reputation of being a seasoned, experienced statesman and might therefore get the votes of conservative Old Line Whigs who might otherwise support Fillmore; and he was from the key state of Pennsylvania. It is hard to think of any other candidate with comparable advantages.
 

Deleted member 9338

What about Nathan Banks from the House. While he may not want to give up his Speaker position he was from New England.

This is assuming he stays a Democrat
 
What about Nathan Banks from the House. While he may not want to give up his Speaker position he was from New England.

This is assuming he stays a Democrat

Is he at least partial to slavery, because Southerners are going to be looking at that specifically.

One thing which this does beg the question on is whether or not no buchanan would split the Northern and southern wings of the democrat party earlier, leadcing to a Fremont Victory which would most likely lead to the civil war earlier.
 
What about Nathan Banks from the House. While he may not want to give up his Speaker position he was from New England.

This is assuming he stays a Democrat

He voted against Kansas-Nebraska, and was involved in a Free Soil-Democratic coalition in earlier years, and already served as the Know Nothing/Republican pick for Speaker. He'd long burned bridges with the Democrats and was a Republican by the 1856 election. Short of a POD several years back, I don't know if he'd stay with them.

If Pierce is renominated, we might get another kind of Democratic split, anti-Pierce ones who might either sit out the election, or tacitly back Fremont/Fillmore to spite the New Hampshire Doughface.
 
As in 1844, might not the party turn to a dark horse from Tennessee--Andrew Johnson? He had after all twice defeated Whig candidates for governor in a state that had not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1832. The one problem was Johnson's support of a homestead law which was seen by many southerners as favoring non-slaveholding farmers; otherwise Johnson was reliably pro-slavery as of 1856.
 
As in 1844, might not the party turn to a dark horse from Tennessee--Andrew Johnson? He had after all twice defeated Whig candidates for governor in a state that had not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1832. The one problem was Johnson's support of a homestead law which was seen by many southerners as favoring non-slaveholding farmers; otherwise Johnson was reliably pro-slavery as of 1856.

Johnson was a slaveholder himself wasn't he? That would hold off criticism, at least you'd think.

A Southern man has the problems of alienating both sides: Fellow Southerners want him to be loyal to their interests rather then that of the Union at large. Northerners would be more and more repulsed at the idea of a man bringing his slaves into the White House, and would be reluctant to vote someone who wasn't certainly a bonafide Unionist, which would make any states rights fanatic dead on arrival. I think if Johnson can win the nomination, a hard task in it's own right, and pair himself with a non-offensive VP, he has a very decent chance of winning.
 
I think if Johnson can win the nomination, a hard task in it's own right, and pair himself with a non-offensive VP, he has a very decent chance of winning.

I do believe Johnson was interested in the nomination IOTL, with no Buchanan he might just be able to pull it off.
 
As in 1844, might not the party turn to a dark horse from Tennessee--Andrew Johnson? He had after all twice defeated Whig candidates for governor in a state that had not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1832. The one problem was Johnson's support of a homestead law which was seen by many southerners as favoring non-slaveholding farmers; otherwise Johnson was reliably pro-slavery as of 1856.
Andrew Johnson is certainly possible I agree, and inevitably there would be some comparisons to Polk among the Democratic base whether justified or not. Looking thru the Proceedings of the Convention I think it is possible to identify some other dark-horse candidates from the vice-presidential nominations, though naturally that doesn't mean it would translate into support for the presidential nomination even among those who supported them for the former.
Naturally of course there is John Breckinridge who would be favorable to the Pierce-Douglas camp, but he may be considered too young and inexperienced to be put forward as a presidential nominee compared to a vice-presidential one. Were that the case they could potentially have gone instead with Linn Boyd whom Breckinridge also favored.

Congressman John Quitman of Mississippi at first seems reasonably strong considering he net delegate votes from Illinois and New York whilst carrying entire delegations in the South, but his radical fire-eater rhetoric would almost certainly do him in and prove politically untenable with the electorate of the battleground states, even while securing the South.

Ironically there is also some potential for Benjamin Butler, who at the time while being a Northerner was wholly supportive of the Compromise of '50 and would be supportive of Breckinridge during the '60 Presidential Election, so his politics and positions might have very well been tenable to the Northern and Southern delegations. That said, his only visible support came from Pennsylvania, he was known to have previously advocated working with Free Soilers in the Massachusetts legislature, and his only political experience was as a single-term state representative.

The New York Times of the period might have other names mentioned for the nomination as well.



 
Not necessarily--southerners remembered Zachary Taylor only too well...


But would they have seen Johnson as another Taylor? Taylor had been prepared to see the Mexican Cession (and presumably the Louisiana Purchase) become free states, while Johnson will presumably accept the Kansas-Nebraska Act as the Law of the land.

I'd have thought his problem would be the other way. Would he be seen as too proslavery to carry the crucial Northern States that elected Buchanan? His support for a Homestead Act would have helped, but would it have been enough, or would he have been liable to lose Pennsylvania?

OTOH, I suppose there is just the possibility that Johnson might have carried Maryland. If he does, then he could eke out a bare majority even without PA, provided he held on to the others.
 
But would they have seen Johnson as another Taylor? Taylor had been prepared to see the Mexican Cession (and presumably the Louisiana Purchase) become free states, while Johnson will presumably accept the Kansas-Nebraska Act as the Law of the land.

I'd have thought his problem would be the other way. Would he be seen as too proslavery to carry the crucial Northern States that elected Buchanan? His support for a Homestead Act would have helped, but would it have been enough, or would he have been liable to lose Pennsylvania?

OTOH, I suppose there is just the possibility that Johnson might have carried Maryland. If he does, then he could eke out a bare majority even without PA, provided he held on to the others.

My point about Taylor is simply that southerners by 1856 did not believe that being a slaveholder was proof of loyalty to the South. (Of course many of them had doubted Clay's soundness on the issue long before Taylor's presidency.) There was no cause to doubt Johnson on the territorial issue, but the repeal of the Missouri Compromise would not do the South much good if the territories were to be flooded with northerners and immigrants--as many southerners believed would happen if a homestead law were passed..

Admittedly, the homestead bill had not been a strict sectional issue--it was no Wilmot Proviso--but there were already tendencies in that direction even before the Kansas-Nebraska bill. In early 1854 the Dawson homestead bill was passed by the House 107-72. Apart from New England, the main opposition was from the South. "Among the fifty-one representatives from Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, only eight voted for the bill and thirty-six opposed it." https://books.google.com/books?id=JoLRT9cwjwwC&pg=PA79 And of course the stakes for the South became much higher after the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

As for whether Johnson would lose in the North because he was considered too pro-slavery, the same question would arise for any Democrat who had a chance of getting the nomination--though a bit less for Buchanan because of his having been out of the country during the Kansas-Nebraska controversy. Apart from that, I doubt that northern antislavery opinion would make much distinction between a Southerner and a "doughface." Plenty of northerners, after all, had voted for Clay and Taylor.
 
As in 1844, might not the party turn to a dark horse from Tennessee--Andrew Johnson? He had after all twice defeated Whig candidates for governor in a state that had not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1832. The one problem was Johnson's support of a homestead law which was seen by many southerners as favoring non-slaveholding farmers; otherwise Johnson was reliably pro-slavery as of 1856.

Didn't Johnson's hatred of Slavocrats, as a class, and championing the right of poor White Southerners make him seem to poisonous to the local powers that be in the South? Or was he not yet so outspoken on the matter in 1856?

If you want a Southerner, there's always Jefferson Davis;)

He'd need a hugely popular Northern Veep, and even then, you are probably talking President Fremont. OTOH, Fremont was actually a much worse politician than Davis.
 
Didn't Johnson's hatred of Slavocrats, as a class, and championing the right of poor White Southerners make him seem to poisonous to the local powers that be in the South? Or was he not yet so outspoken on the matter in 1856?

In 1856, while Johnson did portray himself as a champion of the yeoman, he definitely did not come across as anti-slavery. For example, he defended the "gag rule," supported the annexation of Texas, opposed the Wilmot Proviso, and supported the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In his 1855 campaign for re-election as governor, he boasted that he had "never cast a single vote upon any Southern question not up to the extremest standard of Southern rights." https://books.google.com/books?id=blkUcM2B3dgC&pg=PA78 Moreover, at the time he began to fight for homestead legislation, the South was by no means unanimous in opposition to such legislation, though by 1856 no doubt it had become much more of a slavery question than it had been previously.
 
Top