While I doubt it would be possible to make
Buchanan loved he would @ least not be so
poorly regarded as he is now IOTL if he had avoided making these two great mistakes:
1- Teaming up with SCOTUS Associate Justice John Catron to pursuade fellow
Justice Cooper Grier to join Chief Justice
Taney's holding in the DRED SCOTT case that
Congress had no power to ban slavery in the
territories. The decision was revilied in the
North & because Buchanan had stated in his
inaugural that the court was about to decide
whether territories could be slave or not, it
was soon charged by many that Buchanan &
Taney had plotted together to come up with
this holding. False of course but Buchanan
had meddled in the SCOTUS' affairs.
2- Backing the proposed pro-slavery Lecompton constitution for Kansas, even
though it had been drawn up by a small minority who did not even give the majority of Kansas' citizens(who were anti-slavery)an opportunity to vote on it.
But for Buchanan to act differently would
mean he wasn't the James Buchanan of our
time line- pro-southern in his sympathies to
begin with, & in any case, quickly terrified
by the snarls of southern secessionists- but
someone quite different. Which is why I have
to conclude making Buchanan a president
who could have been ranked with the greats
is strictly ASB.