AHC: James Buchanan Peacefully Resolves the Secessionist Crisis

How can President Buchanan prevent the Secessionist Crisis and ultimately the American Civil War?

He probably can't. It was getting very late in the day. But a few things which might help.

a) Don't try to force through the Lecompton Constitution

b) Put a bigger guard on the arsenal at Harper's Ferry - or move it somewhere else.

c) Don't veto Andrew Johnson's Homestead Bill.

These things don't guarantee it, but at least improve the chances. (a) and (c) give the Democrats a better chance (though by no means a certainty) of winning in 1860, while (b), by aborting the John Brown raid, might leave the South that little bit less hysterical.
 
He probably can't. It was getting very late in the day. But a few things which might help.

a) Don't try to force through the Lecompton Constitution

Definitely.

b) Put a bigger guard on the arsenal at Harper's Ferry - or move it somewhere else.

The idea is to avert John Brown's raid, but that might be better worked in other ways. The utter unreality of Brown's plan suggests it would be hard to stop him from trying.

c) Don't veto Andrew Johnson's Homestead Bill.

Sounds good.

Other things:
  • Don't incite Taney to issue the Dred Scott decision.
  • Support Stephen Douglas for the Democrat nomination in 1860.
IMO the secession crisis was a near-run thing: everything had to break right for the secessionists to overcome the natural resistance of the South.

If secession doesn't happen in 1860... A Republican probably wins in 1864, but a lot of the fever may have burned out by then.
 
The idea is to avert John Brown's raidu, but that might be better worked in other ways. The utter unreality of Brown's plan suggests it would be hard to stop him from trying.

Any thoughts about where else he might try? Iirc St Louis also had a federal arsenal, but that's way ot west, so might not make the same impact as an attack on Virginia.
Don't incite Taney to issue the Dred Scott decision.

Doubt if it would help. Taney was eager to "settle" the slavery question in the Territories, and needed little encouragement.

Support Stephen Douglas for the Democrat nomination in 1860.

Probably follos n from not supporting Lecompton. Iirc that was what they mostly split over.
 
The idea is to avert John Brown's raid, but that might be better worked in other ways. The utter unreality of Brown's plan suggests it would be hard to stop him from trying.

Any thoughts about where else he might try? Iirc St Louis also had a federal arsenal, but might be too far out west to have the same impact as an attack on Virginia.

Don't incite Taney to issue the Dred Scott decision.
Fro what I can gather he needed little inciting.

Support Stephen Douglas for the Democrat nomination in 1860.

That follows on from not supporting Lecompton, which iirc was the main cause of the split.
 
How can President Buchanan prevent the Secessionist Crisis and ultimately the American Civil War?

Well, he couldn't have prevented it in 1860. You have to go back to 1857 and ask what if he had insisted on the submission of the Lecompton Constitution to the people of Kansas? FWIW, Allen Nevins argued that "the last good chance of averting secession and civil strife was perhaps lost in 1857." http://www.americanheritage.com/content/needless-conflict

Was Nevins too optimistic in thinking that the Deep South states that threatened secession over Lecompton were bluffing? He has some support in Kenneth M. Stampp. 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 much 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) Davis later unconvincingly tried to downplay the similarity of what he had said to Dogulas's position. https://books.google.com/books?id=cmYXZNPwkF0C&pg=PA138

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)

(One should note however that even without the split caused by Lecompton, the Democrats would face problems in North in the 1858 elections because of the Panic of 1857, whose economic effects really hit hard in 1858. But maybe that damage would only be temporary if the party had not split over slavery expansion.)

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 of 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)
 
Fro what I can gather he needed little inciting.
From what I recall from when we covered that in my SCOTUS class that was in fact the case. Taney originally intended to issue a limited ruling but was pushed into issuing the massively expansive, and mostly dictum, OTL ruling after reading McLean's draft dissent. McLean's dissent was such an aggressive and outspoken attack on the majority was in part to boost his political prospects.
 
Was Nevins too optimistic in thinking that the Deep South states that threatened secession over Lecompton were bluffing?

This sentence glosses over some important points.

First, how would a "state" threaten secession? By a proclamation of its governor, or a resolution of its legislature. I would be astonished to learn that any governor or legislature ever issued an explicit and official statement of that nature.

Second, as noted, many Southerners were opposed to forcing the Lecompton constitution on Kansas, which in any case was an issue remote from the actual interests of any slave state except Missouri. Threatening secession on such an issue would be seen as a crazy attempt at extortion for nothing important.

Note by the way that in 1857 Douglas was not the great bugbear of the southern Democrats... 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).
Shelby Foote wrote otherwise, but he was often superficial and conventional, to the detriment of accuracy.

"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."

One question not addressed: how would the reapportionment of 1860 affect the electoral map? In 1860, there were 183 electoral votes in free states, and only 120 in slave states; after the reapportionment, and Kansas statehood, that would be 196 to 115. The Republicans could drop 40 free state EV and still win - a plausible outcome even with no Democrat split.
 
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One question not addressed: how would the reapportionment of 1860 affect the electoral map? In 1860, there were 183 electoral votes in free states, and only 120 in slave states; after the reapportionment, and Kansas statehood, that would be 196 to 115. The Republicans could drop 40 free state EV and still win - a plausible outcome even with no Democrat split.

A lot could depend on what happens in New York.

It had a very curious electoral history. In 1856 Fremont took it by about 80,000 votes, but in 1860 Lincoln's majority there was only about 50,000. Then in 1864 Lincoln edges out McClellan by about 7,000 votes (less than one percentage point) and in 1868 Grant loses it to Seymour by about 10,000.

The Republicans win comfortably in 1872, but thereafter it settles down as a "swing" state, going Democratic three times, Republican twice, until the realignment of 1896.

Any idea what was going on here, or how the absence or delay of the ACW might affect it? After all, some at least of the North's additional electors will go to NY, and if the Republicans can no longer count on it their chances are poor.
 
A lot could depend on what happens in New York.

It had a very curious electoral history. In 1856 Fremont took it by about 80,000 votes, but in 1860 Lincoln's majority there was only about 50,000. Then in 1864 Lincoln edges out McClellan by about 7,000 votes (less than one percentage point) and in 1868 Grant loses it to Seymour by about 10,000.

NEW YORK results
------- Democrat ---- Know-Nothing -- Republican
----------------- % -------------- % --------------- %
1856 195,878 32.8 -- 124,604 20.9 --- 276,004 46.3
1860 312,510 46.3 --------------------- 362,646 53.7
1864 361,986 49.5 --------------------- 368,735 50.5
1868 429,883 50.6 --------------------- 419,888 49.4

Maybe there was a lot of Irish immigration. Plus in 1868, Seymour had the home-state advantage.

After all, some at least of the North's additional electors will go to NY...

Nope. NY lost two House seats after 1860.
 
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Does the Kansas-Nebraska Act fit into any of this?

Not really. It was passed nearly three years before Buchanan's inauguration. That was down to Franklin Pierce, the great ninny.

Actually, it might have stood less chance of passage under Buchanan, who regarded Popular Sovereignty as bad law. Also in one of his more perceptive moments he predicted that it would lead to pro- and anti-slavery people rushing in and going for each other hammer and tongs.
 
A lot could depend on what happens in New York.

It had a very curious electoral history. In 1856 Fremont took it by about 80,000 votes, but in 1860 Lincoln's majority there was only about 50,000. Then in 1864 Lincoln edges out McClellan by about 7,000 votes (less than one percentage point) and in 1868 Grant loses it to Seymour by about 10,000.

The Republicans win comfortably in 1872, but thereafter it settles down as a "swing" state, going Democratic three times, Republican twice, until the realignment of 1896.

Any idea what was going on here, or how the absence or delay of the ACW might affect it?

I think the difference between 1856 and 1860 can be explained pretty easily. In 1856, there was a three-way race. In 1860, Lincoln was opposed by a fusion ticket, which included Bell as well as Douglas and Breckinridge electors. Not surprisingly, some conservative Whigs who had voted for Fillmore in 1856 supported the fusion ticker in 1860--though others voted for Lincoln. As for 1864 and 1868, many New Yorkers who opposed slavery expansion in 1856-60 were not keen on a war whose end did not seem to be in sight (to some people even after Atlanta) or conscription or arbitrary arrests or immediate emancipation or (by 1868) Reconstruction involving African American suffrage. Also in 1868 and 1876 the Democratic candidate was a New York governor; of course Greeley too was from New York, but not exactly beloved by many New York Democrats (or for that matter some Liberal Republicans). *Southern* Democrats swallowed their reservations about Greeley fairly easily; ending Reconstruction took precedence over everything. For Northern Democrats, memories of their disagreements with Greeley (and for that matter current disagreements on issues like protectionism) were harder to overcome....
 
I think the difference between 1856 and 1860 can be explained pretty easily. In 1856, there was a three-way race. In 1860, Lincoln was opposed by a fusion ticket, which included Bell as well as Douglas and Breckinridge electors. Not surprisingly, some conservative Whigs who had voted for Fillmore in 1856 supported the fusion ticker in 1860--though others voted for Lincoln. As for 1864 and 1868, many New Yorkers who opposed slavery expansion in 1856-60 were not keen on a war whose end did not seem to be in sight (to some people even after Atlanta) or conscription or arbitrary arrests or immediate emancipation or (by 1868) Reconstruction involving African American suffrage. Also in 1868 and 1876 the Democratic candidate was a New York governor; of course Greeley too was from New York, but not exactly beloved by many New York Democrats (or for that matter some Liberal Republicans). *Southern* Democrats swallowed their reservations about Greeley fairly easily; ending Reconstruction took precedence over everything. For Northern Democrats, memories of their disagreements with Greeley (and for that matter current disagreements on issues like protectionism) were harder to overcome....


All in all, it sounds as if there were quite a few New Yorkers who were firmly against slavery expansion, but otherwise reasonably happy with the Democrats.

So if the Democrats had been able to weather 1860 - by however small a margin - things might have looked up for them, as the failure of Lecompton pretty well shut the door on further expansion. New Mexico might conceivably have been admitted as a nominal slave state, but was unlikely ever to have more than a handful of slaves, and probably wouldn't keep the institution long. So short of annexing Cuba (to which there were formidable obstacles) it was effectively game over.

Also istr that Buchanan's veto of the 1860 Homestead Bill came close to being overridden, being sustained only by a narrow margin in the Senate. Since Republican gains in State Legislatures promised several more Republican Senators in the next Congress, a similar veto in 1861 by, say, President Breckenridge would very likely have been overridden. So that's two issues out of the way. Obviously this doesn't mean the Republicans will never get in, but suggests that they might have to wait a while.
 
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