Buchanan - Any chance?

So James Buchanan is not well received by historians, last or among them when it comes to ranking the Presidents.

My question is whether not not he could have not screwed up so badly and maybe moved a few rungs up from bottom of the dogpile.

Any ideas? POD whenever during his Presidency.
 
My question is whether not not he could have not screwed up so badly and maybe moved a few rungs up from bottom of the dogpile.

Any ideas? POD whenever during his Presidency.

Maybe if Buchanan was able to secure an Alaska purchase during his presidency he could at least be appreciated for that. Otherwise no, virtually everything about his personality and his political views made him the absolute wrong person at the wrong time in American history. He was pro-slavery and ideologically against any action that would force the South to stand down from secession.
 
He had the misfortune of being Pro-South as the South made it's move. It isn't as if he was any more slavish (pun intended) then Pierce but he came at the end, when the moral bankruptcy was laid bare AND when history is paying attention.
 
He could have been a great President had he stood against slavery and secession. But that's just not who Buchanan was, quite the opposite in fact.
 
not exactly what the op wanted, but depending on one's political beliefs about half of the country would consider each of the last 2 presidents to be the worst ever.
 
President Buchanan's Proposed Intervention in Mexico by Howard Lafayette Wilson, The American Historical Review Vol. 5, No. 4 (Jul., 1900), pp. 687-701

Have the Kansas-Nebraska Act die in Congress in 1854, significantly reducing domestic tensions in the long run and Buchanan can then spend his term(s) adding Mexico to the Union.
 
IMO, for Buchanan to prevent secession, 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? [1] 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 ecstasy.'" (pp. 280-281) https://books.google.com/books?id=Q5WF8NCK9YYC&pg=PA280

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." https://books.google.com/books?id=Q5WF8NCK9YYC&pg=PA280

Note by the way that in 1857 Douglas was not yet 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 Douglas' 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." https://books.google.com/books?id=Q5WF8NCK9YYC&pg=PA330 (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' [2] 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] "The well-informed Washington correspondent of the New Orleans Picayune a little later told just how aggressively the Chief Executive was bludgeoned into submission: 'The President was informed in November, 1857, that the States of Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina, and perhaps others, would hold conventions and secede from the Union if the Lecompton Constitution, which established slavery, should not be accepted by Congress'...The same view was taken yet more emphatically by Douglas. He had inside information in 1857, he later told the Senate, that four states were threatening Buchanan with secession. Had that threat been met in the right Jacksonian spirit, had the bluff been called—for the four states were unprepared for secession and war—the leaders of the movement would have been utterly discredited. .." http://www.americanheritage.com/content/needless-conflict

[2] 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)
 
Is there any way in 1860 and 1861 that the Buchanan admin can work with Lincoln more?

I do not think that there was a succession plan or planning between administrations. Maybe Buchanan can be the first to actively work with the next admin.
 
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.

And if the South still secedes in the alt 1864 or worse(from its point of view) 1868 it is likely to be stomped into the dirt. Time was not on the side of the South. Each year that passed made it worse and worse for the South. It might even prevent the war altogether no matter how "radical" the President-elect is. Eventually the war is clearly suicide. This is one reason the Fire Eaters pushed hard in 1860, they knew it was now or never.
 
He wasn't even a southerner, so what excuse did he have to defend slavery?

Ideological sympathy for states' rights and a racist belief that slavery as an institution was beneficial for African-Americans. Most notably he was thrilled with the Dredd Scott decision and personally lobbied for SCOUTS to make it as broad as possible so the issue could be settled once and for all in favor of the South.
 
He was rumored to be gay, and to have had an affair with a slaveholder at some point. Otherwise, he was what they called a doughface.

IMO Buchanan was probably asexual and simply preferred the company of King due to a deep and emotionally intimate friendship (think J. Edgar Hoover). That said, a great POD for history would be if an intimate letter between the two was exposed during the election of 1856 (OTL Buchanan's adopted daughter burned their correspondence after his death) and that gave the election to Fremont. Buchanan would be remembered far more sympathetically today notwithstanding his political views.
 
IMO Buchanan was probably asexual and simply preferred the company of King due to a deep and emotionally intimate friendship (think J. Edgar Hoover). That said, a great POD for history would be if an intimate letter between the two was exposed during the election of 1856 (OTL Buchanan's adopted daughter burned their correspondence after his death) and that gave the election to Fremont. Buchanan would be remembered far more sympathetically today notwithstanding his political views.

Obscurity is better than ignominy, sure.
 
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