James Buchanan and Secession Winter

Hi all!

So I've been playing around with an idea that I might flesh out into a novel for National Novel Writing Month and I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

A while back, I read Harold Holzer's excellent book, Lincoln: President Elect which is about Lincoln's role in Secession Winter (the time before Lincoln was President when the southern states seceded) which got me thinking about then-President James Buchanan's unwillingness in those months from the election to the inauguration to intervene to stop the southern states from seceding. I couldn't help but believe that Andrew Jackson would probably have called in the Army (or at least threatened to do so) to prevent any secession from occurring.

So here's my point of departure: What if James Buchanan had threatened to send in the Army when South Carolina seceded? What would have turned out differently? Does the war go more or less the same but a few months sooner? Does South Carolina still secede but with far less support? How does Lincoln react?

Appreciate your thoughts.
 
Hi all!

So I've been playing around with an idea that I might flesh out into a novel for National Novel Writing Month and I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

A while back, I read Harold Holzer's excellent book, Lincoln: President Elect which is about Lincoln's role in Secession Winter (the time before Lincoln was President when the southern states seceded) which got me thinking about then-President James Buchanan's unwillingness in those months from the election to the inauguration to intervene to stop the southern states from seceding. I couldn't help but believe that Andrew Jackson would probably have called in the Army (or at least threatened to do so) to prevent any secession from occurring.

So here's my point of departure: What if James Buchanan had threatened to send in the Army when South Carolina seceded? What would have turned out differently? Does the war go more or less the same but a few months sooner? Does South Carolina still secede but with far less support? How does Lincoln react?

Appreciate your thoughts.
Even assuming that we completely change Buchanan's personality so that he doesn't bend over backwards to give the slave states everything they want, threatening military force when there was no precedent to say that secession was illegal was a recipe for disaster. That's why Lincoln adopted the strategy that he went with on Fort Sumter; resupplying it without taking offensive action forced the CSA's hand. If Buchanan sends in the troops, the North is the clear aggressor taking illegal military action, and the probability that the CSA gets Franco-British recognition spikes.
 
Even assuming that we completely change Buchanan's personality so that he doesn't bend over backwards to give the slave states everything they want, threatening military force when there was no precedent to say that secession was illegal was a recipe for disaster. That's why Lincoln adopted the strategy that he went with on Fort Sumter; resupplying it without taking offensive action forced the CSA's hand. If Buchanan sends in the troops, the North is the clear aggressor taking illegal military action, and the probability that the CSA gets Franco-British recognition spikes.

(1) It is absolutely not true to say that "there was no precedent to say that secession was illegal." Jackson's "Proclamation on Nullification" explicitly rejected the legality of secession as well as nullification. "Secession, like any other revolutionary act, may be morally justified by the extremity of oppression; but to call it a constitutional right, is confounding the meaning of terms, and can only be done through gross error, or to deceive those who are willing to assert a right, but would pause before they made a revolution, or incur the penalties consequent upon a failure

Because the Union was formed by compact, it is said the parties to that compact may, when they feel themselves aggrieved, depart from it; but it is precisely because it is a compact that they cannot...

Men of the best intentions and soundest views may differ in their construction of some parts of the Constitution, but there are others on which dispassionate reflection can leave no doubt. Of this nature appears to be the assumed right of secession. It rests, as we have seen, on the alleged undivided sovereignty of the States, and on their having formed in this sovereign capacity a compact which is called the Constitution, from which, because they made it, they have the right to secede. Both of these positions are erroneous..."
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/jack01.asp

(2) It does seem strange that Buchanan should say that although secession was illegal, there was no power to coerce the seceded states to rejoin the Union. Here I would just like to recycle an old soc.history.what-if post of mine (my apologies for any links in that post which may no longer work):

***

In fairness, Buchanan in the same speech where he said that the federal
government could not force states to remain in the Union (even though he
not only averred that secession was illegal but IMO gave the best single
argument ever made against its legality [1]) did say that the federal
government had the duty to enforce the laws. This puzzling distinction
between "coercion of states" and "enforcement of the laws" was widespread
at the time--Republicans as well as Democrats used it. "Coercion" meant
marching an army into the South to compel the states to rescind their
ordinances of secession, return their Representatives and Senators to
Congress, haul down their flags, etc.; "enforcement of the laws" meant the
US government holding its own forts and other property and collecting the
tariffs. Furthermore, it was held that enforcement of the laws did not
mean using force against states, because federal laws acted upon
individuals (however numerous, and even if they included the governor, the
state legislators, etc.) not states.

For an example of a Republican using the same distinction, see Senator
Lyman Trumbull:

"This phrase, 'coerce a state,' is a phrase calculated to mislead the
public mind...Nobody proposes to declare war against a State. That would
admit at once that the State was out of the Union--a foreign Government.
Of course, we cannot declare war against a State. Nobody proposes to
coerce a State or to convict a State of treason. You cannot arraign a
State for trial; you cannot convict it or punish it; but you can punish
individuals...The Government has the power to coerce and to punish
individuals who violate its laws."
http://www.constitution.org/cmt/mclaughlin/chus.htm

So Buchanan here is at worst guilty of a sophistry--if that is what it
was--[2] shared by Northern Democrats and Republicans alike (and by some
Southerners; Senator Andrew Johnson of Tennessee made remarks to the same
effect). Of course, the Republicans didn't see it that way because they
viewed his words in the context of four years of a blatantly pro-Southern
administration--and also in the context of the rest of the speech, where
Buchanan put the whole blame for the development of sectional conflict on
the North for its agitation of the slavery question.

(Though I think Buchanan was clear enough, I must acknowledge that some
distinguished scholars disagree. Andrew McLaughlin in his *Constitutional
History of the United States* writes "If, as has been asserted, President
Buchanan made a distinction between coercing states and enforcing the
execution of the laws on persons, he succeeded in clothing his utterances
with obscurity." http://www.constitution.org/cmt/mclaughlin/chus.htm)

[1] "In that mighty struggle between the first intellects of this or any
other country, it never occurred to any individual, either among its
opponents or advocates, to assert or even to intimate that their efforts
were all vain labor, because the moment that any state felt herself
aggrieved she might secede from the Union. What a crushing argument would
this have proved against those who dreaded that the rights of the states
would be endangered by the Constitution!"
http://www.britannica.com/presidents/article-9398250 Indeed, if it had
been assumed at the time of the ratification of the Constitution that
there was a right to secede at will, the vehemence of the opposition to
the new document by the Antifederalists is utterly inexplicable.

[2] The distinction certainly looks like maddening hairsplitting to us
today, and seemed that way to most Southerners at the time. As Kenneth
Stampp wrote in *And the War Came,* it was not much comfort for
secessionists that the Yankee bayonet was a symbol, not of Coercion, but
of Law. Yet the distinction between the federal government acting on
states as such or on individuals did have firm roots in the intentions of
the Framers of the Constitution:

"Soon after the Convention adjourned Madison wrote to Jefferson: 'It was
generally agreed that the objects of the Union could not be secured by any
system founded on the principle of a confederation of Sovereign States. A
voluntary observance of the federal law by all the members could never be
hoped for. A compulsive one could evidently never be reduced to practice,
and if it could, involved equal calamities to the innocent & the guilty,
the necessity of a military force both obnoxious & dangerous, and in
general a scene resembling much more a civil war than the administration
of a regular Government. Hence was embraced the alternative of a
Government which instead of operating, on the States, should operate
without their intervention on the individuals composing them; and hence
the change in the principle and proportion of representation.' October 24,
1787. Madison, Writings (Gaillard Hunt, ed.), V, p. 19. Ellsworth,
addressing the Connecticut convention, said: 'Hence we see how necessary
for the Union is a coercive principle. No man pretends the contrary: we
all see and feel this necessity. The only question is, Shall it be a
coercion of law, or a coercion of arms? [Hamilton had used the same
expression in the Convention at Philadelphia, June 18] ... I am for
coercion by law--that coercion which acts only upon delinquent
individuals." Elliot, Debates, II, p. 197."
http://www.constitution.org/cmt/mclaughlin/chus.htm

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