Suppose James Buchanan had died in 1855 while serving as ambassador to Great Britain. With Buchanan’s death, Stephen Douglas wins the Democratic nomination for President of the United States and goes on to win the election of 1856. What would a Douglas presidency look like? Would Douglas be able to avert the Civil War? Would Douglas be able to win a second term in 1860?
(1) I am not so certain that Douglas would have been nominated if Buchanan had not been available. Many of the delegates to the convention liked Buchanan precisely because he had been out of the country at the time of the Kansas-Nebraska controversy. To be sure, the Democrats knew that they would have to defend the Kansas-Nebraska Act; but many northern Democrats still did not want someone as closely associated with it as Douglas to be the nominee, while many southerners were suspicious of Douglas because of his association with "squatter sovereignty." (The party's platform merely denounced *Congressional* interference with slavery in the territories, and was ambiguous about whether the territories themselves had a right to exclude slavery before they were ready for statehood, but Douglas was thought to be in favor of such a right. The Kansas-Nebraska Act itself had been ambiguous on this issue, saying bascially that the people of the territories could exercise powers consistent with the US Constitution, which begged the question of whether the Constitution allowed the territories to exclude slavery.) True, the chief alternative to Buchanan and Douglas in OTL, President Pierce, had little support outside the South after the violence in Kansas. But in the absence of Buchanan, delegates might turn to someone else to stop Douglas and Pierce--maybe New York's former governor Horatio Seymour. Or it might be another candidate--as 1844 and 1852 show, the Democrats had a way of coming up with "dark horses."
(2) It is also not clear to me that Douglas if nominated would have won. Buchanan's reputation as an experienced and conservative "elder statesman" probably got him the votes of some old-line Whigs who might otherwise have voted for Fillmore. Such voters would be more suspicious of Douglas, who had a reputation for rashness.
Moreover, Buchanan was from the key state of Pennsylvania. Even so, he only barely got a majority of the vote there, and a non-Pennsylvanian candidate might have done substantially worse. True, even with less than a majority, a Democratic presidential candidate might have carried Pennsylvania easily enough as long as the opposition was divided between Fremont and Fillmore. But such a division was by no means certain. In OTL Republicans and Know Nothings did unite in Pennsylvania on for the state elections-and their fusion ticket only narrowly lost to the Democrats in October.
https://books.google.com/books?id=JyYWAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA252 If Buchanan had not been the Democratic presidential candidate, it is possible that the "Fusionists" would have won the October races, and this might have made pressure for a similar fusionist ticket in the next month's presidential elections (not only in Pennsylvania but in New Jersey as well) hard to resist. See my discussion at
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/msg/cdee93afcb44b801 and
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/msg/89d5b109b3dde6ea (Moreover, it is even convneivable that the boost in prestige given Fremont by an October fusionist victory in Pennsylvania might have changed the result in Illinois, even if there were no fusion there--at least that's the argument Alexander McClure makes at
https://books.google.com/books?id=JyYWAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA252.)
Finally, to complicate matters still more, is it sure the Republicans would have nominated Fremont if Buchanan were not in the race? They might try a more conservative candidate like McLean--sice the conservative vote might seem more winnable against Douglas..
(3) Let's assume that Douglas wins--and makes clear after his inauguration his support for truly free elections in Kansas, with the entire constitution being submitted to popular vote. Would that have fatally alienated the South and split the Demcoratic Party? If one can believe Kenneth Stampp *America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink* the answer is No. Stampp 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)
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."
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)
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 [as Douglas would presumably have done--DT]? This is a question no historian can answer. It is doubtful thata 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 Douglas *as president* had come out against Lecompton.)
Stampp does add a note of caution in his next paragaph, though:
"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 for 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.
All in all, if Douglas (or an alternate-Buchanan) had held firm to the position that the proposed constitution must be submitted to the people of Kansas, I doubt very much that any southern states (even South Carolina) would secede, and if they did, they would have much less support from the rest of the South than they would have in OTL in 1860-1. See Allan Nevins' judgment that "the last good chance of averting secession and civil strife [Stampp might add , "at least in 1861"] was perhaps lost in 1857."
http://www.americanheritage.com/content/needless-conflict?page=show
All this of course assumes that unlike Buchanan,a President Douglas *would* stand firm on submitting the Lecompton Constitution to the people of Kansas. Can we be quite sure of that? Without doubting the sincerity of Douglas' belief in "popular sovereignty", one must after all note that he took his OTL position as senator from Illinois--a state with a lot of people strongly opposed to slavery extension. If he had supported Lecompton, he would be sure to be defeated in 1858--even opposing it, he almost lost to Lincoln that year. By contrast, a *President* Douglas would be the leader of a largely southern party--one where he could hardly hope to get renominated without placating the South (especially due to the two-thirds rule) and where his election would primarily depend on southern states with just a few northern ones added. I'm not saying that this fact would necessarily change his position, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility.