WI: Justice James Buchanan

So James Buchanan is generally considered the worst president in American history, and not without reason. However, in 1844, well before his ill fated presidency, President Polk nominated him for the Supreme Court after Justice Henry Baldwin died. If he had accepted the nomination, how would he have voted in the key antebellum decisions, who would the Democrats have run for the presidency in 1856, and how would the winner handle the coming crisis?
 
I'd say it's reasonable to imagine that he'd back the southern / slaveholding view rather consistently. Indeed, he might have authored the majority opinion in the Dred Scott case. Had the Compromise of 1850 or the Kansas-Nebraska Act been brought before the Court, I could imaging Buchanan opting for the Court to hear either or both, and voting (again) on the pro-slavery side.

As to the Dems' nominee in 1856: Breckenridge might have been able to get the nomination, albeit grudgingly (Northern Dems wouldn't have cared much for the choice), and he surely would have had to have a northerner (perhaps Stephen Douglas?) as his running mate. I'm not sure the time was right for Douglas yet, unless he chose a no-nonsense southerner like Jefferson Davis as his running mate.

Breckenridge might have beaten Frémont, but it would have been a nail-biter of an election. With a Douglas / Davis ticket, it's possible just enough people might have voted for a Free Soil candidate to throw the election into the House, whereupon the fun really starts, especially if Douglas is able to muster enough support to win. That would probably result in four years of gridlock, and essentially the same results for the 1860 election as in OTL.
 
If Fremont wins in 1856, do we see a secession crisis then, or do he and Lincoln battle it out for the Republican nomination in 1860, and who wins then?
 
Why should we assume that his being on the Court would eliminate the chance of Buchanan's becoming President? John McLean was on the Court for decades and was spoken of as a possible presidential candidate in election after election. (John Quincy Adams once wrote that McLean "thinks of nothing but the Presidency by day and dreams of nothing else by night." https://books.google.com/books?id=AWtZnsxMCDEC&pg=PA312) Or if we are to confine ourselves to Democrats, what about Levi Woodbury? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levi_Woodbury He, rather than Franklin Pierce (also from New Hampshire) might have become president if he had not died in 1851.
 
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