Worst Union President?

Who could feasibly become the nation’s first Republican President in 1860 that would have done the worst job of running the Northern war effort during the Civil War?
 
Are we limited only to the Republican candidates of 1860? Or can we choose outside of said candidates?

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Simon Cameron. Fortunately, he had little chance of being nominated, but with a deadlocked convention, you can never be sure (especially given the importance of Pennsylvania)...
 
Simon Cameron. Fortunately, he had little chance of being nominated, but with a deadlocked convention, you can never be sure (especially given the importance of Pennsylvania)...

Cameron does sound like a bad choice. Do you think the Union would still have won with him?
 
Cameron does sound like a bad choice. Do you think the Union would still have won with him?

There is a myth about the civil war. It was "the South could have won if they did X." Nope, the war was pretty much unwinnable for the South without European help. I could have ASB most union railroads west of the appellation mountains, turn 70% of the Northern factories into fields or meadows, remove 70% of their mobile artillery, and give them the worst tactician of the time and the North would still be the favorite to win. might be a 13 year war with that ASB. Even with these crippling disadvantages, the North still would have population, production, and logistics advantage of the South. This is a war Simon Cameron can't lose if he's trying not to lose. We'll look at maybe a 1866 finish.
 
There is a myth about the civil war. It was "the South could have won if they did X." Nope, the war was pretty much unwinnable for the South without European help. I could have ASB most union railroads west of the appellation mountains, turn 70% of the Northern factories into fields or meadows, remove 70% of their mobile artillery, and give them the worst tactician of the time and the North would still be the favorite to win. might be a 13 year war with that ASB. Even with these crippling disadvantages, the North still would have population, production, and logistics advantage of the South. This is a war Simon Cameron can't lose if he's trying not to lose. We'll look at maybe a 1866 finish.

Lincoln used some ninja-level diplomacy with Britain and France to keep them out of the war and ensure that the CSA would lose. So the worst choice is the person least likely to keep Europe out of the war. If Cameron blows it with Britain and France, that could be disastrous for the Union.
 
John Bell, considering he later defected to the south and had no intention of using military force to suppress the rebellion. Of course, were he elected, the south may not have seceded to begin with since he was more than willing to incense and kowtow to the slave power
 
Lincoln used some ninja-level diplomacy with Britain and France to keep them out of the war and ensure that the CSA would lose. So the worst choice is the person least likely to keep Europe out of the war. If Cameron blows it with Britain and France, that could be disastrous for the Union.

True, but Cameron doesn't have much of a European diplomacy plan. He wouldn't blow it, because he wouldn't make the decisions. He would have someone in his cabinet or the ambassador do the thinking for him while he concentrates on domestic stuff (like finances or maybe a revolt)
 
John Bell, considering he later defected to the south and had no intention of using military force to suppress the rebellion. Of course, were he elected, the south may not have seceded to begin with since he was more than willing to incense and kowtow to the slave power

He voted against both the Kansas-Nebraska bill and the Lecompton Constitution. That actually makes him one of the least pro-slavery (in the political sense) southerners in Congress in the 1850's. Even Sam Houston voted for Lecompton. Anyway, the original post specifically asked who the worst Republican president would be, and Bell was not a Republican. (Asking how a non-Republican president would handle secession is meaningless, since only the victory of a "Black Republican" would be enough to get the South to secede.)
 
He voted against both the Kansas-Nebraska bill and the Lecompton Constitution. That actually makes him one of the least pro-slavery (in the political sense) southerners in Congress in the 1850's. Even Sam Houston voted for Lecompton. Anyway, the original post specifically asked who the worst Republican president would be, and Bell was not a Republican. (Asking how a non-Republican president would handle secession is meaningless, since only the victory of a "Black Republican" would be enough to get the South to secede.)

According to that poster he was actually considered I don’t know if that was actually the case but I know his party loyalty was somewhat ambiguous considering he previously ran on one of those 1850s third parties.
 
According to that poster he was actually considered I don’t know if that was actually the case but I know his party loyalty was somewhat ambiguous considering he previously ran on one of those 1850s third parties.

Republicans were looking for southern support to disprove the idea that they were "sectional" and some of them overestimated the possibility that some southern Whigs/Americans would support them. There were a few like Henry Winter Davis who hated the Democrats so much that they were thinking about aligning themselves with the Republicans, but note that Davis was from the very northernmost part of the South. Had the secession crisis been averted, I can see a few more being converted, like John Minor Botts of Virginia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Botts

OTOH, for a while it wasn't clear if Bates would run as a Republican or a Constitutional Unionist.
 
Fremont's conduct as a general in 1861 (particularly the Emancipation Edict) seems to indicate that he'd have been much less adept than Lincoln at managing the border states and keeping them loyal. A stronger secessionist movement in Kentucky and Missouri would have made the war quite a bit harder for the Union.
 
A case can be made that Seward, one of the most able men considered for the Republican nomination, might actually be the one most disastrous for the Union. I used to think that a President Seward might unintentionally allow peaceful secession. By "unintentionally" I mean that of course Seward wanted secession to fail--but he had an unrealistic idea that if the North just avoided conflict by abandoning Sumter and possibly Pickens as well [1], not only could the Upper South be held but a Unionist reaction would develop in the Lower South, leading to reunion. (He also thought that a war scare with Spain--I am not convinced he wanted an actual war--could bring about North-South reunion in the interests of "patriotism." See https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/HfDoPtlOem0/gbVpY6q3OzsJ for a discussion of this.) By the time he realized that voluntary reconstruction was a pipe dream, the independence of the Lower South might be so established that he could do little about it.

I am now inclined to think, however, that Seward was such a staunch Unionist that once it was clear to him that his strategy for bringing about voluntary reunion by abandoning the forts had failed, he would have to resort to some sort of "coercion"--even leaving aside his own strong nationalism and expansionism, it would be politically disastrous for the Republicans to be known as the party that accepted disunion. The most likely method, once the forts were gone, would be an attempt to collect the revenues offshore.

[1] There is no actual proof that Seward advocated it, but most historians believe that Scott's sudden recommendation that Pickens as well as Sumter be abandoned--and on openly political (basically "Upper South Unionists insist on it") rather than military grounds--must have come from Seward. E.g., William Cooper in his We Have This War Upon Us: The Onset of the Civil War, November 1860-April 1861:

"No evidence makes Seward's involvement indisputably clear, yet little doubt can exist. He had had Scott's confidence since the winter, before Buchanan left office. He and the general had become closer, though Gideon Welles surely exaggerated in calling Scott no more than Seward's pawn. The secretary of state and the general had given Lincoln identical advice on Fort Sumter since the outset of the crisis. But Scott had never before mentioned politics in suggestions he had given his commander in chief. Seward knew firsthand, however, that his Conservative Unionists wanted federal authority gone from Pickens as well as Sumter. If Seward and Scott had hoped with this double-barreled counsel to bring the president closer to them, they grossly miscalculated..."
https://books.google.com/books?id=LT5_dhd8JNMC&pg=PA249
 
A By the time he realized that voluntary reconstruction was a pipe dream, the independence of the Lower South might be so established that he could do little about it.

Give 10-13 years, the deep South would be coming back if the USA still has slavery. Except maybe South Carolina. I don't give those politicians of the 18th and 19th century from that state the highest marks.
 
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