Heroes of The Civil War: James Buchanan

Having lived from 1791 to 1868, Buchanan was one of many politicians who spent years trying straddle the issues dividing the North and South. He then had the misfortune to become President of the United States when such an approach was impossible. A lawyer by training, Buchanan has become a Jacksonian Democrat in 1824, by which time he had already made a public statement that would characterize the dilemma he confronted decades later. He denounced slavery as a moral and political evil, but then admitted that if the slaves were to rise up in revolt, he would aid his fellow whites.

          As a Representative and then a senator from his native state of Pennsylvania, Buchanan was a solid party man. He served as President Polk’s Secretary of State and handled the negotiations over Texas and Oregon that balanced the demands of the pro and anti-slavery forces. Then as ambassador to England in 1854, he met with the American ambassadors to Spain and France in Ostend, Belgium where they issued a ‘manifesto’ claiming that the US had the right to take Cuba from Spain rather than allow it to become “Africanized’. Such a claim was recognized by Northerners as an expression of pro-slavery sentiments, but it made Buchanan acceptable by Southerners and he got the Democratic nomination for President in 1856.

          He ran and won on a platform of non-interference, but during the next years he made it clear that he supported the pro-slavery forces—fully endorsing the Dred Scott Decision, trying to admit Kansas with its pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution—and the Union disintegrated around him. When the Democratic party split in its conventions of 1860, Buchanan tried to appear to be supporting Douglas but his words and actions actually brought him closer to Breckenridge. When Lincoln won, Buchanan passed his four months as a truly ‘lame duck’ President—still claiming to be against secession yet unable to take decisive action against secessionists, wanting to preserve the Union but unable to reinforce Fort Sumter.

          Finally, in January of 1861, he sent a ship to supply the fort, but he was still trying to avoid the hard decisions by advocating a national referendum on whether the President should call out the militia. All this was inevitable. Retiring to his estate in Pennsylvania, Buchanan at least publicly supported Lincoln, and in his favor it may be observed that had he been able to act more decisively. It most certainly would have brought on a war that much sooner, and Buchanan, not Lincoln, would have been the war President.