James Buchanan and the Civil War
* What: President James Buchanan's weakness, incompetence, defense of slavery, and sympathy for slave owning elites led directly to the Civil War. Had Buchanan confronted southern secessionists more forcefully, they would not have gathered support or more importantly troops and weapons that enabled the Civil War to go on for as long or with as high a cost in human lives. The war may even have been prevented.
* The Body Count: The greatest number of Americans killed in any war, at least 600,000. This includes battle deaths, disease, and famine caused as much by Confederate government incompetence and ideological blindness as the war.
* Who Also Gets the Blame:
* Confederate leaders deserve virtually all the blame for the Civil War. They began it, and they kept fighting long after they had no chance to win, so great was their hatred for the idea of living as equals with Blacks.
* For the war was fought by the United States (the Union) to end slavery, once the Emancipation was issued. We know that most Union soldiers favored abolition by reading their letters and diaries. And clearly, for the Confederacy it was always fought to continue slavery. Anyone doubting so need only read the Declaration of Causes written by Confederate state governments, each explicitly explaining their reason for secession was to defend, continue, and expand slavery.
* The Democratic Party, at that time the party primarily of racist plantation slave owners. While the party often chose northern candidates, it always chose pro slavery ones. The party remained segregationist until the 1970s, when most southern racists became Republicans instead.
* Stephen Douglas, who undermined the Missouri Compromise for his own political career advancement by offering the Kansas Missouri Act in 1854. The US had somewhat stabilized in its debate over slavery. Douglas's proposal was, in this argument, unnecessary. While true, the problem with this claim is it leaves the morally indefensible system of slavery still in place, where it may have continued for at least another twenty years.
* White supremacists and Confederate apologists have long blamed abolitionists or the United States (i.e. the Union) for the Civil War. Obviously this argument is false. The Confederacy began the Civil War by attacking first, at Fort Sumter. Even before that, the Confederacy had already attacked the US dozens of times, by its takeover of federal forts, customs houses, courthouses, and other federal buildings.
* This argument almost literally stands reality on its head. By any measure, the Confederacy and Confederates (excluding the many southerners forced to fight against their will) were simply traitors. The Confederacy went to war because they did not agree with the results of a fair election, and started the war because there was an outside chance the lawful winner, Lincoln, might somewhat restrict slavery in the future from expanding. Lincoln explicitly did not get elected to end slavery. Ironically the Confederacy made slavery end sooner, and pushed Lincoln into Emancipation. Confederates’ ideological blindness and exaggerated image of their own military abilities made them miscalculate how the war would end.
* Some also blame northerners or Yankees. The problems with this argument are two. One is its bigotry, its open hatred and stereotyping of all people from one region of the country. The second problem with this argument is that most southerners were Union supporters, loyal to the US. (See Section Eleven.)
* Most Confederate soldiers were unwilling. They were either draftees or being held in service after their enlistment ended. Most southern men either dodged the draft or deserted the Confederate Army, often more than once. Desertion and draft dodging in the Confederacy were more than double that in the Union.
* A central part of the two arguments above from Confederate apologists is not blaming Black slaves, who they assume to be inferior, passive, and happier “knowing their place” under slavery. That Black slaves to a great extent freed themselves is left out.
* If there is any president who is a better cautionary example of the failure of ideas about limited government, Buchanan is it. Buchanan routinely winds up at the bottom in most scholars' rankings of US presidents, with good reason. In his own time as well, Buchanan was one of the most lowly regarded leaders. Had Buchanan stood up to secessionists, the war may have not happened. Or at the very least, the war would have been over far sooner, perhaps in less than a year with not even one tenth the loss of life.
* Buchanan was elected largely because Fillmore, running as a Know Nothing, split the vote. (See Section Six.) He came to office promising to end division over slavery. But immediately as his term began, he sided with slave owners. The Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott decision that slavery could not be restricted anywhere, and Buchanan agreed with the court. A more pragmatic president would have vowed to find a way to continue earlier compromises.
* Kansas was already being ripped apart over slavery. Both pro and anti slavery factions tried to set up their own governments to declare the state free or slave, using violence against the other. Rather than remain neutral, Buchanan appointed a pro slavery territorial governor, though free staters were the majority. Buchanan approved the fraudulent constitution adopted by pro slavery forces.
* Even his own appointed governor resigned in disgust. Buchanan tried to force the constitution, and Kansas as a slave state, through Congress, offering jobs, issuing threats, and even cash bribes to do so. But the effort failed, and deeply divided Buchanan's own Democratic Party. The episode led to a failed impeachment attempt against Buchanan, charging him with bribery.
* The divisions would only worsen. Buchanan tried diverting attention from the slavery issue by threatening war against Mormons in what would become Utah over the issue of polygamy. He sent an invasion force, but the campaign quickly turned into a farce. Church leaders had their own defense force, the Mormon Battalion.
* So to avoid bloodshed, both sides maneuvered, staying away from battle. Finally, the leader of the Mormon Church, Brigham Young, had a revelation and Mormons accepted US authority. A few years later another revelation agreed to the end of Mormon polygamy, though some fundamentalists continued practicing. Most Americans considered the Mormon War a failure, devoting US troops to a minor issue when they could have been used to stop bloodshed in Kansas. American troops were also needed to try and prevent secessionists from building up their own militias, what would become the Confederate Army.
* By the last two years of his term, Buchanan was increasingly weak and unpopular. By many accounts, he developed nervous tics, had migraines, and could not sleep. Some thought he was coming close to a nervous breakdown or exhaustion. But more and more, Buchanan insisted abolitionists were the problem. That secessionists were the ones threatening violence, the ones forming private armies, smuggling or seizing weapons, openly drilling for war and planning to break away and form their own government, he never even tried to prevent.
* Some argued the problem was not his incompetence but the treasonous actions of those around him. Some of his own cabinet diverted (in other words, stole) weapons and ammunition, sending it to secessionists. Even his own nephew was a secessionist. Buchanan was the only bachelor to be a president, so his nephew was viewed as being the closest thing to a son he had. (In secret, Buchanan was the first gay president. He shared his home for many years with his partner who was, publicly, his best friend. We have love letters between the two that leave little room for doubt.)
* Though Lincoln was elected president, and Buchanan was warned by his leading general, Winfield Scott, that seven states might secede, Buchanan made no effort to stop these treasonous plans. Buchanan loathed Lincoln, and he blamed the Republicans for much of the crisis. Yet when federal facility after facility was seized by Confederates, and they formed and declared their new government, Buchanan still did nothing.
* Finally Fort Sumter was threatened with seizure. The commander had moved from an indefensible position into the island fort in Charleston Harbor. Buchanan actually ordered the commander to return to the indefensible position, where his troops would almost certainly be overwhelmed.
* It was at this point Lincoln became president. There was almost no way Buchanan could have left a worst situation for him. Lincoln ordered the commander to stay at Fort Sumter and resupplied him. The Confederacy opened fire, starting the war that would be the most devastating in all of US history. Yet it certainly did not have to be that way. Virtually no other potential president would have made the mistakes Buchanan did. Not Fremont, not Stephen Douglas, not Breckinridge, not even Fillmore.
* What would any other president have done? Do not allow federal weapons to be stolen. Fire cabinet members if they try to do so. Strengthen federal forts and facilities. Call out the army to its full strength and call for volunteers. Do not back down from traitors.
* Two previous presidents had gotten secessionists to back down by standing firm. Andrew Jackson, though a slave trader, publicly called secessionist John Calhoun's bluff in the Nullification Crisis. South Carolina, which had threatened secession, backed down. There would be no serious threats of secession for over a decade and a half. Zachary Taylor, another slave owner, also publicly said he would hang any attempted secessionists. They backed down as well, and their efforts went even less far than during the Nullification Crisis.
* Simply by standing strong, any other president could have reduced secessionists to a lone state, South Carolina. The best case scenario is that there would only be a revolt in South Carolina, likely over in months, perhaps even weeks, with a death toll perhaps as low as in the hundreds. Even in the worst case scenarios under the other potential presidents, the Civil War is over in less than a year and with a tenth as many deaths. But because of Buchanan's weakness, and in the eyes of some, near treason, over half a million Americans died needlessly.
* “Treason never prospers.” At least, it does not prosper when it is faced down. Limited government also does not work. Buchanan is the proof of it. Into a vacuum steps anarchy, not of the poor and weak, but of the most avaricious elites, in this case the violent tyranny of white supremacist slave-owning traitors.