Worst Presidents: James Buchanan (1857-1861)
A Pennsylvania-born Democrat, deeply devout in his faith and the only bachelor elected to the presidency, Buchanan rejected slavery as an indefensible evil but, like the majority of his party, refused to challenge the constitutionally established order.
Even before he became president, he supported the various compromises that made it possible for slavery to spread into the western territories acquired by the Lousiana Purchase and the Mexican War. (Particularly hurtful to the cause of restraining slavery's spread was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, for example, allowed settlers to determine the status of slavery in their proposed state constitutions.)
In his inaugural address, the 15th president tacitly encouraged the Supreme Court's forthcoming Dred Scott decision, which ruled that Congress had no power to keep slavery out of the territories.
More damaging to his name, though, was his weak acquiescence before the secessionist tide—an unwillingness to challenge those states that declared their intention to withdraw from the Union after Lincoln's election. Sitting on his hands as the situation spiraled out of control, Buchanan believed that the Constitution gave him no power to act against would-be seceders.
To his dying day, he felt that history would treat him favorably for having performed his constitutional duty. He was wrong.
Reader Comments
Buchanan and decision-making
While you can get into a lot of trouble with a president who won't make a decision, you can get into just as much with one who refers to himself as "the decider".
Poor Buchanan
I have often wondered if anyone could have stopped the slide into secession; so hopeless had the situation become. With a US Senator beaten on the floor of the senate and battles routinely raged in Kansas over slavery the advent of outright war was probably inevitable. John Brown's raid quicken the pace of that slide.
Regarding the dispatch of troops to Utah I think the article in Wikipedia sets that reord straight
"The Mountain Meadows massacre was a mass slaughter of the Fancher-Baker emigrant wagon train at Mountain Meadows, Utah Territory, by the local Mormon militia on 11 September 1857. It began as an attack, quickly turned into a siege, and eventually culminated in the execution of the unarmed emigrants after their surrender. All of the party except for seventeen children under eight years old—about 120 men, women, and children—were killed.[1] After the massacre, the corpses of the victims were left decomposing for two years on the open plain,[2] their children were distributed to local Mormon families, and many of their possessions auctioned off at the Latter Day Saint Cedar City tithing office. The Arkansas emigrants were traveling to California shortly before the Utah War started. Mormon leaders had been mustering militia throughout Utah Territory to fight the United States Army, which was sent to Utah to restore US authority in the territory"
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Buchanan
If possible, it would have been better to let the Supreme Court decide the constitutional questions.
However, no doubt in my mind that the country is in a big mess at least partially because everything has gone to Washington and the states do not have many rights allowed them.
The more hands money goes through the less there is at the end of the line.
Less government on all levels but especially Washington would be a welcome improvement in my eyes so I am not ready to vote Buchanan the worse of the bunch.
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