Thoughts on President Buchanan

[thea_447]

Neil,
I realize that you had said some things about President Buchanan on another thread and had left me with a tantalizing quote which would lead one to believe that he absolutely didn't believe in secession.

However, I find that he was quite torn about the whole situation. (Forgive me for starting a new thread for this but I couldn't remember where you had made that statement and I didn't want to get in the middle of your debate with Bill Torrens because the air there is so "heady" that I feel like leaving the field for you two. Tommy is a much braver soul than me. (And he knows more too!)

But I digress. I offer this tidbit concerning Buchanan's opinion of secession which led me ultimately to believe that he did not think the Union could be preserved by the sword.

President Buchanan was a poor prophet in moments of crisis.
In the last days of his presidency, he prepared his last message to Congress. Rose O'Neal Greenhow stayed close to him during these days as he vacillated.

He was at odds with the Senator from Mississippi (Davis) and in modifying his final message to Congress he infuriated Davis. His reasoning was puzzling to his Southern friends while giving cold comfort to the extreme wing of the Republican party.

Mrs.Greenhow had sympathized with his predicament while some of the things he said went against the grain with her. She did acknowledge the truth of his statement that a sense of security no longer existed around the family "altar" and agreed that for "five and twenty years the agitation by the North against slavery has been incessant."

Buchanan expressed the belief that the slavery question "had reached and passed the culminating point." He went on:

"The fact is, that our Union rests upon public opinion, and can never be cemented by the blood of its citizens shed in Civil War. If it cannot live in the affections of the people it must one day perish. Congress possesses many means of preserving it by conciliation; but the sword was not placed in their hand to preserve it by force. But may I be permitted to invoke my countrymen to pause and deliberate, before they determine to destroy this, the grandest temple which has ever been dedicated to human freedom since the world began...It is not every wrong --nay, it is not every grievous wrong--which can justify a resort to such a fearful alternative. This ought to be the last desperate remedy of a despairing people, after every other constitutional means of conciliation has been exhausted."

And since I have mentioned Jefferson Davis too, I would like to add a few notes about him. Around the same time that Buchanan was searching his soul, Davis was leaving the Senate for the last time and had some words that I found very interesting.

Jefferson Davis in his final address to the Senate, drew the distinction between nullification and secession:

"Mr. Calhoun advocated the doctrine of nullification, which he proclaimed to be peaceful, to be within the limits of State power, not to disturb the Union, but only to be a means of bringing the agent before the tribunal of the states for their judgment....

Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. It is to be justified upon the basis that the States are sovereign. There was a time when none denied it.

I am sure I feel no hostility to you, senators from the North. I am sure there is not one of you, that whatever sharp discussion there might have been between us, to whom I cannot now say, in the presence of God, I wish you well...it only remains for me to bid you a final adieu."

Four years later, writing to Mrs. Clement C. Clay from Fort Monroe, at a time when he thought he faced death, Davis said he had not changed his opinion as to the sovereignty of the states or the right of a state to secede. I only regret that we did not defer the evil day or prepare longer, better maintaining our independence," he added. "I still think we might and would have maintained it, with more wisdom in council and in the field, and with more virtue among our people."

On another subject you, Neil, suggested strongly to Tommy that the South did indeed want to conquer the North. I disagree wholeheartedly with that statement. Time and time again, her plaintive cry was "Let us leave, we want to be left ALONE." Most of the war was fought on Southern soil, not Northern. The North was the invader, not the South. You call it treason but a Southerner will tell you that the South had seceded from the Union and was now a new nation. Everything that transpired after that was looked upon as an invasion of the Southern states.

Forgive these rather disjointed thoughts but I wanted to get this down on a thread before it left my head. I have been muttering for days about nullification and secession. My family has thought for years that I was nuts until they learned that there are "others" like me out there, namely YOU GUYS!

Till we meet again, I remain, YMOS,

[hoosier]

Buchanan believed ardently in Manifest Destiny and in expanding American influence as far as possible throughout the Western Hemisphere.

It seems as though, to the very end, he could never understand why his fellow Americans couldn't just put aside their regional differences and focus on the goal of expansion.

[bokscar]

Buchanan was the quintessential "dough face"; a person of northern birth, but with southern convictions.
The only political act of his that mattered, as far as the Civil War is concerned, was his working hand in glove with Southern Fire Eaters to split the Democratic Party (the only truly national political party, at that time)and to sabotage the chances of Stephen Douglas (the only candidate that had a national following) of being elected president in 1860.
He did this and all the time was blissfully unaware of what he was truly accomplishing.
Mistaking stubborness for strength, Buchanan went to his grave convinced that the country was the better for his having been president.