Confederate "Heritage" Month 2009, April 17: The Buchanan administration

Mark Graber, author of Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil (2006), looks at the coming of the Civil War during the last months of the James Buchanan administration in Secession Winter Revisited Balkinization blog 12/20/08.

Graber takes a relatively generous view of slavery supporter Buchanan's approach in the transition period between Lincoln's election and his taking office, which in those days didn't occur until March of the year following the November election (Lincoln was inaugurated March 4, 1861). Graber picks up on an argument by Richard Ellis that Buchanan may have been trying to follow the model that Andrew Jackson set with his successful handling of the Nullification Controversy of 1833.

In this argument, Buchanan viewed the isolation of South Carolina as having been key to Old Hickory's success in suppressing John C. Calhoun's "nullification" movement, which everyone understood at the time had the defense of slavery at its core, though the nominal issue was tariffs.

Here's how Graber, following Ellis' argument, describes Buchanan's strategy in the face of secession compared to Lincoln's:

Buchanan was faced with a similar problem in 1860, although admittedly a more difficult one. His strategy was not dilatory. Rather, he did pretty much what Jackson did successfully in 1832. He sought first to minimize the damage. The theory may have been pretty simple, although this is pure speculation on my part. Secession may have been viable in the long run only if Virginia, Tennessee, and other middle south states joined in. The longer Virginia stayed out, the more likely a Union preserving compromise. In short, any compromise that holds Virginia may in the long run have made the secession crisis goes away.

Lincoln's strategy was quite different. His goal, as Kenneth Stampp details, was to initiate a Civil War in such a way as to keep Kentucky and Maryland in the Union. Essentially, and for all practical purposes, Lincoln from day one abandoned the "keep Virginia in" strategy. Notice, however, Lincoln could not possibly have claimed a mandate for preferring Civil War to a proslavery compromise. He repeatedly insisted on the campaign trail that secession would not take place after he was elected. Lincoln's policies appear more successful than Buchanan's only if we assume the Civil War was inevitable, that Virginia was inevitably going to leave the Union, so that the only reasonable strategies were aimed at keeping Kentucky in the Union. But other assumptions were reasonable in 1860 and Buchanan's strategy may have been reasonable in light of those assumptions. [my emphasis]

While I think he takes the argument much too far, he does make an important point here. Lincoln had campaigned on the basis of preventing secession. So Buchanan may well have thought that the Presidential victory of the Republican Party, on a plurality due to a three-way partisan split, had provided a mandate for peacefully settling the secession controversy. Or, at a minimum, had not provided a mandate for forceful measures.

But other than that, the argument strikes me as far-fetched. James Buchanan was blatantly pro-slavery and wanted to get the reactionary Supreme Court to push its defense of slavery even further than it already had in the Dred Scott decision of 1857.

Other than the eventual end of Earth when the Sun becomes a supernova a few billion years from now, it's hard to say that any historical event is inevitable, except in retrospect. The Dred Scott decision itself had arguably made the Civil War inevitable. But it was only one - albeit a huge one - in a series of events involving the increasing defensiveness of the slave states which led them to increasingly aggressive measures to require the free states to defend slavery, the demographic shifts that were setting the South up to soon lose their majority in the US Senate, growing antislavery sentiment in the North and abroad, and the self-isolation of the slaveowners from meaningful dissent leading to paranoid interpretations of events.

The mini-civil war in Kansas Territory (1854-59), where John Brown got his start as a guerrilla fighter, was an unmistakable sign that events were sliding toward a broader civil war. It could only have been reversed had the national leadership been able to persuade the Slave Power to back off. But Buchanan did just the opposite. For instance, in the Kansas controversy, he recognized the illegitimate, proslavery Lecompton Constitution which had been rejected by the Kansas voters in 1858. Buchanan had every reason to know that he was adding fuel to the fire and encouraging increased belligerence by the slaveowners.

There's also another problem with the idea that Buchanan was hoping for a repeat of Andrew Jackson's success against nullification. By the time Lincoln took office, actual secession was already well under. And Southern state militias were already seizing federal forts throughout the South, which were armed acts of treason. South Carolina and Mississippi had already seceded in December 1860, and by February 1 had been joined by Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas.

It was after Lincoln took office that Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina declared secession.

Pretty much the only thing Buchanan did right in the transition period was to refuse to surrender Fort Sumter in South Carolina, the last US fortress not yet seized by Southern forces.
Of course, speculation is speculation. But in the case of Andrew Jackson when it came to treason and secession, we know how he handled it in 1833. Graber mentions the Force Act in passing, which was passed along with a lowering of the tariffs, the nominal issue over which South Carolina was protesting in the Nullification Controversy. Jackson was fully prepared to make war on a rebel South Carolina if the fools pushed matters that far. It's inconceivable that he would have allowed the seizure of federal forts by traitor forces or sat back idly while five states seceded. Which is what Buchanan did.

It's also difficult to believe that Buchanan could have seriously thought he was imitating Jackson in the way he dealt with that situation.

This basic fact that secession and acts of war by the secessionists were already under way also makes Graber's statement in the context downright strange when he writes, "Lincoln could not possibly have claimed a mandate for preferring Civil War to a proslavery compromise."

Say what? Prior to the 1860 election, secession was a threat from the paranoid, overbearing and blustering slaveowners. Taking Lincoln's vote and the vote for Democratic candidate Stephan Douglas, there was certainly a mandate opposing secession and favoring preservation of the Union. Lincoln didn't have a mandate for civil war? The Confederates had no mandate for secession and civil war either!

On March 4, 1861, secession was a fact. And the acts of war committed by secessionists in seizing federal forts and property hadn't yet become a civil war because James Buchanan had sat back and let it happen with no armed resistance on the part of the national government.

Even when he took office, Lincoln didn't assume that Civil War was inevitable. Though he would have been a fool (or a James Buchanan) if he had not seen that it would be almost impossible to avoid one. He would have preferred that the newly-formed Confederacy dissolve itself and the states involved renounce their secession. He was restrained on the resupply of Fort Sumter.

But he wasn't going to let the slave states secede and make war on the United States. And he didn't. Nor did the mild and conciliatory policy of Buchanan in letting the rebels seize the forts have much to recommend its continuation as a way of preserving the Union by the time Lincoln took office.

If James Buchanan had been more devoted to preserving the Union and less to the cause of slavery, he would have taken stronger action to block the early secessions. And he would have passed on a situation to Lincoln that maybe could have been resolved without civil war. Or, at least, resolved with a shorter and less destructive war.

Tags: andrew jackson, confederate heritage month 2009, james buchanan, old hickory, us civil war