James Buchanan and the Coming of the Civil War

James Buchanan and the Coming of the Civil War
Author: John W. Quist
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2013-03-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813045037

As James Buchanan took office in 1857, the United States found itself at a crossroads. Dissolution of the Union had been averted and the Democratic Party maintained control of the federal government, but the nation watched to see if Pennsylvania's first president could make good on his promise to calm sectional tensions. Despite Buchanan's central role in a crucial hour in U.S. history, few presidents have been more ignored by historians. In assembling the essays for this volume, Michael Birkner and John Quist have asked leading scholars to reconsider whether Buchanan’s failures stemmed from his own mistakes or from circumstances that no president could have overcome. Buchanan's dealings with Utah shed light on his handling of the secession crisis. His approach to Dred Scott reinforces the image of a president whose doughface views were less a matter of hypocrisy than a thorough identification with southern interests. Essays on the secession crisis provide fodder for debate about the strengths and limitations of presidential authority in an existential moment for the young nation. Although the essays in this collection offer widely differing interpretations of Buchanan's presidency, they all grapple honestly with the complexities of the issues faced by the man who sat in the White House prior to the towering figure of Lincoln, and contribute to a deeper understanding of a turbulent and formative era.

James Buchanan

James Buchanan
Author: Jean H. Baker
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2004
Genre: Presidents
ISBN: 9780805069464

1. Buchanan, James, 1791-1868 2. Presidents United States Biography 3. United States - Politics and Government - 1857-1861.

The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens

The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens
Author: Michael J. Birkner
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-06-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 080717081X

The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens examines the political interests, relationships, and practices of two of the era’s most prominent politicians as well as the political landscapes they inhabited and informed. Both men called Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, their home, and both were bachelors. During the 1850s, James Buchanan tried to keep the Democratic Party alive as the slavery debate divided his peers and the political system. Thaddeus Stevens, meanwhile, as Whig turned Republican, invested in the federal government to encourage economic development and social reform, especially antislavery and Republican Reconstruction. Considering Buchanan and Stevens’s divergent lives alongside their political and social worlds reveals the dynamics and directions of American politics, especially northern interests and identities. While focusing on these individuals, the contributors also explore the roles of parties and patronage in informing political loyalties and behavior. They further track personal connections across lines of gender and geography and underline the importance of details like who regularly dined and conversed with whom, the complex social milieu of Washington, the role of rumor in determining political allegiances, and the ways personality and failing relationships mattered in a hothouse of national politics fueled by slavery and expansion. The essays in The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens collectively invite further consideration of how parties, personality, place, and private lives influenced the political interests and actions of an age affected by race, religion, region, civil war, and reconstruction.

The Presidents' War

The Presidents' War
Author: Chris DeRose
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 405
Release: 2014-06-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1493010875

For the first time, readers will experience America’s gravest crisis through the eyes of the five former presidents who lived it. Author and historian Chris DeRose chronicles history’s most epic Presidential Royal Rumble, which culminated in a multi-front effort against Lincoln’s reelection bid, but not before: * John Tyler engaged in shuttle diplomacy between President Buchanan and the new Confederate Government. He chaired the Peace Convention of 1861, the last great hope for a political resolution to the crisis. When it failed, Tyler joined the Virginia Secession Convention, voted to leave the Union, and won election to the Confederate Congress. * Van Buren, who had schemed to deny Lincoln the presidency, supported him in his efforts after Fort Sumter, and thwarted Franklin Pierce's attempt at a meeting of the ex-Presidents to undermine Lincoln. * Millard Fillmore hosted Lincoln and Mary Todd on their way to Washington, initially supported the war effort, offered critical advice to keep Britain at bay, but turned on Lincoln over emancipation. * Franklin Pierce, talked about as a Democratic candidate in 1860 and ’64, was openly hostile to Lincoln and supportive of the South, an outspoken critic of Lincoln especially on civil liberties. After Vicksburg, when Jefferson Davis’s home was raided, a secret correspondence between Pierce and the Confederate President was revealed. * James Buchanan, who had left office as seven states had broken away from the Union, engaged in a frantic attempt to vindicate his administration, in part by tying himself to Lincoln and supporting the war, arguing that his successor had simply followed his policies. How Abraham Lincoln battled against his predecessors to preserve the Union and later to put an end to slavery is a thrilling tale of war waged at the top level of power.

James Buchanan

James Buchanan
Author: Megan M. Gunderson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 40
Release: 2017
Genre: Presidents
ISBN: 9781680777796

"This biography introduces readers to James Buchanan including his early political career and key events from Buchanan's administration including the Dred Scott case and the secession of seven Southern states prior to the American Civil War. Information about his childhood, family, personal life, and retirement years is included. A timeline, fast facts, and sidebars provide additional information. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards." -- Provided by publisher.

James Buchanan

James Buchanan
Author: Hourly History
Publisher:
Total Pages: 60
Release: 2021-03-15
Genre:
ISBN:

Discover the remarkable life of James Buchanan...James Buchanan began life as a country boy in rural Pennsylvania. He would later leave the farm for law school and, after that, politics. Buchanan's ascent to the presidency was a careful and steady rise; he checked all of the requisite boxes and took all of the necessary steps he believed the office required, but nevertheless, when Buchanan was inaugurated president in March of 1857, he had inherited a powder keg that was just waiting to explode into the turmoil that was the American Civil War. James Buchanan has since been lambasted as being the great appeaser who placated the South enough to embolden them to secede from the Union. He is frequently listed as one of the worst presidents in the history of the United States. Buchanan himself, however, always held out the hope that history would vindicate him and the role he played. In this book, we explore James Buchanan's life-before, during, and after the American Civil War-in full. Discover a plethora of topics such as Life, Love, and Loss A Man of Manifest Destiny Buchanan in Britain President Buchanan: The Early Years The Outbreak of the Civil War Life after the Presidency And much more! So if you want a concise and informative book on James Buchanan, simply scroll up and click the "Buy now" button for instant access!

Bosom Friends

Bosom Friends
Author: Thomas J. Balcerski
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2019-08-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190914602

The friendship of the bachelor politicians James Buchanan (1791-1868) of Pennsylvania and William Rufus King (1786-1853) of Alabama has excited much speculation through the years. Why did neither marry? Might they have been gay? Or was their relationship a nineteenth-century version of the modern-day "bromance"? In Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King, Thomas J. Balcerski explores the lives of these two politicians and discovers one of the most significant collaborations in American political history. He traces the parallels in the men's personal and professional lives before elected office, including their failed romantic courtships and the stories they told about them. Unlikely companions from the start, they lived together as congressional messmates in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse and became close confidantes. Around the nation's capital, the men were mocked for their effeminacy and perhaps their sexuality, and they were likened to Siamese twins. Over time, their intimate friendship blossomed into a significant cross-sectional political partnership. Balcerski examines Buchanan's and King's contributions to the Jacksonian political agenda, manifest destiny, and the increasingly divisive debates over slavery, while contesting interpretations that the men lacked political principles and deserved blame for the breakdown of the union. He closely narrates each man's rise to national prominence, as William Rufus King was elected vice-president in 1852 and James Buchanan the nation's fifteenth president in 1856, despite the political gossip that circulated about them. While exploring a same-sex relationship that powerfully shaped national events in the antebellum era, Bosom Friends demonstrates that intimate male friendships among politicians were--and continue to be--an important part of success in American politics.

Worst. President. Ever.

Worst. President. Ever.
Author: Robert Strauss
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2016-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1493024841

Worst. President. Ever. flips the great presidential biography on its head, offering an enlightening—and highly entertaining!—account of poor James Buchanan’s presidency to prove once and for all that, well, few leaders could have done worse. But author Robert Strauss does much more, leading readers out of Buchanan’s terrible term in office—meddling in the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, exacerbating the Panic of 1857, helping foment the John Brown uprisings and “Bloody Kansas,” virtually inviting a half-dozen states to secede from the Union as a lame duck, and on and on—to explore with insight and humor his own obsession with presidents, and ultimately the entire notion of ranking our presidents. He guides us through the POTUS rating game of historians and others who have made their own Mount Rushmores—or Marianas Trenches!—of presidential achievement, showing why Buchanan easily loses to any of the others, but also offering insights into presidential history buffs like himself, the forgotten "lesser" presidential sites, sex and the presidency, the presidency itself, and how and why it can often take the best measures out of even the most dedicated men.