Book Review: The Worst President: The Story of James Buchanan, by Garry Boulard
POTUS #15: the bachelor president who came before Lincoln and may really be the worst.
iUniverse, 2015, 202 pages
Just 24 hours after former President James Buchanan died on June 1, 1868, the Chicago Tribune rejoiced: “This desolate old man has gone to his grave. No son or daughter is doomed to acknowledge an ancestry from him.”
Nearly a century and a half later, in 2004, writer Christopher Buckley observed “It is probably just as well that James Buchanan was our only bachelor president. There are no descendants bracing every morning on opening the paper to find another heading announcing: ‘Buchanan Once Again Rated Worst President in History.’”
How to explain such remarkably consistent historical views of the man who turned over a divided and demoralized country to Abraham Lincoln, the same man regarded through the decades by presidential scholars as the worst president in U.S. history?
In this exploration of the presidency of James Buchanan, 1857-61, Garry Boulard revisits the 15th President and comes away with a stunning conclusion: Buchanan’s performance as the nation’s chief executive was even more deplorable and sordid than scholars generally know, making his status as the country’s worst president richly deserved.
Boulard documents Buchanan’s failure to stand up to the slaveholding interests of the South, his indecisiveness in dealing with the secession movement, and his inability to provide leadership during the nation’s gravest constitutional crisis.
Using the letters of Buchanan, as well as those of more than two dozen political leaders and thinkers of the time, Boulard presents a narrative of a timid and vacillating president whose drift and isolation opened the door to the Civil War.
"The Constitution provided against every possible vacancy in the office of the President, but did not provide for utter imbecility."
- Rep. John Sherman
"A bloated mass of political putridity."
- Rep. Thaddeus Stevens
"When I went to school I read about a man who minded his own business and made a fortune at it."
-President Andrew Jackson, when Buchanan tried to advise him on how to dress
"The country has to struggle through three more months of this disgraceful imbecility and disloyalty to the Constitution."
- New York Times, during the secession crisis
"Imbecility-to use no harsher term-was enthroned at the White House."
- Obituary in the Cincinnati Daily Gazette
"He never had a guiding principle. During his first fifty years of public life there was no policy that he did not both oppose and support. More than half the years of his public life were devoted to intrigue for his elevation to the Presidency. This desolate old man has gone to his grave. No son or daughter is doomed to acknowledge an ancestry from him."
- Obituary in the Chicago Tribune
In the long slog through C-list presidents, we finally arrive at the one who many historians label the Worst President Ever. There is some stiff competition for that title, but Garry Boulard makes a pretty good case for James Buchanan being, if not the very worst president ever, certainly in the bottom tier. He died after watching his party implode and his policies lead directly to the Civil War. He had no real heirs, and even in his home state of Pennsylvania, mourning was rather pro forma. Today he's remembered, if at all, as the guy who preceded Lincoln and might have been a "confirmed bachelor," as they used to say.
Was he really that bad?
Well, yeah.
He had some political game and not much else
Buchanan, like many POTUSes, began life as a lawyer. His family was well to do. (To this day, he is the only former president from Pennsylvania. Poor PA.) He began his political career as a Jacksonian Democrat, and was a six-term Congressman and later a Senator. He served as Minister to the UK under Franklin Pierce, as Secretary of State to James Polk, and Minister to Russia under Andrew Jackson.
Most of the presidents he served under were basically awarding him positions for party loyalty, and to get him out of the way. None seemed to really respect him. If there is one positive thing that can be said about Buchanan, it's that he did appear to genuinely respect the Constitution and make decisions based on his interpretation of it. That said, he was a fussy, pusillanimous pedant whose desire to avoid conflicts dragged the country into its very worst conflict.
Personally, Buchanan was a lifelong bachelor (so far, the only US President who never married). As a young man, he was engaged to a rich heiress, who later broke off the engagement and then unexpectedly died. Her father refused to let Buchanan come to her funeral. Buchanan, so far as is known, never had any kind of romantic relationship again...
...unless you believe the speculation that Buchanan might have been our first gay president. This is based on some very thin evidence (which Boulard goes over) that certain "intimate friends" of his were intimate indeed. The main candidate is Alabama Senator (and former Vice President) William King, with whom he shared a room in Washington as a Congressman. But despite the eagerness with which some historians have latched onto this theory, all we really have to go on are a few ambiguous letters, and some of Buchanan's personal characteristics, which could perhaps be described as "effeminate."
Buchanan was a stiff, charmless, humorless man. Boulard relates several anecdotes of him behaving in a manner that can only be described as "cringeworthy." He was, basically, a huge dork. Known for giving wonky, wordy speeches that often left his audience confused, he nonetheless managed to capture the Democratic Party nomination in 1856, as a Northerner with Southern sympathies. He routed Republican candidate John C. Fremont - the Republicans were a new party formed from the ashes of the Whigs and they didn't have their electoral game in place yet. He became the 15th President of the United States at the age of 70, the oldest president yet.
His inaugural address was uninspiring and set the tone for how he would deal with the looming crisis over slavery:
"Most happy would it be for this country if this long agitation were at an end. During the whole progress it has produced no practical good to any human being, whilst it has been the source of great and dangerous evils."
He wasn't complaining about slavery here. He was complaining about the "agitation" over slavery. Basically he wanted the issue to just go away and hoped that a Supreme Court case or two would put it to rest.
His administration in general was at best mediocre and mostly pretty terrible. He supported the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution in Kansas, and lost most of the House to the Republicans in the 1858 mid-terms. In 1860, Congress launched an investigation known as the Covode Committee, sponsored by Buchanan's enemies seeking impeachment. They found tons of corruption and bribery in the administration but not enough evidence to impeach; Buchanan declared victory.
Buchanan had promised not to seek reelection and he didn't, but in the final days of his presidency, he would face the beginning of the secession crisis, triggered by the election of Abraham Lincoln.
Was the Civil War Buchanan's Fault
The last few presidential biographies I've read have placed some of the blame for the Civil War on each of them, going all the way back to Andrew Jackson, but I've become convinced that the Civil War was more or less inevitable and nothing any POTUS might have done would have prevented it. Different choices might have changed the timeline, maybe shortened it, and I suppose there are some alternate histories where a president actually lets the Confederation secede. But I've been wary of putting the blame for the Civil War on any one man.
Well, I still think the Civil War was probably inevitable, but I was persuaded by this book that if any president could possibly have prevented it (or at least turned it into a brief insurrection, swiftly quelled), it was James Buchanan, and Buchanan instead failed to do a damn thing except wring his hands.
When Lincoln was elected, multiple Southern states immediately declared their intention to secede, and the flashpoint became South Carolina, and Fort Sumter.
Boulard argues that had Buchanan taken a firm stand against secession, and been willing to send troops immediately, then instead of a four-year civil war, we might have had some pitched battles and a lot of seething resentment. Maybe the South would have tried to break away anyway, but it took a certain critical mass for them to be willing to do it, and a federal inertia that let them know they could get away with it, and Buchanan provided this with his indecisive hand-wringing.
On Lincoln's election, as his Southern supporters and northern allies both waited eagerly for him to weigh in on the threat of secession, Buchanan consulted with his Attorney General to determine whether the Constitution did, in fact, give states the right to secede. Their joint conclusion was essentially that there was no such Constitutional right, but neither did the federal government have the Constitutional right to prevent them!
In an absolutely miserable speech, Buchanan delivered this opinion, which angered everyone on all sides. As New York Senator William Seward said, Buchanan's message was essentially, "That no state has the right to secede unless it wishes to," and that "It is the president's duty to enforce the law, unless somebody opposes him."
South Carolina would soon fire on Fort Sumter. Most of Buchanan's cabinet would leave (some of them resigning even before he was out of office), including his longtime friend Jefferson Davis, and join the Confederacy. Buchanan cordially welcomed Lincoln to the White House on Inauguration Day, and then retired to his home in Pennsylvania, where he would watch the war unfold, still hoping the North would offer the Confederation peace terms. He would later become the first president to write a presidential memoir, Mr. Buchanan's Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion, in which he sought to vindicate himself, as he was sure history would. It was panned in reviews.
Best bio about the worst president?
I'll be honest, I chose Garry Boulard's book both for its spicy title and because it was short. I've trudged through thick biographies of other President Who?s and I just wasn't feeling it for James "Why Won't (Arguments About) Slavery Just Go Away?" Buchanan.
Boulard writes almost entirely about Buchanan's presidency, with only a brief sketch of his early life and career. But in this short book he does capture Buchanan's personality pretty well, as well as make his argument for Buchanan indeed being the worst president ever. Now there are a few on the list I haven't gotten to yet, but while I'm still not convinced that even a more competent president could have actually prevented the Civil War, it's clear that Buchanan all but guaranteed it, and being as generally useless as he was in all other respects, I'm inclined to agree with Boulard's judgement. If like me, you are proceeding through the entire list of presidents, this book is probably your best best for understanding Buchanan, unless you really want to get into the weeds with "the Old Public Functionary."
My complete list of book reviews.
iUniverse, 2015, 202 pages
Just 24 hours after former President James Buchanan died on June 1, 1868, the Chicago Tribune rejoiced: “This desolate old man has gone to his grave. No son or daughter is doomed to acknowledge an ancestry from him.”
Nearly a century and a half later, in 2004, writer Christopher Buckley observed “It is probably just as well that James Buchanan was our only bachelor president. There are no descendants bracing every morning on opening the paper to find another heading announcing: ‘Buchanan Once Again Rated Worst President in History.’”
How to explain such remarkably consistent historical views of the man who turned over a divided and demoralized country to Abraham Lincoln, the same man regarded through the decades by presidential scholars as the worst president in U.S. history?
In this exploration of the presidency of James Buchanan, 1857-61, Garry Boulard revisits the 15th President and comes away with a stunning conclusion: Buchanan’s performance as the nation’s chief executive was even more deplorable and sordid than scholars generally know, making his status as the country’s worst president richly deserved.
Boulard documents Buchanan’s failure to stand up to the slaveholding interests of the South, his indecisiveness in dealing with the secession movement, and his inability to provide leadership during the nation’s gravest constitutional crisis.
Using the letters of Buchanan, as well as those of more than two dozen political leaders and thinkers of the time, Boulard presents a narrative of a timid and vacillating president whose drift and isolation opened the door to the Civil War.
"The Constitution provided against every possible vacancy in the office of the President, but did not provide for utter imbecility."
- Rep. John Sherman
"A bloated mass of political putridity."
- Rep. Thaddeus Stevens
"When I went to school I read about a man who minded his own business and made a fortune at it."
-President Andrew Jackson, when Buchanan tried to advise him on how to dress
"The country has to struggle through three more months of this disgraceful imbecility and disloyalty to the Constitution."
- New York Times, during the secession crisis
"Imbecility-to use no harsher term-was enthroned at the White House."
- Obituary in the Cincinnati Daily Gazette
"He never had a guiding principle. During his first fifty years of public life there was no policy that he did not both oppose and support. More than half the years of his public life were devoted to intrigue for his elevation to the Presidency. This desolate old man has gone to his grave. No son or daughter is doomed to acknowledge an ancestry from him."
- Obituary in the Chicago Tribune
In the long slog through C-list presidents, we finally arrive at the one who many historians label the Worst President Ever. There is some stiff competition for that title, but Garry Boulard makes a pretty good case for James Buchanan being, if not the very worst president ever, certainly in the bottom tier. He died after watching his party implode and his policies lead directly to the Civil War. He had no real heirs, and even in his home state of Pennsylvania, mourning was rather pro forma. Today he's remembered, if at all, as the guy who preceded Lincoln and might have been a "confirmed bachelor," as they used to say.
Was he really that bad?
Well, yeah.
He had some political game and not much else
Buchanan, like many POTUSes, began life as a lawyer. His family was well to do. (To this day, he is the only former president from Pennsylvania. Poor PA.) He began his political career as a Jacksonian Democrat, and was a six-term Congressman and later a Senator. He served as Minister to the UK under Franklin Pierce, as Secretary of State to James Polk, and Minister to Russia under Andrew Jackson.
Most of the presidents he served under were basically awarding him positions for party loyalty, and to get him out of the way. None seemed to really respect him. If there is one positive thing that can be said about Buchanan, it's that he did appear to genuinely respect the Constitution and make decisions based on his interpretation of it. That said, he was a fussy, pusillanimous pedant whose desire to avoid conflicts dragged the country into its very worst conflict.
Personally, Buchanan was a lifelong bachelor (so far, the only US President who never married). As a young man, he was engaged to a rich heiress, who later broke off the engagement and then unexpectedly died. Her father refused to let Buchanan come to her funeral. Buchanan, so far as is known, never had any kind of romantic relationship again...
...unless you believe the speculation that Buchanan might have been our first gay president. This is based on some very thin evidence (which Boulard goes over) that certain "intimate friends" of his were intimate indeed. The main candidate is Alabama Senator (and former Vice President) William King, with whom he shared a room in Washington as a Congressman. But despite the eagerness with which some historians have latched onto this theory, all we really have to go on are a few ambiguous letters, and some of Buchanan's personal characteristics, which could perhaps be described as "effeminate."
Buchanan was a stiff, charmless, humorless man. Boulard relates several anecdotes of him behaving in a manner that can only be described as "cringeworthy." He was, basically, a huge dork. Known for giving wonky, wordy speeches that often left his audience confused, he nonetheless managed to capture the Democratic Party nomination in 1856, as a Northerner with Southern sympathies. He routed Republican candidate John C. Fremont - the Republicans were a new party formed from the ashes of the Whigs and they didn't have their electoral game in place yet. He became the 15th President of the United States at the age of 70, the oldest president yet.
His inaugural address was uninspiring and set the tone for how he would deal with the looming crisis over slavery:
"Most happy would it be for this country if this long agitation were at an end. During the whole progress it has produced no practical good to any human being, whilst it has been the source of great and dangerous evils."
He wasn't complaining about slavery here. He was complaining about the "agitation" over slavery. Basically he wanted the issue to just go away and hoped that a Supreme Court case or two would put it to rest.
His administration in general was at best mediocre and mostly pretty terrible. He supported the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution in Kansas, and lost most of the House to the Republicans in the 1858 mid-terms. In 1860, Congress launched an investigation known as the Covode Committee, sponsored by Buchanan's enemies seeking impeachment. They found tons of corruption and bribery in the administration but not enough evidence to impeach; Buchanan declared victory.
Buchanan had promised not to seek reelection and he didn't, but in the final days of his presidency, he would face the beginning of the secession crisis, triggered by the election of Abraham Lincoln.
Was the Civil War Buchanan's Fault
The last few presidential biographies I've read have placed some of the blame for the Civil War on each of them, going all the way back to Andrew Jackson, but I've become convinced that the Civil War was more or less inevitable and nothing any POTUS might have done would have prevented it. Different choices might have changed the timeline, maybe shortened it, and I suppose there are some alternate histories where a president actually lets the Confederation secede. But I've been wary of putting the blame for the Civil War on any one man.
Well, I still think the Civil War was probably inevitable, but I was persuaded by this book that if any president could possibly have prevented it (or at least turned it into a brief insurrection, swiftly quelled), it was James Buchanan, and Buchanan instead failed to do a damn thing except wring his hands.
When Lincoln was elected, multiple Southern states immediately declared their intention to secede, and the flashpoint became South Carolina, and Fort Sumter.
Boulard argues that had Buchanan taken a firm stand against secession, and been willing to send troops immediately, then instead of a four-year civil war, we might have had some pitched battles and a lot of seething resentment. Maybe the South would have tried to break away anyway, but it took a certain critical mass for them to be willing to do it, and a federal inertia that let them know they could get away with it, and Buchanan provided this with his indecisive hand-wringing.
On Lincoln's election, as his Southern supporters and northern allies both waited eagerly for him to weigh in on the threat of secession, Buchanan consulted with his Attorney General to determine whether the Constitution did, in fact, give states the right to secede. Their joint conclusion was essentially that there was no such Constitutional right, but neither did the federal government have the Constitutional right to prevent them!
In an absolutely miserable speech, Buchanan delivered this opinion, which angered everyone on all sides. As New York Senator William Seward said, Buchanan's message was essentially, "That no state has the right to secede unless it wishes to," and that "It is the president's duty to enforce the law, unless somebody opposes him."
South Carolina would soon fire on Fort Sumter. Most of Buchanan's cabinet would leave (some of them resigning even before he was out of office), including his longtime friend Jefferson Davis, and join the Confederacy. Buchanan cordially welcomed Lincoln to the White House on Inauguration Day, and then retired to his home in Pennsylvania, where he would watch the war unfold, still hoping the North would offer the Confederation peace terms. He would later become the first president to write a presidential memoir, Mr. Buchanan's Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion, in which he sought to vindicate himself, as he was sure history would. It was panned in reviews.
Best bio about the worst president?
I'll be honest, I chose Garry Boulard's book both for its spicy title and because it was short. I've trudged through thick biographies of other President Who?s and I just wasn't feeling it for James "Why Won't (Arguments About) Slavery Just Go Away?" Buchanan.
Boulard writes almost entirely about Buchanan's presidency, with only a brief sketch of his early life and career. But in this short book he does capture Buchanan's personality pretty well, as well as make his argument for Buchanan indeed being the worst president ever. Now there are a few on the list I haven't gotten to yet, but while I'm still not convinced that even a more competent president could have actually prevented the Civil War, it's clear that Buchanan all but guaranteed it, and being as generally useless as he was in all other respects, I'm inclined to agree with Boulard's judgement. If like me, you are proceeding through the entire list of presidents, this book is probably your best best for understanding Buchanan, unless you really want to get into the weeds with "the Old Public Functionary."
My complete list of book reviews.