n the months leading up to the 1864 election, Abraham Lincoln thought he would be a one term president. The war was taking longer than everyone had expected, and the mounting casualties made the Democratic Party message of a negotiated peace sound more appealing. The Republican Party was split between the Radical Republicans and the moderates. Some ( Read more... )

In the time leading up to the 1864 election, Abraham Lincoln thought he would be a one term president. The war was taking longer than everyone had expected, and the mounting casualties made the Democratic Party message of a negotiated peace sound more appealing. The Republican Party was split between the Radical Republicans and the moderates. Some ( Read more... )

Alternate Presidents is a collection of 28 short stories edited by Mike Resnick, speculating on what history might have been like if the outcome of 28 presidential elections would have been different. This anthology was released on February 15, 1992. This book is a delight to read. Resnick, a Hugo Award winning science fiction writer, also ( Read more... )

It's almost a certainty that Franklin Pierce was an alcoholic. He died from cirrhosis of the liver, and he is quoted as saying "after being President, there's nothing left to do but get drunk." Whether this quote is authentic or apocryphal, the sentiment expressed in it appears to match Pierce's post-presidential life.

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Millard Fillmore was the second Vice-President to become President upon the death of the incumbent. He would turn out to be the last President from the Whig Party and despite his desire to hold on to the job and run for re-election, his party had ideas. The Compromise of 1850 that Fillmore had supported made him unpopular in the north, especially ( Read more... )

Perhaps the most difficult presidential transition in history took place in 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was elected to succeed James Buchanan. It was a time when sectional strife and division rose to such a high level that it split the Democratic Party and caused many to worry that the president-elect would not live to see his inauguration.


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James Buchanan was the third in a series of "doughface" presidents. Hailing from Pennsylvania, Buchanan's biographer Jean Baker theorizes that Buchanan was "an intellectual and electoral hostage" to the South, and was so enamored with the ways of the south that he let ideology trump pragmatism. Secession began on his watch, and Buchanan is ( Read more... )

Many people consider March 20, 1854 to be the date of birth of the Republican Party. It was on that day, at a meeting in Ripon, Wisconsin, that a group of anti-slavery activists held what is considered by many as the first public meeting of the party. In the course of the debate over the Nebraska bill, a man named Alvan Earl Bovay (pictured below) ( Read more... )

In 1848, the Whig Party convinced popular General Zachary Taylor to run as their candidate, even though Taylor had never run for office before. No one was even sure what party he belonged to or if he had ever even voted before. Taylor ultimately decided that he supported the Whig Party and agreed to run as their candidate. He won the election as ( Read more... )

James Buchanan shuffled off this mortal coil on June 1, 1868 (156 years ago on this day.) Buchanan regularly ranks among the worst of the Presidents ratings done by historians and scholars, usually finishing in last place. He is criticized for his weak and ineffective response to the coming of the secessionist crisis, his obsequiousness to the ( Read more... )