Posted on 02/17/2025 11:25:43 AM PST by DallasBiff
How did Buchanan cause the civil war? Did he send a fleet of warships to Charleston with orders to attack them? (Like Lincoln did.)
Pierce was awful
How does Truman make the top five list of worst? What particular thing that he did make you think he is among the top five worst?
What action should he have taken?
What could he have done?
I had read there was an effort by Lincoln to offer compensation for all the slaves a few months before the Civil War ended, but the South turned it down.
I guess they just didn't understand how precarious their situation was at that point.
LBJ. Utterly disgusting man who expanded the New Deal, admittedly with the complicity of Congress, knowing the fundamental destruction of the black community he was unleashing.
Clinton. Sold military secrets and access to the Chinese to line his pockets, normalized any disgusting behavior, with the aid of a worshipful media, to justify his own, and coddled and enabled terrorists that culminated in 9/11.
Biden. His life of lying and corruption continued unabated in the White House. A decent man would have used one of his few lucid moments to stop the madness, but he just doubled down instead.
Carter. In way, way over his head and responded by digging immense holes.
I’m going to speak up for Buchanan. He didn’t create the mess that went on during his administration and he did exactly what the Constitution allowed him to do about it - nothing. The Democrat Party self destructed over Popular Sovreignty. If he had vetoed the Kansas - Nebraska Act he would been over ridden.
He got married in a house to the daughter of Robert Means about two miles south of where I live in Amherst, NH.
The Robert Means homestead still stands today. It was built in the 1785. https://www.hsanh.org/pdfs/Rehab_of_Means_Mansion.pdf
Buchanan
was the worst followed by:
Biden
Pierce
Carter
Bush II
Some of the others I scratch my head over (LBJ, FDR, Hoover, Harding, Andrew Johnson, Wilson, Obama). I was looking at the ones who obviously left the country in worse shape than they found it and didn’t have accomplishments that could outweigh that.
I can’t, of course, claim that Buchanan, or someone else, would have succeeded in averting the Civil War had they done some particular thing. Buchanan’s failure was in projecting a whole texture of administrative weakness and trying to be neutral on slavery issues, doing nothing to push back against the secessionists. By contrast, Jackson quashed the Secession Crisis of the 1830’s (at least two decades) by taking a strong executive hand.
Buchanan asserted the opposite of Federal executive power in this regard. He went along with the Dred Scott decision (which let the Federal Government “do nothing”). He held that the States could do anything they wished about “their” domestic arrangements, and that the Federal Government was essentially powerless.
Buchanan had been out of the country as a diplomat during much of the key wrangling over slavery in Congress, and perhaps did not grasp the intensity and danger posed to the Union. He supposedly did want to offend his Southern friends and supporters. The upshot of weakness and inaction was that pressure built up without resolution, and pushed politics to more radical extremes. At the 1860 Democratic convention, he derailed Douglas’ campaign to be the sole nominee who would take on Abraham Lincoln, leaving the Democrats split between two nominees (Douglas and John Breckinridge), almost ensuring Lincoln’s election. Splitting the Democrat Party was a key part of the radical Secessionists strategy to sever the South from the Union. I doubt Buchanan helped this along deliberately, but he played into their hands.
Well Lincoln also tried to be "neutral" on the slavery issue, but they didn't believe him. (See Corwin Amendment.)
By contrast, Jackson quashed the Secession Crisis of the 1830’s (at least two decades) by taking a strong executive hand.
He threatened to kill John Calhoun, and of course to use the army to quash secession. With Jackson, these were no idle threats, because he was known for his rash impulsiveness and his willingness to engage in violence.
Ironically, they would have had a better chance seceding in the 1830s when the North was weaker.
Buchanan asserted the opposite of Federal executive power in this regard.
He may have believed he had no authority to oppose secession. A lot of people believed that States had a right to secede, and Buchanan was possibly one of them.
He held that the States could do anything they wished about “their” domestic arrangements, and that the Federal Government was essentially powerless.
Lincoln also held this position and reiterated this point many times. He often said he had no power to interfere with slavery where it existed.
Buchanan had been out of the country as a diplomat during much of the key wrangling over slavery in Congress, and perhaps did not grasp the intensity and danger posed to the Union.
160 years in hindsight, and *I* do not grasp the danger posed to the Union. How would Southern secession damage the Union? And damage it worse than killing 750,000 people, creating an all powerful Federal government, evaporating 5 billion in capital, and wrecking the South's economy for the next 100 years?
Letting the states leave in peace would have done more damage than that?
Lincoln, Wilson, Hoover, FDR, LBJ, GHW Bush, GW, Obama, Biden. Bottom 10. If some of these had never been elected, many Presidents and their service would have been different, or never happened. Clinton should have made the list, but Lincoln was worse. Instead of allowing slavery to die a natural death, he destroyed Federalism and led to Income Tax, direct election of Senators, and the Federal Reserve.
“Let the South secede” vs “horrors of civil war” ignores other possibilities. Such as: With a mix of Jackson’s strength and Clay’s finesse/compromise, the slavery can might have been kicked down the road a couple of decades, after which mechanization would have made slavery unprofitable in the northern tier of what became the Confederate States. Without those States, Southern secession would not have been viable. Slavery would have petered out without a war.
An independent South, with it’s government modelled on the failed Articles of Confederation; very undeveloped economy; a severe shortage of money; worn out land; new production in India and Egypt undermining the cotton trade; millions of enslaved people to feed and deal with; etc. would have become dependent on Great Britain to the point of functioning as its colony. That would be a major problem for the US. The logic of the South’s third-rate leaders required expansion, which would have definitely been a problem for the US, with the two “countries” on path to war. The enslaved population would have continued to grow, with diminishing profitable work, until the slavers could not contain them. Immigrants would choose the free North and avoid the South, where the yeoman farmer model would die out. Add in farm mechanization, poor standards of education, and the growing gap between industrialized and agrarian nations and the South would have ended up like Haiti. That would have been quite a problem for the Union.
Obama, hands down. He hates the United States. He said we need to come down a bit as we were too full pf ourselves.
Joe Biden (for attempting to kill his political rival)
LBJ (for killing his way into the presidency)
Barack Obama (for attempting to kill the USA)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.