James Buchanan

Like his predecessor Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan exists, according to most historians, at an extreme end of the list of America's 3 worst presidents. Pierce, these historians say, is the best of these 3 buffoons, while Buchanan is the shameful bottom of this barrel of pathetic cretins sloppily leading America as it descended into collapse and disunity. He is, in the eyes of many historians, the very worst president in all of American history. I, however, disagree with this notion. Buchanan was better than Pierce and Andrew Johnson, the two presidents historians place just above him. However, he is still a bottom 3 president. Not being the worst does not mean he was good.

The main reason I consider Buchanan better than the other two presidents mentioned in this article's opening paragraph - particularly Pierce - is because Buchanan merely failed to mitigate a crisis created by his predecessors. While his abysmal response to this crisis pushes him down to the bottom 3, I consider creating a crisis worse than poorly responding to it.

Pierce's main sin was the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This law split the Nebraska Territory - a large area in the northern Louisiana Purchase - into two new territories: Kansas and Nebraska. It also allowed the residents of the territories to vote to decide if slavery would be allowed or prohibited in their area. This caused large portions of the American people, who had become increasingly divided over slavery in the 35 years preceding Pierce's signing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, to flee to the territories in hope of swaying the elections in favor of their view on slavery. At the end of 1855, the settlers began fighting, sparking a mini-conflict known as Bleeding Kansas. 

As president, Buchanan supported the Lecompton Constitution, a proposed state constitution for Kansas. In contrast to the Wyandotte, Topeka, and Leavenworth Constitutions, which all banned slavery in Kansas, the Lecompton Constitution allowed slavery in the territory. It also included a bill of rights that excluded black Kansans and stated that if a free black person didn't already live in Kansas, they weren't allowed to move there. Supporting this constitution is itself a horrible decision. But Buchanan was actually a northerner from Pennsylvania and was personally opposed to slavery, even going out of his way on several occasions to buy slaves just so he could free them immediately afterward. He knew what he was doing was abominable, and yet he did it anyway. That makes it much, much worse.

Buchanan also had a needlessly aggressive and hawkish foreign policy. For example, he attempted to annex Cuba. His plot was only foiled because of Republican opposition in Congress. His imperialist tendencies also came close to sparking a war with Mexico. Buchanan wanted to establish a US protectorate in northern Mexico, so he tried to use skirmishes between Mexicans and Americans on the US-Mexican border as an excuse to declare war on the country. And he nearly succeeded in this vile effort, but John Brown's raid on a federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia - an incident that worsened the divide over slavery, as Brown sought weapons for an abolitionist rebellion at the arsenal - left the American people too distracted to go along with the war.

It should be noted, though, that Buchanan's foreign policy, while generally quite awful, did have a few redeeming traits. He arrested William Walker, a US-installed dictator in Nicaragua, and later established US transit rights in that same country. These redeeming traits in foreign policy - alongside a few redeeming qualities in his domestic policy and the fact that the crises Buchanan dealt with were created by his predecessors - are what keep him from being the very worst president.

Yet, when circumstances demanded Buchanan to be bold and strong the most, he transformed into a weak, pathetic worm unable to effectively do a single worthwhile thing. On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln, a member of the anti-slavery Republican Party, defeated pro-slavery candidates Stephen Douglas, John Breckinridge, and John Bell in the 1860 election. Despite the fact that Lincoln's strategy toward abolishing slavery didn't involve any legislation prohibiting the practice generally and merely sought the containment of slavery where it already was so that it would eventually die out, the southern states were terrified by this development. They feared Lincoln would pass a law abolishing slavery. So, beginning with South Carolina on December 20, 1860, southern states began seceding in protest of Lincoln's victory. The civil war was months away. And yet, Buchanan did very little to combat the crisis, which was now starting to erupt.

Now, contrary to popular belief, Buchanan did some things to counter secession. Around the time South Carolina first seceded, Buchanan gave a speech denouncing secession as unconstitutional. Curiously, though, in that exact same speech, Buchanan stated that the law gave the government no power to prevent secession. His response to the secession crisis would not improve from there.

During his remaining months in office, Buchanan supported pro-slavery legislation in a desperate attempt to attract the south back into the Union. For example, Buchanan supported the Crittenden Compromise, a set of constitutional amendments proposed by John Crittenden in an attempt to get the south to rescind their ordinances of secession. The Crittenden Compromise would have:

• Prohibited the federal government from banning slavery
• Compensated all slaveowners unable to recapture escaped slaves due to the efforts of abolitionists
• Clarified that the federal government couldn't ban slavery on land it owned in slave states
• Revived the Missouri Compromise; in other words, all areas located north of the southern border of Missouri - with the exception of Missouri itself - and that were obtained in the Louisiana Purchase would outlaw slavery (I consider this the one good clause of the Crittenden Compromise)
• Barred the federal government from regulating the interstate slave trade
• Outlawed Washington DC from banning slavery unless both Maryland and Virginia - the two states surrounding the city - banned slavery; even then, the city would have to ensure the majority of its residents wanted slavery abolished in a referendum before it could pass such a law
• Instituted a law preventing the repeal of any of the previously-listed clauses

It was only when president-elect Abraham Lincoln announced his opposition to the Crittenden Compromise that it died out. However, this wouldn't stop Buchanan. In February of 1861, Buchanan convinced Congress to draft the Corwin Amendment, a proposed constitutional amendment that would have barred the federal government from prohibiting slavery.

Buchanan's support of pro-slavery legislation was not necessary to inhibit southern secession, especially because it didn't work anyway. The Crittenden Compromise failed to pass Congress and the south didn't think the north would abide by the Corwin Amendment. Instead of supporting cruel and regressive policies in an attempt to appease petulant states, Buchanan should have just sent troops to the south to quell the rebellion.

While this is a minor point in comparison to his decision to enable the slave states and his hawkish foreign policy, it's worth highlighting the almost absurd amount of corruption that existed in the Buchanan Administration. On March 5, 1860, in an attempt to find a scandal worth impeaching the loathed Buchanan over, Congress founded the Covode Committee, which was tasked with investigating any corruption that may have been present in Buchanan's White House. Interestingly, many Democrats, who shared a political party with Buchanan, accused the Covode Committee's leader, a man named John Covode, of only being involved in the effort due to Buchanan's decision to veto the Morrill Bill. This was a bill that, had it passed, would have had the government provide newly-opened agricultural colleges with land that it had previously owned. Covode owned a company that would have benefitted from this policy. Vetoing this bill is one of the many reasons I consider Buchanan an atrocious president. Obviously, however, it is the least of his sins.

On June 16, 1860, the Covode Committee published its findings, disbanding immediately after. According to the document, known as the Covode Report, Buchanan was the most corrupt president in all of American history up until that point.

As previously mentioned, Buchanan had a few redeeming traits that keep him out of the ignoble title of America's worst president. Outside of those already mentioned, I, as a protectionist, appreciate Buchanan's increase in tariffs. In fact, Lincoln would later raise the tariffs instituted by Buchanan to help finance the Union's military during the civil war. He also admitted Oregon, Kansas, and Minnesota into the Union.

His greatest accomplishment came in 1859. In 1846, James K. Polk - who Buchanan was secretary of state under - purchased the southern half of the Oregon Territory from Britain. The British government wanted to maintain control of at least part of the San Juan Islands, a small group of islands off the coast of the Oregon Territory. So, the treaty finalizing the deal said that the border between American Oregon and British-Canadian Oregon was "the channel between" the different islands. However, there were 3 different channels. So, the actual border became impossible to identify.

Consequently, both Britons and Americans settled all across the San Juan Islands. On June 16, 1859, an American farmer noticed a pig owned by one of the British residents eating his potatoes. Infuriated, he shot the pig. Because of this, the pig's owner demanded his arrest. In response, the American residents demanded US troops and warships go to the San Juan Islands and protect them. The American military obliged, and in retaliation, British forces came to the island as well.

Soon after, Buchanan learned of the crisis and was informed that it could escalate into an outright war with Britain. In order to mitigate the situation, Buchanan sent Winfield Scott, a prominent American general, to the San Juan Islands to diffuse the crisis. Scott then convinced both the British and American militaries to keep no more than 100 soldiers from each institution on the islands until the actual owner of the entire archipelago could be determined. This strategy worked, and war was averted. However, while Buchanan obviously deserves a lot of credit for this, Scott brokered the actual deal itself. So, Buchanan only deserves some of the praise.

Regardless, however, preventing this one war - as well as his other achievements - are all incredibly minor in comparison to his most egregious atrocities. At the end of the day, Buchanan was a monstrous leader who sat on his hands as the nation he was supposed to cherish and guard collapsed into disunity, chaos, and eventually, civil war. He is spared from the position of America's worst president by the fact that Pierce created the crisis he was faced with, but his attempts to shield his eyes and retreat back into the delusional comfort of the earlier half of the Antebellum Period damns him to the bottom three.