2. I meant Buchanan not Wilson. Buchanan was not racist, at least I can find no mention of it. If you can great, but I am assuming right now that it was a poor off-hand remark. Lincoln made remarks that were racist and Andrew Johnson has been shown to be a racist. Buchanan, again, was screwed by the supreme court two days into his presidency and it was down-hill from there. Please, Gautam I am not trying to make this an 'issue'. You freely stated that you did no research on Buchanan, but what you say is wrong. Here:
http://gi.grolier.com/presidents/ea/bios/15pbuch.html quote: As the war dragged on, the nation sought a scapegoat and found one in ex-President Buchanan. Perhaps no American President has been so vilified for political purposes. The Republicans, especially, fabricated stories and twisted facts to depict Buchanan as a traitor, a proslavery conspirator, and the principal author of the war. Those who could have set the record straight were silenced by wartime censorship and intimidation. After the war, their statements were ignored. Buchanan, in retirement, published a documented account of his administration, Mr. Buchanan's Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion (1866), but it received scant attention. Recent scholarship recognizes that Buchanan devoted all his talent to averting the catastrophe and that no other policy gave better promise of a peaceful settlement. Kevin T. PA proud Me: There are many people in Pennsylvania history you can be proud of, but Buchanan wasn't one of them. He basically spent his entire career currying favor with the South and working in support of the pro-slavery power. He wasn't a traitor - he was just a weak and inept man who had the bad luck to be President at a time that called for strength. The times make the man - in this case, the times made him a disaster. James Buchanan was one of the three authors of the Ostend Manifesto, which called for the annexation of Cuba and was explicitly an attempt by the slave states to increase their power and protect slavery - and he didn't even have the excuse of being from the South. He also did nothing to control Southern marauders in Kansas, and then supported the ludicrous Lecompton Constitution that was purely a product of Southern bandits who rigged the Kansas elections. He did get stuck with Dred Scott, yes, but he was an active supporter of that decision - he could have done as Lincoln did, declaring it a mistake by the Supreme Court that he would do everything possible to reverse. Furthermore, he actively supported the enforcement of the barbarous Fugitive Slave Act - again, a major strike against him. His greatest mistakes, however, are undoubtedly during the period at the end of his Administration when secession began. He made only a token effort to resupply Ft. Sumter, and when that failed he made no efforts to protect any Federal property in the South. Even his effort to send the Star of the West to Sumter was purely because most of his (pro-Southern) Cabinet resigned, which left Stanton as the most powerful personality near the President, and Buchanan pretty much did whatever his advisors told him to do. Let's be clear on what it meant for Buchanan to choose not to act against secession - in the face of an open rebellion against Federal authority, the President of the United States did _nothing_ to protect the authority of the government. Nothing at all. He publicly declared that it was his opinion that the Federal Government did not have the power under the Constitution to protect itself. This cannot be emphasized enough. Abraham Lincoln demonstrated, quite convincingly, that it was within the capacity of the President to protect the government - which means that Buchanan does not have the excuse that he was prevented from acting by outside constraints. He chose to accede to the dismemberment of the country which he had been elected to protect. There is no more devastating accusation I could make, and it is not one that is subject to interpretation - it's explicitly a part of the historical record. Quoting from Thinkquest: "Although he opposed secession, Buchanan believed that there was no way for him to prevent such action. He put much of the blame on the Republicans because they had denounced the Dred Scott Decision and had refused to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law." This isn't a small thing. The oath of the President of the United States is to protect the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. When Buchanan was faced with those domestic enemies, he decided to do _nothing_. It wasn't a case of he was forced to do nothing - he _chose_ to do nothing when the option to act was available to him. As a consequence Lincoln began the war with all of the extensive Federal property in the South (save Ft. Sumter) in Southern hands. The Southern armies were armed with weapons purchased by the Federal government - because those arms were given up to the South without any effort to defend them. James Buchanan made that choice. I didn't do any research on Buchanan because the Civil War in general and Lincoln in particular are one of my hobbies, and what I typed was a summary of William Gienapp's description of Buchanan. Since Gienapp is Harvard's professor on the Civil War, and is one of the foremost scholars of the period, I certainly think he qualifies as an authority :-) Now, if you asked me about cosmology, I'd have to do research. But on the Civil War I'm fairly confident in my memory :-) It is true that he "devoted all his talent to averting the catastrophe" - the problem is that he didn't _have_ talent. It is also true that "no other policy gave better promise of a peaceful settlement." So what? His _obligation_ as President was to preserve the Union. A peaceful settlement would have been great, but if that wasn't an option, then his job was to find a settlement by whatever means were necessary. He _chose_ not to do that, and in making that choice, earned himself a spot as the worst President ever by a very large margin. Gautam
