Spare a thought for James Buchanan

But just one

A friend sent a photo of the James Buchanan Memorial in Washington. Pennsylvania’s only president sits quietly on the edge of Meridian Hill Park, which abuts 16th Street north of the White House. Joan of Arc commands center stage in the park, brandishing the sword of righteousness from the saddle of her charging horse. “Liberatrice,” pronounces the plaque beneath the statue, a gift from the Society of French Women in Exile in thanks for America’s help in World War I. Compared to the fiery saint, Buchanan seems reserved, even retiring.

And so he was judged in the 1920s, when his statue was erected. Expectations of the presidency had changed since Buchanan’s day. Theodore Roosevelt scorned what he called the “Buchanan-Taft” philosophy of presidential authority (after he had fallen out with his protege William Howard Taft). “I declined to adopt the view that what was imperatively necessary for the nation could not be done by the President unless he could find some specific authorization to do it,” Roosevelt said. The burden, rather, was on those who wanted to stop the president. “My belief was that it was not only his right but his duty to do anything that the needs of the nation demanded unless such action was forbidden by the Constitution or by the laws.”

This had the effect of inverting the Constitution, especially the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. But Roosevelt never had trouble reading upside-down, and his activist view of the presidency became the norm for presidents after him. Against this standard, Buchanan measured poorly. The chief complaint leveled at Buchanan was that he did nothing to halt the secession of the seven southern states that formed the original Confederacy. 

This claim wasn't quite accurate. Buchanan spoke out strongly against secession. “In order to justify secession as a constitutional remedy, it must be on the principle that the Federal Government is a mere voluntary association of States, to be dissolved at pleasure by any one of the contracting parties,” he declared to Congress in December 1860. “If this be so, the Confederacy is a rope of sand, to be penetrated and dissolved by the first adverse wave of public opinion in any of the States. In this manner our thirty-three States may resolve themselves into as many petty, jarring, and hostile republics, each one retiring from the Union without responsibility whenever any sudden excitement might impel them to such a course. By this process a Union might be entirely broken into fragments in a few weeks which cost our forefathers many years of toil, privation, and blood to establish. Such a principle is wholly inconsistent with the history as well as the character of the Federal Constitution.”

Lest anyone mistake his point, Buchanan reiterated: “The right of the people of a single State to absolve themselves at will and without the consent of the other States from their most solemn obligations, and hazard the liberties and happiness of the millions composing this Union, can not be acknowledged. Such authority is believed to be utterly repugnant both to the principles upon which the General Government is constituted and to the objects which it is expressly formed to attain. . . . Secession is neither more nor less than revolution.”

And yet— and here's where Buchanan's critics had a point—the president believed he was simultaneously constrained by the Constitution from resisting secession by force. “The power to make war against a State is at variance with the whole spirit and intent of the Constitution. Suppose such a war should result in the conquest of a State; how are we to govern it afterwards? Shall we hold it as a province and govern it by despotic power?” Even if the president possessed such power, exercising it would be counterproductive. “War would not only present the most effectual means of destroying it”—the Union—“but would vanish all hope of its peaceable reconstruction. Besides, in the fraternal conflict a vast amount of blood and treasure would be expended, rendering future reconciliation between the States impossible. In the meantime, who can foretell what would be the sufferings and privations of the people during its existence?”

The nature of the American republic was that it couldn’t be held together by force, Buchanan said. “Our Union rests upon public opinion, and can never be cemented by the blood of its citizens shed in civil war. If it can not live in the affections of the people, it must one day perish.” Congress must work harder to restore affection for the Union. 

His reading of the Constitution aside, Buchanan had another very good reason for declining to take arms against secession. At his inauguration in 1857, he had proclaimed himself a one-term president. He had kept to this pledge. He held power for the moment, but that moment was quickly waning. The United States in 1860 had a miniscule standing army. If Buchanan announced a war against the seceding states, he would be out of office before sufficient troops could be mustered to commence a campaign. The voters, and particularly the electors, had chosen Abraham Lincoln to be the next president. Buchanan could not, in democratic good faith, commit Lincoln to a policy as fraught as war.

Nor was Lincoln offering help or guidance for the interregnum period. The president-elect was conspicuously silent on how he would handle secession. He deflected questions by referring the questioners to the statements he had made during the campaign. But everyone knew that campaign statements are an entirely different form of political speech than statements by a victorious candidate. Of the latter, there were next to none.

Buchanan did the only thing a conscientious lame duck could do. He said what he believed and why he believed it. But he took no action that might have made the dangerous situation worse. So far, secession was confined to the deep South. The border states, and especially Virginia, the state that could make or break secession, were pondering their responses. Buchanan couldn’t help handing Lincoln a nation politically divided; he refused to hand him a nation at civil war.

Indeed, Lincoln's first month in office was decidedly Buchananesque. Like his predecessor, Lincoln denounced secession as unconstitutional. But he took no action to suppress it. He waited until the South Carolina militia had fired the first shots at Fort Sumter before requesting an army to put down the rebellion. As soon as he did, four other southern states, including Virginia, joined the original seven. And the war Buchanan had hoped to avert began in earnest.

Lincoln learned much from the fighting that ensued, and one thing he learned was the value of cooperation between incoming and departing presidents. In the summer of 1864, with the war going badly for the Union, Lincoln projected his plans for the period after the election of that year. “It seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected,” he wrote in a memo he sealed for opening post-election. “Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President-elect as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration.” Perhaps Lincoln regretted not having tried this approach with Buchanan.

Union victories in the field rescued him from defeat at the polls. Lincoln never had to act on his determination to cooperate with his successor.

The Civil War, as it tragically played out, split the country. But North and South agreed that Buchanan was a miserable excuse for a president. The North blamed him for being insufficiently like Lincoln and failing to crush secession; the South blamed him for being excessively like Lincoln in denying the validity of secession.

So why does he have a statue in Meridian Hill Park? Because his niece in 1903 bequeathed $100,000 to pay for it. Congress dawdled, nearly missing the deadline the niece imposed on her bequest. But finally, in a city-beautifying mood, and at a time when the last Civil War veterans were dying, Congress accepted the deal. The memorial was dedicated on June 26, 1930. 

Today Buchanan sits on his pedestal. He seems lost in thought, possibly about the inscription: “The incorruptible statesman whose walk was upon the mountain ranges of the law.” Buchanan believed he deserved better from his compatriots than he got, but even he might not have gone that far.