President Buchanan is viewed by most as one of the worst presidents because of his failure to address the immediate causes of the Civil War. He was indeed, as bad as Pierce, and maybe worse: (1) He exercised improper influence on the Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, widely considered one of the worst judicial decisions* in American history, in order to gain stronger support for his pro-slavery views; (2) he failed to recognize the legitimate democratic processes of anti-slavery forces in the Kansas Territory and used federal power to advance the cause of pro-slavery forces; (3) he actively opposed the doctrine of popular sovereignty in determining whether a territory was "free' or "slave," completely contradicting the quotation attributed to him in the attached photograph: "The ballot box is the surest arbiter of disputes among free men;" (4) he not only failed to use force to confront secession, he also voiced sympathy for secessionists even while stating that secession was illegal. I tend to think strong action by Buchanan's predecessor, Pierce, would have been more likely to avert the Civil War than anything Buchanan could have done, but, that said, Buchanan simply made a bad situation worse. After Abraham Lincoln won the election of 1860 on a platform of excluding slavery from the western territories, southern states began to secede. Buchanan did nothing, leaving his successor a house divided.
*Tomorrow, March 6th, is the 161st anniversary of the Dred Scott decision.
*Tomorrow, March 6th, is the 161st anniversary of the Dred Scott decision.
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