Welcome to Blogging the Presidents: A Voting While Intoxicated™ Almost Original Series. We will be taking a serious look at the 42 men who have led our country and hopefully finding a few laughable details.
PART XV
I feel bad for James Buchanan. He is often considered the worst President in history because he did not prevent the Civil War. He maintained that succession was illegal, but so was using force against other States in order to force union. As someone who is not convinced that the Constitution is explicitly binding for eternity, and certainly not of the social contract ramifications if it is, I’d be hesitant to claim succession as illegal (though I’d still obviously assert slavery to be immoral). Secondly, it is hard to see what Buchanan would have done to prevent the Civil War. He was opposed to those movements by the Republicans in the North that provoked the South into secessionist sentiments. In a way, Lincoln is more to blame for the Civil War for choosing to fight to maintain the union, and if you feel that maintaining the union was necessary, then Buchanan is knocked not for causing the war but for handling the dawn of the war poorly and making the effort much more difficult for Lincoln.
Ultimately, due to the immoral nature of slavery, we have a very shaded view of the Civil War, and the result of this is Buchanan getting a bad rap. That said, he was not exactly a swell President in other matters. He was actually pro-slavery and not averse to potential corruption in tilting things in favor of slavery (which may have driven the Republicans into some of the anti-slavery activity pushing towards the War). During his time the economy went into a crisis. He also displayed some disgusting persecution of the Mormons (who for whatever their craziness, have had a pretty hard time of it from the American government). On the whole he certainly was not a moral nor competent President, but he may simply be not quite as bad as alleged.
Buchanan is occasionally referred to as the Bachelor President, as he is the only President to date to have never been married. Jefferson, for example, was a widower as President having never remarried after the death of his wife well earlier. This status, plus a close relationship with William Rufus King (the short-lived VP under Pierce), has led many (at the time and among historians) to speculate that he was gay. It is hard to tell, and his successor, Lincoln, has also had similar rumors about him. That said, just as it is fairly likely that someone of not purely Caucasian blood has been President, it seems likely that someone who had dalliances with other men has served as President.
