He didn’t conceive of the federal government having the power to stop the states.”īy the time Lincoln was inaugurated in March 1861, the secessionist states had already formed the Confederate States of America and Civil War was all but assured. “Like Hoover, Buchanan was limited in his concept of what government could do. “I don’t think that history is fair to Buchanan,” says Daniel Franklin, an associate professor emeritus of political science at Georgia State University and author of Pitiful Giants: Presidents in their Final Terms. But when the Star of the West was fired upon and blocked from entering the harbor, Buchanan folded. When South Carolinian troops surrounded Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, Buchanan sent an unarmed vessel, the Star of the West, to provide reinforcements for the U.S.
He knew that secession was illegal, but he also believed that the Constitution barred him from sending in federal soldiers to quash the rebellion. The greater blame for the secession crisis was, as Buchanan saw it, “the long-continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of slavery in the Southern states.”Īfter South Carolina and six other states formally seceded in December 1860 and January 1861, Buchanan was in a tough spot. In his December 1860 State of the Union Address, Buchanan said that “the antecedents of the President-elect have been sufficient to justify the fears of the South that he will attempt to invade their constitutional rights,” although Buchanan didn’t believe Lincoln would act so hastily.
#LAME DUCK CRASH FULL#
President James Buchanan, a lame duck with a Cabinet full of Southerners, chose to blame Lincoln and Northern abolitionists for the division over slavery rather than take a hard line against Southern secession.
When Abraham Lincoln was elected president in November of 1860, slave-owning states led by South Carolina made clear their intentions to secede from the Union rather than make concessions with the incoming Republican administration. James Buchanan, 15th President of the United States, c.
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