War between North and South was not a foregone conclusion in early 1861 as President James Buchanan encouraged and awaited peaceful legislative settlements of the existing sectional issues. Buchanan, a seasoned diplomat and negotiator with previous service as US Minister to England under President Pierce, Secretary of State under President Polk, and Minister to Russia for President Jackson. In contrast, Lincoln served in the Illinois House 1835-1842 and served a mere 2 years as US Representative from Illinois.
War Was Not the Only Path
In the eighty-three years since the election of Lincoln, there has been a compression of events which places the firing upon Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861, hard upon the heels of the Republican victory on November 6, 1860. The magnitude of the Civil War itself has tended to telescope the important 150 days of possible compromise which intervened. Yet there is good reason to believe that President James Buchanan, as well as many other leaders, expected to avoid open conflict. The mood of the country had sobered at the realization that a sectional party had elected a president. Public opinion, in general, was entirely remote from the thought of war.
In the Ohio Valley, for example, the hour of decision was still half a year away. South of the Ohio the tier of border states which had voted for John Bell was ready to work desperately for compromise and Union. It is, of course, now well known that no complete consolidation of opinion ever occurred either in the North or the South.
The mass of opinion in the country found expression, therefore, on December 3, 1860, when Buchanan clearly enunciated his position as chief executive and, in constitutional terms, called upon the legislative branch of government to assume its responsibility for effecting a peaceful solution of the crisis. Forty years of public service, in both houses of Congress, in the cabinet and the courts of Europe, suggested arbitration to Buchanan. Schooled in constitutional debate, the technique of conciliation, and the adjustment of minority rights, as had occurred notably in 1820, 1832, and 1850, this Scotch-Irish Presbyterian president had carefully examined his own soul and the Constitution of the United States, and found that Congress, and Congress alone, had the power to arbitrate or to act. War, he believed, “ought to be the last desperate remedy of a despairing people, after every other constitutional means of conciliation had been exhausted.”
A month later, when South Carolina had, on December 20, voted to secede, and Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas were on the point of secession, Buchanan remained firm in his conviction that “justice as well as sound policy requires us still to seek a peaceful solution.” The prevailing sentiment of the country for adjustment, which found expression in such bodies as the Virginia-led Washington Peace Convention of February 1861, and the Crittenden Compromise, was strong and unchanged, though less articulate than the extremists on both sides. If the tall shadow of the president-elect lay across every discussion, then it will be remembered that Lincoln remained, during this period, a shadow indeed, without voice of assurance or warning.
Buchanan’s conciliatory stand has, until recently, been buried under the avalanche of post-war attitudes which show him only as the inept and weak man who stepped down for Lincoln’s administration. Not until the early decades of this century has a critical use of prejudiced sources and a body of new evidence indicated a revision. Was the Civil War necessary to save the Union, historians have now begun to ask. An able scholar of the new school, James G. Randall, comments succinctly:
“If . . . preservation of the Union by peaceable adjustment was possible, then unionists were not faced with a choice of war or disunion, but rather a choice between a Union policy of war and a Union policy in the Virginia sense of adjustment and concession.”
Especially suggestive to students of the period is Randall’s recent statement that “the wars that have not happened” should be studied. Judged in the light of “historical relativity” rather than in the concept of the “irrepressible conflict,” Buchanan’s policy, particularly as outlined in his December 3rd address to the nation, is subject to fresh interpretation. For its revelation of the gradually evolving picture of James Buchanan, as it has been influenced by changing methods of historical scholarship, and as a chronological picture of a state of public opinion which only gradually has permitted objectivity, a roll call of representative historians is of value.
The Southerner who foresaw that “to the South’s overflowing cup would be added the bitter taste of having the history of the war written by Northerners,” for at least fifty years, was not far wrong. A literary historical method which “saw history as primarily the achievements of great men, engaged in the grand manner, in sublime episodes, of political and military strife,” and made to order for the New England, or nationalist, school of historical writers who, until well past the turn of the century, dominated the field. American historical scholarship was, for that matter, still in its infancy. By 1880 there were still only eleven professors of history in the United States. The German seminar and the scientific methods of objective appraisal, which began to be felt in this country during the 1870’s, only gradually influenced these “prosecuting historians.”
Centering their attack on Buchanan’s December 3rd address, and the four eventful months of a “lame-duck” period, they have often contented themselves with easy, if theoretical, post-judgments. The shades of Jackson and Clay have been called to witness that forceful action would have saved the day. At the same time, accepting Seward’s thesis of the “irrepressible conflict,” Buchanan’s critics have clouded the hopes for peaceful settlement and the continuous efforts and proposals toward this end. The fact that these hopes were shared by such contemporary leaders as John Tyler, John Bell, John Floyd, John C. Breckinridge, Stephen A. Douglas, William H. Seward, Thurlow Weed, and many others, as well as by the average citizen, has not always been indicated.
On the basis of a careful study of manuscript and periodical sources which reflect the mood of the times, historian David M. Potter concludes that Lincoln and his party were unaware of the real threat of secession. His discussion of “Lincoln’s Perilous Silence” (pp. 134-55) is based on the fact that from the Cooper Institute speech in February 1860, to the date of his First Inaugural in March 1861, Lincoln made no definitive speeches.”
(James Buchanan and the Crisis of the Union. Frank W. Klingberg. Journal of Southern History, Vol. 9, No. 4, Nov. 1943, pp. 455-474).