Abstract
Certainly, the strongest element of Lincoln’s case is the “James” segment of his conspiracy charge. Whether he acted in concert with “Franklin” is debatable. His open antipathy to “Stephen” is legendary. Nevertheless, the connection with “Roger” seems to be broadly correct and Buchanan’s policies as president, from his stated willingness in his inaugural address to “cheerfully submit” to the Supreme Court’s impending decision to his very last acts, do suggest the possibility of a plan to nationalize slavery or accept Southern secession.
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Notes
Michael A. Genovese, The Power of the American Presidency ( New York: Oxford University Press, 2001 ), p. 77;
Max J. Skidmore, Presidential Performance ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2004 ), pp. 122–23;
Allan Nevins, Prologue to the Civil War (New York: Knopf, 1974), vol. 2, p. 210.
Michael Birkner, “Getting to Know Buchanan, Again,” in Michael Birkner, ed., James Buchanan and the Political Crisis of the 1850s ( Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press ), p. 17.
Charles F. Faber and Richard B. Faber, The American Presidents Ranked by Performance (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2000), p. 118. Faber and Faber rank Buchanan twenty-fifth.
Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1965 ), p. 593;
Jean H. Baker, James Buchanan ( New York: Times Books, 2004 ), p. 26.
Philip Shriver Klein, President James Buchanan: A Biog raphy (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania Sate University Press, 1962 ), p. 253.
James F. Simon, Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney ( New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006 ), p. 114.
See, Robert K. Carr, The Supreme Court and Judicial Review ( New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1942 );
Robert H. Jackson, The Struggle for Judicial Supremacy (New York: Alfred P. Knopf, 1941). Don. E. Fehrenbacher, however, demurs stating that hostility between the regions was so pronounced that the narrower decision originally drafted would not have altered subsequent events. The Dred Scott Case (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978 ), p. 562. Mark Graber from a different perspective defends the decision on constitutional, though not moral terms, and implies that its rejection, particularly by Lincoln, was a violation of constitutional norms. Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil ( Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008 ).
Janis Lull, King Richard III ( Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999 ), p. 85.
James Buchanan, Mr. Buchanan’s Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion ( New York: Appleton and Co., 1865 ), pp. 232–39.
Elbert B. Smith, The Presidency of James Buchanan ( Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1975 ), p. 69.
Allan Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1959), vol. II, p. 360.
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© 2013 Philip Abbott
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Abbott, P. (2013). Building the House?: James Buchanan. In: Bad Presidents. The Evolving American Presidency Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137306593_5
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