5
Before James Buchanan was even inaugurated as president, he had inserted himself into the federal system in a way most newly elected chief executives have shied away from. For instance, with the country in the midst of the worst economic depression in history when Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected for the first time in 1932, he withdrew from the spotlight as president-elect, even when his defeated opponent, Herbert Hoover, reached out to him for joint consultation while finishing out his term. At the time, FDR was criticized for what he privately termed “staying away from the kitchen until he was made the head cook,” especially given the nation’s desperate state. Instead of inserting himself into a joint decision making process when he was not yet the chief decision maker, Roosevelt maintained his distance until Hoover’s time was up, knowing full well that he needed total control to implement any new course of action, even if that meant putting off much needed change for several months. Whatever might have been possible sooner if FDR had conferred and coordinated with Hoover we will never know, but it is clear that he wanted to enter the White House as the hero with unchallenged authority to make things happen, and to accept the outgoing president’s personal entreaties to jointly address the nation’s financial woes would have rendered that highly unlikely, if not impossible.1
Similarly, Buchanan had the dream of quickly righting the Democratic ship of state and succeeding in everything his outgoing, one-term predecessor, Franklin Pierce, had left messy and unresolved, including a reasonable solution for slavery and a way of ending the Kansas controversy. Having been out of the country for most of the previous three years as a highly respected American diplomat, both goals seemed attainable if he could only insert himself into the process rapidly, even before Inauguration Day.2
Actually “from Buchanan’s perspective,” the demands of the presidency required “a man of calm and firm temperament, a commanding leader,” as Jean Baker took from his own 1852 writings when she authored a biography of him as part of the American Presidents Series. In concurrence with how Buchanan probably arrived at this personal point of view, another presidential historian labeled him: “The last of the Democratic heirs to Andrew Jackson,” the first president he served under as minister to Russia (1832–1833) before also serving under Jacksonian protégé, James K Polk, as secretary of state (1845–1849). From the moment he achieved the White House, Buchanan was convinced he, too, possessed the Jacksonian trait of knowing what would best serve the country at that crucial moment in time and making it happen. It was this uncompromising self-assurance, in fact, that would prompt him to follow the opposite pre-inauguration course to that chosen by FDR, instead inserting himself into the administrative process before his term actually began.3
One way he did that was by showing up in Washington over a month before his inauguration to interview and select his Cabinet on-site. But it was another preliminary and very questionable insertion of himself and presidential influence into the judicial system that attracted condemnation at the time and rumors of corruption ever since. This historic innuendo was made possible by a case out of St. Louis making its way through the federal courts that would become a landmark in American judicial annals. It involved a slave, Dred Scott, who had been taken by his master from pro-slavery Missouri into Illinois and later Wisconsin Territory before being returned to Missouri. Because both Illinois and Wisconsin Territory did not permit slaves, Scott sued for his freedom, which was first rejected by the Missouri Supreme Court and then famously upheld, 7–2, by the U.S. Supreme Court of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney on March 6, 1857, two days after Buchanan was inaugurated.4
To many observers, it did not seem mere coincidence that two days before Taney’s announcement, Buchanan had stated in his inaugural address that the slavery question “belongs to the Supreme Court of the United States, before whom it is now pending and will, it is understood, be speedily and finally settled.” Speculation that Buchanan knew the Court’s decision before it was announced began immediately and, in fact, was supported by pretty damning evidence, including correspondence the President-elect had with Associate Justice John Catron, who apparently confirmed the Southern majority on the Court would probably rule against Scott. In so doing, Catron had also indicated that slaves were protected property under the Constitution, which could be instantly interpreted to mean the government had no right to bar slavery in any territory before statehood.5
In The Worst President: The Story of James Buchanan, Garry Boulard wrote: “Bumptiously inserting himself into preliminary deliberation of the Court, Buchanan had not only corresponded with Catron on the matter, but also with Associate Justice Robert Grier,” an old Pennsylvania friend of his whom he may have influenced to side with his Southern colleagues. And if those suspicions weren’t bad enough, the President had also been seen kibitzing privately with the Chief Justice “in front of thousands” at the inaugural ceremonies.6
Regardless “of what the President knew and when he knew it” (a phrase now common in America’s political lexicon), Buchanan hoped to seize on the opportunity presented by the Dred Scott case to put an end to the slavery issue forever. Based on the Supreme Court’s decision and with the new president in agreement, no African American could be a citizen and, as a result, Dred Scott should have not been able to sue for his freedom. Also, with repeal of the Missouri Compromise line, slaves interpreted as private property by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment could not be prohibited before statehood even during the more ambiguous territorial period, opening the door to slave owners being able to move into the new, and as yet “unconstitutionalized” territories, and bring their slaves/property with them just as any other property owner could. Basically, Buchanan believed slavery had always been rooted in the U.S. Constitution and therefore could not be legislated out. The Dred Scott decision did nothing but reinforce that belief.7
Interestingly, it also reinforced Southern confidence in Buchanan, whose “pronounced pro–Southernism,” as Baker termed it, and belief that the North still needed to permit its Southern neighbors to manage their own affairs had paid dividends. Indeed, Buchanan would not have been elected if not for the South. While failing to carry all but three Northern states, Illinois, Indiana and his own, Pennsylvania, Buchanan was victorious in all but one slave holding state, including all six states of the Deep South, all four in the Upper South, and three of the four soon-to-be Border States. California also went for Buchanan, while Maryland was the only state for Fillmore and Frémont captured the eleven other Northern states.8
Even in victory, however, Buchanan was subdued as he faced the prospect of a nation that had given him just 45.3 percent of its total vote and an Electoral College tally that was 80 votes less than his Democratic predecessor four years earlier. In addition, the brewing toxicity surrounding Northern anti-slavery feeling was becoming increasingly evident and the Republican Party had made huge inroads by adopting that cause and becoming “the party of the North,” basically relegating the Democrats’ immediate future to the South. “For Buchanan, the Republican Party was anathema,” according to Baker. It was made up of “extremists who threatened the South with their anti-slavery propaganda.” So, despite his ascension to the White House after years of seeing younger men reach the presidency ahead of him, Buchanan was relieved, but he was not happy.9
At the same time, the construction of his Cabinet, four Southerners and three Northern Democrats, revealed a chief executive uninterested in peacemaking and intent on having his own way. Armed with the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Dred Scott decision, he planned to make short shrift of the territorial dilemma he had inherited so that he could move on to other, more gratifying issues like expansion and foreign affairs, both of which he felt well qualified to tackle. Even during the financial Panic of 1857 and what became a crisis in the desert, when Mormon leader Brigham Young briefly challenged federal authority in Utah, Buchanan never wavered in his primary focus—a speedy resolution of the presidential headache that was Kansas.10
Douglas, meanwhile, having had the slavery controversy again rear its ugly head, necessitating another round of legislation (as it had in 1820 and 1850), approached the Buchanan presidency confident in his popular sovereignty remedy, the resulting Kansas-Nebraska Act, and his defense of both during the debates with Lincoln. Richard Baker and Neil MacNeil, combining on their 2013 history of the American Senate, summarized his supreme confidence in that moment when they wrote of and quoted him thusly: “With great skill, Senator Douglas managed that legislation to final approval, and he dismissed the Senate’s extended debate as meaningless. ‘I had the authority and power of a dictator throughout the whole controversy,’ he bragged later. ‘The speeches were nothing. It was the marshaling and directing of men, guarding from attacks, and with ceaseless vigilance preventing surprise.’”11
This vintage poster advertised a series of statewide campaign debates between Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln that made the 1856 Illinois senatorial race one of the most remembered in American political history. Douglas would retain the Senate seat, but it was the start of the little-known Lincoln making a national name for himself and his elevation to the presidency in 1860 (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division—Reproduction Number LC-USZC2-5233).
Even in his hard-won victory over Lincoln and return to the Senate, however, he had also misjudged the power of the anti-slavery message. “For Douglas, Lincoln’s proposition that the United States could not endure half slave and half free was belied by American history since 1776,” according to Martin Quitt in his biography of the other, lesser known giant from Illinois. “He genuinely believed that territories should have the right to decide the question of slavery for themselves and that federal intervention deprived territorial inhabitants of their right to self-government.” That’s also why his revision of Dodge’s original territorial bill had been a masterstroke for overcoming the issue of sectional Senate balance, a necessity in that era for the admission of new states. Through it all, Douglas remained the dominant figure in the Democratic Party before the 1856 election, but anti-slavery concerns had necessitated him giving way to the unblemished Buchanan when it came time to face the national electorate. He had survived the vote in his home state, where his seniority, chairmanship, and notoriety were still seen as valuable, but the shine had come off his appeal nationwide and given the sectional signs of the time, that would be something he could never recover.12
Because the Dred Scott decision seemed to contradict the need for his Kansas-Nebraska legislation, Douglas suddenly had to navigate his popular sovereignty concept past not only an increasingly anti-slavery North, but also a South embracing the 7–2 Supreme Court ruling, which had reduced the issue to simple property rights. Even as he resumed his Senate seat, he was not in great shape politically and he knew it.13
Also feeling the political heat but determined there had to be a quick way out was the new president. Buchanan had been counting down the days during his first year in office to the time when an important vote would be held in Kansas. That’s when settlers there were to decide for themselves if they would allow slavery within their borders, the first step towards statehood. And finally, that day arrived, December 21, 1857, with a statewide vote on the result of what had been a very contested constitutional convention held in Lecompton two months earlier and a similar convention that had taken place in Topeka the year before. That meant the results were in; two sets of results, in fact. The first, the Topeka constitution, which would have banned slavery, had been condemned by the Pierce administration and tabled by the Senate following passage in the House. As with Topeka, the pro-slavery Lecompton vote had been tainted by a boycott (each by the other side), but that was not going to stop Buchanan from endorsing it, regardless of the fact that like its predecessor, it had already been proven a sham in terms of democratic process. Understandably, the sitting territorial governor at the time, who was also an old Buchanan ally, began to doubt the entire statehood process and resigned.14
Nevertheless, as Baker emphasized, Buchanan continued to insist he did not wish to interfere “with the decision of the people of Kansas, either for or against slavery,” even though he clearly hoped the Lecompton constitution could be accepted by Congress and the nation could move on with Kansas set to become another slave state, offsetting eventual free state Nebraska (1867). What Buchanan failed to realize was control of Congress was teetering over Kansas and while he naively sought to maintain a coalition of free-soil and pro-slavery Democrats with the Dred Scott decision as his constitutional insurance, sectional division over slavery was already trumping partisan allegiance. The President’s willing acceptance of the governor’s resignation and his perseverance in sticking with Lecompton drew the attention of Northern Democrats and the outrage of Northern Republicans, but it simply reinforced his pro–Southern reputation and conviction to make Kansas a slave state—at least that’s the shared opinion of biographers, presidential historians, and mid–1800s political observers alike. Jean Baker, in fact, concluded that more than any other of his presidential decisions, including those in late 1860 like his conciliatory treatment of Southern secessionist aggression at the start of the Civil War, his management of Kansas demonstrated not just his commitment to the South and determination to have things his way, but his fusion of the two as a “hardheaded resolve to use executive power for Southern interests.” The last Jacksonian president was, after all, “as stubborn for the South as Andrew Jackson was for the Union.”15
Into this political hornet’s nest that Buchanan had created over Lecompton strode Douglas. With his own political viability in question, especially among Northern Democrats, the President’s course had put the party in a very precarious position heading into the 1858 midterms and beyond. Once again, the outspoken senator from Illinois reminded the nation that had it not been for his withdrawal as a candidate in 1856, Buchanan would probably not be president. Famously he declared, “By God Sir, I made James Buchanan, and by God, Sir, I will unmake him.”16
Although successful in his bid to hold off Lincoln and retain his Senate seat, Douglas faced a steadily increasing public backlash over his legislation, even in his own state. In addition, with the President determined to force a quick acceptance of the deeply flawed, pro-slavery Lecompton constitution, Douglas’ idea of popular sovereignty had been corrupted, leaving him in a tenuous place politically in Illinois if he did not oppose Buchanan’s intentions. To remain relevant among Northern Democrats, his core constituency, it became increasingly obvious he would need to marshal congressional forces in rejecting Lecompton on the grounds most people in Kansas had been denied a chance to vote on it.17
In a political cartoon from the 1850s, the Goddess Columbia, the female personification of both the “New World” and the United States in its earliest days, is shown whipping Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois for his role in passing of the controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, while the original Uncle Sam, who also came to symbolize America as her male counterpart after the War of 1812, urges on the punishment (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division—Reproduction Number LC-USZ62-14832).
Nonetheless, the prospect of an “obvious break between the two most powerful Democrats in the country would not only be bad for the party, but ruinous for an administration that [needed] every vote it could get in Congress in the wake of anticipated Republican gains in the coming midterms.” So wrote Garry Boulard in his 2015 biography of Buchanan, The Worst President, before elaborating on the standoff, face-to-face meeting the two top Dems had in December 1857. Indeed, Douglas’ visit and attempt to find common ground would open with the President remarking how he was tired of hearing about Kansas (and) once a constitution had passed, it should be over and done with. Douglas, on the other hand, considered that “a shockingly ignorant” take on events, and urged, instead, that Buchanan “save himself and his presidency by disowning Lecompton” and by starting the ratification process over anew. Douglas also emphasized he had no choice but to openly oppose the Lecompton constitution, even though that would mean opposing the President.18
Obviously angered by this “Democratic impertinence,” Buchanan reportedly replied, “Mr. Douglas, I desire you to remember that no Democrat ever yet differed with an administration of his own choice without being crushed,” to which Douglas supposedly (and just as famously) replied, “Mr. President, Andrew Jackson is dead.” If true, and biographers for both men agree such a reply took place, Douglas’ retort, one Jacksonian to another, would have certainly commenced the rare intra-party war that took place from that moment onward through the presidential election of 1860, nearly three full years later.19
Douglas biographer William Gardner elaborated further on the Democratic conflict when he wrote: “The Buchanan administration and Southern extremists [in his own party] openly declared war on Douglas for his cool indifference to their own special interests,” including “his carelessness whether slavery was voted up or down in the territories and his [apparent] hostility to their plans for planting it in Kansas.” To retain any hope of a presidential audition in the future, Douglas had to know he would face an uphill climb. His majority party was headed for a major split that would obviously work to the benefit of the new anti-slavery Republicans. To hold onto his Senate seat, it had been necessary to stay true to his Illinois constituents, now he would need a plan to re-conquer Southern Dems, who would obviously align with the President. As a keen political strategist, he concluded the treacherous course of all-out Washington war would be necessary to force Buchanan and his Cabinet to, as Gardner put it, “sue for peace.”20
It would never happen. Despite the bold front he would take with the South and despite his willingness “to go to them” and campaign in their midst in secessionist-leaning places like New Orleans and Baltimore, he would never be able to recover from what Southerners by then considered his “abhorrent doctrine”—that despite what the Supreme Court had said, it was still up to the people of the territories to decide about slavery within their borders. When addressing Southern audiences from then on, he would attempt to take the sting out of his philosophy by showing that it was entirely harmless—that despite the Court’s constitutional ruling, the people still had “the practical power to exclude slavery” if their attitude towards it was unfriendly. And according to Gardner, “If slavery would be profitable, their attitude would be friendly, and it would take root and flourish under the protection of law.” But “if by any reason of soil or climate it was unprofitable, their attitude would be unfriendly and not the law nor the Constitution could successfully foster it.” In other words, while trying to coax the South back to his way of thinking, it was an argument at that time that he could not win.21
As for Buchanan, his biographers have confirmed he too went to work to try and maintain control of a party in rebellion. Baker described how throughout the spring of 1858, using tactics often assumed to be the creation of 20th century chief executives, the President sent Cabinet members to lobby congressmen, while “dangling” government contracts before wavering representatives, as well as patronage jobs and commissions. So much so, in fact, that two years later a House committee would investigate whether Buchanan by money, patronage, or other improper means sought to influence Congress. During that same spring, the Washington Union, a pro-administration newspaper of that era, “turned itself into” what Baker termed “an advertisement for the merits of the Lecompton constitution.” At the same time, Buchanan argued that free state residents who had voted for the Topeka constitution had actually been in open rebellion, much like the Mormons in Utah, defying legitimate authority as “mercenaries” for abolitionists. His stubborn advocacy of the Lecompton constitution despite its “forgery by a minority,” as Boulard labeled it, even refuted his earlier commitment to majority rule, and was done with a complete lack of appreciation for how his Kansas actions were negatively affecting the national narrative and boosting the opposition of the still infant Republican party.22
He was actually still urging Congress to accept Lecompton even after a second vote in Kansas had rejected the document. In Massachusetts, the Springfield Daily Republican called his continued efforts in that regard “a disgrace” and his home state Philadelphia North American labeled his “embrace” of the fraudulent constitution “so evidently the work of a mind determinedly defending the wrong as to destroy all credit that the President had before possessed.” Adding to this disdainful Northern media chorus, the Ohio Repository wrote: “Mr. Buchanan, with the most astounding duplicity and inconsistency [has] violated [his] pledges to the people of Kansas and joined the ranks of their enemies.”23
To try and bridge the national turmoil, a compromise was attempted by Indiana Congressman William English, who conceived an amendment to try and make the Lecompton constitution more palatable, whereby if Kansas residents would accept the President’s preferred course and vote to approve Lecompton, the state would be allowed to enter the Union early without going through the normal territorial waiting period and required population of at least 93,000, upon which representation in the House of Representatives was then based. This timing concession, however, was considered nothing more than a bribe by the majority of Kansas’ voters, who would summarily reject it when given the chance.24
Alas, it would not be the last time a U.S. president’s stubborn resolve to his way or no way would doom a unique leadership opportunity for country over self and damage his legacy. Thus pitted against a solid bloc of Republicans and breakaway Northern Democrats, Buchanan “dug in,” still determined to push the Lecompton constitution through a deeply divided Congress.25 In Kansas, meanwhile, settlers re-armed themselves against the prospect of renewed violence should the President’s will come true and Congress bow to his wishes. “Every man is getting his rifle in good order [and] God help the few pro-slavery men and women in the territory for there will be no mercy shown if ‘Old Buck’ forces that upon them,” one of his former territorial governors wrote to an Ohio legislator at the time, as national debate on the issue intensified.26
On March 22, 1858, Douglas, in his capacity as chairman of the Committee on Territories, rose in the Senate to give voice to his official opposition to the admission of Kansas as a U.S. territory under the Lecompton constitution. His address that day was a direct assault on the preferred policy of President Buchanan, but also a deliberate attempt to defend his recent legislative efforts and to bridge, if possible, the gaping divide threatening to consume his Democratic Party. Even for an accomplished speaker and politician like Douglas, it was a nearly impossible task. Permanently preserved in print by the Library of Congress, excerpted highlights from his memorable address that day follow.
On the issue of popular sovereignty:
In as much as the time-honored and venerated policy of the Senate and the other House of Congress saw no remedy but to return to the true principles of the Constitution—to those great principles of self-government and popular sovereignty was to leave the people of the territories and the states free to decide the slavery question, as well as all others, for themselves. The object was to localize, not to revolutionize the controversy in regard to slavery, to make it a question for each state and territory to decide for itself, without any other state, any other territory, the federal government, or any outside power interfering to influence or control the result.
On the question of Lecompton:
Have the people of Kansas been left perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution? If not, you have no right to impose it upon them. I come back to the question ought we to receive Kanas into the Union with the Lecompton constitution? Is there satisfactory evidence that is the act and deed of the people [?] … that it embodies their will? Is the evidence satisfactory that the people of that territory have been left perfectly free to form and regulate domestic institutions in their own way? I think not! But for the slavery clause, could this Lecompton constitution even receive a single vote in either House of Congress? Were it not for the slavery clause, would there be any objection to sending it back to the people for a fair vote? I say to my Southern friends they must act on the right of the people to decide for themselves.
On Lecompton being a party test:
I am told this Lecompton constitution is a party test, a party measure that no man is a Democrat who does not sanction it, who does not vote to bring Kansas into the Union with the government established under this constitution. Sir, who made that a party test? Who has interpolated this Lecompton constitution into our party platform? Oh; we are told it is an administration measure, [but] is it the right of this administration to declare what are party measures and what are not? That has been attempted [before] and failed.
As to Congress being in charge of the admission of new territories and not the President:
The Constitution of the United States says that new states may be admitted into the Union by the Congress—not by the President, his Cabinet, or administration. This constitution shall be submitted directly to the Congress, not to the President—the President [has] nothing to do with it.
On the right of a president to dictate to senators:
I do not recognize the right of the President or his Cabinet, no matter what my respect may be for them, to tell me my duty in the Senate chamber. The President has no more right to prescribe tests to senators than senators have to the President. If the will of my state is one way and the will of the President is the other, am I to be told that I must obey the executive and betray my state or else be branded as a traitor to the party and hunted down by all the newspapers that share the patronage of the administration. What despotism on earth would be equal to this if you establish that the executive has a right to command the votes, consciences, [and] the judgment of senators and representatives instead of their constituents? The President says in effect: Do as you please on all questions but one—that one is Lecompton [and] he intends to brand every Democrat in the United States a traitor who is opposed to the Lecompton constitution. For my part, Mr. President, I stand by the time-honored principles illustrated by Jefferson and Jackson, those principles of state sovereignty and strict construction on which the Democratic Party has ever stood. I will stand by the Constitution and neither the frowns of power nor the influence of patronage will change my action or drive me from my principles. I would prefer private life to abject servile submission to executive will.27
It had to be one of the most ringing rebukes of a sitting president ever delivered by a member of his own party, but it failed to dissuade the Senate and its Democratic majority, two-thirds of whom represented slave-holding states, and by a comfortable margin the Upper House backed the President in approving Lecompton. The Lower House, however, with its composition based on population was a different story, mostly because Northern Democrats—guided by Douglas—viewed Lecompton as fraudulent and voted against it. The congressional split should have provided Buchanan the perfect, face-saving opportunity to send the pro-slavery document back to Kansas for a re-write, but instead all his administration could offer was a renewed push for acceptance based on inclusion of the English amendment. Ultimately the document did get through both houses, but as already noted, Kansans had the final say and overwhelmingly rejected what Baker termed “the bribe” by 9,500 votes of the 13,100-total cast in what was—at least that time—a fair election.28
“So long stifled by the Buchanan administration” and their aggressive pro-slavery neighbors, as Baker also affirmed, new Kansas delegates to a new convention returned a new constitution, the anti-slavery Wyandotte constitution (named after yet another new Kansas border town), which despite being bitterly opposed by Southern legislators, was eventually ratified by Congress. As a result, Kansas finally got to enter the Union as a free state in January 1861—just four months before the first guns of the Civil War were fired.29
Despite obviously being on the wrong side of the issue from the start, Buchanan would seek to save face by taking credit for “resolving the Kansas conflict” in his annual message to Congress at the end of 1858, while blaming “reactionary abolitionist sentiment” for all the violence and controversy that had transpired. Needless to say, it was a hollow message. While claiming that with the crisis of the economy, the Mormons, and Kansas over, the nation could finally address foreign policy and other issues he hoped to pursue, the central issue of slavery continued to linger for all Americans—North and South—and Buchanan’s inability to deal with or offer anything of substance for the coming national storm would render him a one-term president. Even more telling would be one biographer’s label as the worst president ever and another’s judgment of his Kansas policy as one of the “greatest blunders” in American history.30
Meanwhile, facing the same divided country would prove just as problematic for Douglas. Although not aligned with the sentiment of one section over another, as Buchanan was with the South, Douglas was a national leader trapped in the middle of the transformational conflict that would soon envelope the country. Despite making every effort to straddle and bridge the gargantuan gap between the sections, Douglas could only defend his earlier efforts on behalf of what he considered constitutional doctrine—never backtracking, even with his political ambitions under siege.31 And yet, with the sectional divide driving a wedge through his party, past prestige and credentials would still earn him its official presidential nomination in 1860 after 160 days of intense electioneering in more than 150 towns and 23 of the 33 states. Casting aside any false pretense of his ongoing White House ambitions, in fact, Douglas staged what biographer Martin Quitt termed “the first overtly political campaign” by an American presidential candidate.32 Unlike 1856, he was on the ballot and Buchanan was not, but after Buchanan and the war they had waged, the Democrats would have had trouble electing anybody, especially given the fact Douglas would not be the only Dem—or even Illinois candidate—in the presidential field.33
1. Jonathan Alter, The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, 139, 178–181.
2. Jean H. Baker, James Buchanan, 75–78.
3. Jean H. Baker, James Buchanan, 76; Kenneth C. Davis, Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents, 152, 196.
4. Garry Boulard, The Worst President, 33–34; Jean H. Baker, James Buchanan, 83–85; Richard Carwardine, Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power, 71.
5. Kenneth C. Davis, Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents, 238, 240; Garry Boulard, The Worst President, 33–34.
6. Garry Boulard, The Worst President, 34.
7. Jean H. Baker, James Buchanan, 84–85; William DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, 219.
8. William DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, 217; Jean H. Baker, James Buchanan, 74.
9. Jean H. Baker, James Buchanan, 80, 81.
10. Jean H. Baker, James Buchanan, 90–93; Garry Boulard, The Worst President, 40.
11. Richard A. Baker and Neil MacNeil, The American Senate, 285.
12. Scott Farris, Almost President, 59.
13. William Gardner, The Life of Stephen A. Douglas, 135.
14. Ibid., 41–42; Tony O’Bryan, “Topeka Constitution,” civilwaronthewestern border.org., January 30, 2020; Zack Garrison, “Lecompton Constitution,” civilwar onthewesternborder.org., January 30, 2020.
15. Jean H. Baker, James Buchanan, 93, 97; Debra McArthur, The Kansas-Nebraska Act and “Bleeding Kansas,” 73; William DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, 219–220.
16. Garry Boulard, The Worst President, 41.
17. William Gardner, The Life of Stephen A. Douglas, 135; William DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, 219.
18. Garry Boulard, The Worst President, 41.
19. Garry Boulard, The Worst President, 42; Jean H. Baker, James Buchanan, 101–102.
20. William Gardner, The Life of Stephen A. Douglas, 135.
21. Ibid., 136–137.
22. Jean H. Baker, James Buchanan, 102, 103–104; Garry Boulard, The Worst President, 43.
23. Garry Boulard, The Worst President, 43.
24. Jean H. Baker, James Buchanan, 104–105, Nicole Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas, 174–176.
25. F. Martin Harmon, Presidents by Fate, 77–95; William DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, 425; Margaret McMillan, Paris: 1919, 7; Garry Boulard, The Worst President, 42.
26. Nicole Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas, 175.
27. “Speech of Honorable S.A. Douglas of Illinois Against the Admission of Kansas Under the Lecompton Constitution. Delivered in the Senate of the United States, March 22, 1858,” Library of Congress, Scholar Select Series.
28. Jean H. Baker, James Buchanan, 103, 105.
29. Ibid., 105.
30. Ibid., 6, 105-106.
31. Martin H. Quitt, Stephen Douglas and Antebellum Democracy, 128–131.
32. Ibid., 134.
33. William DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, 233–234.