James Buchanan struggled for 4 years to hold the Union together through compromise. He failed. In the election of 1860, the non-Republican vote split 3 ways electing Lincoln by a plurality in the Northern states. Lincoln received no votes from the South in the electoral college. South Carolina seceded the month after Lincoln was elected. Six more states seceded before Buchanan left office.
After Lincoln’s election, Buchanan tried to secure federal property in the South, but there was very little available force. There were 16,000 officers and men in the US Army in 1860. More than half were serving on the frontier. There were 1800 officers and men in the USMC in the same year. Shipboard detachments accounted for most of those.
When Lincoln took office he quickly called for a mass of volunteers from the states to achieve a much larger force. His call for 100k from Virginia was the immediate and proximate specific cause of Virginia’s secession. The ensuing civil war was America’s bloodiest war.
Biden in contrast seems intent on dividing the country. He despises half the electorate and openly speaks of them as enemies of “democracy.” He does not support the independence of the judiciary, and the tri-partite form of the federal government. He does not support US immigration law. He has wrecked a previously flourishing economy He is supporting China against US interests.
Yes. It is unfair to say that Buchanan was as bad a president as Biden. pl
If Brandon doesn’t destroy you country, no one will be able to say it was a lack of trying. On the positive side we may get Liz Truss as PM for the UK at which point Scotland will be in a race with York to see who leaves first.
The only reason I´m saying it is positive is when you cry, you can look at us and say “Oh well, could have been worse”.
At least we will have the holy epiphany of having a Western Anglo-Saxon leader with the actual real legal name Miss Trust. Perfidious Albion personified, codified and carved in stone. It is certainly well to be looked on with abhorrence because it actually spells We Are Doomed more explicitly than all the filmed scariness of a Friday the thirteenth movie and sequelae.
I would classify Lincoln as the worst president ever. Other countries have split peacefully. Norway and Sweden were one country until about 100 years ago. The Czech Republic and Slovakia did so relatively recently. Lincoln was the prototype for the modern dictator.
Lincoln; he ain’t no fren’a mine.
We still need to sever the legacy of the Democrat-run South during the days of slavery from the rest of America today. Not all of America today should be tarred with The South’s peculiar institution. Except if we continue let it.
Jim Crow laws leading to the VRA impacted only these Democrat (Dixiecrat) Southern states, and again the rest of the US should not carry their prior taint.
My recent visit to Mississippi a few years ago found more integrated success in The New South, than one finds in Barry Soetoro’s Chicago or his Martha’s Vineyard seaside retreat. Time to rethink our “national guilt” if one insists on wholesale US historical revisionism today. And also honoring the long-standing tradition of statutes of limitations.
Deap,
You sound like one of the comfortable coasties who believes their own b.s. “percular institution” “national guilt” that’s a nice cultural marxist clap-trap. New South is a window manufacturer and not the now very tired Clintonesque slogan that no one believed in but the marketers pushing it.
“Jim Crow laws leading to the VRA impacted only these Democrat (Dixiecrat) Southern states,”
Please do some basic research on things like red-lining and discrimination in employment in states like Massachusetts and Michigan after 1965 and 1967. Then explain how “affirmative action” is not racial discrimination.
It is so “now” to condemn Buchanan’s presidency. But no one says why … other than he d/n solve the issue of slavery and thereby HE propelled the country to war. Buchanan’s view of the presidency was limited by the Constitution, how quaint. It is also said he supported Taney’s Dred Scott decision. Taney’s decision was constitutionally correct, laws don’t trump the constitution. The idea is that Buchanan was not aggressive enough. Lincoln remedied that. He was the fount for the Leviathan fed gov’t which has subdued our states and threatens individual liberties. He was a mite too active for my taste.
My pick is Scary Harry Truman. Because the split of the US was essentially foreordained according to my readings of the two Adams, Jefferson and his interlocutor Reverend Rush. So I don’t blame Lincoln. Perhaps he was inept. That Andrew Jackson headed off a secession earlier impressed me but he was a practiced General who knew the uses of spies etc. Second worst IMO was LBJ, an actual criminal psychopath by my lights and others. Kennedy? I don’t know, he’s a secular saint and untouchable due to martyrdom but according to Gore Vidal who knew him and his family well (as well as Seymour Hersh’s Dark Side of Camelot, and some recent readings of a West Point officer whose name I can’t recall who wrote about the missile crisis) he was not at all the way he is usually depicted. The people who seem to sort of know that say he “changed” etc.
Col Lang knows far more American history than I ever will, but my amateur’s impression has been that it was hands down the first Johnson, Lincoln’s VP who was the worst of them all. Also a tough call. The country was in ruins, still divided, in fact moreso after a war like that. Bottom line – given a civil war of that magnitude there’s going to be mighty dislike of the rulers before and after.
I was a teen and young man during the VN era so I despise LBJ. I was born in ’52 and think the Cold war was an insane disaster, to say nothing of the atomic bombings and the founding of Israel, so I can’t find any merit whatsoever in Harriet Truman. An ignoramus from the purple gang or Kansas city mob.
I overlooked Colonel Lang’s other thesis. Is Joe Biden the worst ever? Imo no and yes. Time remains and a snail should know that he now risks being the worst president or ruler ever to reside on the planet. Due primarily to the impending risk of nuclear war, but plenty of other things that yes are his responsibility but over which it seems to me he has little agency due to the ongoing digital printing of money which became ludicrously excessive under Obama (Joe was VP but in no way a Dick Chainsaw style VP, so ..). , and then possibly worse under Trump, Mnuchin the plutocrat Munchkin, and the wholly unelected secret ruler of the Whirrled, Larry Fink. And the ongoing breakdown of the American form of government into pure gridlock and raving partisanship. Say what you will about James Earl Carter but he was a President of the United States of America, an Annapolis graduate, a USN officer of distinction, as well as Governor of Georgia, a rather important state. And I mention him bc he said publicly and at length under questioning and challenge that the American experiment as a representational republic had failed and he didn’t know if it would ever be reestablished but if so it would take fifty years time. The man, despite all the criticism, was an intellectual prodigy (see his work as a nuclear engineer, and anyway it’s a known fact from his childhood). If that’s so (and numerous people say so including a study from nothing less than Princeton U) then Col Lang’s question is missing the point, as the determinative criterion no longer apply.
I think it’s an oligarchy and praetorian state or empire, more realistically. With it’s headquarters elsewhere. Look at Donald Trump, who couldn’t for the love of god or devil even have a phone call with Poroshenko without being impeached by the CIA and from the looks of it, the US Army — Vindeman — though he was NSC I guess at the time. I could go on at great length. I joke around about Joe mainly bc I think he’s a nasty, opportunistic, totally insincere crook. Making fun of him in the way that goes on is elder abuse, for sure. But he’s an fool, a poorly educated fool, and worse, a well meaning fool and to top it off that most seriously dangerous and rare human thing in his youth – a very good looking male who was a star athelete. Gorgeous women? Sure I love em, but watch out for that. A gorgeous man? Virgil showed Dante the sign over the entrance to hell, which I mention for good reason. I also think he egregiously mistreated Anita Hill. Noone seems to remember Long Dong Silver. Why is that?
On second thought I nominate Obama for the worst presidential hall of shame. Why? Plenty, but Coup in Yourcranium is sufficient.
At the present time and for a very long time now, voting for American president is indistinguishable from voting for Satan.
Every time I think of a president, I want to scream. For example Clinton. Horrible. Absolutely terrible. My curmudgeonly dad, a lifelong democrat, and proud officer in the USAF, despised him. Tight-lipped, I managed to get out of him: sleeping with women who were obviously agents? That never occurred to me. I hated Clinton for selling the country out to bond traders and Rubin. Maybe I respected Nixon most of all. An obvious thoroughgoing bastard and crook at least he wasn’t a hypocrite. But he was Mary Poppins compared to Clinton, Dubya, Cheney, Obama, and Trump. Biden is the senile old coot plantation owner from way back with a crack addicted son taking tons of money from China and Ukraine. With Vice President Harris the black-Indian cutey pie lady whose relatives owned slaves and wanted to imprison poor parents if their kids cut class. “Joe Biden, I want you to know one thing. I was one of those children!” During the BLM riots she said things that would have sent most people to federal penitentiaries if they said them. Like “yes they’re rioting, as they should, and will continue to do so!”
(Paraphrase). Joe Biden. Hair sniffer extraordinaire. And College wide receiver. Your leader.
Barack picked him for a reason, and Joe Biden learned from the master of division. He even picked all of Barack’s people to staff his administration.
Buchanan was an excellent president. Getting the crazies to dial it down a notch or two was an impossible task. The nutcase Lincoln went for mass mobilization. Just what was the bleeping rush?
Basically ‘the rush’ had to do with the number of western territories wishing to be admitted to the Union. The balance of power in Congress depended on how each state was to be admitted–Free or Slave.
Right; so what was the rush. The Congress had to permit the terrty to enter, or not.
I think seven states seceded prior to Buchanan leaving office, the last being Texas on 2 MAR 1861 (two days prior to Lincoln’s inauguration).
As provided in the militia act Lincoln issued a proclamation on 15 APR 61 calling out militia totaling 75,000 for three months, allocated to states by population. From that allocation
VA – 2,340
NC – 1,560
TN – 1,560
AR – 780
Note that under this call, Virginia enlisted 900. This was due to competing claims to state government in Richmond and Wheeling.
Subsequently on 5 MAY 61 an additional call for 500,000 was made, mostly 3 years.
Lincoln called a special session of Congress which convened 4 JUL 61 and passed a number of acts “regularizing” the volunteer army and expanding the regular army. Among other things the dragoons, mounted riflemen, and cavalry were all redesignated as simply cavalry. As when the original cavalry units were created, the new regiments created a number of field-grade officer “slots” into which various favored regular officers were inserted. The expansion also resulted in additional general officers being authorized, and removed the power of larger states to appoint generals.
For analysis of Buchanan and secession, recommend Freehling, Road to Disunion Vol II. For analysis of the secession of the upper south, recommend Crofts, Reluctant Confederates.
scotts
You aret seven seceded before he left office. A call for militia is not the same thing as a call for volunteers.
scott s.,
Where in the Constitution did it say States could not secede?
Of course any state could freely exit what it freely entered.
This is the most basic idea of English common law to any contract from 1400 on wards. Platitudes not withstanding, the Constitution is a contract between equal member states. Lincoln’s call to war ended the fundamental idea of federal and state power sharing and enforced union membership at the point of a bayonet. We b/c, in 1860, a nation where might makes right not law. The fall from power sharing was not precipitous but inexorable. Look at our understanding of state power today vs 1860. Lincoln did not save the union. He destroyed the America all states fought to gain in 1783, and replaced it with mandatory membership. He did this all w/o consent of congress, w/o a single amendment, and at the cost of 700M American lives. He is presented to American children as a kind and wise man. I find him a tyrant. Sic Semper Tyrannis someone once said.
Biden makes Obama look good, well less bad.
Obama made Carter look less bad.
In the eighties, when we were testing the Soviet Union’s balls, I was a survivalist. Back then, in San Diego County, I figured the HA had the military bearing and organization to rule, should the fan get messy. Fortunately, I had some friends, back then. The cops, they would fold fast, although individual members and teams could hold pockets. But, no organization was better set to rule the day , after , than the Hells Angels – god f’n bless ’em
Various writers on the Internet are predicting that Biden could be impeached soon:
https://conservativebrief.com/impeach-64605/
The mainstream media are trying to avoid mentioning the many scandals of the Biden/Obama/Clinton crime “family” but I think the ordinary folks around the world stopped trusting the mainstream news a while ago. If public disgust at Hunter and Joe’s incestuous antics goes past critical mass, the American public might force Biden out of office, with or without the 25th Amendment.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/07/16/report-hunter-biden-laptop-reveals-he-frequently-met-with-joe-biden-after-foreign-business-meetings/
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/07/17/overwhelming-evidence-joe-biden-lied-had-dozens-of-meetings-with-hunter-bidens-business-partner-n1613536
https://archive.ph/AdOkT
https://conservativebrief.com/obama-scandal-61690/
“the American public might force Biden out of office, with or without the 25th Amendment.”
LMAO.
The same American people who wore masks inside their own homes?
I own a book I can no longer find that purported to be the letters from the delegates to the NC convention to consider secession to the folks back home. These were scanned or printed from microfiche copies of letters, so I have more reason to believe they are authentic than not. I have been unable to locate the book in print. I suspect it was locally produced/published based on the UNC archives but have not taken the time to verify what original material is available.
Judging from their correspondence the majority of delegates had little interest in secession and very little in protecting slavery, since Lincoln had taken that subject off the table. The interest in secession reversed once Lincoln called for an unconstitutional invasion of SC.
My ancestor and two of his brothers died during the conflict. I have been unable to find any record of any transaction involving a slave by any of my ancestors back to 1747 nor is there any evidence of slave burial in or near the family cemetery, in use from 1762 until ~ 1900. I stand unconvinced that protecting slavery was a significant motivation for their service. I did find records of two of my ancestors (father/son) serving in the battle of King’s Mountain where Cornwallis’ Hessian mercenaries were eliminated.
So, I can agree that Lincoln is the leading candidate for the worst president in our history, save the likely possibility of him being replaced by our current one.
In which his celebrated greatness is due to his martydom, as with Kennedy. Not entirely, of course, but primarily. Also Lincoln won a war. That always makes you great, despite evidence to the contrary. As a child I was thrilled with Andrew Jackson simply because he defeated the British. 1959 was the year of Johnny Horton’s smash hit The Battle of New Orleans and the year I had to live in England due to my dad’s sabbatical at Oxford. I had to fight English kids nonstop who called me a dirty Yankee. I won my fights but only once I tricked them into fighting the biggest boy instead of ganging up on me. I wore holes in our copy of Horton’s song. More likely because it was a fine song.
But I got very excited especially listening to these lines:
We took a little bacon and we took a little beans
And we caught the bloody British in the town of New Orleans
We fired our guns and the British kept a-comin’
There wasn’t as many as there was a while ago
We fired once more and they began to runnin’
On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.
Your story is touching and makes me feel terrible not having sufficiently appreciated the tragedy complexity of those days. My dad was from Maryland on the Virginia border and visiting his parents twice a year we’d drive past what seemed infinite rows of white crosses on the civil war cemeteries. The sheer quantity was and is staggering.
It’s beginning to dawn on me only late in life that we tell ourselves we fought to end slavery for the same reason we idolize Lincoln. To ennoble an essentially awful, debilitating and colossal tragedy.
Seven states seceded before Buchanan left office: SC, MS, FL, AL, GA, LA, & TX.
Jeff Davis is also a candidate for worst American Prez. Perhaps he would have served the South better as a general or as Secretary of War as he would have personally preferred. Instead he ended up with five Secretaries of War in the four years of his presidency. Probably because as Prez he focused exclusively on the war and neglected civil government concerns. He would not appoint a Commanding General of the Army until January 1865, because he saw himself in that role. But by the time Lee became General-in-Chief it was too late to rectify Davis’s strategic errors. During his presidency he was criticized (by fellow Southerners) for cronyism, nitpicking, ineffective delegation, vindictiveness, and vendettas. It was not until several decades after the War that he became a revered figure. Go figure?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Davis#Strategic_failures
And who would you have preferred to Davis?
Bill R –
Toombs of Georgia, but he was soundly defeated by the Davis Faction, probably because he had a reputation, (true or not?) as a boozer. He ‘might’ have prevented the war?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Toombs
Or maybe Breckenridge? But being from KY he dad no chance and never considered running for the job.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Breckinridge
Or anybody besides Davis.