15) James Buchanan - 10 Cent Jimmy

In the introduction to this blog I posed three random questions to illustrate my presidential illiteracy: “…what did James Monroe do? What was going on during Buchanan’s presidency as the country moved to the precipice of civil war? Who the heck is Chester Arthur?” We’ve answered the first question already and now it’s time to move on to the second.

Buchanan is the third oldest president at
the time of their inauguration. However,
the current front-runners for the 2016
election, Donald Trump and Hillary
Clinton, would both be older.

In 1791 James Buchanan was born in Cove Gap, Pennsylvania, about 40 miles west of what would become the deadliest battlefield of the Civil War. It would be another 66 years before he reached the White House and in that time Buchanan witnessed and participated in much of the American experiment. In all likelihood his family met President Washington when he stayed at Buchanan’s uncle’s tavern during the Whiskey Rebellion. Buchanan began practicing law out of college but quickly became interested in politics and sought a seat in the state assembly. His electioneering consisted involved a stint volunteering in the War of 1812 where he saw no fighting. From the state assembly, the young Buchanan went on to serve in the House of Representatives for four terms representing the dying Federalist Party before being elected as a Democrat for his fifth and final term. While in the House, Buchanan became wrapped up in the “Corrupt Bargain” which gave John Quincy Adams the presidency over Andrew Jackson in the 1824 campaign, he tangled with another young congressman and future president James Polk, and he chaired the Judiciary Committee during his final term.

When Andrew Jackson was elected Buchanan was asked to serve as Minister to Russia. The Russian post was political exile and it indicates that Jackson may have put some stock in the rumor that Buchanan was involved in the Corrupt Bargain. His Russian job lasted less than two years, but it was a difficult two years to be away from Pennsylvania. During that time two of his siblings married; his mother, brother, and good friend died; and another friend became critically ill. Adding to the distress, he learned that his sister had married into a slave owning family, potential political dynamite for the ambitious young man. Buchanan quietly arranged to buy the family’s two slaves into freedom. With his personal affairs sorted out, Buchanan turned his attention to an available seat in the US Senate which he would hold for the next decade. Buchanan’s time in the Senate was a golden age for the institution. He served with five future presidents; Van Buren, Tyler, Polk, Fillmore, and Pierce; as well as the “Great Triumvirate” of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John Calhoun. Buchanan was very much a legislative role-player during these years and never sponsored any important bills or involved himself in any high profile debates.

The 1884 election of a Democrat, James Polk, brought about patronage for Buchanan and he was asked to join the cabinet. He wavered, hinting he might be more interested in a seat on the Supreme Court, but ultimately joined as Secretary of State. His time in the Polk administration was anything but a honeymoon. The two men often disagreed and Polk’s diary indicates that he did not trust Buchanan. The next Democrat in the White House was Franklin Pierce and he appointed Buchanan to Minister of England. This was another post that Buchanan wasn’t thrilled with, but accepted nonetheless.

Buchanan’s removal from American politics during the Pierce administration proved to be fortuitous. The Kansas-Nebraska Act led to a bitter fight staining those associated with Pierce’s administration. In fact, Buchanan had the good fortune to be removed from domestic politics during the four great political crises of his age. Buchanan was between the Pennsylvania Legislature and the House of Representatives during the Missouri Compromise; during the nullification crisis he was serving in Russia; and during the Compromise of 1850 he was not serving in Fillmore’s Whig administration. This string of good luck undoubtedly aided his electability in 1856.

Political cartoon from the election of 1856 depicting
Fillmore as the level-headed option between
abolitionist (Fremont) and status quo (Buchanan) forces.

By the election of 1856, there was no doubt that it was Buchanan’s turn as the Democratic nominee. He squared off against the Republican John Fremont who ended up splitting votes with Millard Fillmore running for the American (or Know-Nothing) Party. The Republican Party’s platform called for the arresting, jailing, and possibly execution of those who supported the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In short, the Republican Party platform seemed to criminalize Southern slaveholding states and the mere election of a Republican was likely to push a teetering country into disunion. Under those circumstances Buchanan went about setting up his administration. He formed a cabinet excluding Northern and Southern partisans. The mood in Washington was dour at the time of his inauguration and it did not improve. His presidency began with the Dred Scott decision, ended with an impending battle in the Charleston Harbor, and was absorbed by the Kansas controversy throughout. In Kansas rival governments had set up in Lecompton (pro-slavery) and in Topeka (anti-slavery). Buchanan’s support of the Lecompton constitution using a pedantic legal argument split the Democratic party and stranded Buchanan’s administration as the country headed toward Civil War.

Buchanan struggled with the constitutionality of South Carolina’s secession and the reality of conflict at either Fort Sumter or Fort Moultrie. He also struggled with what the Federal government could legally do in dealing with secession in the event of, or absence of, armed rebellion. On the day after Abraham Lincoln was elected all federal employees save the post office workers resigned in South Carolina. It was the beginning of the end. His cabinet imploded and Buchanan worked to at least prevent Fort Sumter from turning into a battle until after he left office.

In hindsight, war was likely inevitable by the time Buchanan ascended to the presidency. Buchanan was a compromiser and a compromiser was not going to be the person to save the union. Like many Americans at the time, Buchanan felt slavery would die away if the country could just run out the clock. Whether or not this would have happened is irrelevant, to modern eyes (and many contemporaries) the inhumanity of this policy is difficult to see beyond. However, the way Buchanan is derided as the country’s worst president seems unfair to me. I think Pierce’s leadership was much weaker. Buchanan has the historical bad luck of being followed by one of the two greatest leaders to hold that office. Buchanan may have been dealt an unwinnable hand, but so was Lincoln and he still won. For that reason, history has judged Buchanan harshly.

With 15 presidents down, it is finally time to move on to Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War.

13) Millard Fillmore - The Compromiser

Millard Fillmore marks the halfway point of the stretch of this project I was least excited about. I had pegged the four presidents leading up to Lincoln, of which I knew little about, as a dull period leading up to the Civil War. Taylor served as a nice surprise, filling in gaps about the goings on during the Mexican American War. Fillmore’s story has some color on the development of the Whig Party but, like Martin Van Buren’s story, it is largely focused on nineteenth century New York state politics which can get dry.

A statue of Fillmore that stands outside
Buffalo's imposing City Hall.

Like Andrew Jackson and Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore was born in a log cabin. Fillmore grew up on an unproductive farm in New York’s Finger Lakes region, his family then moved west to the Buffalo region in Fillmore’s late teens. It was there, in East Aurora, NY, that Fillmore made his mark as a lawyer. He went on to form a law practice with Nathan Hall and Solomon Haven. These men were instrumental in Buffalo’s development, particularly in education. Hall, who would serve as Fillmore’s Postmaster General, helped institute Buffalo’s fist free public school system and Fillmore was instrumental in the founding of the University of Buffalo. Hall would begin his own law office when Fillmore’s duties no longer allowed him to focus on the practice. The new firm went on to train future president Grover Cleveland. That two U.S. presidents came from essentially the same law practice in western New York is an interesting bit of presidential trivia.

Fillmore came of age at a time when Thurlow Weed was building the Whig Party’s base in New York. Fillmore rose through its ranks serving three terms in the House of Representatives and then running unsuccessfully for governor. Weed and Fillmore often battled due to what the author portrayed as Weed’s repeated backing of the other major New York Whig of the time, William Seward, often at Fillmore’s expense. After losing the bid for Governor, Fillmore was elected as the state’s Comptroller.

It is ironic that Fillmore ended up on the Whig ticket with Zachary Taylor in the election of 1848. Taylor was a slaveholding Southerner so to deliver the North in this tenuous period of American history the Whigs needed an anti-slavery Northerner. Fillmore fit the bill. The irony is that Taylor’s anti-slavery views and opposition to slavery in the newly acquired southwestern territories would soon be apparent. Further, when Taylor died and Fillmore assumed the reigns of the presidency he backed Henry Clay and Stephen Douglas’s efforts to broker a compromise between North and South. The compromise was viewed by many as strengthening the protection of slavery. What became known as the Compromise of 1850 was structured as a series of bills whereby:

• Texas surrendered its claim on New Mexico.
• California was admitted as a non-slave state.
• Utah and New Mexico were allowed to choose whether or not they wanted slavery to be  permitted (it was known both were unlikely to permit the practice).
• The slave trade, but not slavery itself, was outlawed in Washington DC.
• The Fugitive Slave Act was strengthened.

Given the political climate in which everyone was focused on the newly acquired Western territories, the likely abolition of slavery in these lands gave Southerners a sour feeling about the Compromise. Northerners were not happy with the strengthening of the Fugitive Slave Act which required law enforcement, even in jurisdictions where slavery was outlawed, to assist in the capture and return of runaway slaves. This had not been the practice in many Northern municipalities where a blind eye was turned to the efforts of abolitionists to aid escaped slaves. Northern abolitionists flouted the new law. A particular incident in Boston where the arrival of escaped slaves William and Ellen Crofts was loudly celebrated forced Fillmore to take a stand. Fillmore announced that he was prepared to use Federal troops to intervene and the Crofts were quickly and quietly moved to London.

It is important to keep in mind that Fillmore’s actions, both supporting the Compromise and his willingness to use force to protect it, were taken at a time when segments of the South were preparing for disunion. While history may remember Fillmore as a feckless doughface, he was attempting to save the Union. Fillmore’s anti-slavery credentials had been sufficient enough to get him on the ticket with Taylor as a sop to the abolitionist wing of the Whig party so branding him a lackey to slaveholders is lazy analysis.

Fillmore’s domestic failings are surely his presidential legacy. However, he did have a notable achievement in foreign policy when he sent Commodore Matthew Perry to Japan. Japan had been a closed society up to this point and America wanted to trade with them, particularly for their large supply of coal which could fuel new coal-powered ocean liners. Perry was successful in opening Japanese ports giving Fillmore a key diplomatic victory.

Fillmore may not have intended to run for a full term. Friends who had tried to convince him to run later said that he did not want to. The endorsement of party leader Henry Clay, on his death bed, finally convinced him to run. Fillmore did not receive the nomination, on the 53^rd ballot General Winfield Scott was nominated and he would go on to lose to another Mexican American War General, Franklin Pierce. But that is a story for the next post.

The Whig Party began to fracture following the defeat of General Scott. Perhaps the correct way to phrase it is that existing fractures could no longer be ignored after Scott’s defeat. The Whig party split largely over the issue of slavery into the Know-Nothings and the modern-day Republican Party. The Know-Nothings were a short-lived anti-Catholic / anti-immigrant party of which, unfortunately, Millard Fillmore joined and represented in the Presidential election of 1856. The Republican party would find presidential success in 1860 when Lincoln’s election raised the drumbeat of secession to fruition.

11) James Polk - Young Hickory

The eleventh president was another that I did not know what to expect from. The subtitle of Walter Borneman’s book, “The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America,” set lofty expectations.

Polk was born in current-day North Carolina and moved to Tennessee as a child. His childhood wasn’t easy. Life on the American frontier was difficult enough, but various illnesses made it even more challenging. By the age of 17, Polk’s parents resolved to send him to Philadelphia to seek the care of Dr. Philip Syng Physick, “the father of American surgery.” Polk could go no farther than Danville, Kentucky.  A Kentucky surgeon removed urinary stones in what must have been an excruciating and terrifying experience. Fortunately, Polk’s health was finally improved, but the primitive surgery is likely the reason he never had children.

Polk hitched his political wagon to the giant of Tennessee Democratic politics, Andrew Jackson, as a young man. Polk served seven terms in the US House of Representatives, making it to the Speakership, before running for governor of Tennessee. While Polk won his first campaign for governor, he lost the next two elections to James “Lean Jimmy” Chamberlain Jones. Lean Jimmy was a Whig showman of little substance and Polk’s losses to him were huge political disappointments and may have ended a less ambitious politician’s career.

The revival of Polk’s career came in the form of a political misstep from Jackson’s protégé, and a master politician in his own right, Martin Van Buren. Polk’s aim was to run as Van Buren’s vice president. However, Van Buren’s equivocation over Texas annexation was a betrayal that Jackson couldn’t forgive; Jackson threw his considerable weight behind Polk for President in 1844. To ensure support from all factions of the splintered Democratic Party, Polk promised to serve only one term. Polk got the Democratic nomination and thanks to an antislavery third party candidate splitting the vote in New York, he squeaked out a win in the general election over perpetual Whig candidate Henry Clay.

Polk would indeed transform the presidency, as the title suggested. He fundamentally strengthening the office into the strong executive we know today. Polk showed evidence of his iron will early when he laid down the ground rules for his cabinet members. Cabinet members would have to a) sign a pledge to support the Democratic platform, b) resign if they decided to run for president, and c) not vacation outside of Washington. Polk would be the first president to reaffirm the Monroe Doctrine by declaring “people of this continent’s right alone” to control the Oregon territory which was jointly held with England.

Where Polk truly transformed the presidency was over the United States’ claim to the Southwest. Polk wanted to force Mexico to accept the United States’ right to Texas and gain control over New Mexico and California. Mexico’s refusal to negotiate was making it seem that they would be convinced only by force. Polk prepared to demand that Congress declare war, ostensibly over Mexico’s refusal to deal with an American envoy. What Polk didn’t know was that Zachary Taylor’s troops had already been engaged by Mexican soldiers in contested West-Texas territory. Polk received a gift prior to approaching Congress. A memo from General Zachary Taylor reached Washington stating that “hostilities may now be considered as commenced.” With that information, Polk went to Congress and told them the war had already begun, they had better accept it. Between the House and the Senate, the total debate time was less than a day and a half. From that point forward the Executive has assumed war making powers from congress, fundamentally strengthening the office of the president.

Polk’s four years in office were dominated by western expansion and the Mexican American War. By the time he left office, the United States had added modern day Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Montana. There is no question that Polk transformed the nation. Acquiring the land was one thing, but adding new states was another. Mid-nineteenth century American politics was completely dominated by slavery and the addition of new “free states” was unacceptable to Southern politicians who were increasingly feeling marginalized and unwilling to upset the balance between free and slave states in congress. The “peculiar institution” dominated national issues, it was becoming evident to prescient politicians that secession was a matter of time.

Polk upheld his pledge not to run for a second term. Lewis Cass ran on the Democratic ticket and in an ironic twist, a third party candidate split the New York vote again, but this time gave the election to the Whig candidate, Zachary Taylor. Despite the fact that Taylor had served as a general under Polk, he did not think highly of him. Polk wrote that Taylor seemed, “a well-meaning old man… uneducated, exceedingly ignorant of public affairs, and of very ordinary capacity.” Polk turned the reigns over to Taylor fearing that Taylor would unwind the land gains Polk’s administration had achieved. The fear proved unfounded, however Polk would not live to be proved wrong. Just 103 days after leaving office, Polk died of cholera. A long tour of the South on his way home to likely did not help.

The America and the office of the presidency that Polk left behind were much different than what he had inherited from John Tyler. Politically, however, slavery remained a ticking time-bomb that would explode in a mere twelve years.

9) William Henry Harrison - Old Tippecanoe

William Henry Harrison, the ninth president of the United States, was in office for 31 days. Harrison was the first Whig to serve as president of the United States. The Whigs were a motley crew consisting of anti-Masons, national Republicans, and anti-Jackson Democrats. While there wasn’t a common platform to hold the Whigs together, they employed rhetoric and the press deftly. The election of 1840, in which Harrison defeated the incumbent Van Buren, was one of little substance. Oliver Perry Chitwood, John Tyler’s biographer, pointed out that the Whig press successfully framed Harrison as a rugged frontiersman while painting Van Buren as an aristocrat. In reality Van Buren was largely a self-made man, as you may recall from the prior post, and Harrison was a scion of Virginia gentry. Harrison’s campaign slogan, “Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too” was one of the most successful and enduring in American history.

There are contradictory accounts about Harrison’s death. The author, Robert Owens, tells the story you often hear; Harrison delivered a long inaugural speech in bad weather, contracted pneumonia, and died shortly thereafter. Chitwood tells a different story, which I’m more inclined to believe given the timeline. Chitwood says that Harrison’s inauguration took place on “beautiful day.” It wasn’t until March 24^th, 20 days after the inauguration, that Harrison contracted pneumonia. This makes the story that Harrison contracted his illness during the inauguration difficult to reconcile.

Owens’ book, Mr. Jefferson’s Hammer, was the first I read during this project that wasn’t a biography. I didn’t realize it when I picked the book up, but it’s really an account of Harrison’s time as governor of the Indiana Territory and his role in 19^th Century American Indian policy. The book spends very little time discussing his childhood and even less discussing his post-Indiana work.  While this was a bit of a divergence from the “presidential biography” tact, the book was still interesting and I certainly learned about a little known president.

Harrison’s father, Benjamin, was governor of Virginia, he was a leader in the House of Burgesses, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. When Harrison applied to join the Army, Washington himself approved the application likely due to his friendship with Benjamin.

Harrison’s most famous military conquest was his role in the Battle of Tippecanoe. Owens tells a story not as glorious as one might expect. Harrison’s Indian adversaries attacked at night in an attempt to kill Harrison. Harrison likely escaped because his customary gray horse ran off earlier that day and he was riding another. Harrison’s men held off the Indians, but suffered dozens of deaths and injuries. Initial criticisms of Harrison’s ill preparation were quickly suppressed as Andrew Jackson defended his actions. 

Like Jackson, Harrison became involved in Aaron Burr’s failed attempt to split the union. Burr conspired with General James Wilkinson whom Harrison had served under at the beginning of his Army career. Wilkinson requested that Harrison send Burr to Congress as Indiana’s representative, a request that he didn’t oblige.

President Thomas Jefferson wrote to Harrison in 1803, which was early in Harrison’s tenure as governor, instructing him to acquire as much Indian land in the Mississippi Valley and to keep this plan secret. Jefferson wanted to secure the Ohio and Mississippi rivers in the event that France (i.e. Napoléon) were to militarize their newly acquired Louisiana Territory. A common refrain in American history education is the story of unfair treaties that the American settlers coerced Indians in to in order to give legal cover to the subjugation of Indian land. Harrison’s time as Governor of Indiana is a case study in this practice. The common tactics seemed to be: (i) When possible negotiate with a tribe on friendly terms with the Americans, these tribes often had tenuous claims on the land that Americans were negotiating over. (ii) Institute an annuity system whereby the tribes were paid over time. This secured the dependence of that tribe on the American government and served as leverage over the tribe’s leadership. (iii) Try to structure payment for land to include farm equipment and/or livestock to help in the “civilizing” of the tribes.  The idea of protecting the Western border from France was to become a moot point soon as the Louisiana Purchase was completed by Jefferson’s administration later in 1803.

While Harrison's time in the highest office was brief, the role he played in the West is an important chapter in American history. Harrison was a slaveholder and a proponent of slavery and worked to institutionalize it in the Indiana Territory, a battle he lost as the country slowly marched toward a Civil War whose first shots would ring out 20 years, almost to the day, after Harrison's death.

8) Martin Van Buren - The Little Magician

Only 43 men have held the title of President of the United Sates at the time of this writing, so naturally there are firsts in every presidency. Martin Van Buren, I would argue, was the first pure politician to rise to the presidency. Before assuming the presidency Van Buren served in the Senate, as Governor of New York, Secretary of State, minister to the United Kingdom, and Vice President. It isn’t the long list of offices that makes Van Buren the first ‘pure politician’; Jefferson, Monroe, and Quincy Adams had similar resumes; it was Van Buren’s work forming modern Democratic Party that gives him that title.

Born about 100 miles north of New York City in the Hudson River town of Kinderhook, Van Buren grew up in an isolated, Dutch village. Much of Washington Irving’s writings are set in Van Buren’s New York. Like his future mentor, Andrew Jackson, Van Buren’s life was marred by tragedy. Van Buren’s mother, father, and wife all died over a three-year span leaving him with four sons, aged two to eleven, to raise on his own.

Van Buren helped to build the Albany Regency, one of the first political machines in the young republic. At a time when communication over long distances was difficult the Regency crafted a system to maintain party discipline wherein the governor and senators sent policy to the caucus in the state legislature that informed the partisan press. Circuit judges also played a roll in spreading the party line as they rode the circuit around New York. The Regency began to give Americans a more positive image of political parties, which were beginning to be seen as a force for good that facilitated political engagement and curbed corruption.

As a luminary of the Regency, Van Buren worked to intertwine the powerful northern and southern states of New York and Virginia. This required a flexibility that would stay with him throughout his political life. Van Buren’s flexibility is most notable in his support for slavery at a time when New York’s abolitionist movement was swelling. Van Buren was of a class of politicians who believed that maintaining the union justified the status quo on slavery, a position he later abandoned when it suited him.

Van Buren’s presidency was unspectacular. He spent the majority of his single term attempting to deal with the Panic of 1837, a consequence of both European financial pressures and Andrew Jackson’s heavy-handed economic intervention. Van Buren’s main objective was to secure an independent treasury bill, reversing the policy of depositing federal funds into state banks. Van Buren’s quest for an independent treasury served to split the Democratic Party that he had worked so hard to build. When the bill passed, three years into Van Buren’s term, it had little practical effect as it merely legislated a practice that had been in effect for a year.

In his reelection campaign William Henry Harrison handily defeated Van Buren. That Harrison excited the electorate with his log cabin imagery and Tippecanoe slogans was evidenced by an increase in the popular vote from 1836 to 1840 from 1.5 million to 2.4 million. Van Buren would again seek the Democratic nomination in 1844 but lost to James Polk. In 1848, he ran as a member of the Free Soil Party which opposed slavery, he failed to carry a single state.

The career politician was often regarded as a shrewd manipulator, nicknamed The Little Magician, Van Buren flip-flopped on a number of issues including the Erie Canal (originally opposed), Jackson’s bank modifications, and slavery. It was Van Buren’s work to form the Democratic Party, and modern party structure in general, which is Van Buren’s lasting legacy.