James Buchanan on His Actions in the Great Secession Crisis: I Warned the Confederates “over & over again that if they attacked Fort Sumter I should consider this attack as the commencement of a civil war”

He says that he supports the Civil War effort, and that history will justify his conduct in office

As President, Buchanan’s sought to diminish sectional antagonism, but sectional tensions were much worse at the conclusion of his presidency than at the start. On the question of slavery in the territories, Buchanan endorsed the southern position that slaveholders had a right to hold slaves throughout the territorial stage. Taking a legalistic view of the situation in Kansas, he urged that Kansas be admitted to the Union under the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution. He reasoned that the antislavery forces in Kansas, who constituted the overwhelming majority of its inhabitants, could eliminate slavery after statehood. These positions made him increasingly unpopular in the North.

In other ways, too, Buchanan identified his administration with the South. Buchanan vetoed a homestead bill to provide free land to settlers, a measure sought after in the North. Slaveholders constituted a majority of Buchanan’s cabinet, and its other members were, like him, highly sympathetic to southern concerns. Buchanan’s foreign policy, which spoke of the annexation of territory, particularly Cuba, to the United States, also worried many northerners who saw those potential territories as areas of growth for slavery. Buchanan alienated many northern Democrats, including the powerful Illinois senator, Stephen A. Douglas. In its 1860 national convention, the Democratic party divided and ran two presidential candidates, one favored by northern Democrats, the other by southern Democrats. Buchanan supported the southern Democratic candidate, John C. Breckinridge, over Douglas. The party’s division contributed to the Republican electoral victory.

Following the election of 1860, seven deep South states left the Union, and Buchanan was presented with the final crisis of his administration. In his message to Congress in early December 1860, issued just prior to South Carolina’s secession, Buchanan showed his sympathy for the South by blaming the sectional crisis on the North’s interference with slavery. He urged northern states to repeal their laws which hampered the return of fugitive slaves. At the same time, however, Buchanan unequivocally defended the Union. He claimed that secession was unconstitutional and could only be justified by the revolutionary right of resistance to oppression. He urged the South to wait until the Republicans committed some overt and dangerous act before seceding. But Buchanan was vague as to what the Federal government would do if a state seceded. He claimed that while the government had the responsibility of enforcing the laws, it had no power to coerce a state to remain in the Union. On a practical level, Buchanan’s assessment was that if he confronted the South, he risked civil war; if he acknowledged their rebellion, he failed the union.

Once secession began, Buchanan sought to retain the loyalty of the upper South and to avoid a confrontation with the departed states until they found their way back to the Union. He hoped that Congress or the Peace Convention, which assembled in Washington in February 1861, would find a solution to the crisis. He also recommended that a constitutional convention be held to pass amendments protecting slavery in the territories and in slaveholding states. However, nothing came of these too-late compromise efforts.

In the waning three months of his presidency, Buchanan faced the delicate issue presented by the Federal forts in South Carolina and Florida, which these seceding states demanded as theirs. Buchanan initially ordered the reinforcement of these forts, but he revoked his orders at the urging of pro-southern friends and cabinet members. However, with secession imminent, Buchanan made a series of changes in his cabinet throughout December 1860 that replaced its pro-secessionist members with staunch unionists. Georgian Howell Cobb, who became president of the provisional Confederate Congress, gave way as Secretary of the Treasury to John Dix, who promptly sent a telegram to U.S. Treasury agents in New Orleans ordering that “If any one attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot.” Edwin A. Stanton, soon to be Lincoln’s Secretary of War, became Attorney General. Southerner John Floyd, the Secretary of War who was accused in the press of having sent large stores of government arms to arsenals in the South in the anticipation of the Civil War, was replaced by Joseph Holt, who would serve as Lincoln’s Adjutant General of the U.S. Army.

Buchanan now determined to try to resupply the Federal forts. He sent a relief expedition to Charleston in early January 1861. The relief attempt failed, and with just over a month left in his term, Buchanan’s policy became maintaining the status quo. He never considered surrendering the forts to the South (“If I withdraw Anderson from Sumter,’’ he told a friend, “I can travel home to Wheatland by the light of my own burning effigies”), and at the end of his presidency, they remained in Federal hands. The problem of holding them became the responsibility of his successor, Abraham Lincoln.

On March 4, 1861, weary and happy to be relieved of his duties, Buchanan left office and retired to his Wheatland estate in Lancaster, PA. His parting words to his successor were: “Sir, if you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to Wheatland, you are a happy man indeed.” Although he supported the war effort and blamed the South for instigating the fighting, he was widely ridiculed for failing to put down secession and to better protect Federal forts. He devoted considerable time in his retirement to defending his administration, and in 1866, he published his memoirs, Mr. Buchanan’s Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion.

Autograph letter signed, 4 pages, Wheatland, September 21, 1861, to George W. Bowman, head of the Office of Public Printing during his administration. In it, he supports the war effort, states his belief that history would justify his conduct in office, that he considered South Carolina’s approaches to him to be insolent, and most importantly, that he warned the Confederates time and again that an attack on Fort Sumter would mean war. “My Dear Sir, Your favor of the 17th instant has afforded me much gratification. I did receive the information to which you refer & apparently from direct quarters; but at the time I stated emphatically there must be some mistake & I did not believe it. Let that pass. I was perfectly convinced before your letter that you had not abused me, nor become a Black Republican. I had a hard time of it during my administration; but upon a careful review of all my conduct I should not change it in a single important measure if this were now in my power. When the official documents & the facts come to be presented to the public, I entertain no apprehension as to what will be their verdict.

“On the one side I had been violently opposed by the Republicans from the beginning & on the other side the leading Secessionists were estranged from me from the date of my message on the 3 December & soon after when I returned the insolent letter of the South Carolina Commissioners to them unanswered all intercourse political or social between them & myself ceased. I was on the next day, or a day or two after, violently attacked in the Senate by Jefferson Davis & his followers & the letter which I had returned was submitted by him to that Body & published in the Congressional Globe. I pursued my own steady course from the beginning. The Charleston authorities were directly notified over & over again that if they attacked Fort Sumter I should consider this attack as the commencement of a civil war.

“I need scarcely say that I agree with you in approving ‘the active prosecution of the war by the Government’. I have never held any other language since the Confederates commenced it by the attack on Fort Sumter. It would probably have commenced early in January had the Senate confirmed my nomination of a Collector for the Port of Charleston. Thank God! My health is almost entirely restored; but my strength returns slowly. I am almost sorry to learn that you have any idea of leaving Bedford; you are so agreeably associated in my mind with that ancient Borough. Still your motive is laudable. I shall be very glad to see you once more at Wheatland whenever this may suit your convenience. With my kindest regards to Mrs. Bowman & the family I remain very respectfully Your friend James Buchanan.”

This remarkable letter details what Buchanan did and said during the secession crisis that led up to the Civil War, as well as gives his views on secessionists, the constancy of his actions in office, and his place in history.