James Buchanans legacy stands as that of the single worst president in American history
this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2024
175 points (98.3% liked)
A Comm for Historymemes
1354 readers
478 users here now
A place to share history memes!
Rules:
-
No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, assorted bigotry, etc.
-
No fascism, atrocity denial, etc.
-
Tag NSFW pics as NSFW.
-
Follow all Lemmy.world rules.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Er, wait, there was this other guy. What was his name again? Ironically, he still seems to be in the running for the current election.
He hasn't caused a civil war yet (if this comment ages like milk feel free to call me stupid)
I think the top right note may not hold up so well anymore.
Gonna be honest with you fam, straight-up not enjoying living in 'interesting times'.
I'm not too knowledgeable of Buchanan's role specifically in the events leading up to the war, and I'm not asking this as some attempt to defend him, but so many times I've read something along the lines of "Buchanan consistently ranks at/near the bottom because of his failure to find a compromise to prevent the Civil War".
Was there really a compromise to be had in regard to slavery? What would that have been? Let some states peacefully secede because the whole country couldn't agree on slavery? Set up some legal guidelines/restrictions on slavery if they stay in the Union?
I can't see how anyone in office at that time, Buchanan or not, would've avoided a war without allowing slavery to continue. I'm sure there are Constitutional experts out there that could explain how secession could work when there are significant differences amongst major segments of the population. But the conversation is different when you're talking about inbred rednecks that are willing to die for their "right" to own other people.
So seriously, what compromise was this poor douche supposed to pull out of his ass?
The thing is that compromise had worked for the past few decades simply by both pro-and-anti-slavery advocates trying not to upset the delicate balance of power. Buchanan was a staunch pro-slavery ideologue, and spent his entire administration doing his best to strengthen the South, which meant that when Lincoln was elected, the South felt like they had lost more than ever (especially since Buchanan was instrumental in the Dredd Scott decision which effectively legalized slavery nationwide). Wiki has a good overview on his presidency.
Compromise only "worked" to avoid war, though. It didn't work too well for the slaves. I guess my question really should've been...was slavery so firmly established as a "right" by this point that war was inevitable if slavery in the US was to end? If Buchanan had worked out some new compromise, it wouldn't have been a permanent solution. My guess is that it would've meant a delayed, but bloodier war because of an even stronger sense of entitlement from the South.
Compromise only “worked” to avoid war, though. It didn’t work too well for the slaves.
Oh, yeah, no argument there.
was slavery so firmly established as a “right” by this point that war was inevitable if slavery in the US was to end?
Ha. That's the million-dollar question. Generally, in the modern day we think "Yes", but at the time, it was still expected by some corners of society, both pro-and-anti-slavery, that slavery could be allowed to die a slow death of economic uncompetitiveness. And it was certainly economically uncompetitive in the long run. The industrial revolution was in full swing, and innovations in agriculture were increasingly creating demand for skilled (or semi-skilled) motivated free labor on farms for intensive agriculture practices.
If Buchanan had worked out some new compromise, it wouldn’t have been a permanent solution. My guess is that it would’ve meant a delayed, but bloodier war because of an even stronger sense of entitlement from the South.
Well, a big part was that slavery, before Buchanan, had effectively been 'hemmed in' to the South, with the new Western states being largely free soil. Combined with the rapidly industrializing North growing in population and economic capacity relative to the South, the South was in a losing position. Delays suited the average slaveowners who didn't want to force the issue and just wanted to gorge themselves on the benefits of brutal oppression while they could, but threatened the viability of slavery in the long-run.
Even many anti-slavery types like Lincoln, at the time, hewed to the idea that it would be less bloody and more agreeable to all parties (except the slaves, who cared about them? It was a horrifically racist time) to 'wait out' slavery, which seemed destined to die by the rapid improvement of industrial capital and the need for an educated and motivated workforce (which American slavery, of course, could not produce, as it rested wholly on the creation of not just an unfree class of peoples, but an unfree, underskilled, and brutalized class of peoples)
That may have been realistic (if a grim decision considering the state of slavery in the South), or it may have been fancy, but either way, delays were generally more a win for anti-slavery forces, rather than pro-slavery forces, who were trapped in a weakening position absent government intervention. Every year that passed meant that free states became more populous, richer, and more ardently anti-slavery, while in the South, exploitation of the system of slave labor was near-max-capacity. It needed land to expand its economy by any significant degree - or a change in their 'peculiar way of life', which they were not willing to do.
You wrote a long comment and I don’t mean to be flippant but I disagree with the premise that industrialization would have somehow starved out slavery. The industrial revolution saw children working in factories, they would have found a way to exploit “free” labor in factories. Every generation thought that technological change would end work as they knew it.
It's important to remember that slavery, true chattel slavery, is very economically inefficient both on the part of labor and labor-employer. The point is not that the industrial revolution was leading to a labor-friendly world, only that the material conditions of industrialization rendered one of the worst forms of unfree labor, chattel slavery, obsolete. Other forms, like debt slavery and wage slavery, would, of course, endure.
But chattel slavery, and American chattel slavery in particular, has a number of unique disadvantages - the disadvantages for the slave are obvious. The disadvantages are subtler to the slaver, but important - the slaver, unlike a market employer, cannot adjust the amount of labor he pays for without dismissing expensive capital (if you will forgive these extremely clinical terms for the buying-and-selling of human beings) - this is an inefficiency. A grotesque one.
The slaver, unlike the employer in a free labor market, necessarily loses money when a laborer's efficiency decreases - he has paid not just upkeep, or wages, but also a very high price for the initial capital. When a laborer's efficiency decreases, insofar as it affects his employment prospects at all, it is the laborer who bears the cost of a reputation of reduced efficiency once dismissed from their job. When a slave's efficiency decreases, it reduces the price they can be sold for; until then, they are an expense that does not give the returns that a similar wage or upkeep cost would. The question then becomes one of sunk cost - and either decision, selling the capital for a lower price than it is 'worth' or maintaining a low-efficiency laborer in the hope of recovering that lost efficiency in some manner, is economically damaging.
These things are bearable for the slaver in an agrarian economy, but in a high-tempo industrialized economy, they render chattel slavery noncompetitive with free labor. Input and output changes too fast, market conditions demand flexibility, which chattel slavery, as mentioned, lacks; the slaver is at a perpetual disadvantage in an industrialized system compared to the less-severe exploitation of an employer.
And all of this, of course, sidesteps the very severe moral implications of chattel slavery. I don't mean to dismiss those, only outline why it's not absurd that industrialization and the decline of chattel slavery worldwide were not coincidentally timed - one very much springs from the other.
We are talking about different things. Whether the south would have contorted the normal business model to continue to house people in perpetual slavery is a matter of historical speculation. What I’m saying is that the legal framework that allowed people to be free (as opposed to the plantation farming system) required war, or there would have just been the same level of oppression but tied to a machine.
My point is, though, that that form of labor exploitation is no longer economically viable when tied to mechanized industry. Without any mechanism for preventing free labor from coming into their markets, or destroying free labor/converting it to unfree labor wholesale, chattel slavery is simply uncompetitive, and for all of its other faults, a capitalist market system devours uncompetitive practices.
There was no point at which the south would have gone “Golly you know, we seem to be farming a whole lot less and industrializing a whole lore more, I guess we should abolish slavery because of that economic change.”
The point isn't that the entrenched slaving elite would have said "Oh gosh gee willikers, I guess it's time to give up slavery!", it's that counter-elites whose power did not rest on slavery, and whose power was often challenged by slavery, would arise, and eradicate slavery in much the same way as it had been eradicated in the North - by the withering of the economic and political pull of slaver elites until they could no longer meaningfully challenge abolitionist control of the legislature - and the same way that it was abolished in most of Europe.
The situation in the US was different. Were slaves being used on vast farms harvesting a single cash crop in Europe? Without knowing the full history of slavery in Europe, besides knowing they abolished it before the industrial revolution, I can guess not. There wasn't as strong of an incentive in favor as there was in southern states, where cotton thrived.
Your argument leaves out something that strikes me as important. That many slavers considered slavery a morally right thing to do. Slaves were considered livestock at the time. The argument to abolish slavery, to the slavers, amounted to freeing the cows. Slavery was wildly profitable not only for those who benefitted from their labor, but also the buying and selling of slaves. They went to war to keep slaves, period. There was no natural end, except by force.
Again, my point isn't that the slavers would be convinced. It's that they would be politically and economically marginalized by the progress of industry, as they had been elsewhere in the country, and elsewhere in the world, at the time, until they had no power to resist abolition.
The war was absolutely over slavery, and it can be argued that the cultural attachment of the South to racial chattel slavery meant things were always going to boil to a head - the intermittent outbursts of violence against 'Yankee' industry in the South being a prime example of the kind of radical agrarianism that could have prevented development of the South into an industrial society that would reject slavery - but the base idea was not absurd. Slavery had met a natural end elsewhere by the mechanisms described. Whether it is moral to attempt to 'wait it out' like that is a different conversation entirely, of course - my point is just that industrialization kills chattel slavery, and it was not strange for moderate abolitionists to see and latch onto that.
You seem to want to push this narrative that leaving slavery alone would have led to a natural conclusion. Are you minimizing slavery? I've seen a lot of arguments lately about similar things, such as Hitler wasn't as bad as Churchill. What's your agenda?
You seem to want to push this narrative that leaving slavery alone would have led to a natural conclusion.
Man, I said numerous times, including in that very fucking comment, that leaving slavery alone in the South would not have necessarily killed it. I outlined why moderate abolitionists believed that it would, and why it's not an inherently absurd idea. Fuck's sake.
It is absolutely an absurd idea, and any modern "abolitionists" who say otherwise are pushing an agenda. Do you watch conspiracy videos?
Okay. Europe and the Northern states don't exist. Got it.
I feel like I’d act like him if I were president. I don’t want this job, so I’m not gonna do this job. You all are fucked and I want to go home.
Which is why I will never run for office, though I’m sure that I’ll be forced to do it like he was.
Fuck.
You're right. People asking for a comprimise 160 years too late forget the missouri compromise, bleeding kansas, the Lecompton crisis and John Brown's raids. Slavery and slave states had to continually expand in order to remain economically viable, there was no compromise that slave states could accept, which is why war was necessary. James Buchanon was a Democrat who represented Southern interests, he could not find a compromise because the South could not accept any compromise and remain competitive with the North.
The reason Buchanon is the worst President is because he sees the Civil War coming and tries to set up a Southern victory during his administration.