James Buchanan in 1857

Electoral Brawlage, #15

“Electoral Brawlage” examines the first inaugural address of each president in U.S. history, with some commentary and analysis. Check back on Mondays for more.

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There’s no way of effectively summarizing the 1856 election without explaining the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the “Bleeding Kansas” episode of American history that ensued. The Act created the official territories of Kansas and Nebraska and repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, allowing settlers to decide the slavery question through popular sovereignty. If there were any further questions after the vote, they would be decided by the courts.

If anyone thought this would solve the slavery question, they were wrong.

The election was a three-way fight, and maybe someday Americans will learn that third parties almost always result in power being handed to the worse of the two larger parties. James Buchanan was a PA Democrat with Southern sympathies, running against John C. Fremont, a CA Republican and the first candidate from that party. Spoiling Fremont’s chances in third place was former president Millard Fillmore, running on the Know-Nothing ticket, and that’s a subject I shall have to go on about in another article. We’re staying focused here.

Buchanan beat Fremont by half a million popular votes (worthless) and sixty Electoral Votes (the only thing that matters.) Then he gave his inaugural address…and he sounded like a man with a gun to his head as he tried to explain to his mommy that he and his brothers weren’t actually fighting while she was taking a nap, and that everything is cool, and has always been cool, and will be even cooler in the future, so there’s no need to do anything uncool, like go to war over slavery.

Seriously, read the first few paragraphs of this. It sounds like pure political BS. I doubt that even Buchanan believed it, he just wanted the problem to go away.

We have recently passed through a Presidential contest in which the passions of our fellow-citizens were excited to the highest degree by questions of deep and vital importance; but when the people proclaimed their will the tempest at once subsided and all was calm.

The voice of the majority, speaking in the manner prescribed by the Constitution, was heard, and instant submission followed…[lol it did not.—GB]

What a happy conception, then, was it for Congress to apply this simple rule, that the will of the majority shall govern, to the settlement of the question of domestic slavery in the Territories... [We have never actually cared about majority rule, this settled nothing.—GB]

As a natural consequence, Congress has also prescribed that when the Territory of Kansas shall be admitted as a State it “shall be received into the Union with or without slavery, as their constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission.”

A difference of opinion has arisen in regard to the point of time when the people of a Territory shall decide this question for themselves.

This is, happily, a matter of but little practical importance. [lmao—GB] Besides, it is a judicial question, which legitimately 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. [LMAOOOOOO—GB] To their decision, in common with all good citizens, I shall cheerfully submit, whatever this may be…

The rest of his speech addresses some boilerplate issues; the government shouldn’t take more in taxes than it needs to perform its duties; Congress alone has the war-making powers and that also includes certain logistical duties like road-building, or else the military couldn’t execute its responsibilities; foreign relations were important, handle them well, etc.

It’s clear the big issue was slavery, and had been for a few election cycles now. We’re one president away from the biggest acceleration that we will see on this subject.

Buchanan served his single term with the intention of only being a four-year man. That he was, and if his inaugural speech is any indication, he had a talent for assuming big problems would just kind of…go away.

They did not.

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