Just how bad of a president is James Buchanan? So bad that during his term in office, John F. Kennedy said that only those who had been president--"even poor James Buchanan"-- could understand the pressure the office placed upon its occupants. Even the other presidents use James Buchanan as shorthand for terrible.
So writing a biography of him is an overwhelming task--you have very little in the way of the traditional narrative. Buchanan follows the path of other presidents--he's a representative, then a senator, then a minister, then Secretary of State (in fact, he's the last Secretary of State to become President, unless Hillary has something to say in 2016). But then he becomes President, and he's terrible. Two days after he's inaugurated, the Supreme Court hands down the Dred Scott decision, meaning that the federal government has no authority to limit or abolish slavery in the territories. This means that Buchanan throws his support behind the pro-slavery government of the Kansas Territory (which at the time has two governments battling it out for legitimacy). He's what's called a "doughface," a Northerner (still the only President from Pennsylvania) with Southern sympathies.
He sends troops to Utah to fight the Mormons. He proclaims "reform, not relief" during the financial Panic of 1857. Like Pierce, he's so paralyzed by respect for the law that he fails to protect the Union, which is in full collapse when he leaves office in 1861.
Even in the summer of 2010, when I read Philip S. Klein's James Buchanan: a Biography, the 15th president was still difficult. This was the first book that took me two months to read. And Buchanan threw a wrench into my blogging plans, keeping me from it for over a year; I just didn't want to write about the guy. There's something in that stretch of Fillmore-Pierce-Buchanan that's like 2 PM on a Friday. You know something good is coming, but it's so long until it gets there.
All the action in Buchanan's bio happens when Lincoln's elected. The Union is dissolved, as the famous headline put it. And we know the answer to what happens next, but the process is well worth watching. Lincoln's Buchanan's opposite in many ways, but most decisively is his willingness to act.
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