Об этой статье мне рассказала моя подруга, очень хорошая хозяйка. Ее http://www.yangl.ru/?p=2144 меня поразил, но я попробовала приготовить это блюдо и пришла в полный восторг. Это очень вкусно! By late 1860 many Northerners believed James Buchanan supported the southern states in their drive toward secession. Numerous critics went so far as to consider him a traitor. Buchanan reacted with consternation and professed a strong attachment to the Union—though one in which slavery would be protected as a property right in the western territories. His reaction to secession when it finally came reinforced northern skepticism; for the most part, he simply stood back and watched. James Buchanan 121 Maybe political leader William H. Seward was right. An "irrepressible conflict” had been reached that no president, in fact no human being, could settle without bloodshed. But Buchanan’s sectional bias and strained legalism made war all the more likely and assured that when Southerners gathered arms, confiscated forts, and declared their own independent nation in his last weeks as president, the federal government would act with meekness rather than strength. k James Buchanan was born on April 23, 1791, in a one-room log cabin near Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, where hills, oak groves, and farms dominated the landscape. He was one of 11 children. His father, also named James, had emigrated from Ireland and operated a trading post where he earned a reputation as a canny and arrogant businessman. In contrast, his mother, Elizabeth Speer Buchanan, embraced a modest, Christian life, dedicating herself to deciphering God’s will and making it to heaven. The elder Buchanan moved his family to town when James was six, buying a two-bedroom brick house that served as both home and business for his mercantile trade. Young James attended school at the local Old Stone Academy, where he studied Latin and Greek. In 1807 he enrolled at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. At first he tended to his studies; then, in an effort to become more popular, he began smoking, carousing, and drinking heavily. He later said, "Without much natural tendency to become dissipated, and chiefly from the example of others, and in order to be considered a clever and spirited youth, I engaged in every sort of extravagance and mischief.” The college reacted by expelling him, perhaps more in the hope of shocking him into changing his ways than preventing him from returning. If that was the intent, it worked. After James promised to temper his social life and tend to his studies, the college readmitted him, and he graduated in 1809 with a reputation for ambition, if not also the arrogance found in his father. He went on to study law, and in 1812 he began his practice in Lancaster. That same year the United States went to war against Britain, and during the conflict James Buchanan decided he would help defend Baltimore. He joined a volunteer regiment and headed south, but the only duty he saw was to confiscate horses for use by the army. After returning home, Buchanan ran for the state legislature in 1814 as a Federalist and won. He retired after two terms to concentrate on his law career and by age 27 amassed considerable wealth. In 1818 he fell in love with Ann Coleman, daughter of an iron-mill owner in Lancaster, and proposed marriage. She accepted, but her parents disapproved. They thought Buchanan wanted to marry their daughter for one reason: money. As a result, Ann broke off the engagement. She then slid into a depression and soon after died under mysterious circumstances. Town rumors said she committed suicide, but that was never proven. The Colemans blamed Buchanan for her death and barred him from the funeral. He never fully recovered from the emotionally racking experience and never married. Buchanan returned to public office in 1820 when he won election to the U.S. House of Representatives. With the Federalist Party dying and his own ambition thriving, in 1824 he announced his support of Andrew Jackson in the presidential race. Jackson lost, but Buchanan took the lead in creating an "amalgamation” of Federalists and Jacksonians in western Pennsylvania. In 1828 he forcefully expressed his attachment to the new alliance when he verbally attacked incumbent president John Quincy Adams as despotic, immoral, and corrupt. He then devoted his efforts to obstructing the Adams program in Congress as a way to boost another presidential run by Jackson. His support for Jackson, who won the presidency that fall, made for a case of strange 122 James Buchanan bedfellows. The two politicians differed on several issues. Buchanan, for example, wanted a high protective tariff, a policy Jackson never subscribed to, though while serving in Congress he did vote to increase rates on several occasions. Further, the Jacksonians appealed to the masses, while the Federalists distrusted them. Yet both men believed in a vigorous executive branch. Buchanan also often disregarded issues in finding a vehicle that would advance his career. Some called him a blatant opportunist, moving in whatever direction the political weather vane pointed. That he won reelection to Congress in 1828 under the banner of the new Democratic Party testified both to his hard work in building an organization to replace the Federalists and to his political agility. Four years later, President Jackson appointed him minister to Russia. Buchanan accepted though with disappointment, for he wanted a more prestigious position and hoped to become Jackson’s running mate in the fall election. He set sail for the Russian capital of St. Petersburg in the spring of 1832 on a mission, he said, "in which my heart never was: to leave the most free and happy country on earth for a despotism more severe than any which exists in Europe.” For all his reluctance he achieved a diplomatic victory when he arranged America’s first trade agreement with Russia. The treaty provided for reciprocity, meaning the ships of each country would receive treatment equal to that received in the ports of the other. In practice, the treaty benefited the United States most, for the number of American ships visiting Russian ports far exceeded those sailing the other way, and Russian regulations were more burdensome than American ones. Buchanan returned from Russia in 1833 and won election to the U.S. Senate in 1834, where he served 11 years. Known as a conservative Democrat with a reputation for caution, he chaired the Foreign Relations Committee, and on several occasions he criticized the expanding activities of abolitionists. James Buchanan wanted the presidency in 1844, and several leading Democrats promoted him. But the party turned instead to Andrew Jackson’s choice, the expansionist James K. Polk of Tennessee. Buchanan worked hard for the nominee, and Polk rewarded him by appointing him secretary of state. The cabinet position was considered a stepping-stone to the White House and certainly encouraged Buchanan’s own ambition. In 1846 he won praise from expansionist Americans for negotiating the acquisition of Oregon with Britain. Polk and Buchanan, however, fought almost constantly over important issues. The president grew exasperated with the Pennsylvanian’s frequent changes of position, changes that convinced him Buchanan thought only about what could get him elected president. In one incident after the U.S.-Mexican War had begun, Buchanan argued that the president should renounce any territorial ambition. Polk refused. Later, with victory for the United States in sight, Buchanan advised the president to acquire as much territory as possible. Polk recorded in his diary: "I cannot help laboring under the conviction that the true reason of Mr. Buchanan’s present course is that he is now a candidate for the Presidency, and he does not wish to incur the displeasure of those who are in favour of the conquest of all Mexico.” In fact, those who wanted more land were Southerners, the very constituent group Buchanan closely identified with when he became president. Polk was correct about his secretary of state: Buchanan was indeed maneuvering for the White House in 1848, but he lost the Democratic nomination to Lewis Cass of Michigan. He subsequently retired to an estate he had recently purchased outside of Lancaster, named Wheatland, with spacious rooms, broad lawns, and towering oaks. There he lived as a country squire. He tried a third time for the presidential nomination in 1852, but Franklin Pierce, a largely unknown politician from New Hampshire, defeated him. In spring 1853 Pierce appointed Buchanan minister to Britain. James Buchanan 123 At any other time the appointment may have ended his domestic political career, taking him far from the public stage and making him forgettable. But in the mid-1850s the appointment helped him, for it removed him from the vicious sectional battles then being fought in Congress and elsewhere over whether to extend slavery into the western territories. His assignment across the Atlantic also kept him distant from the unpopular Pierce administration and its many blunders. Yet Buchanan did not escape every mistaken policy, and he actually contributed to one that helped ruin Pierce’s presidency. In October 1854 he and two other American ministers, Pierre Soule and John Y. Mason, met in Belgium to formulate a policy toward Spain over the slave island of Cuba. They wrote the Ostend Manifesto, in which they recommended the United States try to buy Cuba or, if Spain refused to sell the island, to take it forcibly. Pierce never accepted the recommendation, but in March 1855 the manifesto was published in newspapers and greatly angered Northerners. The emerging Republican Party pointed to it as proof Pierce wanted more slave territory to placate the South. Buchanan’s involvement in the Ostend Manifesto worked to his benefit, however, by raising his standing among Southerners. As a result, when the 1856 Democratic National Convention met, his diplomatic experience helped him in two ways. First, many delegates from the North and West supported him for president because he had been away from the heated debate over the Kansas-Nebraska Act, while southern delegates supported him because he seemed sympathetic toward slavery. Two other candidates for the nomination, President Pierce and Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, had made enemies over the Kansas issue. As a result, after 15 ballots the convention nominated Buchanan for president. Buchanan ran against John C. Fremont of the Republican Party and former president Millard Fillmore of the Know-Nothing Party. In November the Pennsylvanian won less than 50 percent of the popular vote but a majority in the electoral college, with 174 votes to Fremont’s 114 and Fillmore’s 8. As Buchanan’s inauguration neared, the nation prepared for another explosion over slavery. The Supreme Court had before it a suit by Dred Scott, a slave who was claiming his freedom because at one point, from 1834 to 1838, his master had taken him into Illinois and into Wisconsin Territory, both of which forbade slavery. The court could rule for or against Scott, or it could take another route and refuse to rule at all. Buchanan wanted a decision, one that would resolve the issue of slavery in the territories. The five southern justices on the court stood ready to rule against Scott, but without support from a northern justice they hesitated, lest their decision appear completely sectional. With the case in the balance, Buchanan secretly contacted one of the justices, Robert C. Grier of Pennsylvania, and pressured him to join his southern colleagues. Grier wrote back to the president-elect: "We fully appreciate and concur in your views as to the desirableness . . . of having an expression of the opinion of the Court on this troublesome question.” Buchanan’s contact with Grier violated court ethics. He and Grier were close friends and political allies, and Buchanan well knew the justice’s sympathy for the South. According to historian Roy F. Nichols, "Buchanan always had desired to be a member of the Supreme Court; in this instance he practically participated in their deliberations and influenced their judgment.” That the president-elect ever thought the North would accept a decision against Scott testifies either to his misreading of the political crisis or how far he was willing to go to protect southern interests. At his inauguration Buchanan pledged himself to one term as president; then, knowing the Supreme Court decision would come at any moment and would likely favor the South, he said he would abide by whatever ruling the Court chose to issue. Belying the crisis, the capital was filled with revelers, who at his inaugural ball consumed 500 gallons of oysters, 124 James Buchanan 800 chickens, and 100 gallons of ice cream, along with venison, beef, turkey, pheasants, ham, and lobster. Just two days after the celebration, the Supreme Court made its decision public: As a slave, Dred Scott was not a citizen of the United States; his temporary residence in free territory had not ended his bondage; and the Missouri Compromise of 1820 prohibiting slavery in most of the Louisiana Purchase territory was unconstitutional because it deprived persons of their property without due process of the law. In effect, the decision prohibited Congress from preventing slavery in the western territories. No other decision could have caused greater outrage in the North. Theoretically, at least, the Court was saying slavery could even expand into the free states—no law could stop it. As a result, Buchanan began his administration with sectional animosities increasing rather than lessening and with many Northerners suspecting he had some involvement in the Dred Scott case. Making his standing worse, a financial panic in 1857 damaged the economy. That the downturn was more severe in the North than in the South only caused Southerners to say it showed northern depravity and the superiority of the southern economy. Buchanan’s greatest challenge—the very survival of his administration, if not the nation—came in Kansas. Under President Pierce, proslavery and antislavery (Free-Soil) settlers had established separate governments in the territory. James Buchanan, however, appointed a new governor, Robert J. Walker, to resolve the crisis. Walker, a former secretary of the treasury, hailed from Mississippi but was a strong unionist. Before he could arrive in the beleaguered territory, the proslavery government in the Kansas town of Lecompton called for a convention to write a constitution and proceeded to schedule an election to choose delegates for it. Free-Soil leaders in nearby Lawrence called the election procedure rigged, saying it ignored the free-state residents, who by then composed a clear majority in the territory. The balloting for delegates was held in June 1857. The rules established at Lecompton kept half the Free-Soilers from voting, while the other half staged a boycott. Consequently, the Lecompton convention met in October and wrote a constitution filled with proslavery provisions, including prohibiting the freeing of slaves already in Kansas—numbering 200—and strict enforcement of the federal Fugitive Slave Law. The convention scheduled a popular vote for December 21, whereby residents could decide for the "Lecompton constitution” with or without slavery, but if the "without slavery” version were chosen, it would only prohibit the introduction of new slaves and do nothing about the slavery that already existed. In addition, the balloting was to be supervised by the proslavery government. Northerners branded the arrangement fraudulent. Democratic leader Stephen A. Douglas, who in the 1850s promoted popular sovereignty—the right of the residents in a territory to vote whether or not to permit slavery— found himself under pressure from his constituents in Illinois and from newspapers to oppose the Lecompton constitution. Thus, for both political reasons and because he thought the arrangement in Kansas an affront to popular sovereignty, he met with President Buchanan and announced his opposition to the document. Buchanan responded by saying he believed the Lecompton constitution was legitimate. He added that Kansas must be admitted into the Union quickly to defuse the sectional crisis and weaken the new Republican Party, which with its free-soil platform was gaining strength from the Kansas controversy. Buchanan warned Douglas: "I desire you to remember that no Democrat ever yet differed from an Administration of his own choice without being crushed.” In reference to the weakened state of the presidency compared to years earlier, Douglas replied: "Mr. President, I wish you to remember that General [Andrew] Jackson is dead.” James Buchanan 125 Due to its divided condition, Kansas held two votes on the Lecompton constitution. The one arranged by the proslavery government ended in 6,143 ballots for the document with slavery and 569 against it—but most Free-Soilers refused to participate, and in any event the tally included many fraudulent votes. The Free-Soil government held a referendum in which the constitution was soundly defeated—a more accurate reflection of opinion given the greater number of antislavery settlers in the territory. In February the U.S. Senate approved the Lecompton constitution and slavery for Kansas by a vote of 33-25. That result came only after much wheeling and dealing by President Buchanan, including both threats and promises of higher office. When approval of the constitution stalled in the House, Buchanan was forced to propose a compromise, finalized by others, whereby Kansans would vote on a proposed federal land sale that at the same time would allow them to accept or reject the Lecompton constitution. In August 1858 the constitution went down to defeat by a large margin, 11,812 to 1,926. The Kansas debacle destroyed Buchanan. Southerners accused him of allowing Yankee politicians such as Stephen Douglas to engage in sneaky maneuvering that stole the election from the proslavery settlers. Northerners condemned him for siding with the Lecompton constitution. Added to this, the controversy helped the Republicans by allowing them to assume the mantle of democracy, based on their attacks against the proslavery government in Kansas. In the 1858 congressional elections, candidates who opposed the Lecompton constitution swept to victory. The Republican Party gained more seats, though Abraham Lincoln lost his senate race to Douglas, who publicized his stand against President Buchanan. No one could deny Buchanan’s humiliation, and for the remainder of his presidency he was nothing more than a figurehead. In 1859 John Brown staged his dramatic but failed raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, in an attempt to incite a slave uprising. Passions flared again as Northerners hailed him as a hero and Southerners portrayed him as the vanguard of an abolitionist-led crusade to end slavery through bloodshed. As the 1860 presidential election approached, the Democratic Party split, torn asunder by Northerners and Southerners unable to compromise their sectional hatreds. In that setting the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, won the presidency, although he had a minority of the popular vote, and his name was kept off the ballot in the South. Southerners in the Deep South had threatened to secede should the winner be Lincoln, a man they believed to be nothing less than an abolitionist who would destroy their civilization. They now intended to carry out their threat. In a message to Congress in December 1860, Buchanan placed blame for the sectional crisis on northern antislavery agitators. But he also advised caution and said Lincoln would respect the Constitution rather than usurp it and that, in any event, his power would be checked by the other branches of government. Buchanan wanted Congress to affirm the right of slavery in the territories, with popular sovereignty to be used whenever any territory petitioned for statehood. He also wanted action to strengthen the right of masters to their runaway slaves. Despite his message, the Deep South seceded; South Carolina left before Christmas Day, followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. As Southerners seized federal arsenals and forts, President Buchanan was confronted with the need to show decisiveness; instead he showed timidity. Although he declared secession unconstitutional, he said the federal government had no authority to use force against the rebellious states. Buchanan obviously faced a conundrum: Should he do nothing, the South would grow more emboldened; should he use the military—itself in a weak state—he would ignite a full-scale war before Lincoln 126 James Buchanan even set foot in the White House. To make matters worse, the incoming president rejected Buchanan’s overtures for a meeting between them to develop a policy—understandably so from Lincoln’s view, because he wanted to avoid any association with the discredited chief executive. When Buchanan refused to reinforce the federal forts at Charleston, South Carolina, Secretary of State Lewis Cass resigned in protest. His departure from the cabinet stunned the president because Cass represented the moderate wing of the Democratic Party. Cass, however, had concluded Buchanan was too pro-southern. After Lincoln’s inauguration in March 1861, Buchanan retired to Wheatland, leaving the unresolved crisis in the new president’s hands. During the Civil War he supported Lincoln and said he would have reacted to the firing on Fort Sumter in the same way that Lincoln did. But most Northerners denigrated him. One said, "Buchanan is . . . as truly a traitor as was Benedict Arnold himself.” In his memoirs, James Buchanan expressed his strong feelings about the differences between North and South, saying: "The Constitution . . . expressly recognizes the right to hold slaves as property in states where slavery exists. . . . The southern states have rights guaranteed to them, and these rights I determined to maintain, come weal, come woe.” He added, "The abolitionists . . . scattered throughout the slave holding states pamphlets, newspapers and pictorial representations . . . calculated . . . to excite the wild and brutal passions of the slaves to cut the throats of their masters.” Shortly before his death on June 1, 1868, Buchanan insisted, "I have always felt and still feel that I discharged every public duty imposed on me conscientiously. I have no regret for any public act of my life, and history will vindicate my memory.” By then the Civil War had ended—a conflict that took more
American lives than any other.