Qualifications:
1.
State legislator in his 20’s
2.
U.S. House of representatives
3.
U. S. Senator
4.
Secretary of State
5.
Ambassador to Great Britain
6.
Successful lawyer
7.
Rich land owner rising from log cabin poor
childhood.
I think we have a match.
And the result – without dispute one of the worst four
presidents in history and by most accounts – the worst. Having seen a number of dreadful individuals
fill the post during my lifetime (including one of the four worst – Nixon) is
seems impossible to be this bad. But he
was. By the way the other two bad guys –
Harding and Pierce. With Millard
Fillmore and Ulysses Grant right behind (and of course I would put W there
too).
He was from Pennsylvania.
The only bachelor president – With some evidence that he might have been
our only gay president which is an insult to the gay community. He had no sense
of humor and having been single all his life, he never learned how to listen
and compromise with other opinions. He
was dogmatic, insistent and a failure.
During his reign he had the Mormon uprising in Utah which
required troops to come in after the Mormons intentionally attacked and massacred
a wagon train (disguised rather poorly as Indians) but he would not intervene
in Kansas where he was insisting on let the new state be a slave state despite
popular vote and a state constitution that said no slavery. He was insistent.
He worked behind the scenes on the horrible Dred Scott case
influencing the Supreme Court case that essentially said a slave – even a
former slave was an object, not a human and therefore had no rights.
He also plotted to acquire Cuba so that it could come in as
the 16th slave state. And he
owned no slaves never/ever. However he
did like the snobbery of the southern aristocrats and adopted it in the mansion
home he lived in in PN.
He also wanted to send troops to Northern Mexico, but by
that time it was obvious this was a one termer and congress refused to hear
him. Far in advance of Modern presidents
overstepping their war power limits – Buchanan was looking for preemptive
authorization from congress in the 1850’s.
He even sent a military expedition to Paraguay.
He essentially left office after four years of setting the
US up for civil war. His one positive
was dismantling the Democratic Party (which certainly was not liberal in those
days) for failure and setting the stage for Lincoln to be elected in the new
Republican Party (which was liberal in those days).
And of course, his cabinet was corrupt too. The Secretary of War John Floyd undersold
Fort Snelling (MN) to a consortium of investors who happened to include some of
his personal friends.
His administration suffered the ignominy of a
pre-impeachment investigation, but much to the surprise of the public who
became shocked at the level of the graft – there was no impeachment resolution.
In the final months of his presidency Buchanan did nothing to reign in S.
Carolina when is seceded and in fact would have given up Fort Sumter and
Moultrie is Northern cabinet members had not interceded.
He handed over information, gave full access and did nothing
to restrain the confederate southerners.
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