Papers from a conference held at LancasterHistory.org in 2008. Presentation copy from the editors.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents
Introduction: Bum rap or bad leadership? -- James Buchanan, Dred Scott, and the whisper of conspiracy / Paul Finkelman -- Prelude to armageddon: James Buchanan, Brigham Young, and a president's initiation to bloodshed / William P. MacKinnon -- General Jackson is dead: James Buchanan, Stephen A. Douglas, and Kansas policy / Nicole Etcheson -- In defense of doughface diplomacy: a reevaluation of the foreign policy of James Buchanan / John M. Belohlavek -- President James Buchanan: executive leadership and the crisis of the democracy / Michael A. Morrison -- The South has been wronged: James Buchanan and the secession crisis / Jean H. Baker -- "In the midst of a great revolution": the northern response to the secession crisis / William G. Shade -- Joseph Holt, James Buchanan, and the secession crisis / Daniel W. Crofts -- A conversation with William W. Freehling and Michael F. Holt, September 19, 2008 / Moderated by John W. Quist -- Epilogue: James Buchanan's Civil War / Michael J. Birkner.
Summary
An edited volume examining the presidency of James Buchanan and his role engaging the complexities of the debate surrounding the president immediately before Lincoln.
edited by Michael J. Birkner, Randall M. Miller, and John W. Quist.
ISBN
9780807170816 (cloth : alk. paper)
Place of Publication
Baton Rouge
Publisher
Louisiana State University Press,
Date of Publication
[2019]
Physical Description
xiv, 279 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cm.
Series
Conflicting worlds : new dimensions of the American Civil War
Notes
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents
Introduction : possessing the power : the role of force in James Buchanan's Caribbean policy / Amy S. Greenberg -- The bachelor's mess : James Buchanan and the domestic politics of doughfacery in Jacksonian America / Thomas J. Balcerski -- Stephen A. Douglas, free-soiler : a counterfactual analysis of party reformation in the 1850s / Douglas R. Egerton -- "General Jackson is dead" : dissecting a popular anecdote of nineteenth-century party leadership / Matthew Pinsker -- "Buck all over" : James Buchanan and a trail of broken relationships / William P. MacKinnon -- Slavery and the breakup of the Democratic Party in the North : a battle of ideas and organization / Frank Towers -- Friends and outliers : Varina Davis, James Buchanan, and gender relations in Antebellum Washington / Joan E. Cashin -- "Like the baseless fabric of a vision" : Thaddeus Stevens and confiscation reconsidered / John David Smith -- "Eastern and Western empire" : Thaddeus Stevens and the greater Reconstruction / Michael Green -- A conversation with Bruce Levine and James Oakes : moderated by Randall M. Miller.
Summary
"The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens examines the political interests, relationships, and practices of two of the era's most prominent politicians as well as the political landscapes they inhabited and informed. Both men called Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, their home, and both were bachelors. During the 1850s, James Buchanan tried to keep the Democratic Party alive as the slavery debate divided his peers and the political system. Thaddeus Stevens, meanwhile, as Whig turned Republican, invested in the federal government to encourage economic development and social reform, especially antislavery and Republican Reconstruction"--
