In a published letter dealing with the circumstances at as 22 December 1860, in reference to President James Buchanan’s “timidity” over the precarious state of the Union, Congressman John Sherman—the (more) famous General’s younger brother—wrote:
“Impeachment is too slow a remedy. The Constitution provided against every probable vacancy in the office of President, but did not provide for utter imbecility”: Rachel Sherman Thorndike (ed), The Sherman Letters: Correspondence Between General and Senator Sherman From 1837 to 1891, Sampson Low Marston & Company Limited, London, 1894, 95.
Some things worth adding are that calling Buchanan a “staunch Jacksonian Democrat” can be misleading unless we distinguish sharply among the very different Jacksonian currents. Jacksonianism in the Northeast, Midwest, and much of the West meant anti-monopoly politics, government activity heavily weighted toward the county and municipal levels, diffused opportunity, resistance to centralized financial power, broad democratic participation, etc.; southern “Jacksonianism” often operated through a very different slaveholding aristocratic type social order.
It is also easy to forget that many of the people who helped destroy slavery came out of the Jacksonian-Democratic world itself, for example, Martin Van Buren’s Free Soil candidacy in 1848 was among the most consequential third-party runs in American history, helping organize the anti-slavery-extension politics that later broke the old party system, Republican victory possible, and indeed (along with many other Jacksonians) played a role in shaping what the Republican Party would become until after WW2 which was a democratic republican party, not a continuation of the Whigs (who at the national level also just said things like slavery would just "gradually die of its own accord", as Henry Clay was fond of saying)
In a published letter dealing with the circumstances at as 22 December 1860, in reference to President James Buchanan’s “timidity” over the precarious state of the Union, Congressman John Sherman—the (more) famous General’s younger brother—wrote:
“Impeachment is too slow a remedy. The Constitution provided against every probable vacancy in the office of President, but did not provide for utter imbecility”: Rachel Sherman Thorndike (ed), The Sherman Letters: Correspondence Between General and Senator Sherman From 1837 to 1891, Sampson Low Marston & Company Limited, London, 1894, 95.
I love these. Thank you.
Some things worth adding are that calling Buchanan a “staunch Jacksonian Democrat” can be misleading unless we distinguish sharply among the very different Jacksonian currents. Jacksonianism in the Northeast, Midwest, and much of the West meant anti-monopoly politics, government activity heavily weighted toward the county and municipal levels, diffused opportunity, resistance to centralized financial power, broad democratic participation, etc.; southern “Jacksonianism” often operated through a very different slaveholding aristocratic type social order.
It is also easy to forget that many of the people who helped destroy slavery came out of the Jacksonian-Democratic world itself, for example, Martin Van Buren’s Free Soil candidacy in 1848 was among the most consequential third-party runs in American history, helping organize the anti-slavery-extension politics that later broke the old party system, Republican victory possible, and indeed (along with many other Jacksonians) played a role in shaping what the Republican Party would become until after WW2 which was a democratic republican party, not a continuation of the Whigs (who at the national level also just said things like slavery would just "gradually die of its own accord", as Henry Clay was fond of saying)
A very sad commentary.