November 6, 1860 - James Buchanan dies on election day
The precarious health of sixty-nine-year-old President James Buchanan was near final collapse. He had spent four years being unwell, suffering a variety of ailments ever since contracting the so-called "National Hotel Disease" prior to his inauguration. This dreaded condition had already taken the lives of his nephew and private secretary, Eskridge Lane.
The absence of firm presidential authority could not have come at a worse time. As he drew his last breath, seven Deep South cotton states prepared to secede if the "black Republican" Abraham Lincoln was elected president over the multitude of other candidates. Not yet forty years old, the young and vigorous Vice President John Breckinridge was a huge supporter of states rights and voluntary association. But he had no chance of winning the election himself because the national convention had been unable to agree on a unified platform. Worse still, the nomination of Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas had alienated many radical pro-slavery Southern Democrats due to his support for the concept of popular sovereignty.
At this point, the Democrats had nothing to lose and everything to gain. If it was too late the save the Union, then at least the sudden demise of Buchanan presented an unexpected opportunity to avert the outbreak of a bloody civil war. There was barely a Union army to speak of, and more than half of those forces would be loyal to the south. Certainly, there had been many compromises proposed before and brilliant minds put forward imaginative mental frameworks, but the national issue now was about expedience, avoiding an unnecessary tragedy.
For the first time, minds, and political will, became properly focused on solutioning. To de-escalate the situation, Breckinridge made a bold 'farewell' offer to the fire-eaters. The Union would vacate federal property in the seceded states, and these in turn would reimburse the Union for the full value of those facilities and also the costs of transporting any employees who chose to return to federal territory.
The founding fathers of the Confederacy listed the continuation of slavery as their primary justification in the various articles of secession. They dreamt of annexing Mexico and the Caribbean to create slave states out of those regions, but, instead, the seceding states were off to a hesitant start with a rump nation that was weak economically. Nevertheless, they were determined to meet Breckinridge's offer.
Unwilling to follow the "rash secession" of the lower South, the "Old Dominion" of Virginia stood aside; indeed, it was in the state capital of Richmond that Southern Democrats had nominated Breckinridge. While his offer was under consideration by the Deep South, further states chose not to secede, and the Breckinridge Compromise was finally accepted in good spirit on Christmas Eve 1860. In an act of selfless courage, Breckinridge was onboard the Star of the West when it evacuated the federals on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.
Meanwhile, President-elect Abraham Lincoln, who had his own pressures, was rapidly making political calculations. Mainly, this was about the long-term future of a viable slave-holders republic, the capital of which was Montgomery, Alabama, with a population of less than 10,000 people. De facto leader Jefferson Davis declared, "All we ask is to be left alone." Lincoln anticipated that a seven-state Confederacy could not survive in its present form despite being a geographic entity stretching from the Mississippi to the Atlantic Ocean, larger than many European countries.
There were many complex economic and political factors to consider, including the questionable governance ability of the Fire-eaters, the negative reaction of the great powers, mechanization, and slavery being on its way out as a viable labor system. Ultimately, the real question became when the seven states would return to the Union, and beyond that, whether the hero-of-the-hour Breckinridge might win the 1864 election. The paradoxical result of this outcome would be for Lincoln to be remembered as a do-nothing president like Buchanan.
Author's Note:
In reality, Buchanan recovered in 1857 and Lincoln was inaugurated as planned.
The precarious health of sixty-nine-year-old President James Buchanan was near final collapse. He had spent four years being unwell, suffering a variety of ailments ever since contracting the so-called "National Hotel Disease" prior to his inauguration. This dreaded condition had already taken the lives of his nephew and private secretary, Eskridge Lane.
The absence of firm presidential authority could not have come at a worse time. As he drew his last breath, seven Deep South cotton states prepared to secede if the "black Republican" Abraham Lincoln was elected president over the multitude of other candidates. Not yet forty years old, the young and vigorous Vice President John Breckinridge was a huge supporter of states rights and voluntary association. But he had no chance of winning the election himself because the national convention had been unable to agree on a unified platform. Worse still, the nomination of Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas had alienated many radical pro-slavery Southern Democrats due to his support for the concept of popular sovereignty.
At this point, the Democrats had nothing to lose and everything to gain. If it was too late the save the Union, then at least the sudden demise of Buchanan presented an unexpected opportunity to avert the outbreak of a bloody civil war. There was barely a Union army to speak of, and more than half of those forces would be loyal to the south. Certainly, there had been many compromises proposed before and brilliant minds put forward imaginative mental frameworks, but the national issue now was about expedience, avoiding an unnecessary tragedy.
For the first time, minds, and political will, became properly focused on solutioning. To de-escalate the situation, Breckinridge made a bold 'farewell' offer to the fire-eaters. The Union would vacate federal property in the seceded states, and these in turn would reimburse the Union for the full value of those facilities and also the costs of transporting any employees who chose to return to federal territory.
The founding fathers of the Confederacy listed the continuation of slavery as their primary justification in the various articles of secession. They dreamt of annexing Mexico and the Caribbean to create slave states out of those regions, but, instead, the seceding states were off to a hesitant start with a rump nation that was weak economically. Nevertheless, they were determined to meet Breckinridge's offer.
Unwilling to follow the "rash secession" of the lower South, the "Old Dominion" of Virginia stood aside; indeed, it was in the state capital of Richmond that Southern Democrats had nominated Breckinridge. While his offer was under consideration by the Deep South, further states chose not to secede, and the Breckinridge Compromise was finally accepted in good spirit on Christmas Eve 1860. In an act of selfless courage, Breckinridge was onboard the Star of the West when it evacuated the federals on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.
Meanwhile, President-elect Abraham Lincoln, who had his own pressures, was rapidly making political calculations. Mainly, this was about the long-term future of a viable slave-holders republic, the capital of which was Montgomery, Alabama, with a population of less than 10,000 people. De facto leader Jefferson Davis declared, "All we ask is to be left alone." Lincoln anticipated that a seven-state Confederacy could not survive in its present form despite being a geographic entity stretching from the Mississippi to the Atlantic Ocean, larger than many European countries.
There were many complex economic and political factors to consider, including the questionable governance ability of the Fire-eaters, the negative reaction of the great powers, mechanization, and slavery being on its way out as a viable labor system. Ultimately, the real question became when the seven states would return to the Union, and beyond that, whether the hero-of-the-hour Breckinridge might win the 1864 election. The paradoxical result of this outcome would be for Lincoln to be remembered as a do-nothing president like Buchanan.
Author's Note:
In reality, Buchanan recovered in 1857 and Lincoln was inaugurated as planned.
Provine's Addendum:
The Confederacy soon fell into political turmoil of its own making as Texas found it had very different political interests from the other states, particularly as the issue of funding a navy versus frontier forts in the West. Texas soon seceded, again reestablished as the Republic of Texas, which would normalize relations with the United States over questions of the Red River boundary. This irony was not lost on anyone of the day, nor commentators later.
Fearful of losing more ground, most leaders of the Confederacy worked to drive public spirit with a few key causes. Runaway slaves was an issue of particular interest, although the Union to the north was steadfast in granting freedom following the post-Secession congress to be largely anti-slavery. Remaining slave states began a timetable for complete manumission with federal dollars paying for the lost "property" according to arguments based on the Fifth Amendment. The Confederacy knew it had no hopes of winning a war to stop the flow of the Underground Railroad, especially as Abraham Lincoln did plenty of saber-rattling to ensure that New Orleans remained a free port for Union river traffic.
Rather than looking northward, the Confederacy turned south in hopes of conquering Cuba. They became embroiled in the Ten Years' War, which became a muddled mess as the clearer lines between independence and loyalty to the Spanish Crown blurred over Confederate interests. As the war dragged on, male slaves were offered freedom for volunteering, their masters paid by the government; however, stories of the suffering and disease in Cuba meant few actually volunteered themselves. Eventually the Confederacy pulled out of the costly war, bankrupt as a nation and scrambling for international support. South Carolina would be the next state to secede, again, this time establishing itself as an independent nation. The other states had louder and louder factions calling for a return to the Union, leading to eventual revolution that would rock the former slave-holding states.
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