{"id":288,"date":"2009-03-13T11:38:17","date_gmt":"2009-03-13T16:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/blog\/?p=288"},"modified":"2010-06-15T15:36:19","modified_gmt":"2010-06-15T20:36:19","slug":"eminently-successful-in-its-foreign-domestic-policy%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/2009\/03\/13\/eminently-successful-in-its-foreign-domestic-policy%e2%80%9d\/","title":{"rendered":"&quot;Eminently successful in its foreign &amp; domestic policy\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/files\/2009\/03\/hd_buchanjwalter.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-287\" title=\"hd_buchanjwalter\" src=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/files\/2009\/03\/hd_buchanjwalter-244x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"244\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/files\/2009\/03\/hd_buchanjwalter-244x300.jpg 244w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/files\/2009\/03\/hd_buchanjwalter.jpg 485w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 244px) 100vw, 244px\" \/><\/a>I want to highlight <a href=\"http:\/\/hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu\/index.phpnode\/25555\" target=\"_blank\">an interesting letter <\/a>that James Buchanan wrote about a week after President Abraham Lincoln\u2019s Inauguration on March 4, 1861. Despite four \u201cstormy and turbulent\u201d years in the White House, Buchanan told New York Herald editor James Bennett that ultimately \u201c[his] administration [had] been eminently successful in its foreign &amp; domestic policy.\u201d Seven southern states seceded before he left office, but Buchanan believed that the crisis was unavoidable. \u201cNo human wisdom could have prevented\u201d the \u201csad events [that had] recently occurred,\u201d as Buchanan explained. Whether the Civil War was inevitable has been the subject of debate ever since, but most historians criticize his response to the secession crisis.\u00a0 (Historians who participated in CSPAN\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.c-span.org\/PresidentialSurvey\/Overall-Ranking.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">2009 Presidential Leadership Survey <\/a>ranked Buchanan as the worst Chief Executive).Yet perhaps the most interesting part of this letter is Buchanan\u2019s confident stance about how \u201cthe public &amp; posterity [would] judge\u201d him. \u201cI feel conscious that I have done my duty\u2026&amp; that I shall at last receive justice,\u201d as Buchanan wrote.<\/p>\n<p>Buchanan also defended his role during the secession crisis in <em>Mr. Buchanan&#8217;s Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion <\/em>(1866), which you can access through <a href=\"http:\/\/deila.dickinson.edu\/theirownwords\/title\/0010.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Their Own Words<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I want to highlight an interesting letter that James Buchanan wrote about a week after President Abraham Lincoln\u2019s Inauguration on March 4, 1861. Despite four \u201cstormy and turbulent\u201d years in the White House, Buchanan told New York Herald editor James Bennett that ultimately \u201c[his] administration [had] been eminently successful in its foreign &amp; domestic policy.\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,172,173],"tags":[158],"class_list":["post-288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-war-1861-1865","category-letters-diaries","category-rare-books","tag-campaigns-elections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1835,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions\/1835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}