“The American Civil War was somehow caused by slavery, but how was it that the slavery question could not be resolved short of bloodshed? Fred Greenstein rejects the notion of an irrepressible conflict, instead highlighting the failings of a series of presidents, contrasting their drift or dysfunction with Abraham Lincoln’s mastery. Briskly argued and brimming with insight, this book will spark fresh conversation about the role of individuals versus social forces in the making of history.”–Michael Birkner, Gettysburg College

“No one has provided such a compact comparative synthesis, using uniform investigative benchmarks as a means of judging all these presidencies. Students of the presidency–lay readers and academics–will surely want to read this masterful book. In a crowded field, Greenstein makes an important contribution.”–Jean H. Baker, Goucher College

Fred I. Greenstein is professor of politics emeritus at Princeton University. His books include Inventing the Job of President: Leadership Style from George Washington to Andrew Jackson (Princeton), The Presidential Difference: Leadership Style from FDR to Barack Obama (Princeton), and The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader.

Presidents and the Dissolution of the Union

LEADERSHIP STYLE FROM POLK TO LINCOLN

By Fred I. Greenstein, Dale Anderson

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2013 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-15199-1

Contents

CHAPTER 1 The Presidential Difference in the Civil War Era…………….1CHAPTER 2 The Policy-Driven Political Style of James K. Polk…………..13CHAPTER 3 The Rough and Ready Leadership of Zachary Taylor…………….29CHAPTER 4 Millard Fillmore and the Compromise of 1850…………………43CHAPTER 5 Franklin Pierce and the Kansas-Nebraska Act…………………57CHAPTER 6 The Disastrous Presidency of James Buchanan…………………75CHAPTER 7 Abraham Lincoln: Consummate Leader…………………………93CHAPTER 8 What Difference Did the President Make?…………………….111Appendix Background on the Civil War Era Presidents…………………..127Notes…………………………………………………………….147Further Reading……………………………………………………159Acknowledgments……………………………………………………171Index…………………………………………………………….173

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

The Presidential Differencein the Civil War Era

It was not events alone that caused Northernersand Southerners to view each other as enemies….Politicians … were largely responsible for theultimate breakdown of the political process.—Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisisof the 1850s

The mid-nineteenth century witnessed an unprecedentedfailure of the American political system.After two decades of increasingly bitter sectional disagreement,a disastrous war erupted between theNorth and the South that took the lives of roughly 2percent of the nation’s population, left much of theSouth devastated, and radically remade Southern society.So much has been written on this period, it mightbe assumed that no more remains to be said. Nothingcould be further from the truth. The Civil War era isso intellectually fertile that new ways to explore itconstantly arise.

Presidential Leadership

In the pages that follow, I use the period from 1846 to1865 as a stage on which a group of American presidentsexhibit their strengths and weaknesses. Theevents of the period from the Mexican-American Warto the Civil War form the background of that stage. Sixchief executives—James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, MillardFillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, andAbraham Lincoln—occupy its foreground. These menmerit attention because of the demands placed on thechief executive in this momentous era and becausethey varied so greatly in the caliber of that leadership,ranging from Abraham Lincoln, who ranked first inpresidential greatness in a recent poll of historians ofthe presidency, to James Buchanan, who ranked last.

This is the third in a series of books that ask whatenables some American presidents to meet the challengesof their times and causes others to fail. In ThePresidential Difference, I examined the White Houseoccupants from FDR to Barack Obama. In Inventingthe Job of President, I focused on the seven presidentsfrom George Washington to Andrew Jackson. In allthese works, my approach is straightforward. I proceedchronologically, summarizing the formative years,rise to the presidency, and administrations of the protagonists.I then conclude each chapter by assessingthe strengths and weaknesses of the president in questionby focusing on six realms: public communication,organizational capacity, political skill, policy vision,cognitive style, and emotional intelligence.

Why these qualities? Public communication, usingwhat Theodore Roosevelt called the “bully pulpit,”may be thought of as the outer face of the presidency.The ability to articulate goals and rally public supportfor them is fundamental to presidential leadership.Organization can be viewed as the inner face of theoffice. The ability to organize and run an administrationis vital to a successful presidency. In the smalleradministrations of this period, cabinets had muchgreater significance than they do today. How thesepresidents filled their cabinets and used those officialsand other advisers offers instructive comparisons.

It might be assumed that anyone able to rise to thepresidency would be politically skilled, but a surprisingnumber of chief executives has lacked either oneor both of two kinds of political skill. Tactical skill isthe ability to get results; strategic skill is the ability toget results that stand the test of time. But these skillsalone cannot ensure success. Even a consummatelyskilled president may be an underachiever if he or shelacks a policy vision. At the same time, a presidentwho advances policies that have undesirable consequencesis likely to be worse off than one who lacksvision altogether.

A president also needs the appropriate cognitivestyle to process the torrent of advice and informationthat comes his or her way. But even the most cerebralof presidents may go astray in the absence of emotionalintelligence, the ability to control one’s emotionsand turn them to advantage rather than succumbingto disabling emotional flaws. That last, as we shall see,is a quality conspicuously lacking in some of the presidentsconsidered in this volume.

The Context of the Times

It remains to fill in the background against which thesesix presidents performed their duties. In 1845 JamesK. Polk entered the White House inspired by the exampleof his mentor Andrew Jackson to be a strongpresident and with the intention of accomplishing asmall number of explicitly defined goals. One of thosegoals—the acquisition of the Mexican province ofCalifornia—led to the Mexican-American War, whichproduced a far greater territorial growth than he hadenvisioned. The vast new territory gained by this war,called the Mexican Cession, gave the United States thepresent-day states of California, Nevada, and Utah;most of Arizona and New Mexico; and parts of Coloradoand Wyoming. While a great territorial gain, theMexican Cession gave rise to an intractable politicalproblem: whether to allow slavery in this area.

Some in the North wanted slavery to be barredfrom these lands. Early in the war, Pennsylvania congressmanDavid Wilmot sponsored a measure thatwould forbid slavery in any territory gained fromMexico. This proposal, the Wilmot Proviso, passed theHouse of Representatives but not the Senate, but itsrepeated reintroduction and possible passage was aconstant worry to the South until the question wassettled in 1850.

The Southern position on the Mexican Cession wasstaked out in 1847 by John C. Calhoun of South Carolina,who argued that any law prohibiting citizens ofany state from entering a territory with their slaveswould be “a violation of the Constitution.” This standwas the polar opposite of the Wilmot Proviso and, bypromoting the spread of slavery, marked the extremein the debate that worried many Northerners.

The political importance of whether states carvedfrom the Mexican Cession would be open to slaverycannot be overstated. At the time, the free states enjoyeda majority of seats in the House, but the Northand South had equal representation in the Senate. Asa result, the South could block any bills threateningslavery in the Senate. The admission of more free stateswould overthrow that balance, costing the South thiscrucial veto power.

When Zachary Taylor became president in 1849,the question of slavery in the Mexican Cession remainedunsettled. Later that year, the issue came to ahead when California applied for admission as a freestate. By that time, many in the South were speakingangrily of secession as the only way to protect theirrights. A convention of Southerners held in Nashvillein the summer of 1850 asserted the right of states tosecede if they saw their rights being threatened andnamed passage of the Wilmot Proviso as such a threat.This convention also endorsed the idea of extendingthe Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific, banningslavery to its north but allowing it to the south,but insisted that only if California was divided in accordancewith this line could a free state be admittedinto the Union.

In the midst of this crisis, Taylor died in office andwas replaced by Vice President Millard Fillmore. Thebreakup of the Union was temporarily averted bypassage of the Compromise of 1850, a package of provisionssponsored initially by Senator Henry Clay ofKentucky that included some measures that advancedthe interests of the North and others that appealedto the South. While the compromise did not satisfythe demands of the Nashville Convention, Southerntempers were generally soothed. Across the South—thoughnot in South Carolina—secessionist sentimentwaned.

Soon, though, tension reappeared. Many in theNorth were outraged over the government’s enforcementof a key part of the compromise, the FugitiveSlave Act. This act made it far easier than before forSouthern agents to seize African Americans fromNorthern cities under the claim that they were runawayslaves. Many in the North refused to complywith the law, and several Northern states passed personalliberty laws that effectively nullified the FugitiveSlave Act, infuriating Southerners.

Franklin Pierce became president in 1853 in themidst of that bitter controversy. The situation worsenedwhen Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Actof 1854, repealing the Missouri Compromise line andauthorizing slavery in parts of the Louisiana Territoryfrom which it had hitherto been forbidden. The actsparked widespread anger in the North; six Northernmembers of Congress denounced the act as

a gross violation of a sacred pledge; … a criminalbetrayal of precious rights; … part and parcel of anatrocious plot to exclude from a vast unoccupied region… free laborers … and [to] convert it into adreary region of despotism, inhabited by masters andslaves.

Worse, Kansas quickly erupted in bloodshed as proslaveryforces based in Lecompton fought for control ofthe territory with antislavery forces based in Topeka.

James Buchanan entered the White House in themidst of this fighting. Within days of his 1857 inauguration,the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decisionmooted the entire debate over slavery in the territoriesby declaring that Congress had no power to banthe institution from any territory. While Southernershailed the ruling, many in the North saw the decisionas the work of what they called a “Slave Powerconspiracy” that threatened the Union. (Chief JusticeRoger B. Taney and four of the six justices joining himin the majority opinion were from slave states.)

By the 1860 election, the old Democrat and Whigtwo-party system had disappeared. The Whig Partyhad collapsed primarily over the issue of slavery. ManyNorthern Whigs moved to an emerging antislaveryparty, the Republican Party. Some Southern Whigsjoined the Democratic Party, giving primacy to theirsectional interests, which Democratic policy protected.Other Southern Whigs were at sea, looking for a partythat would cool sectional tensions while preservingSouthern interests. Many Northern Democrats, meanwhile,had grown frustrated with the increasingly hard-linepositions of their Southern colleagues.

The Republicans married traditional Whig positionssuch as support for internal improvements anda protective tariff to a stiff opposition to the spread ofslavery to the territories. Support for these policiesgrew quickly in the North and Midwest but was virtuallynonexistent in the South. Southerners regardedthe Republicans with suspicion and fear. They believedthat the new party intended to abolish slavery, endingtheir way of life. Soon after Republican AbrahamLincoln won the 1860 presidential election strictlyon Northern votes, seven Southern states secededfrom the Union and formed the Confederate Statesof America. The Civil War began little more than amonth after Lincoln was inaugurated president.

The Causes of the Civil War

Historians have long debated the causes of the CivilWar. Was it an inevitable result of competing socialand economic forces, fundamental sectional differencesthat clashed with the growing pressure to forgea more united nation? Was slavery really the centralissue in this conflict, or was it merely “a smoke-screenfor concealing the basic motives”? What of the individualswho lived in the Civil War era? What role didthey play in the steps that led to the war or the climatethat produced it?

As historian Michael Holt points out in the epigraphto this chapter, American political leaders hadample opportunities to work out solutions to theissues they faced in the decade and a half from theMexican-American War to the Civil War. They couldnot, however, find a sustaining one. As historian AllanNevins concludes,

The angry issue of slavery in the Territories, settledby the great compromise of 1850 but wantonly reopenedin 1854, was practically settled again by theend of 1858. But by 1858 passions had been so deeplyaroused that large sections of the population couldnot view the situation calmly or discuss it realistically;fear fed hatred, and hatred fed fear. The unrealitiesof passion dominated the hour.

Once political leaders reopened that issue, they allowedpassion to dominate the hour and did not allowcompromise to hold.

What role did the antebellum presidents play inthat dynamic? It is important to recognize that thepresidency in the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s was not aspowerful an office as it is today, and modern administrationsgive ample evidence of the limits even oncurrent presidential power. The chief executive of thepre–Civil War era did not control as extensive a federalbureaucracy as in the modern state, and Congress,to some degree, had the initiative as the leadingagent in setting federal policy. There is a degree towhich, as William J. Andrews explains, presidents inthis period “deferred to Congress in most areas.”

At the same time, the six presidents of this periodwere national leaders who wielded executive powerand who were expected to provide leadership on majorpolicy issues. Even the four presidents from this periodwho are generally judged as weak rather than strongexecutives—Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan—workedto advance what they saw as the policies bestsuited to soothe growing sectional animosity. Yetthose efforts, as those of congressional compromisers,failed. Presidential leadership in the pre–Civil War eramattered. This book addresses the question of how itmattered.

CHAPTER 2

The Policy-Driven Political Styleof James K. Polk

I intend to be, myself, president of the UnitedStates.

—James K. Polk, Letter to CaveJohnson, December 21, 1844

Just before his inauguration, Mr. Polk sat in hisroom with one of those he had selected for one ofthe departments of the government and speakingenergetically, he raised his hand high in the airand bringing it down with force on his thigh said,”there are to be four great measures of my administration:the settlement of the Oregon Questionwith Great Britain, the acquisition of California[from Mexico] …, the reduction of the tariff to arevenue basis, and the complete and permanentestablishment of the Constitutional Treasury.

—Recollection of George Bancroft,Polk’s secretary of the navy, 1866

The United States will conquer Mexico, but it willbe as the man who swallows the arsenic, whichbrings him down in turn. Mexico will poison us.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson,Journal, 1846

James K. Polk has been called the only strongchief executive between Andrew Jackson and AbrahamLincoln. He also ranks near the top in the perennialpolls on greatness in the White House. On theday of his inauguration, Polk declared that his administrationwould advance “four great measures”:division with Great Britain of the jointly administeredOregon Territory, acquisition of California, tariff reduction,and passage of a measure requiring the governmentto keep its funds in its own vaults instead ofin state and private banks. Polk accomplished all thisand more in a single four-year term. He also presidedover Texas statehood and a victorious war with Mexico.By the time Polk stepped down, more than a millionsquare miles had been added to the nation.

Despite his accomplishments, Polk had a significantfailing—he lacked foresight. This was particularly evidentin his inability to foresee that his territorial acquisitionswould trigger a spiral of controversy thatwas to come to a head in the Civil War.

Formative Years

James Knox Polk was born near Charlotte, NorthCarolina, on November 2, 1795. His family moved tocentral Tennessee when he was a child. Polk’s fatherwas Samuel Polk, a prosperous slaveholding planter;his mother was Jane Knox, a devout Presbyterian anddistant relative of the sixteenth-century Calvinisttheologian John Knox.

During his childhood, Polk was afflicted with manyillnesses. The most painful of them was a urologicaldisorder that required an excruciating surgical procedurethat was conducted without anesthesia, whichwas not yet in use. One Polk biographer attributes theintensity of his political leadership to his determinationto overcome his suffering and “his mother’s unyieldingPresbyterianism, with its corollaries of duty,self-reliance, and personal achievement.”

Polk’s education began under his mother’s tutelage,but after recovering from that surgery he was able toattend school near his home. Since the local schoolsdid not provide much in the way of challenge, he tookthe entrance examination for the University of NorthCarolina, which he passed with a high score. He wasadmitted with advanced standing at age twenty andgraduated two and a half years later with honors. Aftercollege, Polk returned to Tennessee, where he studiedlaw. Although Polk was admitted to the bar, the lawwas merely his occupation. Politics was his vocation.

Prepresidential Years

Polk forged his political identity in his early years,when he absorbed Jeffersonian republicanism from hisfamily. He solidified it in his twenties when he becamea Jacksonian Democrat. Polk’s loyalty to Jackson—nicknamed”Old Hickory”—was so strong that he wasgiven the sobriquet “Young Hickory.” Like his mentor,Polk favored strong executive power, low tariffs, andeconomical government.

Polk began his long political career in 1819 by servingas clerk of the Tennessee Senate, a position thatprovided him with invaluable exposure to the innerworkings of politics. Three years later, he was electedto the lower house of the state legislature. Then, in1825, Polk was elected to his first of seven terms inCongress.

Polk’s life took a significant turn in 1824 when hemarried the politically astute Sarah Childress. Polk’swife was to become a major influence on his politicalcareer. As her biographer puts it, she “was not justa politician’s wife whose sole interest was entertaining.”Instead, she had a thorough grasp on politics andpolicy and gave her husband political advice. Beyondthat, Sarah Polk’s gracious and affable manner helpedbalance her husband’s cold, unbending demeanor.

The next politically important event in Polk’s careerwas the 1828 presidential election, in which AndrewJackson swept President John Quincy Adams out ofoffice with 56 percent of the popular vote and 78 percentof the electoral vote. Polk became Jackson’s chieflieutenant in the House, first as chairman of the Waysand Means Committee and then in the even morepowerful office of Speaker. In that post, he played aninvaluable part in Jackson’s conflict with the Whigsand his victorious war with the Bank of the UnitedStates.
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