U.S. President Buchanan Freed Slaves

Posted: 7/30/2016

Introduction

I do not know much about this president, but he appears to be underrated. In rankings of U.S. presidents by scholars etc. he ends up as one of the worst presidents. He has been seen as indecisive, inactive, and unable or unwilling to address the divisive slavery issue.

My impression is rather that this president was a decent man who believed in a civil society and compromise to resolve the slavery issue without the savagery of a civil war.

Sources

1. White House, Presidents, James Buchanan
2. 5 facts about James Buchanan
3. http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/presidents/james_buchanan_wheatland.html
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Buchanan

Briefly On Buchanan’s Views On Slavery & Abolition

Perhaps following quotes illustrate Buchanan’s position (emphasis added):

1. “Although in Pennsylvania we are all opposed to slavery in the abstract, we can never violate the constitutional compact we have with our sister states. Their rights [sovereignty?] will be held sacred by us. Under the constitution it is their own question; and there let it remain”
2. “"Before [the abolitionists] commenced this agitation, a very large and growing party existed in several of the slave states in favor of the gradual abolition of slavery; and now not a voice is heard there in support of such a measure. The abolitionists have postponed the emancipation of the slaves in three or four states for at least half a century."”

I would tend to agree with Buchanan. Was it not the uncompromising fanaticism of northern abolitionists that fueled the flames?

I was surprised to learn that there were actually abolitionists active in the southern slave states. Why don’t we seem not know much about them? Could these southern abolitionists have been part of a more peaceful solution? Victors write history?

Buchanan Personally Freed Slaves

“There are at least two documented cases of Buchanan having, with his own money, purchased slaves to later free them in his native Pennsylvania.

When his youngest sister, Harriet, was to marry Robert Henry of Virginia in 1832, Buchanan found out that the Henrys owned slaves. To spare his sister any association with slavery, Buchanan arranged to purchase their two female slaves, whom he brought to Pennsylvania and freed as quickly as he could.

Harriet’s son James Buchanan Henry, who served as personal secretary to Buchanan as president, said in a biography of his uncle that Buchanan also purchased several slaves in Washington, D.C., during his years in the White House 1857-61. He likewise took them to Pennsylvania to be freed, according to Henry.” (Source 2; emphasis added)

How many slaves did the Great Emancipator Abraham Lincoln buy with his own money to free them?

If more men had followed Buchanan’s great example, then the American Civil War could have largely been avoided!