Buchanan

Describe President James Buchanan's attempts to settle the problem of Bleeding Kansas. What powers of the presidency might he have used to bring about a more acceptable solution?

In the mid 19th century, internal contention over the issue of slavery was it its peak. Among the most violent and damaging manifestations of this conflict took place in Kansas, where a series of political and physical confrontation between Free Staters and pro-slavery Border Ruffians left the state and its people in ravages. Labeled "Bleeding Kansas" by Horace Greenley of the New York Tribune, the devastating attempts of these near-terrorist groups to influence the slavery policy of Kansas before its grant of statehood realized a horrifying climax to the internal disputation over slavery in America.

Bleeding Kansas is most noteworthy for the terrible violence involved, and the innumerable fights that broke out among those involved collectively brought the death of 56 casualties. But not all the fighting done was guerilla warfare: in the political sphere, a war was being waged concerning the selection of a constitution to be used to govern the state of Kansas. Several constitutions were drafted, including the 1855 Topeka Constitution, which created a shadow Free-State government essentially by fiat. In 1857, however, the balance was shifted, and a constitutional convention resulted in the draft of the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution. As the ratification vote failed to offer them a means to cast their ballot against slavery, abolitionist forces boycotted the election. Willfully ignoring the disagreement within Kansas, President James Buchanan accepted the Lecompton Constitution and urged the granting of statehood to the apparently pro-slavery Kansas. Congress disagreed with the President and ordered another election within the state. By the second election, the tables turned again and the pro-slavery forces' were boycotting the political process in Kansas, and thus the anti-slavery forces easily claimed victory and defeated the hated document. After much debate and confusion, the Lecompton Constitution ultimately met its demise when it was determined that it did not accurately represented the will of the majority. By mid-1859, a new document called the Wyandotte Constitution was written which represented the prevailing abolitionist view, and was approved by the electorate by a 2-to-1 margin. After a half-decade, Kansas finally entered the Union as a free state, but the controversy that so lengthened the process of achieving statehood was anything but settled and done with.

President Buchanan's stance on slavery was very much determined by his personal livelihood, and thus he favored the rights of slave owners and sympathized with the Cuba-coveting slave expansionists. Finding an archrival in Senator Stephen Douglas, Buchanan was a staunch defender of the doctrine of popular sovereignty, or the belief that the residents of a state should themselves determine the legality of slavery therein, but implied that a territory could not prohibit slavery until it was ready for statehood. Douglas fought the President on this issue and prevailed, but at the cost of ripping the Democratic party apart. Despising both abolitionists and free-soil Republicans, Buchanan often lumped the two together in his politics. Buchanan saw no injustice