James Buchanan

"Historians generally agree that James Buchanan was the worst U.S. president. After all, it was on his unhappy watch that the Union disintegrated. Far from wishing to rehabilitate Buchanan, Baker wants to bury him deeper in infamy. She brilliantly shows how Buchanan's mishandling of the mini-Civil War between pro- and anti-slavery factions in Kansas led to John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry and helped make the greater conflict inevitable, and how his vacillation and dithering allowed rebels to seize federal forts and arsenals across the South . . . Buchanan was unable to hold it together, and his failure to ensure a united Democratic ticket in the 1860 election made a Republican victory, and the ensuing war, inevitable."—Foreign Affairs

"When James Buchanan took office as president of the United States in 1857, he was widely acclaimed as a well-prepared leader who could solve the crisis between the North and the South. Yet when he left office in 1861, he was widely reviled for a series of errors that encouraged the formation of the Confederate States and the coming of the Civil War. Most historians still consider him among our worst presidents. The essential question about Buchanan's presidency is, then, why such an intelligent public man failed so miserably—and what his mistakes tell us about a crucial moment in our nation's history, when a chief executive failed to rise to the challenge of events."—Jean H. Baker on James Buchanan