Presidents and the Dissolution of the Union: Leadership Style From Polk to Lincoln by Fred I. Greenstein

Author:Fred I. Greenstein [Greenstein, Fred I.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, American Government, Executive Branch, Political Process, Leadership, History, United States, 19th Century, Civil War Period (1850-1877), Americas (North; Central; South; West Indies)
ISBN: 9780691151991
Google: kWeYDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 17130535
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2013-05-12T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

What Difference Did the President Make?

Had the United States possessed three farseeing, imaginative, and resolute presidents instead of Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan, the [Civil] War might have been postponed until time and economic forces killed its roots.

—Allan Nevins, The Statesmanship of the Civil War1

BY WAY OF CONCLUSION, I return to the issues addressed in this book’s introductory chapter. As we have seen, the Civil War era posed profound challenges to these six presidents. There is widespread agreement that Abraham Lincoln met that test in a superlative manner and that Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan responded to it abysmally. It is also widely held that Millard Fillmore’s performance was pedestrian and James K. Polk’s was unusually effective. (Taylor served too briefly to be assessed.) The Civil War era is an instructive period in which to study presidential effectiveness both because these presidents faced such profound challenges and because they ranged so widely in ability that they can be productively compared.

In what follows, I review the way each of these protagonists rose, or failed to rise, to the challenges of his times. I then explore the ways in which the leadership criteria employed in this book figured in the period under consideration. I conclude by discussing a pair of theoretical issues implicit in Allan Nevins’s assertion in the epigraph to this chapter that if the nation had “possessed three farseeing, imaginative, and resolute” chief executives “instead of Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan, the [Civil] War might have been postponed.”

SUMMING UP THE PRESIDENTS

James K. Polk (1845–49) was a staunch Jacksonian Democrat who set four major goals for his administration and achieved each one. Polk managed the Mexican-American War effectively, but he failed to anticipate that bitter contention would arise between the North and the South over the status of slavery in the Mexican Cession. Nevertheless, Polk had more accomplishments in a single term than most chief executives have in two.

Zachary Taylor (1849–50) was a rough-hewn professional soldier who made it a matter of principle during his military service to neither vote nor take a public stand on public issues. Though a slave owner, “Old Rough and Ready” angered the South first by advancing a plan for the Mexican Cession that was against its interests and later by threatening to use military force to prevent the South from seceding. Of course, Taylor’s plan became moot when he died in the summer of 1850.

Millard Fillmore (1850–53), a moderate Whig, was selected as Taylor’s running mate to balance the ticket with a Northerner. He deserves credit for accepting the need for a more evenhanded compromise and energetically working to achieve it. His subsequent actions angered both sections and led his party to deny him a chance for his own race for president.

Franklin Pierce (1853–57) was a Northern politician who supported Southern policies. Such leaders were the adhesive that joined the Northern and Southern wings of the Democratic and Whig parties in the nineteenth century. Despite contrary advice from his cabinet, Pierce succumbed to pressure and used

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