Preserving the White Man's Republic by Joshua A. Lynn;

Author:Joshua A. Lynn;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: IDENTIFIER: Lynn
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: 2019-01-24T16:00:00+00:00

James Buchanan’s Doughface Body

The Democracy’s foes agreed that Buchanan was “the embodiment of the platform,”104 so that belittling his gendered body was a means of disparaging Democratic principles, particularly popular sovereignty. Democrats contended that popular sovereignty was sectionally neutral. Their national platform meant that they did not have to opportunistically portray Buchanan as “a slave-holder at the South and an abolitionist at the North.” Yet they had long tailored the doctrine to sectional audiences, telling northerners that settlers could vote against slavery in the territorial phase, while assuring southerners that it could only be banned upon statehood.105 Rivals claimed that Kansas-Nebraska “was read one way at the South and another way at the North” in order to embarrass Buchanan as a sectional candidate.106 A Frémont partisan attacked Buchanan because the proslavery “operation of squatter sovereignty” would “force slavery into Kansas.” A southern Know-Nothing reached the opposite conclusion and reproached southerners for backing Buchanan, who, when “he gave the platform a voice,” endorsed the northern version of popular sovereignty.107 Democrats’ supposedly national candidate easily succumbed to the stigma of sectionalism.

Along with sectionalism, opponents detected unmasculine dependence in Buchanan’s symbiosis with his platform. Maryland’s Charles B. Calvert juxtaposed Millard Fillmore’s “manly independence, in qualifying his acceptance of the American platform” with “the subserviency of the acceptance of his competitor.” Fellow Know-Nothing supporter Sam Houston observed that it was impossible to “separate the candidate and platform” because Buchanan “has merged himself in the platform.”108 Buchanan’s personal shortcomings paralleled his political cravenness; Houston reportedly felt that his “great private fault was being a bachelor.”109 Know-Nothings had arisen as a reformist crusade against established parties. Their antipartisan culture primed them to interpret Buchanan’s “entire dependence on the party that nominated him” as proof of political corruption in addition to unmanly degradation.110

That Buchanan “renounce[d] his Identity” when mounting a proslavery platform espousing popular sovereignty also convinced antislavery Americans that he was “the pliant instrument of the Slave power that nominated him.”111 In a speech in the Democratic candidate’s hometown, Republican Thaddeus Stevens hissed that “there is no such person running as James Buchanan. He is dead of lockjaw. Nothing remains but a platform and a bloated mass of political putridity.” One Republican pamphlet equated adhering to the platform with surrendering to the South, having Buchanan sing:

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