When I took this photo in Washington in November
2013, I could not foresee using it anytime soon. Then New York Times columnist Gail Collins’ piece from earlier this
week, “Hillary Versus History,”
engaging in what she called “random irrelevant trivia about presidential
elections of the past”—but which, one suspects, she regarded as anything but
irrelevant to today—gave me the opportunity.
The last time one Democrat was elected to succeed
another, without first becoming Vice-President, was when James Buchanan followed Franklin Pierce, back in the election of
1856. That one didn’t go over terribly well. Buchanan, despite one of the most
glittering pre-Presidential resumes in history, became a disaster.
Was Buchanan “the worst President ever,” as Collins
suggests? My vote still goes to Richard Nixon,
for his cynicism, vindictiveness, and the gargantuan set of scandals that, for
the sake of simplicity, is now remembered with the word “Watergate.”
But I’ll grant Collins the point that even Tricky
Dick has not only defenders, but even Democratic historians who, looking back
in the 35 years since Ronald Reagan entered the Oval Office, reluctantly allow that this
GOP predecessor had his good points as far as domestic policy was concerned
(e.g., the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency).
Collins is indisputably correct, that “you very
seldom run into fans of Buchanan, the man who cozied up to slaveholders and
failed to stop Southern secession.” That is why, when I came upon the James
Buchanan Memorial in today’s “Photo of the Day” a year and a half ago, I was
absolutely dumbfounded.
I’m not going to get into the aesthetics of this sculpture of James Buchanan by Hans Schuler in DC’s Meridian Hill Park (now also nicknamed “Malcolm
X Park”—a moniker that, if Buchanan could hear it now, would give this Northern
“doughface” sympathizer of the South fits). But I must say that I had a WTF? moment
when I read its inscription: “THE INCORRUPTIBLE STATESMAN WHOSE WALK WAS UPON
THE MOUNTAIN RANGES OF THE LAW.” And framing him between statues of "Diplomacy" and "Law"--too much!
The only people who could have wanted such a
memorial made, with such a ludicrous description of his character and legacy, would
have been Southern Democratic segregationists who never got over their loss in
the Civil War, I figured. But not so—they weren’t pushing to see him honored, either. On
the other side, there was active opposition from the most prominent Senate
Republican of the time, Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, who noted that the statue would
honor the only president "upon whom rests the shadow of disloyalty in the
great office to which he was elected."
So who wanted it? As Brady Carlson wrote, in an entertaining post on the memorial, it was Buchanan's niece. Yes, his niece.
The only bachelor to become President, Buchanan
never had any offspring. (I’m not going to get into the issue of whether or not
he was gay—not in this post, anyway.) But he needed someone with the feminine
touch to help with social occasions. When the widower Thomas Jefferson became
President, that function was filled by the wife of his Secretary of State,
Dolley Madison (giving her great on-the-job training for when she officially
filled the role, as the actual President’s wife). Now, under Buchanan, that
function was performed by Harriet Lane.
It is one of the great
anomalies of White House history that the first person known to have been
called “First Lady” was not the wife of the President, but his niece.
Buchanan looked on his niece not just as something like
his daughter (he had, in fact, adopted her, after the death of both her parents
when she was 10) but also—surprisingly enough for someone so conservative—as an
intellectual equal, someone whom he could sound out for advice on career
decisions, for instance. Twenty-six years old when her uncle was inaugurated, she
was, by all accounts, a lively, intelligent young woman who, in a different
time, might have aspired to high office herself.
James Buchanan’s life was blighted by national
tragedy; Harriet’s, by personal tragedy, as her husband and two sons died
within three years. Quite affluent by this time (the mid-1850s), as a result of inheritances
from her uncle and her banker husband, she devoted the remainder of her life,
as recounted in this 2006 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article by Mark Roth, to eminently worthwhile philanthropy:
improving prison and hospital conditions, establishing an institute for the
blind in New York and fighting illegal liquor sales on Chippewa Indian
reservations.
But part of her estate, at the time of her death in
1903, was earmarked for a memorial to her uncle. Nowadays, the government would
practically grab with both hands at a project in which no public funds would be
expended (particularly when what would be $100,000 in today's currency would be involved), but for a long time there were no takers. Then, with somebody
noticing that her bequest came with an expiration date—15 years—lawmakers reluctantly
signed on, perhaps consoling themselves with the thought that the project might mean more
work for the construction industry.
Though Woodrow Wilson signed the legislation
enabling the memorial, it was another President, almost as maligned as
Buchanan, Herbert Hoover, who spoke at the monument’s dedication. Hoover—beleaguered,
in the form of the Great Depression, by the steepest challenge to face an American
President since the secession movement that made Buchanan so unhappy—made one
assertion that, while historically debatable, was, given his own predicament,
heartfelt: “James Buchanan occupied the
presidency at a moment when no human power could have stayed the inexorable
advance of a great national conflict.”
But another sentence, about the contribution of
Buchanan’s niece to this most unexpected bit of DC memorial art, was
inarguable: “It is due to Miss Lane's devoted appreciation of his
kindness that this statue has been erected."
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