Voters exhausted by four years of scandal and fraud opted to vote out the sitting president after one term, voting in a new president who offered a change in direction. But there would be months of transition before the president-elect’s inauguration, months that would present a national and international crisis as the outgoing administration sabotaged the nation.
The outgoing single-term president was James Buchanan. The president-elect was Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln had won the popular and electoral vote by significant margins in a contentious 1860 election on November 6th. The inauguration would not be for four months, on March 4, 1861. Seven states seceded from the Union before Lincoln could take office. James Buchanan did not stop them. While Buchanan and Attorney General Jeremiah Sullivan Black both declared secession to be unconstitutional, yet also believed that the federal government had no authority to keep them in the Union. Buchanan blamed the crisis on “intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of slavery in the Southern States,” and suggested that those Southern States “would be justified in revolutionary resistance to the Government of the Union.” This did not surprise anyone as Buchanan had always been a “doughface,” the derogatory name given to northerners with southern sympathies. Slaveholding states knew that Buchanan would do nothing, and indeed he took no action to resist secession, preferring to leave the growing crisis for the new president despite the president-elect having no power himself to act until he had taken the oath of office.
But Buchanan was not alone. Members of his cabinet actively acted to sabotage the Union during the transition. Even prior to election day, Major David Hunter wrote to Abraham Lincoln and offered precise information on the “treasonous” shifting of military resources in preparation for succession. This treason was under the direction of former Virginia governor John Floyd, who was acting in his current position as Buchanan’s Secretary of War. Floyd ordered large numbers of arms to Charleston, South Carolina, the state that was already planning to secede once the election took place. Floyd also sent munitions and soldiers into the South, not to stop secession, but to reduce a possible Union response to secession. He also ordered the Union’s limited navy offshore or further South. Other Buchanan cabinet members also violated their oaths of office to assist the seceding states. Secretary of the Treasury Howell Cobb of Georgia left to become President of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States. Secretary of the Interior Jacob Thompson of Mississippi denounced the incoming administration, then resigned to become Inspector General of the Confederate Army. Later he led the Confederate Secret Service and moved to Canada, from which he organized many anti-Union plots and was suspected of meeting with John Wilkes Booth. Secretary of War John Floyd also left his position after decimating the Union army; he was immediately commissioned a Confederate Major General and bragged about his disloyalty. Floyd was also found to have committed massive fraud while serving as Buchanan’s Secretary of War, lining his pockets through crooked land deals.
Members of Congress from Southern states also engaged in sabotage by strategically leaving their positions in the House and Senate in such a way that they could block any compromise that might reverse secession. Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis and former Congressman Alexander Stephens renounced their citizenship to become President and Vice President of the Confederacy. Many military officers, including Robert E. Lee, who had turned down an offer of leading the Union army to instead lead the fight against the Union. Most of the West Point-trained officers joined the Confederacy.
By the time president-elect Lincoln was sworn into office, the Union military and navy was in shambles. Relations with foreign governments, especially Great Britain and France, were tentative at best. The economy was undergoing a major upheaval as northern textile mills relied on southern cotton.
All of this reinforces the importance of a smooth transition from the outgoing office-holder to the president- and vice president-elect.
Buchanan acknowledged Lincoln’s win in the election and rode with him to the inauguration, as is customary for all American presidents. Buchanan then hightailed out of town as fast as he could, telling Lincoln that “if you are as happy entering the presidency as I am leaving it, then you are truly a happy man.”
David J. Kent is an avid traveler, scientist, and Abraham Lincoln historian. He is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World as well as two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
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[Photo credit: Wikipedia Commons: By Mathew Brady – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Buchanan#/media/File:Buchanan_Cabinet.jpg]
