Buchanan Administration - Buchanan's Advisers
Buchanan's Advisers
Buchanan hoped that he could balance his cabinet with representatives of all of the major political positions of the time. Buchanan's closest friends during the important process of selecting a cabinet, however, were anything but balanced. His most trusted advisers—Secretary of the Treasury Howell Cobb, a slave owner and Unionist; John Slidell, a Louisiana politician; Indiana senator Jesse Bright, who also owned slaves in Kentucky; and Virginia governor Henry Wise—were all southerners or pro-southern northerners.
Buchanan's cabinet, too, was comprised of mostly old-fashioned, southern-leaning politicians who tended to represent views very close to his own. Buchanan's cabinet consisted of four slaveholding southerners and three northerners, only one of whom—Secretary of State Lewis Cass, who was widely regarded as too old and impaired to be of any worth—agreed with the North on the issue of slavery....
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