Buchanan Administration - Changes in the U.S. Government
Changes in the U.S. Government
Minnesota, Oregon, and Kansas all joined the Union during the Buchanan years. Admitted as free states, the growth of the nation in many ways precipitated the dissolution of the Union, by tipping the electoral power towards non-slaveholding states.
Certainly the most significant event during the Buchanan years—indeed, during any president's term—was the departure of the southern states from the Union. Buchanan came to the presidency determined to do whatever he could to hold the Union together—and this, in his opinion, meant following a conservative course of defending the South and the constitutional right to slavery. Every effort to keep the South happy, however, made northern voters intensely unhappy. And northerners' discontent with the political situation, along with the continuing growth of the northern population while the South held steady, fueled the Republican victory in 1860,...
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