Buchanan was elected at a time that demanded strong executive leadership, but despite his political and diplomatic experience, he was not ready for the task. Buchanan failed as president not because he was weak, but because he stubbornly adhered to a narrow, antiquated political philosophy that was out of touch with American society in the 1850s. He yearned for the Jackson years of decades past, when Democrats North and South were unified, the anti-slavery movement was despised and sectional issues were settled by concessions to the South.
As a Northerner enamored of the South, Buchanan let his emotional linkage to the region guide his decisions. His consistent favoritism toward one section of the country compromised his credibility. He refused to acknowledge the ideas or opinions of Republicans and spurned Northern Democrats if they disagreed with his pro-Southern views, relying instead on a small circle of officials who shared them. Rather than forging a national coalition to address the growing crisis, Buchanan widened the division that stoked the fires of secession.
James Buchanan was a not a traitor to his country. That he could have prevented the Civil War is unlikely. He entered the White House with noble intentions of restoring harmony to a divided nation, but he couldn’t see that nearly everything he did made matters worse. If Buchanan had provided the resolute national leadership desperately needed he could’ve prevented a costly civil war.
The four main anti-slavery strategies pursued in the United States: (1) abolitionist campaigns that involved publications and speaking tours (2) slave rebellions, like the one incited by Nat Turner; (3) the Underground Railroad, in which runaway slaves like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, supported by Quakers and others, helped many more slaves escape to freedom; (4) and war which became the most important strategy because of its disastrous short-term and long-term consequences.
Reliance on the use of force resulted in the emancipation of American slaves, obviously a good thing. But this, the military strategy for emancipation, backfired badly. Massive destruction and loss of life embittered Southerners, giving them powerful incentives to avenge their losses whenever they had the chance. Pro-slavery Southerners were bad before the war and worse afterwards. Abraham Lincoln’s conciliatory gestures had little effect because of the intense emotions stirred up by all the fighting, most of which had taken place in the South..
Bottom line: the Civil War was no shortcut to achieving civil rights for blacks. While chattel slavery in the United States was abolished in 1865, blacks didn’t begin to get substantial legal protections for their civil rights until the 1960s.
How else could slavery have been abolished in the United States without the Civil War?
In Brazil, the largest market for slaves – about 40 percent of African slaves were shipped there -- abolitionists raised funds to buy their freedom. Slaveholders resisted, but here and there slaveholders found it in their interest to cash out, and gradually slaveholding areas began to shrink. There was competition among towns, districts and provinces to become slave-free. As liberated areas expanded and became closer to more slaves, the number of runaways accelerated, relentlessly eroding the slave system. Brazilian authorities, like the British, appropriated funds to compensate slaveholders who liberated their slaves. Again, this wasn't because the slaveholders deserved compensation. But compensation undermined the incentives of former slaveholders to oppress former slaves, and the former slaves were safer. So slavery was gradually eroded through persistent anti-slavery action involving multiple strategies. In 1888, Brazil became the last nation in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery, when there were some 1.5 million slaves remaining.
Some people have objected that the United States couldn’t have bought the freedom of slaves, because this would have cost too much. Buying the freedom of slaves more expensive than war? Nothing is more costly than war! The costs include people killed or disabled, destroyed property, high taxes, inflation, military expenditures, shortages, famines, diseases and long-term consequences that often include more wars!
That kind of money could have bought the freedom of a lot of slaves and significantly undermined the slave system in the South! I believe that the fighting over slavery could have surely been peacefully resolved by Buchanan had he been willing to be impartial and objective during the conflict.