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Indiana Magazine of History
Lewis Cass and the Politics of Moderation. By Willard Carl Klunder.
(Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1996. Pp. xiv, 416.
Illustrations, maps, table, notes, bibliography, index. $39.00.)
Lewis Cass, according to Willard Carl Klunder, is “a curiously
neglected historical figure” (p. ix). Though he served for nearly half
a century as Michigan territorial governor, United States senator,
secretary of war under Andrew Jackson and of state under James
Buchanan, and minister to France, he has received no modern scholarly biography. This thorough, well-researched work aims to rectify
that defect.
If historical importance is measured by the length of one’s political vita, then Cass was certainly important. Like fellow Democrat
Buchanan and Whig John McLean, he was forever in the public eye
as a prominent officeholder and presidential hopeful. Today, however, he usually merits only a brief mention as the Democratic standard bearer against Zachary Taylor in 1848 and author of the ill-fated
“popular sovereignty” formula for addressing the issue of slavery in
the western territories.
Klunder does better at remedying the neglect of Cass than at
showing why it was undeserved. His Cass is a stalwart patriot and
Democratic partisan, aggressively expansionist in foreign policy yet
always seeking accommodation and compromise in domestic controversy. Cass’s preference for moderation and the middle way, combined with his administrative talent and amiable personal qualities,
served him well politically untilthe sectional division over slavery opened
the ground beneath his feet. Like Buchanan, Cass always appeased
the slave interest, even sacrificing popular sovereignty to southern
demands for a more definite proslavery stance. Yet he stood for the
Union when it came to war.
Though he avoids hagiography, Klunder evidently considers
Cass an admirable and sympathetic figure. Many contemporaries
did not, and it is easy to see why. C a d s gasconading belligerence
against Britain and Mexico and persistent evasiveness on hot-button
domestic issues could be read as proof of pure patriotism-r
of crass
popularity seeking. As Klunder shows, Cass had a penchant for political trimming and truckling. Always eager t o avoid offense, Cass
abstained from alcohol but pretended to drink at parties; he held
Masonic office but refused to appear in regalia. It was perfectly characteristic of the man that his one undoubted claim to fame, the popular sovereignty doctrine, was an ingenious device for dodging a
difficult question. In the end those who thought it could not be dodged
were right.
“Above all,” concludes Klunder, Cass was “a true democrat.”
However, he assigns no content to Cass’s democracy beyond a platitudinous belief in “the ability and right of the people to govern themselves” (p. 313). If Cass had the courage of his convictions, it was
Book Reviews
293
often unclear what those convictions were. C a d s disposition to segregate moral concerns from practical politics, while sometimes an
asset, was certainly also his greatest weakness. Statesmanship does
not reside only in political expediency. Many in C a d s own party
who looked for forthright principled stands on issues from banking
to slavery despised and distrusted him. Lewis Cass went along to
get along. Whether that best fits him for obscurity or renown, praise
or obloquy, is something readers can judge for themselves.
DANIELFELLER is associate professor of history, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. He is the author o f The Jacksonian Promise: America, 1815-1840 (1995).
James Buchanan and the Political Crisis of the 1850s. Edited by
Michael J. Birkner. (Selinsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 1996. Pp. 215. Illustrations, notes, select bibliography, index. $29.50.)
This monograph emerged from a symposium held at Franklin
and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, marking the bicentennial of James Buchanan’s birth. It contains several articles and
a panel discussion exploring the career of Pennsylvania’s only president. It will appeal almost exclusively to political historians who
study the 1850s. There are, for example, only fleeting references to
contemporary Indianians such as Jesse D. Bright.
Michael J . Birkner introduces the historical debate swirling
around Buchanan’s presidency. He notes that Philip S. Klein’s sympathetic biography (President James Buchanan: A Biography, 1962)
stands in stark contrast to the assessment of most historians, including the contributors to this volume. Setting the stage, Birkner castigates Buchanan for his mismanagement of the Dred Scott case and
“Bleeding Kansas” and concludes that he was “a canny wheelerdealer” (p. 25) undone by the pressures of the White House.
Michael F. Holt, influential author of The Political Crisis of the
1850s (1978), surveys the election of 1856 and claims that it could
have been much closer. Holt argues that John C. Fremont, the first
Republican presidential candidate, was irreparably damaged in the
three-way race by rumors that he was a Catholic. The American
party or “Know-Nothing”nominee, Millard Fillmore, failed spectacularly in his effort t o gain the votes of conservative Whigs and
Democrats. The heated national debates over the Lecompton (Kansas)
Constitution and the nomination of Buchanan, who drew the united
support of southern and northern Democrats, scuttled Fillmore. This
pivotal canvass was the last for both the Whigs and Know-Nothings
and presaged the Republican triumph of 1860.
Peter B. Knupfer depicts Buchanan as “a typical member of the
Jacksonian political generation’’ (p. 152) who was morally obtuse
regarding slavery. Buchanan’s ostracism of fellow Democrat Stephen