Bibliography of James Buchanan

This is a select bibliography of academic level books and journal articles, published mainly after World War II, about the history of James Buchanan and his historical context.

James Buchanan (April 23, 1791June 1, 1868) was the 15th president of the United States from 1857 to 1861. The last president to serve before the American Civil War, Buchanan was a supporter of the right of states to permit slavery, and generally favored the interests of slave states. His administration's support for the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution in Kansas, and his response to the secession crisis, exacerbated the sectional tensions that led to the Civil War.

Works listed here are cited in the notes or bibliographies of scholarly sources. Each is published by an academic or major press, written by a recognized expert, or substantially reviewed in scholarly journals; borderline cases are omitted. A selection of primary sources are included. Many of the books below carry their own bibliographies; see the Further reading section for other bibliographies, and the External links section for historical sites, academic sites, and museums.

Citations follow APA style. Book have citations to academic journal or mainstream published reviews when available. For books only partly about the subject, relevant chapter or section titles are provided when useful and available. Translators of the original-language edition are included when possible. In cases where a title or name has appeared with more than one English spelling, the most recent published form is used and a footnote documents any earlier title under which the work appeared.

General works Baker, J. H. (2004). James Buchanan. Times Books. Balcerski, T. J. (2019). Bosom friends: The intimate world of James Buchanan and William Rufus King. Oxford University Press. Binder, F. M. (1994). James Buchanan and the American empire. Susquehanna University Press. Binder, F. M. (1995). James Buchanan and the earl of Clarendon: An uncertain relationship. Diplomacy & Statecraft, 6(2), 323–341. Birkner, M. J. (Ed.). (1996). James Buchanan and the political crisis of the 1850s. Susquehanna University Press. Birkner, M. J., Miller, R. M., & Quist, J. W. (Eds.). (2019). The worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens: Place, personality, and politics in the Civil War era. Louisiana State University Press. Holt, M. F. (2017). The election of 1860: "A campaign fraught with consequences". University Press of Kansas. Klein, P. S. (1962). President James Buchanan: A biography. Pennsylvania State University Press. Landis, M. T. (2014). Northern men with Southern loyalties: The Democratic Party and the sectional crisis. Cornell University Press. Landis, M. T. (2016). Old Buck's lieutenant: Glancy Jones, James Buchanan, and the antebellum northern democracy. The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 140(2), 183. Lynn, J. A. (2018). A manly doughface: James Buchanan and the sectional politics of gender. The Journal of the Civil War Era, 8(4), 591–620. Lynn, J. A. (2019). Preserving the white man's republic: Jacksonian democracy, race, and the transformation of American conservatism. University of Virginia Press. Meerse, D. E. (1966). Buchanan, corruption and the election of 1860. Civil War History, 12(2), 116–131. Meerse, D. E. (1973). The northern Democratic Party and the congressional elections of 1858. Civil War History, 19(2), 119–137. Meerse, D. E. (1978). Presidential leadership, suffrage qualifications, and Kansas: 1857. Civil War History, 24(4), 293–313. Meerse, D. E. (1995). Buchanan, the patronage, and the Lecompton constitution: A case study. Civil War History, 41(4), 291–312. Quist, J. W., & Birkner, M. J. (Eds.). (2013). James Buchanan and the coming of the Civil War. University Press of Florida. Smith, E. B. (1975). The presidency of James Buchanan. University Press of Kansas.

Background and context The below items contain significant information about James Buchanan or significant background and context for his life and presidency. Bourne, K. (1961). The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty and the decline of British opposition to the territorial expansion of the United States, 1857–60. The Journal of Modern History, 33(3), 287–291. Brown, R. F. (1991). Charles Lennox Wyke and the Clayton-Bulwer formula in Central America, 1852–1860. The Americas, 47(4), 411–445. Childers, C. (2012). The failure of popular sovereignty: Slavery, manifest destiny, and the radicalization of Southern politics. University Press of Kansas. Collins, B. W. (1978). The Democrats' electoral fortunes during the Lecompton crisis. Civil War History, 24(4), 314–331. Cooper, W. J. (2013). We have the war upon us: The onset of the Civil War, November 1860–April 1861. Vintage. Crofts, D. W. (1989). Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the secession crisis. University of North Carolina Press. Etcheson, N. (2004). Bleeding Kansas: Contested liberty in the Civil War era. University Press of Kansas. Freehling, W. W. (1990). The road to disunion: Vol. 1. Secessionists at bay, 1776–1854. Oxford University Press. Freehling, W. W. (2007). The road to disunion: Vol. 2. Secessionists triumphant, 1854–1861. Oxford University Press. Harris, W. C. (2007). Lincoln's rise to the presidency. University Press of Kansas. Holt, M. F. (1978). The political crisis of the 1850s. Wiley. Huebner, T. S. (2016). Liberty and union: The Civil War era and American constitutionalism. University Press of Kansas. Johannsen, R. W. (1973). Stephen A. Douglas. Oxford University Press. McPherson, J. M. (1988). Battle cry of freedom: The Civil War era. Oxford University Press. Nevins, A. (1950). The emergence of Lincoln. Charles Scribner's Sons. Potter, D. M. (1976). The impending crisis, 1848–1861. Harper & Row. Reid, B. H. (1992). The crisis at Fort Sumter in 1861 reconsidered. History, 77(249), 3–32. Robinson, M. (2013). William Henry Seward and the onset of the secession crisis. Civil War History, 59(1), 32–66. Silbey, J. H. (2009). Party over section: The rough and ready presidential election of 1848. University Press of Kansas. St. John, R. (2016). The unpredictable America of William Gwin: Expansion, secession, and the unstable borders of nineteenth-century North America. The Journal of the Civil War Era, 6(1), 56–84. Stampp, K. M. (1950). And the war came: The North and the secession crisis, 1860–1861. Louisiana State University Press. Stampp, K. M. (1990). America in 1857: A nation on the brink. Oxford University Press. Stegmaier, M. J. (1985). Intensifying the sectional conflict: William Seward versus James Hammond in the Lecompton debate of 1858. Civil War History, 31(3), 197–221. Varon, E. R. (2008). Disunion! The coming of the American Civil War, 1789–1859. University of North Carolina Press.

Slavery Ashworth, J. (1996). Slavery, capitalism, and politics in the antebellum republic: Vol. 1. Commerce and compromise, 1820–1850. Cambridge University Press. Childers, C. (2012). The failure of popular sovereignty: Slavery, manifest destiny, and the radicalization of Southern politics. University Press of Kansas. Cooper, W. J., Jr. (1978). The South and the politics of slavery, 1828–1856. Louisiana State University Press. Epps, K. (2016). Slavery on the periphery: The Kansas-Missouri border in the antebellum and Civil War eras. University of Georgia Press. Fehrenbacher, D. E., & McAfee, W. M. (2002). The slaveholding republic: An account of the United States government's relations to slavery. Oxford University Press. Fehrenbacher, D. E. (2001). The Dred Scott case: Its significance in American law and politics. Oxford University Press. Genovese, E. D. (1974). Roll, Jordan, roll: The world the slaves made. Pantheon Books. Hamilton, M. K. (2011). "To preserve African slavery": The secession commissioners to Texas, 1861. Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 114(4), 355–376. Huston, J. L. (2003). Calculating the value of the Union: Slavery, property rights, and the economic origins of the Civil War. University of North Carolina Press. Karp, M. (2016). This vast southern empire: Slaveholders at the helm of American foreign policy. Harvard University Press. Kennington, K. M. (2017). In the shadow of Dred Scott: St. Louis freedom suits and the legal culture of slavery in antebellum America. University of Georgia Press. Maltz, E. M. (2010). Fugitive slave on trial: The Anthony Burns case and abolitionist outrage. University Press of Kansas. Maltz, E. M. (2007). Dred Scott and the politics of slavery. University Press of Kansas. Oakes, J. (1982). The ruling race: A history of American slaveholders. Alfred A. Knopf. Radan, P. (2023). Creating a more perfect slaveholders' union: Slavery, the Constitution, and secession in antebellum America. University Press of Kansas. Roberts-Miller, P. (2010). Fanatical schemes: Proslavery rhetoric and the tragedy of consensus. University of Alabama Press.

Utah Etcheson, N. (2018). Buchanan's Mormon judge: Delana R. Eckels and the Democratic Party in the Utah War. Civil War History, 64(4), 335–364. MacKinnon, W. P. (1963). The Buchanan spoils system and the Utah expedition: Careers of W. M. F. Magraw and John M. Hockaday. Utah Historical Quarterly, 31(2), 127–150. MacKinnon, W. P. (1977). The gap in the Buchanan revival: The Utah expedition of 1857–58. Utah Historical Quarterly, 45(1), 36–46. MacKinnon, W. P. (1984). 125 years of conspiracy theories: Origins of the Utah expedition of 1857–58. Utah Historical Quarterly, 52(3), 212–230. MacKinnon, W. P. (2008). And the war came: James Buchanan, the Utah expedition, and the decision to intervene. Utah Historical Quarterly, 76(1), 22–37. Poll, R. D., & Hansen, R. W. (1961). "Buchanan's blunder" The Utah War, 1857–1858. Military Affairs, 25(3), 121.

Historiography Birkner, M. J. (2005). Looking up from the basement: New biographies of Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, 72(4), 535–543. Bonner, T. N. (1956). Civil War historians and the "needless war" doctrine. Journal of the History of Ideas, 17(2), 193. Egerton, D. R. (2011). Rethinking Atlantic historiography in a postcolonial era: The Civil War in a global perspective. The Journal of the Civil War Era, 1(1), 79–95. Fladeland, B. L. (1986). Revisionists vs. abolitionists: The historiographical cold war of the 1930s and 1940s. Journal of the Early Republic, 6(1), 1. Foner, E. (1974). The causes of the American Civil War: Recent interpretations and new directions. Civil War History, 20(3), 197–214. Huston, J. L. (2016). Did the tug have to come? A critique of the new revisionism of the secession winter. Civil War History, 62(3), 247–283. Nice, D. C. (1984). The influence of war and party system aging on the ranking of presidents. The Western Political Quarterly, 37(3), 443. Pressly, T. J. (1954). Americans interpret their Civil War. Princeton University Press. Rottinghaus, B., & Vaughn, J. S. (2017). Presidential greatness and political science: Assessing the 2014 APSA Presidents and Executive Politics Section presidential greatness survey. Political Science and Politics, 50(3), 824–830. Rottinghaus, B., Eady, G., & Vaughn, J. S. (2020). Presidential greatness in a polarized era: Results from the latest presidential greatness survey. PS: Political Science & Politics, 53(3), 413–420. Simonton, D. K. (1986). Presidential greatness: The historical consensus and its psychological significance. Political Psychology, 7(2), 259. Towers, F. (2011). Partisans, new history, and modernization: The historiography of the Civil War's causes, 1861–2011. The Journal of the Civil War Era, 1(2), 237–264. Wilson, M. L. (1970). The Free Soil concept of progress and the irrepressible conflict. American Quarterly, 22(4), 769.