Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan

Iridic — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:49:16 -0800

There was a rivalry between the parties, of course, but in Potter's account, it was more like the rivalry between Cal and Stanford than that between today's Republicans and Democrats. The parties had somewhat different constituencies and pledged fealty to a different set of men, but each attempted to encompass as much of the political spectrum as possible rather than merely half of it. The story of the 1850s, by these lights, is about how this changed.

With reference to David M. Potter's The Impending Crisis, Adam Cadre surveys the four antebellum presidents. Previously profiled in his occasional series on the American presidents: George Washington ("...a sort of machine programmed to relentlessly seek out personal success.") John Adams ("...a dead-even mix of good and bad qualities.") Thomas Jefferson ("...a chess player's compulsion to rearrange the institutions of society into a more effective alignment.") James Madison ("...first nerd president.") James Monroe ("...kind of an empty suit...") Andrew Jackson ("...a third-world strongman.") John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, and James K. Polk ("...like reading Solo Avengers issues about Starfox and Doctor Druid.")

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Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan

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