Mike McClure

David Rice Atchison was a leader of the pro-slavery border ruffians that invaded Kansas. But before that he was Senate Pro tem at the beginning of the Pierce administration. After Vice President William R King died April 18, 1853 Atchison was a heartbeat away from being president. How would history have changed if Pierce had died and Atchison had become president?

tjadams

I can see Mr. Atchinson being and doing very much like President Pierce did
during his one term. From what I know of Mr. Atchison, he seemed to
have a more dominant personality than Mr. Pierce. The nation was already
beginning to lose the planks of normalacy and having Atchinson as president
would not have sped up or delayed the coming war between the states.

OUmillenium

so much for this thread ;>

Mike McClure

President Pierce was one of our weakest presidents. The South had strongly supported the Kansas Nebraska Act with the idea that Nebraska would be free and Kansas slave. With Atchinson a strong defender of slavery as president, could his policies have lead to Kansas being admitted as a slave state?

tjadams

No. The same people and events were going to happen no matter
who was president or how much he supported which cause.

Mike McClure

Before the Civil War we had three of the weakest presidents in our history. What you are saying that if things had been different and we had a strong president in there, nothing would have changed. Nothing that happened in the 1850's matters?

tjadams

The president isn't a dictator, he has checks and balances to his power.
Fillmore, Pierce and Buchanan were no Jackson, that's for sure, but they
had to function within their times. Look at the major events of the 1850s:
Compromise of 1850
Gadsden Purchase
Kansas-Nebraska Act
Dred Scott vs Sandford
Lecompton Constitution
Harper's Ferry
The nation was moving in one direction
and no president could stop that tide without risking a war, which Lincoln
had to endure. If Atchinson was president, I don't see him able to change
the course of the Mississippi nor change what was on the table at the time.

Mike McClure

I find the idea very fatalistic. It leads to the idea that we can't learn from history and that one man can't change anything. Very disturbing.
As for Atchinson I wonder if Kansas becoming a slave state wouldn't have postponed things. If Atchinson was president then he couldn't have attacked Lawrence. No Harper's Ferry. Maybe there still would have been a Civil War, a little latter on, but it would have turned out a lot different.

tjadams

We can't and we don't. Today we imagine that our problems are somehow
so unique with no way out. Open a History book, look at their solutions
to similar problems and at least it would be a positive direction. Our leaders
today want to reinvent the wheel in their image.

Patito de Hule

One of the reasons they were so weak was the virtually impossible situation they had inherited. Atchison was defeated for the Senate in 1854. He was simply too controversial to have served as a strong president. Only the Southern Democrats in Congress would have supported him.

Tyler was called "His Accidency" for having been the first vice president to assume office on the death of a president. How would Congress and the nation have reacted to Atchison? He would lack legitimacy in the office.