Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

by James M. McPherson

The Buchanan administration handed Republicans another issue: corruption. Americans had always viewed malfeasance and abuse of power as the gravest dangers to republican liberty. Not only was Buchanan, in Republican eyes, the pliant tool of the slave power but his administration also, in the words of historian Michael Holt, “was undoubtedly the most corrupt before the Civil War and one of the most corrupt in American history.”47 An exposure of frauds filled a large volume compiled by a House investigating committee. The committee’s report came off the presses in June 1860, just in time for an abridged edition to be distributed as a Republican campaign document. This report topped off a series of previous investigations that disclosed a sorry record of graft and bribery in government contracts, the civil service, and Congress itself. The War and Navy departments had awarded contracts without competitive bidding to firms that made contributions to the Democratic party. Postmasters in New York and Chicago under both Pierce and Buchanan had siphoned public funds into party coffers for years. Democrats had used some of this money in congressional contests in 1858.