On Saturday, September 19th, local citizens, historians, Civil War enthusiasts, and the rare college student alike converged at the LancasterHistory.org Campus of History for the second day of the President James Buchanan National Symposium. The theme for the symposium was “The Worlds of Thaddeus Stevens and James Buchanan: Race, Gender, and Politics in the Civil War Era,” thus it featured the lives of two of Lancaster, Pennsylvania’s most prominent historical residents and two of the most colorful characters of the Civil War era.

The tone for the day’s discussions was perhaps set out from the beginning by Gettysburg College’s own Professor Michael Birkner as he introduced the first panel, alleging that the traditional historical narratives of the era, such as the unshakable legend of Buchanan dithering away his presidency as the Union collapsed, are old and tired. Instead, he went on to say, we should make way for a body of new, fresher, and more contentious scholarship – one that shall continue to grow thanks in large part to the scholars on hand at the event.
To summarize the full proceedings of the day’s event would be a task far unsuited for a blog post. As such, rather than going through the details of each historian’s paper point-by-point, here are what I believe to be the most pertinent themes and topics of the symposium: Continue reading “Re-Thinking James Buchanan”