Dear Larry,

I agree with you that James Buchanan was not one of the twenty worst Americans. But he was not a good President--and before that, although he had already served as Secretary of State, he was not a very good Minister to England, as I have brought out in some detail in my Pen of Fire: John Moncure Daniel (Kent State Univ. Press, 2002). Daniel, who became our Minister to the Kingdom of Sardinia in Turin when Buchanan was in London, caught Buchanan out in a passport fraud. More importantly, Buchanan imprudently attended a dinner in 1854 given by his Consul, George Sanders, where the guests were leading Europe revolutioniaries--Garibaldi, Mazzini, Herzen, Kossuth and others. Europe then badly needed democratic reform, but if governments had learned about this dinner they might well have cooled if not broken relations with the United States, which I do not think President Pierce or Secretary of State Marcy would have thought in our overall interest.
Best regards--
Peter Bridges