More on James Buchanan
After writing the previous post on James Buchanan, I happened upon this article about Buchanan written by Bill Kauffman for the American Conservative magazine. In the article Kaufman reviews the upcoming movie Copperhead, about a family torn apart during the Civil War. Of that movie and its main character, Kaufman writes:
Abner Beech (Billy Campbell, in a subtly powerful performance) is neither a doughface—i.e., a Northern man with Southern principles, a la Lincoln’s predecessor, James Buchanan—nor a congenital contrarian: he is, rather, a Jefferson-Jackson agrarian in the Upstate New York Democratic tradition. His side will lose, his tradition almost disappear, but Abner will not be moved.
He also refers to a play written by John Updike, entitled Buchanan Dying, a play I had never heard of, but would like to see performed someday. Of the play and its main character, here's what Kaufman has to say:
I mentioned the unlovable James Buchanan, who has been on my mind since I recently reread Buchanan Dying, John Updike’s imaginatively empathetic play about the despised 15th president, who on his deathbed revisits the people and the climacteric moments of his life in Lancaster and Washington.
James Buchanan was something of a cold fish, an inveterate office-seeker, and—typical of the decayed Democracy of that era—an expansionist/imperialist who coveted Mexico, Cuba, and any other southerly territory that wasn’t nailed down. He temporized—or played for time—as the Union ruptured during the interregnum between Lincoln’s election and assumption of office, and Updike makes the best case he can for the wisdom of this course.
The play is an act of Pennsylvania patriotism. As Updike explained, “In my Pennsylvania childhood, I knew him to be the only President our great and ancient state had produced, but where were the monuments, the Buchanan Avenues, the extollatory juvenile volumes with titles like Jimmie Buchanan, Keystone Son in the White House or ‘Old Buck,’ the Hair-Splitter Who Preceded the Rail-Splitter?”
In the tradition of such Middle Atlantic men of letters as Harold Frederic, Edmund Wilson, and Gore Vidal, Updike was something of a war skeptic, even a Copperhead, who referred to “the dubious cause of putting down secession with force.” Writing in 1974 of “our hero,” Updike noted hopefully that “it may be, in these years of high indignation over unbridled and corrupting Presidential power, that we can give more sympathy to Buchanan’s cautious and literal constitutionalism than has been shown him in history books written by Lincolnophiles and neo-abolitionists.”
Airball, John.
Vidal did not care much for Updike, whose books, he said, were surrounded by a “force field” that rendered them impenetrable. Vidal tamped his enthusiasm for Buchanan Dying because he thought Updike skirted the matter of Buchanan’s ambiguous sexuality. Updike gives Buck an Ann Rutledge of his own, Anne Coleman, who takes her life in despair over her suitor’s lack of ardency. He ignores the possibility—the possibility—that Buchanan had eyes instead for his erstwhile roommate, Senator (and Vice President) William Rufus King of Alabama, a silk-scarved dandy who made Oscar Wilde look like Ernest Borgnine. (The roomies were known around Washington as “Mr. and Mrs. Buchanan.”)
As if playing his own devil’s advocate, Updike quotes in his afterword Henry James: “The ‘historic’ novel is, for me, condemned … to a fatal cheapness … . You may multiply the little facts that can be got from pictures & documents, relics & prints as much as you like—the real thing is almost impossible to do …”
Buchanan Dying, like the historical novels of Gore Vidal and Thomas Mallon, among others, refutes James. On screen, I think “Copperhead” does too. But you be the judge of that.
I hope you found that as interesting as I did. James Buchanan: gone, but not forgotten, even if the remembrances are mostly negative ones.
Abner Beech (Billy Campbell, in a subtly powerful performance) is neither a doughface—i.e., a Northern man with Southern principles, a la Lincoln’s predecessor, James Buchanan—nor a congenital contrarian: he is, rather, a Jefferson-Jackson agrarian in the Upstate New York Democratic tradition. His side will lose, his tradition almost disappear, but Abner will not be moved.
He also refers to a play written by John Updike, entitled Buchanan Dying, a play I had never heard of, but would like to see performed someday. Of the play and its main character, here's what Kaufman has to say:
I mentioned the unlovable James Buchanan, who has been on my mind since I recently reread Buchanan Dying, John Updike’s imaginatively empathetic play about the despised 15th president, who on his deathbed revisits the people and the climacteric moments of his life in Lancaster and Washington.
James Buchanan was something of a cold fish, an inveterate office-seeker, and—typical of the decayed Democracy of that era—an expansionist/imperialist who coveted Mexico, Cuba, and any other southerly territory that wasn’t nailed down. He temporized—or played for time—as the Union ruptured during the interregnum between Lincoln’s election and assumption of office, and Updike makes the best case he can for the wisdom of this course.
The play is an act of Pennsylvania patriotism. As Updike explained, “In my Pennsylvania childhood, I knew him to be the only President our great and ancient state had produced, but where were the monuments, the Buchanan Avenues, the extollatory juvenile volumes with titles like Jimmie Buchanan, Keystone Son in the White House or ‘Old Buck,’ the Hair-Splitter Who Preceded the Rail-Splitter?”
In the tradition of such Middle Atlantic men of letters as Harold Frederic, Edmund Wilson, and Gore Vidal, Updike was something of a war skeptic, even a Copperhead, who referred to “the dubious cause of putting down secession with force.” Writing in 1974 of “our hero,” Updike noted hopefully that “it may be, in these years of high indignation over unbridled and corrupting Presidential power, that we can give more sympathy to Buchanan’s cautious and literal constitutionalism than has been shown him in history books written by Lincolnophiles and neo-abolitionists.”
Airball, John.
Vidal did not care much for Updike, whose books, he said, were surrounded by a “force field” that rendered them impenetrable. Vidal tamped his enthusiasm for Buchanan Dying because he thought Updike skirted the matter of Buchanan’s ambiguous sexuality. Updike gives Buck an Ann Rutledge of his own, Anne Coleman, who takes her life in despair over her suitor’s lack of ardency. He ignores the possibility—the possibility—that Buchanan had eyes instead for his erstwhile roommate, Senator (and Vice President) William Rufus King of Alabama, a silk-scarved dandy who made Oscar Wilde look like Ernest Borgnine. (The roomies were known around Washington as “Mr. and Mrs. Buchanan.”)
As if playing his own devil’s advocate, Updike quotes in his afterword Henry James: “The ‘historic’ novel is, for me, condemned … to a fatal cheapness … . You may multiply the little facts that can be got from pictures & documents, relics & prints as much as you like—the real thing is almost impossible to do …”
Buchanan Dying, like the historical novels of Gore Vidal and Thomas Mallon, among others, refutes James. On screen, I think “Copperhead” does too. But you be the judge of that.
I hope you found that as interesting as I did. James Buchanan: gone, but not forgotten, even if the remembrances are mostly negative ones.