The worst President of the United States ever

In some circles it is fashionable to refer to the Current Occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. as the worst ever President of the United States.

However bad you think he may be -- and even his most ardent admirers admit that he's abrasive and divisive -- we still have 50 states.

By contrast, when James Buchanan (pictured here) left the presidency, seven states had already claimed, and had purported to exercise, a right to secede from the Union.

You probably remember that Buchanan was the President immediately prior to Abraham Lincoln.

And you probably don't remember much more than that.

So you might not remember that Buchanan's Vice President, John C. Breckenridge, took up arms against the United States, becoming a major general in the Confederate Army. (That would put Breckenridge in the running for worst Vice President ever, but the competition for this dubious honor is pretty intense. Consider, for example, Aaron Burr.)

Buchanan's Secretary of the Treasury, Howell Cobb, resigned in late 1860, after Lincoln's election, but while Buchanan was still in office, to become President of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States. After serving as a founding father of the Confederacy, Cobb, too, took up arms against the United States, rising to the rank of major general in the Confederate Army.

In his postwar Memoirs, U.S. Grant charged that Buchanan's first Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, "scattered the army so that much of it could be captured when hostilities should commence, and distributed the cannon and small arms from Northern arsenals throughout the South so as to be on hand when treason wanted them."

Floyd also resigned from Buchanan's Cabinet in December 1860 to 'go South' and join the Confederates. Commissioned a major general in the Provisional Army of Virginia, Floyd subsequently accepted appointment as a brigadier general in the Confederate Army.

Buchanan's Secretary of the Interior, Jacob Thompson, resigned in early January 1861 and subsequently joined the Confederate Army. Late in the war, Thompson was recruited by Jefferson Davis (Floyd's predecessor as Secretary of War) to run covert operations for the Confederacy from Canada.

Admittedly, Buchanan did not surround himself entirely with traitors.

John Dix, who served the last couple of months of Buchanan's term as Secretary of the Treasury, became a major general in the Union Army.

Buchanan's Secretary of State, Lewis Cass, also resigned from the Cabinet in December 1860, but for the exact opposite reason: He was frustrated with Buchanan's failure to protect federal interests in the South and mobilize the military. His successor, Jeremiah S. Black, had been Buchanan's Attorney General. Black's successor as Attorney General was Edwin Stanton, later Lincoln's Secretary of War.

But the fact that some of his appointees did not commit treason is surely not enough to make up for the disintegration of the Union on Buchanan's watch. Buchanan's place as the worst President ever seems secure. And let's hope it stays that way!