Pierce into obtaining new land, to create new slave states. Another one of our country's early Presidents was James Buchanan rejoiced because he 'believed that the Dred Scott decision would end the problem of slavery forever.' He believed that it was 'illegal for the South to secede but told northerners he would not use force to make the South stay in the Union since the Constitution did not give him that power.' It's no wonder why these 3 presidents were rated so lowly. The 58 historians surveyed by C-SPAN, assessed the 41 men who have served in the Oval Office on 10 qualities of presidential leadership, from managing the economy to providing moral authorities. They rated Fillmore 35th, Pierce 39th, and Buchanan dead last at 41. President Lincoln did however receive the highest rating, #1. In a speech Lincoln gave to Congress in 1861 he said 'the sophism itself is, that any state of the Union may, consistently with the national Constitution, and therefore lawfully, and peacefully, withdraw from the Union, without the consent of the Union, or any other state.' Lincoln continues to say that ' having never been States, either in substance, or in mane, outside of the Union, whence this magical omnipotence of the State's Rights, asserting a claim of power to lawfully destroy the Union itself.' Lincoln saw it himself that the Union would be destroyed if it continued to go on the way it did. It's no wonder why Lincoln received the high rating he did. By the 1850's the Constitution had become a source of sectional discord and tension, contributed to the failure of the union, and no longer was an instrument of national unity. Although the compromises helped solve the problems of the time, however, they were delaying the inevitable and these helped lead to the Civil War. Therefore, there were many leading key factors that helped to the "national and sectional" discord in our Constitution. These compromises had both its ups and downs bu...
