and i mean your subject, president james buchanan.ght ses session was illegal but he thought the federal government had no power to prevent it. what might he have done between january and march 1861 to make sure the rebellion die, maybe even 1860, but perhaps in the first two months and one week of the new year? >> i must preface my remarks whenever i tell people at social events, cocktail parties that i'm working on the biography of james buchanan i get a blank stare. inevitably the question arises, what would james buchanan do? and it's a very simple answer. nothing. obviously, we know he like his predecessor franklin price and mill ard were doe faces, northerners with great sympathy for the south. buchanan was greatly conflicted with this whole crisis. he was devoted to the union at the same time he had great great emotional attachment to the south. he was a man who had few friends and those friends were southerners. what i could have done is he could have reached out to those faxes who he demisal. republicans, he didn't -- he coul

>> if you see me afterwards, i'm starting a james buchanan forum. [ laughter ] >> with only two people. >> volunteers could meet in the closet in the back. >> well, at the end of 1861, what turned out to be but the first year of the civil war, abraham lincoln sent his first annual message to congress. he ended it by saying, the struggle for today is not altogether for today, but it is for a vast future also. he meant, of course, that american democracy preserve could yet, as he put it earlier, like the world. but he also knew a vast future of death and destruction might be necessary to achieve that goal. to do less than defend the country, he believed, would guarantee, as he put it, that all of liberty shall be lost. to lincoln and to jefferson davis and the populations they led, it was a war worth extending for years to come. all dreaded it. lincoln remembered of the day he began his presidency. all sought to avert it, by which he meant war. both parties deppricated war, ad others would make war rather than let it perish. and the war came. and as we learned today in our panel about 18

. >> i think one of the fascinating areas in terms of james buchanan is in terms of what he didn't do are the things he didn't do that could have made things far worse for lincoln coming in, including -- confederacy. just what was his motivation?pa he genuinely have a few remaining principles that he was not going to put lincoln in a worse position than he already was? >> well -- this one? yeah. let's keep in mind that he was making decisions with only several months remaining, and he wanted to get out of town without -- seriously, he wanted to get out of town without having the war start on his watch. so he made it very clear that -- and he even actually states this, that i will do nothing that will incite any kind of a war or conflict. and i think the prime example of this is even though he did send a message to the commissioners from south carolina that he would protect and respond militarily to any kind of attack on a fort or interfere with the carrying out of federal law, when he did send a release expedition to relief with sumter, when it was fired upon as it tried to enter the

meanwhile and finally, let's talk about our bachelor president james buchanan.t turns out he was a teetotaler so what would he do when he would hold a reception at the white house? >> buchanan was a big partyier and he had a lot of dances there and he would take whiskey glasses and tip them up to his -- his mouth but never imbibe. he was also blind in one eye and he would constantly cock his head when talking to people. that would lead people to believe he was interested in what they had to say. in fact, he was trying to see them. >> he was a bachelor, right? >> that's right. and in these dances, he had extremely small hands. and in the dances, he would dance around and feature his hands so that everybody could see what dainty hands he had. >> thank you, larry. thank you, sir. >> have a great day on this president's day. >> thank you. 19 minutes after the top of the hour. 50 years ago today, john glenn made history as the first american to orbit the earth three times. up next, a former astronaut says this anniversary isn't a celebration. it's a major wake-up cal