Citizen Bachelors: Manhood and the Creation of the United States

Epilogue: Bachelors since 1800

BACHELORS SINCE 1800 In 1856 lifelong bachelor James Buchanan was elected the fifteenth president of the United States. The election turned on slavery and fears of disunion, with Buchanan’s Democrats predicting a civil war if the newly formed Republican Party succeeded at the polls.Amid these great issues of the day, Buchanan’s marital status became part of the debate. America had had widowed presidents before but never one who was a confirmed bachelor. Was the country ready for this? For his part, Buchanan knew that his lack of a wife would raise questions and so he arranged for his operatives to release an explanation. In the popular Harper’s Magazine Buchanan was quoted at length telling the story of how he had courted “the affections of a lovely girl, alike graced with beauty of person and high social position” when he was a young lawyer in Philadelphia. However, in a story befitting aVictorian novel, Buchanan’s efforts at love were thwarted at every turn, by the woman’s devious mother, an untrustworthy stead, and idle gossip. These difficulties kept the two apart and ultimately caused the woman such grief that she died. Buchanan never recovered from this heartbreak and resolved thereafter to live as a bachelor. In an epilogue to Buchanan’s story, a supporter reflected on how “the country strangely becomes intrigued” that “the ‘White House’ may possibly have a bachelor for its occupant.” Yet he assured the American public that Buchanan remained unmarried “not so because of indifference to woman, but really from the highest appreciation of one of the loveliest of the sex.” Buchanan’s explanation did not end the debate over his marital status. Republicans rejected the maudlin tale and connected questions about Buchanan’s moral character to his qualifications for office. A pamphlet claimed the candidate favored the acquisition of Cuba for a slave state and raised fears of miscegenation by claiming Epilogue: Bachelors since 1800 199 “Buchanan the choice of Virginia Slave-breeders.” The New York Herald attacked Buchanan’s explanation of his marital status that had appeared in Harper’s. Instead of being a story about love and loss, Buchanan’s bachelorhood was the result of far more sinister causes. “One of two things: either Mr. Buchanan shows that he had no taste for matrimony, which plainly implies a lack of some essential quality,” that is, he lacked either the ability to love or the desire for women, “or Mr. Buchanan has signified by his conduct that there was not in Pennsylvania or in Washington a lady fit to be his bride.” We might read a thinly veiled charge of homosexuality in the latter explanation because the author found it unbelievable that any normal man could remain a bachelor in the midst of such beautiful women. Regardless of cause, Buchanan’s marital status was hardly inconsequential. The article concluded that “if he is elected, he will be the first President who shall carry into the White House, the crude and possibly the gross tastes and experiences of a bachelor.”1 The debate over James Buchanan’s bachelorhood serves as a fitting portrait for the status of bachelorhood in America after 1800. Much had changed since the first English colonists had settled in America. Back in the early seventeenth century, the marital status of a law-abiding man with his own estate would have been irrelevant. Indeed, it is doubtful that the earliest colonists would even have considered Buchanan a bachelor; such an appellation—along with its reputation for immorality— was saved for the young and masterless. Since then a series of political, cultural, and social changes had caused Americans to reconsider the single man. Attempts to ease the burden on men with families to support had led to new civic obligations on single men, while the unprecedented growth of print media and a new fascination with love led authors to ponder the character of the single man and his place in society. These developments had the dual effect of separating young and propertyless bachelors from other dependents, such as women, children, and servants , and classifying all unmarried men together regardless of wealth or age.These developments created the bachelor as a legal identity, a cultural ideal, and a lived experience. It also ensured that the bachelor was a permanent fixture of American society. Whether one loved him or hated him, no one could deny the existence of the bachelor. In this, James Buchanan lived...