Talk:James Buchanan

Did Jackson really cozy up to Buchanan?
I though that when Polk appointed Buchanan to the post of Secretary of State, Jackson objected to it. When Polk pointed out that he had made him Minister to Russia, Jackson supposedly said "It was as far as I could send him out of my sight, and where he could do the least harm. I would have sent him to the North Pole if we had kept a minister there!".

"Most savage conflict in American history"
I'm not so sure of the veracity of this claim because most of the so-called "American-Indian Wars" were part of a (sometimes) deliberate effort to exterminate the indigenous peoples of this land, and regardless of motivation the effects were the same. The indigenous peoples were brutalized into submission, had their lands stolen, populations reduced (some groups were driven to outright extinction), language and culture suppressed etc. None of this happened to the South, except maybe the first part, but even then, the people of the South only lost in a military sense. They retained their land, place of privilege, culture, language (for the Anglophone majority), and overall institutional autonomy and power. Vee (talk) 00:12, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes. I suppose it depends what you mean by a "conflict." Certainly many events in the American Civil War were as brutally savage as any typically military events in American history. If you simply want to compare numbers of deaths over a fixed period of time, the Civil War killed many more over a four year period than any other four year period in American history, as far as we know. But, it must be admitted, that the tragedy that befell the Native Americans dating from 1492 to the present due to the conflict instigated by the introduction of European immigrants is the more devastating and brutal conflict.Ariel31459 (talk) 00:46, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I was thinking in more proportionality. In terms of brute numbers the American Civil War was the most devastating, in terms of percentage points not so much. The Southern Whites at the time still have descendants, more importantly descendants with a level of institutional and cultural continuity in a way that they still maintain institutional power. The American Indian Holocaust wiped out entire nations, and for those who were fortunate enough to scrape by, they really don't have the same level of institutional or cultural continuity the way white Southerners do. The white South was never subjected to genocide after all, specifically settler colonial genocide. Now the American Indians are forcibly subjugated to the institutions of those who stole their lands, destroyed their cultures, and genocided/"cleansed" their people. Vee (talk) 01:29, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I think someone who is at a computer should change it to “bloodiest conflict” to reflect death toll rather than behavior. To my knowledge, no side in the Civil War cut off ears and penises to take home as war trophies as was done at Wounded Knee. 01:33, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
 * If you're talking per capita deaths, King Phillip's War blows it out of the water, and that one was outright genocidal too. Probably just changing it so the article says "highest death toll" is fine. Plutocow (talk) 02:01, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Just say "one of the most savage conflicts" or "one of the bloodiest conflicts". 02:07, 17 January 2023 (UTC)