Tearing Down the Burning House”

James Buchanan's use of Edmund Burke

Bibliographic Data

ID16769011
AuthorsMichael J Connolly, Michael Connolly (0000-0002-9086-7905, Purdue University Northwest, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume10
Issue2
Pages211-221
Publication date2009-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Nineteenth Century History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1466-4658 • E-ISSN: 1743-7903
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14664650902908185
OpenAlexW2045931198
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited12

The 1854 Ostend Manifesto has long been scorned as an expansionist treatise, a leading indicator of "Young America's" hold on the antebellum Democratic Party, and a signal of Franklin Pierce's failed presidency. Unnoticed is the genesis of the document's most famous metaphor, of Cuba representing a neighbor's "burning house" that could cause American intervention. The primary author of the Manifesto was minister to Great Britain and future president James Buchanan, and he attempted to smooth over the rough suggestion of an American takeover of the island by borrowing imagery from Edmund Burke's 1791 Reflections on the Revolution in France. Buchanan's use of Burke, the anti‐revolutionary English philosopher of prudence and critic of ideology, demonstrates the wide but underappreciated popularity of Burke with American politicians of all parties. Not just Whigs and Southern planters, but also Northern Doughface Democrats such as Buchanan, especially in the 1850s, used Burke to preach calm, moderation, and political prudence. As his use in the Manifesto makes clear, a larger study of Edmund Burke's appeal to Americans is badly needed to plot his broad influence on American politics leading up to the Civil War

Law and economics · Political science · Sociology · Tearing · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Engineering · History · Law · Mechanical Engineering

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