I don’t often write book reviews on this blog. I used to write them with more frequency years ago, but now I only review one or two books a year at most. However, when I do post a book review, it’s because there is something significant I want to relay to my readers. Such is the case with the following book. I finished reading Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King by Thomas J. Balcerski a few days ago. It is a fascinating account of the perceptions of masculinity in the early 1800s, and how those perceptions have evolved over time. Here is the book’s description from Amazon.com:

The friendship of the bachelor politicians James Buchanan (1791-1868) of Pennsylvania and William Rufus King (1786-1853) of Alabama has excited much speculation through the years. Why did neither marry? Might they have been gay? Or was their relationship a nineteenth-century version of the modern-day “bromance”? 

In Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King, Thomas J. Balcerski explores the lives of these two politicians and discovers one of the most significant collaborations in American political history. He traces the parallels in the men’s personal and professional lives before elected office, including their failed romantic courtships and the stories they told about them. Unlikely companions from the start, they lived together as congressional messmates in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse and became close confidantes. Around the nation’s capital, the men were mocked for their effeminacy and perhaps their sexuality, and they were likened to Siamese twins. Over time, their intimate friendship blossomed into a significant cross-sectional political partnership. Balcerski examines Buchanan’s and King’s contributions to the Jacksonian political agenda, manifest destiny, and the increasingly divisive debates over slavery, while contesting interpretations that the men lacked political principles and deserved blame for the breakdown of the union. He closely narrates each man’s rise to national prominence, as William Rufus King was elected vice-president in 1852 and James Buchanan the nation’s fifteenth president in 1856, despite the political gossip that circulated about them.

While exploring a same-sex relationship that powerfully shaped national events in the antebellum era, Bosom Friendsdemonstrates that intimate male friendships among politicians were–and continue to be–an important part of success in American politics.

In the American Historical Review, the leading peer reviewed journal for books on American History, Andrew L. Slap, Professor of History at East Tennessee State University, wrote: 

“Balcerski impressively balances the personal and the worldly to produce an original and engaging study both of two men and of the wider antebellum world which they lived in and helped shape….This is certainly the definitive account of the intimate friendship between Buchanan and King. In addition, Balcerski makes important original contributions to our understanding of male friendships and politics in the antebellum United States. This is an excellent first book from a promising young scholar.”

Thomas J. Balcerski is an Associate Professor of History at East Connecticut State University who specializes in Early American History, Manhood and Gender, and U.S. Presidents and First Ladies. Bosom Friends shows his expertise in the study of Manhood and Gender as the book spends a considerable amount of time discussing intimate male friendships in the antebellum period, how those friendships were used by early American politicians, and how such a close friendship could be used against them.  From the outset, Balcerski tells the reader he is not going to make a case for the sexuality of Buchanan or King. Instead, he aims to use the historical record to tell about the “bosom friendship” of these two men. The Cambridge Dictionary describes a bosom friend as a friend that you like a lot and have a very close relationship with; someone you can be very close with and confide everything in. It seems this is what Buchanan and King had for a number of years while they lived in the same boardinghouses.

The two men were so close they were referred to as the Siamese Twins. Political opponents often attacked their manhood and suggested they were romantically involved. But were they? In my opinion, they most likely were not sexual partners. I suspect King may have been romantically invested in Buchanan, but it doesn’t appear Buchanan felt the same way. King was described as handsome and fashionably dressed. Some even compared him to Lord Byron. He was said to have been the epitome of manners, and a perfect example of Southern male chivalry right down to his involvement in several near duels. Buchanan, on the other hand, was always flirting with younger women. Furthermore, Buchanan appeared to hold friendships in high esteem when it would help him politically. His friendship with King seems to have been strongest when King was most powerful politically. When the tables were turned with Buchanan’s appointment as Secretary of State, and King’s appointment as Minister to France, King became Buchanan’s subordinate and their relationship began to deteriorate.

By the mid-1840s and early-1850s, King and Buchanan both vied for the offices of Vice President or President on the Democratic ticket. Instead of their tight friendship, their political ambitions seemed to get in the way. King supported Buchanan’s aspirations to higher office, but when King was nominated for Vice President, Buchanan largely kept silent. King was the first to hold one of the two top elected positions, but he never really served after he was elected. He died just six weeks after being sworn in as Vice President. Buchanan received the 1856 nomination for President, which proved disastrous for the nation as he saw the break-up of the country under his watch.

The book brought up two questions for me: 1) Was there a romantic relationship between King and Buchanan? and 2) What would have happened if King had lived to see the Civil War? The first is left up to the reader to decide, and the second isn’t addressed at all as this is not a “what if” type of book. Unlike some historians of Buchanan, Balcerski keeps to the facts and leaves conjecture to the reader. Little archival information on King still exists. There is one box of King Family Papers at the Alabama Department of Archives and History, but little else except in the Papers of James Buchanan. Both men had nieces who tried to preserve their uncles’ legacies. Buchanan’s niece was far more successful at preserving his documents, but not at rehabilitating his reputation. King’s plantation, Chestnut Hill, just outside of Selma in what was King’s Bend, was burned and ransacked during the Civil War as Union troops advanced through Alabama from Selma to Montgomery. King’s niece wrote to Buchanan’s niece stating there was a box of letters her uncle had received from Buchanan, but they were at the old plantation home. She had recently relocated to Camden, Alabama, and whatever happened to those letters is lost to history. They could have burned or perished in one of the frequent area floods of the plantation. Some have speculated the nieces burned the letters containing the most intimate details, but that is supposition. There is no proof.

The fact is King’s personal life has mostly been lost to history. One thing that remains, Buchanan is the only one of the two who seemed to show any regular interest in a woman. King supposedly fell instantly in love when he met the future Czarina of Russia, Maria Feodorovna. He repeated throughout his life he had loved once but could not love again when retelling the story of the meeting. So, to answer the question whether Buchanan and King were a romantic couple, you’ll have to read the book and decide. It does seem to be the definitive book on the relationship and is free of any bias.

Now comes my own speculation. If King had lived through the Civil War, would he have been chosen as the Confederate President instead of Jefferson Davis? He was certainly the most powerful and influential Southern politician of his time. If he had been chosen, I think it is unlikely he would have moved the capital from Montgomery to Richmond. Could the Confederate capital having a more central location changed the course of the war? Would it have influenced Virginia’s decision to secede? There is no doubt King was pro-slavery, but he was also an ardent unionist. So, would he have had enough influence to calm the tempers of the day? With his intimate friend Buchanan as President, could he have even helped prevent the war? One thing is certain, had King lived through the Civil War, he would have been at the heart of the secession crisis. The question is, what side would he have been on and what role would he have played?

If you have an interest in American political history in the years preceding the Civil War, I think you would enjoy this book. Also, if you want a better understanding of early American male bonding and masculinity, you will also enjoy this book. There are still questions about King and Buchanan, but those questions are ultimately unanswerable due to the lack of historical resources. We have no idea what went on in the bedrooms of these two politicians, but I suspect it is unlikely anything happened as they always lived with other people in their various boardinghouses. My ultimate suggestion, then, is to just read the book and enjoy it.

Here’s a piece of trivia for you: the land where King’s plantation, Chestnut Hill, once occupied is now owned by Buchanan Lumber Mobile Inc. of Mobile, Alabama.

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