Overview

"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 Friends demonstrates that intimate male friendships among politicians were--and continue to be--an important part of success in American politics."

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9780190054724

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Reviews

Bosom Friends is not merely a fascinating story told by a gifted young historian, but a potentially pathbreaking study that suggests new ways to understand political alliances in the late antebellum years. Far richer than simply a dual biography of two influential public men, this volume instead situates the much gossiped-about King-Buchanan relationship within larger patterns of intimate male friendships common to the nineteenth century. An illuminating and intelligent work of scholarship. -- Douglas R. Egerton, author of Year of Meteors: Douglas, Lincoln, and the Election That Brought on the Civil War This original dual biography offers a good deal more than a spirited argument about the nature of the Buchanan-King relationship; it sheds new light on the meaning and importance of male intimacy in antebellum political culture. --Amy S. Greenberg, author of Lady First: The World of First Lady Sarah Polk Bosom Friends is a revelation. Exhaustively researched, it sheds fresh light on antebellum politics through its discerning analysis of a distinctive, intimate friendship that crossed sectional, if not sexual, boundaries. Prepare to be surprised and enlightened by Balcerski's findings. --Michael J. Birkner, Gettysburg College Bosom Friends takes us back into a nineteenth-century political world that relied not only on vicious partisanship but also intimate, loving male friendships that provided affection and support as well as serving to advance common political interests. In this absorbing new book, Thomas Balcerski explores the boardinghouses where most early nineteenth-century congressmen lived and asks how Americans understood the close friendships that developed in these settings. Focusing on the friendship between Buchanan and King, Balcerski pays careful attention to the ways in which contemporaries described, praised, and attacked the intimate yet public bond between these two men. -- Richard Godbeer, author of The Overflowing of Friendship: Love Between Men and the Creation of the American Republic With Bosom Friends, Thomas Balcerski enlarges our understanding of the factors that can erode friendships and rupture nations. Rarely has any scholarly treatment of the disintegrating Union felt more urgent. --Richard Norton Smith, Wall Street Journal Beyond the were-they-or-weren't-they question, Balcerski's book provides a useful understanding of the way personal networks and informal groups, such as messes, ran Washington in the mid 19th century. James Buchanan was a central part of that world for several decades, and if he had won the White House in his early fifties instead of his mid sixties, today we might rank him among the best presidents. Instead he became the dog who finally caught the car, only to see it burst into flames. --Fred Schwarz, National Review To understand the lives of King and Buchanan, one must inherently understand politics, of which much of this book consists. This is necessary, since it also shows division between the two men, ultimately both physically and emotionally; the scrappy political competition in which they engaged; and an untraversable gulf of disagreement facets that, individually and together, are fascinating. Readers will clearly see the affection between the two men here, though we'll never completely know the true nature of it: possibly-argument-settling written communication between the two disappeared shortly after the Civil War. --Washington Blade, Terri Schlichenmeyer

Author Information

Thomas J. Balcerski is an Assistant Professor of History at Eastern Connecticut State University.

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