Original sentence: It could be argued that there was very little that anyone could have done to stop America's slide toward Secession, and that it was simply Buchanan's bad luck to have presided over it.On the day before his death, he predicted that "history will vindicate my memory": but historians continue mainly to emphasize his failure to deal with secession, with the policy of appeasement practiced by Buchanan and his predeessor, Franklin Pierce, toward the pro-slavery lobby being heavily censured.There is no evidence, however, that Pierce and Buchanan taking a harder line against slavery would have done anything but provoke the Southern states to seceede a few years earlier than they eventually did
Edited sentence: If Buchanan, or Franklin Pierce before him, had taken a harder, less appeasing line toward the pro-slavery lobby, the only difference that is likely to have resulted is that secession would have happened a few years earlier.In Buchanan's defense, it is surely significant that the same historians who criticize him so severely have failed to make even one constructive suggestion about what Buchanan could possibly have done to counter the slide toward secession.Nobody seems prepared to point to a single decision that Buchanan could have taken, or a single policy that he could have adopted, that could have steered America away from constitutional crisis.On the day before his death, he predicted that "history will vindicate my memory": but historians continue mainly to emphasize his failure to deal with secession.The truth is that there was probably very little that anyone could have done to avert the Secession Crisis, and that it was simply Buchanan's bad luck to have presided over it.They condemn Buchanan — but they never say what they would have done in his place