Buchanan, James

born April 23, 1791, near Mercersburg, Pa., U.S.

died June 1, 1868, near Lancaster

15th president of the U.S. (1857–61).

He was admitted to the bar in 1812 and soon established a successful law practice. He was elected to the Pennsylvania legislature in 1814 and later served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1821–31), as minister to Russia (1832–34), and in the U.S. Senate (1834–45). He was secretary of state in the cabinet of Pres. James K. Polk (1845–49). As minister to Britain (1853–56), he helped draft the Ostend Manifesto. In 1856 he was elected president as a Democrat, defeating John C. Frémont. Although experienced in government and law, he lacked the courage to deal effectively with the slavery crisis, and he equivocated on the question of Kansas's status as a slaveholding state. The ensuing split within his party allowed Abraham Lincoln to win the election of 1860. He denounced the secession of South Carolina following the election and sent reinforcements to Fort Sumter but failed to respond further to the mounting crisis. He was the only president never to have married.

James Buchanan, photograph by Mathew Brady.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

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▪ president of United States

born April 23, 1791, near Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, U.S.

died June 1, 1868, near Lancaster, Pennsylvania

  15th president of the United States (1857–61), a moderate Democrat whose efforts to find a compromise in the conflict between the North and the South failed to avert the Civil War (American Civil War) (1861–65). (For a discussion of the history and nature of the presidency, see presidency of the United States of America.)

      Buchanan was the son of James Buchanan and Elizabeth Speer, both of Scottish Presbyterian stock from the north of Ireland. His father had immigrated to the United States in 1783 and worked as a storekeeper. Buchanan was educated at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, graduating in 1809, and studied law in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He was admitted to the bar in 1812 and soon established a successful law practice. His gift for oratory led him to politics.

      Buchanan never married and remains the only bachelor president. In 1819, when he was 28 years old, he became engaged to Anne C. Coleman, the daughter of a wealthy Pennsylvania family. He broke off the engagement for an undisclosed reason, and shortly afterward Coleman died, possibly a suicide. While Buchanan was senator he shared lodgings with another bachelor, Senator William R. King (King, William Rufus de Vane) of Alabama, causing some tongues in Washington to wag, but, in conformity with the mores of the time, the relationship was not a public matter. When Buchanan became president, he made his 27-year-old niece, Harriet Lane (Lane, Harriet), his hostess. Buchanan had served as her guardian, and he had overseen her education since she was 12 years old when her mother, Buchanan's sister, died. He took her to England with him when he was minister to Great Britain, where she became accustomed to being in the limelight. In the U.S. capital she was a popular figure, even dubbed the “Democratic Queen.”

      A Federalist (Federalist Party), Buchanan served in the Pennsylvania legislature (1814–16) and in the U.S. House of Representatives (1821–31). When his party disintegrated in the 1820s, Buchanan associated himself with the emerging Democratic Party. He served as U.S. minister to St. Petersburg (1831–33) for the Andrew Jackson (Jackson, Andrew) administration, U.S. senator (1834–45), and secretary of state (1845–49) in the cabinet of President James K. Polk (Polk, James K.). The annexation of Texas and subsequent Mexican War (Mexican-American War) took place during Buchanan's tenure as secretary of state. Buchanan's role in the war was limited, but he played a more active part in the border dispute with Britain over Oregon. Despite the 1844 campaign slogan of “Fifty-four forty or fight,” the matter was settled peaceably by treaty. In both situations the United States gained large tracts of territory. Buchanan had sought the nomination for president in 1844 but had ultimately thrown his support to Polk. Failing to receive the presidential nomination in 1848, Buchanan retired from public service until 1853, when he was appointed minister to Britain by President Franklin Pierce (Pierce, Franklin).

      In Congress, Buchanan tended to side with the South, and, although he felt that slavery was morally wrong, he did not want the country to eliminate the institution by the “introduction of evils infinitely greater.” From his perspective, a greater evil would be freeing the slaves and making them the new masters, “abolishing slavery by the massacre of the high-minded, and the chivalrous race of men in the South.” He therefore tried to impress the Southern party leadership with his respect for the constitutional safeguards for the practice. Thus in 1846 he opposed the Wilmot Proviso, which would have prohibited the extension of slavery into the U.S. territories, and he supported the Compromise of 1850 (1850, Compromise of), which attempted to maintain a balance of Senate seats between slave and free states. While in Europe as minister to Britain he played a large part in drafting the Ostend Manifesto (October 18, 1854), a diplomatic report recommending that the United States acquire Cuba from Spain to forestall any possibility of a slave uprising there. Buchanan's support for the manifesto stemmed not only from his fear that such an uprising might have an inflammatory effect on slaves in the United States but also from his basic belief in American imperialism. “It is, beyond question,” he wrote to Congress in 1858, “the destiny of our race to spread themselves over the continent of North America, and this at no distant day.”

   Cabinet of President James BuchananHaving thus consolidated his position in the South, Buchanan was nominated for president in 1856 and was elected, winning 174 electoral votes to 114 for the Republican John C. Frémont (Frémont, John C) and 8 for Millard Fillmore (Fillmore, Millard), the American (Know-Nothing) Party candidate. (See primary source document: Inaugural Address (James Buchanan: Inaugural Address). See also Cabinet of President James Buchanan.) During the campaign Republican speakers harped on Buchanan's seemingly heartless statement that ten cents a day was adequate pay for a workingman. They jeered him as “Ten-Cent Jimmy.” Although well-endowed with legal knowledge and experienced in government, Buchanan lacked the soundness of judgment and conciliatory personality to undo the misperceptions the North and South had of one another and thereby to deal effectively with the slavery crisis. His strategy for the preservation of the Union consisted in the prevention of Northern antislavery agitation and the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act (Fugitive Slave Acts) (1850). (See primary source document: The Impending Disruption of the Union (James Buchanan: The Impending Disruption of the Union).) Embroiled in the explosive struggle in Kansas over the expansion of slavery (1854–59), he attempted to persuade Kansas voters to accept the unpopular Lecompton Constitution, which would have permitted slavery there. The economic panic of 1857 and the raid on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859 by the abolitionist John Brown (Brown, John) added to the national turmoil. Buchanan's position was further weakened by scandals over financial improprieties within his administration. At the 1860 Democratic National Convention, a split within the Democratic Party resulted in the advancement of two candidates for president, Senator Stephen A. Douglas (Douglas, Stephen A) of Illinois and Vice President John C. Breckinridge (Breckinridge, John C), which opened the way for the election of the Republican Abraham Lincoln (Lincoln, Abraham) as president in 1860.

      On December 20, 1860, South Carolina voted to secede from the Union. By February 1861 seven Southern states had seceded. Buchanan denounced secession but admitted that he could find no means to stop it, maintaining that he had “no authority to decide what shall be the relation between the federal government and South Carolina.” His cabinet members began to resign, and stopgap measures were rejected by Congress. War (American Civil War) was inevitable. The president refused to surrender any of the federal forts that he could hold, however, and he ordered reinforcements (January 1861) sent to Fort Sumter (Fort Sumter National Monument) at Charleston, South Carolina. However, when the federal supply ship was fired upon by shore batteries, it turned back. The call for a second relief mission came too late for Buchanan to act. As the crisis deepened, he seemed impatient for his time in the White House to run out.

 Upon leaving office (March 4), Buchanan retired to Wheatland, his home near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. His reputation suffered during his years in retirement. Congress, the Republican Party, President Lincoln, the U.S. military, and national newspapers all ridiculed his handling of the Fort Sumter crisis and his failure to prevent the secession of Southern states. The Senate even drafted a resolution to condemn Buchanan. In fact, to prevent the defacing of Buchanan's portrait, it had to be removed from the Capitol rotunda. Buchanan vigorously defended his presidency and died confident in the belief that posterity would vindicate him and redeem his reputation.

Additional Reading

John Bassett Moore (compiler and ed.), The Works of James Buchanan, 12 vol. (1908–11, reissued 1960), collects his speeches, state papers, and private correspondence. Philip Shriver Klein, President James Buchanan (1962, reprinted 1987), is a useful biography. Frederick Moore Binder, James Buchanan and the American Empire (1994), studies Buchanan's foreign policy work prior to his term as president. A convenient summary of Buchanan's embroilment is Michael J. Birkner, James Buchanan and the Political Crisis of the 1850s (1996). Elbert B. Smith, The Presidency of James Buchanan (1975), studies the Buchanan administration in the years leading up to the Civil War. David Reisman, The Political Economy of James Buchanan (1990), focuses on the economic policy of the Buchanan administration.

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