BUCHANAN, James
(1791–1868), 15th president of the U.S. (1857–61),
who tried unsuccessfully to stave off the crisis that led to the
American Civil War.
Buchanan was born on April 23, 1791, near Mercersburg, Pa.,
the son of prosperous Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. After graduating
from Dickinson College, he studied law in Lancaster, Pa., where
in 1812 he was admitted to the bar and soon established a flourishing
practice. An able and resourceful advocate, he moved freely in society
and enjoyed the company of women, but after the early death of a
fiancée who had broken with him, he remained a bachelor.
A Federalist in politics, Buchanan was twice elected to the
Pennsylvania General Assembly (1814, 1815), and in 1821 he entered
the U.S. Congress. Eventually joining the coalition that in 1828
elected Andrew Jackson president, he became a loyal Democrat, although
he generally remained a moderate on such partisan issues as tariff
and bank policies.
After briefly serving (1832–33) as minister to Russia,
Buchanan was elected U.S. senator from Pennsylvania. A conciliator
rather than an innovator, he sought to harmonize the various factions
of the Democratic party. In 1845 he became President James K. Polk’s
secretary of state, a position in which he again counseled moderation,
particularly in connection with annexations in Mexico and Oregon.
In 1852 President Franklin Pierce appointed him minister to Great
Britain, a mission that kept him away from the country during the
Kansas-Nebraska Act controversy. He incurred criticism by joining
the U.S. ambassadors to Spain and France in signing the Ostend Manifesto
(1854), which declared the U.S.’s right to take Cuba by force
should efforts to purchase the slaveholding island fail. Nevertheless,
two years later he won his party’s nomination for the presidency.
In 1856 Buchanan defeated John C. Frémont, a Republican,
and the former president Millard Fillmore in their bid for the presidency.
Acceptable both to Northern Democrats and Southern moderates, he
ran on a platform of popular sovereignty (the right of settlers
in a territory to decide whether or not to sanction slavery). Within
two days of his inauguration, however, in the Dred Scott decision, of
which he had prior knowledge, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the
Constitution protected slavery in all territories. The president’s
difficulties multiplied with the depression caused by the Panic
of 1857 and with his support for the admission of Kansas to the
Union as a slave state. This aroused opposition in Buchanan’s
own party.
Seeking to steer a middle course between the widely divergent
philosophies of the South and North, Buchanan was unable in 1860
to prevent the breakup of his party or afterward to reunite the
factions, one of which supported Vice-President John C. Breckinridge
and the other Sen. Stephen A. Douglas. In the secession crisis following
the victory of Republican Abraham Lincoln, Buchanan sought to gain
time to allow passions to cool. Declaring that secession was illegal
but that he had no power to prevent it, he attempted to preserve the
peace by not provoking secessionists. Stiffening somewhat after
the reorganization of his cabinet, he refused Southern demands that
federal troops be ordered to abandon Fort Sumter in the harbor of
Charleston, S.C. His efforts to supply the fort failed, however,
as did his plans for a constitutional convention. He left office
disappointed and discredited.
Well-intentioned and dignified, but a weak executive, Buchanan
had the misfortune of holding office during an extremely difficult
period. He died at his estate, Wheatland, in Lancaster, on June
1, 1868.