James Buchanan

James Buchanan (1791-1868) was the fifteenth president of the United States. His administration was dominated by fighting between pro-and antislavery forces. In 1860, at the close of his term in office, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union.

James Buchanan was born on April 23, 1791, on a farm in Lancaster, Pa., the son of a Scotch-Irish immigrant. After graduating from Dickinson College in 1809, Buchanan became a lawyer. As a Federalist, he was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1814 and to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1820. He was an early supporter of Andrew Jackson's presidential aspirations and became a leading member of the new Democratic party in Pennsylvania. Buchanan was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1834, serving there until 1845. As a senator, he supported Southern demands that all abolitionist petitions to the Senate be immediately tabled without consideration.

Presidential Contender

At the 1844 Democratic convention, Buchanan was one of the leading contenders for the presidential nomination but lost out to James K. Polk. When Polk won the presidency and formed his Cabinet, Buchanan was named secretary of state. In this position he played a key role in Polk's expansionist policies. He successfully negotiated a treaty with England over the Oregon Territory, thus avoiding a possible war. At the beginning of the administration, he often acted as a moderating influence on the President, but later Buchanan became a leading imperialist. He urged rejection of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) in favor of annexation of large areas of Mexico. He also tried to secure the purchase of Cuba from Spain for $120 million.

At the 1848 and 1852 Democratic conventions, Buchanan was a leading contender for the presidential nomination but was again passed over. In 1853, he was appointed ambassador to England by President Franklin Pierce. While on this mission, in order to win Southern support for his nomination in 1856 he helped draft the Ostend Manifesto, which called for United States acquisition of Cuba, by force of arms if necessary. Returning to the United States in 1856, he received the Democratic nomination for president, and won the election.

A Crisis President

Buchanan sought to restore unity within his party and within the country by appointing Democrats from all geographical sections to the Cabinet. He was doomed to failure. A week after he was inaugurated, the Supreme Court handed down the Dred Scott decision, which upheld the Southern position that Congress had no right to legislate on the question of slavery in the territories. The decision alienated a great many Northerners.

Another stumbling block of Buchanan's administration was the constitution submitted by the territory of Kansas to Congress. A proslavery convention had drawn up the Lecompton Constitution. Governor Robert Walker warned that unless the whole document was submitted for a vote, Congress would reject it. In defiance of the threat, only one section of the constitution was submitted. Buchanan put great pressure on Congress to accept it and to admit Kansas as a state but ran into opposition from Stephen A. Douglas, his party's most powerful senator. Douglas argued that the document was fraudulent and violated the provisions of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which had provided for popular sovereignty. This dispute split the Northern and Southern wings of the Democratic party.

Buchanan's handling of the Kansas problem was complicated by several other difficulties. Shortly after he had taken office, the country went into a depression. Adhering to a strict states'-rights doctrine, Buchanan cut the budget and urged stricter regulation of banks but refused to commit the Federal government to relief measures. He also had difficulty with the Mormons, who had settled in the Utah Territory. As a consequence of Brigham Young's refusal to accept a governor appointed in Washington, the President sent 2,500 troops to bring Utah under Federal control. After the Mormons fled Salt Lake City and threatened a scorched-earth policy, Buchanan reached a compromise with Young that granted the Mormons a high degree of autonomy.

The administration also failed to achieve its diplomatic goals, which were to repudiate the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty and to establish American control over Central American and Cuba. In his last year and a half of the presidency, Buchanan faced a hostile Republican majority in Congress and had no hopes of securing ratification of a treaty on either subject, even had one been negotiated.

By the time of the Democratic convention in April 1860, the administration had been completely repudiated. The Democratic party broke into two factions—the North supporting Douglas for president and the South supporting Vice President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky.

When Lincoln won in November 1860, Buchanan faced his final crisis—the secession of South Carolina. Unable to secure support in Congress and unable to overcome his own scruples against the use of force to restore the Union, Buchanan found his administration paralyzed. This paralysis was compounded by Lincoln's refusal to agree to any policy before actually becoming president. Buchanan did support efforts to conciliate the two sides, especially the Crittenden Compromise and the Peace Conference called by Virginia in 1861, but when these failed, so did the Union. Many Northerners blamed him for the dissolution of the Union and the ensuing Civil War. Thus, as the new president took office, Buchanan left Washington, a bitter and tired old man. He returned to Lancaster, where he died on June 1, 1868, at the age of 77.

Further Reading

The best biography of Buchanan is Philip Shriver Klein, President James Buchanan (1962), a well-researched work sympathetic to the subject. For the problems of the Buchanan administration see Allan Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln (2 vols., 1950). For a summation of Buchanan's work as secretary of state see the chapter on Buchanan by St. George L. Sioussat in Samuel Flagg Bemis, ed., The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy, vol. 5 (1928). □

BUCHANAN, JAMES

James Buchanan achieved prominence as a statesman and as the fifteenth president of the United States.

Buchanan was born April 23, 1791, near Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. A graduate of Dickinson College in 1809, Buchanan was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1812 before serving a tour of duty in the militia during the war of 1812. After the war, he entered politics and joined the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 1814.

In 1821 Buchanan began his career in federal politics, representing Pennsylvania in the U.S. House of Representatives until 1831. Later that year, he extended his interests to the field of foreign service and performed the duties of U.S. minister to Russia for a two-year period. He returned to Congress in 1834 and represented Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate for the next eleven years. From 1845 to 1849, he served as U.S. secretary of state and reentered foreign service in 1853 as U.S. minister to Great Britain until 1856.

Buchanan became unpopular in 1854 with his involvement in the creation of the Ostend Manifesto, which provided for the purchase by the United States of Cuba from Spain; if Spain refused to sell, the manifesto gave the United States the right to seize the country forcibly. Cuba would then become a slave state, which

was viewed favorably by Southerners, but which met with vehement opposition by abolitionists. The manifesto was eventually rejected by the U.S. department of state.

As a presidential candidate in 1857, Buchanan adopted a moderate attitude toward slavery and worked to establish a balance between the proslavery forces and the abolitionists. He believed that slavery was immoral, but that the Constitution provided for the protection of the practice in areas where it already existed. New states, he believed, should have the right to choose whether to be free or slave.

"What is right and what is practicable are two different things."
—James Buchanan

He won great support from the South, and after his election in 1857, Buchanan unsuccessfully attempted to reconcile the strife between the warring factions. He again advocated the

acquisition of Cuba and favored the admission of Kansas as a slave state, which earned him disfavor with the northern free states. The strife between North and South continued, and Buchanan was unable to prevent the secession of South Carolina that led to the outbreak of the Civil War. He opposed secession but believed that he did not possess the power to compel states to remain faithful to the Union. When abraham lincoln succeeded Buchanan as president in 1861 the country was ready for civil war. Buchanan retired to Pennsylvania where he died June 1, 1868, in Lancaster.

Buchanan, James (1791–1868), fifteenth president of the United States.Born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the son of a storekeeper and farmer, Buchanan was a successful lawyer who soon turned to politics. Originally a Federalist, he became a Jacksonian Democrat, serving successively as a state legislator, congressman, minister to Russia (1832–1834), U.S. Senator (1834–1845), secretary of state under James Knox Polk (1845–1849), and ambassador to Great Britain (1853–1856). Like other antebellum Democrats, Buchanan distrusted federal power, favored popular sovereignty, and remained largely indifferent to slavery. Elected president in 1856 with significant southern backing, Buchanan faced a sectional crisis inflamed by the struggle for control of the Kansas territory and the Republican party's emergence as a northern party opposed to slavery's expansion. Despite his efforts at conciliation, tensions intensified throughout his presidency. Buchanan's prosouthern tilt on the Kansas issue, based on his hatred of the Republicans and his sympathy for southern fears, provoked a split with the powerful Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas, who believed that Buchanan and his southern‐dominated cabinet had leaned too far to placate the South. This split and the bloodshed in Kansas increased both northern resistance to southern demands and the South's determination to preserve the slave system.

Buchanan did not seek renomination in 1860 (nor would he have succeeded had he tried). As the Democratic party fragmented, the election of the Republican Abraham Lincoln led seven southern states to secede and to seize federal property within their borders. Buchanan, still president, opposed secession and insisted on federal rights, but he did not believe that he could compel the seceding states to return, and his term ended in futility. His distinguished career of public service irretrievably tarnished by a failed presidency, Buchanan consistently ranks low in scholarly assessments of presidential greatness. A Jacksonian in outlook who lacked Old Hickory's willingness to use the presidency to accomplish great ends, he is remembered primarily for weakness and ineffectiveness.
See also Antebellum Era; Antislavery; Federalist Party; Jackson, Andrew; Kansas‐Nebraska Act.

Bibliography

Philip S. Klein , President James Buchanan, 1962.
Elbert B. Smith , The Presidency of James Buchanan, 1975.

Joel H. Silbey

Buchanan, James (1791–1868) 15th US president (1857–1861). Buchanan entered Congress in 1821, and acted as senator (1834–45). President Polk appointed him secretary of state (1845–49). Under President Franklin Pierce, Buchanan served as minister to Great Britain (1853–56). After securing the Democratic Party nomination, he defeated John Frémont of the newly formed Republican Party and Millard Fillmore in the presidential election. Buchanan's administration was unpopular, his attempt to compromise between pro- and anti-slavery factions floundered. His efforts to purchase Cuba and acceptance of a pro-slavery constitution in Kansas, contributed to his electoral defeat by Abraham Lincoln. The Southern states seceded and, shortly after Buchanan left office, the American Civil War began.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents

Buchanan, James (1791–1868) fifteenth president of the United States (1857–61); born near Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. As the last “antebellum” president, Buchanan sought to defuse the sectional crisis, but made decisions that only inflamed tensions. His greatest challenge was to settle the Kansas controversy and remove the issue of slavery's expansion from national politics. Buchanan isolated himself from dissenting views, disliked confrontation, never understood northern feelings against slavery, and was excessively pro-southern in his views, qualities that eventually destroyed his political influence and wrecked his presidency.

Buchanan, James (1791–1868) US Democratic statesman, 15th President of the USA (1857–61). He consistently leaned towards the pro-slavery side in the developing dispute over slavery. Towards the end of his term the issue grew more fraught and he retired from politics in 1861.