James Buchanan

James Buchanan devoted his presidency to trying to maintain the Democratic Party ‘s North-South coalition (voting bloc), which he believed would keep the United States intact in the years prior to the Civil War (1861–65). He was unable to keep his party or the United States intact, and he is probably most often remembered for this failure.

Buchanan was born on April 23, 1791, and raised in a large, respected family in Pennsylvania . He received a good education in his hometown and graduated from Dickinson College in 1809. After college, Buchanan studied law, and he was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1812. He quickly established a successful law practice. The two main ingredients of his success were his knowledge of the law and his talent for giving speeches and debating.

Enters politics

Buchanan's political career began with his election to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 1813. As a Federalist (a member of the Federalist Party , which sought a strong central government and an industrialized society), he opposed the War of 1812 (1812–15), a conflict between England and the United States over trade issues. He feared that it would be harmful to northern industries. Once war was declared, though, he enlisted in the military.

Buchanan became a member of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1820. The U.S. victory in the War of 1812 had destroyed the Federalist Party, leaving the United States with only one political party, the Democratic-Republican Party . In the election of 1824, four Democratic-Republicans ran for president, splintering the party. Those who supported Andrew Jackson (1767–1845) would become the Democratic Party, and those who supported John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) formed a new party, the Whigs . The majority of former Federalists joined the Whig party, but Buchanan supported Jackson.

A Jacksonian Democrat

Adams won the election of 1824, although Jackson had gotten the majority of popular votes. During the Adams administration, Buchanan actively opposed many of the president's efforts. It was during this time that he made his first public statement on slavery , calling it a moral and political evil, but one that would endure for years to come.

After ten years in the House, Buchanan became the minister (diplomatic representative) to Russia. He returned in 1833 and was elected to the U.S. Senate. As a member of the Democratic Party, Buchanan realized he must support Jackson, who had followed Adams as president. When Jackson announced his ambition to crush the national bank (a commercial bank regulated by the federal government), Buchanan supported Jackson, even knowing that this action would hurt his home state of Pennsylvania, where the Second National Bank of the United States was located. The bank, located in Philadelphia, had held the nation's federal funds for nearly two decades. Buchanan chose to be a loyal Jacksonian Democrat in opposing the bank, motivated, at least in part, by his national (rather than state) political ambitions.

From 1845 to 1849, Buchanan served as secretary of state to President James K. Polk (1795–1849; served 1845–49), representing the government in foreign affairs, and then he became the minister to Great Britain. When he returned from England in 1856, Buchanan found the United States more deeply divided than ever by the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act . The act repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had permitted Missouri to be admitted as a slave state while banning slavery in the remaining northern portions of the Louisiana Purchase . The Democratic Party was bitterly divided between its members in slave-holding states and its members in free (nonslave-holding) states. Buchanan had avoided the conflict simply by being out of the country, and some believed he was the only candidate who could mend the Democratic Party's wounds and save the Union . Thus he became the party's candidate.

In the 1856 presidential election, Buchanan was not a favorite of either the North or the South, but those who opposed the Democratic Party were too divided to take the election. Buchanan did not get a majority of the popular votes, but he did win the presidency. He defeated the Republican Party candidate, John C. Frémont (1813–1890), and the Know-Nothing Party candidate, former president Millard Fillmore (1800–1874; served 1850–1853).

The presidency in 1856

Buchanan's administration was haunted by the question of slavery in the U.S. territories. He hoped that the Supreme Court ‘s verdict in the Dred Scott case in 1857 would settle the issue once and for all. Dred Scott (c. 1795–1858) was a slave who had sued for his freedom based on his residence in a free territory, where he and his slave owner had moved. The Supreme Court ruled against him, stating that he was still the property of his owner even though he had lived in a free state. To Buchanan and many others, the Dred Scott decision meant that only states—and not the federal government—had the authority to prohibit slavery within their boundaries.

Buchanan believed that the Democratic Party had held the Union together during the recent conflicts; as president, he felt it was his job to unite the party. He tried to keep Southerners from abandoning it by strongly upholding the right to own slaves in slave-holding states. In his zeal to please Southerners, he attacked abolitionists (people who sought to abolish slavery) and placed many prominent Southerners in high positions in Washington. But the South could not be appeased so easily. With most of the new states destined to be free of slavery, the North was sure to gain power at the South's expense. The old North-South coalition of the Democratic Party had been pushed to the breaking point. The territory of Kansas had reached a state resembling civil war over the issue of slavery. Buchanan's compromises were inadequate to stop the divide.

Buchanan chose not to run for president in 1860. The Democratic Party splintered into three sectional factions, whose candidates, Vice President John C. Breckinridge (1821–1875), U.S. senator Stephen A. Douglas (1813–1861) of Illinois, and former U.S. representative John Bell (1797–1869) of Tennessee, lost to Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865; served 1861–65). Lincoln had spoken strongly of limiting the expansion of slavery. When Lincoln won the election, the South prepared to secede (withdraw from the Union). Buchanan had been warned, but he had not prepared for the secession. During his last days in office, his administration fell apart as the Civil War between the North and the South began.

Buchanan supported the Union throughout the Civil War. He died in 1868, remembered most for the last few months of his administration, when the country divided.