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JAMES BUCHANAN

15TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

1857-1861

BUCHANAN, JAMES (1791-1868), 15th President of the United States (1857-61). He was born in Stony Batter, Franklin County, Pennsylvania, the second of 11 children of James and Elizabeth Speer Buchanan. His father had migrated from County Donegal, Ireland, in 1783 and ran a frontier trading post near Mercersburg, Pennsylvania.  His mother came from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and brought a strong Presbyterian indoctrination to her family.

Young Buchanan learned business in his father's store, the classics at Dickinson College at Carlisle, Pennsylvania (graduating in 1809), and took his law training in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he entered practice in 1812. Within ten years he had built up a lucrative practice, served as district attorney for Lebanon County, as a member of the Pennsylvania State Assembly, and as counsel for the defense in three state impeachment trials of district judges. Buchanan won each of these contests.

Politician. In 1819 Buchanan and Anne Coleman, daughter of a wealthy ironmaster of Lancaster, planned to marry but local gossip soon provoked a quarrel, and Anne died suddenly before a reconciliation could take place. Some thought she had committed suicide and held Buchanan responsible.  To distract him, his friends nominated him for Congress.  He served five terms, from 1821 to 1831, changing his party from Federalist to Jacksonian Democrat before the election of 1828.  Buchanan became the leader of one of the two main Jacksonian factions in Pennsylvania.  He drew his support from the rural areas and the city workmen. The other faction, led by George M. Dallas of Philadelphia, held its strength in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and appealed to the state's banking, commercial, and propertied interests.  Buchanan served on the House Agriculture and Judiciary committees.  Entangled in the political horse-trading of the 1824 presidential election, he found himself in 1827 at the center of the "bargain-gain-and-sale" controversy between Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay.  This produced a personal but not a political break with Jackson.  His greatest Congressional service was his successful fight in 1830 to prevent repeal of the 25th section of the Judiciary Act of 1789 giving the Supreme Court jurisdiction over state laws and court decisions that drew into question the validity of national treaties or involved Constitutional rights.

In 1831 President Jackson appointed him minister to Russia.  During his residence at St. Petersburg (1832-33), Buchanan negotiated the first commercial treaty between the two nations. The Pennsylvania legislature elected him to the U.S. Senate in 1834, returning him to that post until he entered President Polk's Cabinet in March, 1845. As Senator, Buchanan strongly supported the Jacksonian policies -- opposition to a federally chartered bank, a tariff for revenue with incidental protection, and the maintenance of a strong foreign policy.  He justified Jackson's sword-rattling during the debate of the French "spoliation claims," opposed the Maine boundary settlement of 1842 on the ground that Daniel Webster had given up American property to the British for nothing, and took a leading part in promoting the annexation of Texas.  On the slavery question he took middle ground, condemning the institution but declining to involve the government in efforts to settle a moral issue by statutory laws. He successfully opposed the adoption of a "gag" against receiving abolition petitions in the Senate but asserted the right of the government to exclude inflammatory materials from the mails.

Diplomat. Polk recognized Buchanan's political strength by naming him Secretary of State. In this office (1845-49), he steered negotiations with England over the Oregon Territory away from war to a peaceful division of the area at the 49th parallel. He made a strong effort to achieve a peaceful conclusion of the complex dispute with Mexico, but tailed. His diplomatic policy emphasized the inevitability of territorial expansion in the Americas the rights of American citizens abroad, the extension of diplomatic and commercial relations with Central Europe and the Near East, and the "Caribbean policeman" interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. The dominant theme of his diplomacy was to eliminate European influence and control from the Americas, substituting for it the power of the United States.

Buchanan's friends offered him as a Presidential candidate in 1844, 1848 and 1852, but made a serious bid only in the latter year. President Franklin Pierce gave him the prestigious post of minister to the Court of St. James's (1853-1856). In England Buchanan tried to negotiate a settlement of difficulties arising from opposite interpretations of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. He reluctantly participated in the Ostend Conference of 1854. He had hoped to purchase of Cuba by quiet negotiation through international bankers, a plan killed by the unexpected publication of the Ostend Manifesto.

President. Buchanan was elected President in 1856 by the conservative Democrats. He ran with John C. Breckenridge on a "Save the Union" platform that pictured the Republicans led by John C. Fremont, as committed to abolition of both slavery and the Constitution. Buchanan steered his presidential course by the doctrine of strict adherence to procedural law. He supported the Lecomponton Constitution of Kansas because he felt he had to uphold the sanctity of a local election even though he deplored the result. This position, contested by Senator Steven A Douglas, split the Democratic party and ended Buchanan's chance of implementing his presidential program. At home he proposed to banish discussion of slavery from politics by laws covering the status of slavery in all the remaining territories. Abroad he proposed to make United States the center of trade between the Orient and Europe by treaties with China and Japan and by building railroads across Panama, Mexico, and the United States. The Panic of 1857, the Kansas struggle, and the Utah War so sapped both the political and the economic strength of his administration that Buchanan achieved few of his plans.

The split in the Democratic party that made possible the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 heralded the larger break between the North and South in 1861.  Buchanan, during the last three months of his administration, proposed a program of pacification that he asked Congress to authorize, both to legalize procedure and to provide some evidence of public support.  This program -- the confirmation of new federal officials in South Carolina, an increase in the armed, the projection of the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific, and the calling of a Constitutional Convention -- Congress rejected.  Lincoln held the Republican legislators to a policy of "masterly inactivity".  Buchanan declined to break this impasse by executive action unsupported by Congressional appropriation or authorization.  He turned the government over to Lincoln in the form that he understood Lincoln wanted it -- at peace, and with more slave states in the Union than out of it.

Unionist. When South Carolina attacked Fort Sumter on April 12, Buchanan asserted that she had forced the war on Lincoln and that no alternative remained but to fight. Buchanan had earlier warned the Carolinians that such an assault in his administration would constitute a declaration of war.  Though bitterly assailed as an author of the Civil War and as a Southern sympathizer during it Buchanan supported the Northern war effort and strongly opposed those Democrats who fought against the draft aw and who urged a negotiated peace.  Throughout his life he played the role of conservative, opposing solutions of problems by violence and sudden, drastic change.  Politically he emphasized right procedure, saying "I acknowledge no master but the law." As a public officer he supported the rule, "If there is no law for it, it is against the law," a rule not applicable to private citizens who held all residual rights under the Constitution.

Buchanan never married.  He became guardian for many orphaned nephews and nieces, among whom his favorite was Harriet Lane, who won acclaim in British court circles in 1855 and later served with charm and grace as mistress of the White House.  Buchanan, though personally devout, postponed joining a church until 1865 when he became a Presbyterian.  He amassed a $300,000 fortune, mostly by prudent investments and personal thrift.  Buchanan died at his home, Wheatland, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on June 1, 1868.  He is buried at Woodward Hill Cemetery, Lancaster.

Consult Nichols, R. F., Disruption of American Democracy (1948).

PHILIP S. KLEIN; Pennsylvania State University

For the history of our local settlers, see Early Settler History (1833 - 1850).

Source: Encyclopedia International, Grolier International, 1972.

Pictures from the Encyclopedia International, Grolier International, 1972.

Last Modified:  06/01/2002