James Buchanan
James Buchanan Jr. was the 15th president of the United States, serving from 1857 to 1861. He also served as the 17th United States secretary of state from 1845 to 1849 and represented Pennsylvania in both houses of the U.S. Congress. Buchanan was an advocate for states' rights, particularly regarding slavery, and minimized the role of the federal government preceding the American Civil War.
Buchanan was a lawyer in Pennsylvania and won his first election to the state's House of Representatives as a member of the Federalist Party. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1820 and retained that post for five terms, aligning with Andrew Jackson's Democratic Party. Buchanan served as Jackson's minister to Russia in 1832. He was elected a U.S. senator from Pennsylvania in 1834 and served for 11 years. He was appointed to serve as President James K. Polk's secretary of state in 1845, and eight years later was named as President Franklin Pierce's minister to the United Kingdom.
Beginning in 1844, Buchanan became a regular contender for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. He was nominated and won the 1856 presidential election. As President, Buchanan intervened to assure the Supreme Court's majority ruling in the pro-slavery decision in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case. He acceded to Southern attempts to engineer the Kansas Territory's entry into the Union as a slave state under the Lecompton Constitution, and angered not only Republicans, but also Northern Democrats. Buchanan honored his pledge to serve only one term and supported his Vice President John C. Breckinridge's unsuccessful candidacy in the 1860 presidential election. He failed to reconcile the fractured Democratic Party amid the grudge against Stephen A. Douglas, leading to the election of Republican and former Congressman Abraham Lincoln.
Buchanan's leadership during his lame duck period, before the American Civil War, has been widely criticized. He simultaneously angered the North by not stopping secession and the South by not yielding to their demands. Buchanan supported the Corwin Amendment in an effort to reconcile the country. He made an unsuccessful attempt to reinforce Fort Sumter, but otherwise refrained from preparing the military. His failure to forestall the American Civil War has been described as incompetence, and he spent his last years defending his reputation. Historians and scholars rank him as among the worst presidents in American history.
Early life
Childhood and education
James Buchanan Jr. was born into a Scotch-Irish family on April 23, 1791, in a log cabin on a farm called Stony Batter, near Cove Gap in the Allegheny Mountains of southern Pennsylvania. He was the second of eleven children with six sisters and four brothers, and the eldest son of James Buchanan Sr. and Elizabeth Speer. James Buchanan Sr. was an Ulster-Scot from just outside Ramelton, a small town in County Donegal, Ireland, who emigrated to the newly formed United States in 1783. He belonged to the Clan Buchanan, whose members had emigrated in large numbers from the Scottish Highlands to Ulster during the Plantation of Ulster in the seventeenth century and, later, largely because of poverty and persecution by the Crown due to their Presbyterian faith, had further emigrated in large numbers to America from the early eighteenth century onwards. Shortly after Buchanan's birth, the family relocated to a farm near Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, and later settled in the town in 1794. His father became the area's wealthiest resident, working as a merchant, farmer, and real estate investor. Buchanan attributed his early education primarily to his mother, whereas his father had a greater influence on his character. His mother had discussed politics with him as a child and had an interest in poetry, quoting John Milton and William Shakespeare to Buchanan.Buchanan attended the Old Stone Academy in Mercersburg and then Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. In 1808, he was nearly expelled for disorderly conduct; he and his fellow students had attracted negative attention for drinking in local taverns, disturbing the peace at night and committing acts of vandalism, but he pleaded for a second chance and ultimately graduated with honors in 1809. Later that year, Buchanan moved to the state capital at Lancaster, to train as a lawyer for two and a half years with the well-known James Hopkins. Following the fashion of the time, he studied the United States Code and the Constitution of the United States as well as legal authorities such as William Blackstone during his education.
Early law practice and Pennsylvania House of Representatives
In 1812, Buchanan passed the bar exam and remained in Lancaster after being admitted to the bar, even when Harrisburg became the new capital of Pennsylvania. He quickly established himself as a prominent legal representative in the city. His income rapidly rose after he established his practice, and by 1821 he was earning over $11,000 per year. At this time, Buchanan became a Freemason, and served as the Worshipful Master of Masonic Lodge No. 43 in Lancaster and as a District Deputy Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania.He also served as chairman of the Lancaster chapter of the Federalist Party. Like his father, Buchanan supported their political program, which provided federal funds for building projects and import duties as well as the re-establishment of a central bank after the First Bank of the United States' license expired in 1811. He became a strong critic of Democratic-Republican President James Madison during the War of 1812. While not serving in a militia during the War of 1812, during the British occupation he joined a group of young men who stole horses for the United States Army in the Baltimore area. Buchanan was the last president involved in the War of 1812.
In 1814, he was elected for the Federalists to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, becoming the youngest member, and held this seat until 1816. Since the sessions in the Pennsylvania General Assembly lasted only three months, Buchanan continued practicing law at a profit by charging higher fees, and his service helped him acquire more clients. In 1815, he defended District Judge Walter Franklin in an impeachment trial before the Pennsylvania Senate, over alleged judicial misconduct. Impeachments were more common at the time because the line between abuse of office and a wrong legal decision was determined by the ruling parties' preferences and the popularity of the judge's decision. Buchanan persuaded the senators that only judicial crimes and clear violations of the law justified impeachment.
Congressional career
U.S. House of Representatives
In the congressional elections of 1820, Buchanan ran for a seat in the House of Representatives. Shortly after his election victory, his father died in a carriage accident. As a young Representative, Buchanan was one of the most prominent leaders of the "Amalgamator party" faction of Pennsylvanian politics, named that because it was made up of both Democratic-Republicans and former Federalists, which transitioned from the First Party System to the Era of Good Feelings. During this era, the Democratic-Republicans became the most influential party. Buchanan's Federalist convictions were weak, and he switched parties after opposing a nativist Federalist bill. During the 1824 presidential election, Buchanan initially supported Henry Clay, but switched to Andrew Jackson when it became clear that the Pennsylvanian public overwhelmingly preferred Jackson. After Jackson lost the 1824 election, he joined his faction, but Jackson had contempt for Buchanan due to his misinterpretation of his efforts to mediate between the Clay and Jackson camps.In Washington, Buchanan became an avid defender of states' rights, and was close with many southern Congressmen, viewing some New England Congressmen as dangerous radicals. Buchanan's close proximity to his constituency allowed him to establish a Democratic coalition in Pennsylvania, consisting of former Federalist farmers, Philadelphia artisans, and Ulster-Scots-Americans. In the 1828 presidential election, he secured Pennsylvania, while Democratic-Republican party split into the "Jacksonian Democrats" and National Republican Party. The Jacksonians won an easy victory in the parallel congressional election.
Buchanan gained attention during an impeachment trial in which he prosecuted federal district judge James H. Peck, whom the Senate acquitted. He was appointed to the Agriculture Committee in his first year, and he eventually became chairman of the Judiciary Committee. In 1831, Buchanan declined a nomination for the 22nd United States Congress from his constituency consisting of Dauphin, Lebanon, and Lancaster counties. He still had political ambitions and some Pennsylvania Democrats put him forward as a candidate for the vice presidency in the 1832 election.
Minister to Russia
After Jackson was re-elected in 1832, he offered Buchanan the position of United States Ambassador to Russia. Buchanan was reluctant to leave the country, viewing the distant St. Petersburg as a kind of political exile, but ultimately agreed. That was Jackson's intent, as he considered Buchanan an "incompetent busybody" and untrustworthy. His work focused on concluding a trade and shipping treaty with Russia. While Buchanan was successful with the former, negotiating an agreement on free merchant shipping with Foreign Minister Karl Nesselrode proved difficult. He had denounced Tsar Nicholas I as a despot merely a year prior during his tenure in Congress; many Americans had reacted negatively to Russia's response to the 1830 Polish uprising.U.S. Senator
Buchanan returned home and lost the election in the State Legislature for a full six-year term in the 23rd Congress, but was appointed by the Pennsylvania state legislature to succeed William Wilkins in the U.S. Senate. Wilkins, in turn, replaced Buchanan as the ambassador to Russia. The Jacksonian Buchanan, who was re-elected in 1836 and 1842, opposed the re-chartering of the Second Bank of the United States and sought to expunge a congressional censure of Jackson stemming from the Bank War. Buchanan served in the Senate until March 1845 and was twice confirmed in office. To unite Pennsylvania Democrats at the State Convention, he was chosen as their candidate for the Democratic National Convention. Buchanan maintained a strict adherence to the Pennsylvania State Legislature's guidelines and sometimes voted against positions in Congress which he promoted in his own speeches, despite open ambitions for the White House.Buchanan was known for his commitment to states' rights and manifest destiny. He rejected President Martin Van Buren's offer to become United States Attorney General and chaired prestigious Senate committees such as the Committee on the Judiciary and the Committee on Foreign Relations. Buchanan was one of only a few senators to vote against the Webster–Ashburton Treaty for its "surrender" of lands to the United Kingdom, and he demanded the entire Aroostook River Valley for the United States. In the Oregon Boundary Dispute, Buchanan adopted the maximum demand of 54°40′ as the northern border and spoke out in favor of annexing the Republic of Texas. During the contentious 1838 Pennsylvania gubernatorial election, he supported the Democratic challenger, David Rittenhouse Porter, who was elected by fewer than 5,500 votes as Pennsylvania's first governor under the state's revised Constitution of 1838.
Buchanan also opposed a gag rule sponsored by John C. Calhoun that would have suppressed anti-slavery petitions. He joined the majority in blocking the rule, with most senators believing that it would have the reverse effect of strengthening the abolitionists. Buchanan said, "We have just as little right to interfere with slavery in the South, as we have to touch the right of petition." He thought that the issue of slavery was the domain of the states, and he blamed abolitionists for exciting passions over the issue. In the lead-up to the 1844 Democratic National Convention, Buchanan positioned himself as a potential alternative to former President Martin Van Buren, but the nomination went to James K. Polk, who won the election.