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James Buchanan (1857-1861)

Fifteenth President of the United States. Born at Stony Batter, Franklin County, Pa., April 22, 1791. Died at Wheatland, Lancaster, Pa., June 1, 1868. Lawyer. At 23 urged the enlistment of volunteers for the defense of Baltimore against the British at the capture of Washington, D. C, 1814. Democratic member of Congress 1821-31. Minister to Russia 1831-33*. United States Senator 1833-45. Secretary of State Cabinet of President Polk. Minister to Great Britain 1853-56. President of the United States 1857-61, with John C. Breckinridge, as Vice-President. Buried Woodward Hill, Lancaster, Pa.

Buchanan was born to Irish immigrant parents near Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. He entered Dickinson College at the age of 16 and graduated in 1809. Buchanan studied law and passed the bar in Lancaster, which would be his home for the rest of his life. Following graduation, Buchanan began a clerkship with John Hopkins, a reputable lawyer in Lancaster. After a failed attempt to begin his practice in Kentucky, he returned to Pennsylvania where he was admitted to the bar in 1812.

Two years later, after marching in a military company against the British in the War of 1812, Buchanan entered politics when he was nominated to the State Assembly. Following a second term in the lower house of the Pennsylvania legislature, Buchanan was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1820. Elected five times to the United States House of Representatives, Buchanan was a gifted debater and well versed in the law. After an interlude as minister to Russia, he served for a decade in the United States Senate.

In 1832, President Andrew Jackson made Buchanan Minister Plenipotentiary to Russia. After returning from two years in St. Petersburg, he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1834 and served for three terms. Buchanan had presidential aspirations during his Senate service and was even considered for the Democratic nomination for the 1844 election. The nomination instead went to James K. Polk and in return for Pennsylvania’s support, Polk appointed Buchanan as Secretary of State.

Both President Polk and Secretary Buchanan believed in Manifest Destiny and were strong proponents of U.S. westward expansion. In addition to supporting U.S. efforts to annex Texas, Buchanan was charged with negotiating a settlement on the boundary dispute with Great Britain over the Oregon Territory. Like the 1848 treaty with Mexico that would soon follow, the 1846 Oregon Treaty fell short of a full territorial concession.

Outgoing President Tyler successfully pushed for the Annexation of Texas by a congressional joint resolution just before leaving office, an effort supported by Buchanan. Annexation prompted the Mexican-American War and resulted in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The treaty brought the United States significant territorial expansion, yet Buchanan opposed its outcome and believed that Baja and the northern provinces of Mexico should have been included.

Polk directed most aspects of U.S. foreign policy during his presidency, allowing Buchanan little control. Buchanan felt this lack of power intensely and communicated his discontent to close friends and associates. Nevertheless, he served as Secretary of State until the end of the Polk Administration.

Buchanan made three unsuccessful bids for the presidency. Buchanan attempted to win the Presidency in 1852 but failed. Instead, he served as Minister to Great Britain from 1853 to 1856, where he drafted the Ostend Manifesto with other U.S. diplomats. His absence during the sectional schism of the Democratic Party over the Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed him to win that party’s nomination. His reputation as a compromiser made him a more acceptable Democratic candidate than either Franklin Pierce or Stephen A. Douglas. Wheatland became the symbol of Buchanan’s "front porch" presidential campaign. In many places, Buchanan supporters formed "Wheatland Clubs" to promote his election.

President Buchanan held tightly to his conviction that although slavery might be morally wrong, the Federal Government lacked the right to interfere with States’ rights. In his inaugural address, Buchanan called the question of slavery in the territories "happily, a matter of but little practical importance." Still hoping for compromise, he appointed a Cabinet representing all parts of the country. Only two days after he took office, the Supreme Court delivered the Dred Scott decision, which Buchanan favored and possibly influenced. The decision gave slaveholders the right to transport their human property wherever they wanted, declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional because Congress had no power to regulate slavery in the territories, and blocked any person of African descent from ever attaining citizenship. The Supreme Court's ruling delighted the South and infuriated many people in the North.

Buchanan hoped the admission of Kansas as a State would remove the issue of slavery in the territories from public attention. Buchanan urged Congress to accept a constitution drawn up by a proslavery group meeting in Lecompton—though the proslavery men were outnumbered four to one in the territory. His proposal angered Republicans and even members of his own party and Congress refused. Kansas did not achieve statehood until 1861, remaining a sore reminder of the fractured nation.

By 1858, the Federal Government was near paralysis. Republicans and northern Democrats dominated the House. Southern votes in the Senate and presidential vetoes blocked any legislation passed by the House. The North was still depressed following the Panic of 1857, and John Brown's antislavery raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry brought sectional tension to a boil.

The crisis was a much greater one than that which Jackson had to meet. Then, although the disunion party had a large majority in South Carolina, and she had the tacit sympathy of three sister States, the case was vastly different from the present situation where unanimity prevailed within her confines, and she had the avowed sympathy of all the cotton States. In 1832, Louisiana and the border States were against South Carolina; now Louisiana was getting ready to follow her, while the border States, though deprecating her precipitate movement, shared her feeling as to the aggression of the North.

Yet, if the crisis was greater, greater would have been the glory to him who met it in the way unerringly pointed out by precedent, law, and devotion to the Union. It was a pregnant opportunity for an executive gifted with singleness of purpose, a dauntless temper of mind, and a wisdom to guide his valor to act in safety. But on such a man as Buchanan fortune lavishes her favors in vain. Vacillating and obstinate by turns, yet lacking firmness when the occasion demanded firmness, he floundered about in a sea of perplexity, throwing away chance after chance, and, though not wanting in good intentions and sincere patriotism, he laid himself open to the undisguised contempt of all sections and all parties.

In but one respect has the later differed from the contemporary judgment of him. From an oft-repeated Northern charge that he was actuated by treachery to his own section, he has been fully absolved. When, however, what he did is compared with what he ought to have done, of all the Presidents, with perhaps a single exception, Buchanan made the most miserable failure.

He had been so long under Southern domination that he could not now throw it off. Common prudence required that he should keep in his cabinet none but stanch Union men; this test would have resulted in the retirement of Cobb and Thompson, and probably a reconstruction of the whole cabinet in the middle of November, such as took place late in December and in January. At a time when a plan of resolute action should have been the daily and nightly thought of Buchanan, he sat himself down to write an essay on constitutional law, which he sent to Congress as his annual message.

The presidential election of 1860 took place in the midst of crisis. Buchanan had pledged that he would not run for a second term. The northern and southern wings of the Democratic Party each nominated their own candidates. John Bell ran as the candidate of the Constitutional Union Party. The young Republican Party united behind Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln won, though with far less than a popular majority. His name did not even appear on the ballot in any southern State. Outraged by the election, South Carolina seceded; six other States soon followed. By February 1861, they joined to form the Confederate States of America.

In his fourth and final message to Congress on December 3, 1860, President James Buchanan had conceded that, due to the resignation of federal officials throughout South Carolina, “the whole machinery of the Federal Government necessary for the distribution of remedial justice among the people has been demolished.” He contended, however, that “the Executive has no authority to decide what shall be the relations between the Federal Government and South Carolina.” Any attempt in this regard, he felt, would “be a naked act of usurpation.” Consequently, Buchanan had indicated that it was his “duty to submit to Congress the whole question in all its bearings,” observing that “the emergency may soon arise when you may be called upon to decide the momentous question whether you possess the power by force of arms to compel a State to remain in the Union.” Having “arrived at the conclusion that no such power has been delegated to Congress or to any other department of the Federal Government,” he proposed that Congress should call a constitutional convention, or ask the states to call one, for purposes of adopting a constitutional amendment recognizing the right of property in slaves in the states where slavery existed or might thereafter occur.”

During Buchanan's remaining months in office, he made repeated but unsuccessful efforts to compromise with the secessionists. Early in 1861, Buchanan finally took stronger measures to uphold Federal authority. He sent an unarmed merchant ship with reinforcements and supplies to relieve the beleaguered garrison at Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor. When South Carolina batteries drove the ship away, he refused to evacuate the fort, though he made no further efforts to resupply it. This stalemate only briefly averted the outbreak of war.

Slavery dominated Buchanan’s administration but was not his only concern. A dispute erupted with the Mormon-dominated Territory of Utah, which sought to become a State. Buchanan’s dismissal of Brigham Young as governor led to a short-lived and bloodless Mormon War, which ended when the President sent a special representative to calm tensions in the territory. He expanded American influence in Central and South America and discouraged intervention by European powers. Like his predecessors Polk and Pierce, he continued attempts to purchase Cuba from Spain. In 1860, he established diplomatic relations with Japan.

He served one term in office, 1857-1861. He did not seek re-election in 1860. In March 1861, James Buchanan retired to Wheatland with the country on the brink of war. He was the only president who never married. Following his death on June 1, 1868, 20,000 people attended his funeral in a show of his continued popularity.

That firm and prompt action on the part of the President would have been alone sufficient to nip secession in the bud, as it did nullification in 1832, sppeared to some contemporary actors, and such a view has been urged with persistence by later writers. It does seem possible that such vigor might have led, in December 1860, to a compromise of a sort to prevent the secession of any State but South Carolina.

In the last days of December 1860 Buchanan ordered the Secretary of War to write to Major Anderson, commanding Union forts in Charleston SC, these words: “It is neither expected nor desired that you should expose your own life, or that of your men, in a hopeless conflict in defense of these forts…. It will be your duty to yield to necessity and make the best terms in your power.” Buchanan was different from his successor Lincoln.

Those who hold to the idea of the irrepressible conflict can see in the success of such a project no more than the delay of a war that was inevitable, a postponement proper indeed, if the compromise were not dishonorable — for the stars in their courses were fighting on the side of the North.

Yet the weight of probability tends to the view that the day of compromise was past, and that the collision of sentiment, shaping the ends of the North and the South, had now brought them both to the last resort of earnest men. That Buchanan feared a conflict is evident: the mainspring of his wavering course was his feverish desire that the war should not begin under a Democratic administration, nor while he was in the Presidential chair. His policy was guided by the thought of after me the deluge, and must be classed among the wrecks with which the vacillation of irresolute men have strewn the coasts of time.