Buchanan, James (Administration)

JAMES BUCHANAN WAS born on April 23, 1791 in Cove Gap, Pennsylvania, into a wealthy family. A life long bachelor, he was the only president to never marry. Buchanan received academy education before going on to attend Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He graduated in 1809 and immediately began studying law. He opened a law practice in 1813. He joined a brigade, which helped defend Baltimore during the War of 1812.

In 1814 he was elected to a two-year term in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. In 1820 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, serving until 1831. Buchanan then left Congress and was U.S. minister to Russia until 1934, when he resigned after being elected to the U.S. Senate. In 1845 Buchanan left the Senate to become secretary of state under President James K. Polk, where he secured the annexation of Texas, settled the Oregon question, and directed the Mexican-American War. He retired from politics in 1849.

Franklin Pierce appointed him minister to Great Britain in 1853 and Buchanan served until 1856. With myriad political experiences the Democrats tapped him as their candidate in 1956 and he defeated John C. Fremont, the Republican candidate, and Millard Fillmore of the Know-Nothing Party. Buchanan's presidency was controversial. Just two days after he took office, the U.S. Supreme Court interjected the slavery issue into national politics with its decision in the Dred Scott case. [Page 95]The case involved a slave who sued for his freedom claiming that he had lived in territory declared free by the Missouri Compromise. Buchanan advised the Court to make a broad decision, which would settle the issue. The high court ruled that Congress had no power over slavery in the territories and blacks were not citizens and therefore could not use the courts. Buchanan welcomed the Court's decision, believing that the issue was settled. However, northern Democrats and Republicans both condemned the decision and organized opposition to it. In Kansas a small-scale civil war erupted that cost the lives of several thousand Americans. Pro-slavery and antislavery forces battled in Kansas.

The proslavery faction wrote a constitution and requested admission to the Union as a free state, even though the overwhelming majority of the state's residents were antislavery. In an election that was clearly bogus, proslavery forces declared victory in the state and were attempting to set up a government at Lecompton. The so-called Lecompton Constitution was a fraudulent document, but Buchanan accepted it and tried to push it through Congress. When Congress rejected the Kansas admission and instead established it as a free territory, the slavery-in-the-territories issue took center stage.

On October 16, 1859, the radical abolitionist John Brown staged a raid on Harper's Ferry in Virginia. When Brown was tried and then executed on December 2, feelings in both the north and south intensified. In 1860 when Abraham Lincoln was elected president, seven southern states left the Union and created the Confederate States of America. Buchanan denounced their action as illegal but refused to act. Buchanan refused to turn over Fort Pickens in Florida and Fort Sumpter in South Carolina. Buchanan left office in 1861 and returned to his home in Wheatland, Pennsylvania. He supported Lincoln's policies during the war, but wrote a defense of his administration in 1866. He died on June 1, 1868, at his home.

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