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JAMES BUCHANAN

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James Buchanan (1791-1868), America’s 15th

president, was in office from 1857 to 1861. During

his tenure, seven Southern states seceded from

the Union and the nation teetered on the brink of

civil war. A Pennsylvania native, Buchanan began

his political career in his home state’s legislature

and went on to serve in both houses of the U.S.

Congress; he later became a foreign diplomat and

U.S. secretary of state. Buchanan, a Democrat who

was morally opposed to slavery but believed it was

protected by the U.S. Constitution, was elected to

the White House in 1856. As president, he tried to

maintain peace between pro-slavery and anti-

slavery factions in the government, but tensions

only escalated. In 1860, after Abraham Lincoln

(1809-1865) was elected to succeed Buchanan,

South Carolina seceded and the Confederacy was

soon established. In April 1861, a month after

Buchanan left office, the American Civil War (1861-

1865) began.

America and the Civil War5min

America Divided4min

TAGS CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA JAMES BUCHANAN SLAVERY

Home • Topics • U.S. Presidents • James Buchanan

JAMES BUCHANAN’S EARLY YEARS AND PERSONAL LIFE

SENATOR AND DIPLOMAT

ELECTION OF 1856

JAMES BUCHANAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE

SECESSION

JAMES BUCHANAN’S LATER YEARS

FACT CHECK We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!

James Buchanan was born on April 23, 1791, in Cove Gap, Pennsylvania, to James

Buchanan Sr. (1761-1833), a merchant who had emigrated from Ireland, and Elizabeth

Speer Buchanan (1767-1833). The younger Buchanan graduated from Dickinson College in

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and then studied law. After being admitted to the bar in 1812, he

opened a successful practice in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

A member of the Federalist Party, Buchanan began his political career by serving in the

Pennsylvania legislature from 1814 to 1816. In 1820, he was elected to the U.S. House of

Representatives, where he remained for the next decade. In Congress, Buchanan aligned

himself with the Democrats as the Federalist Party dissolved. After Democrat Andrew

Jackson (1767-1845) was elected president in 1828, he appointed Buchanan the U.S.

ambassador to Russia in 1831. The following year, Buchanan negotiated a trade and

maritime agreement with Russia.

Buchanan is the only U.S. president who never married. In 1819, he was engaged to Ann

Coleman (1796-1819), the daughter of a wealthy Pennsylvania manufacturer; however, the

wedding was called off that same year. When Coleman died unexpectedly soon afterward,

rumors circulated that her death had been a suicide. During Buchanan’s time in the White

House, his niece, Harriet Lane (1830-1903), assumed the social duties of first lady and

became a popular figure.

Did You Know?

James Buchanan was nicknamed "Old Buck" and "Ten-Cent Jimmy." Thelatter was given to him by the Republicans in the presidential campaignof 1856 after Buchanan said 10 cents was fair daily pay for manuallaborers.

In 1834, after returning from Europe the previous year, James Buchanan was elected to

represent his home state in the U.S. Senate. He resigned from the Senate in 1845, when

President James Polk (1795-1849) named him U.S. secretary of state. During Buchanan’s

tenure in this post, which lasted until 1849, the nation’s territory grew by more than one-

third and extended across the continent for the first time. The United States annexed

Texas, acquired California and much of the present-day Southwest during the Mexican-

American War and secured what would become the Oregon Territory after settling a

boundary dispute with Great Britain.

The question of whether to extend slavery to America’s newly acquired territories, as well

as the moral legitimacy of slavery as an institution, became increasingly divisive issues

across the United States. In 1846, Buchanan sided with Southerners who successfully

blocked the Wilmot Proviso, which proposed banning slavery in any territory acquired from

Mexico in the Mexican-American War. Buchanan later supported the Compromise of 1850,

a series of congressional acts that admitted California as a free state but let the new

western territories decide whether they would allow slavery before applying for statehood,

a concept that became known as popular sovereignty.

In 1853, President Franklin Pierce (1804-1869) appointed Buchanan as minister to Great

Britain. In this role, Buchanan helped draft the 1854 Ostend Manifesto, a plan for America

to acquire Cuba from Spain. Although never acted upon, the proposal generated protests

from anti-slavery Northerners and others in the United States who feared Cuba would

become a slave state.

In 1854, President Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which created two new

territories and allowed settlers to determine whether they would enter the Union as free

states or slave states. Pierce’s support for the Kansas-Nebraska Act hurt him politically, and

in 1856 the Democrats opted not to re-nominate him. Instead, they chose James

Buchanan, who was living abroad at the time of the controversial bill’s signing and had

taken no position on it.

In the general election, Buchanan maintained that slavery was an issue to be decided by

individual states and territories, while his Republican challenger, John Fremont (1813-

1890), an explorer and U.S. senator from California, asserted that the federal government

should ban slavery in all U.S. territories. Buchanan received 174 electoral votes, while

Fremont, the first-ever Republican presidential candidate (the party was established in

1854), garnered 114 votes. Former president Millard Fillmore (1800-1874) of the American

“Know-Nothing” Party, who ran an anti-immigration campaign that did not focus on slavery,

earned eight votes. The popular vote was closer, with Buchanan capturing a little more

than 45 percent of the total ballots cast.

Buchanan’s vice president was John Breckinridge (1821-1875), a U.S. congressman from

Kentucky. Breckinridge was 35 when elected, making him the youngest vice president in

U.S. history.

Once in office, James Buchanan appointed a cabinet composed of Northerners and

Southerners and hoped to keep peace between the country’s pro-slavery and anti-slavery

factions. Instead, the national debate over slavery only intensified, and the new president

was seen by many people as being more sympathetic to Southern interests. Two days after

he was sworn in, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its Dred Scott decision, which said

the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in the territories and denied

African Americans the rights of U.S. citizens. Buchanan hoped the ruling would resolve

America’s slavery issue, and he reportedly pressured a Northern justice to vote with the

Southern majority in the case. Far from settling the issue, the Dred Scott decision, which

Southerners applauded and Northerners protested, led to increased divisiveness.

Buchanan further rankled Northerners by supporting the Lecompton Constitution, which

would have allowed Kansas to become a slave state. (It was later voted down, and Kansas

joined the Union as a free state in 1861.) In 1858, relations between Congress and the

president were further strained when the Republicans won a plurality in Congress and

blocked much of Buchanan’s agenda. He, in turn, vetoed Republican legislation.

In October 1859, abolitionist John Brown (1800-1859) tried unsuccessfully to stage a

massive slave uprising by raiding the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West

Virginia). After Brown was convicted of treason and hanged, hostilities between the North

and South continued to escalate.

Upholding a promise he had made in his inaugural address, James Buchanan did not seek

reelection in 1860. At their national convention, the Democrats were split over their choice

for a nominee, with Northern Democrats selecting Stephen Douglas (1813-1861) of Illinois

and Southern Democrats picking Vice President Breckinridge. The Republicans chose

Abraham Lincoln, and the Constitutional Union Party nominated John Bell (1796-1869).

Lincoln won 180 electoral votes (and a little less than 40 percent of the popular vote), while

his challengers garnered a combined electoral 123 votes. On December 20, 1860, in

response to Lincoln’s victory, South Carolina seceded from the Union. By the time of his

inauguration on March 4, 1861, six more states–Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia,

Louisiana and Texas–had also seceded and formed the Confederate States of America.

Buchanan asserted that states did not have the right to secede; however, he also believed

he had no constitutional power to stop them. In the end, he left the slavery crisis to be

resolved by the Lincoln administration. He reportedly told his successor, “If you are as

happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to Wheatland [his estate

near Lancaster, Pennsylvania], you are a happy man.”

On April 12, 1861, a little over a month after Buchanan left office and retired to Wheatland,

Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina and the Civil War began.

Buchanan supported Lincoln’s policies and the Union during the war.

In 1866, the former president published a memoir, “Mr. Buchanan’s Administration on the

Eve of Rebellion,” in which he defended his administration. He died on June 1, 1868, at age

77, and was buried at Woodward Hill Cemetery in Lancaster.

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