James Buchanan biography

Synopsis

Origins and bachelorhood

Buchanan was the son of James Buchanan and Elizabeth Speer, both of Scottish Presbyterian stock from the north of Ireland. His father had immigrated to the United States in 1783 and worked as a storekeeper. Buchanan was educated at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., graduating in 1809, and studied law in Lancaster, Pa. He was admitted to the bar in 1812 and soon established a successful law practice. His gift for oratory led him to politics.

Buchanan never married and remains the only bachelor president. In 1819, when he was 28 years old, he became engaged to Anne C. Coleman, the daughter of a wealthy Pennsylvania family. He broke off the engagement for an undisclosed reason, and shortly afterward Coleman died, possibly a suicide. While Buchanan was senator, he shared lodgings with another bachelor, Sen. William R. King of Alabama, causing some tongues in Washington to wag, but, in conformity with the mores of the time, the relationship was not a public matter. When Buchanan became president, he made his 27-year-old niece, Harriet Lane, his hostess. Buchanan had served as her guardian, and he had overseen her education since she was 12 years old, when her mother, Buchanan's sister, died. He took her to England with him when he was minister to Great Britain, where she became accustomed to being in the limelight. In the U.S. capital she was a popular figure, even dubbed the “Democratic Queen.”

Early political career

A Federalist, Buchanan served in the Pennsylvania legislature (1814–16) and in the U.S. House of Representatives (1821–31). When his party disintegrated in the 1820s, Buchanan associated himself with the emerging Democratic Party. He served as U.S. minister to St. Petersburg (1831–33) for the Andrew Jackson administration, U.S. senator (1834–45), and secretary of state (1845–49) in the cabinet of Pres. James K. Polk. The annexation of Texas and subsequent Mexican War took place during Buchanan's tenure as secretary of state. Buchanan's role in the war was limited, but he played a more active part in the border dispute with Britain over Oregon. Despite the 1844 campaign slogan of “Fifty-four forty or fight,” the matter was settled peaceably by treaty. In both situations the United States gained large tracts of territory. Buchanan had sought the nomination for president in 1844 but had ultimately thrown his support to Polk. Failing to receive the presidential nomination in 1848, Buchanan retired from public service until 1853, when he was appointed minister to Britain by Pres. Franklin Pierce.

In Congress, Buchanan tended to side with the South, and, although he felt that slavery was morally wrong, he did not want the country to eliminate the institution by the “introduction of evils infinitely greater.” From his perspective, a greater evil would be freeing the slaves and making them the new masters, “abolishing slavery by the massacre of the high-minded, and the chivalrous race of men in the South.” He therefore