James Buchanan

• James Buchanan, Jr. (April 23, 1791 – June 1, 1868) was

the 15th President of the United States from 1857–1861 and the last to
be born in the 18th century.
• To date he is the only president from the state of Pennsylvania and the
only president to have never married and to have remained
a bachelor.
• A popular and experienced politician prior to his presidency, Buchanan
represented Pennsylvania in the House of Representatives and later
the Senate, and served as Secretary of State under President James K.
Polk.
• After turning down an offer for an appointment to the Supreme Court,
he served as Minister to the United Kingdom under President Franklin
Pierce, in which capacity he helped draft the inflammatory Ostend
Manifesto, which suggested the U.S. should declare war if Spain
refused to sell Cuba.
• The Ostend Manifesto was never acted upon and greatly damaged the
Pierce administration.
• Despite unsuccessfully seeking the Democratic presidential nomination
in 1844, 1848, and 1852, Buchanan was nominated in the election of
1856 as a compromise between the two sides of the slavery issue; this
occurred while he was away on business.
• His subsequent election was largely due to the even more divided
state of the opposition.
• As President he was a "doughface", a Northerner with Southern
sympathies who battled with Stephen A. Douglas for the control of
the Democratic Party.
• Buchanan's efforts to maintain peace between the North and the South
alienated both sides, and as the Southern states declared
their secession in the prologue to the American Civil War, Buchanan's
opinion was that secession was illegal, but that going to war to stop it
was also illegal; hence, he remained inactive.
• By the time he left office, popular opinion had turned against him, and
the Democratic Party had split in two.
• Buchanan had once hoped that his presidency might rank in history
with that of George Washington.
• However, his handling of the crisis preceding the Civil War has led to
his consistent ranking by historians as one of the worst Presidents.
• James Buchanan, Jr., was born in a log cabin in Cove Gap,
near Harrisburg (now James Buchanan Birthplace State Park), Franklin
 County, Pennsylvania, on April 23, 1791, to James Buchanan, Sr.
(1761–1833), and Elizabeth Speer (1767–1833).
• His parents were both of Scotch-Irish descent, the father having
emigrated from northern Ireland in 1783.
• He was the second of eleven children, three of whom died in infancy.
Buchanan had six sisters and four brothers, only one of whom lived
past 1840.
• In 1797, the family moved to nearby Mercersburg, Pennsylvania.
• he home in Mercersburg was later turned into the James Buchanan
Hotel.
• Buchanan attended the village academy and later Dickinson
College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
• Expelled at one point for poor behavior, after pleading for a second
chance, he graduated with honors on September 19, 1809.
• Later that year, he moved to Lancaster, where he studied law and was
admitted to the bar in 1812.
• A dedicated Federalist, he strongly opposed the War of 1812 on the
grounds that it was an unnecessary conflict.
• Nevertheless, when the British invaded neighboring Maryland, he
joined a volunteer light dragoon unit and served in the defense
of Baltimore.
• An active Freemason during his lifetime, he was the Master
of Masonic Lodge #43 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and a District
Deputy Grand Master of theGrand Lodge of Pennsylvania.