Who was James Buchanan?
James Buchanan was the son of Irish immigrants and trained as a lawyer in Pennsylvania. He then spent some forty years in public service. He sat in the House and Senate and served as minister to Russia, as Polk's secretary of state and as Pierce's minister in London. Because he was overseas during the Kansas-Nebraska fight, he avoided the blame and won the Democratic nomination in 1856, then the presidency. He hoped the Dred Scott ruling would settle the slavery question. Instead it, along with his backing of a proslavery constitution for Kansas, split his party. After Lincoln won in 1860, seven Southern states left the Union before Buchanan's term ended. He said he had no power to stop them.
Political views
- In the 1857 Dred Scott case he urged Justice Robert Grier to side with a broad majority. The ruling said Congress had no power to ban slavery in the territories.Source: en.wikipedia.org
- He supported Kansas entering the Union under the proslavery Lecompton Constitution, even though most white Kansans did not want it.Source: millercenter.org
- After Lincoln's election he said he had no power to stop secession, and he did nothing to prevent it.Source: en.wikipedia.org
- In 1857 he sent an army to the Utah Territory to install a new governor. He later offered a pardon to residents who accepted federal rule.Source: millercenter.org
- As president he kept trying to annex Cuba, but Republican opposition in Congress ended the effort.Source: millercenter.org
- In March 1861, near the end of his term, he signed the Morrill Tariff because it protected Pennsylvania's industries.Source: en.wikipedia.org
Legacy
Historians and ranking surveys keep placing Buchanan last or close to it. The main charge is that he failed to stop the Union breaking apart and that his policies favoured the South. Critics say his part in Dred Scott and his backing of the Lecompton Constitution, which Stephen Douglas called a fraud, angered the North and divided the Democrats. A small group of defenders says the crisis was close to impossible, that he read his powers narrowly and that he avoided a war before Lincoln took over. The Utah expedition was also criticised as costly and badly planned. Buchanan spent his last years defending what he had done.