James Buchanan

James Buchanan was the fifteenth president of the United States. He served four years, from 1857 to 1861 — the last term before the Civil War. He was a Democrat from Pennsylvania — the Democratic Party. Friends and papers called him Old Buck. His home there was called Wheatland, near Lancaster. He is the only president who never married. He is the only president who did not marry. His niece Harriet Lane served as White House hostess and was a popular figure in Washington. His vice president was John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky.

Buchanan hoped the Supreme Court would settle the slavery fight. Instead, two days after his inauguration in 1857, the Dred Scott decision arrived. The Court said Dred Scott remained a slave and that Black Americans could not be citizens. The ruling made many Northerners furious. The Panic of 1857 shook banks and businesses and added a money crash to a political storm. In 1859 John Brown attacked a federal armory at Harpers Ferry. The raid failed, but it terrified the South and thrilled some in the North.

Seven Southern states seceded before Abraham Lincoln was sworn in. Buchanan said secession was illegal, but he said he lacked the power to stop it. The Union kept breaking while he waited. Lincoln took the oath on March 4, 1861, and inherited a country already splitting. A gloomy line is tied to Buchanan as states began to leave: “I am the last President of the United States.” He feared the Union was finished. Lincoln would prove that it was not. Historians often rank Buchanan poorly — among the least successful presidents — because the country split on his watch. His term is remembered for failing to hold the Union together as states seceded.