Tall,
stately, stiffly formal in the high stock he wore around his
jowls, James Buchanan was the only President who never
married.
Presiding
over a rapidly dividing Nation, Buchanan grasped inadequately
the political realities of the time. Relying on constitutional
doctrines to close the widening rift over slavery, he failed
to understand that the North would not accept constitutional
arguments which favored the South. Nor could he realize how
sectionalism had realigned political parties: the Democrats
split; the Whigs were destroyed, giving rise to the
Republicans.
Born
into a well-to-do Pennsylvania family in 1791, Buchanan, a
graduate of Dickinson College, was gifted as a debater and
learned in the law.
He was
elected five times to the House of Representatives; then,
after an interlude as Minister to Russia, served for a decade
in the Senate. He became Polk's Secretary of State and
Pierce's Minister to Great Britain. Service abroad helped to
bring him the Democratic nomination in 1856 because it had
exempted him from involvement in bitter domestic
controversies.
As
President-elect, Buchanan thought the crisis would disappear
if he maintained a sectional balance in his appointments and
could persuade the people to accept constitutional law as the
Supreme Court interpreted it. The Court was considering the
legality of restricting slavery in the territories, and two
justices hinted to Buchanan what the decision would be.
Thus, in
his Inaugural the President referred to the territorial
question as "happily, a matter of but little practical
importance" since the Supreme Court was about to settle
it "speedily and finally."
Two days
later Chief Justice Roger B. Taney delivered the Dred Scott
decision, asserting that Congress had no constitutional power
to deprive persons of their property rights in slaves in the
territories. Southerners were delighted, but the decision
created a furor in the North.
Buchanan
decided to end the troubles in Kansas by urging the admission
of the territory as a slave state. Although he directed his
Presidential authority to this goal, he further angered the
Republicans and alienated members of his own party. Kansas
remained a territory.
When
Republicans won a plurality in the House in 1858, every
significant bill they passed fell before southern votes in the
Senate or a Presidential veto. The Federal Government reached
a stalemate.
Sectional
strife rose to such a pitch in 1860 that the Democratic Party
split into northern and southern wings, each nominating its
own candidate for the Presidency. Consequently, when the
Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln, it was a foregone
conclusion that he would be elected even though his name
appeared on no southern ballot. Rather than accept a
Republican administration, the southern
"fire-eaters" advocated secession.
President
Buchanan, dismayed and hesitant, denied the legal right of
states to secede but held that the Federal Government legally
could not prevent them. He hoped for compromise, but
secessionist leaders did not want compromise.
Then
Buchanan took a more militant tack. As several Cabinet members
resigned, he appointed northerners, and sent the Star of
the West to carry reinforcements to Fort Sumter. On
January 9, 1861, the vessel was fired upon and driven away.
Buchanan
reverted to a policy of inactivity that continued until he
left office. In March 1861 he retired to his Pennsylvania home
Wheatland--where he died seven years later--leaving his
successor to resolve the frightful issue facing the Nation.
-
James
Buchanan