James Buchanan is born in a log cabin, April 23, 1791
On this day in 1791, James Buchanan, who served as the nation’s 15th president from 1857 to 1861, was born as the second of 10 children in a log cabin near Mercersburg, Pa.
Buchanan entered politics as a Federalist member of the Pennsylvania state Legislature in 1814. When the Federalists collapsed, he joined Andrew Jackson’s Democratic Party and was elected to Congress in 1820. After serving five terms, he became minister to Russia in 1832. Buchanan soon returned home to win a Senate seat in 1833.
From 1845 to 1849, Buchanan was President James Polk’s secretary of State. In that role, he negotiated the 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain, establishing the 49th parallel as the northern boundary of the Western United States. No secretary of State has become president since, although William Howard Taft, the 27th president, at times served as acting secretary during Theodore Roosevelt’s administration.
From 1853 to 1855, Buchanan served as President Franklin Pierce’s minister to Britain. Successive overseas tours helped him avoid becoming embroiled in the divisive slavery issue. But his removal from this sectional conflict ended when he entered the White House. It also spelled the doom of his administration.
In 1857, as president-elect, Buchanan pressured the U.S. Supreme Court to rule in Dred Scott v. Sandford that Congress lacked the right to outlaw slavery in the territories — in the erroneous belief that Americans would take the court’s decision as the final word on the matter. Two of the justices told Buchanan what the probable decision would be — that the Constitution did not intend to offer American citizenship to black people.
In his inaugural address, Buchanan said the issue of extending slavery into the territories would soon be “happily a matter of but little practical importance” because the Supreme Court was about the settle the question “speedily and finally.”
Buchanan also said: “The Constitution expressly recognizes the right to hold slaves as property where slavery exists. … The Southern states have rights guaranteed to them, and these rights I am determined to maintain, come weal, come woe.”
His passivity toward Southern states that threatened to leave the Union over slavery alienated many fellow Northern Democrats, opening the door for Republican Abraham Lincoln to win the 1860 presidential election in a four-way contest.
After serving one term, Buchanan retired to his home in Lancaster, Pa. In his memoirs, published in 1866, he blamed abolitionists for having precipitated the Civil War. He died two years later at 77.
In February 2019, 157 scholars surveyed by the Siena College Research Institute ranked Buchanan as the nation’s second worst president, finishing behind Andrew Johnson, who had taken office after Lincoln was assassinated and barely escaped being removed from office by the Senate. They ranked Donald Trump third.
SOURCE: “This Day in Presidential History,” by Paul Brandus (2018)