President James Buchanan: A Biography

It is the last Sunday of the month, which means we are on to the 15th president, James Buchanan, making this week’s book of the week President James Buchanan: A Biography by Philip Shriver Klein.

James Buchanan was born April 23, 1791, in Cove Gap, PA to James Buchanan Sr and Elizabeth Speer Buchanan, both of Irish descent, like literally, both were born in Ireland, James and his siblings were 1st generation Americans. There were ELEVEN Buchanan children, three of whom died in childhood. James was the first-born son and only son for the first 13 years of his life, so he was kind of pampered and held the weight of family expectations on him.

He was educated at the Old Stone Academy in Mercersburg and graduated from Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA. However, he only barely graduated. He was a bit of a wild child in college and was nearly expelled for his partying ways in his second year. Fortunately, he managed to repent and complete his studies. However, his ego became pretty big, and he was almost expelled again for hubris. Ultimately, he was allowed to graduate, however his attitude denied him the valedictorian position which he felt entitled to. His father talked him back from the metaphorical ledge through a combination of parenting and don’t be a dumbass type thought exercises.

Like basically every other president except Taylor, he was a lawyer, and a really good one, essentially building a reputation for extreme common sense and encyclopedic knowledge of the law. There is one case where he is defending a guy who was being sued for threatening someone. Buchanan got the offended party, aka plaintiff, on the stand and the trial transcript reads:

Buchanan: “Well, sir, suppose you were a man of more nerve, a man not easily frightened by threat—put yourself in the position of a courageous man—would you have cared for the threat of my client?”

Plaintiff: “I am a man of as much courage as anybody, sir.”

Buchanan: “then you were not frightened when my client threatened you?”

Plaintiff: “No, sir.”

Buchanan: “You are not afraid of him?”

Plaintiff: “No I am not.”

Buchanan: “Well, then, what did you bring this charge for? I move its dismissal.”

Basically, Buchanan called him a punk as bitch. And when the guy said no, I’m not a punk ass bitch, Buchanan moved for dismissal. And got it. Apparently, being a punk ass bitch is not limited to the 21st century.

Where he really built his reputation, though, was in defending Judge Walter Franklin. Now, Franklin had not actually done anything wrong, other than be the wrong political persuasion. Franklin, and at that time Buchanan, were both Federalists. The Democrats in the district kept suing Franklin because they disliked his rulings. And Buchanan kept defending him in these nuisance suits. And winning. And because he was winning cases defending a sitting judge, his clients all figured it would be good to have Buchanan defend them too, especially if their cases were then being tried before that judge. By the time he entered politics in 1821, he was earning $11,000 per year, which in today’s money, is around $220,000 per year, which is absurdly successful for back in the 1820’s.

Buchanan never married, he was a lifelong bachelor, which started in his 20’s. He had been engaged to Ann Coleman, who was a very wealthy heiress. But due to the financial panic of 1819, which kept his law practice hopping, Miss Coleman got her feelings hurt, believing he should pay more attention to her, and broke off their engagement. Shortly after that, she died. It was rumored she died of a broken heart, and Buchanan certainly never recovered as he never married. He becane engaged a second time a few years later, but that engagement ended by mutual agreement. Ultimately he ended up becoming the rich uncle to a plethora of nieces and nephews who ended up under his care as Buchanan’s siblings started dying off as a result of general poor health that was common to the 19th century. The only one of his siblings to outlive him was his youngest brother Edward, who greatly resented James’s success in life. 

Politically, Buchanan served in Pennsylvania legislature first before being elected to the US House of Representatives in 1821. Now, the Federalist party was starting to collapse around this time and when Monroe followed tradition and decided to limit himself to two terms, Buchanan had to pick if he would stick with the Federalist candidate John Qunicy Adams, or back Andrew Jackson. Buchanan actually backed Calhoun but when Calhoun dropped out, Buchanan so intensely disliked John Quincy Adams, that he threw himself in to Jackson’s campaign. His party loyalty was rewarded several years later when Jackson was president and appointed Buchanan to be the minister to Russia. While there, Buchanan learned what we all know from the safe distance of 200 years: When in Russia, they will open your mail. Of course, he also objected that all official correspondence was forwarded to him from the American Embassy in Paris to the Russian Embassy in Paris, giving the Russians plenty of time to open every dispatch. He cautioned the administration not to put anything in writing they didn’t want the Russians to read.

When he returned from Russia, he was appointed US Senator by Pennsylvania legislature and served in that capacity until Polk was president and assigned him to be Secretary of State, in which capacity Buchanan served for all four years of Polk’s presidency. And then he was good. Buchanan was, like so many of his predecessors to the White House, ready to retire and live the good life, and he went to his home in Wheatland and was happy to raise his nieces and nephews. He stayed retired throughout the Taylor and Fillmore administrations, but when Pierce was elected, Pierce called Buchanan into service as minister to the United Kingdom.

Now, as discussed last month, Secretary of State Marcy, who was Buchanan’s boss on this mission, was grossly ineffective as Secretary of State, issuing directives that made Buchanan’s job difficult, such as insisting on no court dress when Buchanan went to court, resulting in Buchanan not being received in court because he was not dressed appropriately to meet the Queen. For all this, Buchanan was as successful as he could be, given how his hands were tied, which was that he managed to not burn all diplomatic bridges, and was more than ready for his job to end when he finally received his recall orders in early 1856. He returned to the States just in time for his own nomination to President, and was elected in November 1856, swearing in on March 4, 1857.

And he inherited one hell of a mess from Pierce…and Fillmore, to be honest. The compromise of 1850, having set up Bleeding Kansas, left Buchanan to try and staunch the bleeding. Which did not happen. Buchanan sent Governor Robert J Walker to Kansas with the intent to have a plebiscite solely on the question of slavery in Kansas. What happened is that Walker showed up and told them they needed to vote on a state constitution, and heavily implied that the preferred constitution be anti-slavery, as the climate in Kansas did not really support growing crops that were slave dependent, i.e., cotton and tobacco. What happened was massive voter fraud when the Lecompton Constitution was written, resulting in Kansas enshrining slavery in the Lecompton Constitution. As a result of this the abolitionists nationwide becoming more militant, with John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry resulting in Brown’s death by hanging.

When the mid-term elections of 1858 resulted in Republicans gaining a foothold and parity with the Democrats, Buchanan’s political fortunes took a downward turn, not helped in the least by Stephan Douglas’s refusal to get with the party program and insistence on running his own race. Douglas, it seems, was sure that, as the arbiter of the 1850 compromise and trying to toe the line between abolitionists and the slave owning southern states, that he would be the sole Democratic choice for president in 1860. And part of keeping the abolitionist base in Illinois happy was demonizing Buchanan.

All of this changeover in Congress resulted in the Covode Committee, which was set to investigate Buchanan and his administration for impeachable offenses. And they found nothing. I mean, there was the patronage, the using of position to grant government contracts to friends, but none of that was unusual. Hell, that still exists today, so it’s very much status quo for the 19th century. There was some evidence of mismanaged funds and graft in his Cabinet, but Buchanan himself had done nothing unusual or illegal.

Now, when he accepted the nomination and I believe during his inaugural, Buchanan explicitly stated that he would be a one term president. He did not want a second term; his goal had been to steer the country through bleeding Kansas and try and find a path to peace and compromise between the southern slaveowners and the northern abolitionists. This was always a fool’s errand, which he knew on some level as he references throughout the Civil War in private correspondence and speeches, that the Civil War was decades in the making between these two conflicting ideologies. He wanted to help the Democrats choose the most likely candidate to win, which was not Stephen Douglas, who had already split the party severely. Ultimately, the election results of 1860 were split among four candidates: Abraham Lincoln, John C Breckinridge who was the official Democratic Candidate, John Bell, and Stephen Douglas. Lincoln won with 180 electoral votes, Breckinridge got 72, Bell 39 and Douglas 12. So not even close. Even if all the other votes had been for one candidate, Lincoln still would have one.

The day after the election, South Carolina seceded. We’re taught that South Carolina seceded as a result of Lincoln’s being elected, but I had always on some level assumed they waited to secede until he was sworn in. They did not. They seceded immediately, using as their argument that the president only sits with the consent of the governed. Buchanan heartily disagreed with this. And now we enter the stuff of historical legend.

The 19th century spin doctors told the story far and wide that Buchanan was doing everything he could to help the south secede, that he was smuggling them arms and ammunition, and that he pushed for the Civil War. In reality, he was very much against the Civil War. The only arms that ALMOST made it south was a cannon that his secretary of war had ordered south, which Buchanan stopped, as he did not believe the south needed arms.

From the time Lincoln was elected and South Carolina seceded, Buchanan tried constantly to communicate with Lincoln, to determine how Lincoln wanted things handled. Lincoln never responded. When Fort Sumter asked for reinforcements, the Republican controlled Congress refused to send them. I know it’s not popular knowledge today, but in the 19th century, it was acknowledged fact that only Congress could declare war. So, when Congress refused to reinforce Sumter, there was nothing Buchanan could do. War by executive order was not a thing in the 19th century, and the only executive orders Buchanan issued in his time as president were fully in line with the Constitution and existing law. For example, when South Carolina seceded, in the intervening four months between Lincoln’s election and swearing in, Buchanan’s entire cabinet abandoned him, resigning one after another. As congress was not in session, he would use his executive authority to appoint new cabinet members, which he could do for up to six months before requiring congressional approval.

The Republicans at that time were very determined to dump the whole of the Civil War on Buchanan, claiming it was all his doing for not preventing South Carolina from seceding. The problem with that is, South Carolina had every reason to fear the Republicans were coming for their slaves…because they were. Listen, when someone tells you their plans, don’t assume it’s hyperbole. The abolitionists in the preceding decade had become ever more violent, culminating in Bleeding Kansas and Harper’s Ferry. The south saw the writing on the wall, even if Buchanan did not want to acknowledge it

But every step he tried to take to stave off the civil war was stonewalled by Republican congress. He recommended a constitutional convention, he recommended reinforcing Fort Sumter, he made speeches and wrote scads of correspondence trying to bring the south back to the fold. At this point in history, I’m not sure ANYONE could have prevented what was coming. And having read this book, and the preceding books on all the presidents, I am a little clearer on what Barbara F Walter meant in her book a few weeks ago, about why the south seceded. Not sure that’s the whole story, and I have a book on the Civil War specifically I’ll be reading in August, but her logic is holding sound so far.

And while the Republicans were bound to hang this war on Buchanan’s neck, and history has obliged by consistently ranking him one of the worst presidents for his failure to prevent the Civil War, one very good thing about Buchanan was his consistent chronicling of his life. One of the reasons he had such an encyclopedic knowledge of the law is that after every case, he wrote down what the case was, who won, and why…then he cross referenced this to other case law. This habit stood him in good stead as his addresses to congress and official correspondence bear out all his efforts to stop what was coming. But as the saying goes, it takes two to tango, and his prospective dance partners rejected his advances.

Furthermore, in a particularly telling passage at the end of the book, several passages from Lincoln’s inaugural address, mirror closely phrases from Buchanan’s last address to Congress. Like…if this were a 21st century political race, Lincoln would probably be accused of plagiarism close. So, the two men were not, in fact, that different, and Buchanan never had an unkind thing to say about Lincoln, thought quite highly of Lincoln, and truly mourned when Lincoln was assassinated.

This despite the lack of communication from Lincoln during the run up to the inauguration, which, incidentally, Buchanan’s attempt to communicate was new. I have not seen that before. Every other president to this point, was president until the new guy was sworn in. But Buchanan saw the writing on the wall, knew Civil War was fast approaching, and tried to loop Lincoln in so Lincoln wouldn’t be blindsided in office. Hell, if Lincoln had responded, had communicated with the Republicans in congress and authorized reinforcement of Fort Sumter, how much would history have changed?

Everyone thought it would be a three-month war and done, but Buchanan knew it would be at least three years, and was vilified all over again when he voiced that opinion. When it did drag on, and Republican mudslingers started dragging him in the papers, a very mean-spirited congress canceled franking privileges for all former presidents, so that Buchanan couldn’t even respond and defend himself. Franking privileges are the gift to former presidents of free postage for life. If he had had that, Buchanan could have sent a rebuttal to every newspaper in the country. Instead, he was left silent in the face of the onslaught.

I’m glad I picked this book. It is an older one, written in 1962, but it was a balanced, nuanced review of a really maligned man, who I think was genuinely trying to steer the country away from catastrophe, and was met with extreme resistance by ego’s larger than his. I will not be placing him at the bottom of my list, because he did try. He very much saw the writing on the wall, but by this point in history, I don’t think anyone could have prevented what was coming. So, I’m placing him 10th, just behind Zachary Taylor. He did what he could, but no one would let him lead the country to peace. And you can’t blame one man for the actions of others.

This book was initially reviewed on YouTube on June 26, 2022, but is now available on Rumble and PodBean.