The Failed Presidency of James Buchanan

James Buchanan was the fifteenth President of the United States. Few presidents before him had as much experience in public life as he, but his presidency was to be an utter failure. A study of his presidency may prove to have some lessons for the current administration.

Buchanan was born in Pennsylvania of prosperous Scotch-Irish parents. After graduating from Dickinson College he became a highly successful lawyer and was elected to Congress in 1820 after serving in the Pennsylvania legislature as a Whig. When the Whig party collapsed he followed Andrew Jackson and became an important democratic leader.

Buchanan served as minister to Russia and, in 1934, was elected to the Senate where he served for ten years. He became Secretary of State under James K. Polk in 1844. After a couple of failed attempts for the presidency, Buchanan finally secured the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1854 with support from the South and was elected president in November of that year. As President Buchanan was beholden to the South his pro south policies and his inability to compromise in the face of sectional pressures proved to be disastrous for the Democratic Party.

In order to uphold the southern view that a territorial legislature could not prohibit slavery, Buchanan secretly influenced a northern justice of the Supreme Court into voting with the southern Supreme Court majority against the legality of the Missouri Compromise giving us the infamous Dred Scott decision. His expansionist policies further exacerbated sectional tensions and his endorsement of the admission the State of Kansas to the Union as a slave state after he had earlier pledged for a fair vote proved to be politically disastrous.

A depression in 1857, Buchanan's opposition to northern sponsored economic recovery legislation and the fact that his was the most corrupt administration since the countries founding did further harm his administration. With all this, Buchanan found himself desperately trying to avoid a civil war as states threatened to secede from the union. Even though he was able to work out an informal agreement to temporarily preserve the union, it was small recompense for the damage done. He handed over the reins of power to President Lincoln in 1809 and withdrew from politics.

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