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James Buchanan (April 23,  1791 – June 1,
1868) was the 15th President of the United
States|President of the United States (1857-1861).
He was the only bachelor President, and the only
resident of Pennsylvania to hold that office. He
has been criticized for failing to prevent the
country from sliding into schism and the American
Civil War and as a result, he is widely
considered, together with his predecessor Franklin
Pierce, to be historical rankings of U.S.
Presidents|one of the worst presidents in U.S.
history.

==Biography==
Buchanan was a United States House of
Representatives|Representative and a United States
Senate|Senator from Pennsylvania. He was born in a
log cabin at Cove Gap, near Mercersburg, Franklin
County, Pennsylvania, on April 23, 1791 to James
Buchanan and Elizabeth Spear. He moved to
Mercersburg with his parents in 1799, was
privately tutored and then attended the village
academy and was graduated from Dickinson College,
Carlisle, Pennsylvania. In 1809 he moved to
Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The same year he studied
law, and was admitted to the bar (law)|bar in 1812
and practiced in Lancaster. He was one of the
first volunteers in the War of 1812 and served in
the defense of Baltimore, Maryland. He was a
member of the Pennsylvania State House of
Representatives from 1814 to 1815. He was elected
to the Seventeenth and to the four succeeding
Congresses (March 4, 1821 - March 3, 1831).  He
was chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary
(Twenty-first Congress). He was not a candidate
for renomination in 1830. Buchanan served as one
of the managers appointed by the House of
Representatives in 1830 to conduct the impeachment
proceedings against James H. Peck, judge of the
United States District Court for the District of
Missouri.  Buchanan served as Minister to Russia
from 1832 to 1834.

In 1819 Buchanan was engaged to Ann Caroline
Coleman, the daughter of wealthy iron
manufacturer. However she abruptly broke off their
engagement and died of mysterious causes several
days later. After his fiancee's death Buchanan
vowed he would never marry. He would live with
Alabama senator William Rufus King for sixteen
years in Washington, D.C., but King died four
years before Buchanan became president. Rumors and
speculation circulated that the two had a
homosexual relationship, with references to
Buchanan's "wife" and "better half", even
President Andrew Jackson referred to King as "Miss
Nancy". The difficulty in determining if someone
was a homosexual, especially in the mid-1800s,
means Buchanan's sexual orientation remains
uncertain.

Buchanan was elected as a United States Democratic
Party|Democrat to the United States Senate to fill
the vacancy caused by the resignation of William
Wilkins. He served from December 6, 1834; was
reelected in 1837 and 1843, and resigned on March
5, 1845, to accept a Cabinet portfolio. He was
chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations
(Twenty-fourth through Twenty-sixth Congresses).

Buchanan served as United States Secretary of
State|Secretary of State in the Cabinet of
President James K. Polk from 1845 to 1849, during
which he negotiated the 1846 Oregon Treaty
establishing the 49th parallel as the northern
boundary in the western U.S. No Secretary of State
has become President since James Buchanan. 

In 1853, Buchanan was named president of the Board
of Trustees of Franklin and Marshall College in
his hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania|Lancaster.
 He served in this capacity until 1865.

He served as Minister to the United Kingdom from
1853 to 1856, during which time he help to draft
the Ostend Manifesto which proposed the purchase
of Cuba under the threat of force.

==Presidency==
Buchanan was elected as a Democratic President of
the United States in U.S. presidential election,
1856|1856 and served from March 4, 1857 to March
4, 1861.  

In regard to the growing schism in the country, as
President-elect he intended to sit out the crisis
by maintaining a sectional balance in his
appointments and persuading the people to accept
constitutional law as the Supreme Court of the
United States|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. 

In his inaugural address, besides promising not to
run again, Buchanan 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 v. Sandford|Dred Scott
Decision, asserting that Congress had no
constitutional power to exclude slavery in the
territories. Much of Taney’s written judgment is
widely interpreted as dicta — statements
made by a judge that are unnecessary to the
outcome of the case, which in this case, while
they delighted Southerners, created a furor in the
North. Buchanan was widely believed to have been
personally involved in the outcome of the case,
with many Northerners recalling Taney whispering
to Buchanan during Buchanan's inauguration.
Buchanan wished to see the territorial question
resolved by the Supreme Court. To further this,
Buchanan personally lobbied his fellow
Pennsylvanian Justice Robert Cooper Grier to vote
with the majority in that case to uphold the right
of slave property.

Buchanan, however, faced further hardship on the
territorial question. Buchanan threw the full
prestige of his administration behind
congressional approval of the Lecompton
Constitution in Kansas, which would have admitted
Kansas as a slave state, going so far as to offer
patronage appointments and even cash bribes in
exchange for votes. The Lecompton government was
wildly unpopular to Northerners, as it was
dominated by slaveholders who had enacted laws
curtailing the rights of non-slaveholders. Even
though the voters in Kansas had rejected the
Lecompton Constitution, Buchanan managed to ram
his bill through the House, but it was blocked in
the Senate by Northerners led by Stephen A.
Douglas. Eventually, Congress voted to call a new
vote on the Lecompton Constitution, a move which
infuriated Southerners. Buchanan, meanwhile, was
by now tremendously unpopular in the North.

Economic troubles also plagued Buchanan's
administration with the outbreak of the Panic of
1857. The government suddenly faced a shortfall of
revenue, due in part to the Democrats' successful
push to lower the tariff. Buchanan's
administration, at the behest of Treasury
Secretary Howell Cobb, began issuing deficit
financing for the government, a move which flew in
the face of two decades of Democratic support for
hard-money policies and allowed Republicans to
attack Buchanan for financial mismanagement.

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. Bitter hostility between Northern and
Southern members prevailed on the floor of
Congress, where memories of the caning of Charles
Sumner in 1856 by a Southern Democrat still
burned. 

Sectional strife rose to such a pitch in 1860 that
the Democratic Party split. The southern wing
walked out of the convention and nominated its own
candidate for the presidency, incumbent
vice-president John C. Breckinridge, whom Buchanan
refused to support. 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 it. 

Then Buchanan took a more militant tack. As
several Cabinet members resigned, he appointed
Northerners, and chartered the civilian steamer
Star of the West to secretly carry reinforcements
and supplies to Fort Sumter. However, the attempt
to maintain secrecy failed. Newspapers published
stories that the ship was headed for Charleston,
and South Carolina officials received confirmation
from Louis T. Wigfall, still a United States
senator from Texas, as well as from Buchanan's
Secretary of the Interior, Jacob Thompson of
Mississippi. In the early morning of January 9,
1861, South Carolina's batteries opened on the
Star of the West. The unarmed ship was caught in a
crossfire. Receiving no assistance from Fort
Sumter, it turned back to New York City|New York
after suffering minor damage. As a result of the
operation, Thompson resigned from the cabinet. 

As such, the first shots of the American Civil War
were fired during the Buchanan Administration.
Before he left office, seven slave states seceded,
several seizing other federal forts and property
within their boundaries.

Buchanan retired to his home "Wheatland," near
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he died June 1,
1868, at the age of 77. He was interred in
Woodward Hill Cemetery, in Lancaster. "Wheatland"
should not be confused with the Wheatland musical
organization.

===Cabinet===
{| cellpadding="1" cellspacing="4"
style="margin:3px; border:3px solid #000000;"
align="left"
!bgcolor="#000000" colspan="3"|
|-
|align="left"|OFFICE||align="left"|NAME||align="le
ft"|TERM
|-
!bgcolor="#000000" colspan="3"|
|-
|align="left"|President of the United
States|President||align="left" |James
Buchanan||align="left"|1857–1861
|-
|align="left"|Vice President of the United
States|Vice President||align="left"|John C.
Breckinridge||align="left"|1857–1861
|-
!bgcolor="#000000" colspan="3"|
|-
|align="left"|United States Secretary of
State|Secretary of State||align="left"|Lewis
Cass||align="left"|1857–1860
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Jeremiah S.
Black||align="left"|1860–1861
|-
|align="left"|United States Secretary of the
Treasury|Secretary of the
Treasury||align="left"|Howell
Cobb||align="left"|1857–1860
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Philip
Thomas||align="left"|1860–1861
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|John Adams
Dix|John A. Dix||align="left"|1861
|-
|align="left"|United States Secretary of
War|Secretary of War||align="left"|John B.
Floyd||align="left"|1857–1861
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Joseph
Holt||align="left"|1861
|-
|align="left"|Attorney General of the United
States|Attorney General||align="left"|Jeremiah S.
Black||align="left"|1857–1860
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Edwin M.
Stanton||align="left"|1860–1861
|-
|align="left"|Postmaster General of the United
States|Postmaster General||align="left"|Aaron V.
Brown||align="left"|1857–1859
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Joseph
Holt||align="left"|1859–1861
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Horatio
King||align="left"|1861
|-
|align="left"|United States Secretary of the
Navy|Secretary of the Navy||align="left"|Isaac
Toucey||align="left"|1857–1861
|-
|align="left"|United States Secretary of the
Interior|Secretary of the
Interior||align="left"|Jacob
Thompson||align="left"|1857–1861
|}



=== Supreme Court appointments ===
Buchanan appointed the following Justice to the
Supreme Court of the United States:
* Nathan Clifford - 1858

=== States admitted to the Union ===
* Minnesota – May 11, 1858
* Oregon – February 14, 1859
* Kansas – January 29, 1861

== Related articles ==
* U.S. presidential election, 1856
* Origins of the American Civil War
* Paraguay expedition

== External links ==
*http://www.usa-presidents.info/inaugural/buchanan
.html Inaugural Address
*http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/2458 The
Other Buchanan Controversy
*http://www.usa-presidents.info/union/buchanan-1.h
tml First State of the Union Address of James
Buchanan
*http://www.usa-presidents.info/union/buchanan-2.h
tml Second State of the Union Address of James
Buchanan
*http://www.usa-presidents.info/union/buchanan-3.h
tml Third State of the Union Address of James
Buchanan
*http://www.usa-presidents.info/union/buchanan-4.h
tml Fourth State of the Union Address of James
Buchanan
*http://www.americanpresident.org/history/jamesbuc
hanan University of Virginia article: Buchanan
biography
*http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/jb15
.html White House Biography

start box
succession box| title=U.S. Congressman for the 3rd
District of Pennsylvania| before=Jacob Hibshman|
after=John Phillips| years=1821 – 1823
succession box| title=U.S. Congressman for the 4th
District of Pennsylvania| before=James S.
Mitchell| after=William Hiester| years=1823
– 1831
succession box| title=U.S. House Committee on the
Judiciary#Chairmen of the House Committee on the
Judiciary,1813-present|Chairman of the U.S. House
Committee on the Judiciary| before=Philip P.
Barbour| after=Warren R. Davis| years=1829 –
1831
succession box| title=U.S. Minister to Russia|
before=John Randolph| after=Mahlon Dickerson|
years=1832 – 1833
succession box| title=List of United States
Senators from Pennsylvania|U.S. Senator from
Pennsylvania| before=William Wilkins| after=Simon
Cameron| years=1834 – 1845
succession box| title=United States Secretary of
State| before=John C. Calhoun| after=John M.
Clayton| years=March 10, 1845 – March 7,
1849
succession box| title=U.S. Ambassador to the
United Kingdom|U.S. Minister to Britain |
before=Joseph R. Ingersoll| after=George M.
Dallas| years=1853 – 1856
succession box| title=United States Democratic
Party|Democratic Party President of the United
States|Presidential :

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James McGill Buchanan Jr. (born October 3, 1919)
is an economist most renowned for his work on
Public Choice Theory, and who won the 1986 Bank of
Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of
Alfred Nobel. He originally graduated from Middle
Tennessee State University|Middle Tennessee Normal
School in 1940. He has long been professor at
George Mason University.  His work in economics
included a rigorous analysis of the theory of
logrolling.

His book The Calculus of Consent is considered to
be one of the classic works that founded the
discipline of public choice in economics and
political science.

economist-stub

==List of publications==
*http://www.econlib.org/library/Buchanan/buchCCont
ents.html The Collected Works of James M.
Buchanan by James M. Buchanan, at the
http://www.econlib.org Library of Economics and
Liberty.  Multi-volume work; copyrighted but free
to read and access; fully searchable online.
Includes:

*http://www.econlib.org/library/Buchanan/buchCv2Co
ntents.html Public Principles of Public Debt: A
Defense and Restatement, by James M. Buchanan,
at the Library of Economics and Liberty
*http://www.econlib.org/library/Buchanan/buchCv3Co
ntents.html The Calculus of Consent: Logical
Foundations of Constitutional Democracy, by
James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, at the
Library of Economics and Liberty
*http://www.econlib.org/library/Buchanan/buchCv4Co
ntents.html Public Finance in Democratic
Process: Fiscal Institutions and Individual
Choice, by James M. Buchanan, at the Library
of Economics and Liberty
*http://www.econlib.org/library/Buchanan/buchCv5Co
ntents.html The Demand and Supply of Public
Goods, by James M. Buchanan, at the Library of
Economics and Liberty
*http://www.econlib.org/library/Buchanan/buchCv6Co
ntents.html Cost and Choice: An Inquiry in
Economic Theory, by James M. Buchanan, at the
Library of Economics and Liberty
*http://www.econlib.org/library/Buchanan/buchCv7Co
ntents.html The Limits of Liberty: Between
Anarchy and Leviathan, by James M. Buchanan,
at the Library of Economics and Liberty
*http://www.econlib.org/library/Buchanan/buchCv8Co
ntents.html Democracy in Deficit: The Political
Legacy of Lord Keynes, by James M. Buchanan
and Richard E. Wagner, at the Library of Economics
and Liberty
*http://www.econlib.org/library/Buchanan/buchCv9Co
ntents.html The Power to Tax: Analytical
Foundations of a Fiscal Constitution, by
Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan, at the
Library of Economics and Liberty
*http://www.econlib.org/library/Buchanan/buchCv10C
ontents.html The Reason of Rules:
Constitutional Political Economy, by Geoffrey
Brennan and James M. Buchanan, at the Library of
Economics and Liberty


==External links==
*http://www.gmu.edu/jbc/faculty_bios/buchananbio.h
tml Biography at GMU
*http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Buchanan.
html Biography of James M. Buchanan at the
Concise Encyclopedia of Economics

==See also==
*Economists
*Economics
*List of economists
*List of economics consultancies and think tanks
*Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in
Memory of Alfred Nobel
*Liberalism
*Contributions to liberal theory