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 far away.