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James Buchanan, 25th President of the United States, 15th under the US
Constitution
James Buchanan 25th
President of the United States
15th under the US Constitution
An exceptional early James Buchanan autograph letter signed, dated
October 17, 1823 commenting on Presidential candidate Andrew Jackson: "I
do not believe Jackson has the most remote
chance of being elected President." Page
1 and page 2.
James Buchanan was honest and sincere, a man who by hard work achieved the
highest office in the country. Prior to his becoming President he had compiled a
record of 42 years of almost continuous public service. He became president at a
time of great crisis in the United States when extraordinary leadership was
needed if the Southern states were to remain in the Union, but he was not a
successful leader. Under more normal circumstances his qualities as a
hardworking politician of compromise and accommodation would have served the
country admirably. He failed realize that the North would not accept arguments
favoring the South. Nor did he realize how sectionalism had realigned the
political parties. The problems of slavery had divided the nation. Nearing the
end of his term, Buchanan was unable to prevent the secession of seven slave
states of the Deep South and the formation of an independent government, the
Confederate States of America. The result was the American Civil War.
Buchanan was born the son of James and Elizabeth Speer Buchanan on April
23, 1791 in Cove Gap, Pennsylvania. His father was a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian
immigrant who became a successful storekeeper and landowner. He learned his love
of good books from his mother. Buchanan attended school in Mercersburg,
Pennsylvania studying Latin and Greek. At the age of 16 he entered Dickinson
College and graduated two years later in 1809. Upon graduation he studied law
and was admitted to the bar three years later. With a wide knowledge of the law
and a great ability as a public speaker, he was an immediate success as a lawyer
in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He moved freely in society and enjoyed the company
of women. In 1819 Buchanan was engaged to marry Ann Coleman, the daughter of a
wealthy Lancaster iron manufacturer. As the result of a quarrel, the engagement
was broken. Ann died soon after. A desolate Buchanan never married and became
the nation's only bachelor President.
Buchanan served as a volunteer in the defense of Baltimore, Maryland,
against the British during the War of 1812. After working as a lawyer for two
years Buchanan entered politics though his father advised him against it. He
held his first public office at the age of 23, when he was elected to the
Pennsylvania House of Representatives for the first of two terms. In 1820
Buchanan was elected to the United States House of Representatives serving for
ten years. He served first as a Federalist and then as a Jacksonian
Democrat. He emerged as the leader of the Amalgamation party, the dominant
faction of Pennsylvania Jacksonians.
After serving his ten years in the House of Representatives, Buchanan
planned to retire from politics, but Andrew Jackson, who had been elected
president in 1828, persuaded him to accept the post of diplomatic representative
to Russia in 1831. Buchanan served at Saint Petersburg, the capital of Russia,
from 1832 to 1833. During that time he negotiated the first commercial treaty
with Russia. Two years later he was elected United States Senator from
Pennsylvania. Re-elected twice, he served until 1845. At this time, Buchanan
took his stand on slavery, the most controversial issue of the day. He
maintained that slavery was morally wrong, but he also believed that the federal
government had an obligation to protect it in the Southern states where it
already existed. In this view he differed from the abolitionists, who demanded
an end to slavery and whom he despised as fanatics. Buchanan tolerated the
existence of slavery on the grounds that the Constitution of the United States
permitted it. Therefore, he argued that it was the duty of the federal
government to protect the institution of slavery wherever it existed in the
country.
In 1845 he became Secretary of State under President
James Polk. In this position he presided over the annexation of Texas,
helped settle the Oregon boundary dispute and tried to buy Cuba from Spain. He
retired from the office at the end of the Polk administration in 1849 and
returned to Wheatland, his newly purchased estate near Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
He was a strong contender for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1852,
but lost to Franklin Pierce. He supported Pierce in the campaign and was named
Minister to Great Britain. This ministry to London accomplished little but it
relieved him of any involvement in the current bitter controversy over the
Kansas-Nebraska Act. He joined United States ambassadors to Spain and France in
signing the Ostend Manifesto declaring American right to take Cuba by force
should efforts to purchase the island fail. This action increased Buchanan's
popularity at home because the nation was eager to pursue its "manifest
destiny" by acquiring more territory.
Buchanan returned from his diplomatic post in London to take part in the
Democratic National Convention of 1856. With the backing of his home state of
Pennsylvania, the second largest state in the Union, Buchanan's political
strength was formidable. His record of compromise on the slavery issue made him
acceptable to the South. Buchanan was unanimously nominated for president on the
17th ballot. John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky was nominated for Vice President.
Campaigning on a conservative platform he stressed his belief that Congress
should not interfere with slavery in the territories. His major opponent was the
Republican Party's first presidential candidate, John Charles Fremont. Former
President Millard Fillmore was the third
candidate, a nominee of both the American "Know Nothing" and
Whig parties. Buchanan won the election despite the fact the combined popular
vote of his two opponents was greater than his own. He received 174 electoral
and 1,832,955 popular votes and carried every slaveholding state except
Maryland. Support received in the South, and Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Indiana,
Illinois and California won Buchanan his election.
If viewed from a social aspect, the Buchanan administration would be
considered a success. Harriet Lane, his orphaned niece to whom he had been
appointed guardian, acted as his hostess and entertained brilliantly. However,
on the political front, his administration would be judged ineffective. The most
important issue during Buchanan's presidency was the growing division between
the North and the South over slavery. 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.
In his Inaugural Address he predicted that the pending decision would lay
to rest the question of slavery in the territories. Two days later Chief Justice
Roger B. Taney of the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the Dred Scott
Case. The decision asserted that Congress had no constitutional power to deprive
persons of their property rights in slaves without due process of law.
Southerners were delighted, but the decision created a furor in the North. The
decision made the breach between North and South wider, and thus brought the
nation closer to war. The President's difficulties multiplied with the
depression caused by the Panic of 1857 and with his support for the admission of
Kansas to the Union under the 1858 Lecompton Constitution as a slave state.
Buchanan angered the Republicans and alienated members of his own party. The
raid by John Brown at Harpers Ferry and Brown's execution by Virginia
authorities in 1859 intensified public feeling in both the South and the North.
The Democrats abandoned Buchanan in 1860 because it was obvious he could not
win. Split into Northern and Southern factions, each had its own presidential
candidate. Northern Democrats supported Stephen A. Douglas for President.
Southern Democrats chose Vice President John Brackinridge. This split secured
the election of Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln. Between the election and
the inauguration of Lincoln, Buchanan's administration reached a crisis. In his
last annual message to Congress on December 3, 1860, the president blamed the
abolitionists and the North's unrelenting agitation against the South for the
critical condition of the nation. He contended that the South asked only to be
let alone to manage its own affairs. Buchanan felt that secession was not a
remedy. However, seven Southern states seceded rather than accept the new
administration and Buchanan's Southern Cabinet members resigned to join the
Confederacy. Though Buchanan called the secession illegal, he took no action to
save the Union. He attempted to preserve peace by not provoking the
secessionists.
Injured by the resignations of his cabinet, he took a more militant
attack. In January 1861, Buchanan dispatched the steamer Star of the West with
reinforcements for besieged Fort Sumter. The ship was fired upon and driven
away. Buchanan abandoned all attempts to assist outposts in the South. Union war
supplies in the South were lost. Reverting to a policy of inactivity, Buchanan
eagerly waited for the expiration of his term on March 4, 1861. Under attack
from critics in both the North and the South for his compromise tactics,
Buchanan claimed that as president he could not have acted other than as he had.
President-elect Abraham Lincoln was
escorted to the ceremonies by Buchanan on inauguration day in March, after which
he then accompanied him to the executive mansion, the White House. He left
office disappointed and discredited and returned to the more peaceful atmosphere
of Wheatland and lived quietly until his death seven years later on June 1,
1868. Buchanan told his neighbors that he had parted from Lincoln with the
comment: "If you are as happy, my dear sir, on entering this house as I
am in leaving it and returning home, you are the happiest man in this
country." A well-intentioned and dignified Buchanan had the misfortune
of holding office during an extremely difficult period. His reputation is judged
mainly by his conduct during the last months of his presidency, and he is
therefore generally regarded as an ineffective executive.
BUCHANAN, James, fifteenth
president of the United States under the US Constitution, born near Mercersburg,
Pennsylvania, 23 April, 1791 ; died in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1 June. 1868.
The days of his youth were those of the nation's youth; his public career of
forty years saw all our great extensions of boundary on the south and west,
acquired from foreign powers, the admission of thirteen new states, the
development of many important questions of internal and foreign policy, and the
gradual rise and final culmination of a great and disastrous insurrection. He
was educated at a school in Mercersburg and at Dickinson College, Pennsylvania,
where he was graduated in 1809.
He began to practice law in Lancaster in 1812. His early political principles
were those of the federalists, who disapproved of the war; yet, as he himself
said, "he thought it was the duty of every patriot to defend the
country, while the war was raging, against a foreign enemy." His first
public address was made at the age of twenty-three, on the occasion of a popular
meeting in Lancaster after the capture of Washington by
the British in 1814. He urged the enlistment of volunteers for the defense of
Baltimore and was among the first to enroll his name. In October of the same
year he was elected to the house of representatives in the legislature of
Pennsylvania for Lancaster County. Peace was proclaimed early in 1815, and on 4
July Mr. Buchanan delivered an oration before the Washington association of
Lancaster. In it he spoke of the war as "glorious, in the highest
degree, to the American character, but disgraceful in the extreme to the
administration." The speech excited much criticism, and in later life
he said that "it contained many sentiments which he regretted, but that
at the same time it could not be denied that the country was wholly unprepared
for war at the period of its declaration, and the attempt to carry it on by
means of loans, without any resort to taxation, had well nigh made the
government bankrupt."
He was again elected to the legislature in October, 1815, and at the close of
that session he retired to the practice of his profession, in which he gained
early distinction, especially in the impeachment of a judge, whom he
successfully defended. His intention at this time was not to reenter public
life, but the death of a young lady to whom he was engaged caused him to seek
change and distraction of thought, and he accepted a nomination to congress, and
was elected in 1820 for a district composed of the counties of Lancaster, York,
and Dauphin, taking his seat in December, 1821. He was called a federalist, but
the party distinctions of that time were not very clearly defined, and Mr.
Buchanan's political principles, as a national statesman, were yet to be formed.
Mr. Monroe had become president in 1817, and held that office during two terms,
his administration being called "the era. of good feeling." The
excitement and animosities of the war of 1812 had subsided, and when Mr.
Buchanan entered congress there was no sectionalism to disturb the repose of the
country. Questions of internal policy soon arose, however, and he took an able
part in many important debates. Mr. Monroe's veto
of a bill imposing tolls for the support of the Cumberland road, for which Mr.
Buchanan had voted, produced a strong effect upon the latter's constitutional
views. It was the first time that his mind had been brought sharply to the
consideration of the question in what mode "internal improvements"
can be effected by the general government, and consequently he began to perceive
the dividing line between the federal and the state powers.
Mr. Buchanan remained in the house of representatives ten years--during Mr.
Monroe's second term, through the administration of John
Quincy Adams, and during the first two years of Jackson's
administration. In December, 1829, he became chairman of the judiciary
committee of the house, and as such introduced a bill to amend and extend the
judicial system of the United States, by including in the circuit-court system
six new states, and by increasing the number of judges of the Supreme Court to
nine. His speech in explanation of this measure--which was not adopted at the
time--was as important as any that has been made upon the subject. Another
measure, evincing a thorough knowledge and very accurate views of the nature of
our mixed system of government, was a minority report, presented by him as
chairman of this committee, against a proposition to repeal the 25th section of
the judiciary act of 1789, which gave the Supreme Court appellate jurisdiction,
by writ of error to the state courts, in eases where the constitution, treaties,
and laws of the United States are drawn in question. This report caused the
rejection of the bill by a vote of 138 to 51.
During Mr. Adams's term the friends of the administration began to take the
name of national republicans, while the opposing party assumed the name of
democrats. Mr. Buchanan was one of the leaders of the opposition in the house of
representatives. He was always a strong supporter and warm personal friend of
General Jackson. At the close of the 21st congress in March. 1831, it was Mr.
Buchanan's wish to retire from public life, but, at the request of General
Jackson (who had become president in 1829), he accepted the mission to Russia.
He embarked from New York in a sailing-vessel on 8 April, 1832, and arrived at
St. Petersburg about the middle of June. The chief objects of his mission were
the negotiation of a commercial treaty that should promote an increase of the
commerce between Russia and the United States by regulating the duties to be
levied on the merchandise of each country by the other so far as to prevent
undue discrimination in favor of the products of other countries ; to provide
for the residence and functions of consuls, etc. ; and also the negotiation of a
treaty respecting the maritime rights of neutral nations on the principle that
"free ships make free goods." The Russian minister for foreign
affairs at this time was Count Nesselrode. He favored the treaty of commerce,
and, though there was much opposition to it from some members of the Russian
ministry, it was finally concluded on 18 December, 1832. The negotiation
concerning a treaty on maritime rights was not successful, because, as Mr.
Buchanan wrote, "Russia is endeavoring to manage England at present, and
this is an unpropitious moment to urge her to adopt principles of public law
which would give offence to that nation, and which would in any way abridge her
own belligerent rights."
His attractive manners and evident sincerity of character produced their
effect on the Russians, especially the emperor and empress ; and he wrote home :
"I flatter myself that a favorable change has been effected in his [the
emperor's feelings toward the United States since my arrival" : and at
his audience of leave the emperor told him to tell General Jackson to send him
another minister exactly like himself. He wrote to President Jackson : "Your
foreign policy has had no small influence on public opinion throughout
Europe." Of Russia and the emperor Mr. Buchanan wrote:" There
is no freedom of the press, no public opinion, and but little political
conversation, and that very much guarded; in short, we live in the calm of
despotism, though the Emperor Nicholas [I.] is one of the best of despots.
Coming abroad can teach an American no other lesson but to love his country, its
institutions, and its laws better, much better than he did before. I have not
yet learned to submit patiently to the drudgery of etiquette. Foreign ministers
must drive a carriage and four with a postilion."
He left St. Petersburg on 8 August, 1833, spent a short time in Paris and
London, and reached home in November. The next year was spent in private
occupations in Lancaster, except that he was one of the commissioners appointed
by Pennsylvania to arrange with commissioners from New Jersey concerning the use
of the waters of Delaware river. On 6 December, 1834, the legislature of
Pennsylvania elected him to the United States senate to succeed Mr. Wilkins, who
had been appointed minister to Russia. This office was acknowledged by Mr.
Buchanan afterward to be "the only public station he desired to
occupy." He took his seat December 15. He held very strongly the
doctrine of instruction, that is, the right of a state legislature to direct the
vote of a senator of the state in congress, and the duty of the senator to obey.
There has never been a period in the history of the senate when more real power
of debate was displayed, or when public measures were more thoroughly
considered, than at this time.
President Jackson's celebrated proclamation against nullification, and his
removal of the public deposits from the bank of the United States into certain
selected state banks, had been made during Mr. Buchanan's residence abroad.
Jackson enjoyed great popularity and influence throughout the country, but a
large majority of the senate were opposed to his financial measures. This
opposing party, the old "national republicans" of John Quincy
Adams's administration, were now called Whigs, and included Mr. Clay, Mr.
Webster, Mr. Clayton, of Delaware, Mr. Ewing, of Ohio, and Mr. Frelinghuysen and
Mr. Southard, of New Jersey. Among the Jackson men, or democrats, were Mr.
Buchanan, Mr. Wright, of New York, Mr. Benton, of Missouri, and Mr. King, of
Alabama. Mr. Calhoun stood apart from both the political parties, a great and
powerful debater who had been vice-president, and who was now senator from the "nullifying"
state of South Carolina. One of the first debates in which Mr. Buchanan took
part in the senate (and one that has not yet lost its interest) was upon a bill
requiring the president, when making a nomination to fill a vacancy occasioned
by the removal of any officer, to state the fact of such removal and to render
reasons for it. Mr. Buchanan opposed it. He contended that the constitution only
made the consent of the senate necessary in the appointment of officers by the
executive, not in their removal; that, if such consent were required, long and
dangerous delays might occur when the senate was not in session ; and that, if
the president must assign reasons for removals, these reasons must be
investigated, much time would be consumed, and the legislative branch of the
government would thus exercise functions to which it has no claim.
Another great discussion into which Mr. Buchanan entered related to the
refusal of the legislative chambers of France to pay a certain sum that had been
promised in 1831 by a convention between the United States and the government of
King Louis Philippe for the liquidation of certain claims of American citizens
against France. The United States waited three years in vain for the payment of
this money; and finally, in January, 1836, the president recommended to congress
a parties non-intercourse with France. Mr. Buchanan made a long and earnest
speech, contending against Webster and Clay,
in support of this measure, insisting that "there is a point in the
intercourse between nations at which diplomacy must end and a nation must either
consent to abandon her rights or assert them by force." There was some
danger for a time of war with France, but eventually Great Britain made an offer
of mediation and the difficulty was amicably adjusted. In January, 1837, Mr.
Buchanan delivered a speech that may be regarded as his ablest effort in the
senate. It was in support of Col. Benton's "expunging"
resolution, which proposed to cancel in the journal of the senate Mr. Clay's
resolution of censure against President Jackson for his removal of the public
deposits from the bank of the United States.
In this argument Mr. Buchanan separated, in a remarkable degree, that which
was personal and partisan in the controversy from the serious questions
involved. He contended that the censure passed by the senate in 1834 upon the
president was unjust, because he had violated no law; and that the senate, in
recording such a mere censure, adopted in its legislative capacity, had rendered
itself incompetent to perform its high judicial function of impeachment. He
concluded with a very ingenious and elaborate criticism of the word "expunge."
The "expunging" resolution was adopted by a party vote.
Toward the end of Jackson's administration the subject of slavery began to be
pressed upon the attention of congress by petitions for its abolition in the
District of Columbia. Mr. Buchanan himself from some Quakers in his own state
presented one memorial on this subject. Mr. Calhoun and others objected to the
reception of these petitions.
Mr. Buchanan, though he disapproved of slavery, yet contended that congress
had no power under the constitution to interfere with slavery within those
states where it existed, and that it would be very unwise to abolish it in the
District of Columbia--" a district carved out of two slave-holding
states and surrounded by them on all sides"; but, nevertheless, he also
contended, in a long and forcible speech, for the people's right of petition and
the duty of congress, save under exceptional circumstances, to receive their
petitions. In June, 1836, Mr. Buchanan argued, against Mr. Webster, for a bill,
introduced in conformity with a special recommendation from President Jackson,
prohibiting the circulation through the mails of incendiary publications on the
subject of slavery. In a very sarcastic speech against a bill to prevent the
interference of certain federal officers with elections, even in conversation,
Mr. Buchanan thus expressed his political faith : "I support the
president because he is in favor of a strict and limited construction of the
constitution, according to the true spirit of the Virginia and Kentucky
resolutions. I firmly believe that if this government is to remain powerful and
permanent it can only be by never assuming doubtful powers which must
necessarily bring it into collision with the states. I oppose the Whig party,
because, according to their reading of the constitution, congress possesses, and
they think ought to exercise, powers which would endanger the rights of the
states and the liberties of the people."
The most important and far-reaching of President Jackson's executive measures
was his veto in 1832 of a bill for renewing the charter of the bank of the
United States. Jackson removed the national deposits into certain state banks,
which produced financial distress throughout the land. Mr. Buchanan was
conspicuous in the senate as a supporter of Jackson's financial policy
throughout his administration and that of his successor, Mr. Van Buren, of the
same party. Mr. Buchanan had been reelected to the senate in January, 1837, by a
very large vote and for a full term, his first election having been to a
vacancy, and he was the first person that had ever received a second election
from the legislature of Pennsylvania. In 1839 Mr. Van Buren offered Mr. Buchanan
the attorney generalship, which Mr. Grundy had resigned. Mr. Buchanan answered
that he "preferred his position as a senator from Pennsylvania; that
nothing could induce him to waive this preference except a sense of public duty,
and that he felt that he could render a more efficient support to the
principles" of the administration "on the floor of the senate
than he could in an executive office."
The great commercial distress of the country produced, in the elections of
1840, a political revolution, and on 4 March, 1841, the Whigs came into power
under President Harrison. His death in April placed in the executive chair Mr.
Tyler, who proved to be opposed to a national bank, and vetoed two bills : the
first for a national bank, and the second for a "Fiscal Corporation of
the United States." Mr. Clay made frequent attacks upon Mr. Tyler's
vetoes, and even proposed a joint resolution for an amendment of the
constitution requiring but a bare majority, instead of two thirds, of each house
of congress to pass a bill over the president's objections. Mr. Buchanan, on 2
February, 1842, replied to Mr. Clay in a speech that may be ranked very high as
an exposition of one of the most important parts of our political system. He
showed that the president's veto was the people's safeguard, through the omcer
who "more nearly represents a majority of the whole people than any
other branch of the government," against the encroachments of the
senate. The veto power "owes its existence," said he, "to
a revolt of the people of Rome against the tyrannical decrees of the Roman
senate. The president of the United States, elected by his fellow-citizens to
the highest official trust in the country, is directly responsible to them for
the manner in which he shall discharge his duties; and he will not array
himself, by the exercise of the veto power, against a majority in both houses of
congress, unless in extreme eases, where, from strong convictions of public
duty, he may be willing to draw down upon himself their hostility."
Mr. Buchanan was one of those that opposed the ratification of the treaty
with England negotiated by Mr. Webster and Lord Ashburton in 1842. In 1843 he
was elected to the senate for a third term, and in 1844 his name was brought
forward as the democratic candidate of Pennsylvania for the presidential
nomination; but before the national convention met he withdrew in order that the
whole strength of the party might be concentrated upon one candidate. James
K. Polk was elected; he asked Mr. Buchanan to become his secretary of state,
and the invitation was accepted. In this responsible position Mr. Buchanan had
two very important questions to deal with, and they required the exercise of all
his political tact and indefatigable industry. One was the settlement of the
boundary between the territory of Oregon and the British
possessions.
The other was the annexation of Texas, which resulted in the Mexican war.
Texas had been for nine years independent of Mexico, and now sought admission
into our union. The difficulties that attended this question were, on the one
hand, the danger of increasing the excitement, already considerable, against
slavery (for Texas would be a slave-holding state); and, on the other, the
danger of interference on the part of England if Texas should remain independent
and resume her war with Mexico. The adoption by Texas of the basis of annexation
proposed by the United States was followed by the refusal of the Mexican
government to receive Mr. Slidell, sent by Mr. Polk as envoy extraordinary, with
the object of avoiding a war and to settle all questions between the two
countries, including the western boundary of Texas. The result of the Mexican
war was the cession to the United States of California and New Mexico and the
final settlement of the Texan boundary. The policy of Mr. Polk's administration
toward the states of Central America and on the subject of the Monroe doctrine
was shaped by Mr. Buchanan very differently from that adopted by the succeeding
administration of General Taylor, whose
secretary of state was Mr. Clayton, the American negotiator of the Clayton-Bulwer
treaty with Great Britain.
Acting under Mr. Buchanan's advice, President Polk, in his first annual
message, in December. 1845, reasserted the Monroe
doctrine that no European nation should henceforth be allowed by the United
States to plant any colony on the American continent or to interfere in any way
in American affairs. This declaration was intended to frustrate the attempts of
England to obtain a footing; in the then Mexican province of California by an
extensive system of colonization. England's aims were defeated for the time. Two
years afterward, when the Mexican war was drawing to a close, Mr. Buchanan
turned the attention of President Polk to the encroachments of the British
government in Central America, under the operation of a protectorate over the
kingdom of the Mosquito Indians. Great disturb-antes followed in Yucatan, and
the Indians began a war of extermination against the whites. If not actually
incited by the British authorities, the savages were known to be supplied with
British muskets. The whites were reduced to such extremities that the
authorities of Yucatan offered to transfer the dominion and sovereignty of the
peninsula to the United States, as a consideration for defending it against the
Indians, at the same time giving notice that if this offer should be declined
they would make the same proposition to England and Spain. The president
recommended to congress the appeal of Yucatan, but declined to recommend the
adoption of any measure with a view to acquire the dominion and sovereignty over
the peninsula.
In April, 1848, the United States appointed a charge d'affaires to
Guatemala, and Mr. Buchanan instructed him to " promote, by his counsel
and advice, should suitable occasions offer, the reunion of the states that
formed the federation of Central America; to cultivate the most friendly
relations with Guatemala and the other states of Central America; and to
communicate to the state department all the information obtainable concerning
the British encroachments upon the Mosquito kingdom." The new charge
was prevented from reaching Guatemala until late in Mr. Polk's administration,
and the plan wisely conceived by Mr. Buchanan was not carried out. In the mean
time the British government seized upon the port of San Juan de Nicaragua, the
only good harbor along the coast. Instead of carrying out the policy of
President Polk and Buchanan, the administration of President Taylor, without
consulting the states of Central America entered in 1850 into the Clayton-Bulwer
treaty, the ambiguous language of which soon gave rise to such complications and
misunderstandings between England and the United States that Mr. Buchanan was
obliged to go, subsequently, as minister to London, to endeavor to unravel them.
Instead of a simple provision requiring Great Britain absolutely to recede from
the Mosquito protectorate, and to restore to Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica
their respective territories, the treaty declared that neither of the parties
should "make use of any protection which either affords or may afford,
or any alliance which either has or may have, to or with any state or people,
for the purpose of erecting or maintaining any fortifications, or of occupying,
fortifying, or colonizing any part of Central America, or of assuming or
exercising any dominion over the same." It soon became the British
construction of this clause that it recognized the existence of the Mosquito
protectorate for all purposes other than those expressly prohibited; and down to
the time when President Pierce as minister sent Mr. Buchanan to England this
claim was still maintained.
On the accession of the Whig party to power under Taylor, in March, 1849, Mr.
Buchanan retired for a time from official life. His home, from the age of
eighteen, had been the City of Lancaster, where he owned a house. In the autumn
of 1848 he purchased a small estate of twenty-two acres, known as Wheatland,
about a mile from the town. The house was a substantial brick mansion, and, on
Mr. Buchanan's retirement from the cabinet, this became his permanent abode when
he was not occupying an official residence in London or in Washington. Mr.
Buchanan never married. The death of the lady whom he had intended to marry was
a deep and lasting sorrow. The loss of his sister, Mrs. Lane, in 1839, and of
her husband two years later, gave him the care of their four children; and the
youngest of these, afterward widely known as Miss Harriet Lane, became an inmate
of his household. James Buchanan Henry, the son of another sister, who died
about the same time, was also taken into his family; and their uncle with the
most wise and affectionate care brought up these two cousins.
Mr. Buchanan's letters to his niece, begun when she was a school-girl, and,
after Miss Lane had grown up, written almost daily during her absences from him,
give a charming picture of his private life. During the few years of Mr.
Buchanan's unofficial life, passed chiefly at Wheatland, he does not appear to
have devoted much time to the law. His correspondence was large; and this, with
a constant and lively interest m public affairs, rendered him, even in
retirement, very busy. He lent considerable influence to his party as a private
individual; but purely partisan feeling did not mark his exertions. He
strenuously opposed the Wihnot proviso, which aimed at excluding slavery from
all newly acquired territory; and favored Mr. Clay's "Compromise
Measures of 1850," which provided for the admission of California as a
free state, and the abolition of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia;
but, by the fugitive slave law, secured the return to their owners of slaves
that had escaped into free states. He wrote many influential public letters, in
one of which he declared that "two things are necessary to preserve the
union from danger: 1. Agitation in the north on the subject of southern slavery
must be rebuked and put down by a strong and enlightened public opinion; 2. The
fugitive slave law must be enforced in its spirit."
In the presidential election of 1852 Mr. Buchanan was a candidate for the
democratic nomination; but General Franklin Pierce
received the nomination and was elected. The most important service rendered by
Mr. Buchanan to his party in this election--and with him a service to his party
was alike a service to his country--was a speech made at Greensburg,
Pennsylvania, in October, 1852, in opposition to the election of General Scott,
the Whig candidate. This speech exhibited in a very clear light the whole
political history of that period, and asserted a principle which he said ought
to be an article of democratic faith : "Beware of elevating to the
highest civil trust the commander of your victorious armies," drawing a
distinction between one "who had been a man of war, and nothing but a
man of war from his youth upward," and such as had been "soldiers
only in the day and hour of danger, when the country had demanded their
services, and who had already illustrated high civil appointments"; and
then criticizing exhaustively each of General Scott's avowed political opinions,
and quoting Mr. Thurlow Weed, " one of General Scott's most able
supporters," as acknowledging that "there was weakness in all
Scott said or did about the presidency."
When in 1853 Franklin Pierce, became president, he appointed Mr. Buchanan
minister to England. Buchanan, though social in his nature, was a man of simple
republican tastes, and the formality and etiquette of life at a foreign court,
never agreeable, now, at the age of sixty-two, appeared to him particularly
distasteful; besides, he considered that his duty to his young relatives as well
as to his only surviving brother, a clergyman in delicate health, required his
presence at home. But with Mr. Buchanan duty to his country always outweighed
every other consideration, and Mr. Pierce's urgent appeal to him to accept what
was at that time a very important mission, at length prevailed. Mr. Buchanan
sailed for England from New York on 5 August, 1853, and landed in Liverpool on
the 17th. There were three important questions to be settled with England at
this time: the first related to the fisheries; the second was the desire of
England to establish reciprocal free trade in certain enumerated articles
between the United States and the British North American provinces, and thus
preserve their allegiance and ward off the danger of their annexation to the
United States; and this Mr. Buchanan was very desirous to use as a powerful
lever to secure the third point, which the United States earnestly desired,
viz., the withdrawal of all British dominion in Central America, and the
recognition of the Monroe doctrine, which the Clayton-Bulwer treaty had not
firmly established.
President Pierce considered it best that the reciprocity and fishery
questions should be settled at Washington; but Mr. Buchanan was entrusted with
the negotiation of the Central American question in London. Mr. Buchanan's main
object was to develop and ascertain the precise differences between the two
governments in regard to the construction of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, but the
Crimean war so long delayed the negotiations with this country that nothing
could be accomplished while he remained in England. As the war approached, and
when it was finally declared, the principles of neutrality, privateering, and
many other topics came within the range of the discussion; and it was very much
in consequence of the views expressed by Mr. Buchanan to Lord Clarendon, and by
the latter communicated to the British cabinet, that the course of England
toward neutrals during that war became what it was. When Lord Clarendon, in
1854, presented to Mr. Buchanan a project for a treaty between Great Britain,
France, and the United States, making it piracy for neutrals to serve on board
of privateers cruising against the commerce of either of the three nations when
such nation was a belligerent, the very impressive reasons that Mr. Buchanan
opposed to it caused it to be abandoned.
An American minister at the English court, at periods of exciting and
critical questions between the two nations, is very likely to experience a
considerable variation in the social barometer. But the strength of Mr.
Buchanan's character, and the agreeable personal qualities which were in him
united with the gravity of years and an experience of a very uncommon kind,
overcame at all times any tendency to social unpleasantness that might have been
caused by national feelings excited by temporary causes. Throughout his
residence in England Mr. Buchanan was treated with marked attention, not only by
society in general, but by the queen and the prince consort. Miss Lane joined
him in the spring of 1854, and remained with him until the autumn of 1855. Mr.
Buchanan arrived in New York in April, 1856, and there met with a public
reception from the authorities and people of the City, that evinced the interest
that now began to be everywhere manifested in him as the probable future
president.
Prior to the meeting of the national democratic convention at Cincinnati in
June, 1856, there was lack of organization on the part of Mr. Buchanan's
political friends; and Mr. Buchanan himself, though willing to accept the
nomination, made no efforts to secure it, and did not believe that he would
receive it. The rival claimants were President Pierce and Senator Douglas of
Illinois. Chiefly through the efforts of Mr. Slidell, Mr. Buchanan was
nominated. By this time the Whig party had disappeared, the old party lines were
obliterated, and the main political issue had come to be the question of slavery
or no slavery in the territories. The anti-slavery party now called themselves
republicans, and their candidate was General Fremont.
The result of the election shows, with great distinctness, the following
facts: 1. That Mr. Buchanan was chosen president because he received the
electoral votes of the five free states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Indiana,
Illinois, and California (sixty-two in all), and that without them he could not
have been elected. 2. That his southern vote (that of every slave-holding state
excepting Maryland) was partly given to him because of his conservative opinions
and position, and partly because the candidate for the vice-presidency, Mr.
Breckinridge, was a southern man. 3. That General Fremont received the electoral
vote of no southern state, and that this was due partly to the character of the
Republican Party, and partly to the fact that the republican candidate for the
vice-presidency, Mr. Dayton, of New Jersey, was a citizen of a non-slaveholding
state. General Fremont himself was nominally a citizen of California. This
election, therefore, foreshadowed the sectional division that would be almost
certain to happen in the next one if the four years of Mr. Buchanan's
administration should not witness a subsidence in the sectional feelings between
the north and the south. It would only be necessary for the republicans to wrest
from the Democratic Party the five free states that had voted for Mr. Buchanan,
and they would elect the president in 1860. Whether this was to happen would
depend upon the ability of the Democratic Party to avoid a rupture into factions
that would themselves be representatives of irreconcilable dogmas on the subject
of slavery in the territories. Hence it is that Mr. Buchanan's course as
president, for the first three years of his term, is to be judged with
refer-once to the responsibility that was upon him so to conduct the government
as to disarm, if possible, the antagonism of section to section. His
administration of affairs after the election of Mr.
Lincoln is to be judged simply by his duty as the executive in the most
extraordinary and anomalous crisis in which the country had ever been placed.
Mr. Buchanan was inaugurated on 4 March, 1857. The cabinet, which was
confirmed by the senate on 6 March, consisted of Lewis Cass, of Michigan,
secretary of state; Howell Cobb, of Georgia, secretary of the treasury: John
Floyd, of Virginia, secretary of war; Isaac Toucey, of Connecticut, secretary of
the navy; Aaron V. Brown, of Tennessee, postmaster-general; Jacob Thompson, of
Mississippi, secretary of the interior; and Jeremiah S. Black, of Pennsylvania,
attorney general. The internal affairs of the country during Buchanan's
administration occupied so much of the public attention at the time, and have
since been a subject of so much interest, that his management of our foreign
relations has been quite obscured. The wisdom displayed in this branch of his
duties was such as might have been expected from one who had had his previous
experience in the state department and in important diplomatic posts. His only
equals in the executive office in this respect have been Mr.
Jefferson and Mr. John Quincy Adams.
During an administration fraught with the most serious hazards to the
internal relations of the states with each other, he kept steadily in view the
preservation of peace and good will between the United States and Great Britain,
while he abated nothing from our just claims or our national dignity. He left to
his successor no unsettled question between these two nations that was of any
immediate importance, and he also left the feeling between them and their
respective governments in a far better condition than he found it on his
accession to the presidency. The long-standing and dangerous question of British
dominion in Central America, in the hope of settling which Mr. Buchanan had
accepted the mission to England, was still pending, but it was at length
amicably and honorably settled, under his advice and approbation after he became
president, by treaties between Great Britain and the two Central American
states, in accordance with the American construction of the Clayton-Bulwer
treaty.
President Buchanan removed another subject of contention that had long
existed between the two countries in a summary and dignified way. The
belligerent right of search had been exercised by Great Britain in the maritime war
of 1812. In process of time she undertook to assert a right to detain and
search, on the high seas, in time of peace, merchantmen suspected of being
engaged in the slave-trade. In 1858 she dispatched some cruisers with such
orders to the coast of Cuba and the Gulf of Mexico. President Buchanan, always
vigilant in protecting the commerce of the country, but mindful of the
importance of preventing any necessity for war, remonstrated to the English
government against this violation of the freedom of the seas. Then he sent a
large naval force to the neighborhood of Cuba with instructions "to
protect all vessels of the United States on the high seas from search or
detention by the vessels of war of any other nation." The effect was
most salutary. The British government receded, abandoned the claim of the right
of search, and recognized the principle of international law in favor of the
freedom of the seas.
During the whole of Mr. Buchanan's administration our relations with Mexico
were in a complicated and critical position, in consequence of the internal
condition of that country and of the danger of interference by European powers.
Great outrages were committed in Mexico upon our citizens and their property,
and their claims against that government exceeded $10,000,000. Mr. Buchanan
recommended to congress to send assistance to the constitutional government in
Mexico, which had been forcibly superseded by military rule, but which still
held the allegiance of the majority of the people, and to enforce redress for
the wrongs of our citizens. He saw very clearly that, unless active measures
should be taken by the government of the United States to reach a power with
which a settlement of all claims and difficulties could be effected, some other
nation would undertake to establish a government in Mexico, and the United
States would then have to interfere, not only to secure the rights of their
citizens, but to assert the principle of the Monroe doctrine. He also instructed
the Mexican minister, Mr. McLane, to make a "Treaty of Transit and
Commerce" and a "convention to enforce treaty stipulations, and
to maintain order and security in the territory of the republics of Mexico and
the United States." But congress took no notice of the president's
recommendation, and refused to ratify the treaty and the convention. Mexico was
left to the interference of Louis Napoleon; the establishment of an empire,
under Maximilian, followed, for the embarrassment of President Lincoln's
administration while we were in the throes of our civil war, and the claims of
American citizens were to all appearance indefinitely postponed.
Our relations with Spain were also in a very unsatisfactory condition at the
beginning of Mr. Buchanan's term. There were many just claims of our citizens
against the Spanish government for injuries received in Cuba, and Mr. Buchanan
succeeded in having a "convention concluded at Madrid in 1860,
establishing a joint commission for the final adjudication and payment of all
the claims of the respective parties." The senate refused to ratify
this convention also, probably because of the intense excitement against
slavery, the convention having authorized the presenting before the
commissioners of a Spanish claim against the United States for the value of
certain slaves. In the settlement of claims against the government of Paraguay
the president's firm policy was seconded by congress, and he was authorized to
send a commissioner to that country accompanied by "a naval force
sufficient to exact justice should negotiation fail." This was entirely
successful ; full indemnification was obtained without any resort to arms. Mr.
Buchanan's negotiations with China, conducted through William born Reed as
minister, were also successful; a treaty was concluded in 1858, which
established very satisfactory commercial relations with that country and secured
the liquidation of all claims.
June 22, 1860, Mr. Buchanan vetoed a bill "to secure homesteads to
actual settlers in the public domain, and for other purposes." The
other purposes contemplated donations to the states. The ground of the veto was
that the power "to dispose of" the territory of the United
States did not authorize congress to donate public lands to the states for their
domestic purposes. In the senate the bill failed to receive the two thirds
majority necessary to pass it over the veto. In internal affairs the preceding
administration of President Pierce had left a legacy of trouble to his successor
in the repeal of the Missouri compromise, which was followed by a terrible
period of lawlessness and bloodshed in Kansas, under what was called "squatter
sovereignty," the slavery and the anti-slavery parties among the
settlers struggling for supremacy. The pro-slavery party sustained the
territorial government and obtained control of its legislature. The anti-slavery
party repudiated this legislature and held a convention a Topeka to institute an
opposition government. Congress had recognized the authority of the territorial
government, and Mr. Buchanan, as president had no alternative but to recognize
and uphold it also. The fact that the legislature of that government was in the
hands of the pro-slavery party made the course he adopted seem as if he favored
their pro-slavery designs, while, in truth, he had no object to subserve but to
sustain, as he was officially obliged to sustain, the government that congress
had recognized as the lawful government of the territory.
Now, throughout the north, the press and the pulpit began to teem with
denunciations of the new president, who had not allowed revolutionary violence
to prevail over the law of the land, and this was kept up throughout his
administration. The anti-slavery party gained ground, and the election of 1860
resulted in the triumph of Mr. Lincoln. Mr. Buchanan was a conservative and
far-seeing man, who, though opposed to slavery, believed that the blind and
fanatical interference of the northern abolitionists in the domestic affairs of
the southern states would excite the latter in a manner dangerous to the peace
and prosperity of the union. His messages constantly recommended conciliatory
legislative measures; but congress paid no attention to his advice. Finally the
election of Mr. Lincoln was seized upon as the signal in South Carolina for the
breaking out of her old doctrine of secession. She passed her ordinance
of secession on 20 December, 1860. Mr. Buchanan never for a moment admitted
that a state had any power to secede from the union. South Carolina had once and
forever adopted and ratified the constitution of the United States, and he
maintained that she had by this act permanently resigned certain powers to the
federal government, and that she could not, by her own will and without the
consent of the other states, resume those powers and declare herself
independent. She could, if actually oppressed by the general government, seek to
redress her wrongs by revolution; but never by secession. He refused to receive,
in their assumed official capacity, the commissioners sent by South Carolina, in
December, 1860, to treat with him as with a foreign power.
In October, 1860, before the election, Mr. Buchanan received from General
Scott, the general-in-chief of the army, a communication saying that, in the
event of Mr. Lincoln's election, General Scott anticipated that there would be a
secession of one or more of the southern states; and that, from the general
rashness of the southern character, there was danger of a "preliminary"
seizure of certain southern forts. This paper became known as "General
Scott's Views." It was the foundation, at a later period, of a charge
that President Buchanan had been warned by General Scott of the danger of
leaving the southern forts without sufficient garrisons to prevent surprises,
and that he had neglected this warning. Mr. Buchanan, who had publicly denied
the right of secession, could not furnish the southern states with any
justification of such a proceeding by prematurely reinforcing the forts as if he
anticipated secession. But, even if the president had wished to adopt such a
measure, there were, as General Scott himself said, but five companies of
regular troops, or 400 men, available for the garrisoning of nine fortifications
in six highly excited southern states. The remainder of the army was scattered
over the western plains. Scott's views were clearly impracticable, and produced
no impression upon the president's mind. Mr. Buchanan has been often and
severely reproached for a "temporizing policy" and a want of
such vigor as might have averted the civil war; but the policy of Mr. Lincoln's
administration, until after the attack on Fort Sumter, was identical with that
of Mr. Buchanan.
In his annual message of 5 December, 1860, Mr. Buchanan stated clearly and
forcibly his denial of the right of secession, and also his conviction that if a
state should adopt such an unconstitutional measure the federal government had
no power, under the constitution, to make aggressive war upon her to compel her
to remain in the union; but at the same time drawing a definite distinction
between this and the right of the use of force against individuals, in spite of
secession, in enforcing the execution of federal laws and in the preservation of
federal property. This doctrine met the secessionists upon their own ground; for
it denied that a state ordinance of secession could absolve its people from
obeying the laws of the United States. Mr. Buchanan thus framed the only
justifiable basis of a civil war, and left upon the records of the country the
clear line of demarcation that would have to be observed by his successor and
would make the use of force, if force must be used, a war, not of aggression,
but of defense.
In order to disarm all unreasonable opposition from the south, Mr. Buchanan
urged upon congress the adoption of an "explanatory amendment"
of the constitution, which should effectually secure to slave-holders all their
constitutional rights. From all parts of the country, north and south, he
received private letters approving, on various grounds, the tone of the message;
but nearly the whole of the Republican Party saw fit to treat it as a denial by
the president of any power to enforce the laws against the citizens of a state
after secession, and even after actual rebellion; while this very power,
emphatically stated as it was in the message, was made by the secessionists
their ground of attack. It was the great misfortune of Mr. Buchanan's position
that he had to appeal to a congress in which there were two sectional parties
breathing mutual defiance; in which broad and patriotic statesmanship was
confined to a small body of men, who could not win over to their views a
sufficient number from either of the parties to make up a majority upon any
proposition whatever. In the hope of preventing the secession of South
Carolina., the president sent Caleb Cushing to Charleston, with a letter to
Governor Pickens, urging the people of the state to await the action of
congress.
After the actual secession of South Carolina, Mr. Buchanan's two great
objects were: 1. To confine the area of secession, so that if there was to be a
southern confederacy it might comprehend only the cotton states, which were most
likely to act together. 2. To induce congress to prepare for a civil war in case
one should be precipitated. While he made it apparent to congress that at that
time he was without the necessary executive powers to enforce the collection of
the revenue in South Carolina, he did not fail to call for the appropriate
powers and means. But at no time during that session did a single republican
senator (and the republicans had a majority in the senate), in any form
whatever, give his vote or his influence for any measure that would strengthen
the hands of the president either in maintaining peace or in executing the laws
of the United States. Whatever was the governing motive for their inaction, it
never can be said that the president did not seasonably warn them that a policy
of inaction would be fatal. That policy not only crippled him, but crippled his
successor. When Mr. Lincoln came into office, seven states had already seceded,
and not a single law had been put upon the statute-book that would enable the
executive to meet such a condition of the union.
Mr. Crittenden, of Kentucky, had introduced into the senate a resolution,
which became known as the "Crittenden Compromise," providing in
substance for a restoration of the Missouri compromise-line of 36° 30': and it
was proposed that this question should be referred to a direct vote of the
people in the several states. On 8 January, 1861, Mr. Buchanan sent a special
message to congress, strongly recommending the adoption of this measure; but it
produced no effect. During the last three months of his term there were several
changes in his cabinet. Mr. Cobb resigned his portfolio on 8 December, 1860, and
Mr. Thomas, who succeeded him as secretary of the treasury, also resigned on 11
January, their sympathies being with the secessionists. General John A. Dix then
took this department. Mr. Thompson, secretary of the interior, resigned on 8
January, also because he was a southern man, and the duties of this office were
subsequently performed by Moses Kelly, chief clerk. General Cass and Governor
Floyd resigned their offices in December; Judge Black was transferred from the
attorney generalship to the state department, and Edwin M. Stanton became
attorney general. Joseph Holt succeeded Sen. Floyd in the war department.
The two critical questions which it was important that the president should
correctly and consistently decide were, whether he was to receive in their
assumed official character any commissioners sent by the southern states as to a
foreign power, and whether re-enforcements should be sent to Maj. Anderson at
Fort Sumter, or to any other southern fort. Mr. Buchanan always refused to
receive both the South Carolina commissioners and also Mr. Crawford, the first
of the commissioners from the confederate government at Montgomery, who arrived
in Washington just before the close of his term; he thus left the new president
entirely free to act as he saw best, and entirely untrammeled by any previous
pledges. As to re-enforcements for southern forts, Maj. Anderson was instructed
to report to the government any necessity for assistance, and in the mean time
an expedition was fitted out at New York and held in readiness to sail at an
hour's notice. Until the Nose of Mr. Buchanan's administration, Maj.
Anderson considered himself sufficiently strong, and agreed with the
president that any unnecessary movement of troops would be regarded by the south
as a menace and would provoke hostilities. Mr. Buchanan would not initiate a
civil war; his policy was entirely defensive ; and yet he did all that he could,
constitutionally, to avert a war.
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