The Gentleman from Pennsylvania

In the chill of the Allegheny foothills, in a place with the flinty name of Stony Batter, James Buchanan was born on April 23, 1791. He came into the world in a log cabin perched above the frontier, the son of Ulster Presbyterians who had carried their Scotch-Irish grit across the ocean and into the hills of Pennsylvania. He would be the last American president born in the 18th century, and until Joseph R. Biden, the only president born in Pennsylvania. Buchanan believed that the Constitution and the rule of law could steady the ship of state through any storm. But as it turned out, the ship would hit the rocks—and Buchanan would go down in history not as its helmsman, but as the man who froze at the tiller.

Listen to the article:

James Buchanan was a man of contradictions—reserved in temperament yet deeply wounded by a lost love; unyielding in constitutional formalism yet permissive of corruption; adept at diplomacy yet paralyzed in crisis. By the standards of the age, he should have been among the greats. He was certainly among the most experienced: a five-term Congressman, a U.S. Senator, a Secretary of State, a Minister to Russia, and later to Great Britain. He had dined with emperors and negotiated with czars. He returned from London just in time to be the Democratic Party’s compromise nominee in 1856—untouched by the Kansas violence that had discredited his rivals. He was a safe choice. The tragedy was that the times were anything but safe.

In his youth, Buchanan had cut a striking figure in Lancaster, Pennsylvania: tall, commanding, meticulous in dress. But his romantic life bore a lifelong shadow. In 1819, he became engaged to Ann Coleman, daughter of a wealthy ironmaster. The engagement ended under mysterious circumstances. Ann died soon after—possibly by suicide. Buchanan, shattered, kept her letters tied in a pink ribbon until his death, with strict orders they be burned unread. He never married, and his emotional reserve—along with Washington gossip about his relationship with Senator William Rufus King—set him apart from his contemporaries.

Buchanan rose steadily through the ranks. He began in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, moved to the U.S. House, and later served in the Senate. He sided with the South more often than not. Though he considered slavery a moral wrong, he feared abolition more. He opposed the Wilmot Proviso in 1846 and supported the Compromise of 1850, hoping to preserve a precarious balance between slave and free states. As Secretary of State under Polk, he helped expand the nation’s borders but also dabbled in imperial ambition—endorsing the Ostend Manifesto, which advocated acquiring Cuba from Spain, even by force.

In 1856, he was elected president, defeating Republican John C. Frémont and former President Millard Fillmore. His campaign had been mocked for his comment that ten cents a day was sufficient wages for a laborer, earning him the nickname “Ten-Cent Jimmy”. But more troubling was his stance on slavery. Two days after his inauguration, the Supreme Court delivered its ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford. Buchanan had lobbied behind the scenes for a sweeping decision, and Chief Justice Roger Taney delivered. The Court ruled that African Americans could not be citizens and that Congress had no authority to regulate slavery in the territories. Buchanan hoped the ruling would settle the debate. Instead, it exploded it.

In Kansas, violence had already erupted. Buchanan threw the power of his office behind the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution, despite clear evidence that it did not reflect the will of the majority. When Stephen A. Douglas, the father of popular sovereignty, refused to support it, the Democratic Party fractured. Northern Democrats rebelled. Republicans surged. Abraham Lincoln found his issue. And Buchanan, bound to a flawed legalism, could not see the political fire it kindled.

Then came the corruption. His Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, was discovered to be approving fraudulent military supply contracts and had, by 1860, facilitated the transfer of tens of thousands of arms to Southern arsenals—many of which would later be used by the Confederacy. Floyd also enabled a disastrous misuse of an Indian trust fund, using the bonds to back fictitious invoices. Buchanan knew of the practices by 1859 and told Floyd to stop. Floyd ignored him. Buchanan kept him on regardless. It was an astonishing display of weakness.

As Southern states began to secede in late 1860, Buchanan delivered a message to Congress insisting that secession was illegal—but also that the federal government had no constitutional authority to prevent it. This logic, pristine in theory, was disastrous in practice. He refused to reinforce Fort Sumter, resisted General Winfield Scott’s calls to prepare the military, and deferred to Southern sympathizers in his Cabinet. When finally pressed, he offered half-measures and vague hopes for compromise, including support for the Corwin Amendment, which would have constitutionally protected slavery in the states where it already existed.

By the time Abraham Lincoln arrived in Washington, the Union was breaking apart. Buchanan handed him the keys with the posture of a man grateful to be rid of a cursed inheritance. He returned to Wheatland, his estate in Lancaster, where he spent the rest of his life writing volumes in defense of his actions. He died in 1868, still insisting that history would vindicate him.

It has not.

James Buchanan did not light the fire, but he sat in the parlor while it spread. He believed that reason could tame passion, that the Constitution could heal a wound it had failed to prevent. But he misunderstood the times. He mistook paralysis for prudence. The country needed conviction; Buchanan offered caution. It needed action; he offered delay. And in the end, the Republic survived not because of him—but despite him.

He remains the only bachelor president. And that, perhaps, is fitting. James Buchanan never truly committed—to the Union, to emancipation, to the great cause of American liberty. He believed that doing nothing was the safest course. But in 1860, doing nothing was the most dangerous act of all.