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James Buchanan

president of the United States from 1857 to 1861

James Buchanan, Jr. (23 April 1791 – 1 June 1868) was the 15th president of the United States (1857–61), serving immediately prior to the American Civil War. He represented Pennsylvania in the United States House of Representatives and later the Senate, then served as Minister to Russia under President Andrew Jackson. He was named Secretary of State under President James K. Polk, and is to date the last former Secretary of State to serve as President of the United States. After Buchanan turned down an offer to sit on the Supreme Court, President Franklin Pierce appointed him Ambassador to the United Kingdom, in which capacity he helped draft the Ostend Manifesto.

I feel that my duty has been faithfully, though it may be imperfectly, performed, and, whatever the result may be, I shall carry to my grave the consciousness that I at least meant well for my country.

As president, he was often called a "doughface", a Northerner with Southern sympathies, who battled with Stephen A. Douglas for control of the Democratic Party. Buchanan's efforts to maintain peace between the North and the South alienated both sides, and the Southern states declared their secession in the prologue to the American Civil War. Widely hated as he left office, Buchanan was shunned in the Civil War-era United States and is widely regarded as the worst President in United States history.

I am the last President of the United States!
What is right and what is practicable are two different things.

Quotes

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  • You have lost a child, a dear, dear child. I have lost the only earthly object of my affection.... I have now one request to make,... deny me not. Afford me the melancholy pleasure of seeing her body before internment.
    • Letter returned to him unopened, to the father of his former fiancée Ann Coleman, written after her death, rumored to have been suicide soon after her breaking of their engagement. (1819).
  • I am now ‘solitary and alone,’ having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them. I feel that it is not good for man to be alone; and should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection.
  • I shall not again be a candidate for the Presidency...I shall be 65 on the 23rd April next, and I had determined upon my line of life from the remnant of days with which a kind Providence might bless me, discarding every idea of the Presidency...I can now leave public life, I trust, with credit. Should I become President, the case may be very different, after I shall have worn myself out with the toil and anxiety of the office.
    • Responding to suggestions that he run for President in 1856, as quoted at wheatland.org.
  • All agree that under the Constitution slavery in the States is beyond the reach of any human power except that of the respective States themselves wherein it exists. May we not, then, hope that the long agitation on this subject is approaching its end, and that the geographical parties to which it has given birth, so much dreaded by the Father of his Country, will speedily become extinct? Most happy will it be for the country when the public mind shall be diverted from this question to others of more pressing and practical importance. Throughout the whole progress of this agitation, which has scarcely known any intermission for more than twenty years, whilst it has been productive of no positive good to any human being it has been the prolific source of great evils to the master, to the slave, and to the whole country. It has alienated and estranged the people of the sister States from each other, and has even seriously endangered the very existence of the Union. Nor has the danger yet entirely ceased. Under our system there is a remedy for all mere political evils in the sound sense and sober judgment of the people. Time is a great corrective. Political subjects which but a few years ago excited and exasperated the public mind have passed away and are now nearly forgotten. But this question of domestic slavery is of far graver importance than any mere political question, because should the agitation continue it may eventually endanger the personal safety of a large portion of our countrymen where the institution exists. In that event no form of government, however admirable in itself and however productive of material benefits, can compensate for the loss of peace and domestic security around the family altar. Let every Union-loving man, therefore, exert his best influence to suppress this agitation, which since the recent legislation of Congress is without any legitimate object.
    • Inaugural address (4 March 1857).
  • I am the last President of the United States!
    • A statement he is reported to have made several times to others after the secession of South Carolina, or as early as after the election of Abraham Lincoln (1860). — Perret, Geoffrey (2004). Lincoln's War: The Untold Story of America's Greatest President as Commander in Chief. Random House. ISBN 0375507388. 
  • The course of events is so rapidly hastening forward that the emergency may soon arise when you may be called upon to decide the momentous question whether you possess the power by force of arms to compel a State to remain in the Union. I should feel myself recreant to my duty were I not to express an opinion on this important subject.
    The question fairly stated is, Has the Constitution delegated to Congress the power to coerce a State into submission which is attempting to withdraw or has actually withdrawn from the Confederacy? If answered in the affirmative, it must be on the principle that the power has been conferred upon Congress to declare and to make war against a State. After much serious reflection I have arrived at the conclusion that no such power has been delegated to Congress or to any other department of the Federal Government. It is manifest upon an inspection of the Constitution that this is not among the specific and enumerated powers granted to Congress, and it is equally apparent that its exercise is not "necessary and proper for carrying into execution" any one of these powers. So far from this power having been delegated to Congress, it was expressly refused by the Convention which framed the Constitution.
    • Speech before Congress (3 December 1860).
  • It is said that serious apprehensions are to some extent entertained (in which I do not share) that the peace of this District may be disturbed before the 4th of March next. In any event, it will be my duty to preserve it, and this duty shall be performed.
    In conclusion it may be permitted to me to remark that I have often warned my countrymen of the dangers which now surround us. This may be the last time I shall refer to the subject officially. I feel that my duty has been faithfully, though it may be imperfectly, performed, and, whatever the result may be, I shall carry to my grave the consciousness that I at least meant well for my country.
    • Speech to Congress (8 January 1861).
  • Sir, if you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to Wheatland, you are a happy man indeed.
    • Said to Abraham Lincoln on the ride back from Lincoln's inauguration as president (4 March 1861); as quoted in James Buchanan (2004) by Jean H. Baker, Pg 140; This or slightly paraphrased variants or abbreviated versions have also been been reported as having been said before the inauguration:
      Sir, if you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning [home], you are a happy man indeed.
      If you are as happy entering the presidency as I am in leaving it, then you are truly a happy man.
      • As quoted in Presidential Leadership : Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House (2004) edited by James Taranto and Leonard Leo.
    • Earlier variant: Some knave or fool got up a lie from the whole cloth and it was telegraphed over the country that I was about to purchase or had purchased a place somewhere else and would not return to Wheatland. If my successor should be as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to Wheatland he will indeed be a happy man. I am just now in my own mind chalking out the course of my last message. In it, should Providence continue his blessing, I shall have nothing to record but uninterrupted success for my country. The trouble about the slavery question would all have been avoided, had the Country submitted to the decision of the Supreme Court delivered two or three days after my inaugural.
      • Letter to William Carpenter (13 September 1860); as published in Historical Papers and Addresses of the Lancaster County Historical Society.
  • Liberty must be allowed to work out its natural results; and these will, ere long, astonish the world.
    • As quoted in Presidential Leadership : Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House (2004) edited by James Taranto and Leonard Leo.
  • What is right and what is practicable are two different things.
    • As quoted in Presidential Leadership : Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House (2004) edited by James Taranto and Leonard Leo.

Quotes about Buchanan

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Poor, foolish Buchanan! ~ Samuel Eliot Morison
 
There is a wrong impression about one of the candidates. There is no such person running as James Buchanan. He is dead of lock-jaw. Nothing remains but a platform and a bloated mass of political putridity. ~ Thaddeus Stevens
  • That same year, a group of frustrated antislavery Whigs, Free Soiler and other antislavery political types joined forces to establish the Republican Party. They put up John C. Fremont, senator from California, as their first political nominee, and William Dayton, ex-Whig senator from New Jersey to join him on the ticket in 1856. The Republican duo put up a respectable fight, carrying eleven states—all from the North or Midwest—and 33 percent of the popular vote, but ultimately lost to James Buchanan, a Pennsylvania Democrat with an impressive pedigree that included secretary of state, ambassador to the UK and Russia, US senator, and member of the House of Representatives. Despite his extraordinary reputation and experienced resume, Buchanan struggled to deal with the fault lines that were breaking the country apart and became the eighth president in a row to serve one term or less. It would take another twenty-eight years for a Democrat to win the White House.
    • Jared Cohen, Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Changed America (2019), p. 81
  • Mister Toombs was willing to dissolve the Union to save slavery, Mister Phillips, to save liberty; while Mister Seward, denounced and derided by both, declared that the deepest instinct of the American people was for union. Reserved rights. State rights, limited powers, the advantages of union and disunion, were the cucumbers from which we were busily engaged in distilling light, overlooking the fact of nationality in discussing the conditions of union. We were speculating upon costume. We gravely proved that the clothes were the clothes of a woman, or of a child, without seeing that whatever the clothes might be there was a full-grown man inside of them. "The Constitution is a contract between sovereign States", shouted Mister Toombs, "let Georgia tear it and separate". "The Constitution is a league with hell", calmly replied Mister Phillips, "let New York cut off New Orleans to rot alone". "Oh, dear! it"s a dreadful dilemma", whimpered President Buchanan. "States have no right to secede, and the United States have no right to coerce. Oh, dear me! it"s perfectly awful! I"m the most patriotic of men, but what shall I do? what shall I do?" Separate! Cut off! Secede! It was of a living body they spoke, which, pierced anywhere, quivered everywhere.
  • There is a wrong impression about one of the candidates. There is no such person running as James Buchanan. He is dead of lock-jaw. Nothing remains but a platform and a bloated mass of political putridity.
  • It has been suggested that the President intentionally left those forts in a bad condition, that South Carolina might seize them before his successor had time to take means for their safety. I cannot believe it; I will not believe it, for it would make Mr. Buchanan a more odious traitor than Benedict Arnold. Every drop of blood that shall be shed in the conflict would sit heavy on his soul forever.
  • No one has a right to grade a president — even poor James Buchanan — who has not sat in his chair, examined the mail and information that came across his desk, and learned why he made his decisions.
  • Flabby James Buchanan, long an aspirant for the Democratic presidential nomination, now easily obtained it. The "Black Republicans," as their enemies called them, made a lively campaign. "Free soil, free speech, and Frémont" was the slogan, but slavery in the territories was the only real issue. Many Southern leaders warned the country that if Frémont were elected the South would secede; and when John M. Botts, an independent Virginia Whig, called this an idle threat, the Richmond Enquirer advised him to leave the state lest he "provoke the disgrace of lynching." A sectional showdown in 1856 was prevented by Buchanan's carrying every slave state except Maryland, together with Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Indiana, which gave him 174 electoral votes to Frémont's 114. But the "Pathfinder" polled an impressive popular vote, 1,340,000 to Buchanan's 1,838,000. Ominous figures, because all but 1,200 of Frémont's votes came from the non-slaveholding states.
    • Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People (1965). New York: Oxford University Press, p. 593
  • Poor, foolish Buchanan! He had hoped for a peaceful term of office, but the Dred Scott case unleashed the worst passions of pro- and anti-slavery when his administration was less than a week old.
    • Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People (1965). New York: Oxford University Press, p. 593

See also

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  1. ↑ http://www.allreadable.com/d0455Sui
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