James Buchanan Jr. served as the 15th president of the United States. He was a prominent lawyer in Pennsylvania and represented Pennsylvania in both houses of the U.S. Congress. Buchanan was a states’ rights advocate and minimized the role of the federal government in the nation’s final years of slavery. He is considered one of the country’s least successful presidents.
About James Buchanan in brief
James Buchanan Jr. served as the 15th president of the United States. He was a prominent lawyer in Pennsylvania and represented Pennsylvania in both houses of the U.S. Congress. Buchanan was a states’ rights advocate, and minimized the role of the federal government in the nation’s final years of slavery. He supported the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case, which denied a slave’s petition for freedom. He also joined with Southern leaders in attempting to admit Kansas to the Union as a slave state. Buchanan honored his pledge to serve only one term, and supported John C. Breckinridge’s unsuccessful candidacy in the 1860 presidential election. He is the only president with military experience who was not an officer in the 1812 War of 1812 and is also the last president who served in the S. S. House of Representatives and won election to Congress. In 1820 he ran for U. s. Senate and won, though his Federalist Party was waning. He later served as Secretary of State and was named as President Franklin Pierce’s Minister to the United Kingdom. He became a strong critic of Democratic-Republican President James Madison during the War of1812. He helped organize Jackson’s followers into the Democratic Party, and he became a prominent Democrat in Washington, D.C. After the 1824 presidential election, he was close with many southern Congressmen and some New Englandmen, viewed as New Englanders by some southern Democrats.
He died in 1856, and was buried in Mount Hope, Pennsylvania, where he had been a member of the Pennsylvanian Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1809. His wife, Elizabeth Speer, was also a prominent Pennsylvania lawyer, and they had a son, James Buchanan Jr., who died in 1861 in a car accident. The couple had a daughter, Elizabeth Buchanan, who was born in 1809 and later became a noted author and playwright. The family moved to Mercersburg, Pennsylvania in 1794, and in 1812 the family moved into the town of Harrisburg, where Buchanan was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar. Buchanan also served as a private in the Henry Shippen Brigade, 1st Division, 4th Division, Pennsylvania Militia, a private unit of yagers, in 1814, when the British invaded neighboring Maryland. He went on to serve in the Pennsylvania House of Reps. from 1820 to 1834, when he was elected to the House of Rep. and held that post for 11 years. He served as President James K. Polk’s secretary of state from 1845 to 1853, and then as a senator from Pennsylvania from 1834 to 1856. Buchanan is considered one of the country’s least successful presidents, and some historians rank him as a less-successful president than President Abraham Lincoln. His son was a Freemason, and served as Master of Masonic Lodge No. 43 in Lancaster, and as a District Deputy Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvanians.
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This page is based on the article James Buchanan published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 06, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
