James Buchanan (1791-1868)

He was preceded in the Presidency by Franklin Pierce and after serving one term in office for the Democrats he was succeeded in 1861 by Abraham Lincoln. His Vice-President throughout was John C. Breckinridge. He is only the second President to have been elected from Pennsylvania and the only President never to have married - he had been engaged to the heiress Ann Caroline Coleman but she called it off. His niece, Harriet Lane, acted as his Ambassador's wife while he was Minister to the Court of St. James in London and as his First Lady in Washington D.C. His nephew and secretary, James Buchanan Henry, lived with him at Wheatland. Another niece, Lois, married Alexander Johnston Cassatt, projector and President of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

He was born in a log cabin near Cove Gap in the Allegheny Mountains of southern Pennsylvania. Becoming a lawyer, he had an extensive political career before reaching the presidency, serving as a Congressman, Senator, Minister to Russia and Great Britain, and Secretary of State under James K. Polk. As such, he entered the White House with considerable experience in foreign affairs and domestic politics, but his presidency was dominated by the escalating crisis over slavery. He believed in a strict constitutional interpretation and felt the federal government had limited power to address the slavery question. His administration was marked by several critical failures, including his support for the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution in Kansas, which deepened sectional tensions.

The Dred Scott decision occurred early in his presidency (1857), when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that enslaved people were not citizens of the United States and, therefore, could not expect any protection from the federal government or the courts. The result it had on further inflaming the slavery debate and Buchanan's inability to address the growing divide between North and South effectively left the nation more fractured than when he took office. By the time he left the presidency in March 1861, seven Southern states had already seceded from the Union. Historians consistently rank Buchanan among the worst American presidents, primarily due to his failure to prevent the dissolution of the Union and his ineffective leadership during this critical period of American history.