Tall, stately, stiffly formal in the high stock he wore around his jowls, James Buchanan was the
only President who never married. 

Presiding over a rapidly dividing Nation, Buchanan grasped inadequately the political realities of
the time. Relying on constitutional doctrines to close the widening rift over slavery, he failed to
understand that the North would not accept constitutional arguments which favored the South. Nor
could he realize how sectionalism had realigned political parties: the Democrats split; the Whigs
were destroyed, giving rise to the Republicans. 

Born into a well-to-do Pennsylvania family in 1791, Buchanan, a graduate of Dickinson College, was
gifted as a debater and learned in the law. 

He was elected five times to the House of Representatives; then, after an interlude as Minister to
Russia, served for a decade in the Senate. He became Polk's Secretary of State and Pierce's
Minister to Great Britain. Service abroad helped to bring him the Democratic nomination in 1856
because it had exempted him from involvement in bitter domestic controversies. 

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, and two justices hinted to Buchanan what the decision would be. 

Thus, in his Inaugural the President referred to the territorial question as "happily, a matter of
but little practical importance" since the Supreme Court was about to settle it "speedily and
finally." 

Two days later Chief Justice Roger B. Taney delivered the Dred Scott decision, asserting that
Congress had no constitutional power to deprive persons of their property rights in slaves in the
territories. Southerners were delighted, but the decision created a furor in the North. 

Buchanan decided to end the troubles in Kansas by urging the admission of the territory as a slave
state. Although he directed his Presidential authority to this goal, he further angered the
Republicans and alienated members of his own party. Kansas remained a territory. 

When Republicans won a plurality in the House in 1858, every significant bill they passed fell
before southern votes in the Senate or a Presidential veto. The Federal Government reached a
stalemate. 

Sectional strife rose to such a pitch in 1860 that the Democratic Party split into northern and
southern wings, each nominating its own candidate for the Presidency. Consequently, when the
Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln, it was a foregone conclusion that he would be elected even
though his name appeared on no southern ballot. Rather than accept a Republican administration, the
southern "fire-eaters" advocated secession. 

President Buchanan, dismayed and hesitant, denied the legal right of states to secede but held that
the Federal Government legally could not prevent them. He hoped for compromise, but secessionist
leaders did not want compromise. 

Then Buchanan took a more militant tack. As several Cabinet members resigned, he appointed
northerners, and sent the Star of the West to carry reinforcements to Fort Sumter. On January 9,
1861, the vessel was far away. 

Buchanan reverted to a policy of inactivity that continued until he left office. In March 1861 he
retired to his Pennsylvania home Wheatland--where he died seven years later--leaving his successor
to resolve the frightful issue facing the Nation.