James Buchanan, the fifteenth President of the United States, was born on April 23, 1791 into a Scotch-Irish family that ran the frontier trading post Stony Batter. As he grew to manhood, he made it his life’s ambition to learn the law and the inner workings of American government, and at age twenty-three he began a political career that lasted forty-seven years. Over the next forty-two years he conducted campaigns, gained prominence and stature, never lost an election in which he ran, and governed by the principle, “I acknowledge no master but the law.” Buchanan became Pennsylvania’s only president in 1857, and many believed he was better prepared for the presidency than any predecessor except John Quincy Adams. When he took office, the United States was rapidly splitting over slavery, and he kept the Union together through compromise even as abolitionists in the North and secessionists in the South rejected compromise. In a special message to Congress in January 1861, he explained his policy, which northern newspapers called weak and pro-Southern papers called wavering and even treasonable, while only a few papers noted that Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural policy three months later occupied exactly the same ground. Buchanan’s public service included two terms as a Pennsylvania assemblyman from 1814 to 1817, five terms as a U.S. representative from 1821 to 1831, service as foreign minister to Russia from 1832 to 1833 under Andrew Jackson, two and a half terms as a U.S. senator from 1834 to 1845, service as Secretary of State from 1845 to 1849 under James Polk, service as foreign minister to Great Britain from 1853 to 1856 under Franklin Pierce, and the presidency from 1857 to 1861.
