James Buchanan, Jr.

(/bknn/, also /bjuknn/; April 23, 1791 June 1, 1868) was the
15th President of the United States (185761), serving immediately prior to the American Civil War.
He representedPennsylvania 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 as of 2016 is 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 himAmbassador to the United Kingdom, in which capacity he
helped draft the Ostend Manifesto.
Buchanan was nominated by the Democratic Party in the 1856 presidential election. Throughout
most of Pierce's presidency, Buchanan had been stationed in London as minister to the Court of St.
James's and so was not caught up in the crossfire of sectional politics that dominated the country.
His subsequent election victory took place in a three-man race with John C. Frmont and Millard
Fillmore. 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. Buchanan's view was that
secession was illegal, but that going to war to stop it was also illegal. Buchanan, an attorney, was
noted for his mantra, "I acknowledge no master but the law."[1]
By the time he left office, popular opinion was against him and the Democratic Party had split.
Buchanan had once aspired to be a