James Buchanan



""If you are as happy to be accepting this office as I am to be leaving it, then you are a very happy man"."

- James Buchanan "welcoming" Abraham Lincoln.

""Meanwhile the nation's chief executive, James Buchanan, did nothing""

- Ken Burns "The Civil War"

James Buchanan was the only President to never marry (his niece fulfilled the duties of First Lady). He was engaged to a woman at one point, but they broke up and she died (likely suicide) shortly after. Although each of the three previous Presidents had played a part in creating the circumstances that led to the Civil War (Zachary Taylor's belligerent approach to the slave states got things off on the wrong foot, Millard Fillmore created an ultimately ill-advised compromise agreement, and Franklin Pierce proceeded to piss off the slave states by breaking the terms of said agreement), the final, fatal lurch towards the conflict happened on Buchanan's watch.

Buchanan began his political career in the House of Representatives in 1814. He was not popular with fellow politicians. Andrew Jackson gave him the position of Minister to Russia in an attempt to keep him out of the country, where he would, in Jackson's words, "do the least harm". Unfortunately, this lead to the impression that he had serious diplomatic/political credentials. This post was followed by time in the Senate, as Secretary of State, and as Minister to Great Britain.

Part of the reason he was elected was because he had been out of the country for the past four years as an ambassador and was able to avoid blame for the Kansas-Nebraska Act. He led America into the Civil War by attempting to maintain the status quo: enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act and opposing abolitionist activism. Like most leaders at the time, he was utterly bewildered at the current high stakes conditions, so he just decided to... do nothing and try to maintain the Union until a solution appeared.

It didn't help that he ordered the invasion of Utah for the purpose of persecuting an unpopular Christian denomination.

Is often believed to have been a closeted gay man, who allegedly had a long relationship with Alabama senator William King (who became Franklin Pierce's Vice-President, but died only six weeks into his term, and just under four years before Buchanan became president). The truth died with Buchanan, since his relatives burned his diaries and personal documents upon his death, as per his request.

Buchanan once said that "History will vindicate me." It didn't. Much like Neville Chamberlain who would come 60 years after him, regardless of any of his other accomplishments, his legacy is ultimately judged on his reaction to the greatest challenge facing his nation. Buchanan's desire to merely maintain the status quo (to the point that he would say that while secession was illegal, military force to stop secession was also illegal) did nothing to mend a bitterly divided nation. By the end, as his page quote shows, he was only interested in holding off civil war long enough for him to get out of office and leave the problems to the next president. Today, he is considered to be one of the worst if not the worst President in US history. (On July 6, 2021, U.S. News and World Report updated their list of The 10 Worst U.S. Presidents; James Buchanan placed at the top of the list, beating out Donald Trump, Andrew Johnson, and his immediate predecessor Franklin Pierce.)

A one-minute biography of the guy can be found here.


 * Ambiguously Gay: He was a boarder with and very good friends with congressman William King, to the point it was joked King was "Buchanan's wife". Neither man was ever proven to have a confirmed homosexual relationship, and the truth died with them both.
 * Category Traitor: He was known as a "doughface", a Northerner with Southern sympathies.
 * Fashion Victim Villain: He was considered disreputable in some circles because of his rather oldfashioned apparel.
 * The Peter Principle: Living proof of it. He was assumed qualified for the presidency because of all the other government posts he was good at, but it turned out to be one rung of power too high on the ladder for his competence.
 * Pet the Dog: Had one moment in his congressional career, where, despite his southern sympathies, he utterly opposed an attempt to prevent abolitionist petitions from being heard before Congress, citing he thought them nonsense himself, but the people had every right to petition Congress regardless.
 * Reliable Traitor: Given his handwringing and impotence in the face of imminent secession, he was regarded as such by many who had plans to secede because his impotence was such an asset to their cause,and his pro-Southern sympathies despite his avowed Unionism were so well known he was regarded as an accomplice to their designs either way.
 * Retcon: His memoirs written two years before his death attempt to recast his failures as things he could not have prevented.
 * Vindicated by History: The only president among the most vilified of the entire group to have never gotten this treatment. Even Warren Harding got this trope by some later historians after he was discovered to be Misblamed for a lot of actions by others. Richard Nixon managed to redeem himself in later years, and while Franklin Pierce wasn't much better in some historians eyes, his errors were not half as pronounced as Buchanan's.