James Buchanan was born in a log cabin in Pennsylvania in 1791, the second of 11 children, not far from the Mason Dixon line. His father, also named James Buchanan, owned a general store which was successful enough for him to buy a substantial farm, then a store on main street in Mercersburg, and he eventually became one of the richest men in the area. As the oldest son, the younger James Buchanan was the favorite among his siblings, and was particularly close to his mother.

At 16, Buchanan went to college at Dickinson, but since his mother had already educated him in the classics, he found college too easy. He began his lifelong habit of smoking cigars (in later years, he would chew the ends of unlit cigars). He was the smartest student and also the most arrogant, flouting school rules. He got expelled for disorderly conduct.

Buchanan promised to behave better and they readmitted him. Even though he had the best grades, he wasn’t given the prestigious speech at the graduation ceremony. He wrote a speech anyway and got to give a speech as a non-honoree, but he never forgave the college for this slight.

He then began training for the law at 18 and passed the bar in 1812 at the age of 21. Although he spent a lot of time at the taverns (he was fond of Madeira, the drink of the colonies), he took his studies seriously. He got involved in local politics as a Federalist and volunteered to fight in the War of 1812, although all he ended up doing was a secret mission to steal horses from the Quakers because they were anti-war.

Buchanan had blue eyes, blond hair, and broad shoulders. He was about six feet tall. He had a condition that prevented him from growing body or facial hair, but fortunately being clean-shaven was the style at the time. He was nearsighted in one eye and farsighted in the other and his pupils sometimes looked in different directions. He’d cock his head when talking to others so he could see them better, but people took this as him being interested in them.

Buchanan became a successful lawyer and a part of high society. He was initiated into the Masons, eventually becoming deputy grand master in his district. He was likely considered the most eligible bachelor in Lancaster. He started dating Ann Coleman whose father was one of the richest men in the country and asked her to marry him in 1819. Her father, knowing Buchanan’s reputation as a heavy drinker who liked practical jokes and partying, didn’t approve. Rumors spread that Buchanan was only marrying Ann for her money and that he was eying other women, so Ann broke off the engagement. She then died a few days later, the doctor calling it the only case he knew of a woman dying from hysteria. Many blamed her death on Buchanan upsetting her.

He was elected to Congress before he was 30, but back then Congress only met a few months out of the year. His first term didn’t start until December 1821, more than a year after he’d been elected. His father died in an accident shortly before his term began. The horse towing his carriage suddenly bolted, flipping him out of his seat. His head struck the iron tire, killing him. Buchanan took care of the financial affairs for his mother and five younger siblings still living at home. Later in life, Buchanan would “adopt” as many as 20 of his nieces and nephews to care for them financially.

When he came to Washington, the White House had been rebuilt following the War of 1812, but the Capitol was still under construction. When the Federalist party disintegrated, he started a new party called Amalgamation, but shortly after, he joined the Democrats. After a particularly vicious campaign, he announced his retirement from politics.

President Jackson didn’t trust Buchanan. For one thing, when Buchanan tried to help Jackson get elected during the controversial election of 1824, their secret meeting became public knowledge, embarrassing Jackson. Also, Buchanan embarrassed Jackson’s protégé James Polk when he was a novice member of the house trying to table a motion on a minor bill. As punishment, Jackson offered Buchanan the job of minister to Russia. It was a way to get him out of the way without being openly hostile towards him. Buchanan wanted to refuse the offer, but it would bring Jackson’s wrath down upon him if he did, so he reluctantly accepted.

He’d been a really successful lawyer and had amassed a fortune of $4.5 million in today’s dollars in real estate and financial holdings. Buchanan was supposed to open up trade with Russia, but Jackson didn’t expect him to succeed. Russia’s court was full of pomp and displays of wealth, so Buchanan used his own wealth to throw lavish parties and got the czar to sign a trade treaty with America. He became friends with Czar Nicholas and often danced with his wife at parties since the czar wasn’t as big on dancing. He completed his assignment in just one year when it was expected to take three. He was quite popular when he returned home, much to Jackson’s chagrin.

After returning from Russia, Buchanan bought his dead fiancé’s childhood home. Perhaps the reason he never married was because he’d lost his one true love. Jackson sent a senator he hated to Russia as punishment for voting against him and Buchanan got to take over the departing senator’s seat as a reward for supporting Jackson’s stance against the national bank.

When in Washington, Buchanan shared living quarters with his fellow congressman and close friend William Rufus DeVane King of Alabama (who ended up dying of an infection shortly after becoming vice president under Pierce). King was a wealthy slave-owner who founded the town of Selma, Alabama. King County (where Seattle is located) was originally named after him, but it was “renamed” in Martin Luther King’s honor in 1986. His senate biography describes King as tall, prim, quiet, and unobtrusive. He never dated women. He continued wearing a wig long after they’d gone out of fashion. Since both were life-long bachelors, there were rumors that Buchanan and King were lovers. Andrew Jackson called William King “Aunt Nancy” and James Polk called him “Mrs. James Buchanan.”

Buchanan wanted to be president, but was willing to wait for Jackson’s term (and the term of Jackson’s successor Van Buren) to end. He was patient like that. However Harrison won the next election and when he died, his vice president Tyler finished his term. 1844 was not Buchanan’s year either. Polk was elected president thanks to an endorsement from Jackson, but Polk at least made Buchanan his secretary of state.

Buchanan was a famous flip-flopper, constantly changing positions. When he was Polk’s secretary of state, he was opposed to the 54/40 boundary between Oregon and Canada in negotiations with England, then he wrote a report in favor of it, then he opposed his own report and asked for compromise, then when Polk was in favor of compromise, he was against it again. He had a similar equivocation regarding the Mexican American War.

He expressed interest in being on the Supreme Court, but when Polk offered it to him, he declined. Later, he wanted it again and threw a lavish party to solidify support, then he decided he didn’t want it after all.

After Polk’s term, Buchanan eyed the presidency again. He didn’t get his party’s nomination, but the Whigs won again anyway. He was willing to wait another four years.

In the meantime, he purchased the Wheatland estate and let several of his orphaned nieces and nephews live there. He became a gentleman farmer, took sleigh rides in the winter, and was a bird watcher. He collected rare wine vintages. His investments were doing so well, he didn’t need to do any lawyer work.

He was famous for throwing expensive parties where he served Madeira, sherry, and rye whiskey. He would buy 10-gallon casks of Old J.B. Whiskey and joke the initials stood for James Buchanan. He would drink two or three bottles at a sitting and didn’t seem to suffer the effects of drunkenness.

He wanted to run for president again in 1852. While Buchanan wasn’t a slave holder himself, he had many friends who were and he vigorously supported their right to own slaves. Buchanan and northerners like him who were sympathetic to the South were called Doughfaces. He condemned the abolitionists as troublemakers who cared more about freeing slaves than keeping the Union together. Buchanan led the early ballots in the Democratic primary, but didn’t have enough of a lead to get the nomination. He had his friends nominate Franklin Pierce, who didn’t have a chance of winning, to split the vote, but this backfired on him when Pierce ended up winning.

Pierce made Buchanan minister to Great Britain to keep him out of the way and Buchanan felt he had to accept. He didn’t do much in Britain, but it did keep him from having to take a position on the controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act, which tainted everyone who took a side.

In 1856, it was finally Buchanan’s turn to run for president. The election of 1856 saw the collapse of the Whig party and the formation of a new party called the Republicans. John C. Fremont was selected as their first presidential candidate. He was an outdoorsy type, having led several expeditions to the West. His wife, Jessie Benton, was the daughter of US senator Thomas Hart Benton and knew politics well enough to give Fremont good PR. She wrote about his adventures in a fictionalized way and spread his fame around the country.

Fremont was the illegitimate son of an American woman and a French Canadian. He sometimes added an accent to the e in his name to sound more exotic and sometimes dropped the t at the end. He was the military governor of the territory of California for a time and also one of California’s first two senators. He was anti-slavery, which made him a good match for the new Republican party.

Former president Millard Fillmore ran for president again, this time for the American (or Know-Nothing) party which was anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic.

Buchanan’s Democratic party had more money to spend than the Republicans or Know-Nothings. Half a million dollars was spent campaigning in the swing state of Pennsylvania by the Democrats while the newly formed Republicans spent less than a tenth of that. The fact Know-Nothings pulled votes away from the Republicans also helped Buchanan.

For his campaign song, Buchanan, nicknamed Old Buck, enlisted the help of his sister-in-law’s brother, Stephen Foster, who just happened to be the most well known person in the entertainment business at the time. His song “The Abolitionist Show” mocked Fremont for his pro-abolition leanings and blamed Bleeding Kansas on the Republicans. Since copyright law basically didn’t exist back then, Fremont’s side rewrote the lyrics to Foster’s “Camptown Races” to emphasize the difference in age between the two: “There’s an old gray horse whose name is Buck (Du Da, Du Da) His dam was Folly and his sire, Bad Luck (Du Da, Du Da Day).”

Buchanan won the election at the age of 65, making him one of the oldest presidents elected up to that time. Washington wasn’t much of a city back then. Most politicians only lived there when Congress was in session, which wasn’t often. Farmers allowed their hogs to wallow along Capitol Hill. The nearby canal was filled with dead animals and people dumped their sewage out into street gutters. Days before Buchanan’s inauguration, many people got sick from dysentery due to foul water at the National Hotel and some of them died, including one of Buchanan’s nephews. Buchanan himself was sick at his inauguration.

After Dolley Madison’s passing, Washington wasn’t much of a party town, but Buchanan was known for throwing great parties. Buchanan had the most glorious and expensive inauguration parade and inaugural ball. He spent $15,000 on a temporary structure to house the ball and $3,000 on wine, not to mention other expenses like 400 gallons of oysters, 1,200 quarts of ice cream, a four-foot tall cake, and a forty-piece orchestra.

His niece, Harriet Lane, was the first woman to be called the First Lady while residing at the White House. She had red hair and became Buchanan’s ward at the age of 11 when both her parents died of disease. During her uncle’s presidency, she was the most popular woman in the nation. Everyone wanted to wear what she wore and admirers followed her everywhere. During her stay in England while Buchanan was minister there, she charmed royalty. A popular song “The Mocking Bird” was dedicated to her and a photo of her was turned into a souvenir postcard.

A Coast Guard cutter was named after her. In the White House, she got rid of the slaves who had served the Pierces, replacing them with paid labor. When the teenage Prince Edward of Wales came to Washington late in Buchanan’s term, she commandeered the cutter named after her and threw the biggest party of the half century with orchestra, dancing, and fine wine. (White House gatherings often didn’t have dancing since it offended some religious folks.)

Later in life, both her sons died from rheumatic fever. She endowed a pediatric clinic to treat all children regardless of race and the Harriet Lane Clinic in John Hopkins still operates to this day. After her husband died, she moved back to Washington and became the Dolley Madison of her age, throwing and attending parties. She also donated a lot of money to charity. She remained popular and got invited to White House functions up to 1901. Her last major public appearance was Prince Edward’s coronation when she was 72.

The main issue when Buchanan took office was slavery. In “Bleeding Kansas” people were killing each other over the issue in a mini Civil War. Only 1 in 5 Southern families owned a slave, but many still supported the institution anyway. Many Northerners supported it as well in order to keep the Union together, but abolitionist sentiment was on the rise. Buchanan would need to do something to solve the issue of slavery. In his inauguration speech, he said the Supreme Court’s upcoming Dred Scott decision would save the Union. (He knew what their decision would be since he’d secretly influenced the judges’ ruling in a backroom deal.)

Dred Scott was a slave who’d lived with his owners in the north and asked for his freedom when they prepared to move south. The Supreme Court ruled that since Scott was black, he wasn’t a citizen, and thus couldn’t file suit. They ruled that the Constitution’s laws about slavery only applied to the states that existed at the time the Constitution was written. They also declared that the Missouri Compromise, the only thing that was holding the Union together, was unconstitutional.

The Dred Scott decision supported slave owners keeping their slaves even if they moved to free states. It went so far as to say black people, whether slave or free, “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” All states had effectively become slave states. This caused the nation to be even more divided than it had been before.

The abolitionists had been a fringe group before this. The Dred Scott decision became their most powerful recruiting tool. Northern Democrats, Republicans, and Know-Nothings all rallied against Dred Scott. Today, it’s largely considered the worst decision in the Supreme Court’s history. Buchanan was shocked at the negative reaction. He thought Dred Scott was a good compromise to make slave-holders happy until slavery naturally died out on its own, but the rest of the nation didn’t see it that way.

Alas, Dred Scott was only the first mistake of many Buchanan would make during his presidency. His next mistake as president was picking a cabinet full of men who wouldn’t disagree with him about anything. His cabinent was also his social circle. They’d meet nearly every weekday for hours at a time, and were also expected to have dinner with him at night.

Buchanan also precipitated the recession known as the Panic of 1857. The day before he took office, Congress passed the Tariff Bill of 1857 with his support. The bill lowered tariffs on foreign goods, but made American goods less competitive. The Dred Scott decision also caused less people to want to travel West, which hurt the railroad companies, causing their stock to fall. Many railroads declared bankruptcy. Thousands were unemployed and banks started foreclosing on loans and property. Every bank in New York City closed down its use of scrip and many companies failed. Instead of acting, Buchanan chose to do nothing about it, further hurting the economy, which would be in a recession during his entire term.

The SS Central America, a boat carrying 2 million dollars worth of gold from California to New York, sank in a hurricane. This by itself wouldn’t have hurt the economy much, but it led to public panic and bank runs which did hurt the economy. Buchanan could have prevented this by urging people not to panic, but, again, he did nothing.

Previous presidents ignored the Mormons in Utah. However, when judges in the territory accused the Mormons of burning federal documents, Buchanan overreacted. Instead of dealing with this as an administrative matter, he appointed a new governor and sent in troops to restore order. Brigham Young didn’t get the letter informing him he was no longer governor. He only knew a huge federal force was headed his way. Young formed an army and ordered them to burn every building, tree, and piece of hay the federal force might capture. The Mormons allegedly slaughtered innocent wagon trains going west as well as members of the federal brigade. Thomas L. Kane, a freelance diplomat, cooled things down, but not before thousands of Mormons had lost their homes and livelihoods due to Buchanan’s mishandling of the situation.

In violation of the Missouri Compromise, the Kansas Nebraska Act passed under President Pierce allowed the two proposed territories to decide themselves whether they’d be free or slave. Since Kansas soil wasn’t amenable to growing cotton, it was thought Kansas would choose to be free, but giving them a choice would placate the South. That didn’t happen.

A group of slave owners from Missouri crossed the border into Kansas and hastily threw together the town of Lecompton. They wrote a constitution legalizing slavery. Meanwhile, the original residents of Kansas had set up a government in Topeka which outlawed slavery. Pierce supported the Lecompton group.

In 1856, Charles Sumner made a speech comparing the institution of slavery to a harlot. He compared Kansas being made a slave state to rape. Representative Preston Brooks beat Sumner with a cane on the senate floor a few days later. Sumner was so badly injured, it took him years to recover. Brooks was never punished and became a hero to the South. In Kansas, days after Sumner’s beating, John Brown and seven others apparently shot five slave sympathizers and hacked their bodies to pieces. Hundreds died in Bleeding Kansas over the issue of slavery.

Once Buchanan was president, he supported the Missouri group living in Lecompton. He appointed a governor of Kansas, but didn’t listen to his advice. Buchanan then called for a vote to make Kansas a slave state and it passed. However, very few people voted in that election. In a later election in which everyone voted, 10,226 voters were against slavery while fewer than 200 were in favor, but Buchanan still supported the Missouri group.

Buchanan tried to get the Lecompton Constitution passed through Congress by bribery including land grants. Some said he even offered prostitutes to get votes. The vote failed. When Kansas became a state later in 1861, it was as a free state. (Strangely, Lecompton celebrates itself as the “Civil War Birthplace” to this day and has annual events celebrating Bleeding Kansas.)

Buchanan next set his sights on Cuba. When Pierce was president, Buchanan wrote the Ostend Manifesto, a scheme to acquire Cuba as a slave state. (Slavery was already practiced in Cuba. If it became a state, its population would give it 9 representatives, a lot of voting power in Congress at the time.) This energized the abolitionist movement when it became public knowledge.

Buchanan also wanted to expand the US further into Mexico and South America. A “filibuster” named William Walker tried to conquer Nicaragua. Buchanan supported him, but sent troops to capture him for show. When Walker was brought back to the US, Buchanan released him. Walker ended up dying on his second attempt to conquer Nicaragua.

Buchanan even fought petty wars for expansion like the Pig War on the border of Washingon and British Colombia. An American squatter on Canadian land shot someone else’s pig. When the Canadians threatened to deport him, American troops came to defend the squatter. Instead of using diplomacy to settle this minor incident, Buchanan choose to send in troops and warships. When General Winfield Scott, not a fan of Buchanan, got there, he proposed joint occupation of the straight without hostility, but if a different general had been in charge, there could have been bloodshed.

Buchanan also chose to invade Paraguay in 1859. Paraguay said Americans had appropriated their land and they fired on an American ship, killing one officer. Buchanan sent in 2,500 marines and 19 warships in response. By the time the force arrived there, even those eager to make Paraguay a slave state weren’t in favor of the invasion anymore and went back home. Buchanan could have used these troops to prevent the South from seceding from the Union, but he had a bad habit of using soldiers when they weren’t necessary and not using them when they were necessary.

The OJ Simpson trial of the time involved a man named Daniel Sickles who shot the son of Francis Scott Key for having an affair with his wife. Sickles was found not guilty by reason of insanity, the first time this defence had been used at a major trial. However, newspapers criticized Buchanan for visiting Sickles in jail. Sickles was friends with Buchanan and had been his secretary when Buchanan was in England.

A committee investigated bribery charges against Buchanan. He was exonerated of direct wrong doing, but the testimonies given still hurt his reputation. His cabinet was definitely corrupt. The department of war overpaid for contracts and bought armaments from fraudulent companies. There were hundreds of extraneous port agents and post masters who got paid to do nothing. His secretary of the interior profited from Kansas vote bribes. Buchanan had vowed to deal with corruption if it happened, however, he was afraid dismissing the corrupt officials in his administration would offend Southerners, so he didn’t.

John Brown planned a slave rebellion involving taking over the armory in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. It was no secret he was planning an attack. He met prominent members of the abolitionist movement in public. Buchanan could have kept tabs on Brown, but chose to do nothing instead.

Rather than put Brown on trial in a neutral place like Washington, Buchanan allowed pro-slavery men to try Brown. He was quickly convicted of murder and freeing slaves (even though he didn’t do either of those things) and was hanged to death, becoming an instant martyr to the abolitionist cause. Many Northerners who had tolerated slavery up to this time had finally decided that enough was enough.

Slavery split the Democratic party so much, there were essentially three different Democratic candidates for president in 1860 to run against Lincoln. Lincoln won in a landslide, getting more electoral college votes than the other three combined. However, Buchanan would still be president for four more months before Lincoln was sworn in.

States started seceding from the union. Today, some insist the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, but state rights. However, the only state right any Southern secession document ever mentioned was slavery.

The average white Southerner at the time was worse off than the average Northerner. Virginia had 12 times the illiteracy rate of New England and states further south were even higher. Even penal laws couldn’t convince many rural parents to put their kids in school.

Farming in the South was also less sophisticated than in the North. The rich slave holders seized the best land and ruined it with heavy crops of cotton, tobacco, and corn, exhausting the land and plowing much of the top soil into streams, then abandoning it. Rapid soil exploitation gave a limited number of land owners temporary wealth at the expense of general impoverishment. As many as half the whites in South Carolina were unemployed. Workers in Tennessee averaged only 80 cents a day.

As militias formed in the South, Buchanan could have ended the Civil War before it started by calling in the military, but he once again chose to do nothing. He did nothing when the Confederates began to seize garrisons, armories, and weapons from the United States. He even told Fort Sumter to surrender. Fortunately, it didn’t. Doing nothing for months while the Confederates organized was Buchanan’s last and biggest mistake as president. If only he’d done something to stop them, the Civil War may not have happened.

His secretary of treasury resigned because Buchanan was opposed to South Carolina’s secession. Secretary of State Lewis Cass resigned because Buchanan refused to send troops to defend forts under attack by the Confederate rebels, particularly Fort Sumter. According to Cass, Buchanan trembled with panic on a regular basis and spent most of his time either praying or crying.

When he left office and retired to his estate in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, people would write graffiti on the fences and throw rotten fruit at his house. People in both the north and south primarily blamed him for the Civil War. Lincoln offered him armed guards to protect him from his enemies. Buchanan had planned to travel more after his presidency, but ended up staying home most of the time to avoid the hate directed against him. He wrote an autobiography blaming the Civil War on abolitionists.

The only letter he wrote to President Lincoln asked for him to send some books he left behind in the Executive Mansion, seemingly oblivious of the Civil War he’d dumped in Lincoln’s lap.

So was Buchanan the worst president ever? Of the presidents I’ve reviewed so far, he’s certainly responsible for the most death. He could have stopped the Civil War, but didn’t, resulting in over 600,000 deaths. Not only that, but over 11,000 died in the Filibuster War in Nicaragua which he supported, over 100 people died in Bleeding Kansas which he only made worse, and dozens were killed in the unnecessary Utah War. No one died in the Pig War or the invasion of Paraguay, but both conflicts could have easily resulted in death and it was reckless for Buchanan to deploy troops in the first place. The Panic of 1857, largely caused by Buchanan, caused thousands to be unemployed and many likely starved to death. The Dred Scott decision made slavery worse, no doubt resulting in an increased number of deaths. So, of the presidents I’ve covered so far, Buchanan is definitely the worst.