President James Buchanan

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James Buchanan, Jr., the fifteenth president of the United States from 1857 to 1861, tried to maintain a balance between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions, but his moderate views angered radicals in north and south, and he failed to forestall the secession of South Carolina on 20 December 1860.

He served immediately prior to the Civil War. He represented Pennsylvania in the House of Representatives and later in the Senate and then served as minister to Russia under Andrew Jackson, president. He served as secretary of state under James Knox Polk, this last former secretary of state to date served as president of the United States. After Buchanan turned down an offer to sit on the Supreme Court, Franklin Pierce, president, appointed him ambassador to the United Kingdom, in which capacity he helped to draft the Ostend manifesto.

The Democratic Party nominated Buchanan in the presidential election of 1856. The crossfire of sectional politics that dominated the country caught not Buchanan, stationed in London as minister to the Court of Saint James's during the term of Pierce. His subsequent election victory took place in a three-man race with John C. Frémont 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 of record 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."

The Democratic Party split popular opinion before the time when he left office. Buchanan, a president, once aspired to rank in history with George Washington. His inability to identify a ground for peace or to address the sharply divided pro-slavery and anti-slavery partisans with a unifying principle on the brink of the Civil War, however, led historians to rank him consistently among the worst presidents in American history. Historians in both 2006 and 2009 voted his failure to deal with secession the worst presidential mistake ever made.

He is, to date, the only president from Pennsylvania and the only president to remain a lifelong bachelor. He was the last president born in the 18th century.