What did james buchanan do as president
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James Buchanan (1845–1849)
James Buchanan was born in 1791 in Stony Batter, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Dickinson College in 1809, studied law, was admitted to the Pennsylvania state bar in 1812, established a law practice in Lancaster, and fought in the War of 1812. At war’s end, Buchanan returned home and was elected in 1814 and again in 1815 to the lower house of the Pennsylvania legislature. He declined a third term and resumed his law practice; he was back in politics in 1820 as a Democrat, winning a seat in the United States House of Representatives, where he served from 1821 to 1831.
Buchanan was a major supporter of President Andrew Jackson’s policies, and Jackson rewarded him in 1831 by appointing him U.S. minister to Russia; Buchanan served there until 1834. Upon his return to the United States, Buchanan was tapped to fill a vacancy in the United States Senate and served from 1834 to 1845, at which time President James K. Polk named him secretary of state.
During his tenure at the State Department (1845-1849), Buchanan negotiated with Britain over the Oregon bo
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James Buchanan: Life Before the Presidency
James Buchanan was the last President born in the eighteenth century, on April 23, 1791. Although he was born in a log cabin, his origins were far from humble. His father, for whom he was named, had emigrated from Ireland a decade before, married Elizabeth Speer, and became a successful merchant in rural Pennsylvania, settling near Mercersburg in the southern part of the state. The Buchanans eventually had eleven children, James being the second of them and the eldest son
James attended school in the Mercersburg area, but his father's business triumphs and his mother's interest in education dictated better opportunities for the boy. At age sixteen, he entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, seventy miles from home. A spirited presence on campus, James managed to avoid two near expulsions from the school over disciplinary matters. After two years, he graduated with honors and then promptly began law studies. In 1813, he was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar and began practicing in Lancaster. Soon after, he answered a call to arms for th
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James Buchanan
The biography for President Buchanan and past presidents is courtesy of the White House Historical Association.
James Buchanan, the 15th President of the United States (1857-1861), served immediately prior to the American Civil War. He remains the only President to be elected from Pennsylvania and to remain a lifelong bachelor.
Tall, stately, stiffly formal in the high stock he wore around his jowls, James Buchanan was the only President who never married.
Presiding over a rapidly dividing Nation, Buchanan grasped inadequately the political realities of the time. Relying on constitutional doctrines to close the widening rift over slavery, he failed to understand that the North would not accept constitutional arguments which favored the South. Nor could he realize how sectionalism had realigned political parties: the Democrats split; the Whigs were destroyed, giving rise to the Republicans.
Born into a well-to-do Pennsylvania family in 1791, Buchanan, a graduate of Dickinson College, was gifted as a debater and learned in the law.
He was elected
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