In , after returning from Europe the previous year, James Buchanan was elected to represent his home state in the U. The United States annexed Texas , acquired California and much of the present-day Southwest during the Mexican-American War and secured what would become the Oregon Territory after settling a boundary dispute with Great Britain.
In , Buchanan sided with Southerners who successfully blocked the Wilmot Proviso , which proposed banning slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico in the Mexican-American War. Buchanan later supported the Compromise of , a series of congressional acts that admitted California as a free state but let the new western territories decide whether they would allow slavery before applying for statehood, a concept that became known as popular sovereignty.
Although never acted upon, the proposal generated protests from anti-slavery Northerners and others in the United States who feared Cuba would become a slave state. In , President Pierce signed the Kansas- Nebraska Act, which created two new territories and allowed settlers to determine whether they would enter the Union as free states or slave states.
In the general election, Buchanan maintained that slavery was an issue to be decided by individual states and territories, while his Republican challenger, John Fremont , an explorer and U. Buchanan received electoral votes, while Fremont, the first-ever Republican presidential candidate the party was established in , garnered votes. The popular vote was closer, with Buchanan capturing a little more than 45 percent of the total ballots cast. Breckinridge was 35 when elected, making him the youngest vice president in U.
Instead, the national debate over slavery only intensified, and the new president was seen by many people as being more sympathetic to Southern interests.
Two days after he was sworn in, the U. Supreme Court handed down its Dred Scott decision, which said the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in the territories and denied African Americans the rights of U. Far from settling the issue, the Dred Scott decision, which Southerners applauded and Northerners protested, led to increased divisiveness. Buchanan further rankled Northerners by supporting the Lecompton Constitution , which would have allowed Kansas to become a slave state.
It was later voted down, and Kansas joined the Union as a free state in He, in turn, vetoed Republican legislation. In October , abolitionist John Brown tried unsuccessfully to stage a massive slave uprising by raiding the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia now West Virginia.
After Brown was convicted of treason and hanged, hostilities between the North and South continued to escalate. Upholding a promise he had made in his inaugural address, James Buchanan did not seek reelection in In , when Andrew Jackson was elected to his second term as president, he appointed Buchanan as his envoy to Russia, a post in which Buchanan further proved his aptitude as a diplomat.
In Buchanan returned to the United States and won a seat in Senate as a Democrat, a position he would hold for the next 10 years, until, in , he resigned to serve as James K. Polk 's secretary of state, a position he used to further an expansionist agenda.
In , he made an unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, losing to Franklin Pierce , who, after being elected president, made Buchanan his minister to England. In , Buchanan successfully defeated Republican candidate John C. Fremont and, on March 4, , was sworn in as the 15th president of the United States. In his inaugural address, Buchanan, who had won, in no small part, due to the support he had garnered in the southern states, reiterated a belief that had been one of the major running points of his campaign: that slavery was a matter for states and territories to decide, not the federal government.
He went on to suggest that the matter was one that would be easily resolved, both "speedily and finally. Shortly after his inauguration, the Dred Scott decision was delivered, essentially stating that the federal government had no right to exclude slavery in the territories. Around this time, Buchanan also attempted to resolve the slavery dispute in Kansas, so that it could agree on a constitution and be admitted to the Union. Buchanan supported the pro-slavery Lecompton constitution, which passed the House but was blocked by the Senate and ultimately defeated.
By the end of Buchanan's presidency, the slavery issue threatened to tear the country apart. When Abraham Lincoln was elected president in , the possibility that several states would secede was approaching likelihood. In his final address to Congress, Buchanan argued that while the states had no legal right to seceded, the federal government had no right to prevent them from doing so.
Despite Buchanan's attempts to prevent it, on December 20, , South Carolina became the first state to secede. Box Carlisle, PA James Buchanan, fifteenth president of the United States, was born near Mercersburg, Pennsylvania on April 23, to parents of Scotch-Irish descent. Buchanan attended the Mercersburg Academy until the fall of , when he entered the junior class of Dickinson College. He found the school to be in "wretched condition" with "no efficient discipline.
After making a pledge of good behavior to his minister, Dr. John King a college trustee , Buchanan was readmitted to Dickinson. In his senior year, he felt slighted by the faculty because he did not win the top award of the College for which his literary society had nominated him.
Buchanan commented, "I left college,. Upon graduation, Buchanan began to study under the prominent Lancaster lawyer James Hopkins. After being admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar in , he quickly gained prominence, and was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in and as a Federalist.
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