Buchanan had not achieved a race win before competing in the Kentucky Derby and by contemporary accounts was a difficult and unruly mount.
Buchanan retired from racing at age three and lived the remainder of his days at the Senorita Stock Farm in Lexington, Kentucky, site of the present day Kentucky Horse Park.
His most successful son was the Latonia Derby winner Buck McCann.
Buchanan does not appear in the stud books after 1897 and was reported to have died at the age of 17 by a 1910 Daily Racing Form article.
[3][4] The Semi-weekly Interior Journal of Stanford, KY reported on June 1, 1894, that Buchanan died after a sudden illness of inflammation of the bowels.