James Buchanan Jr. was born into a Scottish-Irish family on April 23, 1791, in a log cabin on a farm called Stony Batter, near Cove Gap, Peters Township, in the Allegheny Mountains of southern Pennsylvania.

[5] James Buchanan Sr., was an Ulster-Scot from just outside Ramelton, a small town in the north-east of County Donegal in the north-west of Ulster, the northern province in Ireland, who emigrated to the newly formed United States in 1783, having sailed from Derry.

[8] In 1808, he was nearly expelled for disorderly conduct; he and his fellow students had attracted negative attention for drinking in local taverns, disturbing the peace at night and committing acts of vandalism,[9] but he pleaded for a second chance and ultimately graduated with honors in 1809.

Since the sessions in the Pennsylvania General Assembly lasted only three months, Buchanan continued practicing law at a profit by charging higher fees, and his service helped him acquire more clients.

Buchanan maintained a strict adherence to the Pennsylvania State Legislature's guidelines and sometimes voted against positions in Congress which he promoted in his own speeches, despite open ambitions for the White House.

In the lead-up to the 1844 Democratic National Convention, Buchanan positioned himself as a potential alternative to former President Martin Van Buren, but the nomination went to James K. Polk, who won the election.

[26] Buchanan was offered the position of Secretary of State in the Polk administration or, as the alternative, a seat on the Supreme Court, to compensate him for his support in the election campaign but also in order to eliminate him as an internal party rival.

When Northern Democrats rallied around the popular slogan Fifty-Four Forty or Fight ("54°40′ or war") in the 1844 election campaign, Buchanan adopted this position, but later followed Polk's direction, leading to the Oregon Compromise of 1846, which established the 49th parallel as the boundary in the Pacific Northwest.

[34] In regards to Mexico, Buchanan maintained a dubious view that its attack on American troops on the other side of the Rio Grande in April 1846 constituted a border violation and a legitimate reason for war.

Buchanan emerged as a promising candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, alongside Lewis Cass, Stephen Douglas, and William L. Marcy; however, the Pennsylvania convention did not vote unanimously in his favor, with over 30 delegates protesting against him.

[56][57][58] In 2022, historian David W. Blight argued that the year 1857 was, "the great pivot on the road to disunion...largely because of the Dred Scott case, which stoked the fear, distrust and conspiratorial hatred already common in both the North and the South to new levels of intensity.

[72][73] Two days after Buchanan was sworn in as president, Chief Justice Taney delivered the Dred Scott decision, which denied the petitioner's request to be set free from slavery.

[78] Buchanan acted in accordance with Jacksonian Democracy principles, which restricted paper money issuance, and froze federal funds for public works projects, causing resentment among some of the population due to his refusal to implement an economic stimulus program.

Following the dispatch of test and configuration telegrams, on August 16, 1858 Queen Victoria sent a 98-word message to Buchanan at his summer residence in the Bedford Springs Hotel in Pennsylvania, expressing hope that the newly laid cable would prove "an additional link between the nations whose friendship is founded on their common interest and reciprocal esteem".

May the Atlantic telegraph, under the blessing of Heaven, prove to be a bond of perpetual peace and friendship between the kindred nations, and an instrument destined by Divine Providence to diffuse religion, civilization, liberty, and law throughout the world.

[89] Buchanan appointed Robert J. Walker to replace John W. Geary as Territorial Governor, and there ensued conflicting referendums from Topeka and Lecompton, where election fraud occurred.

In a December 1857 meeting with Stephen A. Douglas, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, Buchanan demanded that all Democrats support the administration's position of admitting Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution.

Douglas' faction continued to support the doctrine of popular sovereignty, while Buchanan insisted that Democrats respect the Dred Scott decision and its repudiation of federal interference with slavery in the territories.

In the western and northwestern United States, where the Homestead Act was very popular, even many Democrats condemned the president's policies, while many Americans who considered education an important asset resented Buchanan's veto of agricultural colleges.

[107] In March 1860, the House impaneled the Covode Committee to investigate the Buchanan administration's patronage system for alleged impeachable offenses, such as bribery and extortion of representatives.

[116] As early as October, the army's Commanding General, Winfield Scott, an opponent of Buchanan, warned him that Lincoln's election would likely cause at least seven states to secede from the union.

"[119][120] Buchanan's only suggestion to solve the crisis was "an explanatory amendment" affirming the constitutionality of slavery in the states, the fugitive slave laws, and popular sovereignty in the territories.

[124] Buchanan's friend Rose O'Neal Greenhow took advantage of the proximity to the president and spied for the Confederacy, which had already established a sophisticated network for gathering information from its eventual opponent before its formation.

[131] He also wrote a letter to his fellow Pennsylvania Democrats in Harrisburg, urging them and all young men to enlist in the Union army and "join the many thousands of brave & patriotic volunteers who are already in the field.

[130] He received hate mail and threatening letters daily, and stores in Lancaster displayed Buchanan's likeness with the eyes inked red, a noose drawn around his neck and the word "TRAITOR" written across his forehead.

In an enlarged view, the people's interests may seem identical, but to the eye of local and sectional prejudice, they always appear to be conflicting ... and the jealousies that will perpetually arise can be repressed only by the mutual forbearance which pervades the constitution.

"[141] On the resulting spread of slavery, through unconditional expansion, he stated: "I feel a strong repugnance by any act of mine to extend the present limits of the Union over a new slave-holding territory."

[168][better source needed] According to surveys taken by American scholars and political scientists between 1948 and 1982, Buchanan ranks every time among the worst presidents of the United States, alongside Harding, Fillmore and Nixon.

In fact Buchanan's failing during the crisis over the Union was not inactivity, but rather his partiality for the South, a favoritism that bordered on disloyalty in an officer pledged to defend all the United States.

[177] A bronze and granite memorial near the southeast corner of Washington, D.C.'s Meridian Hill Park was designed by architect William Gorden Beecher and sculpted by Maryland artist Hans Schuler.