Then he attended and graduated from Cumberland University at Lebanon, Tennessee in 1885 with a Bachelor of Science degree.

[1] Buchanan was one of the earliest faculty members appointed to the newly created Oklahoma University by its first president, David Ross Boyd, and began advancing through the academic ranks.

He also survived political purges that swept away two presidents and several other highly rated faculty members during the early years of the University's existence.

Instead, James decided to move to Indian Territory, where he became a professor of history at Central Normal School in Edmond in 1894.

[2][a] In 1895, Buchanan moved to Norman and accepted the same position at the newer University of Oklahoma, a connection he would maintain for the rest of his career.

[b] Around the dawn of the Twentieth Century, territorial colleges and universities were ripe fields for political patronage.

At the first statewide election after being granted statehood on November 16, 1907, the electorate chose an administration controlled by the Democratic Party, led by Charles N. Haskell.

Very soon, Haskell fired the entire OU Board of Regents and named a new president for the school, Arthur Grant Evans, who was to take over, effective July 1, 1908.

Evans had previously been president of Henry Kendall College, then a Presbyterian School located in Muskogee.

[3] Every faculty member was directed to appear before the Board of Regents on June 23, 1908, to present reasons why he or she should be allowed to remain at OU.

He represented a solidly populist wing of the electorate who felt that the institution had become too elitist, too expensive, and whose curriculum taught too many social concepts that they opposed.

Buchanan was dean of the college of arts and sciences for 14 years before he was named acting president of the university on July 1, 1923.

On December 23, 1924, he married his second wife, Katharyn Osterhaus, who had been the supervisor of English at University High School also in Norman, Oklahoma.