Politics of Continuity
Ambivalent Americans
Affairs of Party: The Political Culture of Northern
Democrats in the Mid-Nineteenth Century
The Stevensons: Biography of an American Family
Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography
Civil War and Reconstruction
Votes for Women
JEAN H. BAKER is professor of history at Goucher College. She is the author of several books, including The Stevensons and a biography of Mary Todd Lincoln, and she is at work on a book about the suffrage movement. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
1: ASCENSIONFROM STONY BATTER TO THE CABINET, 1791-1848
John Bassett Moore, ed., The Works of James Buchanan (New York: Antiquarian Press, 1960), 12:260 (All Buchanan quotes in the text are from this source.) George Ticknor Curtis, Life of James Buchanan (New York: Harpers, 1883), 1:3.
Curtis, 1:7.
Ibid., 18, 19.
Philip Klein, President James Buchanan: A Biography (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1962), 156; Curtis, 1:519.
Jonathan Ned Katz, Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). I am indebted to Kings biographer, Daniel Fate Brooks, for my understanding of the King-Buchanan relationship.
Elbert B. Smith, The Presidency of James Buchanan (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1975), 13; Congressional Directory of 1836 , 24th Cong.; James SterlingYoung, The Washington Community (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966).
Robert Remini, Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 477; Congressional Globe, 27th Cong., 1st sess., 596.
Elizabeth Buchanan to James Buchanan, October 21, 1831 (Buchanan Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania).
Polk: The Diary of a President, 1845-1849, ed. Allan Nevins (New York: Longmans Green, 1929), 54, 27.
Ibid., 278, 306, 379.
Klein, 194.
2: WHEATLAND TO THE WHITE HOUSE, 1849-1856
Klein, 208; Moore, 8:387; Curtis, 1:16.
Moore, 2:451.
Klein, 226.
Frederick Binder, James Buchanan and the American Empire (Selinsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 1994), 175, 17; Curtis, 2:100, 111; Moore, 9:158.
Moore, 9:9596.
Curtis, 2:162, 120.
3: THE BUCHANAN PRESIDENCYTHEORY AND PRACTICE
Moore, 8:496.
Don E. Fehrenbacher, Slavery, Law, and Politics: The Dred Scott Case in Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 168; Moore, 10:1069; 13:39.
The Diary of Edmund Ruffin (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), 1:267.
Moore, 10:203.
Thomas Thomas to Alexander Stephens, in Correspondence of Robert Toombs, Alexander Stephens, and Howell Cobb (New York: Da Capo Press, 1970), 1:372.
Moore, 10:120; Kenneth M. Stampp, America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 180.
Roy F. Nichols, The Disruption of American Democracy (New York: Macmillan, 1948), 130.
Moore, 10:190.
4: APPEASING THE SOUTH: THE FINAL MONTHS OF THE BUCHANAN PRESIDENCY
Mark W. Summers, The Plundering Generation : Corruption and the Crisis of the Union, 1849-1861 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 23960; The Covode Investigation, 36th Cong., 1st sess., House of Representatives, Report no. 648.
Curtis, 2:289; Moore, 10:461.
Nichols, 386.
William Brigance, Jeremiah Sullivan Black (Philadelphia: n.p., 1926), 301; Klein, 381; Philip Gerald Auchampaugh, James Buchanan and His Cabinet on the Eve of Secession (Lancaster, Pa.: privately printed, 1926); Philadelphia Press , September 10, 1883.
Congressional Globe, 36th Cong, 2nd sess., 1373.
AFTERWORD
The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, ed. Arthur Link (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 6:659.
1791 Born in Stony Batter, Cove Gap, Franklin County, Pennsylvania, on April 23
1794 Family moves to Mercersburg, Pennsylvania
1809 Graduates from Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania
1809-12 Studies law under James Hopkins in Lancaster, Pennsylvania
1814-16 Elected and reelected to Pennsylvania legislature as a Federalist
1819 Engaged to Ann Coleman, who breaks off the engagement
1820 Missouri Compromise passes Congress
1821-31 Member of House of Representatives; elected five times; becomes a Democrat
1828 Andrew Jackson elected president
1831 Appointed minister to Russia by Jackson
1833 Defeated for U.S. Senate seat
1834-45 Member of U.S. Senate, filling vacancy for the other Pennsylvania seat; reelected twice
1837 Chairman of Senate Foreign Relations Committee
1844 James K. Polk elected president
1845-49 Serves as secretary of state
1846 Senate ratifies Oregon Treaty; Mexican-American War begins
1849 Wheatland becomes his permanent residence; niece Harriet Lane moves there
1852 Loses Democratic nomination to Franklin Pierce, who is elected president
1853-56 U.S. minister to Great Britain
1854 Ostend Manifesto signed
1856 Elected president
1857 Dred Scott decision
1858 Lecompton constitution rejected on a third vote in Kansas; Minnesota admitted into the Union
1860 Abraham Lincoln elected president; South Carolina secedes; controversy over Fort Sumter begins
1861 Six more states secede during Buchanans term; Lincoln inaugurated in March
1866 Publishes Mr. Buchanans Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion
1868 Dies on June 1 and is buried in Lancaster
Auchampaugh, Philip Gerald. James Buchanan and His Cabinet on the Eve of Secession. Lancaster, Pa.: privately printed, 1926.
Binder, Frederick Moore. James Buchanan and the American Empire . Selinsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 1994.
Birkner, Michael, ed. James Buchanan and the Political Crisis of the 1850s. Selinsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 1996.
Buchanan, James. Mr. Buchanans Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion . New York: D. Appleton, 1866.
Coleman, John F. The Disruption of the Pennsylvania Democracy, 1848-1860 . Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1975.
Crawford, Samuel. The Genesis of the Civil War. New York: Charles Webster, 1887.
Curtis, George Ticknor. Life of James Buchanan: Fifteenth President of the United States . 2 vols. New York: Harpers, 1883.
Fehrenbacher, Don E. The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics . New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
Gara, Larry. The Presidency of Franklin Pierce . Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992.
Gienapp, William E. The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856 . New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Holt, Michael F. The Political Crisis of the 1850s . New York: Wiley, 1978.
Johannsen, Robert W. Stephen A . Douglas. New York: Oxford University Press ,
Klein, Maury. Days of Defiance: Sumter, Secession, and the Coming of the Civil War . New York: Vintage, 1999.
Klein, Philip S. President James Buchanan: A Biography . University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1962.
Maizlish, Stephen E., and John J. Kushma. Essays on American Antebellum Politics, 1840-1860. College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, 1982.
