James Buchanan: Was This Man America’s Worst President?

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In the modern age, it’s common for anyone in the White House to be dubbed the “worst president ever” at least briefly. For example, Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan both spent part of their administrations with low approval ratings. Some of you might already be commenting about current presidents, but what happens when the assessment is true? What happens when the historical consensus broadly agrees that someone really was the worst?

Look no further than James Buchanan. Elected in 1856, Buchanan became the 15th president just as the nation was falling apart. Pro- and anti-slavery settlers were clashing in Kansas, and tensions were high. While this would have tested any president, Buchanan failed that test spectacularly. In an age of division, he tentatively tried to find a compromise, only to watch as both his reputation and his country plunged into chaos. Was he a truly bad leader or just unlucky? Today, we’re telling the story of the man who history has declared America’s worst leader.

So far this century, there have been 14 major surveys of historians and academics that attempted to rank U.S. presidents from best to worst. In all but four of them, James Buchanan finished last. On the rare occasions when he didn’t, he placed second from the bottom. With such a poor historical reputation, it could be tempting to think that there must have been something preordained about Buchanan’s failure, that it was clear how ineffective he was from the day he was born.

However, that’s the most interesting aspect of James Buchanan’s life. If you only focus on it prior to 1856, you might think he would make a pretty good leader. Born on April 23, 1791, in rural Pennsylvania, Buchanan came from decent, hard-working stock. His father had emigrated to the U.S. from Ireland just eight years earlier and had already established a successful business. His mother was also smart and motivated, instilling in Buchanan and his ten siblings a love of reading. With the best education his father could provide, Buchanan graduated prepared for a life among his state’s elite.

He settled in Lancaster, studied law, passed the bar, and by 1812 had opened his own practice. However, his legal career would be put on hold because 1812 was also the year that North America erupted into conflict. The War of 1812 was one of those awkward conflicts where many people died, but nobody really won, pitting Americans and their Native allies against the British and their indigenous associates. In Pennsylvania, militias were activated, and able-bodied men were called up, including Buchanan. Although his unit wouldn’t see action, the stir around the war helped crystallize his politics. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he found himself drawn to the anti-war Federalists.

By the time Buchanan joined their ranks, the party was in decline, unable to beat the Democratic-Republicans. Still, something about their basic conservatism appealed to him. From 1814 to 1819, he served as a Federalist in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, honing his political skills while his growing law career helped boost his speaking talent and net him considerable wealth. By the time he left the state house, Buchanan was a growing political force with a bright future ahead of him.

Now he just needed someone to share that future with. On paper, Anne Caroline Coleman was the perfect match for the up-and-coming lawyer. The daughter of a wealthy merchant and part of Pennsylvania high society, she was just the sort of potential wife an ambitious young man needed by his side. Sadly, that may have been all Buchanan ever saw in her.

There are two versions of what happened after their engagement. One version has it that Coleman’s parents suspected Buchanan was after their money and refused to allow the marriage. The other is that Coleman discovered her fiancé was secretly seeing other women. Whatever the truth, the outcome was the same: Coleman broke off the engagement, and a few days later, she was dead amid rumors of suicide. The death of his fiancée broke Buchanan, and he lost himself in politics, claiming later that he began his national career as a distraction from his great grief.

Although it was as a Federalist that Buchanan won his first seat in Congress, it was clear by then that the party was over. In the 1820 election, they hadn’t even been able to find a candidate. Unless Buchanan wanted to fade with them, he needed to switch parties. Luckily, a new movement was about to throw Washington’s disaffected politicians a lifeline.

In 1823, the state of Tennessee sent the hugely popular war hero Andrew Jackson to the Senate. Although nominally a Democratic-Republican, Jackson was really a force unto himself. No sooner had he hit D.C. than he began sweeping through like a hurricane, scattering old certainties in his path. Among those swept up by his populist movement was James Buchanan.

Buchanan became Jackson’s staunchest champion in Pennsylvania. When four candidates separately ran under the Democratic-Republican banner in 1824, it was Jackson that he threw his support behind. However, 1824 wouldn’t be Jackson’s breakthrough year. Although he netted a plurality of the vote, he didn’t win outright, allowing the election to be decided in the House, where enough delegates lined up to hand John Quincy Adams the presidency.

To say Andrew Jackson was livid is an understatement. Jackson decried the “corrupt bargain” that made Adams president and also criticized Buchanan, who he felt had failed to back him. Since Jackson was an epic grudge holder, this slight would keep Buchanan out of serious politics for years. Still, he was deeply invested in Jackson’s movement. When Jackson formed the Democratic Party, Buchanan was there in Pennsylvania campaigning hard for it. When Jackson won the presidency in both 1828 and 1832, Buchanan was among those cheering the loudest.

Eventually, Jackson’s temper cooled enough to forgive. In 1832, he made Buchanan envoy to Russia. When Buchanan returned, he sat in the Senate as a Democrat, beginning an 11-year stretch in Congress where he quietly amassed more power. It was also the beginning of perhaps the most important relationship in his life.

If you’ve Googled James Buchanan, you may have come across the claim that he was America’s first gay president. This is due to his incredibly close relationship with Senator William Rufus DeVane King of Alabama. Upon arriving in Washington, Buchanan and King both moved into the same boarding house for bachelors, originally home to several unmarried congressmen. It eventually emptied out until only the two remained, living like a couple.

Contemporaries referred to them as “Mr. Buchanan and his wife” or “Aunt Nancy and Aunt Fancy.” They clearly enjoyed one another’s company immensely. However, while it’s tempting to claim Buchanan as an early LGBTQ pioneer, the truth is that we simply don’t have enough evidence to say if he and King were lovers or just really good friends.

King had a profound impact on Buchanan’s life. A powerful supporter of states’ rights and slavery, King was nonetheless notable for being strongly against secession. This put him at odds with many other southerners and seemed to point to an optimistic truth for Buchanan: that finding common ground between free and slave states was possible and desirable. Sadly, Buchanan would live to see just how hollow that truth turned out to be.

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By the time 1844 rolled around, Buchanan was an experienced senator with a significant power base in the Democratic Party. Just as the Democrats were getting ready to regain the White House after two terms of Jackson and one of his successors, Martin Van Buren, Buchanan’s party had lost power to Whig candidate William Henry Harrison. However, Harrison died, and his replacement, John Tyler, alienated everyone, leaving the White House back in play.

If Buchanan could secure his party’s nomination, he might become president. Unfortunately, that was a big “if.” With a crowded field, the convention deadlocked, and James K. Polk’s name was pushed forward. Realizing his chance had been blown, Buchanan threw his delegates behind Polk, who became the Democratic nominee and went on to win the White House.

Still, Polk’s ascension wasn’t all bad for Buchanan. Grateful for his support and needing to keep Pennsylvania onside for a coming political battle over tariffs, Polk made Buchanan his Secretary of State. This dropped Buchanan right into the middle of the two biggest issues of the day: Oregon and Texas.

A believer in America’s manifest destiny, Polk came to power promising to annex the Republic of Texas and kick the British out of the jointly controlled Oregon territory. It was a demanding prospect for any Secretary of State, and the way Buchanan dealt with it hints at all his future failings. Polk recorded in his diary that his new minister was incapable of taking a position that might make his supporters unhappy.

For example, Polk’s campaign slogan of “54-40 or fight” implied war with Britain if it didn’t surrender Oregon all the way up to the Alaskan border. In private, Buchanan counseled avoiding conflict and advocated a compromise that eventually became the modern Canadian-U.S. border. However, when the compromise bill came to a Senate vote, Buchanan suddenly transformed into an ardent expansionist, excoriating Polk for not throwing the British out.

The same deal occurred with the Mexican-American War, triggered by the U.S. annexation of Texas. The war saw America seize huge swathes of its southern neighbor. Buchanan initially urged Polk to announce that the U.S. would return the conquered territory at the war’s end, but then, as the U.S. marched on Mexico’s capital, Buchanan suddenly joined the Democratic cheerleaders demanding Polk take Mexico.

As far as Polk was concerned, all this flip-flopping was a sign that his Secretary of State was more interested in building support for a future presidential bid than helping to run the country. A more charitable reading is possible: all his life, Buchanan was a man who liked to be liked. Whether in the Senate or as a Northerner dealing with Southerners, his default instinct was to keep everyone happy.

In better times, this kind of reflexive centrism could have been his making; instead, it wound up being his undoing. In 1848, James Polk stepped down after a single term, leaving the Democratic nomination open. Buchanan threw his hat into the ring, only for the delegates to reject him. He placed third on the ballot, clearly having failed to win any friends.

Not that it mattered; 1848’s all-Mexican-American War hero Zachary Taylor stood for the Whigs, netting the party a solid win. In the aftermath, Buchanan returned to Pennsylvania to plot his return, aiming to come back in 1852 and finally nab the presidency. Instead, fate would force him to wait until the White House had gone from being a prize to a chalice laced with poison.

For a guy who liked to be liked, Buchanan had a knack for making enemies. Take Stephen A. Douglas, a senator from Illinois with a tiny body and an oversized head, earning him the nickname “the Little Giant.” Douglas stood against Buchanan at the 1852 Democratic convention, but their fight for the nomination was so bitter that it damaged both their chances.

The convention opted for a compromise candidate, declaring little-known Franklin Pierce the winner. Still, Pierce’s nomination and eventual win needn’t have been bad for Buchanan. His old buddy Colonel King was Pierce’s VP pick, and elected alongside him. However, while Buchanan celebrated his friend’s triumph, it was short-lived. On April 18, 1853, William R. King died following a long illness.

When Buchanan got the news, he was devastated. He had accepted a posting to England from Pierce, and all he could do was board the boat and try to hide his overwhelming grief. While things clearly sucked on a personal level, on a professional level, the timing couldn’t have been better. His new post meant Buchanan was far enough away to survive the oncoming political storm.

Remember all that territory the U.S. seized from Mexico? Those territories now wanted to be admitted as states, and Congress was sensitively balanced between free and slave states. Both sides were jumpy about the newcomers making them a permanent minority. This led to the Compromise of 1850, which cemented the idea of popular sovereignty deciding if a new state was free or slave. However, this only made the Kansas-Nebraska Act worse.

In 1854, Buchanan’s nemesis Stephen Douglas tried to pass a bill organizing the territory of Nebraska into two separate territories: Nebraska and Kansas. Douglas did this to keep pushing the U.S. west, but because he was unable to pass his bill without Southern support, he included a clause about these new territories deciding the slavery issue by popular vote. This undermined the long-standing Missouri Compromise, which had outlawed slavery north of the 36°30′ parallel.

When the bill passed, it set off a rush of settlers from both slave states and the free North into Kansas, leading to violence known as “Bleeding Kansas.” Dozens were killed, and tensions skyrocketed across the nation. It also damaged the reputations of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Stephen Douglas, and Franklin Pierce.

By 1856, the Democratic nomination was back in play, but Buchanan was having his own PR problems. In 1853, he had met America’s ministers to Spain and France in Austin, Belgium, to discuss Spain’s refusal to sell Cuba. Paranoid that a slave revolt on the island might prompt a similar uprising in the South, Buchanan helped prepare a cable urging Pierce to annex Cuba. Unfortunately, the cable was made public, and abolitionists and free-soilers reacted strongly.

Thanks to his conviction that the U.S. Constitution upheld the rights of slave states, Buchanan was already seen as a “doughface,” a Northerner with Southern sympathies. The Austin Manifesto made him look like an imperialist trying to spread slavery. As a result, Buchanan became extremely unpalatable to Northern voters.

However, the opposite was also true within the Democratic Party. The Southern wing began to see Buchanan as more than just an ally; they began to see him as one of their own. This meant that when Buchanan tried for the nomination again, he had to rely on the slave states to win, but this new allegiance would come at a terrible cost for him and for all America.

When James Buchanan emerged triumphant at the 1856 Democratic convention, the news was met with a resigned sigh. Although a serious player, Buchanan hadn’t won because anyone thought he’d be a great nominee, but because he was the only person both Southerners and Northerners might back. By then, it was clear the nation was splitting at the seams.

In the months before the convention, a pro-slavery mob had sacked the free town of Lawrence in Kansas, and in retaliation, abolitionist John Brown had murdered five pro-slavery settlers. The violence even spread to the capital when Senator Brooks viciously beat Senator Charles Sumner half to death for an anti-slavery speech. Things were so tense that Buchanan hesitated to accept the nomination, writing that he had hoped for the nomination in previous years but now feared the abolitionists would bring war upon the land.

Yet for all the prescience of that statement, Buchanan had spent over a decade conniving and scheming for the top job, and 1856 promised an easy race. The weak party had collapsed, and the Republicans were still widely seen as too radical to win. So despite his reservations, Buchanan went for it.

On November 4, the Democrats won the White House, and Buchanan was on track to become the 15th president. However, his wish was about to sour quickly. Back in February, the Supreme Court began hearing the case of Dred Scott, a slave who had accompanied his master to a free state and tried to sue for his freedom. Since the case could have massive implications, the entire nation was nervously waiting on the verdict, including the president-elect.

In early 1857, Buchanan broke with ethical practice to write to some of the justices, pressuring them for advanced news of the outcome. He may have even prodded one in his preferred direction. Either way, he got the answer he wanted. On March 4, 1857, a confident James Buchanan told his inauguration crowd that the slavery issue was about to be settled and everyone should abide by the ruling.

Two days later, the Supreme Court issued its decision, and with that, Buchanan’s dreams of a unified nation collapsed. The court ruled that slaves had no rights and that the Missouri Compromise had been unconstitutional, meaning slavery could now spread north unchecked. It was perhaps the most explosive ruling in U.S. history.

While Buchanan tried to dilute the backlash by appointing a cabinet of moderates, the damage was done. Buchanan’s honeymoon period, if it ever existed, was over. From now on, everything was going to be downhill. James Buchanan’s single term is often likened to watching a clown car filled with nitroglycerin slowly roll toward an orphanage—somehow pathetic, fascinating, and tragic all at once.

Things kicked off right away with the Lecompton Constitution. Back in 1855, vote rigging and intimidation had led to the Kansas territory electing a pro-slavery legislature, which then wrote a constitution that could be boiled down to “well, slavery.” Thanks to the vote-rigging, most congressmen were against this constitution, and even Buchanan’s advisors told him it was a non-starter.

But for whatever reason, Buchanan decided this was the hill he was going to die on. He pressed hard for the Lecompton Constitution despite it being anathema to his party’s Northern wing. When that wing offered a compromise whereby the pro-slavery constitution would be passed but open to amendment by a popular majority at any time, Buchanan refused. The result was Northern Democrats, led by Buchanan’s old enemy Stephen Douglas, joining with the Republicans to kill the Kansas Constitution.

Buchanan had angered Northerners and divided his party, only to get nothing in return. This pattern would continue for four whole years. We don’t want to give the impression that Buchanan’s lack of leadership was the only thing causing America to crumble. There were plenty of factors beyond his control, such as the Panic of 1857 that hit the economy or John Brown’s 1859 raid on Harper’s Ferry in an attempt to spark a slave uprising.

Yet we also shouldn’t underestimate the role Buchanan himself played in the march to war. Despite favoring bridge-building, Buchanan reflexively sided with the slave states on almost all issues, declaring the South as sovereign states responsible for slavery. He believed the people of the North were not responsible and had no right to interfere.

By the time 1860 arrived, Buchanan’s administration was