{"id":692,"date":"2018-10-24T19:33:39","date_gmt":"2018-10-24T19:33:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/slavery\/?page_id=692"},"modified":"2024-08-28T12:05:29","modified_gmt":"2024-08-28T12:05:29","slug":"james-buchanan","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/slavery\/people\/james-buchanan\/","title":{"rendered":"James Buchanan"},"content":{"rendered":"
PUBLIC MEMORY AT DICKINSON<\/strong><\/header>\n
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\"BuchananBuchanan Hall is the only building on campus named after former U.S. president James Buchanan.\u00a0 Long reviled as one of the nation’s worst chief executives, Buchanan’s memory at Dickinson has never quite been erased, but it has certainly not been celebrated either.\u00a0 There are not many portraits of him visible on campus, other than a large one in the college library and a small teaching installation about the Dred Scott case inside the House Divided studio.\u00a0 Over the years, most college publications have also treated his controversial legacy quite cautiously.<\/p>\n

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BRIEF PROFILE<\/strong><\/h6>\n

James Buchanan, a graduate of Dickinson College and a native of Pennsylvania, was one of the best-prepared and yet least successful presidents in American history. During his long career, Buchanan was a state legislator, congressman, senator, US minister overseas, and even Secretary of State. In1856, Buchanan, a Democrat, defeated Republican John Fremont and American Party candidate Millard Fillmore in a hotly contested three-way race.\u00a0\u00a0 Buchanan’s stormy administration began in the shadow of the Dred Scott decision, announced just two days after his inauguration in March 1857.\u00a0 Most of his single term in office was then consumed by the bitter politics of slavery. \u00a0As slaveholding states began seceding from the union following Republican Abraham Lincoln\u2019s victory in November 1860, Buchanan tried vainly to stop the nation\u2019s collapse.\u00a0 Yet he was never willing to employ the forceful measures that Lincoln later used to save the country. Frustrated and exhausted, James Buchanan then retired to his Wheatland estate in Lancaster where he wrote the first presidential memoirs in American history \u2013an angry defense of his most unpopular political choices. He died in 1868.<\/p>\n