James Buchanan was the fifteenth president of The United States. He held office from 1857-1861. Buchanan was born in 1791 in Cove Gap, Pennsylvania and died in 1868 at age seventy-seven in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. One month after Buchanan left office to Abraham Lincoln, The American Civil War began. James was nicknamed “Old Buck” or “Ten-Cent Jimmy” by the Republicans in the presidential campaign of 1856 after Buchanan said ten cents was fair daily pay for manual laborers. Buchanan 's inability to halt the southern states ' drive toward secession before The Civil War has led most historians to consider his presidency a failure, but overall he did a lot for the country.(1) Buchanan was a democrat who didn 't believe in slavery, …show more content…
He appointed a cabinet composed of Northerners and Southerners and hoped to keep peace between the country’s pro-slavery and anti-slavery people, but it created lots of tension. People were accusing James of being biased to the southern colony interests and slavery issue. Two days after being in office, the U.S. Supreme Court gave a document that stated, “The federal government had no power to regulate slavery in the territories and denied African Americans the rights of U.S. citizens.” He hoped that the document would resolve the slavery issue, but he, “reportedly pressured a Northern justice to vote with the Southern majority in the case.” Then, the southerners were contempt, but the northerners were protesting, which led to diversity. Each had complete different opinions, and it was just getting everybody upset. Buchanan made the Northerners even more angry by supporting the Lecompton Constitution, which would have allowed Kansas to become a slave state, but it was voted down and Kansas became a part of the Union. The republicans then started to block most of Buchanan’s agenda, so James vetoed republican legislation. James did not want reelection in 1860. Buchanan didn 't think that states had the right to become independent, but he didn 't have any proof from the constitution to prove it. In the end, Buchanan left the whole slavery problem to be resolved by Abraham