Was James Buchanan A Success Or Failure

James Buchanan was the fifteenth president of the United States of America and was the president during the escalation to the Civil War. Buchanan was born in Cove Gap, Pennsylvania, in 1791. At the age of twenty-one, Buchanan enlisted in the military at the start of the war of 1812 and fought in the defense of Baltimore. However, after the War of 1812 Buchanan began his forty-six-year long political career. Buchanan’s first position was in 1814 when he was elected to as a member of the Federalist Party to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, and later on won a chair in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1821-1831. After spending five consecutive terms in the U.S. House of Representatives he held various positions in the political realm such as winning a seat in the Senate, James K. Polk’s secretary of state,

At the end of 1856 Buchanan successfully beat John C. Fremont to become President of the United States. During Buchanan’s presidential term he did not accomplish much, and he watched the United States slowly deteriorate without doing anything about it. After his term as president, Buchanan tried to blame others for the Civil War but was ultimately ignored. James Buchanan leads a very eventful and remarkable life prior to becoming president, however, Buchanan was a pitiful and unproductive president.

When analyzing and reviewing James Buchanan’s presidency an unpredicted economic crisis struck the United States in the Summer of 1857, which was the Panic of 1857. A series of events occurred prior to the Panic of 1857 that could have possibly been foreseen and prevented by James Buchanan or one of his associates. The Panic of 1857 was the worst economic downturn in America in twenty year and last approximately a year and a half. The Panic of 1857 began with the ending of the