James Buchanan - Political Career

Political Career

Buchanan began his political career in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from 1814–1816 as a member of the Federalist Party. He was elected to the 17th United States Congress and to the four succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1821 – March 4, 1831), serving as chairman of the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary in the 21st United States Congress. In 1830, he was among the members appointed by the House to conduct impeachment proceedings against James H. Peck, judge of the United States District Court for the District of Missouri, who was ultimately acquitted. Buchanan did not seek reelection and from 1832 to 1833 he served as Minister to Russia, appointed by Andrew Jackson.

With the Federalist Party long defunct, Buchanan was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate to fill a vacancy and served from December 1834; he was reelected in 1837 and 1843, and resigned in 1845 to accept President James K. Polk's nomination of him as Secretary of State. He was chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations from 1836–1841.

After the death of Supreme Court Justice Henry Baldwin in 1844, Polk nominated him to fill the vacancy in March 1845, but he declined that nomination because he felt compelled to complete his collaboration on the Oregon Treaty negotiations. The seat was eventually filled by Robert Cooper Grier.

Buchanan served as Secretary of State under President Polk from 1845 to 1849, despite objections from Buchanan's rival, Vice President George Dallas. In this capacity, he helped negotiate the 1846 Oregon Treaty establishing the 49th parallel as the northern boundary of the western U.S. No Secretary of State has become President since Buchanan, although William Howard Taft, the 27th President of the United States, often served as Acting Secretary of State during the Theodore Roosevelt administration.

In 1852, Buchanan was named president of the Board of Trustees of Franklin and Marshall College in his hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and he served in this capacity until 1866, despite a false report that he was fired.

He served as minister to the Court of St. James's (Britain) from 1853 to 1856, during which time he helped to draft and then signed, with Pierre Soulé and John Mason, a memorandum that became known as the Ostend Manifesto. This document proposed the purchase from Spain of Cuba, then in the midst of revolution and near bankruptcy, declaring the island "as necessary to the North American republic as any of its present ... family of states." Against Buchanan's recommendation, the final draft of the Manifesto suggested that "wresting it from Spain" if Spain refused to sell would be justified "by every law, human and Divine". The Manifesto, generally considered a blunder overall, was never acted upon but weakened the Pierce administration and support for Manifest Destiny.