美国第15任总统布坎南James Buchanan（图）简介：

James Buchanan

President Buchanan, 1859 portrait, by George Healy



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15th President of the United States
In office
March 4, 1857 – March 4, 1861
Vice President John C. Breckinridge
Preceded by Franklin Pierce
Succeeded by Abraham Lincoln

James Buchanan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

James Buchanan, Jr. (April 23, 1791 – June 1, 1868) was the fifteenth President of the United States from 1857–1861 and the last to be born in the eighteenth century. To date he is the only president from the state of Pennsylvania and the only president to remain a bachelor.

A popular and experienced politician prior to his presidency, Buchanan represented Pennsylvania in the House of Representatives and later the Senate, and served as Secretary of State under President James K. Polk. After turning down an offer for an appointment to the Supreme Court, he served as Minister to the United Kingdom under President Franklin Pierce, in which capacity he helped draft the inflammatory Ostend Manifesto, which suggested the U.S. should declare war if Spain refused to sell Cuba. The Ostend Manifesto was never acted upon and greatly damaged the Pierce administration.

Despite unsuccessfully seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in 1844, 1848, and 1852, Buchanan was nominated in the election of 1856 as a compromise between the two sides of the slavery issue; this occurred while he was away on business. His subsequent election was largely due to the even more divided state of the opposition. As President he was a "doughface", a Northerner with Southern sympathies who battled with Stephen A. Douglas for the control of the Democratic Party. Buchanan's efforts to maintain peace between the North and the South alienated both sides, and as the Southern states declared their secession in the prologue to the American Civil War, Buchanan's opinion was that secession was illegal, but that going to war to stop it was also illegal; hence, he remained inactive. By the time he left office, popular opinion had turned against him, and the Democratic Party had split in two. Buchanan had once dared to hope that his presidency might rank in history with that of George Washington. However, his handling of the crisis preceding the Civil War has led to his consistent ranking by historians as one of the worst Presidents.