Portal:Pennsylvania/Selected Biography/6

James Buchanan, Jr. (April 23, 1791 – June 1, 1868) was the fifteenth President of the United States (1857–1861). To date he is the only President from Pennsylvania and the only President never to marry. As president he was a "doughface" who battled Stephen A. Douglas for control of the Democratic Party. As Southern states declared their secession in the lead-up to the American Civil War, he held that secession was illegal, but that going to war to stop it was also illegal. Taking his own advice, he did nothing.

Buchanan was a Representative and a Senator from Pennsylvania. He was born in a log cabin at Cove Gap, near Mercersburg, Franklin County, Pennsylvania, on April 23, 1791, to James Buchanan and Elizabeth Speer as the second of ten children (two of whom did not survive past infancy). The Buchanan family claims direct descent from King James I of Scotland. In 1802, he moved to Mercersburg with his parents, where he was privately tutored. He later attended the village academy and graduated from Dickinson College, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. At one point, he was expelled from Dickinson for wild behavior and bad conduct, but after pleading for a second chance he graduated with honors three years later on September 7, 1809. (Read more...)