Images and More: Passed Presidents - # 15

Sorry, Bill Coleman. Pretty picture time is over for now. It’s back to the Dead Presidents Quest. The anniversary date schedule will take us on a two-month, ten-site blitz that will end on my birthday. By July 31, all 39 last resting places of the nation’s departed Chief Executives will be documented and we will be done with that topic...until the next one meets his maker.

One hundred forty six years ago today, James Buchanan, the last of the 13 presidents born in the 18^th century, passed. He was also one of six and the last president who also served as Secretary of State. In fact, he had as good a résumé as anyone who held the office. By the time he was inaugurated at age 65, he was ten years a Congressman, ten years a Senator and also Minister to Russia and Britain...not that any of it helped his presidential legacy.

Inscription on James Buchanan Grave, Lancaster, PA (27 October 2005)

Buchanan lived most of his life in central Pennsylvania. The only president from the Keystone State lived, died and is buried in Lancaster. Unlike most of the graves I tracked down on this ten-year odyssey, Lancaster is close to home. We paid our respects on a nice autumn day trip, cruising around Amish Country to photograph old covered bridges.

Wheatland, the President’s Home in Lancaster, PA (27 October 2005)

Many surveys place Buchanan at the head of their Bottom Ten list. After all, the nation broke up while he was in the White House. I suspect that placement was also influenced by the fact that he was our only unmarried president...but it appears he was not a George Clooney kind of bachelor. While serving in Congress, Buchanan lived many years with Alabama Senator William Rufus King. It was said that he and the flamboyant Southerner were inseparable. Andrew Jackson, not one to mince words, called them “Miss Nancy” and “Aunt Fancy.” In this current era of right wing hostility toward gays, I’d like to think we had our first gay president over 150 years ago. You’d think we would have made more progress by now.

Commemorative Medallion at Buchanan’s Grave [27 October 2005]

After the British burned Washington, Buchanan joined a

company of volunteers to take the fight to the invaders. The

group was disbanded after one brief mission. That still made

him the last president to have served in the War of 1812.

Like Franklin Pierce and Millard Fillmore before him, Buchanan was a do-nothing president who found it easier to appease the slave states than take steps to civilize and unify our growing nation. His single term was marked by economic problems, the awful Dred Scott Decision, the “Bloody Kansas” conflicts and John Brown’s raid. Open warfare was inevitable and he did nothing to stop it. It’s hard to rise above last place in the rankings when the worst event in American history happened on your watch. By the time he left office, seven states had seceded. The rest of that history belongs to Abraham Lincoln.