Great Democrats in History -- James Buchanan

James Buchanan, the 15th President of the United States, was born on this day, April 23, in 1791. As president, Buchanan sympathized with the slave-expansionists, believing the residents of a territory could not prohibit slavery until they were ready for statehood. He despised both abolitionists and free-soil Republicans, lumping the two together. Seeing no injustice in the slave system, and no problem with slaveowner control of the government, he fought the opponents of the Slave Power (a term used in the Northern United States to characterize the political power of the slaveholding class in the South). In his third annual message Buchanan claimed that slaves were "treated with kindness and humanity....Both the philanthropy and the self-interest of the master have combined to produce this humane result." Shortly after his election, he assured a southern Senator that the "great object" of his administration would be "to arrest, if possible, the agitation of the Slavery question at the North and to destroy sectional parties. Should a kind Providence enable me to succeed in my efforts to restore harmony to the Union, I shall feel that I have not lived in vain."