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Show i James Buchanan The fifteenth President of the United States, James Buchanan, served at a critical and fateful time and was criticized cri-ticized for seeking to avoid war over the question of secession. BUCHANAN WAS born near Mercersburg, Pa., April 23, 1791. Educated at Dickinson Dickin-son College at Carlisle, he practiced law at Lancaster. He served in the state legislature, then in Congress and as Minister to Russia. Trusted in the South, he won the Democratic nomination in 1856 and was elected President. These were inflammatory and electric times, for the South believed in the right of a state to secede, while the abolitionists and most of those outside the area denied such a right. BUCHANAN did not think a state could secede, but he also held the view that no President could send military force into a state unless state authorities requested such forces. Critics at the time and afterward af-terward claimed this view was tantamount to weakness, an encouragement to secessionists. seces-sionists. HOWEVER, PROBING historians have speculated that Buchanan might have avoided an all-out war with his policy of patience, even if a temporary rupture had been effected. No one, of course, will ever know the answer, for when Lincoln adopted a more positive posi-tive attitude and the flag was fired upon, the great majority outside the South, including Buchanan, supported the war effort. : |