John Charles Frémont was an American mapmaker and explorer of the Far West, and an important figure in the U.S. conquest and development of California. He ran unsuccessfully as the first Republican presidential candidate in 1856. Frémont became a multimillionaire in the 1848 California gold bonanza, and in 1850 he was elected one of the state's first two senators. A firm opponent of slavery, he was nominated for the presidency in 1856 by the new Republican Party. In the election he was defeated by the Democratic candidate, James Buchanan, but he came closer to uniting the electorate of the North and West against the South than had any previous candidate. Encyclopedia Britannica Online. http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9035334 (Retrieved 8/21/2009)
James Buchanan was the 15th president of the United States (1857-61), a moderate Democrat whose efforts to find a compromise in the conflict between the North and the South failed to avert the Civil War (1861-65). A Federalist, Buchanan served in the Pennsylvania legislature (1814-16) and in the U.S. House of Representatives (1821-31). When his party disintegrated in the 1820s, Buchanan associated himself with the emerging Democratic Party. He served as U.S. minister to St. Petersburg (1831-33) for the Andrew Jackson administration, U.S. senator (1834-45), and secretary of state (1845-49) in the cabinet of President James K. Polk. The annexation of Texas and subsequent Mexican War took place during Buchanan's tenure as secretary of state. Buchanan's role in the war was limited, but he played a more active part in the border dispute with Britain over Oregon. Despite the 1844 campaign slogan of "Fifty-four forty or fight," the matter was settled peaceably by treaty. In both situations the United States gained large tracts of territory. Buchanan had sought the nomination for president in 1844 but had ultimately thrown his support to Polk. Failing to receive the presidential nomination in 1848, Buchanan retired from public service until 1853, when he was appointed minister to Britain by President Franklin Pierce. In Congress, Buchanan tended to side with the South, and, although he felt that slavery was morally wrong, he did not want the country to eliminate the institution by the "introduction of evils infinitely greater." From his perspective, a greater evil would be freeing the slaves and making them the new masters, "abolishing slavery by the massacre of the high-minded, and the chivalrous race of men in the South." He therefore tried to impress the Southern party leadership with his respect for the constitutional safeguards for the practice. Thus in 1846 he opposed the Wilmot Proviso, which would have prohibited the extension of slavery into the U.S. territories, and he supported the Compromise of 1850, which attempted to maintain a balance of Senate seats between slave and free states. While in Europe as minister to Britain he played a large part in drafting the Ostend Manifesto (October 18, 1854), a diplomatic report recommending that the United States acquire Cuba from Spain to forestall any possibility of a slave uprising there. Buchanan's support for the manifesto stemmed not only from his fear that such an uprising might have an inflammatory effect on slaves in the United States but also from his basic belief in American imperialism. "It is, beyond question," he wrote to Congress in 1858, "the destiny of our race to spread themselves over the continent of North America, and this at no distant day." Having thus consolidated his position in the South, Buchanan was nominated for president in 1856 and was elected, winning 174 electoral votes to 114 for the Republican John C. Frémont and 8 for Millard Fillmore, the American (Know-Nothing) Party candidate. During the campaign Republican speakers harped on Buchanan's seemingly heartless statement that ten cents a day was adequate pay for a workingman. They jeered him as "Ten-Cent Jimmy." Although well-endowed with legal knowledge and experienced in government, Buchanan lacked the soundness of judgment and conciliatory personality to undo the misperceptions the North and South had of one another and thereby to deal effectively with the slavery crisis. His strategy for the preservation of the Union consisted in the prevention of Northern antislavery agitation and the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act (1850). Embroiled in the explosive struggle in Kansas over the expansion of slavery (1854-59), he attempted to persuade Kansas voters to accept the unpopular Lecompton Constitution, which would have permitted slavery there. The economic panic of 1857 and the raid on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859 by the abolitionist John Brown added to the national turmoil. Buchanan's position was further weakened by scandals over financial improprieties within his administration. At the 1860 Democratic National Convention, a split within the Democratic Party resulted in the advancement of two candidates for president, Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and Vice President John C. Breckinridge, which opened the way for the election of the Republican Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860. Encyclopedia Britannica Online. http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9017867 (Retrieved 8/21/2009)
From the description of W. P. Greene ALS, 1859 March 4. (University of Georgia). WorldCat record id: 432313085
