Presidential Coloring Pages - James Buchanan - 15

Harriet Lane served as hostess for James Buchanan, the fifteenth President of the US, who was a bachelor.
Presidential coloring pages are a easy way to learn about the presidents, while having fun learning.

Born into a well-to-do Pennsylvania family in 1791, Buchanan, a graduate of Dickinson College, was gifted as a debater and learned in the law.

Presiding over a rapidly dividing Nation, Buchanan grasped inadequately the political realities of the time. Relying on constitutional doctrines to close the widening rift over slavery, he failed to understand that the North would not accept constitutional arguments which favored the South. Nor could he realize how sectionalism had realigned political parties: the Democrats split; the Whigs were destroyed, giving rise to the Republicans.

Buchanan was ultimately reduced to a policy of inactivity that continued until he left office. In March 1861 he retired to his Pennsylvania home Wheatland - where he died seven years later - leaving his successor to resolve the frightful issue facing the Nation.