Buchanan Administration - Career

Career

Buchanan practiced law in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, after his admission to the bar in 1812. In 1814 he was elected to the Pennsylvania assembly as a member of the Federalist Party. He won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1820, and as a leading member of the new Democratic Party in Pennsylvania, he was an early supporter of Democrat Andrew Jackson's presidential aspirations. When Jackson became president in 1828, Buchanan was sent to St. Petersburg as the U.S. minister to Russia, where he spent two years negotiating commercial and maritime treaties. When Buchanan returned to Pennsylvania, he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1834, serving there until 1845. As a senator in a chamber increasingly divided by the North-South tensions over the issue of slavery, Buchanan frequently sided with southern interests, supporting, for example, southern demands that the Senate dismiss petitions calling for the abolition of...

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