Presidential Biographies | Buchanan Administration - Foreign Issues

Foreign Issues

In the years before James Buchanan took office, the United States had grown from a small agricultural nation to an empire that stretched across the North American continent. Buchanan, an ardent expansionist, was instrumental in the nation's growth—as secretary of state under James Polk he had helped orchestrate the nation's expansion. He believed passionately in the ideology of "manifest destiny," the nation's mission to extend to the edges of the continent.

As president, Buchanan is remembered as somewhat more forceful in the foreign policy realm than he was in the domestic arena. Buchanan ran his own State...