James Buchanan: The President and the Mason

On paper, Brother James Buchanan was highly qualified to be president of the United States. He served as a member of the Pennsylvania State Legislature, the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate, as Foreign Minister to both Russia and Great Britain and as Secretary of State for President Polk.

But the topic of slavery dominated the presidential election of 1856, and while Buchanan managed to edge out the incumbent, Franklin Pierce, to become the nation’s 15th president, he is widely considered by most historians and scholars to be one of our country’s worst presidents, due to his inability to stave off the looming Civil War.

Buchanan served as president from 1857 to 1861, just before the Civil War would divide the country in two. He simultaneously angered the North by not stopping secession and the South by not yielding to their demands, scholars and historians said.

“His [James Buchanan’s] weaknesses in the stormy years of his presidency were magnified by enraged partisans of the North and South,” noted Buchanan biographer Philip S. Klein in 1962. “His many talents, which in a quieter era might have gained for him a place among the great presidents, were quickly overshadowed by the cataclysmic events of civil war and by the towering Abraham Lincoln.”

Prior to his election, Buchanan was a prominent lawyer representing Pennsylvania in both houses of Congress, where he was considered an advocate for states’ rights, particularly regarding slavery, and minimizing the role of the federal government.

Buchanan was particularly significant to Pennsylvania as the first president from the Keystone state (President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., who was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, is the second.) Buchanan was also a prominent Freemason, a member of Lodge No. 43 in Lancaster. Last year marked the 200th anniversary of Buchanan’s service to the lodge as Worshipful Master, said Nathaniel (“Nat”) Gilchrist, Past Master and historian for Lodge No. 43. This year marks the 200th anniversary of his appointment as the first District Deputy by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania.

Despite disagreements as to whether he was an effective president or not, the city of Lancaster chose to honor Buchanan by erecting a statue of him in Lancaster city’s Buchanan Park in 1928.

The eight-foot statue of Buchanan was professionally cleaned in May for the first time since 2003, thanks to the efforts of four District 1 lodges: Lodge No. 43, Lancaster; Abraham C. Treichler Lodge No. 682, Elizabethtown; Columbia Lodge No. 286; and Ashara-Casiphia Lodge No. 551, Mount Joy, along with the Lancaster City Parks Department, the Office of Public Art and A.R.T. Research Enterprises, a local business that specializes in fabrication and restoration services.

“To commemorate this accomplishment was a worthwhile community and District 1 endeavor,” Nat said. “Grand Master Larry Derr is from District 1. He said that lodges should look for more ways to partner with the community. We thought this was a great opportunity.”

Charles Grafly, a Philadelphia sculptor, worked on the original Buchanan statue from 1925 to 1927, according to Jack Brubaker, retired from the Lancasteronline.com news staff, who writes for “The Scribbler” column every Sunday, and recently penned a piece about the cleaning of the statue.

Brother Dulon F. Buchmiller, a prominent philanthropist and member of Lamberton Lodge No. 476 (which merged in 2021 to form Millersville Lodge No. 476) admired Buchanan and offered to underwrite the expense and donate the land to the city for the statue. Mary Buchmiller Ledwith, Dulon’s daughter, unveiled the finished sculpture in June 1928.

“Buchanan was misjudged a lot,” Nat said. “He was trying to walk the fence and appease both sides [north and south]. He knew the Southern states were upset with the Northern states’ reaction to slavery and wanted to secede from the union, and Buchanan was trying to prevent that. That was truly his intent.”

On May 8, 2024, Nat presented a paper to his lodge in first person as Buchanan, dressed in 18th century clothing with a cane representative of Buchanan’s statue. He had found the paper in the lodge’s archives that a lodge member had written and presented to Jerusalem Lodge No. 506, Philadelphia, on April 11, 1991, defending the criticisms Buchanan had received as president.

“I wanted to do it to demonstrate support for our historic lodge brother, present some factual information not many are aware of and mainly because as a lodge whose history includes a brother who was president, it’s important to keep his memory alive,” Nat said.

An excerpt of the paper stated the following from Buchanan:

“I think anyone who has ever been elected to a position of responsibility has high hopes for what they hope to accomplish while in office. I know that was the case when I was elected Worshipful Master of this lodge, and when I was elected to the presidency, there were definite goals that I hoped to attain. It wasn’t long for these hopes to be dashed. The ‘Loyal Opposition’ and members of my own [Democratic] party soon started planting the seeds of unrest.”

When he returned home from Washington, D.C., after his presidency, Buchanan was besieged with threats to his life and property. He was entitled to Secret Service protection but declined it. Lodge No. 43, however, rallied in support of Buchanan, forming a committee to patrol his property 24-7 for several months.

“He was well respected in the lodge,” Nat said of Buchanan. “He had come in as a young lawyer and made friends with everyone.”

Buchanan was known for getting things done, Nat said. In the 1820s, he and Lodge No. 43 Past Master John Reynolds led a campaign to elicit feedback from all the lodges in the state on a number of needed improvements. For example, when there was a vote on a resolution, a communication would go out by mail to all the lodges in the state. But with mail service not being efficient in the 1800s, by the time the lodges in the more remote regions of the state received the communication, the vote had already been taken.

“The primary voting base was in Philadelphia because of its close proximity to the Grand Lodge, so it became largely a Philadelphia vote,” Nat said. “That is one of the changes he [Buchanan] recommended to the Grand Lodge – to get messages out sooner and by different means, so these other lodges would have more of a say.”

Regardless of Buchanan’s place in history, Nat said it’s important for Masons to honor a fellow Mason – especially the only Pennsylvania president in U.S. history – by cleaning and maintaining the statue of Buchanan.

“Masons around the state should be proud of it and appreciate it,” Nat said. “History has not been kind to James Buchanan. We try to defend him by recognizing there were a lot of things involved that were not of his doing. Anybody who was president during that time would have been subject to criticism and have a difficult time trying to pacify everyone.”