By 1854 and Franklin Pierce’s penning of his name on Senator Stephen Douglas and the Democrats’ Kansas-Nebraska Act, it is doubtful that any president could have averted the gathering of war clouds. However, the weak and ineffectual Pierce — followed by a placeholder president — simply swayed in the political winds and allowed the nation to race toward armed conflict.

In the wake of the legislation’s passage, which divided the Northern and Southern Democrats, the party found itself challenged by a new political gathering of primarily Northerners, the Republican Party. Its most recognizable member was an Illinois lawyer named Abraham Lincoln, who would eventually gain acclaim and Southern animosity.

Most American history students recall walking through a “Countdown to the Civil War” and the prominence of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and its aftermath, Bloody Kansas. But the details may have become blurred as the division between North and South deepened and the gulf appeared too wide to bridge.

Once the legislation was enacted, the idea of popular sovereignty spurred a mad rush toward the future new state. As settlers raced toward Kansas — white males divided between pro-slavery Southerners and abolitionist Northerners — conflict was inevitable. The pro-slavery faction quickly established a government in the region and, under the guidelines of the federal legislation, demanded that the U.S. government provide protection for the newly elected leaders and policies. Andrew Reeder was appointed by President Pierce as the territorial governor, and his alliance with the anti-slavery majority angered the pro-slavery minority that saw hope for a slave state slipping away. The pro-slavery faction appealed to Pierce, long recognized as sympathetic to the South’s cause and a supporter of slavery, and the president fired Reeder. He then appointed Wilson Shannon, an Ohio supporter of slavery’s expansion.

The fires grew hotter.

The abolitionists — free soil settlers — were enraged and attempted to establish their own government, and the rage on both sides, combined with their desires to determine the future of the nation, meant that by the time James Buchanan was inaugurated in March 1857, the region had become engulfed in violence and death. The national press carried the stories of “Bleeding Kansas,” spotlighted by the earlier sensationalized but bloody conflict in Lawrence, Kansas. When pro-slavery raiders stormed across the border from Missouri and burned the majority of the town after looting it, John Brown — the future Harper’s Ferry abolitionist firebrand — gathered his own abolitionist raiders and attacked Pottawatomie in retaliation. Five pro-slavery men were killed and the nation was consumed by the stories of the open violence, realizing that Kansas foreshadowed the future.

Even with violence ripping the region apart, Pierce was hesitant to send federal troops. Citizens on both sides of the issue figuratively shook their heads at his indecisive leadership and his unwillingness to stop the violence. Pierce yearned for a second term to “fix” his presidency and mark his place in the nation’s history, but his own party said “No” and chose James Buchanan instead. Summarily dismissed, Pierce retreated into the shadows.

Who was this bachelor president-elect, nominated by the Democrats, to hopefully steer the ship of state through another stormy patch?

While Buchanan loved to talk about his log cabin roots, he was hardly the backwoods boy battling the wilderness for survival. His father had immigrated from Ireland during the time of the American Revolution, married, fathered a large family, and become a successful merchant who provided his oldest son with an enviable education.

Young James entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania — equally famous today as the site of Carlisle Barracks, home of the U.S. Army’s War College — when only 16, and his family envisioned a sterling future for James. Stories of his escapades at Dickinson belay the quiet, stoic president he would become; he skated close to expulsion several times during his terms but managed to persuade those in power that he was a “reformed” youth. He would graduate with honors, study law, and at 22 be admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar. Following service during the War of 1812, he had clicked off the requirements to become a representative of the people, and in 1814, he was elected to the Pennsylvania House.

If only we had time to talk about his engagement to the only woman he would ever love, Ann Coleman, and her tragic death during a period of estrangement just prior to the wedding, we might have a better understanding of Buchanan, but…

Having sworn to never love another, the future president threw himself into his work. His legal practice soared and he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1820, where he was considered quite the scholar and the most expert interpreter of the Constitution.

The future looked quite promising for the young man from Pennsylvania.