Pity James Buchanan.

If "Old Buck," as he was known, was to rise from his tomb at Woodward Hill Cemetery in Lancaster and wander the streets of his former home today, on President's Day, our 15th president might be a little bummed out.

A recent poll of historians named Buchanan as the worst president. Ever. Again.

And people from his own town?

Well, most of us really don't know that much about the guy with the odd trademark tendency to tilt his head, which his enemies once said stemmed not from his deficient eyesight but because he had once tried to hang himself.

Truthfully, things haven't gotten much better since then for Mr. Buchanan.

"I've been by his house but I'm not sure exactly where it is," said John Kunkle, 73, of Lancaster.

"When was he president? Was it the mid- to early 1800s?" wondered Alan Campbell, 49, of Lancaster.

Jessica Julian, 25, of Lancaster, pondered what she knew about Buchanan.

"Not very much," she said. "Nothing of interest. Mainly, that he was from here."

And those who did know something about him — that something wasn't very good.

"I never heard him spoken about very highly," said Harvey Odell, 76, of Lancaster.

"Every poll that's been done, he's always been last," Campbell said.

The most recent poll was conducted by the cable channel C-SPAN, which asked 65 historians to rank the 42 men who have been president on 10 leadership qualities, including international relations, crisis leadership, vision and economic management.

Abraham Lincoln was rated first, followed by George Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt. George W. Bush ranked 36th.

And Buchanan came in last, where he was in 2000, the last time C-SPAN conducted the poll.

Embarrassing?

"Well, sure," said Jennifer DeCarlo, 57, of Reinholds.

Other than the fact that his presidency is often ranked as the worst, most people could not name many facts about Buchanan, other than a tidbit or two about his personal life.

"I know about his love story with a local woman," said Karen Horn, 31, of Mount Joy. "I thought that would make a good movie — how her father wouldn't let her get married to him — it has Hollywood written all over it."

That would be Ann Coleman, whose family was not wild about Buchanan, but she eventually broke off her engagement to Buchanan on her own, possibly because he was cold to her.

Oh my. Again.

A brief history of Lancaster's president, who lived at Wheatland on Marietta Avenue, west of Lancaster:

He served as president from 1857 to 1861. During the presidential campaign, he earned the nickname "Ten-Cent Jimmy" for unwisely suggesting that 10 cents a day was a fair wage for manual laborers.

As president, he presided over a nation that was rapidly dividing and heading for Civil War, and many historians believe he did not grasp the political realities of his day. He denied the legal rights of states to secede but also held that the federal government could not legally prevent them.

Buchanan died seven years after leaving office. He never did marry, and was the only single president.

Though many local residents interviewed knew that Buchanan is not highly regarded, they did not know why, though they offered their own theories.

"He was followed by Lincoln, who had a lot going in his tenure," Odell said.

"Maybe he didn't do anything," said Jim Campbell, 71, of Lancaster. "Maybe he was a do-nothing president."

DeCarlo said, "This county is very conservative, very sheltered. It wouldn't surprise me that Buchanan was very sheltered and he didn't know what was going on in the real world."

Buchanan does have his defenders here.

"Every president makes decisions and I'd like to think he made the best decisions based on the information he had," said Kurt Enck, 47, of Mount Joy.

A social studies teacher, Enck was more familiar than most with Buchanan.

Though he realizes Buchanan made mistakes, Enck said, "I'm proud of the fact that a president is from Lancaster County."

Said Petrina Reese, 53, of Lancaster, "I think it needs to be re-evaluated. A lot of other presidents were not good presidents."

"Maybe he got a bum rap."

The nation, she said, was headed for Civil War anyway, and it would have been difficult to turn that tide. She feels bad that many people don't know about Buchanan, and don't care.

Others were more philosophical.

"I guess," Hopple said, "somebody has to be last, don't they?"


The list


The presidential ranking, by historians, was:

1 Abraham Lincoln
2 George Washington
3 Franklin D. Roosevelt
4 Theodore Roosevelt
5 Harry S. Truman
6 John F. Kennedy
7 Thomas Jefferson
8 Dwight D. Eisenhower
9 Woodrow Wilson
10 Ronald Reagan
11 Lyndon B. Johnson
12 James K. Polk
13 Andrew Jackson
14 James Monroe
15 Bill Clinton
16 William McKinley
17 John Adams
18 George H.W. Bush
19 John Quincy Adams
20 James Madison
21 Grover Cleveland
22 Gerald R. Ford
23 Ulysses S. Grant
24 William Howard Taft
25 Jimmy Carter
26 Calvin Coolidge
27 Richard M. Nixon
28 James A. Garfield
29 Zachary Taylor
30 Benjamin Harrison
31 Martin Van Buren
32 Chester A. Arthur
33 Rutherford B. Hayes
34 Herbert Hoover
35 John Tyler
36 George W. Bush
37 Millard Fillmore
38 Warren G. Harding
39 William Henry Harrison 
40 Franklin D. Pierce
41 Andrew Johnson
42 James Buchanan


Staff writer Cindy Stauffer can be reached at cstauffer@LNPnews.com or 481-6024.