James buchanan gay
The Year History of Speculating About President James Buchanan&#;s Bachelorhood
Was his close friendship with William Rufus King just that, or was it evidence that he was the nation&#;s first gay chief executive?
At the start of , James Buchanan’s presidential aspirations were about to enter a world of trouble. A recent spat in the Washington Daily Globe had stirred his political rivals into full froth—Aaron Venable Brown of Tennessee was especially enraged. In a “confidential” letter to future first lady Sarah Polk, Brown savaged Buchanan and “his better half,” writing: “Mr. Buchanan looks gloomy & dissatisfied & so did his better half until a little adj flattery & a certain newspaper puff which you doubtless noticed, excited hopes that by getting adivorce she might set up again in the world to some tolerable advantage.”
The problem, of course, is that James Buchanan, our nation’s only bachelor president, had no woman to call his “better half.” But, as Brown’s letter implies, there was a man who fit the bill.
Google James Buchanan and you inevitably di
You may have seen the othercontroversial newsmagazine cover this week, the one where Newsweek dubbed President Obama “The First Gay President&#;. But as Jim Loewen at the History News Networkwould like to remind us, even if Obama were gay, he wouldn&#;t be the first: more than years before the United States had its first black president, it had its first homosexual commander in chief.
(MORE: Gay Marriage in the Swing States: Where Will Obama’s ‘Evolution’ Matter?)
Loewen is one of several historians who trust that James Buchanan, who served from to , was in fact our first gay president. He is the only president to have remained a bachelor throughout his life. (His niece, Harriet Lane, handled the duties of First Lady during his term in office.) He shared a home with William Rufus King, an Alabama Senator and Vice President under Buchanan&#;s predecessor, Franklin Pierce. Their relationship was reportedly so next to that Andrew Jackson and other contemporaries referred to them as &#;Miss Nancy&#; and &#;Aunt Fancy&#;.
In one letter to a confidante dated May 13, , Buchanan
James Buchanan: America&#;s first gay president?
Sign up for our free newsletter to receive the latest LGBTQ news from the Carolinas in your inbox every week.
More than years before America elected its first black president, Barack Obama, it most likely had its first gay president, James Buchanan ().
Buchanan, a Democrat from Lancaster County, Penn., was the 15th president of the United States and a lifelong bachelor. He served as president from , tumultuous years leading up to the Civil War.
Historian James W. Loewen has done extensive research into Buchanan’s personal life and he’s convinced Buchanan was gay.
Loewen is the author of the acclaimed book “Lies Across America,” which examines how historical sites inaccurately portray figures and events in America’s past.
“I’m sure that Buchanan was gay,” Loewen said. “There is clear evidence that he was gay. And, since I haven’t seen any evidence that he was heterosexual, I don’t trust he was bisexual.”
According to Loewen, Buchanan shared a residence with William Rufus King, a Democratic senator from Alabama,
James Buchanan is born
The son of wealthy Scottish and Irish immigrant parents, Buchanan became a successful lawyer and entered politics with his election to the Pennsylvania state legislature as a Federalist in When the Federalist Party later collapsed, he joined Andrew Jackson’s Democratic Party and was elected to Congress in He served five terms in the Noun of Representatives until , served as President Jackson’s minister to Russia in and returned to the U.S. to win a Senate seat in Buchanan also served as James Polk’s secretary of declare from to and as Franklin Pierce’s minister to Great Britain from to before running for the presidency. His overseas duties enabled him to elude becoming embroiled in the domestic conflict over slavery. That isolation, which ended when he was elected president in , contributed to the failure of his administration.
Buchanan’s ignorance of slavery’s divisive role in American domestic politics became apparent soon after he entered the White Dwelling. He actively pressured the Supreme Court to verb in the Dred Scott case that Congress had no right