A commission of inquiry was appointed in October 1549 and reported in June 1550. Buchanan and two Portuguese, Diogo de Teive and Joāo da Costa (who had succeeded to the rectorship), were committed for trial. Teive and Costa were found guilty of various offences against public order, and the evidence shows that there was ample reason for a judicial inquiry. Buchanan was accused of Lutheran and Judaistic practices. He defended himself with conspicuous ability, courage and frankness, admitting that some of the charges were true. About June 1551 he was sentenced to abjure his errors, and to be imprisoned in the monastery of Sāo Bento in Lisbon. Here he was compelled to listen to edifying discourses from the monks, whom he found "not unkind but ignorant." In his leisure he began to translate the Psalms into Latin verse. After seven months he was released, on condition that he remained in Lisbon; and on the 28th of February 1552 this restriction was annulled. Buchanan at once sailed for England, but soon made his way to Paris, where in 1553 he was appointed regent in the college of Boncourt. He remained in that post for two years, and then accepted the office of tutor to the son of the Maréchal de Brissac. It was almost certainly during this last stay in France, where Protestantism was being repressed with great severity by Francis I., that Buchanan ranged himself on the side of the Calvinists.
In 1560 or 1561 he returned to Scotland, and in April 1562 we find him installed as tutor to the young queen Mary, who was accustomed to read Livy with him daily. Buchanan now openly joined the Protestant, or Reformed Church, and in 1566 was appointed by the earl of Murray principal of St Leonard's College, St Andrews. Two years before he had received from the queen the valuable gift of the revenues of Crossraguel Abbey. He was thus in good circumstances, and his fame was steadily increasing. So great, indeed, was his reputation for learning and administrative capacity that, though a layman, he was made moderator of the general assembly in 1567. He had sat in the assemblies from 1563.
Buchanan accompanied the regent Murray into England, and his Detectio (published in 1572) was produced to the commissioners at Westminster. In 1570, after the assassination of Murray, he was appointed one of the preceptors of the young king, and it was through his tuition that James VI. acquired his scholarship. While discharging the functions of royal tutor he also held other important offices. He was for a short time director of chancery, and then became lord privy seal, a post which entitled him to a seat in the parliament. He appears to have continued in this office for some years, at least till 1579. He died on the 28th of September 1582.
His last years had been occupied with two of his most important works. The first was the treatise De Jure Regni apud Scotos, published in 1579. In this famous work, composed in the form of a dialogue, and evidently intended to instil sound political principles into the mind of his pupil, Buchanan lays down the doctrine that the source of all political power is the people, that the king is bound by those conditions under which the supreme power was first committed to his hands, and that it is lawful to resist, even to punish, tyrants. The importance of the work is proved by the persistent efforts of the legislature to suppress it during the century following its publication. It was condemned by act of parliament in 1584, and again in 1664; and in 1683 it was burned by the university of Oxford. The second of his larger works is the history of Scotland, Rerum Scoticarum Historia, completed shortly before his death (1579), and published in 1582. It is of great value for the period personally known to the author, which occupies the greater portion of the book. The earlier part is based, to a considerable extent, on the legendary history of Boece. Buchanan's purpose was to "purge" the national history "of sum Inglis lyis and Scottis vanite" (Letter to Randolph), but he exaggerated his freedom from partisanship and unconsciously criticized his work when he said that it would "content few and displease many."
Buchanan is one of Scotland's greatest scholars. For mastery over the Latin language he has seldom been surpassed by any modern writer. His style is not rigidly modelled upon that of any classical author, but has a certain freshness and elasticity of its own. He wrote Latin as if it had been his mother tongue. But in addition to this perfect command over the language, Buchanan had a rich vein of poetical feeling, and much originality of thought. His translations of the Psalms and of the Greek plays are more than mere versions; the smaller satirical poems abound in wit and in happy phrase; his two tragedies, Baptistes and Jephthes, have enjoyed from the first an undiminished European reputation for academic excellence. In addition to the works already named, Buchanan wrote in prose Chamaeleon, a satire in the vernacular against Maitland of Lethington, first printed in 1711; a Latin translation of Linacre's Grammar (Paris, 1533); Libettus de Prosodia (Edinburgh, 1640); and Vita ab ipso scripta biennio ante mortem (1608), edited by R. Sibbald (1702). His other poems are Fratres Fraterrimi, Elegiae, Silvae, two sets of verses entitled Hendecasyllabon Liber and Iambon Liber; three books of Epigrammata; a book of miscellaneous verse; De Sphaera (in five books), suggested by the poem of Joannes de Sacrobosco, and intended as a defence of the Ptolemaic theory against the new Copernican view.
There are two editions of Buchanan's works:—(a) Georgii Buchanani Scoti, Poetarum sui seculi facile principis, Opera Omnia, in two vols. fol., edited by Ruddiman (Edinburgh, Freebairn, 1715); (b) edited by Burman, 4to, 1725. The Vernacular Writings,
consisting of the Chamaeleon (u.s.), a tract on the Reformation of St Andrews University, Ane Admonitioun to the Trew Lordis, and two letters, were edited for the Scottish Text Society by P. Hume Brown. The principal biographies are:—David Irving, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of George Buchanan (Edinburgh,1807 and 1817); P. Hume Brown, George Buchanan, Humanist and Reformer (Edinburgh, 1890), George Buchanan and his Times (Edinburgh, 1906); Rev. D. Macmillan, George Buchanan, a Biography (Edinburgh, 1906). Buchanan's quatercentenary was celebrated at different centres in Scotland in 1906, and was the occasion of several encomia and studies. The most important of these are: George Buchanan: Glasgow Quatercentenary Studies (Glasgow, 1906), and George Buchanan, a Memoir, edited by D.A. Millar (St Andrews, 1907). A verse translation of the Baptistes, entitled Tyrannicall-Government Anatomized (1642), has been attributed to Milton; its authorship is discussed in the Glasgow Quatercentenary Studies. The records of Buchanan's trial, discovered by the Portuguese historian, G.J.C. Henriques, were published by him under the title George Buchanan in the Lisbon Inquisition. The Records of his Trial, with a Translation thereof into English, Facsimiles of some of the Papers, and an Introduction (Lisbon, 1906).
BUCHANAN, JAMES (1791-1868), fifteenth president of the United States, was born near Foltz, Franklin county, Pennsylvania, on the 23rd of April 1791. Both parents were of Scottish-Irish Presbyterian descent. He graduated at Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in 1809, studied law at Lancaster in 1809-1812, and was admitted to the bar in 1812. He served in the lower house of the state legislature in 1814-1816, and as a representative in Congress from 1821 to 1831. As chairman of the judiciary committee he conducted the impeachment trial (1830) of Judge James H. Peck, led an unsuccessful movement to increase the number of Supreme Court judges and to relieve them of their circuit duties, and succeeded in defeating an attempt to repeal the twenty-fifth section of the Judiciary Act of 1789, which gave the Supreme Court appellate jurisdiction by writ of error to the state courts in cases where federal laws and treaties are in question. After the dissolution of the Federalist party, of which he had been a member, he supported the Jackson-Van Buren faction, and soon came to be definitely associated with the Democrats. He represented the United States at the court of St Petersburg in 1832-1833, and there negotiated an important commercial treaty. He was a Democratic member of the United States Senate from December 1834 until March 1845, ardently supporting President Jackson, and was secretary of state in the cabinet of President Polk from 1845 to 1849—a period marked by the annexation of Texas, the Mexican War, and negotiations with Great Britain relative to the Oregon question. After four years of retirement spent in the practice of his profession, he was appointed by President Pierce minister to Great Britain in 1853.
Up to this time Buchanan's attitude on the slavery question had been that held by the conservative element among Northern Democrats. He felt that the institution was morally wrong, but held that Congress could not interfere with it in the states in which it existed, and ought not to hinder the natural tendency toward territorial expansion through a fear that the evil would spread. He voted for the bill to exclude anti-slavery literature from the mails, approved of the annexation of Texas, the war with Mexico, and the Compromise of 1850, and disapproved of the Wilmot Proviso. Fortunately for his career he was abroad during the Kansas-Nebraska debates, and hence did not share in the unpopularity which attached to Stephen A. Douglas as the author of the bill, and to President Pierce as the executive who was called upon to enforce it. At the same time, by joining with J.Y. Mason and Pierre Soule in issuing the Ostend Manifesto in 1854, he retained the good-will of the South.[[1]] Accordingly on his return from England in 1856 he was nominated by the Democrats as a compromise candidate for president, and was elected, receiving 174 electoral votes to 114 for John C. Frémont, Republican, and 8 for Millard Fillmore, American or "Know-Nothing."
His high moral character, the breadth of his legal knowledge, and his experience as congressman, cabinet member and diplomat, would have made Buchanan an excellent president in ordinary times; but he lacked the soundness of judgment, the self-reliance and the moral courage needed to face a crisis. At the beginning of his administration he appointed Robert J. Walker of Mississippi, territorial governor of Kansas, and Frederick P. Stanton of Tennessee, secretary, and assured them of his determination to adhere to the popular sovereignty principle. He soon began to use his influence, however, to force the admission of Kansas into the Union under the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution, contrary to the wishes of the majority of the settlers. Stanton was removed from office for opposing the scheme, and Walker resigned in disgust. This change of policy was doubtless the result of timidity rather than of a desire to secure re-election by gaining the favour of the Southern Democracy. Under the influence of Howell Cobb of Georgia, secretary of the treasury, and Jacob Thompson of Mississippi, secretary of the interior, the president was convinced that it was the only way to avoid civil war. Federal patronage was freely used to advance the Lecompton measure and the compromise English Bill, and to prevent Douglas's election to the Senate in 1858. Some of these facts were brought out in the famous Covode Investigation conducted by a committee of the House of Representatives in 1860. The investigations, however, were very partisan in character, and there is reason to doubt the constitutional power of the House to make it, except as the basis for an impeachment trial.