The Home & Grave of the WORST (???) American President | History Traveler Episode 281

[Music] when you think about the men who have occupied the office of President of the United States but your mind probably first goes to to some of the great men like George Washington or Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt or maybe even Woodrow Wilson I'm actually just joking about the last one I only threw that in to make Chris from vlogging through history fall out of his chair but anyway you excused for thinking of of some of the men who are considered the greats first but what about some of the presidents who really aren't considered to be some of our greatest men like James Buchanan is there anything that we can learn from men like that as well well today I'm in Lancaster Pennsylvania and we are at the home of James Buchanan [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] so again the the home that we are standing in front of right now is the home of our 15th President James Buchanan it's better known as Wheatland and right off the bat we might as well acknowledge the elephant in the room uh Americans like to rank things so that goes with our presidents too so we'd like to know who's the greatest and who's considered the the least among them James Buchanan uh typically comes in last or or very close to last but I think there are some things that we can learn about both from him and from the the era that he becomes president in that is valuable so imagine it being 1856. and James Buchanan is standing right here on this porch and you are among some of the crowd out here listening to him give his speech as we're standing here in front of Wheatland a few things I want to point out about James Buchanan one uh he has the distinction of being our only bachelor president he never married although he was engaged at one point and there's different stories about what happened with his fiance her father apparently didn't want them to marry and she may have died of some disease or some stories say that she committed suicide because she was grief stricken anyway Buchanan never married and he served in a lot of different roles in government but in 1856 he decided to run for president he was a Democrat as a matter of fact James Buchanan is one of two presidents to have been a native of Pennsylvania the other one being Joe Biden and it seems odd to us in this day and age that you know a president wouldn't travel the country during the campaign you know we think of him today going on the campaign Trail and going to different cities well James Buchanan wasn't doing any of that and that wasn't uncommon he ran his entire campaign from this porch right here so so people would come and stand in the exact spot where we are standing right now and listen to him give campaign speeches and this was a very chaotic time the Civil War hadn't started yet in 1856 but that doesn't mean that there wasn't still violence Kansas and Missouri were just insane during this period of time it was kind of like a civil war before the Civil War so so you had that going on um when he is elected and is inaugurated you're going to have the Dred Scott Decision come down uh John Brown's rage is going to happen during his presidency and then the secession crisis so so this is a man who is going to be president when things are really falling apart in this country all right we're going to take a look around at a few other things and then go inside all right moved over to the back side of the house and before we go in I wanted to show this building right here so no home tour is complete without a look at the the bathroom or the bathroom facilities so this building was built in 1829 and uh it's pretty interesting if we look in here you can see that the bathrooms here were kind of a family affair looks like we have five holes here I got a couple for adults and then there's one medium size that I'm guessing is for an adolescent and then uh there on the the far end uh here you can see two that uh for children or exceptionally short people but yeah I thought that was interesting [Music] [Laughter] [Music] all right so we just got into the the front door here at Wheatland and uh we're just going to take a little walk through the house by no means we're going to be able to see everything but but we'll show as much as we can in the time that we have so if you would have been a guest of James Buchanan in the 1800s well this room right here is where you would have been received this is one of the front parlor rooms and we we have a newspaper account from a reporter who visited Wheatland and and he he really does a good job of describing in depth the the different rooms of the house so if we walk in here well above the fireplace well here is a portrait of James Buchanan his nephew said that he he very rarely was seen out side of you know any formal attire so here you can see uh kind of the characteristic look that James Buchanan had with the high collar very nice shirt the family says that in this portrait he's holding a copy of the Constitution but that's that's debatable but if if we look around I mentioned the newspaper reporter well here is an artist depiction of what this room would have looked like okay so here's the fireplace over here and then of course you have a couch and some other things where where guests can be received and uh one of the things that that I'll point out in here that I found fascinating is this gaming table and uh here you could play you know any number of different games but there was one game that could be played between men and women where you would ask different questions and then the the women would give an answer and it was supposed to you know kind of be a little bit goofy in a way like uh here the question is would you have hot tea with me and the other one the response is only in morning clothes uh and Veil so anyway it was designed to just be something a little bit fun now one thing that I want to point out in this home that I think is just extremely fascinating is that in this home 47 to almost 50 percent of the Furnishings in this home are original so so when you walk into Wheatland you are really walking into a time capsule the wheatlands as it was known by its original owner Mr Jenkins was a farm that was organized in 1828 which is the age of the house the house was actually construction started in January and was complete in October of 1828 which was pretty fast even by today's standards for a house this size it's about 13 000 square feet James Buchanan was good friends with the Jenkins family and probably saw Wheatland going up a little did he know that in 1848 he would be negotiating the purchase of this Farm which he bought for six thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars roughly equivalent to a little over um just a little over three hundred thousand dollars in today's money uh and James Buchanan bought it uh for cash uh he he paid uh three thousand dollars down in uh December of 1848 and paid it off a couple of weeks later in uh January of 18 uh 49. and um Buchanan was a little busy in Washington at the time he was the Secretary of State for the United States uh under President Polk and he wrote home to his uh his niece Harriet sometime in uh early spring and said that he was hoping that by sometime in April of 1849 that they could all as a little family move into the Wheatland Farm mansion we know that they were here certainly by the 25th or 28th of the month of April that year so old Buck didn't get necessarily to celebrate his birthday on the 23rd here but he was certainly finished with his uh with his work in Washington by March 4th or 5th when Zachary Taylor took over the presidency and Mr Polk retired so James Buchanan moved in here with his little family which consisted of uh two blood relatives uh Harriet Lane who had just completed her studies at the uh female Seminary uh the Catholic visitation Catholic School for Girls run by the uh the convent of the visitation nuns in Georgetown Maryland and he also had a nephew who was a ward just like Harriet and his name was James Buchanan Henry Buchanan had been raising James Henry since James was orphaned at the age of seven all right we're leaving the the front parlor now and entering into this room here that would have been a little bit more of a a private space for Buchanan this is a another one of the the sitting rooms here and there are just books everywhere and a few other things that I'm going to show now when you look at Buchanan we look at him through Modern Eyes not through 1856 eyes keep in mind this man was popular he was elected president of the United States on paper highly highly qualified he had been in in the Senate and House at a state level Senate house on a federal level he had been the minister to Great Britain and to Russia he had served as Secretary of State so so this is a guy that had all of the qualifications of of serving as president of the United States but he was going to be up against a some very difficult circumstances in the United States at the time I want to show a few things here in this room though oh take a look at this this is a desk that actually belonged to James Buchanan and man it is ornate it is made from teak wood and I mentioned that James Buchanan was a minister to Great Britain and also to Russia as a foreign Diplomat James Buchanan was good he he really excelled in that position during his time as minister to Russia he orchestrated some negotiations with Czar Nicholas who was a notoriously difficult person to work with that really helped Advance the interest of the United States it was a three-year position he basically accomplished his job in two years and then spent the third traveling well one of the places that he went was India and made a lot of contacts there people who admired him and when he became president well this desk which again is made of teak wood was gifted to him now we don't know the name of the gifter but we know that it came out of Calcutta India very very amazing a few other things that I want to show out of this room again I'm just amazed at all of the original pieces and original artifacts that they have out on display here in this home which really immerses you in the experience this is a book that obviously belonged to James Buchanan we can see his name on there this is a book that talked about the different American Indian tribes that were in the North American continent or on the North American continent also in this room we have some original Furniture this was arranged by his niece Harriet so James Buchanan was our only bachelor president so his niece kind of served as the the first lady to James Buchanan and you know orchestrated parties and things like that she had traveled with him when he was a foreign Diplomat take a look at this this is really something else to me so in his travels he had met Queen Victoria and also her husband Albert these are two lithographs that were sent to James Buchanan and here's what is really amazing to me these aren't copies these are the originals and both are signed by Queen Victoria and by Albert simply amazing that they have this here [Music] all right we're moving now into the part of the house that served as the dining room for James Buchanan and a few things that I want to point out here so so this table that we are looking at looks kind of small but could be expanded out to seat 18 people and if you look at the China so this is the the actual original China that James Buchanan had here in the house that he got from the minister to France and uh if we go over here you can see you know the the larger collection of it and you might look at it and by today's standards look at it and say oh pink that's kind of an interesting color not you know maybe uh something more Associated is uh being more of a an effeminate color but during this period of time well what we're looking at here the color was called Parisian pink and it was very rare was difficult to reproduce this but you know it was actually you know only produced in Paris and if you had something in Parisian pink well what you were signaling to your guests is that you were a person of means and of of wealth so anyway pretty neat to see this China here in in the dining room and and one other thing that I really found fascinating if we walk over here uh Buchanan was a a man who who liked find drinks and Fine Wines this is an original bottle of wine that belonged to James Buchanan [Music] okay I've moved back out into the foyer area and a few things that I wanted to point out here so right here we have a portrait of James Buchanan and his his nephew said that of all of the portraits that were made of his uncle this one was probably the the most accurate the most close to his likeness now we don't know exactly how tall James Buchanan was but there's an old sketch of him standing next to Abraham Lincoln at the inauguration of Lincoln and he's just a few it looks to be just a few inches shorter so he was maybe between six six two and then over here on the other side well like many other presidents George Washington was a favorite of James Buchanan so here you can see a portrait of Washington and then as we move back here one thing that I wanted to show was this bust of James Buchanan so this was made from a life mask that that was done on Buchanan at the time and uh yeah is now right here in the home okay I have one more room that we're going to look at here on the lower level and that is the library all right uh walking now into the library here at Wheatland and oh my gosh I love books Buchanan also liked books he was a lawyer and I have to say I am I am jealous of this room holy smokes I I don't know why but I am really fond of this ring this is my favorite room that I've been in so far so like I said James Buchanan was a lawyer he he revered the law and had this thought that that all of America's problems would be fixed if we just followed the law which I can agree to that to some extent and but really the the problems at the time and and some of the the fracturization if that's even a word that we had in the United States went beyond that so A few things that I'll point out here I mentioned the newspaper reporter who had visited Buchanan's Wheatland before let me see if I can get a good angle on this uh here's a an artist depiction of the library here and a few things that I'll point out this desk was a gift from his niece Harriet when he was elected president so the the chairs and the the desk are exactly the chairs and desk that we see in this picture and again you know kind of re-emphasizing the fact that Buchanan was our only bachelor president when he became president Harriet became kind of like his uh de facto first lady so something else here that's kind of interesting is here in this picture and we see this ship this was a revenue cutter named the Harriet Lane named after uh Buchanan's niece incidentally this is the first ship that was named after the woman who would really occupy the the first lady position later in the Civil War it was converted to a warship all right so we've got a tour that's coming through so we're gonna go upstairs right now to the second level and something that's pretty interesting so buchanans like to to live nice if if you look at this this hand railing here well this is made of Rosewood and the spindles are made of tiger stripe Maple there are 101 of them so yeah the the Buchanan's definitely like to live nice moving now into the East bedroom here in the house and as I mentioned earlier almost half of the Furnishings in this house are original so what we're looking at here is a bed that Harriet had made now it wasn't originally here in the house it was her home down around Baltimore but she had it made for James Buchanan and as you can see it's pretty low to the ground well this is because you know as he was advancing in age James Buchanan suffered from from gout and uh anyway this bed would be easier for him to get out of and and if you look here well this is the desk that belonged to Harriet and you can see that it is just carved with an incredible amount of detail this would have been in the house after the death of James Buchanan he probably would not have tolerated something so I guess ornate or extravagant in the house but it has remained in the house throughout its entire history since it was put in here moving over to the west side of the second floor and after the death of James Buchanan Harriet decided to make some improvements to the home which included some indoor plumbing now again this is a wealthy family so this is something that that would have not been common but here and I love how this looks we have this this zinc lined tub and also a bidet and over here in the corner it's thought that this is where the toilet would have been now here at the the Wheatland house they have a bookcase in here uh to kind of interpret how they think that this would have been a another library that James Buchanan would have had and then again I've mentioned a couple of times how how many original pieces of furniture and artifacts they have in here something else this room could have been used for was to store luggage for the guests so here we're looking at some original trunks that that belong to Harriet and her husband moving into the next room this is the space that would have served as the bedroom for Harriet so a few interesting things here one is this prayer bench and if we take a little bit of a closer look here I'm not going to to touch it but this is a prayer book that actually belonged to Harriet and while she was in the white house with James Buchanan oh Harriet head an admirer who decided to make this doll for her that was made in her likeness so this is real human hair the head is made from beeswax and was you know of course moldable to where the the person who made it could fashion it in such a way that it looked like Harriet and if you hold up a picture next to it you can definitely see the likeness and then he even had so much attention to detail that he had these fake flowers made which were white white roses which also happened to be her favorite flower yeah but this was this was Harriet's bedroom [Music] okay moving now into the bedroom of James Buchanan and there are a few things in here that uh I found interesting anyway one of them being this bathtub right here now when they were manufactured and advertised in the 1800s they were called a hat tub because it obviously looks like an upside down hat but the way this would work is is you would stand in this tub and you can see a little soap dish there and soap yourself down and pour water you know over your head and over your body maybe do this you know once a week and then you could stand in this tub and of course you can see that it slopes down to catch the water and you don't get the floor wet now this wouldn't have been in the bedroom this more likely would have been in the kitchen and something else that was interesting in this room that I don't know is different by today's standards is this right here this is called a nighttime commode so you can see it's just a regular chair but has this lid on the seat now underneath of this seat you would have had a couple of boards that would have had like Runners there that you could slide a lead or zinc um oh like a kind of like a chamber pot to where if in the middle of the night you had to go to the bathroom well you don't want to necessarily have to go outside in the dark well you can do your business right here in the bedroom which seems kind of nasty the only thing worse is having the job of the chamber made he would have to empty it out the next day as we've already mentioned James Buchanan is elected in 1856 and you can go online and see a bunch of before and after pictures of presidents to see just how the the stress of the job wears on them well here is a picture of James Buchanan at the end of his term and you can see how the the stress of being the leader of this country during such a tumultuous time took its toll on him and right here in this bed on June 1st of 1868 well James Buchanan drew his last breath he'd had some a lot of Health complications due to drinking some bad water from the uh the National Hotel in Washington D.C prior to his his presidency and then that opened him up for you know basically weakened his immune system he had a bunch of respiratory problems but right here is the deathbed of James Buchanan [Music] all right uh we've got another place that we're going to get to here in just a second but holy smokes if you were ever in the area of Lancaster Pennsylvania come to this place forget all the stuff about Buchanan being ranked as one of the worst presidents in U.S history that that was really really interesting and I didn't even show a fraction of what is in that house but anyway we're going to go ahead and hop in the vehicle and head to the final resting place of James Buchanan [Music] thank you foreign we've moved just a few miles down the road from Wheatland and are now at Woodward Hill Cemetery which is the final resting place of James Buchanan and there was something that I forgot to mention about Buchanan that I meant to say earlier and that is as you can see on this little marker here he was also a veteran of the war of 1812. now I don't think that he saw combat but was in a reserve unit but but served nonetheless and if we look here says here rest the remains of James Buchanan 15th president of the United States born in Franklin County Pennsylvania April 23 1791 that makes Buchanan the last president to have been born in the 1700s and also the last president to have been born when George Washington was in office and then died at Wheatland June 1st 1868 and he was surrounded by his family at his deathbed including the uh his niece who was holding his hand and he was slipping in and out of Consciousness and he he came awake and uttered his final words he uttered O Lord Almighty as thou Wilt and then slipped back into unconsciousness and then again died on June 1st of 1868. but right here is the final resting place of James Buchanan [Music] foreign left office he was widely uh condemned for his performance as president of the United States he had done a great job as a diplomat and as Secretary of State and all these things but those skills that he had in those roles did not translate well to the presidency maybe his greatest strength was also his greatest weakness in in trying to just make everybody happy and then trying to make everybody happy he made nobody happy and under his watch this country is going to fall apart now Buchanan said in his his later years that history would vindicate him but that hasn't really turned out to be the case but that doesn't mean that that there aren't things that uh that we can't learn from James Buchanan he's just as worthy as studying as any of the other presidents so I've got this goofy goal where I've been trying to visit all of the the presidential Graves I've been to Washington's grave and Kennedy and Taft and a whole number of others Polk uh Benjamin Harrison and now can check off James Buchanan so uh you can go to the playlist uh here on this channel where you can see some of the other presidential sites that I've been to but anyway for now we're off to the next place [Music] I want to see some of the other presidential sites that we've been to then click on this playlist right here also be sure to subscribe to catch all of the new content when it comes out [Music]

Channel: The History Underground

Views: 952,699

Keywords: history traveler, history underground, history, documentary, james buchanan, worst president, president buchanan, the presidents full episode, james buchanan documentary, james buchanan president, james buchanan home, james buchanan biography, wheatland

Id: MdVNfcwZvYg

Length: 33min 37sec (2017 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 18 2023