• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

—Richard Norton Smith

Though hardly a figure of Shakespearian dimensions, there is undoubtedly a tragic quality to America’s fourteenth president. The youngest ever to hold that office when he was sworn in 1853, whatever chance he had for success was crushed, along with his eleven-year-old son, Bennie, killed a few weeks earlier in a horrible train wreck as his parents looked on. For Bennie’s mother, Jane, a strict Calvinist who blamed her husband’s political ambitions for the loss of their child, the White House was a well-furnished purgatory. Her death in December 1863, wounded Pierce’s spirit, while the passing of his dearest friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne, the following spring, dramatized the political ostracism caused by Pierce’s pro-southern record in office. At Hawthorne’s funeral the former president was excluded from the ranks of pallbearers, which included the likes of Emerson, Longfellow, and Whittier. Instead, Pierce remained behind the other mourners in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, to scatter a few blossoms into the open grave.

When his own casket was borne into Saint Paul’s in October 1869, the ceremonies were formalistic, the grief contained. Concord’s farewell to its “Man Who Might Have Been” recalled nothing so much as Longfellow’s lyric written for Hawthorne’s obsequies.

“How beautiful it was,

that one bright day

In the long week of rain!

Though all its splendor could

not chase away

The omnipresent pain.”

—RNS

James Buchanan

Buried: Woodward Hill Cemetery, Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Fifteenth President - 1857-1861

Born: April 23, 1791, in Cove Gap, Pennsylvania

Died: 8:30 a.m. on June 1, 1868, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Age at death: 77

Cause of death: Pneumonia

Final words: “Oh Lord, God Almighty, as Thou wilt.”

Admission to Woodward Hill Cemetery: Free

James Buchanan is known as our only bachelor president. Less familiar is the story of Buchanan’s early romance with a young woman named Anne Coleman. She died suddenly in 1819, shortly after they had quarreled. Buchanan suffered when rumors of suicide circulated, along with claims that he was only interested in her money. He declared that his happiness would be “buried with her in the grave” and that the cause of their breakup would be revealed in a letter released after his death.

It’s said that Buchanan first ran for Congress in 1820 to escape his grief and the gossip mills in his hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. However, rumormongering has followed him into the modern age. Buchanan’s choice of a Washington roommate—flamboyant fellow senator William Rufus DeVane King—has led to speculation about his personal life. Lacking a wife to handle White House social duties, Buchanan asked his niece, Harriet Lane, to serve as his first lady when he won the presidency in 1856.

The inscription on Buchanan’s grave

Weary of the slavery issue, he declined to seek a second term and left the White House for his Wheatland estate, where he received a hero’s welcome and settled into a quiet retirement. He lived just seven more years. In his final days, Buchanan suffered from rheumatism and dysentery. These maladies left him susceptible to infection. In May of 1868, Buchanan contracted pneumonia. Sensing that the end was near, he did not leave his bedroom. James Buchanan died alone on June 1, 1868, at the age of seventy-seven.

The city of Lancaster held a public meeting in his honor. His body lay on view in the main hall at Wheatland. Mourners and curiosity seekers found the former president dressed in his typical white tie and high collar shirt. A two-and-a-half mile funeral parade followed, with bands, 125 carriages, and thousands of onlookers.

Historic marker at Woodward Hill Cemetery

Two days before his death Buchanan gave final instructions to Hiram Swarr, the executor of his estate. First, he wanted a simple obelisk for his tomb. Second, the letter explaining his broken engagement was to be burned, unopened. Both orders were obeyed. He was buried at Woodward Hill Cemetery in Lancaster, where a white