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awkwardly named opposition party born of Jefferson’s resistance to what he felt were monarchical, unduly centralist, anti-democratic, anti-republican, and anti-French tendencies in the Washington Administration. Democratic-Republicans would rather make war on Great Britain than on Napoleon. The Federalists nominated Buchanan for state Assemblyman. The day after his nomination news arrived that the British had burned Washington. The young office-seeker’s first campaign duty, then, was to volunteer in the general mobilization and march to the defense of Baltimore. His company, calling itself the“Lancaster County Dragoons,” was beseeched for volunteers for a secret mission; he volunteered, and their secret mission proved to be not fighting the British but stealing sixty horses from the residents of the countryside,
always preferring to take them from Quakers
, says Klein, not citing his source. The lowly mission was accomplished; the British withdrew from Baltimore, having inspired the lyrics for “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The dragoons were disbanded; Buchanan came home and was elected Assemblyman. In Lancaster the Federalists always won but their fortunes, sagging lately, were restored by anti-war sentiments. Buchanan’s full-of-advice father wrote him:
Perhaps your going to the Legislature may be to your advantage & it may be otherwise
. If his father had been less advisory, would Buchanan have been a stronger man, leaning less on others? Would he have been less secretive? He hid his thoughts from even his Cabinet, it was said of his time in the White House. Parents do pry. Our first lies are to them. Buchanan did his duties in Harrisburg.
A tall, broad-shouldered young man with wavy blond hair, blue eyes, and fine features
(Klein), he gave his maiden speech on February 1, 1815, against conscription and Philadelphia’s privileged set, championing the West against the East and the poor against the rich. He was told he should become a Democrat. A friendly Democrat, William Beale, state Senator from Mifflin County,
called upon me, and urged me strongly during this session to change my party name, and be called a Democrat, stating that I would have no occasion to change my principles. In that event, he said he would venture to predict that, should I live, I would become President of the United States
. To demonstrate his Federalism Buchanan gave another Fourth of July speech in Lancaster, attacking the Democrats as
demagogues
and
factionaries
and
friends of the French
, possessed by
blackest ingratitude
and
diabolic passions
. He got re-elected but the speechcreated an enmity among the Jeffersonians that lasted all his political life. Even his
rabidly pro-Federalist father thought his attack was too severe
, and Buchanan allowed,
There are many sentiments in this oration which I regret
, but goes on in his memoir to quote cherished bits, such as this of the citizens aroused by the British invasion:
They rushed upon their enemies with a hallowed fury which the hireling soldiers of Britain could never feel. They taught our foe that the soil of freedom would always be the grave of its invaders
.
    The rules forbade running for Assemblyman a third time. He was out of politics. He thought of going to Philadelphia to practice and his father talked him out of it. He had a bilious fever; he was prone all his long life to illnesses of stress. Staying in Lancaster, he worked at the law. A local judge judged of him,
He was cut out by nature for a great lawyer, and I think was spoiled by fortune when she made him a statesman
. In the years 1816–18 he thrice successfully defended the Federalist-appointed judge Walter Franklin against impeachment charges brought by the Democratic legislature, arguing the case with what a witness called
great ingenuity, eloquence, and address
. He based his case on the United States Constitution and its separation of powers. He was always to take a lawyer’s careful approach to government,