John P. Buchanan
John Price Buchanan (October 24, 1847 – May 14, 1930) was the Governor of the U.S. State of Tennessee from 1891 to 1893. He was a native of Williamson County, Tennessee.
A Confederate Army veteran, Buchanan moved to Rutherford County in 1878, where he operated a successful 325-acre (132 ha) farm. He was twice elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives, representing a district in his adopted home of Rutherford County.[1] In 1889, he was elected president of the Tennessee Farmers' Alliance and Laborers' Union. The Alliance formed a successful populist coalition for the 1890 elections, allowing Buchanan to capture the Tennessee Democratic Party nomination for governor. Although there was stiff opposition to Buchanan within Democratic Party ranks, he rallied enough to support to win the general election, becoming the state's 28th governor.
Buchanan's term as governor was marred by a series of armed uprisings against the state's convict lease system, namely the Coal Creek War in Anderson County and a subsequent uprising in Grundy County, in which free coal miners attacked prison stockades after being replaced by convicts the state had leased out to the mining companies. Divided between his support for labor on the one hand and his obligation to enforce contracts the state had signed on the other, Buchanan struggled in his efforts to end the conflict, and was sometimes left bedridden with anxiety. Newspapers, coal miners, labor organizers, and mining companies alike vilified him, calling him "cowardly" and "ineffective."[2] The influence of the Farmers' Alliance quickly disintegrated, and the state's Democrats dropped Buchanan in favor of state Supreme Court chief justice Peter Turney in the 1892 election. Buchanan mounted a third party campaign for the general election, but captured only about 10% of the vote.[3]
After his defeat, Buchanan returned to farming and did not subsequently hold public office. The Confederate pension system was put in place during his tenure, as were state-supported secondary public schools.
[edit] References
- ^ Karin Shapiro, A New South Rebellion: The Battle Against Convict Labor in the Tennessee Coalfields, 1871-1896 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), pp. 90-94.
- ^ Pete Daniel, "The Tennessee Convict War." Tennessee Historical Quarterly Vol. 34 (1975), pp. 273-292.
- ^ Perry Cotham, Toil, Turmoil & Triumph: A Portrait of the Tennessee Labor Movement (Franklin, Tenn.: Hillsboro Press, 1995), pp. 56-80.
[edit] External links
- Governor John P. Buchanan (1847-1930) 1891-1893. Online finding aid to the gubernatorial papers of Tennessee Governor John P. Buchanan. PDF document. Retrieved August 26, 2006.
- Farmer's Alliance (Farmer's and Laborer's Union). At Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture. Retrieved August 26, 2006.
| Political offices | ||
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| Preceded by Robert Love Taylor |
Governor of Tennessee 1891-1893 |
Succeeded by Peter Turney |
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