Born in 1791, James Buchanan grew up in rural Pennsylvania. He graduated from Dickinson College in 1809. After moving to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, he studied law and gained admission to the bar in 1812. Two years later he was elected to the state assembly as a Federalist and then won election to the House of Representatives in 1820. During the 1820s he shifted from Federalist to Democratic ranks as an early supporter of Andrew Jackson. After declining to stand for reelection to Congress in 1830, he spent two years as minister to Russia (1832–1834) before returning to the United States to serve in the U.S. Senate for the next eleven years. He soon showed himself a staunch supporter of the South when it came to the defense of slavery’s constitutionality, as his January 1836 remarks to Congress suggest. As secretary of state during the administration of James Polk (1845–1849) he oversaw negotiations leading to the settlement of the Oregon question (an agreement over the boundary between the western United States and Canada) and advised the president during the Mexican-American War. He retired to private life in 1849, but he accepted an appointment as minister to England in 1853 during the Franklin Pierce administration. In June 1856 he beat out Pierce and Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas for the Democratic presidential nomination and defeated Republican John C. Frémont and Know Nothing Millard Fillmore in the fall contest.