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Harriet Lane

Harriet Rebecca Lane Johnston (May 9, 1830 – July 3, 1903), niece of perpetual bachelor James Buchanan, acted as First Lady of the United States from 1857 to 1861.

Harriet Lane's family was from Franklin County, Pennsylvania. She was the youngest child of Elliott Tole Lane, a merchant, and Jane Buchanan Lane. An orphan after the death of her father when she was 11 years old (her mother had died two years earlier), she requested that her favourite uncle, James Buchanan, be appointed her legal guardian. Buchanan, an unmarried Democratic senator from Pennsylvania, indulged his niece and her sister, enrolling them in boarding schools in Charleston, Virginia (later West Virginia), and then for two years at the Academy of the Visitation Convent in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C. By this time, "Nunc" was Secretary of State, and he introduced her to fashionable circles as he had promised, "in the best manner."

In 1854 she joined him in London, where he was minister to the Court of St. James. Queen Victoria gave "dear Miss Lane" the rank of ambassador's wife; admiring suitors gave her the fame of a beauty. In appearance "Hal" Lane was of medium height, with masses of light hair almost golden.

After the sadness of the Pierce administration, the capital eagerly welcomed its new "Democratic Queen" to the White House in 1857. Harriet was a popular hostess during the four years of the Buchanan presidency. Women copied her hair and clothing styles, parents named their daughters for her, and a popular song ( "Listen to the Mockingbird" ) was dedicated to her. While in the White House, she used her position to promote social causes, such as improving the living conditions of Native Americans in reservations. She also made a point of inviting artists and musicians to White House functions. For both her popularity and her advocacy work, she has been described as the first of the modern first ladies.

As sectional tensions increased, she worked out seating arrangements for her weekly formal dinner parties with special care, to give dignitaries their proper precedence and still keep political foes apart. Her tact did not falter, but her task became impossible--as did her uncle's. Seven states had seceded by the time Buchanan retired from office and returned with his niece to his spacious country home, Wheatland (Lancaster), near Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

From her teenage years, the popular Miss Lane flirted happily with numerous beaux, calling them "pleasant but dreadfully troublesome." Buchanan often warned her against "rushing precipitately into matrimonial connexions," and she waited until she was almost 36 to marry. She chose, with her uncle's approval, Henry Elliott Johnston, a Baltimore banker. Within the next 18 years she lost her uncle, her two fine young sons, and her husband.

Thereafter she decided to live in Washington. She had acquired a sizable art collection, largely of European works, which she bequeathed to the government. Accepted after her death in 1903, it inspired an official of the Smithsonian Institution to call her First Lady of the National Collection of Fine Arts.

In addition, she had dedicated a generous sum to endow a home for invalid children at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. It became a renowned pediatric facility; the Harriet Lane Outpatient Clinics serve thousands of children today, and the widely-used manual for pediatric house officers, The Harriet Lane Handbook, bears her name.

She is buried at Greenmount Cemetery, Baltimore, Maryland.

The United States Coast Guard has had three Cutters named in her honor. The first was the USS Harriet Lane, commissioned into the United States Revenue Cutter Service (predecessor of the USCG) in 1857. This cutter was transferred to the United States Navy in 1861 because of the American Civil War and was captured by the Confederated Navy in 1863.

The second cutter named for Harriet Lane was the 125 foot USCGC Harriet Lane (WSC-141). The Cutter was commissioned in 1926, and decommissioned in 1946

The third cutter named for Harriet Lane is the USCGC Harriet Lane (WMEC-903). The Cutter was commissioned in May 1984, and as of 2007, is still in active service.

• Original text based on White House biography
• Margaret Brown Klapthor, The First Ladies, 1995, White House Historical Association, ISBN 0-912308-58-3

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