Correspondence, notes, drafts of remarks, commissions, land patents, and other papers relating chiefly to Buchanan's career in the Senate, as U.S. secretary of state, and as minister to Great Britain prior to his presidency in 1857. Subjects include Democratic politics in Pennsylvania and the U.S.; presidential politics including the elections of 1852 and 1856; the Democratic convention of 1852 held in Baltimore, Md.; the Know Nothings (American Party); the Whig Party; Afro-Americans in the Republican party; sectional strife between North and South; Missouri compromise; Kansas and Nebraska; nullification; abolitionists; the National Bank; Cumberland Road; Delaware Canal; transcontinental railroad; and notice of Buchanan in the New York Herald. Other subjects include Joel R. Poinsett's negotiations with Mexico; blockade of Mexico; Oregon question; British attempts to obtain a marine postal monopoly; trade treaties; tariffs; Ostend Manifesto; and the Crimean war. Includes a version of the 1858 State of the Union message. Correspondents include J. Glancy Jones. Johnston's correspondence relates primarily to ladies' fashions, social affairs, romantic ventures, and selection of a biographer of James Buchanan. Includes correspondence with her husband, Henry Elliot Johnston.