On June 15, 1859, an American farming squatter named Lyman Cutlar shot and killed a pig that was rooting around his shack. It turned out that the pig belonged to the Hudson Bay Company, and the Canadians then threatened to round up and deport any Americans still living on the wrong side of the strait [Juan de Fuca, on the border of Washington and British Columbia].
A troop of Americans commanded by then Captain George Pickett, whose charge several years later during the Battle of Gettysburg led to the Confederate defeat there, came to defend the honor of the pig-shooting squatter.
Instead of using diplomacy in what was clearly a minor incident, [President James] Buchanan dispatched General Winfield Scott with troops and warships on a six-week passage from New York to the strait by way of Panama. By the time Scott got there, there were troops and ships ready to fire at each other over, well, a pig.
Worst. President. Ever. James Buchanan, the POTUS Rating Game, and the Legacy of the Least of the Lesser Presidents, by Robert Strauss ’73, Lyons Press, 2016