[In regard to voting for Buchanan for President, Grant says in his
_Memoirs_ that he believed that the election of a Republican President
in 1856 would mean the secession of all the slave States and
inevitable rebellion. Accordingly, he preferred the success of a
candidate whose election would prevent or postpone secession, to
seeing the country plunged into a war the end of which no man could
foretell. "With a Democrat elected by the unanimous vote of the Slave
States, there would be no pretext for secession for four years. I very
much hoped that the passions of the people would subside in that time,
and the catastrophe be averted altogether; if it were not, I believed
the country would be better prepared to receive the shock and to
resist it. I therefore voted for James Buchanan for President."]
St. Louis,
Sept. 23d, 1859.