Presidential Election of 1860.--The Electoral and Popular Vote.--
Wide Divergence between the Two.--Mr. Lincoln has a Large Majority
of Electors.--In a Minority of 1,000,000 on Popular Vote.--Beginning
of Secession.--Rash Course of South Carolina.--Reluctance on the
Part of Many Southern States.--Unfortunate Meeting of South-Carolina
Legislature.--Hasty Action of South-Carolina Convention.--The Word
"Ordinance."--Meeting of Southern Senators in Washington to promote
Secession.--Unwillingness in the South to submit the Question to
Popular Vote.--Georgia not eager to Secede.--Action of Other States.
--Meeting of Congress in December, 1860.--Position of Mr. Buchanan.
--His Attachment to the Union as a Pennsylvanian.--Sinister Influences
in his Cabinet.--His Evil Message to Congress.--Analysis of the
Message.--Its Position destructive to the Union.--The President's
Position Illogical and Untenable.--Full of Contradictions.--Extremists
of the South approve the Message.--Demoralizing Effect of the
Message in the North and in the South.--General Cass resigns from
State Department.--Judge Black succeeds him.--Character of Judge
Black.--Secretaries Cobb, Floyd, and Thompson.--Their Censurable
Conduct in the Cabinet.--Their Resignation.--Re-organization of
Cabinet.--Dix, Holt, Stanton.--Close of Mr. Buchanan's Administration.
--Change in the President's Course.--The New Influences.--Analysis
of the President's Course.--There were two Mr. Buchanans.--Personal
and Public Character of Mr. Buchanan.
The winter following the election of Mr. Lincoln was filled with
deplorable events. In the whole history of the American people,
there is no epoch which recalls so much that is worthy of regret
and so little that gratifies pride. The result of the election
was unfortunate in the wide divergence between the vote which Mr.
Lincoln received in the electoral colleges and the vote which he
received at the polls. In the electoral colleges he had an aggregate
of 180. His opponents, united, had but 123. Of the popular vote,
Lincoln received 1,866,452; Douglas, 1,291,547; Breckinridge,
850,082; Bell, 646,124. Mr. Lincoln's vote was wholly from the
free States, except some 26,000 cast for him in the five border
slave States. In the other slave States his name was not presented
as a candidate. Mr. Douglas received in the South about 163,000
votes. In the North the votes cast distinctively for the Breckinridge
electoral ticket were less than 100,000, and distinctively for the
Bell electoral ticket about 80,000.
It was thus manifest that the two Northern Presidential candidates,
Lincoln and Douglas, had absorbed almost the entire vote in the
free States, and the two Southern Presidential candidates, Breckinridge
and Bell, had absorbed almost the entire vote in the slave States.
The Northern candidate received popular support in the South in
about the same degree that the Southern candidate received popular
support in the North. In truth as well as in appearance it was a
sectional contest in which the North supported Northern candidates,
and the South supported Southern candidates. It was the first time
in the history of the government in which the President was chosen
without electoral votes from both the free and the slave States.
This result was undoubtedly a source of weakness to Mr. Lincoln,--
weakness made more apparent by his signal failure to obtain a
popular majority. He had a large plurality, but the combined vote
of his opponents was nearly a million greater than the vote which
he received.
The time had now come when the Southern Disunionists were to be
put to the test. The event had happened which they had declared
in advance to be cause of separation. It was perhaps the belief
that their courage and determination were challenged, which forced
them to action. Having so often pledged themselves not to endure
the election of an anti-slavery President, they were now persuaded
that, if they quietly submitted, they would thereby accept an
inferior position in the government. This assumed obligation of
consistency stimulated them to rash action; for upon every
consideration of prudence and wise forecast, they would have quietly
accepted a result which they acknowledged to be in strict accordance
with the Constitution. The South was enjoying exceptional prosperity.
The advance of the slave States in wealth was more rapid then at
any other period of their history. Their staple products commanded
high prices and were continually growing in amount to meet the
demands of a market which represented the wants of the civilized
world. In the decade between 1850 and 1860 the wealth of the South
had increased three thousand millions of dollars, and this not from
an overvalution of slaves, but from increased cultivation of land,
the extension of railways, and all the aids and appliances of vast
agricultural enterprises. Georgia alone had increased in wealth
over three hundred millions of dollars, no small proportion of
which was from commercial and manufacturing ventures that had proved
extremely profitable. There was never a community of the face of
the globe whose condition so little justified revolution as that
of the slave States in the year 1860. Indeed, it was a sense of
strength born of exceptional prosperity which led them to their
rash adventure of war.
THE FIRST EFFORT AT SECESSION.
It would however be an injustice to the People of the South to say
that in November, 1860, they desired, unanimously, or by a majority,
or on the part of any considerable minority, to engage in a scheme
of violent resistance to the National authority. The slave-holders
were in the main peacefully disposed, and contented with the
situation. But slavery as an economical institution and slavery
as a political force were quite distinct. Those who viewed it and
used it merely as a system of labor, naturally desired peace and
dreaded commotion. Those who used it as a political engine for
the consolidation of political power had views and ambitions
inconsistent with the plans and hopes of law-abiding citizens. It
was only by strenuous effort on the part of the latter class that
an apparent majority of the Southern people committed themselves
to the desperate design of destroying the National Government.
The first effort at secession was made, as might have been expected,
by South Carolina. She did not wait for the actual result of the
election, but early in October, on the assumption of Lincoln's
success, began a correspondence with the other Cotton States. The
general tenor of the responses did not indicate a decided wish or
purpose to separate from the Union. North Carolina was positively
unwilling to take any hasty step. Louisiana, evidently remembering
the importance and value of the Mississippi River and of its numerous
tributaries to her commercial prosperity, expressed an utter
disinclination to separate from the North-West. Georgia was not
ready to make resistance, and at most advocated some form of
retaliatory legislation. It was evident that even in the Cotton-
belt and the Gulf States there was in the minds of sober people
the gravest objection to revolutionary measures.
It happened, most unfortunately, that the South-Carolina Legislature
assembled early in November for the purpose of choosing Presidential
electors, who in that State were never submitted to the popular
vote. While it might seem extravagant to ascribe the revolution
which convulsed the country to an event so disconnected and apparently
so inadequate, it is nevertheless true that the sudden _furor_
which seized a large number of the Southern people came directly
from that event. Indeed, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say
that the great civil war, which shook a continent, was precipitated
by the fact that the South-Carolina Legislature assembled at the
unpropitious moment. Without taking time for reflection, without
a review of the situation, without stopping to count the cost, with
a boldness born of passionate resentment against the North, the
rash men of South Carolina fired the train. In a single hour they
created in their own State a public sentiment which would not brook
delay or contradiction or argument. The leaders of it knew that
the sober second thought, even in South Carolina, would be dangerous
to the scheme of a Southern confederacy. They knew that the feeling
of resentment among the Southern people must be kept at white-heat,
and that whoever wished to speak a word of caution or moderation
must be held as a public enemy, and subjected to the scorn and the
vengeance of the people.
In this temper a convention was ordered by the Legislature. The
delegates were to be chosen directly by the people, and when
assembled were to determine the future relation of South Carolina
to the Government of the United States. The election was to be
held in four weeks, and the convention was to assemble on the 17th
of December. The unnatural and unprecedented haste of this action,
by which South Carolina proceeded, as she proclaimed, to throw off
her national relations, is more easily comprehended by recalling
the difficult mode provided in every State for a change in its
constitution. In not a single State of the American Union can the
organic law be changed in less than a year, or without ample
opportunity for serious consideration by the people. At that very
moment the people of South Carolina were inhibited from making the
slightest alteration in their own constitution except by slow and
conservative processes which gave time for deliberation and
reflection. In determining a question momentous beyond all
calculation to themselves and to their posterity, they were hurried
into the election of delegates, and the delegates were hurried into
convention, and the convention was hurried into secession by a
terror of public opinion that would not endure resistance and would
not listen to reason.
The few who were left in possession of coolness and sound judgment
among the public men of South Carolina, desired to stay the rush
of events by waiting for co-operation with the other slave-holding
States. Their request was denied and their argument answered by
the declaration that co-operation had been tried in 1850, and had
ended in defeating all measures looking to Disunion. One of the
members declared that if South Carolina again waited for co-operation,
slavery and State-rights would be abandoned, State-sovereignty and
the cause of the South would be lost forever. The action of the
convention was still further stimulated by the resignation of Mr.
Hammond and Mr. Chestnut, United-States senators from South Carolina,
and by the action of Governor Pickens in appointing a cabinet of
the same number and of the same division of departments that had
been adopted in the National Government.
THE ACTION OF SOUTH CAROLINA.
South Carolina was urged forward in this course by leading Disunionists
in other States who needed the force of one bold example of secession
to furnish the requisite stimulus to their own communities. The
members of the South Carolina convention, recognizing the embarrassment
and incongruity of basing their action simply upon the constitutional
election of a President, declared that the public opinion of their
State "had for a long period been strengthening and ripening for
Disunion." Mr. Rhett, eminent in the public service of his State,
asserted "that the secession of South Carolina was not produced by
Mr. Lincoln's election, or by the non-execution of the Fugitive-
slave Law; that it was a matter which had been gathering head for
thirty years," and that they were now "determined upon their course
at whatever risk."
Among the singular incidents of the South-Carolina secession,
followed subsequently by other States, was the solemn import attached
to the word _ordinance_. The South gave it a significance which
elevated its authority above the Constitution, and above the laws
of their own State and of the United States. And yet, neither in
legal definition nor in any ordinary use of the word, was there
precedent or authority for attaching to it such impressive meaning.
An _ordinance_ of Parliament was but a temporary Act which the
Commons might alter at their pleasure. An _Act_ of Parliament
could not be changed except by the consent of king, lords, and
commons. In this country, aside from the use of the word in
declaring the freedom of the North-west Territory in 1787, _ordinance_
has uniformly been applied to Acts of inferior bodies, to the
councils of cities, to the authorities of towns, to the directors
of corporations,--rarely if ever to the Acts of legislative assemblies
which represent the power of the State.
It is still more singular that, in passing the ordinance of Secession,
the convention worded it so that it should seem to be the repeal
of the ordinance of the 23d of May, 1788, whereby the Constitution
of the United States was ratified by South Carolina, when, in simple
truth, the Act of that State ratifying the Federal Constitution
was never called an ordinance. Mirabeau said that words were
things; and this word was so used in the proceedings of Secession
conventions as to impress the mind of the Southern people with its
portentous weight and solemnity. With an amendment to the
constitutions of their States they had all been familiar. In the
enactment of their laws thousands had participated. But no one of
them had ever before seen or heard or dreamed of any thing of such
momentous and decisive character as an Ordinance. Even to this
day, when disunion, secession, rebellion have all been destroyed
by the shock of arms, and new institutions have been built over
their common grave, the word "ordinance" has, in the minds of many
people both in the North and in the South, a sound which represents
the very majesty of popular power.
If the other Southern States would have been left to their own
counsels, South Carolina would have stood alone, and her Secession
of 1860 would have proved as abortive as her Nullification of 1832.
The Disunion movement in the remaining States of the South originated
in Washington. Finding that the Cotton States, especially those
bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, were moving too slowly, the senators
from Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi,
and Florida held a meeting in Washington on the 5th of January,
1861. The South had always contended for the right of States to
instruct their senators, but now the Southern senators proceeded
to instruct their States. In effect they sent out commands to the
governing authorities and to the active political leaders, that
South Carolina must be sustained; that the Cotton States must stand
by her; and that the secession of each and all of them must be
accomplished in season for a general convention to be held at
Montgomery, not later than Feb. 15, and, in any event, before the
inauguration of Mr. Lincoln. The design was that the new President
of the United States should find a Southern Confederacy in actual
existence, with the ordinary departments of government in regular
operation, with a name and a flag and a great seal, and all the
insignia of national sovereignty visible.
It is a suggestive fact that, in carrying out these designs, the
political leaders determined, as far as possible, to prevent the
submission of the ordinances of Secession to the popular vote. It
is not indeed probable that, in the excited condition to which they
had by this time brought the Southern mind, Secession would have
been defeated; but the withholding of the question from popular
decision is at least an indication that there was strong apprehension
of such a result, and that care was taken to prevent the divisions
and acrimonious contests which such submission might have caused.
In the Georgia convention the resolution declaring it to be her
right and her duty to secede was adopted only by a vote of 165 to
130. A division of similar proportion in the popular vote would
have stripped the secession of Georgia of all moral force, and
hence the people were not allowed to pass upon the question.
ACTION OF OTHER COTTON STATES.
Georgia was really induced to secede, only upon the delusive
suggestion that better terms could be made with the National
Government by going out for a season than by remaining steadfastly
loyal. The influence of Alexander H. Stephens, while he was still
loyal, was almost strong enough to hold the State in the Union;
and but for the phantasm of securing better terms outside, the
Empire State of the South would have checked and destroyed the
Secession movement at the very outset. Mississippi followed
Jefferson Davis with a vote amounting almost to unanimity. Florida,
Louisiana, and Alabama followed with secession ordained by conventions
and no vote allowed to the people. Texas submitted the ordinance,
after the other States had seceded, and by the force of their
example carried it by a vote of about three to one. These were
the original seven States that formed the nucleus of the Confederacy.
They had gone through what they deemed the complete process of
separation from the Union, without the slightest obstruction from
any quarter and without the interposition of any authority from
the National Government against their proceedings.
Long before the Secession movement had been developed to the extent
just detailed, Congress was in session. It assembled one month
after the Presidential election, and fifteen days before the
Disunionists of South Carolina met in their ill-starred convention.
Up to that time there had been excitement, threats of resistance
to the authority of the government in many sections of the South,
and an earnest attempt in the Cotton States to promote co-operation
in the fatal step which so many were bent on taking. But there
had been no overt act against the national authority. Federal
officers were still exercising their functions in all the States;
the customs were still collected in Southern ports; the United-
States mails were still carried without molestation from the Potomac
to the Rio Grande. But the critical moment had come. The Disunion
conspiracy had reached a point where it must go forward with
boldness, or retreat before the displayed power and the uplifted
flag of the Nation. The administration could adopt no policy so
dangerous as to permit the enemies of the Union to proceed in their
conspiracy, and the hostile movement to gain perilous headway. At
that juncture Mr. Buchanan confronted a graver responsibility than
had ever before been imposed on a President of the United States.
It devolved on him to arrest the mad outbreak of the South by
judicious firmness, or by irresolution and timidity to plunge the
Nation into dangers and horrors, the extent of which was mercifully
veiled from the vision of those who were to witness and share them.
PENNSYLVANIA AND THE UNION.
There could be no doubt in the mind of any one that the destruction
of the Union would be deplored by Mr. Buchanan as profoundly as by
any living man. His birth and rearing as a Pennsylvanian leave no
other presumption possible. In the original Union, Pennsylvania
was appropriated denominated the Keystone of the arch, supported
by, and in turn supporting, the strength of all. Of the "old
thirteen" there were six free States north of her, and six slave
States south of her. She was allied as warmly by ties of friendship
and of blood with her Maryland and Virginia neighbors on the one
side as with those of New Jersey and New York on the other. Her
political and social connection on both sides were not more intimate
than those of a business and commercial character. As the Union
grew in power and increased in membership, Pennsylvania lost nothing
of her prestige. She held to the new States as intimate relations
as she held to the old. The configuration of the country and the
natural channels of communication have bound her closely to all
sections. Her northern border touching the great lakes, connected
her by sail and steam, before the era of the railway, with the
magnificent domain which lies upon the shores of those inland seas.
Her western rivers, whose junction marks the site of a great city,
form part of the most extensive system of interior water-communications
on the globe, affording a commercial highway twenty thousand miles
in length through seventeen States not included in the original
Union. Patriotic tradition increased Pennsylvania's attachment to
the National Government. It was on her soil that the Declaration
of Independence was proclaimed. It was in her Legislative halls
that the Constitution was formed and the "more perfect Union" of
the States ordained. From geographical position therefore, from
material interest, from inherited pride, from every association
and sympathy, from every aspiration, and from every hope, Pennsylvania
was for the Union, inviolable and indissoluble. No threat of its
destruction ever came from her councils, and no stress of circumstances
could ever seduce her into a calculation of its value, or drive
her to the contemplation of its end.
With all his attachment to the Union, Mr. Buchanan had been brought
under influences which were hostile to it. In originally constituting
his Cabinet, sinister agencies had controlled him, and far-seeing
men anticipated trouble when the names were announced. From the
South he had selected Howell Cobb of Georgia for the Treasury, John
B. Floyd of Virginia for Secretary of War, Jacob Thompson of Missouri
for the Interior, and Aaron V. Brown of Tennessee for Postmaster-
General. From the North he had selected Lewis Cass of Michigan
for the State Department, Isaac Toucey of Connecticut for the Navy,
and Jeremiah S. Black of Pennsylvania for Attorney-General. It
seemed extraordinary that out of seven Cabinet officers four should
be given to the South, when the North had a vast preponderance of
population and wealth. It was hardly less than audacious that the
four departments assigned to the South should be those which dealt
most intimately and most extensively with the finances, the
manufactures, and the commerce of the country. The quiet manner
in which the North accepted this inequitable distribution of
political power added only another proof of the complete ascendency
which the South had acquired in the councils of the Democratic
party.
Mr. Buchanan had always looked to the statesmen of the South as a
superior class; and after a political life wholly spent in close
association and constant service with them, it could not be expected
that, even in a crisis threatening destruction to the Union, he
would break away from them in a day. They had fast hold of him,
and against the influence of the better men in his Cabinet they
used him for a time to carry out their own ends. Secessionists
and Abolitionists Mr. Buchanan no doubt regarded as equally the
enemies of the Union. But the Secessionists all came from the
party that elected him President, and the Abolitionists had all
voted against him. The Abolitionists, in which phrase Mr. Buchanan
included all men of anti-slavery conviction, had no opportunity,
even if they had desired, to confer with the President, while the
Secessionists from old and friendly association, were in daily and
intimate relations with him. They undoubtedly persuaded the
President by the most plausible arguments that they were not in
fault; that the whole responsibility lay at the door of the Northern
anti-slavery men; and that, if these disturbers of the peace could
be suppressed, all would be well. It was under these influences,
artfully insinuated and persistently plied, that Mr. Buchanan was
induced to write his mischievous and deplorable message of the
first Monday of December, 1860,--a message whose evil effect can
never be estimated, and whose evil character can hardly be
exaggerated.
The President informed Congress that "the long-continued and
intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question
of slavery in the Southern States has at last produced its natural
effect. . . . The time has arrived so much dreaded by the Father
of his Country, when hostile geographical parties have been formed."
He declared that he had "long foreseen and often forewarned" his
countrymen of "the impending danger." Apparently arguing the case
for the Southern extremists, the President believed that the danger
"does not proceed solely from the attempt to exclude slavery from
the Territories, nor from the efforts to defeat the execution of
the Fugitive-slave Law." Any or all of these evils, he said, "might
have been endured by the South," trusting to time and reflection
for a remedy. "The immediate peril," Mr. Buchanan informed the
country, "arises from the fact that the long-continued agitation
in the free States has at length produced its malign influence on
the slaves, and inspired them with vague notions of freedom. Hence
a sense of security no longer exists around the family altar. The
feeling of peace at home has given place to apprehensions of servile
insurrections, and many a matron throughout the South retires at
night in dread of what may befall herself and her children before
morning." The President was fully persuaded that "if this apprehension
of domestic danger should extend and intensify itself, disunion
will become inevitable."
PRESIDENT BUCHANAN AND THE SOUTH.
Having thus stated what he believed to be the grievances of the
South, Mr. Buchanan proceeded to give certain reasons why the slave-
holders should not break up the government. His defensive plea
for the North was worse, if worse were possible, than his aggressive
statements on behalf of the South. "The election of any one of
our fellow-citizens to the office of President," Mr. Buchanan
complacently asserted, "does not of itself afford just cause for
dissolving the Union." And then he adds an extraordinary qualification:
"This is more especially true if his election has been effected by
a mere plurality, and not a majority, of the people, and has resulted
from transient and temporary causes, which may probably never again
occur." Translated into plainer language, this was an assurance
to the Southern Disunionists that they need not break up the
government at that time, because Mr. Lincoln was a minority President,
and was certain to be beaten at the next election. He reminded
the Southern leaders moreover that in the whole history of the
Federal Government "no single Act had ever passed Congress, unless
the Missouri Compromise be an exception, impairing in the slightest
degree the rights of the South to their property in slaves." The
Missouri Compromise had been repealed, so that the entire body of
national statutes, from the origin of the government to that hour
was, according to President Buchanan, guiltless of transgression
against the rights of slave-holders. Coming from such a source,
the admission was one of great historic value.
The President found that the chief grievance of the South was in
the enactments of the free States known as "personal liberty laws."
When the Fugitive-slave Law subjected the liberty of citizens to
the decision of a single commissioner, and denied jury trial to a
man upon the question of sending him to lifelong and cruel servitude,
the issue throughout the free States was made one of self-preservation.
Without having the legal right to obstruct the return of a fugitive
slave to his servitude, they felt not only that they had the right,
but that it was their duty, to protect free citizens in their
freedom. Very likely these enactments, inspired by an earnest
spirit of liberty, went in many cases too far, and tended to produce
conflicts between National and State authority. That was a question
to be determined finally and exclusively by the Federal Judiciary.
Unfortunately Mr. Buchanan carried his argument beyond that point,
coupling it with a declaration and an admission fatal to the
perpetuity of the Union. After reciting the statutes which he
regarded as objectionable and hostile to the constitutional rights
of the South, and after urging their unconditional repeal upon the
North, the President said: "The Southern States, standing on the
basis of the Constitution, have a right to demand this act of
justice from the States of the North. Should it be refused, then
the Constitution, to which all the States are parties, will have
been willfully violated by one portion of them in a provision
essential to the domestic security and happiness of the remainder.
In that event, the injured States, after having used all peaceful
and constitutional means to obtain redress, would be justified in
revolutionary resistance to the government of the Union."
By this declaration the President justified, and in effect advised,
an appeal from the constitutional tribunals of the country to a
popular judgment in the aggrieved States, and recognized the right
of those States, upon such popular judgment, to destroy the
Constitution and Union. The "constitutional means" of redress were
the courts of the country, and to these the President must have
referred in the paragraph quoted. After an appeal to the courts,
and a decision upon the questions presented, it would have been
the plain duty of the parties to accept the decision as authoritative
and final. By the advice of the President, the States of the South
were to accept the decision obtained by constitutional means, in
case it was favorable to them, and to disregard it, and to destroy
both the Constitution and the Union, if it should prove to be
adverse to the popular opinion in those States.
It is not improbable that the President's language conveyed more
than his real meaning. He may have intended to affirm that if the
free States should refuse to repeal their obnoxious statutes after
a final decision against their constitutionality, then the slave
States would be justified in revolutionary resistance. But he had
no right to make such an argument or suggest such an hypothesis,
for never in the history of the Federal Government had the decision
of the Supreme judicial tribunal been disobeyed or disregarded by
any State or by any individual. The right of "revolutionary
resistance" was not so foreign to the conception of the American
citizen as to require suggestion and enforcement from Mr. Buchanan.
His argument in support of the right at that crisis was prejudicial
to the Union, and afforded a standing-ground for many Southern men
who were beginning to feel that the doctrine of Secession was
illogical, unsafe, untenable. They now had the argument of a
Northern President in justification of "revolutionary resistance."
Throughout the South, the right of Secession was abandoned by a
large class, and the right of Revolution substituted.
FATAL ADMISSION OF THE PRESIDENT.
Having made his argument in favor of the right of "Revolution,"
Mr. Buchanan proceeded to argue ably and earnestly against the
assumption by any State of an inherent right to secede from the
government at its own will and pleasure. But he utterly destroyed
the force of his reasoning by declaring that "after much serious
reflection" he had arrived at "the conclusion that no power has
been delegated to Congress, or to any other department of the
Federal Government, to coerce a State into submission which is
attempting to withdraw, or has actually withdrawn," from the Union.
He emphasized his position by further declaring that, "so far from
this power having been delegated to Congress, it was expressly
refused by the convention which framed the Constitution." Congress
"possesses many means," Mr. Buchanan added, "of preserving the
Union by conciliation; but the sword was not placed in their hands
to preserve it by force."
The fatal admission was thus evolved from the mind of the President,
that any State which thought itself aggrieved and could not secure
the concessions demanded, might bring the Government down in ruins.
The power to destroy was in the State. The power to preserve was
not in the Nation. The President apparently failed to see that if
the Nation could not be preserved by force, its legal capacity for
existence was dependent upon the concurring and continuing will of
all the individual States. The original bond of union was, therefore,
for the day only, and the provision of the Constitution which gave
to the Supreme Court jurisdiction in controversies between States
was binding no further than the States chose to accept the decisions
of the Court.
The difference between the President and the Secessionists of the
South was a difference of opinion as to the time for action, and
as to the name by which that action should be called. In principle
there was concurrence. The President insisted that the injured
party should appeal to the aggressor, and then to the courts, with
the reserved right of revolution always in view and to be exercised
if neither the aggressor nor the courts furnished satisfactory
redress. The President recognized the reserved right of revolution
in the States, and it was a necessary incident of that right that
each State might decide when the right should be exercised. He
suggested that, as justification of revolution, the Federal Government
must be guilty of "a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise"
of powers not granted by the Constitution, quoting from the text
of the State-rights declaration by Virginia in 1798. But in all
his arguments he left the State to be the ultimate judge of the
constitutionality of the Acts of the Federal Government. Under
these doctrines the Government of the United States was shorn of
all power to preserve its own existence, and the Union might crumble
and fall while its constituted authorities stood paralyzed and
impotent.
This construction was all that the extremists of the South desired.
With so much conceded, they had every thing in their own hands.
They could march out of the Union at their own will and caprice,
without resistance from the National Government, and they could
come back upon such conditions as, with the President's aid, they
might extort from an alarmed and weakening North. Assured by the
language of the President that they could with impunity defy the
constitutional authority of the government, the Secessionists were
immeasurably encouraged. The Southern men had for three generations
been cherishing the belief that they were as a class superior to
Northern men, and they were more than ever confirmed in this pleasing
illusion when they saw a Northern President, with the power of the
nation in his hands, deliberately affirming that he could exercise
no authority over or against them.
Men who, under the wholesome restraint of executive power, would
have refrained from taking aggressive steps against the National
Government, were by Mr. Buchanan's action forced into a position
of hostility. Men in the South, who were disposed to avoid extreme
measures, were by taunt and reproach driven into the ranks of
Secession. They were made to believe, after the President's message,
that the South would be ruined if she did not assert a position
which the National authority confessed it had no right and no means
to contest. The Republicans had been taunting Southern men with
the intention of using only bluster and bravado, and if they should
now fail to take a decisive step in the direction of Disunion, they
felt that it would be a humiliating retraction of all they had said
in the long struggle over slavery. It would be an invitation to
the Abolitionists and fanatics of the North, to deal hereafter with
the South, and with the question of slavery, in whatever manner
might seem good in their sight. No weapon of logic could have been
more forcible; and, wielded as it was by Southern leaders with
skill and courage, they were able to consolidate the public opinion
and control the political action of their section.
The evil effects of Mr. Buchanan's message were not confined to
the slave States. It did incalculable harm in the free States.
It fixed in the minds of tens of thousands of Northern men who were
opposed to the Republican party, the belief that the South was
justified in taking steps to break up the government, if what they
termed a war on Southern institutions should be continued. This
feeling had in turn a most injurious influence in the South, and
stimulated thousands in that section to a point of rashness which
they would never have reached but for the sympathy and support
constantly extended to them from the North. Even if a conflict of
arms should be the ultimate result of the Secession movement, its
authors and its deluded followers were made to believe that, against
a South entirely united, there would be opposed a North hopelessly
divided. They were confident that the Democratic party in the free
States held the views expressed in Mr. Buchanan's message. They
had conclusively persuaded themselves that the Democrats, together
with a large proportion of the conservative men in the North who
had supported Mr. Bell for the Presidency, would oppose an "abolition
war," and would prove a distracting and destructive force in the
rear of the Union army if it should ever commence its march
Southward.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE RESIGNS.
The most alarming feature of the situation to reflecting men in
the North was that, so far as known, all the members of Mr. Buchanan's
Cabinet approved the destructive doctrines of the message. But as
the position of the President was subjected to examination and
criticism by the Northern press, uneasiness was manifested in
Administration circles. It was seen that if the course foreshadowed
by Mr. Buchanan should be followed, the authority of the Union
would be compelled to retreat before the usurpations of seceding
States, and that a powerful government might be quietly overthrown,
without striking one blow of resistance, or uttering one word of
protest. General Cass was the first of the Cabinet to feel the
pressure of loyalty from the North. The venerable Secretary of
State, whose whole life had been one of patriotic devotion to his
country, suddenly realized that he was in a false position. When
it became known that the President would not insist upon the
collection of the national revenue in South Carolina, or upon the
strengthening of the United-States forts in the harbor of Charleston,
General Cass concluded that justice to his own reputation required
him to separate from the Administration. He resigned on the twelfth
of December,--nine days after Mr. Buchanan had sent his fatal
message to Congress.
CHARACTER AND CONDUCT OF JUDGE BLACK.
Judge Black, who had from the beginning of the Administration been
Mr. Buchanan's chief adviser, now became so by rank as the successor
of General Cass in the State Department. He was a man of remarkable
character. He was endowed by nature with a strong understanding
and a strong will. In the profession of the law he had attained
great eminence. His learning had been illustrated by a prolonged
service on the bench before the age at which men, even of exceptional
success at the bar, usually attract public observation. He had
added to his professional studies, which were laborious and
conscientious, a wide acquaintance with our literature, and had
found in its walks a delight which is yielded to few. In history,
biography, criticism, romance, he had absorbed every thing in our
language worthy of attention. Shakspeare, Milton, indeed all the
English poets, were his familiar companions. There was not a
disputed passage or an obscure reading in any one of the great
plays upon which he could not off-hand quote the best renderings,
and throw original light from his own illumined mind. Upon theology
he had apparently bestowed years of investigation and reflection.
A sincere Christian, he had been a devout and constant student of
the Bible, and could quote its passages and apply its teachings
with singular readiness and felicity. To this generous store of
knowledge he added fluency of speech, both in public address and
private communication, and a style of writing which was at once
unique, powerful, and attractive. He had attained unto every
excellence of mental discipline described by Lord Byron. Reading
had made him a full man, talking a ready man, writing an exact man.
The judicial literature of the English tongue may be sought in vain
for finer models than are found in the opinions of Judge Black when
he sat, and was worthy to sit, as the associate of John Bannister
Gibson, on the Supreme Bench of Pennsylvania.
In political opinion he was a Democrat, self-inspired and self-
taught, for his father was a Whig who had served his State in
Congress. He idolized Jefferson and revered Jackson as embodying
in their respective characters all the elements of the soundest
political philosophy, and all the requisites of the highest political
leadership. He believed in the principles of Democracy as he did
in a demonstration of Euclid,--all that might be said on the other
side was necessarily absurd. He applied to his own political creed
the literal teachings of the Bible. If Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
had held slaves without condemnation or rebuke from the Lord of
hosts, he believed that Virginia, Carolina, and Georgia might do
the same. He found in the case of Onesiums, St. Paul's explicit
approval of the Fugutive-slave Law of 1850, and in the cruel case
of Passmore Williamson he believed himself to be enforcing the
doctrines of the New Testament. Personally unwilling to hold even
a beast of burden in oppressive bondage, nothing could induce him
to condemn slave-holding in those whose conscience permitted them
to practice it. In the Abolitionists he found the chief disturbers
of the Republic, and he held New England answerable to posterity
and to God for all the heresies which afflicted either Church or
State. He had an uncompromising hostility to what are termed New-
England ideas, though the tenderest ties of his life were of New-
England origin. "The New-Englander individually I greatly affect,"
he often said, "but, in the mass, I judge them to be stark mad."
"I think, too," he would add, "that if you are going to make much
of a New-Englander, he should, like Dr. Johnson's Scotchman, be
caught young."
To his native State Judge Black was devotedly attached. He inherited
the blood of two strong elements of its population,--the German
and the Scotch-Irish,--and he united the best characteristics of
both in his own person. He had always looked upon Pennsylvania as
the guardian of the Federal Union, almost as the guarantor of its
safety and its perpetuity. He spoke of her as the break-water that
protected the slave States from the waves of radicalism which were
threatening to ingulf Southern institutions. The success of the
Republican party in 1860 he regarded as a portent of direst evil,
--indeed, as a present disaster, immeasurably sorrowful. The
excitement in the Southern States over the probability of Mr.
Lincoln's election he considered natural, their serious protest
altogether justifiable. He desired the free States to be awakened
to the gravity of the situation, to be thoroughly alarmed, and to
repent of their sins against the South. He wished it understood
from ocean to ocean that the position of the Republican party was
inconsistent with loyalty to the Union, and that its permanent
success would lead to the destruction of the government. It was
not unnatural that with these extreme views he should be carried
beyond the bounds of prudence, and that, in his headlong desire to
rebuke the Republican party as enemies of the Union, he should aid
in precipitating a dissolution of the government before the
Republicans could enter upon its administration. He thus became
in large degree responsible for the unsound position and the
dangerous teachings of Mr. Buchanan. In truth some of the worst
doctrines embodied in the President's evil message came directly
from an opinion given by Judge Black as Attorney-General, and, made
by Mr. Buchanan still more odious and more dangerous by the quotation
of a part and not the whole.
It was soon manifest however to Judge Black, that he was playing
with fire, and that, while he was himself desirous only of arousing
the country to the dangers of anti-slavery agitation, Mr. Buchanan's
administration was every day effectually aiding the Southern
conspiracy for the destruction of the Union. This light dawned on
Judge Black suddenly and irresistibly. He was personally intimate
with General Cass, and when that venerable statesman retired from
the Cabinet to preserve his record of loyalty to the Union, Judge
Black realized that he was himself confronted by an issue which
threatened his political destruction. Could he afford, as Secretary
of State, to follow a policy which General Cass believed would
destroy his own fame? General Cass was nearly fourscore years of
age, with his public career ended, his work done. Judge Black was
but fifty, and he had before him possibly the most valuable and
most ambitious period of his life. He saw at a glance that if
General Cass could not be sustained in the North-West, he could
not be sustained in Pennsylvania. He possessed the moral courage
to stand firm to the end, in defiance of opposition and regardless
of obloquy, if he could be sure he was right. But he had begun to
doubt, and doubt led him to review with care the position of Mr.
Buchanan, and to examine its inevitable tendencies. He did it with
conscience and courage. He had none of that subserviency to Southern
men which had injured so many Northern Democrats. Until he entered
the Cabinet in 1857, he had never come into personal association
with men from the slave-holding States, and his keen observation
could not fail to discern the inferiority to himself of the four
Southern members of the Cabinet.
Judge Black entered upon his duties as Secretary of State on the
17th of December,--the day on which the Disunion convention of
South Carolina assembled. He found the malign influence of Mr.
Buchanan's message fully at work throughout the South. Under its
encouragement only three days were required by the convention at
Charleston to pass the Ordinance of Secession, and four days later
Governor Pickens issued a proclamation declaring "South Carolina
a separate, sovereign, free, and independent State, with the right
to levy war, conclude peace, and negotiate treaties." From that
moment Judge Black's position towards the Southern leaders was
radically changed. They were no longer fellow-Democrats. They
were the enemies of the Union to which he was devoted: they were
conspirators against the government to which he had taken a solemn
oath of fidelity and loyalty.
Judge Black's change, however important to his own fame, would
prove comparatively fruitless unless he could influence Mr. Buchanan
to break with the men who had been artfully using the power of his
administration to destroy the Union. The opportunity and the test
came promptly. The new "sovereign, free, and independent" government
of South Carolina sent commissioners to Washington to negotiate
for the surrender of the national forts, and the transfer of the
national property within her limits. Mr. Buchanan prepared an
answer to their request which was compromising to the honor of the
Executive and perilous to the integrity of the Union. Judge Black
took a decided and irrevocable stand against the President's
position. He advised Mr. Buchanan that upon the basis of that
fatal concession to the Disunion leaders he could not remain in
his Cabinet. It was a sharp issue, but was soon adjusted. Mr.
Buchanan gave way, and permitted Judge Black, and his associates
Holt and Stanton, to frame a reply for the administration.
THE PRESIDENT AND THE SOUTHERN LEADERS.
Jefferson Davis, Mr. Toombs, Mr. Benjamin, Mr. Slidell, who had
been Mr. Buchanan's intimate and confidential advisers, and who
had led him to the brink of ruin, found themselves suddenly
supplanted, and a new power installed at the White House. Foiled,
and no longer able to use the National Administration as an
instrumentality to destroy the National life, the Secession leaders
in Congress turned upon the President with angry reproaches. In
their rage they lost all sense of the respect due to the Chief
Magistrate of the Nation, and assaulted Mr. Buchanan with coarseness
as well as violence. Senator Benjamin spoke of him as "a senile
Executive under the sinister influence of insane counsels." This
exhibition of malignity towards the misguided President afforded
to the North the most convincing and satisfactory proof that there
had been a change for the better in the plans and purposes of the
Administration. They realized that it must be a deep sense of
impending danger which could separate Mr. Buchanan from his political
associations with the South, and they recognized in his position
a significant proof of the desperate determination to which the
enemies of the Union had come.
The stand taken by Judge Black and his loyal associates was in the
last days of December, 1860. The re-organization of the Cabinet
came as a matter of necessity. Mr. John B. Floyd resigned from
the War Department, making loud proclamation that his action was
based on the President's refusal to surrender the national forts
in Charleston Harbor to the Secession government of South Carolina.
This manifesto was not necessary to establish Floyd's treasonable
intentions toward the government; but, in point of truth, the plea
was undoubtedly a pretense, to cover reasons of a more personal
character which would at once deprive him of Mr. Buchanan's
confidence. There had been irregularities in the War Department
tending to compromise Mr. Floyd, for which he was afterwards indicted
in the District of Columbia. Mr. Floyd well knew that the first
knowledge of these shortcomings would lead to his dismissal from
the Cabinet. Whatever Mr. Buchanan's faults as an Executive may
have been, his honor in all transactions, both personal and public,
was unquestionable, and he was the last man to tolerate the slightest
deviation from the path of rigid integrity.
Mr. Thompson, the Secretary of the Interior, followed Mr. Floyd
after a short interval. Mr. Cobb had left the Treasury a few days
before General Cass resigned from the Cabinet, and had gone to
Georgia to stimulate her laggard movements in the scheme of destroying
the government. His successor was Philip Francis Thomas of Maryland,
who entered the Cabinet as a representative of the principles whose
announcement had forced General Cass to resign. The change of
policy to which the President was now fully committed, forced Mr.
Thomas to retire, after a month's service. He frankly stated that
he was unable to agree with the President and his chief advisers
"in reference to the condition of things in South Carolina," and
therefore tendered his resignation. Mr. Thomas adhered to the
Union, and always maintained an upright and honorable character,
but his course at that crisis deprived him subsequently of a seat
in the United-States Senate, though at a later period he served in
the House as representative from Maryland.
Mr. Cobb, Mr. Floyd, and Mr. Thompson had all remained in the
Cabinet after the Presidential election in November, in full
sympathy, and so far as was possible in full co-operation, with
the men in the South who were organizing resistance to the authority
of the Federal Government. Neither those gentlemen, nor any friend
in their behalf, ever ventured to explain how, as sworn officers
of the United States, they could remain at their posts consistently
with the laws of honor,--laws obligatory upon them not only as
public officials who had taken a solemn oath of fidelity to the
Constitution, but also as private gentlemen whose good faith was
pledged anew every hour they remained in control of the departments
with whose administration they had been intrusted. Their course
is unfavorably contrasted with that of many Southern men (of whom
General Lee and the two Johnstons were conspicuous examples), who
refused to hold official positions under the National Government
a single day after they had determined to take part in the scheme
of Disunion.
BUCHANAN'S RECONSTRUCTED CABINET.
By the re-organization of the Cabinet, the tone of Mr. Buchanan's
administration was radically changed. Judge Black had used his
influence with the President to secure trustworthy friends of the
Union in every department. Edwin M. Stanton, little known at the
time to the public, but of high standing in his profession, was
appointed Attorney-General soon after Judge Black took charge of
the State Department. Judge Black had been associated with Stanton
personally and professionally, and was desirous of his aid in the
dangerous period through which he was called to serve.
Joseph Holt, who, since the death of Aaron V. Brown in 1859, had
been Postmaster-General, was now appointed Secretary of War, and
Horatio King of Maine, for many years the upright first assistant,
was justly promoted to the head of the Post-office Department.
Mr. Holt was the only Southern man left in the Cabinet. He was a
native of Kentucky, long a resident of Mississippi, always identified
with the Democratic party, and affiliated with its extreme Southern
wing. Without a moment's hesitation he now broke all the associations
of a lifetime, and stood by the Union without qualification or
condition. His learning, his firmness, and his ability, were
invaluable to Mr. Buchanan in the closing days of his administration.
General John A. Dix of New York was called to the head of the
Treasury. He was a man of excellent ability, of wide experience
in affairs, of spotless character, and a most zealous friend of
the Union. He found the Treasury bankrupt, the discipline of its
officers in the South gone, its orders disregarded in the States
which were preparing for secession. He at once imparted spirit
and energy into the service,--giving to the administration of this
department a policy of pronounced loyalty to the government. No
act of his useful and honorable life has been so widely known or
will be so long remembered as his dispatch to the Treasury agent
at New Orleans to take possession of a revenue cutter whose commander
was suspected of disloyalty and of a design to transfer his vessel
to the Confederate service. Lord Nelson's memorable order at
Trafalgar was not more inspiring to the British navy than was the
order of General Dix to the American people, when, in the gloom of
that depressing winter, he telegraphed South his peremptory words,
"If any man attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on
the spot."
Thus reconstructed, the Cabinet as a whole was one of recognized
power,--marked by high personal character, by intellectual training,
by experience in affairs, and by aptitude for the public service.
There have been Cabinets perhaps more widely known for the possession
of great qualities; but, if the history of successive administrations
from the origin of the government be closely studied, it will be
found that the re-organized Cabinet of President Buchanan must take
rank as one of exceptional ability.
For the remaining two months of Mr. Buchanan's administration the
destinies of the country were in the keeping of these constitutional
advisers. If in any respect they failed to come to the standard
of a loyalty that was quickened by subsequent developments, they
no doubt fairly represented the demand of the Northern States at
the time. There was everywhere the most earnest desire to avert
a conflict, and an unwillingness to recognize the possibility of
actual war. The majority of the Republican party in both branches
of Congress was not advocating a more decided or more aggressive
course with the South, during the months of January and February,
than the Cabinet, with Judge Black at its head, was pursuing. The
time for executive acts of a more pronounced character was directly
after the Presidential election, when the first symptoms of resistance
to national authority were visible in the South. If the new Cabinet
had been then in power, the history of the civil revolt might have
been different. But the force that will arrest the first slow
revolution of a wheel cannot stand before it when, by unchecked
velocity, it has acquired a destructive momentum. The measures
which might have secured repression in November would only have
produced explosion in January.
THE PRESIDENT'S NEW POSITION.
The change of position on the part of Mr. Buchanan was not left to
inference, or to the personal assurance of the loyal men who composed
his re-organized Cabinet. He announced it himself in a special
message to Congress on the 8th of January, 1861. The tone was so
different from the message of December, that it did not seem possible
that the two could have been written by the same man. It was
evident from many passages in the second message that he was trying
to reconcile it with the first. This was the natural course
suggested by the pride of one who overrated the virtue of consistency.
The attempt was useless. The North with unaffected satisfaction,
the South with unconcealed indignation, realized that the President
had entirely escaped from the influences which dictated the first
message. He now asserted that, "as the Chief Executive under the
Constitution of the United States," he had no alternative but "to
collect the public revenues, and to protect the public property,
so far as this might be practicable under existing laws." Remarking
that his province "was to execute, and not to make, the laws," he
threw upon Congress the duty "of enlarging their provisions to meet
exigencies as they may occur." He declared it as his own conviction
that "the right and the duty to use military force defensively
against those who resist the federal officers in the execution of
their legal functions, and against those who assail the property
of the Federal Government, are clear and undeniable." Conceding
so much, the mild denial which the President re-asserted, of "the
right to make aggressive war upon any State," may be charitably
tolerated; for, under the defensive power which he so broadly
approved, the whole force of national authority could be used
against a State aggressively bent upon Secession.
The President did not fail to fortify his own position at every
point with great force. The situation had become so serious, and
had "assumed such vast and alarming proportions, as to place the
subject entirely above and beyond Executive control." He therefore
commended "the question, in all its various bearings, to Congress,
as the only tribunal possessing the power to meet the existing
exigency." He reminded Congress that "to them belongs exclusively
the power to declare war, or to authorize the employment of military
force in all cases contemplated by the Constitution." Not abandoning
the hope of an amicable adjustment, the President pertinently
informed Congress that "they alone possess the power to remove
grievances which might lead to war, and to secure peace and union."
As a basis of settlement, he recommended a formal compromise by
which "the North shall have exclusive control of the territory
above a certain line, and Southern institutions shall have protection
below that line." This plan, he believed, "ought to receive
universal approbation." He maintained that on Congress, and "on
Congress alone, rests the responsibility." As Congress would
certainly in a few days be under the control of the Republicans in
both branches,--by the withdrawal of senators and representatives
from the seceding States,--Mr. Buchanan's argument had a double
force. Not only was he vindicating the position of the Executive
and throwing the weight of responsibility on the Legislative
Department of the government, but he was protecting the position
of the Democratic party by saying, in effect, that the President
chosen by that party stood ready to approve and to execute any laws
for the protection of the government and the safety of the Union
which a Republican Congress might enact.
A certain significance attached to the date which the President
had selected for communicating his message to Congress. It was
the eighth day of January, the anniversary of the Battle of New
Orleans, celebrated that year with enthusiastic demonstrations in
honor of the memory of Andrew Jackson, who had, on a memorable
occasion not unlike the present, sworn an emphatic oath that "the
Federal Union must and shall be preserved." There was also marked
satisfaction throughout the loyal States with Mr. Buchanan's
assurance of the peace of the District of Columbia on the ensuing
4th of March, on the occasion of Mr. Lincoln's inauguration. He
did not himself "share in the serious apprehensions that were
entertained of disturbance" on that occasion, but he made this
declaration, which was received in the North with hearty applause:
"In any event, it will be my duty to preserve the peace, and this
duty shall be performed."
The change of sentiment towards Mr. Buchanan after the delivery of
the special message, was as marked in the North as it was in the
South, though in the opposite direction. It would not be true to
say that any thing like popularity attended the President in his
new position; but the change of feeling was so great that the
Legislature of Massachusetts, on the 23d of January, 1861, adopted
resolutions in which they declared that they regarded "with unmingled
satisfaction the determination evinced in the recent firm and
patriotic special message of the President of the United States to
amply and faithfully discharge his constitutional duty of enforcing
the laws, and preserving the integrity of the Union." The Legislature
"proffered to the President, through the Governor of the Commonwealth,
such aid in men and money as he may require to maintain the authority
of the National Government." These resolutions were forwarded to
Mr. Buchanan by Governor Andrew. They were only one of many
manifestations which the President received of approval of his
course.
The Massachusetts Legislature was radically Republican in both
branches, and even in making a reference to "men and money" as
requisite to maintain the Union, they had gone farther than the
public sentiment at that time approved. Coercive measures were
generally condemned. A few days after the action of the Legislature,
a large meeting of the people of Boston, held in Faneuil Hall,
declared that they "depended for the return of the seceding States,
and the permanent preservation of the Union, on conciliatory
counsels, and a sense of the benefits which the Constitution confers
on all the States, and not on military coercion." They declared
that they shrunk "with horror from the thought of civil war between
the North and the South."
It must always be remembered that the disbelief in ultimate secession
was nearly universal throughout the free States. The people of
the North could not persuade themselves that the proceedings in
the Southern States would lead to any thing more serious than
hostile demonstrations, which would end, after coaxing and compromise,
in a return to the Union. But with this hope of final security
there was, on the part of the great mass of the people in the free
States, the gravest solicitude throughout the winter of 1860-61,
and a restless waiting and watching for a solution of the troubles.
Partisan leaders were busy on both sides seeking for an advantage
that might survive the pending trials. Northern Democrats in many
instances sought to turn the occasion to one of political advantage
by pointing out the lamentable condition to which anti-slavery
agitation had brought the country. This was naturally answered by
Republicans with defiance, and with an affected contempt and
carelessness of what the South might do. Much that was written
and much that was spoken throughout the North during that winter,
both by Democrats and Republicans, would have remained unwritten
and unspoken if they had realized the seriousness and magnitude of
the impending calamity.
FINAL ESTIMATE OF MR. BUCHANAN.
In a final analysis and true estimate of Mr. Buchanan's conduct in
the first stages of the revolt, the condition of the popular mind
as just described must be taken into account. The same influences
and expectations that wrought upon the people were working also
upon him. There were indeed two Mr. Buchanans in the closing months
of the administration. The first was Mr. Buchanan of November and
December, angered by the decision of the Presidential election and
more than willing that the North, including his own State, should
be disciplined by fright to more conservative views and to a stricter
observance of what he considered solemn obligations imposed by the
Constitution. If the Southern threat of resistance to the authority
of the Union had gone no farther than this, Mr. Buchanan would have
been readily reconciled to its temporary violence, and would probably
have considered it a national blessing in disguise.--The second
was Mr. Buchanan of January and February, appalled by surrounding
and increasing perils, grieved by the conduct of Southern men whom
he had implicitly trusted, overwhelmed by the realization of the
evils which had obviously followed his official declarations, hoping
earnestly for the safety of the Union, and yet more disturbed and
harrowed in his mind than the mass of loyal people who did not
stand so near the danger as he, or so accurately measure its alarming
growth. The President of December with Cobb and Floyd and Thompson
in his Cabinet, and the President of January with Dix and Stanton
and Holt for his councilors, were radically different men. No true
estimate of Mr. Buchanan in the crisis of his public career can
ever be reached if this vital distinction be overlooked.
It was Mr. Buchanan's misfortune to be called to act in an emergency
which demanded will, fortitude, and moral courage. In these
qualities he was deficient. He did not possess the executive
faculty. His life had been principally devoted to the practice of
law in the most peaceful of communities, and to service in legislative
bodies where he was borne along by the force of association. He
had not been trained to prompt decision, had not been accustomed
to exercise command. He was cautious and conservative to the point
of timidity. He possessed ability of a high order, and, though he
thought slowly, he could master the most difficult subject with
comprehensive power. His service of ten years in the House and an
equal period in the Senate was marked by a conscientious devotion
to duty. He did not rank with the ablest members of either body,
but always bore a prominent part in important discussions and
maintained himself with credit.
PERSONAL CHARACTER OF MR. BUCHANAN.
It was said of Mr. Buchanan that he instinctively dreaded to assume
responsibility of any kind. His keenest critic remarked that in
the tentative period of political issues assumed by his party, Mr.
Buchanan could always be found two paces to the rear, but in the
hour of triumph he marched proudly in the front rank. He was not
gifted with independence or self-assertion. His bearing towards
Southern statesmen was derogatory to him as a man of spirit. His
tone towards administrations of his own party was so deferential
as almost to imply a lack of self-respect. He was not a leader
among men. He was always led. He was led by Mason and Soule into
the imprudence of signing the Ostend Manifesto; he was led by the
Southern members of his Cabinet into the inexplicable folly and
blunder of indorsing the Lecompton iniquity; he was led by Disunion
senators into the deplorable mistake contained in his last annual
message. Fortunately for him he was led a month later by Black
and Holt and Stanton to a radical change of his compromising
position.
If Mr. Buchanan had possessed the unconquerable will of Jackson or
the stubborn courage of Taylor, he could have changed the history
of the revolt against the Union. A great opportunity came to him
but he was not equal to it. Always an admirable adviser where
prudence and caution were the virtues required, he was fatally
wanting in a situation which demanded prompt action and strong
nerve. As representative in Congress, as senator, as minister
abroad, as Secretary of State, his career was honorable and
successful. His life was singularly free from personal fault or
short-coming. He was honest and pure-minded. His fame would have
been more enviable if he had never been elevated to the Presidency.