THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
Less than a month intervened between the November election at which
Lincoln had been chosen and the annual session of Congress, which would
meet on the first Monday of December, and it was necessary at once to
begin the preparation of the annual message. A golden opportunity
presented itself to President Buchanan. The suffrages of his
fellow-citizens had covered his political theories, his party measures,
and his official administration with condemnation, in an avalanche of
ballots.[1] But the Charleston conspirators had within a very few days
created for him a new issue overshadowing all the questions on which
he had suffered political wreck. Since the 6th of November the campaign
of the Border Ruffians for the conquest of Kansas, and the wider
Congressional struggle for the possession of the Territories, might be
treated as things of the past. Even had they still been pending issues,
they paled into insignificance before the paramount question of
disunion. Face to face with, this danger, the adherents of Lincoln, of
Douglas, of Bell, and the fraction of the President's own partisans in
the free-States would be compelled to postpone their discords and as
one man follow the constitutional ruler in a constitutional defense of
the laws, the flag, and the territory of the Union.
Without change of position, without recantation of principle, without
abatement even of declared party doctrine, honestly executing only the
high mandate of the Constitution, he could turn from the old issues and
take up the new. A single stride, and from the flying leader of a
discomfited rout he might become the mailed hero of an overpowering
host. Tradition, patriotism, duty, the sleepless monition of a solemn
official oath, all summoned him to take this step, and the brilliant
example set by President Jackson--an incident forever luminous in
American history--assured him of the plaudits of posterity.
Unfortunately for himself and for his country, President Buchanan had
neither the intellectual independence nor the courage required for such
an act of moral heroism. Of sincere patriotism and of blameless
personal rectitude, he had reached political eminence by slow promotion
through seniority, not by brilliancy of achievement. He was a
politician, not a statesman. Of fair ability, and great industry in his
earlier life, the irresolution and passiveness of advancing age and
physical infirmity were now upon him. Though from the free-State of
Pennsylvania, he saw with Southern eyes and heard with Southern ears,
and had convinced himself that the South was acting under the impulse
of resentment arising from deliberate and persistent injuries from the
North.
The fragment of an autograph diary of John B. Floyd, Secretary of
War,[2] affords the exact evidence of the temper in which President
Buchanan officially confronted the rebellion of the Southern States.
The following are extracts from entries, on several days, beginning
with November 7, 1860, the day following the Presidential election:
WASHINGTON CITY, November 7, 1860.
... The President wrote me a note this evening, alluding to a
rumor which reached the city to the effect that an armed force
had attacked and carried the forts in Charleston harbor. He
desired me to visit him, which I did, and assured him that the
rumor was altogether without foundation, and gave it as my
opinion that there was no danger of such an attempt being made.
We entered upon a general conversation upon the subject of
disunion and discussed the probabilities of it pretty fully. We
concurred in the opinion that all indications from the South
looked as if disunion was inevitable. He said that whilst his
reason told him there was great danger, yet his feelings repelled
the conviction of his mind.
Judge Black, the Attorney-General, was present during a part of
the conversation, and indicated an opinion, that any attempt at
disunion by a State should be put down by all the power of the
Government.[3]
November 9 ... A Cabinet meeting was held as usual at I o'clock;
all the members were present, and the President said the business
of the meeting was the most important ever before the Cabinet
since his induction into office. The question, he said, to be
considered and discussed, was as to the course the Administration
should advise him to pursue in relation to the threatening aspect
of affairs in the South, and most particularly in South Carolina.
After a considerable amount of desultory conversation, he asked
the opinions of each member of the Cabinet as to what should be
done or said relative to a suggestion which he threw out. His
suggestion was that a proposition should be made for a general
convention of the States as provided for under the Constitution,
and to propose some plan of compromising the angry disputes
between the North and the South. He said if this were done, and
the North or non-slaveholding States should refuse it, the South
would stand justified before the whole world for refusing longer
to remain in a confederacy where her rights were so shamefully
violated. He said he was compelled to notice at length the
alarming condition of the country, and that he would not shrink
from the duty.
General Cass spoke with earnestness and much feeling about the
impending crisis--admitted fully all the great wrongs and
outrages which had been committed against the South by Northern
fanaticism, and deplored it. But he was emphatic in his
condemnation of the doctrine of secession by any State from the
Union. He doubted the efficacy of the appeal for a convention,
but seemed to think it might do well enough to try it. He spoke
warmly in favor of using force to coerce a State that attempted
to secede.
Judge Black, the Attorney-General, was emphatic in his advocacy
of coercion, and advocated earnestly the propriety of sending at
once a strong force into the forts in Charleston harbor, enough
to deter, if possible, the people from, any attempt at disunion.
He seemed to favor the idea of an appeal for a general convention
of all the States.
Governor Cobb, the Secretary of the Treasury, declared his very
decided approbation of the proposition for two reasons--first,
that it afforded the President a great opportunity for a high and
statesmanlike treatment of the whole subject of agitation, and
the proper remedies to prevent it; secondly, because, in his
judgment, the failure to procure that redress which the South
would be entitled to and would demand (and that failure he
thought certain), would tend to unite the entire South in a
decided disunion movement. He thought disunion inevitable, and
under present circumstances most desirable.
Mr. Holt, the Postmaster-General, thought the proposition for the
convention dangerous, for the reason that if the call should be
made and it should fail to procure redress, those States which
now are opposed to secession might find themselves inclined, from
a feeling of honor, to back the States resolving on disunion.
Without this common demand and common failure he thought there
would be no such danger of united action, and therefore a
stronger prospect of some future plan of reconciliation.
Mr. Thompson, the Secretary of the Interior, thought well of the
plan of calling for a general convention--thought his State
(Mississippi) about equally divided between the union and
disunion men. He deprecated the idea of force, and said any show
of it by the Government would instantly make Mississippi a unit
in favor of disunion.
Mr. Toucey, Secretary of the Navy, thought well of the appeal for
the convention--coincided in an opinion I had expressed, that
retaliatory State measures would prove most availing for bringing
the Northern fanatics to their senses.
I expressed myself decidedly opposed to any rash movement, and
against the idea of secession at this time. I did so because I
think that Lincoln's administration will fail, and be regarded as
impotent for good or evil within four months after his
inauguration. We are to meet to-morrow at 1 o'clock.
[Sidenote] Pollard, "Life and Times of Robert E. Lee," etc., pp.
790-94.
November 10 ... We had a Cabinet meeting to-day, at which the
President read a very elaborate document, prepared either as a
part of his message or as a proclamation. It was well written in
the main, and met with extravagant commendation from General
Cass, Governor Toucey, Judge Black, and Mr. Holt. Cobb, Thompson,
and myself found much to differ from in it,--Cobb because it
inculcated submission to Lincoln's election and intimated the use
of force to coerce a submission to his rule, and because it
reprehended the policy of the Kansas-Nebraska bill; Thompson
because of the doctrine of acquiescence and the hostility to the
secession doctrine. I objected to it because I think it misses
entirely the temper of the Southern people and attacks the true
State-Rights doctrine on the subject of secession. I do not see
what good can come of the paper, as prepared, and I do see how
much mischief may flow from it.
It is an open question whether we may accept these extracts at their
full literal import. Either the words "coerce," "submission," "use of
force," and so on, are written down by the diarist in a sense
different from that in which they were spoken, or the President and
several of his counselors underwent an amazing change of sentiment.
But in a general way they show us that on the fourth day after
Lincoln's election the Buchanan Cabinet was already divided into
hostile camps. Cass of Michigan, Secretary of State, Toucey of
Connecticut, Secretary of the Navy, Black of Pennsylvania,
Attorney-General, and Holt of Kentucky, Postmaster-General, were
emphatic Unionists; while Cobb of Georgia, Secretary of the Treasury,
Thompson of Mississippi, Secretary of the Interior, and Floyd of
Virginia, Secretary of War, were secessionists--the latter yet
professing devotion to the Union, but with such ifs and buts as left
sufficiently clear evidence of his inevitable drift to disloyalty.
All impulses of prudence and patriotism ought to have moved the
President to reconstruct his Cabinet. But instead of some energetic
executive act of this character, he seems to have applied himself to
the composition of a political essay to teach the North its duty; as
if his single pen had power to change the will of the people of the
United States upon a point which they had decided by their votes only
four days previously after six years of discussion. In the draft of
this document, which he read to his Cabinet on November 10, we have
the important record that "it inculcated submission to Lincoln's
election, and intimated the use of force to coerce a submission to his
rule"--positions which Floyd records were "met with extravagant
commendations from General Cass, Governor Toucey, Judge Black, and Mr.
Holt." This was a true touchstone; it instantly brought out not only
the open secessionism of Cobb and Thompson, but the disguised
disloyalty of Floyd.
It is a strange historical phenomenon that, with the President and a
majority of the Cabinet in this frame of mind, the South should have
been permitted to organize rebellion. The solution seems to lie in the
temporizing feebleness of Buchanan and in the superior finesse and
daring conspiracy of Cobb, Thompson, and Floyd.
Many indications make it evident that a long factional struggle took
place over the preparation of the President's message. The telegraph
announced several protracted Cabinet sessions; and as early as the
21st of November the points under discussion and the attitude of the
President and his several official advisers were accurately
foreshadowed in the newspapers. Nor were these momentous deliberations
confined to the Cabinet proper. All the varieties of suggestion and
contradictory counsels which were solicited or tendered we may never
learn, and yet we know enough to infer the highest extremes and
antagonisms of doctrine and policy. Jefferson Davis, the future chief
of the rebellion, came on the one hand at the urgent call of his
fellow-conspirators; Edwin M. Stanton, afterwards Buchanan's
Attorney-General and Lincoln's Secretary of War,[4] was on the other
hand called in by Mr. Buchanan himself, to help him through, the
intricate maze of his perplexed opinions and inclinations. How many
others may have come voluntarily or by summons it is impossible to
guess. Many brains and hands, however, must have joined in the work,
since the document is such a heterogeneous medley of conflicting
theories, irreconcilable doctrines, impracticable and irrelevant
suggestions. For at length the hesitating and bewildered President,
unable to decide and impotent to construct, seems to have made his
message a patchwork from the contributions of his advisers, regular
and irregular, with the inevitable effect, not to combine and
strengthen, but to weaken and confuse the warring thoughts and alien
systems.
Aside from the mere recapitulation of department reports, the message
of President Buchanan delivered to Congress on the 4th of December
occupied itself mainly with two subjects--slavery and disunion. On the
question of slavery it repeated the assertions and arguments of the
Buchanan faction of the Democratic party during the late Presidential
campaign, charging the present peril entirely upon the North. As a
remedy it recommended an amendment to the Federal Constitution
expressly[5] recognizing slavery in States which had adopted or might
adopt it, and also expressly giving it existence and protection in the
Federal Territories. The proposal was simply childish. Precisely this
issue had been decided at the Presidential election; to do this would
be to reverse the final verdict of the ballot-box.[6]
On the question of disunion or secession, the message raised a vague
and unwarrantable distinction between the infractions of law and
allegiance by individuals, and the infractions of law and allegiance
by the commonwealth, or body politic denominated a State. Under the
first head it held: That the Union was designed to be perpetual; that
the Federal Government is invested with sovereign powers on special
subjects, which can only be opposed or abrogated by revolution; that
secession is unconstitutional, and is, therefore, neither more nor
less than revolution; that the Executive has no right to recognize the
secession of a State; that the Constitution has established a perfect
government in all its forms, legislative, executive, and judicial, and
this government, to the extent of its powers, acts directly upon the
individual citizen of every State and executes its own decrees by the
agency of its own officers; and, finally, that the Executive cannot be
absolved from his duty to execute the laws.
But, continued the President, the laws can only be executed in certain
prescribed methods, through the agency of courts, marshals, _posse
comitatus_, aided, if necessary, by the militia or land and naval
forces. The means and agencies, therefore, fail, and the performance
of this duty becomes impraticable, when, as in South Carolina,
universal public sentiment has deprived him of courts, marshals, and
_posse_. Present laws being inadequate to overcome a united
opposition, even in a single State, Congress alone has the power to
decide whether they can be effectually amended.[7]
It will be seen from the above summary, that the whole of the
President's rambling discussion of the first head of the disunion
question resulted logically in three ultimate conclusions: (1) That
South Carolina was in revolt; (2) that the Constitution, the laws, and
moral obligation all united gave the Government the right to suppress
this revolt by executing the laws upon and against the citizens of
that State; (3) that certain defects in the laws paralyzed their
practical enforcement.
Up to this point in his argument, his opinions, whatever may be
thought of their soundness, were confined to the legitimate field of
executive interpretation, and such as in the exercise of his official
discretion he might with undoubted propriety communicate to Congress.
But he had apparently failed to satisfy his own conscience in thus
summarily reasoning the executive and governmental power of a young,
compact, vigorous, and thoroughly organized nation of thirty millions
of people into sheer nothingness and impotence. How supremely absurd
was the whole national panoply of commerce, credit, coinage, treaty
power, judiciary, taxation, militia, army and navy, and Federal fag,
if, through the mere joint of a defective law, the hollow reed of a
secession ordinance could inflict a fatal wound!
[Illustration: JAMES BUCHANAN.]
[Sidenote] Appendix, "Globe," Dec. 3, 1860, p. 3.
The President proceeds, therefore, to discuss the second head of the
disunion question, by an attempt to formulate and define the powers
and duties of Congress with reference to the threatened rebellion. He
would not only roll the burden from his own shoulders upon the
National Legislature, but he would by volunteer advice instruct that
body how it must be borne and disposed of. Addressing Congress, he
says in substance: "You may be called upon to decide the momentous
question, whether you possess the power by force of arms to compel a
State to remain in the Union.... The question, fairly stated, is: Has
the Constitution delegated to Congress the power to coerce a State
into submission which is attempting to withdraw, or has actually
withdrawn, from the Confederacy! If answered in the affirmative, it
must be on the principle that the power has been conferred upon
Congress to declare and make war against a State. After much serious
reflection I have arrived at the conclusion that no such power has
been delegated to Congress, or to any other department of the Federal
Government.... It may be safely asserted that the power to make war
against a State is at variance with the whole spirit and intent of the
Constitution.... But if we possessed this power, would it be wise to
exercise it under existing circumstances?... Our Union rests upon
public opinion, and can never be cemented by the blood of its citizens
shed in civil war.... Congress possesses many means of preserving it
by conciliation; but the sword was not placed in their hand to
preserve it by force."
Why did the message thus leap at one bound without necessary connection
or coherence from the discussion of executive to those of legislative
powers? Why waste words over doubtful theories when there was pressing
need to suggest practical amendments to the statute whose real or
imaginary defects Mr. Buchanan had pointed out? Why indulge in
lamentations over the remote possibility that Congress might violate
the Constitution, when the occasion demanded only prompt preventive
orders from the Executive to arrest the actual threatened violation of
law by Charleston mobs? Why talk of war against States when the duty
of the hour was the exercise of acknowledged authority against
insurrectionary citizens?
The issue and argument were wholly false and irrelevant. No State had
yet seceded. Execute such laws of the United States as were in
acknowledged vigor, and disunion would be impossible. Buchanan needed
only to do what he afterwards so truthfully asserted Lincoln had
done.[8] But through his inaction, and still more through his declared
want of either power or right to act, disunion gained two important
advantages--the influence of the Executive voice upon public opinion,
and especially upon Congress; and the substantial pledge of the
Administration that it would lay no straw in the path of peaceful,
organized measures to bring about State secession.
[Sidenote] Correspondence, N.Y. "Evening Post".
[Sidenote] Washington "Constitution" of December 19, 1860.
[Sidenote] London "Times," Jan. 9, 1851.
The central dogma of the message, that while a State has no right to
secede, the Union has no right to coerce, has been universally
condemned as a paradox. The popular estimate of Mr. Buchanan's
proposition and arguments was forcibly presented at the time by a
jesting criticism attributed to Mr. Seward. "I think," said the New
York Senator, "the President has conclusively proved two things: (1)
That no State has the right to secede unless it wishes to; and (2)
that it is the President's duty to enforce the laws unless somebody
opposes him." No less damaging was the explanation put upon his
language by his political friends. The recognized organ of the
Administration said: "Mr. Buchanan has increased the displeasure of
the Lincoln party by his repudiation of the coercion theory, and his
firm refusal to permit a resort to force as a means of preventing the
secession of a sovereign State." Nor were intelligent lookers-on in
foreign lands less severe in their judgment: "Mr. Buchanan's message,"
said the London "Times," a month later, "has been a greater blow to
the American people than all the rant of the Georgian Governor or the
'ordinances' of the Charleston Convention. The President has
dissipated the idea that the States which elected him constitute one
people."
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[1] There were 3,832,240 opposition popular votes against 847,953 for
Breckinridge and Lane, the Presidential ticket championed by Mr.
Buchanan and his adherents.
[2] Printed in "The Early Life, Campaigns, and Public Services of
Robert E. Lee, with a record of the campaigns and heroic deeds of his
companions in arms, by a distinguished Southern journalist." 8vo. E.B.
Treat, publisher, New York, 1871; p. 789; article, Major-General John
B. Floyd. It says: "Among his private papers examined after his death
the fragment of a diary was found, written in his own hand, and which
is here copied entire." The diary also bears internal evidence of
genuineness.
[3] The astounding mysteries and eccentricities of politics find
illustration in the remarkable contrast between this recorded impulsive
and patriotic expression of Attorney-General Black on November 7, and
his labored official opinion of an apparently opposite tenor, certified
to the President under date of November 20. See "Opinions of the
Attorneys-General." Vol. IX., p. 517.
[4] "It was while these plans for a _coup d'état_ before the 4th of
March were being matured in the very Cabinet itself and in the presence
of a President too feeble to resist them and too blind oven to see them,
that Mr. Stanton was sent for by Mr. Buchanan to answer the question,
'Can a State be coerced?' For two hours he battled, and finally
scattered for the time being the heresies with which secession had
filled the head of that old broken-down man. He was requested to prepare
an argument in support of the power, to be inserted in the forthcoming
message."--Hon. H.L. Dawes, in the "Boston Congregationalist." See
"Atlantic Monthly," October, 1870, p. 468.
[5] Slavery existed by virtue of express enactments in the several
constitutions of the slave States, but the Constitution of the United
States gave it only implied recognition and toleration.
[6] "It was with some surprise, I confess, that I read the message of
the President. The message laid down certain conditions as those upon
which alone the great Confederacy of the United States could be
preserved from disruption. In so doing the President appeared to be
preparing beforehand an apology for the secession. Had the conditions,
indeed, been such as the Northern States would be likely to accept, the
message might have been considered one of peace. But it seems very
improbable that the Northern States should now, at the moment of their
triumph, and with large majorities of Republicans in their assemblies,
submit to conditions which, during many years of struggle, they have
rejected or evaded."--Lord John Russell to Lord Lyons, December 26,
1860. British Blue Book.
[7] The logic of the message breaks down by the palpable omission to
state the well-known fact that, though every citizen of South
Carolina, or any other State, might refuse to accept or execute the
office of United States marshal, or, indeed, any Federal office, the
want could be immediately lawfully supplied by appointing any qualified
citizen of any other State, who might lawfully and properly lead either
a _posse_, or Federal forces, or State militia, to put down obstruction
of the Federal laws, insurrection, or rebellion. President Buchanan
admitted his own error, and repudiated his own doctrine, when on
January 2, following, he nominated a citizen of Pennsylvania for the
office of collector of the port of Charleston, South Carolina.
Sections two and three of the Act of February 28, 1795, authorize the
President, when the execution of the laws is obstructed by insurrection
too powerful for courts and marshals, to call forth the militia of any
and all the States, first and primarily to "suppress such
combinations," and, secondly, "to cause the laws to be duly executed,
and the use of militia so to be called forth may be continued, if
necessary, until the expiration of thirty days after the commencement
of the then next session of Congress." In performing this duty the act
imposes but a single condition or prerequisite on the Executive: he
shall "by proclamation command the insurgents to disperse." These
sections are complete, harmonious, self-sufficient, and, in their chief
provisions, nowise dependent upon or connected with any other section
or clause of the act. They place under the President's command the
whole militia, and by a subsequent law (March 3, 1807) also the entire
army and navy of the Union, against rebellion. The assertion that the
army can only follow a marshal and his writ in case of rebellion, is
not only unsupported by the language of the act, but utterly refuted by
strong implication. The last section repeals a former provision
limiting the President's action to cases of insurrection of which
United States judges shall have given him notice, and thereby remits
him to any and all of his official sources of information. Jackson's
famous force bill only provided certain supplementary details; it
directly recognized and invoked the great powers of the Act of 1795,
and expiring by limitation, left its wholesome plenitude and broad
original grant of authority unrepealed and unimpaired.
[8] "Happily our civil war was undertaken and prosecuted in self-defense,
not to coerce a State, but to enforce the execution of the laws within
the States against individuals, and to suppress an unjust rebellion
raised by a conspiracy among them against the Government of the United
States."--Buchanan, in "Mr. Buchanan's Administration," p. 129.