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I wonder, in truth, at the politicians who advise him to a "masterly inactivity," that is, who urge him to continue Mr. Buchanan!
When, therefore, the pro-slavery constitutional convention met at Lecompton in October, Kansas had a free-state Legislature duly elected. To make Kansas still a slave State it was necessary to get rid of that Legislature and of the Governor through whose agency it had been chosen, and at the same time to frame a constitution which would secure the approval of the Buchanan Administration.
President Buchanan, bachelor, with his handsome but somewhat self-contained niece, was not equal to this social rivalry. Moreover, the cares of office permitted the perplexed, wearied, and timid executive no respite day or night. Events in Kansas gave heart to those who were fighting Lecomptonism.
One of these favoured days sometimes occurs in springtime, when that soft air is breathing over the blossoms and new-born verdure which inspired Buchanan with his beautiful Ode to the First of May; the air which, in the luxuriance of his fancy, he likens to that of the golden age, to that which gives motion to the funereal cypresses on the banks of Lethe; to the air which is to salute beatified spirits when expiatory fires shall have consumed the earth with all her habitations.
Buchanan, indeed, whose classic weapons had been brought into this literary crusade, and who also had his fling at the Franciscans as well as his coarser and more popular brethren, was imprisoned for a time, and had to withdraw from his country, but the poets of the people, far more effective, would seem to have escaped.
Next day was Sunday and Colonel Morrison spent the day in reorganising the Battalion into two companies; No. 1 company being commanded by Captain W.L. Buchanan and No. 2 company by Captain R.H. Morrison, while six Lewis guns went into battalion reserve.
He was about to set out when the King, who doubtless had owed some entertainment to Buchanan on the lingering homeward journey, and who must have been well aware of his character and gifts, made him pause by offering him the tutorship of his illegitimate son, one among several for whom James, so young as he was, not more than twenty-five, was already responsible, another James Stewart, though not the notable James who was afterwards the Regent Murray.
Buchanan to change the order, and substitute for the Brooklyn a merchant vessel, loaded with supplies and two hundred and fifty recruits. This was a fatal error, for the steamer chosen, the Star of the West, was, from its nature, wholly unfitted to contend with shore batteries.
South Carolina had begun raising and drilling soldiers for a probable war as soon as Lincoln was elected. The other Southern States had at various intervals followed her example. On the Northern side there had been no preparation whatever under the Buchanan régime, and Lincoln had not much chance of attempting such preparation before the war was upon him.
Spafford had said road agent, which means highwayman in California, we could not have been more surprised. A successful book agent must have the hide of a rhinoceros, the guile of a serpent, the obstinacy of a mule, and the persuasive notes of a nightingale. "If Miss Buchanan has been a book agent, she'll do," said Ajax.
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