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Updated: June 24, 2025
It is suggested that he had now but one motive, the desire that the struggle should break out in his successor's time rather than his own. Even this is perhaps to judge Buchanan's notorious and calamitous laches unfairly.
Buchanan's name will be handed down to posterity at least so far as his own church is concerned. His "Ten Year's Conflict" is the only complete and authoritative record of the causes and effects of the Disruption that has yet been published.
He had insufficient ammunition and was nearly out of provisions. Lincoln at last concluded to "send bread to Sumter," surely not a hostile act. Owing to complications which he inherited from Buchanan's administration he had given to Governor Pickens, of South Carolina, a promise that he would not attempt to relieve Sumter without first giving him notice.
So came his beloved enemy, Judge Whipple, who did not make an excursion to the rear regions of the house with the Colonel; but they stood and discussed Mr. President Buchanan's responsibility for the recent panic, until the band, which Mr. Hopper had stationed under the stairs, drowned their voices.
Buchanan's mind in 1861 as the time for his exit from the White House approached. At the North there had been a political ground-swell; at the South, secession, half accomplished by the Gulf States, yawned in the Border States. Curiously enough, very few believed that war was imminent. As a reporter for the States I met Mr. Lincoln immediately on his arrival in Washington.
The new cabinet, though unable to obtain President Buchanan's consent to aggressive measures to reëstablish the Federal authority, was, nevertheless, able to prevent further concessions to the insurrection, and to effect a number of important defensive precautions, among which was the already mentioned concentration of a small military force to protect the national capital.
Who, then, could carry these doubtful and pivotal States? This second branch of the question also found its ready answer. The contest in these States would be not against a Territorial slave code, but against "popular sovereignty "; not with Buchanan's candidate, but with Douglas; and for Douglas there was only a single antagonist, tried and true Abraham Lincoln.
Buchanan's term, every branch of the national Government was its tool, the Supreme Court included, enabling it authoritatively to mis-read the Constitution, declare the Union a pro-slavery compact, and act accordingly. But justice would not be mocked, and, though advancing upon halting foot, dealt the death-blow like lightning at last.
My explanation was then confirmed by signs. After the exchange of President Buchanan's message with the message of Queen Victoria the use of the Atlantic Telegraph has been suspended by invisible agency, and while the City of New York, the great Babylon of the United States, was celebrating the first time the success of the Atlantic Telegraph, the tower, the cupola and so much of the interior of the building of the City Hall was destroyed, as could be reached by fire.
So I told the messenger that I would continue to support Buchanan's administration, that I would pile my support upon it until it broke down under the weight and sunk into everlasting infamy.
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