James Buchanan.
P. S. Please to remember me to Mr. Amos Slaymaker and Henry and his wife. I hope Mr. Dickenson may, ere this reaches you, be restored to his flock, and have a son and heir to bless his marriage bed.
I shall not have time to write to Mr. Reynolds. Please to deliver him the enclosed, and tell him that I have no journal later than the 10th August, although my other papers have arrived up till the middle of September. You may also say to him, but to him alone and caution him not to repeat it, that the prospects of success in my mission, after many difficulties, now begin to appear bright. I have received no letter from him lately. Mr. Clay will not leave this for a fortnight yet, and I shall send this letter by another opportunity to London.
As the reader has already learned, Mr. Buchanan had two very promising younger brothers, one of whom died five years before he went abroad, and the other was living and in apparently good health when he left the country. The elder of these two, William Speer Buchanan, died at Chambersburg in his 22d year, on the nineteenth of December, 1827, a few months after his admission to the bar. He had graduated at Princeton in 1822, and studied his profession at Chambersburg and at the law school in Litchfield, Connecticut. His father died while he was still at Princeton: and a letter from his mother to his brother James, written in 1821, which lies before me, gives indications of his early character.[[31]]
William Buchanan did not, like his next youngest brother, live to show what he might have become. This other, and perhaps more brilliant member of the family, George W. Buchanan, graduated at Dickinson college in Carlisle, in 1826, at the age of eighteen, with the highest honors of his class. Being nearly twenty years younger than James, the latter, after the death of their father, took a parental interest in promoting his prospects, and guiding his professional education, he studied law in Chambersburg and Pittsburgh, and being admitted to the bar in Pittsburgh in 1828, he began to practise there. In the autumn of 1830, as the reader has seen, he was, doubtless on his brother’s request, appointed by President Jackson United States District Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania. Probably no man ever received a similar appointment at so early an age; he was only two and twenty; but his letters, some of which have been quoted, show great maturity of character; and as his application for the appointment must have been supported by the influence of other persons as well as by that of his brother, it is safe to assume that the office was intrusted to fit hands. He was already acquiring a lucrative private practice, when, in the summer of 1832, his health began to fail. He died in November of that year, and the following letter of Mr. Buchanan to his brother Edward relates to the sad termination of his illness:
St. Petersburg, Jan. 9th, N. S. 1832.
My Dear Brother:—
I have received your three letters of the 10th and 26th September and of the 12th November: the first on the 21st October, the second not till the 2d instant, and the last on the 28th December. You will thus perceive that the one announcing the death of poor George had a very long passage, having got out of the usual line and lain at Paris a considerable time. I had heard of this melancholy event long before its arrival. How consoling it is to reflect that he had made his peace with Heaven before he departed from earth. All men desire to die the death of the righteous; but a large portion of the human race are unwilling to lead their life. I can say sincerely for myself that I desire to be a Christian, and I think I could withdraw from the vanities and follies of the world without suffering many pangs. I have thought much upon the subject since my arrival in this strange land, and sometimes almost persuade myself that I am a Christian; but I am often haunted by the spirit of scepticism and doubt. My true feeling upon many occasions is: “Lord, I would believe; help Thou mine unbelief.” Yet I am far from being an unbeliever.
Ere this reaches you, you will probably have heard of the conclusion of the commercial treaty, which was the principal object of my mission. My success under all the circumstances seems to have been almost providential. I have had many difficulties to contend with and much serious opposition to encounter; but through the blessing of Providence I have been made the instrument of accomplishing a work in which all my predecessors had failed. I trust it will receive the approbation and promote the interests of my country.
I entertain some faint hopes that I may be permitted to leave St. Petersburg by the last steamboat of the next season; though it is probable I shall be obliged to remain another winter. Nothing, however, shall detain me longer than two years from the time of my arrival, except an urgent sense of public duty or the request of General Jackson, neither of which I anticipate. My anxiety to return home is increased by the present state of health of mother and Jane. It is not in any degree occasioned by want of kindness on the part of the people here. On the contrary, I am everywhere received in the most polite and friendly manner, and have good reason to believe I am rather a favorite, even with the emperor and empress themselves.