With best regards to yourself and Miss Lane, I am
Ever faithfully yours,
B. Moran.[[53]]
Both with reference to this visit of the Prince of Wales, and to some other incidents of the administration, and to certain traits of Mr. Buchanan’s character, I insert here an extract from Mr. J. Buchanan Henry’s communication to me, before I proceed to the trying period of “secession,” which is to occupy a large part of the remaining pages of this volume.
As private secretary, I had to be in my office, a room on the southwest corner of the second story adjoining that of the President, whenever he was there, which was from eight in the morning until luncheon at one o’clock, and from that time until five, when, with rare exceptions, he took an hour’s walk. I doubt whether Mr. Buchanan used his coach and horses a dozen times a year, except during the summer when he was at the “Soldier’s Home;” then he drove in to the executive mansion in the morning and out in the evening. He greatly preferred the exercise of walking, with its exchange of kindly personal greetings with friends. On returning from this daily exercise he dined with the members of his household. It was not then etiquette for the President to accept dinner or other invitations, for the wise reason, I believe, that any discrimination would have been impossible without giving offence, and universal acceptance would have been impossible. Once a week Mr. Buchanan caused some of the Cabinet members and their wives to be invited to dinner “en famille” and as there was but little ceremony and all were agreeable guests, with common and identical interests for the most part, I remember that these were most pleasant little entertainments. During the winter, or properly during the session of Congress, there was what might be called a State dinner, once a week, an entertainment of a much more formal and formidable character, in the large dining-room, capable of seating about forty persons. The first of these dinners was, I think, given to the Justices of the Supreme Court, the next to the Diplomatic Corps, then to the members of the Senate, and the House of Representatives, including each member in his turn, according to official seniority, except in a very few cases where individuals had by discourtesy or offence rendered such an invitation improper. Miss Lane and I attended to the details of these social matters, including dinner and party attending, making visits, etc., for the President. Among the most troublesome of these duties was the proper assigning of precedence to the guests at these so-called state dinners; a delicate task in these Washington entertainments, as any neglect would pretty surely give offence. Miss Lane, from natural aptitude and tact and the experience she had in London whilst her uncle was minister there, managed these details very cleverly. I had the difficult and worrying task at these dinners, in the short time between the arrival of the forty odd guests in the drawing-room and the procession into the great dining-room, of ascertaining the name of each gentleman and telling him what lady he was to take in, and probably introducing the parties to each other. It was sometimes a very mauvaise quart d’heure of expectation for me; as I was pretty sure to find at the last moment, when the President was leading the procession to the table, that some male guest, perhaps not accustomed to such matters, had strayed away from his intended partner, leaving the lady standing alone and much embarrassed. I had then to give them a fresh start.
As private secretary I was charged with the expenditure of the library fund, the payment of the steward, messengers, and also of the expenditures of the household which were paid out of the President’s private purse. I might here mention that these latter expenditures generally exceeded the President’s salary in the winter months, because President Buchanan enjoyed entertaining and entertained liberally from inclination. In summer the social entertaining being much less, and the President being at the Soldier’s Home, a modest but pretty stone cottage on the hills near Washington, the expenses were much less. Taking the year through, the salary of $25,000 was nearly sufficient to pay the actual expenses of the executive mansion, but nothing beyond that, or to allow the President to save any part of it; but on the contrary, I think he had to draw upon his private means to a considerable extent.
My first duty was to organize the private secretary’s office. I had a set of books or records carefully prepared, in which could be briefly entered the date of receipt of any letter or communication addressed to the President, the name of the writer—subject-matter condensed to the utmost—dates and substance of answer, if any, to what department referred, and date of such reference. If the letter contained a recommendation for appointment to office, these records indicated the office, the name of the applicant and by whom recommended. Such communications as the President ought to see I folded and briefed and took them to him every morning at eight o’clock and received his instructions as to the answer I should make, and in some instances he would answer them himself, if of a purely personal nature. Either he or I would then endorse upon all letters “Respectfully referred to the Secretary of State,” War, or otherwise, according as the communication in subject matter related to the business of that department; and once a day I would enclose them, as they accumulated, in large envelopes, with printed addresses, and despatch them by the messenger to the several departments. By this system I could recall any letter or communication of any kind by reference to the entries on my books, whenever the President desired them for action. This was the routine of the Executive Office.
It will hardly be credited that this simple and natural course of business gave the pretext at a later day, and I can scarcely suppress my indignation as I think of it, for that infamous “mare’s nest,” discovered by Covode of Pennsylvania, a member of the House of Representatives, and for the investigation of which he obtained a committee with full powers. The letters of General Patterson and others to which it related, were simply referred to the Secretary of the Navy according to the ordinary and proper routine of business in the Executive Office, as I have above described, and were endorsed exactly as thousands of others had been either by the President or by me, and such endorsement had therefore no signification whatever. It was a cruel and malicious pretence to infer that the Secretary of the Navy would attach any importance whatever to the mere act of reference by the President himself because a multitude of such papers were similarly endorsed either by him or by me every day.
There would have been no room to keep such a mass of papers in the White House, and they would have been out of place there, as they related to the business of the several cabinet officers, and yet upon this miserable basis was the “Covode investigation” erected, and the first attempt ever made to soil a spotless public life, extending over more than forty years in every exalted station of our Government, as member of the legislature of Pennsylvania, many years member of the House of Representatives, Senator of the United States, twice diplomatic representative of the nation at the two principal courts of Europe, Secretary of State of the United States, and finally President of the Republic. The meagre partisan fruits of the investigation when made, and the refusal, to its credit be it said, of a bitterly hostile opposition in the House to propose even a censure, clearly showed its baseless character.
The committee, with well simulated delicacy, never summoned me to appear and testify, but sent for my clerk, and after examining him were glad, it seems, to drop it. I dwell upon this matter, because in a long career of public service it is the only attempt ever made to impeach Mr. Buchanan’s public or private integrity. He himself felt it very bitterly, and I think it will be admitted that he administered a wholesome and deserved rebuke to the House in his special message of protest. Although the result demonstrated that there was not the most gossamer pretext for the charge made by Covode, I think Mr. Buchanan’s friends can be well pleased at its having been made, and its futility exposed, as it leads to the fair conclusion for history, that Mr. Buchanan was invulnerable to any assaults upon the honor of his public or private life. Surely this is much to be able to say of a public servant, and a nation capable of breeding many such public men can justly congratulate itself.