Was the President of the United States, standing at the threshold of the secession movement, measuring as he was bound to do with a comprehensive grasp the condition of the Union, to be silent respecting these things? Was he, if he spoke to the South, warning her that the election of Abraham Lincoln was no cause for her attempting to leave the Union, and expounding to her the utter futility of the doctrine of secession as a constitutional right—was he to say nothing to the North of the duty which rested upon her to remove all just causes of complaint, and thus to render secession inexcusable to the Southern people themselves? A supreme ruler, placed as Mr. Buchanan was at the period I am now considering, had a complex duty to perform. It was to prevent, if he could, the formation of any sort of Southern Confederacy among the cotton States, and thereby to relieve his successor from the necessity of having to encounter more than the secession of South Carolina. She could be dealt with easily, standing alone, if Congress would clothe the President with the necessary power to enforce the laws of the Union within her limits. Backed by a new confederacy of her contiguous sisters, containing five millions of people, and controlling the whole cotton production of the country, the problem for the new President would indeed be a formidable one. To prevent this, certain measures of conciliation were deemed by President Buchanan, in as honest and as wise a judgment as any statesman ever formed, to be essential. When the reader has examined his recommendations of constitutional amendments, along with the practical measures for which he applied, and which Congress did not adopt, he will have to ask himself, if Congress had done its duty as the President performed his, is it within the bounds of probability that Mr. Lincoln would have been embarrassed with the question about the forts in Charleston harbor, or that the Montgomery government would have ever existed, or that South Carolina, unaided and undirected by that new confederacy, would ever have fired on Sumter?
As the internal affairs of the country claimed the first attention of the President, and occupied a very large part of his message, I quote the whole of what it said on this very grave topic:
Fellow-citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives:—
Throughout the year since our last meeting, the country has been eminently prosperous in all its material interests. The general health has been excellent, our harvests have been abundant, and plenty smiles throughout the land. Our commerce and manufactures have been prosecuted with energy and industry, and have yielded fair and ample returns. In short, no nation in the tide of time has ever presented a spectacle of greater material prosperity than we have done, until within a very recent period.
Why is it, then, that discontent now so extensively prevails, and the union of the States, which is the source of all these blessings, is threatened with destruction?
The long continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of slavery in the Southern States has at length produced its natural effects. The different sections of the Union are now arrayed against each other, and the time has arrived, so much dreaded by the Father of his Country, when hostile geographical parties have been formed.
I have long foreseen, and often forewarned my countrymen of the now impending danger. This does not proceed solely from the claim on the part of Congress or the Territorial legislatures to exclude slavery from the Territories, nor from the efforts of different States to defeat the execution of the fugitive slave law. All or any of these evils might have been endured by the South, without danger to the Union (as others have been), in the hope that time and reflection might apply the remedy. The immediate peril arises, not so much from these causes, as from the fact that the incessant and violent agitation of the slavery question throughout the North for the last quarter of a century has at length produced its malign influence on the slaves, and inspired them with vague notions of freedom. Hence a sense of security no longer exists around the family altar. This feeling of peace at home has given place to apprehensions of servile insurrections. Many a matron throughout the South retires at night in dread of what may befall herself and her children before the morning. Should this apprehension of domestic danger, whether real or imaginary, extend and intensify itself, until it shall pervade the masses of the Southern people, then disunion will become inevitable. Self-preservation is the first law of nature, and has been implanted in the heart of man by his Creator for the wisest purpose; and no political union, however fraught with blessings and benefits in all other respects, can long continue, if the necessary consequence be to render the homes and the fire-sides of nearly half the parties to it habitually and hopelessly insecure. Sooner or later the bonds of such a Union must be severed. It is my conviction that this fatal period has not yet arrived: and my prayer to God is, that he would preserve the Constitution and the Union throughout all generations.
But let us take warning in time, and remove the cause of danger. It cannot be denied that for five and twenty years the agitation at the North against slavery has been incessant. In 1835, pictorial handbills and inflammatory appeals were circulated extensively throughout the South, of a character to excite the passions of the slaves, and, in the language of General Jackson, “to stimulate them to insurrection and produce all the horrors of a servile war.” This agitation has ever since been continued by the public press, by the proceedings of State and county conventions, and by abolition sermons and lectures. The time of Congress has been occupied in violent speeches on this never ending subject; and appeals, in pamphlet and other forms, indorsed by distinguished names, have been sent forth from this central point and spread broadcast over the Union.
How easy would it be for the American people to settle the slavery question forever, and to restore peace and harmony to this distracted country! They, and they alone, can do it. All that is necessary to accomplish the object, and all for which the slave States have ever contended, is to be let alone and permitted to manage their domestic institutions in their own way. As sovereign States, they, and they alone, are responsible before God and the world for the slavery existing among them. For this the people of the North are not more responsible, and have no more right to interfere, than with similar institutions in Russia or in Brazil.
Upon their good sense and patriotic forbearance, I confess, I still greatly rely. Without their aid it is beyond the power of any President, no matter what may be his own political proclivities, to restore peace and harmony among the States. Wisely limited and restrained as is his power under our Constitution and laws, he alone can accomplish but little for good or for evil on such a momentous question.