Washington, January 12, 1861.

My Dear Sir:—

I have received your letter of yesterday, resigning the office of Secretary of the Treasury, to take effect when your successor shall be appointed and qualified.

I very much regret that circumstances, in your opinion, have rendered it necessary. Without referring to those circumstances, I am happy to state, in accepting your resignation, that during the brief period you have held this important office, you have performed its duties in a manner altogether satisfactory to myself.

Wishing you health, prosperity, and happiness, I remain,

Very respectfully, your friend,

James Buchanan.

CHAPTER XX.
1860—December.

THE RESIGNATION OF SECRETARY FLOYD, AND ITS CAUSE—REFUTATION OF THE STORY OF HIS STEALING THE ARMS OF THE UNITED STATES—GENERAL SCOTT'S ASSERTIONS DISPROVED.

Among the assertions made by the South Carolina commissioners in their letter to the President of December 28th, there was one to which it is now specially necessary to advert. “Since our arrival,” they said, “an officer of the United States, acting, as we are assured, not only without, but against your orders, has dismantled one fort and occupied another, thus altering to a most important extent the condition of affairs under which we came.” The person who assured them that Anderson had acted without and against the President’s orders, was Mr. Floyd, the Secretary of War, who had instructed Buell what orders to give to Anderson, and who knew well what the orders were. This brings me, therefore, to the point at which Mr. Floyd’s conversion took place, from an avowed and consistent opponent of secession to one of its most strenuous supporters:—a conversion which was so sudden, that between the 23d of December and the arrival of the South Carolina commissioners, on the 26th, the Secretary boldly assumed a position entirely at variance with all his previous conduct, and thereafter became an intimate associate with disunion Senators, who had always, to this point, condemned his official conduct. The cause of this remarkable change was the discovery, by the President, of an act implicating Mr. Floyd in a very irregular proceeding, which had no connection whatever with the relations between the Federal Government and the State of South Carolina, or with the subject of secession.