Mr. Greeley’s secession argument, drawn from the Declaration of Independence and the right of revolution, was a remarkable proof of the unsoundness of his reasoning powers. Because the right of self-government is an inherent right of a people, he assumed that men cannot be required to perform their covenanted obligations. He could not see, he said, how twenty millions of people could rightfully hold ten, or even five, other millions in a political union which those other millions wished to renounce. But if he had ever been in the habit of reasoning upon the Constitution of the United States as other men reasoned, who did not accept the doctrine of State secession, he could have seen that when five millions of people, exercising freely the right of self-government, have solemnly covenanted with the twenty millions that they will obey the laws enacted by a legislative authority which they have voluntarily established over themselves and over all the inhabitants of the country, the moralist and the publicist can rest the right to use compulsion upon a basis which is perfectly consistent with the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and which those principles do in truth recognize.

In fact, however, Mr. Greeley, by his public utterances at this great crisis, bettered the instructions of the secessionists themselves. He taught them that the Crittenden Compromise, or any other measure of conciliation, need not be considered. They had only to will that they would leave the Union, and they were out of it, and at liberty to care nothing about concessions from the North. And in the same way, he taught those of the North, on whom rested the immediate duty of preventing the spread of the secession movement, that all measures of conciliation were useless, for the right of secession, as he maintained, was bottomed on the Declaration of Independence, and neither persuasion nor coercion ought to be used against the exercise of such a right. Such political philosophy as this, proclaimed by a leading organ of the Republican party, created difficulties for a President situated as Mr. Buchanan was after the election of his successor, which posterity can not overlook.[[104]]

Seeing how fatally wrong was the course of this erratic journalist, and how much depended on the success of the Crittenden Compromise, the President endeavored to enlist in its behalf another great journal of the North, which was conducted by a person on whom he thought he could rely, and whose paper was professedly independent of party politics. The following private letter to the editor of the New York Herald attests how earnestly Mr. Buchanan was bent upon the improvement of every chance by which the spread of secession might be prevented:

[MR. BUCHANAN TO JAMES GORDON BENNETT.]

(Private and confidential.)

Washington, December 20, 1860.

My Dear Sir:—

You wield the most powerful organ in the country for the formation of public opinion, and I have no doubt you feel a proportionate responsibility under the present alarming circumstances of the country. Every person here has his own remedy for existing evils, and there is no general assent to any proposition. Still, I believe the tendency is strong, and is becoming stronger every day, towards the Missouri Compromise, with the same protection to slaves south of 36° 30´ that is given to other property. The South can lose no territory north of this line, because no portion of it is adapted to slave labor, whilst they would gain a substantial security within the Union by such a constitutional amendment. The Republicans have for some years manifested indignation at the repeal of this compromise, and would probably be more willing to accept it than any other measure to guarantee the rights of the South. I have stated my favorite plan in the message, but am willing to abandon it at any moment for one more practicable and equally efficacious. If your judgment should approve it, you could do much by concentrating and directing your energies to this single point. My object, when I commenced to write, was simply to express my opinion that existing circumstances tended strongly toward the Missouri Compromise; but, with pen in hand, I shall make one or two other remarks.

I do not know whether the great commercial and social advantages of the telegraph are not counterbalanced by its political evils. No one can judge of this so well as myself. The public mind throughout the interior is kept in a constant state of excitement by what are called “telegrams.” They are short and spicy, and can easily be inserted in the country newspapers. In the city journals they can be contradicted the next day; but the case is different throughout the country. Many of them are sheer falsehoods, and especially those concerning myself......

With my kindest and most cordial regards to Mrs. Bennett, I remain, very respectfully, your friend,