I might add that Dickinson College, when I was a student, was not conducted in such a manner as to inspire me with any high degree of gratitude for the education I received from my “Alma Mater.” This was after the death of Dr. Nesbit and before a new President had been elected. I am truly happy to believe that it is now well and ably conducted under the auspices of a Christian Church founded by John Wesley, whose character I have ever held in highest veneration, and whose sermons I have read over and over again with great interest.
Yours very respectfully,
James Buchanan.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK EVENING POST.]
Wheatland, near Lancaster, May 11, 1865.
Sir:—
In the New York Tribune of yesterday I read, with no little surprise, an extract from the Evening Post (which I do not see), stating in substance that the Cincinnati Democratic convention of June, 1856 (not “May”), had come to “a dead lock” on the evening before Mr. Buchanan’s nomination, and had adjourned until the next morning, with a fair prospect that it would meet only to adjourn sine die; but that in the meantime, arrangements were made to secure his nomination as soon as the convention should reassemble, in consequence of pledges given by his friends. The nature of these pledges, according to the article in the Post, was openly avowed by Judge Black on the floor of the convention immediately after nomination had been made. According to it: “A silence ensued for a few moments, as if the convention was anticipating something prepared, when Judge Black, of Pennsylvania (afterwards Attorney General under Buchanan), rose in his place and made a set speech, in which he proceded to denounce ‘Abolitionism’ and ‘Black Republicanism’ very freely, and to argue that the States possessed, under the Constitution, the right of secession. He went further, and told the convention that if the nominee was elected, and a Black Republican should be elected as his successor, he [Mr. Buchanan] would do nothing to interfere with the exercise of it. This pledge was ample, and was accepted by the Southern leaders.”
You will doubtless be astonished to learn that Judge Black, afterwards Mr. Buchanan’s Attorney General, by whom this pledge is alleged to have been made, and through whom the evident purpose now is to fasten it upon Mr. Buchanan, was not a delegate to the Cincinnati convention, nor was he within five hundred miles of Cincinnati during its session. Instead of this, he was at the very time performing his high official duties as a Judge of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.
It may be added, that from the date of General Jackson’s message of January, 1833, against South Carolina nullification and secession, until that of his own message of December, 1860, and indeed since, no public man has more steadfastly and uniformly opposed these dangerous and suicidal heresies than Mr. Buchanan. Had any person, in or out of the convention, dared to make a pledge in his behalf on this or any other subject, such an act would have been condemned a few days thereafter by the terms of his letter accepting the nomination. In this, after expressing his thanks for the honor conferred, he says that: “Deeply sensible of the vast and varied responsibility attached to the station, especially at the present crisis in our affairs, I have carefully refrained from seeking the nomination, either by word or deed;” and this statement is emphatically true.
A few words in regard to the alleged “dead lock” in the Cincinnati convention, at the time of its adjournment on the evening of the 5th June, after fourteen ballots had been taken for a candidate. It appears from its proceedings, as officially published, that on each of these ballotings Mr. Buchanan received a plurality, and on the sixth, attained a majority of all the votes of the convention, but not the required two-thirds. On the fourteenth and last ballot on that evening, the vote stood 152½ for Mr. Buchanan, 75 for Pierce, 63 for Douglas, and 5½ for Cass. This being the state of the case, when the convention assembled the next morning the New Hampshire delegation withdrew the name of General Pierce, and the Illinois delegation withdrew that of Judge Douglas, in obedience to instructions from him by telegraph, on the day before the ballotings had commenced. After this, the nomination of Mr. Buchanan seemed to be a matter of course. He had never heard of “a dead lock” in the convention, or anything like it, until he read the article in the Post.