It may be proper to state that Colonel Samuel W. Black, of Pittsburg, was a delegate to the Cincinnati convention from Pennsylvania, and being well known as a ready and eloquent speaker, “shouts were raised” in the convention for a speech from him immediately after the nomination was announced. To these he briefly responded in an able and enthusiastic manner. From the identity of their surnames, had this response, reported with the proceedings, contained the infamous pledge attributed to Judge Black, or anything like it, we might in charity have inferred that the author of the article had merely mistaken the one name for the other. But there is nothing in what Colonel Black said which affords the least color for any such mistake.
Colonel Black afterwards sealed his hostility to secession with his blood. At an early stage of the war, he fell mortally wounded on the field of battle, whilst gallantly leading on his regiment against the rebels.
I doubt not you will cheerfully do me justice by publishing this letter, and I would thank you for a copy of the paper.
Yours very respectfully,
James Buchanan.
[MR. BUCHANAN TO MR. NAHUM CAPEN.]
Wheatland, May 13, 1865.
My Dear Sir:—
I have received your note of the 11th, with the slip from the Boston paper not named. The astounding answer to it is, that Judge Black was not a delegate to the Cincinnati Convention, was not within five hundred miles of Cincinnati during its session, but was at the time performing his duties on the Bench, as Judge of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Although convinced that he was not present, in order to make assurance doubly sure, I sent him a telegram on the subject. His answer is as follows: “I was not at Cincinnati in 1856, or at any other time in my life. I was not a member of, or an attendant upon the Democratic Convention.” This is a clincher.
When I saw the article from the New York Evening Post in the New York Tribune, I addressed a letter to the editor, and fearing he might be unwilling to publish such a damning condemnation of his article, a la mode —— of Boston, I sent a duplicate to the Tribune.