Mr. J. Buchanan Henry concludes his communication to me, from which I have already quoted, as follows:
In personal appearance Mr. Buchanan was tall—over six feet, broad shouldered, and had a portly and dignified bearing. He wore no beard; his complexion was clear and very fair; his forehead was massive, white and smooth; his features strong and well marked, and his white hair was abundant and silky in texture; his eyes were blue, intelligent and kindly, with the peculiarity that one was far and the other near sighted, which resulted in a slight habitual inclination of the head to one side—a peculiarity that will be remembered by those who knew him well. He dressed with great care, in black, wearing always a full white cravat, which did not, however, impart to him anything of a clerical aspect. He was, on the whole, a distinguished looking and handsome man, and his size and fine proportions gave a dignity and commanding air to his personal presence. His manner and bearing had much of the old-fashioned courtly school about it.[[187]]
I do not think he was a very easy or fluent public speaker, but what he had to say always commanded attention, even among his great compeers in the Senate.
Mr. Buchanan’s parents were Presbyterians, and he always evinced a preference for that form of worship. He was a regular attendant upon church services, both at Washington and in Lancaster, being a pew holder and an always generous contributor to both the building and maintenance of Christian worship. I have known him to give a thousand dollars at a time in aid of building funds for churches of all denominations, and many of his most faithful friends were members of the Roman Catholic communion. He was, to my knowledge, always a sincere believer in all the cardinal doctrines of Christianity, had no eccentricities of religious belief, but accepted Christianity as a divine revelation and a simple rule for the conduct of human life, and relied upon it for the guidance of his own life. He certainly always pressed their force upon my cousin and myself, in our family intercourse under his roof, as his wards. I remember that she and I always hid away our secular newspaper or novel on Sunday if we heard him approaching, as we were otherwise pretty sure to get a mild rebuke for not better employing our time on Sunday, either in good works, or at least in better reading.
The candid student of history, intent only on getting at the very truth without fear, favor or prejudice, after the perusal of President Buchanan’s plain exposition of the threatenings of the impending rebellion, as set forth in his message of December, 1860, and the message of January 8, 1861, must ask the question, why did not the Congress, sole constitutional depositary of the power to raise armies or to call out the militia, then and there, by proper legislation, authorize the President to stamp out the incipient revolt by voting the money for and the authority to employ any necessary military force to accomplish the legitimate end? I have reason to know that the President would not have hesitated to faithfully execute any law which Congress might then have enacted. Why, then, did Congress, from December to March, with the plain facts fully brought to their attention by President Buchanan, and in the face of such imminent public peril, neglect to perform its constitutional function, or to vote either supplies or men? What more could President Buchanan have legally done? Should he have become an usurper, and declared himself Dictator, after the fashion of South America? The conclusion must be, that Congress, from some inexplicable reason, saw fit to abdicate its functions, leaving its powers dormant at the most critical period. Can it have been from any unworthy partisan motive? It could not have been from doubt of its possessing the authority. Whilst President Buchanan held, and rightly held, that he could find no authority in the Constitution to coerce the States, as States, or mere legal entities, he clearly enunciated the true doctrine of the constitutional power of the National Government to fully enforce its laws, by acting coercively upon the persons of all citizens when in revolt or resistance to its authority, wherever they might be, and whether as individuals or massed together in armies. That doctrine then set forth by Mr. Buchanan was unpopular, but it stands to-day confessed to be the only true construction of the Constitution. After the flames of a four years’ civil conflagration had beaten against the text, no important writer on the organic law held any other construction to be tenable. Its present universal acceptance proves the sagacity and correctness of Mr. Buchanan’s views at that early date.
If there was any more marked political bias of Mr. Buchanan’s mind than any other it was that of an almost idolatrous respect and reverence for the Constitution. He had been educated and lived in the old constitutional school of statesmanship, and wholly believed in the wisdom and perfection of that great organic law devised by the founders and builders of our Government. He fully and ardently believed in its sufficiency for all purposes, whether of peace or war. Perhaps such a faith as was entertained by that race of statesmen would be considered by the present lax school as savoring of political fetichism. Certainly there were many who so regarded it, and who rather contemptuously avowed in Congress that their views and measures were, in many instances, extra-constitutional. To me, at least, this knowledge of Mr. Buchanan’s political religion, so to speak, explains why he did not for an instant contemplate the usurpation—for usurpation it would have been, pure and simple—of the constitutional prerogatives of Congress to declare war, or, at least, to precipitate war: or by seizing the persons of the Southern members of Congress and of the State authorities who were working to secure the secession of their several States. Congress was in session, and it was, that being the case, only for the President to lay the facts before that body and obey their behest, whether for peace or war. No belief that the American people would have condoned his usurpation, if made, or have upheld his extra-constitutional act, such as calling for volunteers, or declaring war, or making an aggressive war, would have justified him in assuming the prerogatives of Congress, then actually in session. Although such an act might have made him the most popular idol in American history, I do not think he could have been tempted to break his solemn oath to support the Constitution, by ignoring its plainest provisions. “Nothing succeeds like success.” I am sometimes asked why Mr. Buchanan did not “take the responsibility?” Such a course would have remained impossible to him, with his views of his duty, and I think that in time he will be applauded, not blamed, for his self-sacrificing devotion to what he regarded as the right, rather than seeking his own personal popularity by illegal means.
I cannot close without a few words upon my uncle’s views upon slavery. He simply tolerated it as a legal fact under our Constitution. He had no admiration for it whatever. I know of a number of instances in which he purchased the freedom of slaves in Washington, and brought them to Pennsylvania with him, leaving it to them to repay him if they could out of their wages. His constant recognition of the legal existence of slavery in the South, and its right to protection so long as it legally existed there, rendered him liable to misrepresentation at the North and to misconception at the South; the one regarding him as an apologist of slavery, and the other as its open friend, whereas he was neither. He was only desirous to see the Constitution and laws obeyed, and did, emphatically, not believe in the so-called “Higher Law.” In fact I cannot but regard Mr. Buchanan as having been cruelly misrepresented at the North and betrayed by the South, which began its unjustifiable secession when quite safe from any invasion of its Constitutional rights. The Southern leaders did not hesitate to precipitate what they knew would be disastrous to his benign administration, if it did not actually terminate it in blood. It was, too, the grossest ingratitude to the Democratic party, which had always stood like a wall of fire between the South and its assailants in the North.
Mr. Buchanan, to the day of his death, expressed to me his abiding conviction that the American people would, in due time, come to regard his course as the only one which at that time promised any hope of saving the nation from a bloody and devastating war, and would recognize the integrity and wisdom of his course in administering the Government for the good of the whole people, whether North or South. His conviction on this point was so genuine that he looked forward serenely to the future, and never seemed to entertain a misgiving or a doubt.
The day is now not very far off when the American people will appreciate his faithful services to the Republic, his stainless character and his exalted patriotism.
The remainder of Miss Annie Buchanan’s very interesting paper is as follows: