Life of James Buchanan, Fifteenth President of the United States. v. 2 (of 2)

by George Ticknor Curtis

W. M. Meredith.

In December the purchase-money was paid and the deed of the property was executed by Mr. Meredith. Mr. Buchanan soon afterwards transferred his household goods[goods] to Wheatland, and from that time until his death it was his permanent abode, when he did not occupy some official residence in Washington or in London. He removed to Wheatland the furniture which he had hitherto used in Washington and Lancaster, and made some new purchases. The style of everything was solid, comfortable, and dignified, without any show. The library was in the eastern wing of the house, and was entered by a hall running transversely from the main hall, which extended through the house from east and west, and was also entered from the principal parlor. At the window of the library farthest from the main hall was Mr. Buchanan’s accustomed seat. Long years of honorable public service, however, and sore trials, are to be traced, before we reach the period when he finally retired to the repose of this peaceful retreat. He left office on the 4th of March, 1849, with a fixed purpose not to re-enter public life. But although he held no public position during the four years of General Taylor’s and Mr. Fillmore’s term, he could not avoid taking an active interest in public affairs; and it will be seen that he was not at liberty to decline all public service when his party in 1853 again came into power.

But it is now necessary to revert to the spring and summer of 1848, and to the state of things consequent upon the treaty which had been concluded with Mexico. The great acquisitions of territory made by the annexation of Texas, and the cession of New Mexico and California to the United States, had opened questions on which the Democratic and the Whig parties occupied very different positions. The acquisition of these countries was a Democratic measure; and had that party retained its control of the Federal Government, it is probable that its Northern and its Southern branches would have united upon some plan for disposing of the question of slavery in these new regions. The Whigs, on the other hand, although constituting the opposition, and as such acting against the administration of Mr. Polk and its measures, were far from being unanimous in their resistance to the treaty which Mr. Polk proposed to make with Mexico. There were very eminent Whigs who were opposed to all acquisitions of new territory, for various reasons, and especially because of the tendency of such acquisitions to re-open questions about slavery. There were other very prominent men in the Whig party who were willing to have New Mexico and California added to the Union, and to trust to the chances of a harmonious settlement of all questions that might follow in regard to the organization of governments for those extensive regions. It may not only now be seen, but it was apparent to thoughtful observers at the time, that the true course for the Whig party to pursue, was to adopt as its candidate for the Presidency some one of its most eminent and experienced statesmen, who would represent a definite policy on this whole subject, either by an application of the so-called “Wilmot Proviso,” or what was far better, considering the sectional feelings involved, by an extension to the Pacific Ocean of the Missouri Compromise line of division between free and slave territory. But there came about in the winter of 1848 one of those states of popular feeling, in which the people of this country have sometimes taken it for granted that military success, united with certain traits of character, is a good ground for assuming fitness of an individual for the highest civil station. Along with this somewhat hazardous assumption there runs at such times the vague and scarcely expressed idea that the Presidency of the United States is to be treated as a reward for distinguished military services. After General Taylor’s return from his Mexican campaign, in which a series of brilliant victories were gained, on each occasion with a force numerically inferior to that of the enemy, he became at once a sort of popular idol. There were a good many elements in his personal character, which entitled him to strong esteem, and some which easily account for his sudden popularity. He had a blunt honesty and sincerity of purpose, which were backed by great strength of will, and prodigious energy as a warrior. The appellation of “Old Rough and Ready,” bestowed on him by his soldiers, went straight to the popular heart. These indications of what has been called “availability” in the political nomenclature which has acquired a peculiar significance, were not lost upon that class of Whig politicians who were most disposed to be on the lookout for such means of political success. General Taylor, although never a politician, and although, from his military life, he had rarely even voted at elections, was known to be a Whig, but, as he described himself, not an “Ultra Whig.” He was at no pains to seek a nomination for the Presidency, but it was pretty well known that if it came to him unsought, he would accept it. At the same time, with the modesty and sincerity that belonged to his honest nature, he did not affect to conceal his own distrust of his fitness for the office. It was, with him, a matter which the people of the country were to decide. If they chose to call him to the office, he would discharge its duties to the best of his ability. The sagacity of that portion of the Whigs who expected to win a political victory with such a candidate, was not at fault. When the Whig national convention, which was to make the nomination, assembled at Philadelphia in June, (1848), it was found that both Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster were to be disregarded; and on the fourth ballotting General Taylor received 171 votes out of 279. It is a remarkable fact, that although this nomination was made by a national convention of all the Whigs, several attempts to have it declared by resolution that it must be accepted as a “Whig” nomination, and to declare what the principles of the Whig party were, were voted down. One proposal was to have it declared that Whig principles were “no extension of slavery—no acquisition of foreign territory—protection to American industry, and opposition to executive usurpation.” But singularly enough, these propositions were ruled to be out of order: and although the nomination of Millard Fillmore of New York, as Vice President, might seem to give the whole proceeding a Whig aspect, Mr. Fillmore’s name, unconnected with any annunciation of a distinctive Whig policy, to be upheld in the election, could do nothing more than to acquire for the “ticket” such weight as his personal character, not then very extensively known, could give to it. It was plain enough, therefore, that the election of General Taylor as President, if it should occur, would settle nothing in regard to the very serious questions that were already resulting from the Mexican war.

It was this step on the part of the Whigs—nominating a candidate without any declared policy—that entailed upon that party, at the beginning of General Taylor’s administration, the most embarrassing questions, and increased the danger of the formation of a third party, on the subject of slavery, whose sphere of operations would be confined to the Northern States, and which might, for the first time in our political history, lead to a sectional division between the North and the South.

On the other hand, the Democratic party had to nominate a candidate for the Presidency who, besides being of sufficient consideration throughout the country to counteract the popular furore about General Taylor, would represent some distinctive policy in regard to the new territories and the questions growing out of their acquisition. The friends of General Cass, who, although he wore a military title, was not in the category of military heroes, claimed that his party services and public position entitled him to the nomination. Mr. Buchanan was by far the fittest candidate whom the Democrats could have adopted; but he had made it a rule not to press his claims upon the consideration of his party, at the risk of impairing its harmony and efficiency. He had adhered to this rule on more than one previous occasion, and he did not now depart from it. General Cass was nominated by the Democratic Convention, and along with the candidate for the Vice-Presidency, W. O. Butler of Kentucky, he was vigorously supported in the canvass by Mr. Buchanan.[^[1]] But the Whig candidates, Taylor and Fillmore, received one hundred and sixty-three electoral votes, being seventeen more than were necessary to a choice. General Taylor was inaugurated as President on the 4th of March, 1849. Although he was a citizen of Louisiana and a slaveholder, he had received the electoral votes of the free States of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. These, with the votes of Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Florida, had elected him. All the other States had been obtained for the Democratic candidates; for although the Northern Whigs who were dissatisfied with such a candidate as General Taylor, and who had begun to call themselves “Conscience Whigs,” together with a faction of the Northern Democracy known as “barn-burners” had put in nomination Ex-President Van Buren of New York and Mr. Charles Francis Adams of Massachusetts, this singularly combined party did not obtain the electoral vote of a single State.

While General Taylor, therefore, entered upon the administration of the Government under circumstances which indicated much popular strength, the situation of the country, and his want of the higher qualities of statesmanship and civil experience, were not favorable to his success as a President of the United States. His cabinet, moreover, was not, comparatively speaking, a strong one. The Secretary of State, the Hon. John M. Clayton of Delaware, was scarcely the equal of Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Buchanan, his immediate predecessors; and his negotiation of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty was one of the most unfortunate occurrences in our diplomatic history. The Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Meredith, was simply an accomplished lawyer and a most estimable gentleman. The Attorney-General, the Hon. Reverdy Johnson of Baltimore, was a very eminent advocate in the Supreme Court of the United States, but not a wise and far-seeing statesman. The ablest man in the cabinet, intellectually, was the Hon. Thomas Ewing of Ohio. The other Secretaries were not men of much renown or force. When this administration took charge of the executive department of the Government, a session of Congress was not to commence until December, 1849. At that session, California, which had adopted a State constitution and one that prohibited slavery, demanded admission into the Union as a free State. New Mexico and Utah required the organization of territorial governments. The whole South was in a state of sensitiveness in regard to these matters, and also in regard to the escape of slaves into free territory and to the growing unwillingness of many of the people of the Northern States to have executed that provision of the Constitution which required the surrender of fugitives from service. General Taylor’s policy on these dangerous subjects was not a statesman-like or a practicable one. In his annual message (December, 1849), he recommended the admission of California as a State; but he proposed that the other Territories should be left as they were until they had formed State governments and had applied for admission into the Union. Practically, this would have involved the necessity for governing those regions largely by military power; for the peace must be kept between the inhabitants of Texas and the inhabitants of New Mexico, and between the United States and Texas, in reference to her boundaries. In the opposite sections of the Union popular feeling was rising to a point of great excitement. In the North, the “Wilmot Proviso” was most insisted upon. In the South, this was resented as an indignity. By the end of January, 1850, the angry discussion of these subjects in Congress had obstructed almost all public business, and this excitement pervaded the legislative bodies of the States and the whole press of both sections. It seemed as if harmony and judicious legislation were impossible.

It was at this extraordinary juncture that Mr. Clay came forward in the Senate with his celebrated propositions which became known as the “Compromise Measures of 1850.”[^[2]] The discussion of these measures went on until the 9th of July (1850), on which day General Taylor died, after a short illness. His policy was characterized by Mr. Webster as marked by the foresight of a soldier, but not by the foresight of a statesman. It was attended with the danger of a collision between the United States and Texas, which might have led to a civil war. Mr. Fillmore, however, who as Vice-President succeeded to General Taylor, and who was sworn into office as President on the 10th of July, was a civilian and was not without experience as a public man, although not hitherto very conspicuous. Mr. Webster, Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun[^[3]] had all strenuously advocated the Compromise Measures. A particular description of this great settlement must be deferred to a future chapter. But in order that these measures might receive their consummation, a reconstruction of the cabinet became necessary. All of the Secretaries appointed by General Taylor resigned. The State Department was offered to and accepted by Mr. Webster. Thomas Corwin of Ohio became Secretary of the Treasury; Charles M. Conrad of Louisiana, Secretary of War; William A. Graham of North Carolina, Secretary of the Navy; Nathan K. Hall of New York, Postmaster-General; John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, Attorney-General; and Alexander H. H. Stuart of Virginia, Secretary of the Interior. Thus a new Whig administration, pledged to the pacification of the country by a policy very different from that of General Taylor, came into the Executive Department. The Compromise Measures became laws before the adjournment of Congress, which occurred on the 30th of September; and then came the question whether they were to be efficacious in quieting the sectional controversies about slavery, and were to be acquiesced in by the North and the South. Mr. Buchanan, although not in official life, in common with many other patriotic men of both the principal parties, lent all his influence to the support of this great settlement. In November, 1850, he had to address a letter to a public meeting in Philadelphia, called to sustain the Compromise Measures, in which he said:

[LETTER TO A PUBLIC MEETING.]

“Wheatland[“Wheatland], near Lancaster, Nov. 19, 1850.

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