Why did the message thus leap at one bound without necessary connection or coherence from the discussion of executive to those of legislative powers? Why waste words over doubtful theories when there was pressing need to suggest practical amendments to the statute whose real or imaginary defects Mr. Buchanan had pointed out? Why indulge in lamentations over the remote possibility that Congress might violate the Constitution, when the occasion demanded only prompt preventive orders from the Executive to arrest the actual threatened violation of law by Charleston mobs? Why talk of war against States when the duty of the hour was the exercise of acknowledged authority against insurrectionary citizens?
The issue and argument were wholly false and irrelevant. No State had yet seceded. Execute such laws of the United States as were in acknowledged vigor, and disunion would be impossible. Buchanan needed only to do what he afterwards so truthfully asserted Lincoln had done.[8] ] But through his inaction, and still more through his declared want of either power or right to act, disunion gained two important advantages—the influence of the Executive voice upon public opinion, and especially upon Congress; and the substantial pledge of the Administration that it would lay no straw in the path of peaceful, organized measures to bring about State secession.
Correspondence, N.Y. "Evening Post".
London "Times," Jan. 9, 1851.
Washington "Constitution" of December 19, 1860.
The central dogma of the message, that while a State has no right to secede, the Union has no right to coerce, has been universally condemned as a paradox. The popular estimate of Mr. Buchanan's proposition and arguments was forcibly presented at the time by a jesting criticism attributed to Mr. Seward. "I think," said the New York Senator, "the President has conclusively proved two things: (1) That no State has the right to secede unless it wishes to; and (2) that it is the President's duty to enforce the laws unless somebody opposes him." No less damaging was the explanation put upon his language by his political friends. The recognized organ of the Administration said: "Mr. Buchanan has increased the displeasure of the Lincoln party by his repudiation of the coercion theory, and his firm refusal to permit a resort to force as a means of preventing the secession of a sovereign State." Nor were intelligent lookers-on in foreign lands less severe in their judgment: "Mr. Buchanan's message," said the London "Times," a month later, "has been a greater blow to the American people than all the rant of the Georgian Governor or the 'ordinances' of the Charleston Convention. The President has dissipated the idea that the States which elected him constitute one people."
[ [1]] There were 3,832,240 opposition popular votes against 847,953 for Breckinridge and Lane, the Presidential ticket championed by Mr. Buchanan and his adherents.
[ [2]] Printed in "The Early Life, Campaigns, and Public Services of Robert E. Lee, with a record of the campaigns and heroic deeds of his companions in arms, by a distinguished Southern journalist." 8vo. E.B. Treat, publisher, New York, 1871; p. 789; article, Major-General John B. Floyd. It says: "Among his private papers examined after his death the fragment of a diary was found, written in his own hand, and which is here copied entire." The diary also bears internal evidence of genuineness.
[ [3]] The astounding mysteries and eccentricities of politics find illustration in the remarkable contrast between this recorded impulsive and patriotic expression of Attorney-General Black on November 7, and his labored official opinion of an apparently opposite tenor, certified to the President under date of November 20. See "Opinions of the Attorneys-General." Vol. IX., p. 517.
[ [4]] "It was while these plans for a coup d'état before the 4th of March were being matured in the very Cabinet itself and in the presence of a President too feeble to resist them and too blind oven to see them, that Mr. Stanton was sent for by Mr. Buchanan to answer the question, 'Can a State be coerced?' For two hours he battled, and finally scattered for the time being the heresies with which secession had filled the head of that old broken-down man. He was requested to prepare an argument in support of the power, to be inserted in the forthcoming message."—Hon. H.L. Dawes, in the "Boston Congregationalist." See "Atlantic Monthly," October, 1870, p. 468.