In compliance with their request and my own sense of duty, I designate Friday, the 4th day of January, 1861, for this purpose, and recommend that the people assemble on that day, according to their several forms of worship, to keep it as a solemn fast.
The Union of the States is at the present moment threatened with alarming and immediate danger; panic and distress of a fearful character prevail throughout the land; our laboring population are without employment, and consequently deprived of the means of earning their bread. Indeed, hope seems to have deserted the minds of men. All classes are in a state of confusion and dismay, and the wisest counsels of our best and purest men are wholly disregarded.
In this the hour of our calamity and peril to whom shall we resort for relief but to the God of our fathers? His omnipotent arm only can save us from the awful effects of our own crimes and follies—our own ingratitude and guilt toward our Heavenly Father.
Let us, then, with deep contrition and penitent sorrow unite in humbling ourselves before the Most High, in confessing our individual and national sins, and in acknowledging the justice of our punishment. Let us implore Him to remove from our hearts that false pride of opinion which would impel us to persevere in wrong for the sake of consistency rather than yield a just submission to the unforeseen exigencies by which we are now surrounded. Let us with deep reverence beseech Him to restore the friendship and good will which prevailed in former days among the people of the several States, and, above all, to save us from the horrors of civil war and "blood guiltiness." Let our fervent prayers ascend to His throne that He would not desert us in this hour of extreme peril, but remember us as He did our fathers in the darkest days of the Revolution, and preserve our Constitution and our Union, the work of their hands, for ages yet to come.
An omnipotent Providence may overrule existing evils for permanent good. He can make the wrath of man to praise Him, and the remainder of wrath He can restrain. Let me invoke every individual, in whatever sphere of life he may be placed, to feel a personal responsibility to God and his country for keeping this day holy and for contributing all in his power to remove our actual and impending calamities.
JAMES BUCHANAN.
EXECUTIVE ORDERS.
[From Sparks's Washington, Vol. X, pp. 11-12.]
NEW YORK, June 8, 1789.
SIR:[177] Although in the present unsettled state of the Executive Departments under the Government of the Union I do not conceive it expedient to call upon you for information officially, yet I have supposed that some informal communications from the Office of Foreign Affairs might neither be improper nor unprofitable. Finding myself at this moment less occupied with the duties of my office than I shall probably be at almost any time hereafter, I am desirous of employing myself in obtaining an acquaintance with the real situation of the several great Departments at the period of my acceding to the administration of the General Government. For this purpose I wish to receive in writing such a clear account of the Department at the head of which you have been for some years past as may be sufficient (without overburthening or confusing the mind, which has very many objects to claim its attention at the same instant) to impress me with a full, precise, and distinct general idea of the affairs of the United States so far as they are comprehended in or connected with that Department.