This presumed fitness for office greatly assisted his chances in the Presidential campaign; and it assisted him especially with those timid and conservative minds, of which there are many, apt to conceive that a familiarity with the business and details of government is the same as statesmanship, and to confound the skill and facility acquired by mere routine with a genuine ability in execution. Had these men, however, looked more closely into Mr. Buchanan's official career, they would have found causes for suspecting the validity of their judgment, in the very length and variety of his services. They would have discovered, that, long as these had been and various as they had been, they were quite undistinguished by any peculiar evidences of capacity or aptitude.
He had been, senator, secretary, and diplomatist, it is true; but in no one of these positions had he achieved any remarkable successes. The occasion could not be indicated on which he had risen above the average level of respectability as a public man. There were no salient points in his course,—no splendid developments of mastery,—no great reports, or speeches, or measures, to cause him to be remembered,—and no leading thoughts or acts, to awaken a high and general feeling of admiration on the part of his countrymen. He was never such a senator as Webster was, nor such a secretary as Clay, nor such a diplomatist as Marey. Throughout his protracted official existence, he followed in the wake of his party submissively, doing its appointed work with patience, and vindicating its declared policy with skill, but never emerging as a distinct and prominent figure. He never exhibited any peculiar largeness of mind or loftiness of character; and though he spoke well and wrote well, and played the part of a cool and wary manager, he was scarcely considered a commanding spirit among his fellows. Amid that array of luminaries, indeed, which adorned the Senate, where his chief reputation was made,—among such men as Calhoun, Clay, Webster, Benton, and Wright,—he shone with a diminished lustre.
Now, forty years of action, in the most conspicuous spheres, unillustrated by a single incident which mankind has, or will have, reason to cite and applaud, were not astonishing evidence of fitness for the chief magistracy; and the event has shown, that Mr. Buchanan was to be regarded as an old politician rather than a practised statesman, that the most serviceable soldier in the ranks may prove to be an indifferent general in command,—and that the experience, for which he was vaunted and trusted, was not that ripening discipline of the mind and heart,
———-"which doth attain To something of prophetic strain,"—
but that other unlearning use and wont, which
——"chews on wisdom past, And totters on in blunders to the last."
His administration has been a series of blunders, and worse; it has evinced no mastery; on the other hand, it may be arraigned for inconsistencies the most palpable, for proceedings the most awkward, for a general impotence which places it on a level with that of Tyler or Pierce, and for signal offences against the national sense of decorum and duty.
It is scarcely a year since Mr. Buchanan assumed the reins at Washington. He assumed them under circumstances by which he and his party and the whole country had been taught a great lesson of political duty. The infamous mismanagement of Kansas, by his immediate predecessor, had just shattered the most powerful of our party organizations, and caused a mighty uprising of the masses of the North in defence of menaced freedom. His election was carried amid the extremest hazards, and with the utmost difficulty. Two months more of such ardent debate and such popular enlightenment as were then going forward would have resulted in his defeat. As it was, nearly every Northern State—no matter how firm its previous adherence to the Democratic party—was aroused to a strenuous opposition. Nearly every Northern State pronounced by a stupendous majority against him and against his cause. Nothing but a systematic disguise of the true questions at issue by his own party, and a gratuitous complication of the canvass by means of a foolish third party, saved his followers from the most complete and shameful rout that had been given for many years to any political array. Men of every class, of every shade of faith, joined in that hearty protest against the spirit which animated the Democratic administration, and joined in it, that they might utter the severest rebuke in their power, of its meanness and perfidy.
Mr. Buchanan ought to have read the warning which was thus blazed across the political skies, like the hand-writing upon the wall. He ought to have discerned in this general movement the signs of a deep, earnest, and irrepressible conviction on the part of the North. It is no slight cause which can start such general and enthusiastic expressions of popular feeling; they cannot be manufactured; they are not the work of mere party excitement; there is nothing spurious and nothing hollow in them; but they well up from the deep heart of nations, showing that a chord of sympathy has been touched, with which it is fatal to tamper or to sport. Call it fanaticism, if you will; call it delusion; call it anything; but recollect also that it is out of such feelings that revolutions are born, and by them that awful national crises are determined.
But Mr. Buchanan has not profited, as we shall see, by the monition. His initial act, the choice of a cabinet, in which the only man of national reputation was superannuated, and the others were of little note, gave small hope that he would do so; and his subsequent mistakes might have been augured from the calibre of the counsellors by whom he chose to be surrounded.—But let the men pass, since our object is to discuss measures.