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LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN
FIFTEENTH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
BY GEORGE TICKNOR CURTIS
IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. II.
NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 1883
Copyright, 1883, by GEORGE TICKNOR CURTIS.
All rights reserved.
Stereotyped by Smith & McDougal.
I. 1848-1852
PAGE
Purchase of Wheatland—Nomination and Election of General 1 Taylor—His Death and the Accession of President Fillmore—The Compromise Measures of 1850—Letters to Miss Lane—Public Letters on Political Topics
II. 1852
The Presidential Nominations of 1852—Election of General 34 Franklin Pierce to the Presidency—Buchanan’s Course in regard to the Nomination and the Election—His Efforts to defeat the Whig Candidate
III. 1852-1853
Personal and Political Relations with the President—Elect 68 and with Mr. Marcy, his Secretary of State—Buchanan is offered the Mission to England—His own Account of the Offer, and his Reasons for accepting it—Parting with his Friends and Neighbors in Lancaster—Correspondence with his Niece
IV. 1853-1856
Arrival in London—Presentation to the Queen at Osborne—The 99 Ministry of Lord Aberdeen—Mr. Marcy’s Circular about Court Costumes, and the Dress Question at the English Court—Letters to Miss Lane
V. 1853-1856
Negotiations with Lord Clarendon—The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty 126 and Affairs in Central America—The Crimean War and the new British Doctrine respecting the Property of Neutrals
VI. 1853-1856
British Enlistments in the United States—Recall of the 134 English Minister at Washington—The Ostend Conference
VII. 1854-1855
The Social Position of Mr. Buchanan and his Niece in England 142
VIII. 1856
Return to America—Nomination and Election to the 169 Presidency—Significance of Mr. Buchanan’s Election in respect to the Sectional Questions—Private Correspondence
Chapter IX
1857-1858.
Inauguration as President—Selection of a Cabinet—The 187 Disturbances in Kansas—Mr. Buchanan’s Construction of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and of the “Platform” on which he was elected—Final Admission of Kansas into the Union
X. 1857-1861
Foreign Relations during Mr. Buchanan’s Administration 211
XI. 1858-1860
Complimentary Gift from Prince Albert to Mr. Buchanan—Visit 228 of the Prince of Wales—Correspondence with the Queen—Minor Incidents of the Administration—Traits of Character—Letters to Miss Lane—Marriage of a young Friend
XII. 1860—March and June
The so-called “Covode Investigation.” 246
Chapter XIII
Summary of the Slavery Questions from 1787 to 1860—The 262 Anti-Slavery Agitation in the North—Growth and Political Triumph of the Republican Party—Fatal Divisions among the Democrats—Mr. Buchanan declines to be regarded as a Candidate for a second Election
XIV. 1860—October
General Scott’s “Views.” 297
XV. 1860—November
Election of President Lincoln—The Secession of South 315 Carolina—Nature of the Doctrine of Secession—President Buchanan prepares to encounter the Secession Movement—Distinction between making War on a State and enforcing the Laws of the United States
XVI. 1860—December
The President’s Annual Message of December 3, 1860 330
XVII. 1860—December
Reception of the President’s Message in the Cabinet, in 352 Congress, and in the Country—The firm Attitude and wise Policy of Mr. Buchanan
XVIII. 1860—December
General Scott again advises the President—Major Anderson’s 365 Removal from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter—Arrival of Commissioners from South Carolina in Washington—Their Interview and Communication with the President—The supposed Pledge of the Status Quo—The “Cabinet Crisis” of December 29th—Reply of the President to the South Carolina Commissioners—The anonymous Diarist of the _North American Review_ confuted
XIX. December, 1860-January, 1861
Resignation of General Cass from the Department of 396 State—Reconstruction of the Cabinet which followed after the Resignations of Messrs. Cobb, Thompson, and Thomas
XX. 1860—December
The Resignation of Secretary Floyd, and its Cause—Refutation 406 of the Story of his stealing the Arms of the United States—General Scott’s Assertions disproved
XXI. November, 1860-March, 1861
The Action of Congress on the Recommendations of the 418 President’s Annual Message—The “Crittenden Compromise”—Strange Course of the New York Tribune—Special Message of January 8, 1861
LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN.
--------------
I. 1848-1852
PURCHASE OF WHEATLAND—NOMINATION AND ELECTION OF GENERAL TAYLOR—HIS DEATH AND THE ACCESSION OF PRESIDENT FILLMORE—THE COMPROMISE MEASURES OF 1850—LETTERS TO MISS LANE—PUBLIC LETTERS ON POLITICAL TOPICS.
At the distance of a little more than a mile from that part of the city of Lancaster where Mr. Buchanan had lived for many years, and a little beyond the corporate limits, there had long stood a substantial brick mansion on a small estate of twenty-two acres known as Wheatland, and sometimes called “The Wheatlands.” The house, although not imposing, or indeed of any architectural beauty, was nevertheless a sort of beau ideal of a statesman’s abode, with ample room and verge for all the wants of a moderate establishment. Without and within, the place has an air of comfort, respectability, and repose. It had been for some years owned and occupied as a summer residence by the Hon. Wm. M. Meredith of Philadelphia, a very eminent lawyer, who became Secretary of the Treasury in the administration of President Taylor. The house stands about half way up a gently rising ground, and has a wide lawn stretching down to the county road, shaded by oaks, elms, and larches, interspersed with evergreens. The view from the front of the house, looking to the west of north, ranges over a broad expanse of the county of Lancaster, one of the richest of Pennsylvania’s lovely domains, spread out in a map of highly cultivated farms, and dotted by the homesteads of a wealthy agricultural population. Behind the house stands a noble wood, which is reached through the gardens; and from the crown of the hill, in a southerly direction, the eye ranges over another fine valley of smaller extent. Coolness and peace pervade this attractive old place, and it is not singular that a man of Mr. Buchanan’s habits and temperament, who could not afford time and had no strong tastes for large pursuits of agriculture, should have coveted this his neighbor’s dwelling.
But he did not break the commandment in seeking it. A treaty between two persons for the purchase of an estate is not ordinarily a matter of much interest. But this one was conducted in a manner so honorable to both parties that a few words may be given to it. The buyer and the seller had always been on opposite political sides; but they were friends, and they were gentlemen. In the month of June, 1848, Mr. Buchanan, having heard that Mr. Meredith wished to sell this property, addressed to him the following letter:
[MR. BUCHANAN TO MR. MEREDITH.]
WASHINGTON, June 12, 1848.
MY DEAR SIR:
I have received an intimation from our friends Fordney and Reynolds that you are willing to sell the Wheatlands, for the price which you gave Mr. Potter for them. As I intend, in any event, to retire from public life on the 4th of March next, I should be pleased to become the purchaser. The terms of payment I could make agreeable to yourself; and I should be glad if you would retain the possession until the autumn. In making this offer, I desire to purchase from you just what you purchased from Mr. Potter, and to pay you the same price which you paid him. If I have been misinformed in regard to your desire to sell, I know you will pardon this intrusion.
Yours, very respectfully, JAMES BUCHANAN.
To this letter Mr. Meredith replied as follows:
[MR. MEREDITH TO MR. BUCHANAN.]
PHILADELPHIA, June 19, 1848.
MY DEAR SIR:—
On my return home a day or two since I had the pleasure of finding your letter. A month ago, I should probably have accepted your offer, as I had then an opportunity of securing a place in this neighborhood that would have suited me better in point of proximity than Wheatland. I have missed that, and it is now too late to make new arrangements for my family for the summer. I should not like to occupy the place after having sold it, for several reasons, and principally because the certainty of leaving it would tend to render the children uncomfortable through the season. These little people are imaginative and live very much on the future, and it would scarcely do to destroy all their little plans, and schemes, and expectations connected with the place at the very commencement of their holidays. I will therefore, with your permission, postpone the subject to the autumn, when, if I should be disposed to part with the place, I will do myself the pleasure of writing to you. Of course your offer does not stand over; but I will certainly make no disposition of the property without first offering it to you.
With great esteem, I am, sir, yours most respectfully, W. M. MEREDITH.
In the autumn, Mr. Buchanan again wrote:
[MR. BUCHANAN TO MR. MEREDITH.]
WASHINGTON, September 25, 1848.
MY DEAR SIR:—
Upon my return to this city, on Saturday night, I found your letter to Mr. Fordney kindly offering to dispose of Wheatland, including all that you bought from Mr. Potter, to myself at the price you paid, and the matting in the house at a valuation. I accept this proposition, and you may consider the bargain closed.
Of the purchase-money I can conveniently pay $1750 at present, and the remainder on or before the first of January. If, however, you should need it sooner, I can procure it without much difficulty.
You can make the deed when you think proper, and the affair of the matting may be arranged at any time.
With many thanks for your kindness, I remain yours very respectfully, JAMES BUCHANAN.
In the succeeding month of November, the following letters passed between the two gentlemen:
[MR. BUCHANAN TO MR. MEREDITH.]
(Private.) LANCASTER, November 21, 1848.
MY DEAR SIR:—
I have seen Mr. Fordney since I came here, who read me a part of your second letter. From this I infer that you regret you had parted with Wheatland. Now, my dear sir, if you have the least inclination to retain it, speak the word and our bargain shall be as if it never had been. It will not put me to the least inconvenience, as I have an excellent house in Lancaster. Indeed I feel a personal interest in having you in the midst of our society; and if you should retain Wheatland, I know that after you shall be satisfied with fame and fortune, you will make this beautiful residence your place of permanent abode.
Please to address me at Paradise P. O., Lancaster county, as I shall be at my brother’s, near that place, to-morrow evening, where I shall remain until Thursday evening.
From your friend, very respectfully, JAMES BUCHANAN.
[MR. MEREDITH TO MR. BUCHANAN.]
PHILADELPHIA, November 23, 1848.
MY DEAR SIR:—
Your very kind letter was received yesterday, just as I was going to court in the morning, where I was kept without dinner till near six. I was then obliged to attend an evening engagement at seven. I mention these details to excuse myself for the apparent want of promptness in replying. I have in the first place to express to you my deep sense of the courtesy and consideration which induced you to make me the offer which your letter contains. I cannot accept it, because to do so would be to take advantage of your friendly impulses, which I ought not and cannot do. I have no doubt I shall find a place somewhere in the same county, and hope to call neighbors with you yet. I need not say how much I regret that Mr. Fordney should have been so indiscreet as to communicate my letter to you.
My furniture, etc., is now removed, and I will deliver possession at once, and I wish you heartily, my dear sir, many years of happiness there.
I am, always your obliged friend and servant, 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 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.
Footnote 1:
The “platform” of the Democratic party contained the following resolution: “That Congress has no power, under the Constitution, to interfere with, or control the domestic institutions of the several States; and that such States are the sole and proper judges of everything pertaining to their own affairs, not prohibited by the Constitution; that all efforts, by abolitionists or others, made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery, or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences, and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people and endanger the stability and permanency of the Union, and ought not to be countenanced by any friend to our political institutions.” Excepting in an indirect manner, this resolution did not enunciate any specific policy in regard to the newly acquired territories.
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:
Footnote 2:
Introduced in the Senate, January 29th, 1850.
Footnote 3:
Mr. Calhoun died at Washington on the last day of March, 1850, at the age of 68.
[LETTER TO A PUBLIC MEETING.]
“WHEATLAND, near LANCASTER, Nov. 19, 1850.
. . . . . . . .
I now say that the platform of our blessed Union is strong enough and broad enough to sustain all true-hearted Americans. It is an elevated—it is a glorious platform on which the down-trodden nations of the earth gaze with hope and desire, with admiration and astonishment. Our Union is the star of the West, whose genial and steadily increasing influence will at last, should we remain an united people, dispel the gloom of despotism from the ancient nations of the world. Its moral power will prove to be more potent than millions of armed mercenaries. And shall this glorious star set in darkness before it has accomplished half its mission? Heaven forbid! Let us all exclaim with the heroic Jackson, ‘The Union must and shall be preserved.’
And what a Union has this been! The history of the human race presents no parallel to it. The bit of striped bunting which was to be swept from the ocean by a British navy, according to the predictions of a British statesman, previous to the war of 1812, is now displayed on every sea, and in every port of the habitable globe. Our glorious stars and stripes, the flag of our country, now protects Americans in every clime. ‘I am a Roman citizen!’ was once the proud exclamation which everywhere shielded an ancient Roman from insult and injustice. ‘I am an American citizen!’ is now an exclamation of almost equal potency throughout the civilized world. This is a tribute due to the power and resources of these thirty-one United States. In a just cause, we may defy the world in arms. We have lately presented a spectacle which has astonished the greatest captain of the age. At the call of their country, an irresistible host of armed men, and men, too, skilled in the use of arms, sprang up like the soldiers of Cadmus, from the mountains and valleys of our confederacy. The struggle among them was not who should remain at home, but who should enjoy the privilege of enduring the dangers and privations of a foreign war, in defence of their country’s rights. Heaven forbid that the question of slavery should ever prove to be the stone thrown into their midst by Cadmus, to make them turn their arms against each other, and die in mutual conflict.
. . . . . . . .
The common sufferings and common glories of the past, the prosperity of the present, and the brilliant hopes of the future, must impress every patriotic heart with deep love and devotion for the Union. Who that is now a citizen of this vast Republic, extending from the St. Lawrence to the Rio Grande, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, does not shudder at the idea of being transformed into a citizen of one of its broken, jealous and hostile fragments? What patriot had not rather shed the last drop of his blood, than see the thirty-one brilliant stars, which now float proudly upon our country’s flag, rudely torn from the national banner, and scattered in confusion over the face of the earth?
Rest assured that all the patriotic emotions of every true-hearted Pennsylvanian, in favor of the Union and Constitution, are shared by Southern people. What battle-field has not been illustrated by their gallant deeds; and when in our history have they ever shrunk from sacrifices and sufferings in the cause of their country? What, then, means the muttering thunder which we hear from the South? The signs of the times are truly portentous. Whilst many in the South openly advocate the cause of secession and union, a large majority, as I firmly believe, still fondly cling to the Union, awaiting with deep anxiety the action of the North on the compromise lately effected in Congress. Should this be disregarded and nullified by the citizens of the North, the Southern people may become united, and then farewell, a long farewell, to our blessed Union. I am no alarmist; but a brave and wise man looks danger steadily in the face. This is the best means of avoiding it. I am deeply impressed with the conviction that the North neither sufficiently understands nor appreciates the danger. For my own part, I have been steadily watching its progress for the last fifteen years. During that period I have often sounded the alarm; but my feeble warnings have been disregarded. I now solemnly declare, as the deliberate conviction of my judgment, that two things are necessary to preserve this Union from danger:
‘1. Agitation in the North on the subject of Southern slavery must be rebuked and put down by a strong and enlightened public opinion.
‘2. The Fugitive Slave Law must be enforced in its spirit.’
On each of these points I shall offer a few observations.
Those are greatly mistaken who suppose that the tempest that is now raging in the South has been raised solely by the acts or omissions of the present Congress. The minds of the Southern people have been gradually prepared for this explosion by the events of the last fifteen years. Much and devotedly as they love the Union, many of them are now taught to believe that the peace of their own firesides, and the security of their families, cannot be preserved without separation from us. The crusade of the Abolitionists against their domestic peace and security commenced in 1835. General Jackson, in his annual message to Congress, in December of that year, speaks of it in the following emphatic language: ‘I must also invite your attention to the painful excitement produced in the South by attempts to circulate through the mails inflammatory appeals, addressed to the passions of the slaves, in prints and various sorts of publications, calculated to stimulate them to insurrection, and produce all the horrors of a servile war.‘
From that period the agitation in the North against Southern slavery has been incessant, by means of the press, of State Legislatures, of State and County conventions, Abolition lectures, and every other method which fanatics and demagogues could devise. The time of Congress has been wasted in violent harangues on the subject of slavery. Inflammatory appeals have been sent forth from this central point throughout the country, the inevitable effect of which has been to create geographical parties, so much dreaded by the Father of his Country, and to estrange the northern and southern divisions of the Union from each other.
Before the Wilmot proviso was interposed, the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia had been the chief theme of agitation. Petitions for this purpose, by thousands, poured into Congress, session after session. The rights and the wishes of the owners of slaves within the District were boldly disregarded. Slavery was denounced as a national disgrace, which the laws of God and the laws of men ought to abolish, cost what it might. It mattered not to the fanatics that the abolition of slavery in the District would convert it into a citadel, in the midst of two slaveholding States, from which the Abolitionist could securely scatter arrows, firebrands and death all around. It mattered not with them that the abolition of slavery in the District would be a violation of the spirit of the Constitution and of the implied faith pledged to Maryland and Virginia, because the whole world knows that those States would never have ceded it to the Union, had they imagined it could ever be converted by Congress into a place from which their domestic peace and security might be assailed by fanatics and Abolitionists. Nay, the Abolitionists went even still further. They agitated for the purpose of abolishing slavery in the forts, arsenals and navy-yards which the Southern States had ceded to the Union, under the Constitution, for the protection and defence of the country.
Thus stood the question when the Wilmot proviso was interposed, to add fuel to the flame, and to excite the Southern people to madness.
. . . . . . . .
It would be the extreme of dangerous infatuation to suppose that the Union was not then in serious danger. Had the Wilmot proviso become a law, or had slavery been abolished in the District of Columbia, nothing short of a special interposition of Divine Providence could have prevented the secession of most, if not all, the slaveholding States.
It was from this great and glorious old Commonwealth, rightly denominated the ‘Keystone of the Arch,‘ that the first ray of light emanated to dispel the gloom. She stands now as the days-man, between the North and the South, and can lay her hand on either party, and say, thus far shalt thou go, and no farther. The wisdom, moderation and firmness of her people qualify her eminently to act as the just and equitable umpire between the extremes.
It was the vote in our State House of Representatives, refusing to consider the instructing resolution in favor of the Wilmot Proviso, which first cheered the heart of every patriot in the land. This was speedily followed by a vote of the House of Representatives at Washington, nailing the Wilmot Proviso itself to the table. And here I ought not to forget the great meeting held in Philadelphia on the birthday of the Father of his Country, in favor of the Union, which gave a happy and irresistible impulse to public opinion throughout the State, and I may add throughout the Union.
The honor of the South has been saved by the Compromise. The Wilmot Proviso is forever dead, and slavery will never be abolished in the District of Columbia whilst it continues to exist in Maryland. The receding storm in the South still continues to dash with violence, but it will gradually subside, should agitation cease in the North. All that is necessary for us to do ‘is to execute the Fugitive Slave Law,‘ and to let the Southern people alone, suffering them to manage their own domestic concerns in their own way......
2. I shall proceed to present to you some views upon the subject of the much misrepresented Fugitive Slave Law. It is now evident, from all the signs of the times, that this is destined to become the principal subject of agitation at the present session of Congress, and to take the place of the Wilmot Proviso. Its total repeal or its material modification will henceforward be the battle cry of the agitators of the North.
And what is the character of this law? It was passed to carry into execution a plain, clear, and mandatory provision of the Constitution, requiring that fugitive slaves, who fly from service in one State to another, shall be delivered up to their masters. The provision is so explicit that he who runs may read. No commentary can present it in a stronger light than the plain words of the Constitution. It is a well-known historical fact, that without this provision, the Constitution could never have existed. How could this have been otherwise? Is it possible for a moment to believe that the slave States would have formed a union with the free States, if under it their slaves, by simply escaping across the boundary which separates them, would acquire all the rights of freemen? This would have been to offer an irresistible temptation to all the slaves of the South to precipitate themselves upon the North. The Federal Constitution, therefore, recognizes in the clearest and most emphatic terms, the property in slaves, and protects this property by prohibiting any State into which a slave might escape, from discharging him from slavery, and by requiring that he shall be delivered up to his master.
. . . . . . . .
The two principal objections urged against the Fugitive Slave law are, that it will promote kidnapping, and that it does not provide a trial by jury for the fugitive in the State to which he has escaped.
The very same reasons may be urged, with equal force, against the act of 1793; and yet it existed for more than half a century without encountering any such objections.
In regard to kidnapping, the fears of the agitators are altogether groundless. The law requires that the fugitive shall be taken before the judge or commissioner. They must there prove, to the satisfaction of the magistrate, the identity of the fugitive, that he is the master’s property, and has escaped from his service. Now, I ask, would a kidnapper ever undertake such a task? Would he suborn witnesses to commit perjury, and expose himself to detection before a judge or commissioner, and in the presence of the argus eyes of a non-slaveholding community, whose feelings will always be in favor of the slave? No, never. The kidnapper seizes his victim in the silence of the night, or in a remote and obscure place, and hurries him away. He does not expose himself to the public gaze. He will never bring the unfortunate object of his rapacity before a commissioner or a judge. Indeed, I have no recollection of having heard or read of a case in which a free man was kidnapped under the forms of law, during the whole period of more than half a century, since the act of 1793 was passed.
. . . . . . . .
The Union cannot long endure, if it be bound together only by paper bonds. It can be firmly cemented alone by the affections of the people of the different States for each other. Would to Heaven that the spirit of mutual forbearance and brotherly love which presided at its birth, could once more be restored to bless the land! Upon opening a volume, a few days since, my eye caught a resolution of a Convention of the counties of Maryland, assembled at Annapolis, in June, 1744, in consequence of the passage by the British Parliament of the Boston Port Bill, which provided for opening a subscription ‘in the several counties of the Province, for an immediate collection for the relief of the distressed inhabitants of Boston, now cruelly deprived of the means of procuring subsistence for themselves and families by the operation of the said act of blocking up their harbor.‘ Would that the spirit of fraternal affection which dictated this noble resolution, and which actuated all the conduct of our revolutionary fathers, might return to bless and reanimate the bosoms of their descendants! This would render our Union indissoluble. It would be the living soul infusing itself into the Constitution and inspiring it with irresistible energy.”
I select from the letters of Mr. Buchanan to his niece, written in the years 1850, 1851, and 1852, some of those which indicate his constant interest in her, and in their home circle of friends, amid the very busy life which he led even when he was not in any official position:
[TO MISS LANE.]
BEDFORD SPRINGS, August 4, 1850.
MY DEAR HARRIET:—
I received your letter yesterday and was rejoiced to hear from home, especially of Mr. ——’s visit to Miss Hetty, which, I know must have rendered her very happy. I hope he will do better than Mr. —— or Mr. ——.
I have found Bedford very pleasant, as I always do; but we have very few of the old set, and the new are not equal to them. I will not tell you how many inquiries have been made for you, lest this might make you vainer than you are, which to say the least is unnecessary.
I intend, God willing, to leave here to-morrow morning. Six of us have taken an extra to Chambersburg: Mr. Wilmer and his daughter, Mrs. and Miss Bridges, Mr. Reigart and myself. I shall leave them at Loudon, as I proposed, and hope to be at home on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday next, I know not which.
It was kind in you, and this I appreciate, to say a word to me about Mrs. ——. Should Miss Hetty marry Mr. ——, I shall bring this matter to a speedy conclusion one way or the other. I shall then want a housekeeper, as you would not be fit to superintend: and whose society would be so charming as that of Mrs. ——-?
Remember me affectionately to Mrs. Dunham and Miss Hetty, and believe me to be yours “with the highest consideration.”
JAMES BUCHANAN.
[TO MISS LANE.]
WHEATLAND, October 12, 1850.
MY DEAR HARRIET:—
Mr. McIlvain of Philadelphia, with whom I had contracted to put up a furnace and kitchen range this week, has disappointed me, and I cannot leave home until this work shall be finished. He writes me that he will certainly commence on Monday morning; and if so, I hope to be in New York the beginning of the week after, say about the 22d instant.
You ask what about your staying at Mrs. Bancroft’s. With this I should be very much pleased; but it seems from your letter that she did not ask you to do so. She wished “to see a great deal” of you when you came to New York, implying that you were not to stay with her all the time. If she has since given you an invitation, accept it.
Could I have anticipated that you would not pass some time at Governor Marcy’s, I should have arranged this matter by writing to Mrs. Bancroft. It is now too late.
I may probably pass a few days at the Astor House in New York; but I may have to see so many politicians, that I should have but little time to devote to you. I desire very much to reach New York before the departure of Mr. Slidell which will be on the 26th instant.
I shall be very glad, if Clementina Pleasanton should accompany you home, though the leaves are beginning to change color and to fall.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Professor Muhlenbergh, having been appointed a professor in Pennsylvania College (Gettysburg), has ceased to teach school, and James Henry left for Princeton on Thursday last.
We have no local news, at least I know of none, that would interest you. I think we shall have very agreeable neighbors in the Gonders at Abbeville. Please to remember me very kindly to Mr. and Mrs. Robinson and give my love to Rose.
Yours affectionately, JAMES BUCHANAN.
[TO MISS LANE.]
WHEATLAND, January 17, 1851.
MY DEAR HARRIET:—
I have received yours of the 15th, and we are all happy to learn that you have reached Washington so pleasantly. I hope that your visit may prove agreeable; and that you may return home self-satisfied with all that may transpire during your absence. Keep your eyes about you in the gay scenes through which you are destined to pass, and take care to do nothing and say nothing of which you may have cause to repent. Above all be on your guard against flattery; and should you receive it, “let it pass into one ear gracefully and out at the other.” Many a clever girl has been spoiled for the useful purposes of life, and rendered unhappy by a winter’s gaiety in Washington. I know, however, that Mrs. Pleasanton will take good care of you and prevent you from running into any extravagance. Still it is necessary that, with the blessing of Providence, you should take care of yourself.
I attended the festival in Philadelphia, on the occasion of the arrival of the steamer “City of Glasgow,” but did not see Lilly Macalester. Her father thinks of taking her to the World’s Fair in London. I saw Mrs. Plitt for a moment, who inquired kindly after you.
We are moving on here in the old way, and I have no news of any interest to communicate to you. Eskridge was out here last night, and said they were all well in town. I met Mrs. Baker yesterday on the street with her inseparable companion. She was looking very well.
I have not yet determined whether I shall visit Washington during the present session; but it is probable that I may, on or about the first of February.
Give my love to Laura and Clementina, and remember me in the kindest terms to Mr. and Mrs. Pleasanton.
Miss Hetty and James desire their love to you.
Yours affectionately, JAMES BUCHANAN.
[TO MISS LANE.]
WHEATLAND near LANCASTER, April 7, 1851.
MY DEAR HARRIET:—
Supposing that you are now in Baltimore, I send you the enclosed letter received yesterday. It was inadvertently opened by me; but the moment I saw it was addressed to “My dear Harriet” it was closed. It may contain love or treason for aught I know.
Eskridge was here yesterday; but he gave me no news, except that Mary and he were at a party at Mr. McElrath’s on Wednesday evening last.
The place now begins to look beautiful, and we have concerts of the birds every morning. Still I fear it will appear dull to you after your winter’s gaiety. Lewis has gone, and we have a new coachman in the person of Mr. Francis Quinn, who with his lady occupy the gardener’s house. They have no children. Mr. C. Reigart will leave here on Saturday next for the World’s Fair and a trip to the continent. Your ci-devant lover, Mr. ——, purposes to go likewise; but many persons think he will not get off on account of the expense. Mr. and Mrs. Gonder prove to be very agreeable neighbors. They are furnishing their house and fitting up their grounds with much taste and at considerable expense.
With my kindest regards for Mr. and Mrs. White and the young ladies, I remain,
Yours affectionately, JAMES BUCHANAN.
[TO MISS LANE.]
WHEATLAND, near LANCASTER, Nov. 4, 1851.
MY DEAR HARRIET:—
I have received your favor of the 29th ultimo, and would have answered it sooner had I not been absent at Lebanon on its arrival. You appear to have already got under full sail in Pittsburgh, and I hope your voyage throughout may be prosperous and happy. If you have found the place even blacker and dirtier than you anticipated, you will find the people warm-hearted, generous, kind and agreeable. But do not for a moment believe that any hearts will be broken, even if you should fail to pay all the visits to families where you are invited. I know, however, that you are not so romantic a girl as to take for gospel all the pretty things which may be said to you.
My dinner to the bride and groom is to come off next Saturday, and I intend to call upon Mrs. Baker to be mistress of ceremonies. I had to send for her on Friday last to stay with Mr. and Mrs. Yost, whom I was compelled to leave, by an engagement to be present at a Jubilee at Lebanon.
Eskridge was here on Sunday, but brought no budget of news. Indeed, I believe, there is nothing stirring which would interest you.
I have a friend in Pittsburgh, such as few men ever had, by name Major David Lynch. He does not move in the first circle of fashionable society, but he exercises more influence than any other Democrat in that region. His devotion to me is unexampled. With one such man there would be no difficulty in Lancaster county. I know that Dr. Speer don’t like him; but when you visit Mrs. Collins, get Mr. McCandless to request him to pay you a visit and treat him with the utmost kindness. His wife is a lady of fine sense; but I presume you will not be asked to visit her. If you should, make it a point to go.
Miss Hetty and myself are now alone, although I have many calls. For the last two days, and a great part of the night I have been constantly at work in answering the letters which have accumulated during my absence at New York, the Harrisburg Fair and Lebanon.
Miss Hetty desires to be kindly remembered to you. Take care of yourself. Be prudent and discreet among strangers. I hope you will not remove the favorable impression you have made. Please to present my kindest regards to Dr. and Mrs. Speer, Miss Lydia and the family, and believe me to be,
Yours affectionately, JAMES BUCHANAN.
P.S.—If I believed it necessary, I would advise you to be constant in your devotions to your God. He is a friend who will never desert you. Men are short-sighted and know not the consequences of their own actions. The most brilliant prospects are often overcast; and those who commence life under the fairest auspices, are often unfortunate. Ask wisdom and discretion from above. ——, and ——, and —— married unfortunately. I should like nothing better than to see you well settled in life; but never think of marrying any man unless his moral habits are good, and his business or his fortune will enable him to support you comfortably. So now my postscript is like a woman’s; the best the last.
[TO MISS LANE.]
Saturday Morning, Nov. 8, 1851.
MY DEAR HARRIET:—
Our excellent friend and neighbor, Mr. Gonder, died this morning, and this event has covered us with gloom. Of course there will be no dinner party to-day. We are all well and going on as usual.
Yours affectionately, JAMES BUCHANAN.
[TO MISS LANE.]
WHEATLAND, near LANCASTER, Dec. 12, 1851.
MY DEAR HARRIET:—
I have received your letter of the 6th instant, and am happy to learn you are still enjoying yourself at Pittsburgh. I have not any news of interest to communicate, unless it be that Mary and Kate Reynolds went to Philadelphia on Wednesday last, and James Henry is to be at home next week. At Wheatland we are all moving on in the old way. My correspondence is now so heavy as to occupy my whole time from early morning until late at night, except when visitors are with me.
I still continue to be of the same opinion I was concerning the Presidency; but this is for yourself alone.
My life is now one of great labor, but I am philosopher enough not to be very anxious.
. . . . . . . .
With my kindest regards for Mrs. Collins and Sis,
I remain yours affectionately, JAMES BUCHANAN.
[TO MISS LANE.]
WHEATLAND, near Lancaster, Feb. 24, 1852.
MY DEAR HARRIET:—
On my return home from Richmond and Washington, on the day before yesterday, I received yours of the 9th instant. I am truly grateful that you have enjoyed your visit to Pittsburgh so much. I have no desire that you shall return home until it suits your own inclination. All I apprehend is that you may wear out your welcome. It will be impossible for me to visit Pittsburgh and escort you home.
. . . . . . . .
Senator Gwin misinformed me as to the value of Mr. Baker’s office. The salary attached to it is $4000 per annum. He thinks that Mrs. Baker ought by all means to go to California. I have not seen Eskridge since my return.
I took Miss —— to Washington and left her there, and am truly glad to be clear of her.
Whilst in Washington I saw very little of the fashionable society. My time was almost constantly occupied with the politicians. Still I partook of a family dinner with the Pleasantons, who all desired to be kindly remembered to you. I never saw Clementina looking better than she does, and they all appear to be cheerful. Still when an allusion was made to her mother, she was overcome at the table and had to leave it. Mr. Pleasanton is evidently in very delicate health, though he goes to his office.
I called to see Mrs. Walker, who inquired very kindly for you, and so did Col. King and others.
The mass of letters before me is “prodigious,” and I only write to show that you are not forgotten.
Yours affectionately, JAMES BUCHANAN.
[TO MISS LANE.]
WHEATLAND, near LANCASTER, March 13, 1852.
MY DEAR HARRIET:—
I have received yours of the 9th instant. It was difficult to persuade you to visit Pittsburgh, but it seems to be still more difficult for you to leave it. I am, however, not disappointed in this particular, because I know the kindness and hospitality of the people. There is not a better or more true-hearted man alive than John Anderson, and his excellent wife well deserves such a husband. Make out your visit, which, it is evident, you propose to continue until the middle of April; but after your return I hope you will be content to remain at home during the summer. The birds are now singing around the house, and we are enjoying the luxury of a fine day in the opening spring.
Miss Hetty has just informed me that Mrs. Lane gave birth to a son a few days ago, which they call John N. Lane. She heard it this morning at market from Eskridge, whom I have not seen since last Sunday week. I hope he will be here to-morrow.
The new Court House is to be erected on Newton Lightner’s corner. Its location has caused much excitement in Lancaster. It enables your sweetheart, Mr. Evans, Mr. Lightner and Mr. —— to sell their property to advantage. We have no other news.
Yours affectionately, JAMES BUCHANAN.
P.S.—Miss Harriet Lane to me; but Miss Harri_ette_ to the rest of man and womankind.
[TO MISS LANE.]
SARATOGA SPRINGS, August 8, 1852.
MY DEAR HARRIET:—
I arrived at this place on Thursday evening last, and now on Sunday morning before church am addressing you this note........ I find the Springs very agreeable and the company very pleasant, yet there does not appear to be so many of the “dashers” here as I have seen. The crowd is very great, in fact it is quite a mob of fashionable folks. Mrs. Plitt is very agreeable and quite popular. Mrs. Slidell is the most gay, brilliant and fashionable lady at the Springs; and as I am her admirer, and attached to her party, I am thus rendered a little more conspicuous in the beau monde than I could desire. Mrs. Rush conducts herself very much like a lady, and is quite popular. She has invited me to accompany her to Alboni’s concert to-morrow evening, and I would rather go with her to any other place. Alboni is all the rage here. I have seen and conversed with her, and am rather impressed in her favor. She is short and thick, but has a very good, arch and benevolent countenance. I shall, however, soon get tired of this place, and do not expect to remain here longer than next Thursday. Not having heard from you, I should have felt somewhat uneasy, had Mary not written to Mrs. Plitt. I expect to be at home in two weeks from the time I started. Mrs. Plitt desires me to send her love to you, Mrs. Baker and Miss Hetty. Remember me affectionately to Mrs. Baker, Miss Hetty and James Henry, and believe me to be
Yours affectionately, JAMES BUCHANAN.
Numerous public letters written by Mr. Buchanan in these years, 1851 and 1852, find their appropriate place here. They exhibit fully all his sentiments and opinions on the topics which then agitated the country.
[TO COL. GEORGE R. FALL.[4]]
WHEATLAND, near LANCASTER, Dec. 24th, 1851.
MY DEAR SIR:—
I am sorry I did not receive your letter sooner. I might then have given it the “old-fashioned Democratic” answer which you desire. But I am compelled to leave home immediately; and if I should not write at the present moment, it will be too late for the 8th of January Convention. I must therefore be brief.
My public life is before the country, and it is my pride never to have evaded an important political question. The course of Democracy is always straight ahead, and public men who determine to pursue it never involve themselves in labyrinths, except when they turn to the right or the left from the plain forward path. Madison’s Report and Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolutions are the safest and surest guides to conduct a Democratic administration of the Federal Government. It is the true mission of Democracy to resist centralism and the absorption of unconstitutional powers by the President and Congress. The sovereignty of the States and a devotion to their reserved rights can alone preserve and perpetuate our happy system of Government. The exercise of doubtful and constructive powers on the part of Congress has produced all the dangerous and exciting questions which have imperilled the Union. The Federal Government, even confined within its strict constitutional limits, must necessarily acquire more and more influence through the increased and increasing expenditure of public money, and hence the greater necessity for public economy and watchful vigilance. Our Constitution, when it proceeded from the hands of its framers, was a simple system; and the more free from complexity it remains, the more powerfully, satisfactorily and beneficially will it operate within its legitimate sphere.
It is centralization alone which has prevented the French people from establishing a permanent republican government, and entailed upon them so many misfortunes. Had the provinces of France been converted into separate territorial provinces, like our State governments, Paris would then no longer have been France, and a revolution at the capital would not have destroyed the Federative Republic.
Had the principles I have enumerated been observed by the Federal Government and by the people of the several States, we should have avoided the alarming questions which have arisen out of the institution of domestic slavery. The people of each State would then, to employ a homely but expressive phrase, have attended to their own business and not have interfered in the domestic concerns of their sister States. But on this important subject I have so fully presented my views in the enclosed letter to the great meeting in Philadelphia, held in November, 1850, that it would be useless to repeat them, even if time would permit.
From your friend, very respectfully, JAMES BUCHANAN.
Footnote 4:
From the Mississippian of January 9, 1852.
[TO THE CENTRAL SOUTHERN RIGHTS ASSOCIATION OF VIRGINIA.]
WHEATLAND, near LANCASTER, April 10, 1851.
MY DEAR SIR:—
I have received your kind letter of the 2d inst., with the resolutions adopted by the Central Southern Rights Association of Virginia, inviting me to address the Association at such time as may suit my convenience, and to counsel with them “in regard to the best means to be adopted in the present alarming crisis, for the maintenance of the Constitution and the Union of these States in their original purity.”
I should esteem it both a high honor and a great privilege to comply with this request, and therefore regret to say, that engagements, which I need not specify, render it impossible for me to visit Richmond during the present, or probably the next month.
The Association do me no more than justice, when attributing to me a strong desire “for the maintenance of the Constitution, and the Union of the States in their original purity.”
Whilst few men in this country would venture to avow a different sentiment, yet the question still remains, by what means can this all-important purpose be accomplished? I feel no hesitation in answering, by returning to the old Virginia platform of State rights, prescribed by the resolutions of 1798, and Mr. Madison’s report. The powers conferred by the Constitution upon the General Government, must be construed strictly, and Congress must abstain from the exercise of all doubtful powers. But it is said these are mere unmeaning abstractions—and so they are, unless honestly carried into practice. Like the Christian faith, however, when it is genuine, good results will inevitably flow from a sincere belief in such a strict construction of the Constitution.
Were this old republican principle adopted in practice, we should no longer witness unwarrantable and dangerous attempts in Congress to interfere with the institution of domestic slavery, which belongs exclusively to the States where it exists—there would be no efforts to establish high protective tariffs—the public money would not be squandered upon a general system of internal improvements—general in name, but particular in its very nature, and corrupting in its tendency, both to the Government and to the people; and we would retrench our present extravagant expenditure, pay our national debt, and return to the practice of a wise economy, so essential to public and private prosperity. Were I permitted to address your Association, these are the counsels I should give, and some of the topics I should discuss, as the best means “for the maintenance both of the Constitution and the Union of the States, in their original purity,” and for the perpetuation of our great and glorious confederacy.
With sentiments of high regard, I remain yours, very respectfully,
JAMES BUCHANAN.
[TO SHELTON F. LEAKE, ESQ., AND OTHER GENTLEMEN.[5]]
Footnote 5:
From the Lancaster Intelligencer, February 24, 1852.
RICHMOND, February 12, 1852.
GENTLEMEN:—
On my arrival in this city last evening I received your very kind letter, welcoming me to the metropolis of the Old Dominion and tendering me the honor of a public dinner. I regret—deeply regret—that my visit to Richmond will necessarily be so brief that I cannot enjoy the pleasure and the privilege of meeting you all at the festive board. Intending merely to pass a day with my valued friend, Judge Mason, my previous arrangements are of such a character that I must leave here to-morrow, or, at the latest, on Saturday morning.
But whilst I cannot accept the dinner, I shall ever esteem the invitation from so many of Virginia’s most distinguished and estimable sons as one of the proudest honors of my life. Your ancient and renowned commonwealth has ever been the peculiar guardian of State rights and the firm supporter of constitutional liberty, of law, and of order. When, therefore, she endorses with her approbation any of my poor efforts to serve the country, her commendation is a sure guarantee that these have been devoted to a righteous cause.
You are pleased to refer in favorable terms to my recent conduct “at home in defence of the Federal Constitution and laws.” This was an easy and agreeable task, because the people of Pennsylvania have ever been as loyal and faithful to the Constitution, the Union, the rights of the sovereign States of which it is composed, as the people of the ancient Dominion themselves. To have pursued a different course in my native State would therefore, have been to resist the strong current of enlightened public opinion.
I purposely refrain from discussing the original merit of the Compromise, because I consider it, to employ the expressive language of the day, as a “finality”—a fixed fact—a most important enactment of law, the agitation or disturbance of which could do no possible good, but might produce much positive evil. Our noble vessel of State, freighted with the hope of mankind, both for the present and future generations, has passed through the most dangerous breakers which she has ever encountered, and has triumphantly ridden out the storm. Both those who supported the measures of the Compromise as just and necessary, and those who, regarding them in a different light, yet acquiesce in them for the sake of the Union, have arrived at the same conclusion—that it must and shall be executed. They have thus, for every practical purpose, adopted the same platform, and have resolved to sustain it against the common enemy.—Why, then, should they wrangle, and divide and waste their energies, not respecting the main question, which has already been definitely settled, but in regard to the process which has brought them, though from different directions, to the same conclusion? Above all, why should the strength of the Democratic party of the country be impaired and its ascendency be jeoparded for any such cause? We who believe that the triumph of Democratic principles is essential not only to the prosperity of the Union, but even to the preservation of the Constitution, ought reciprocally to forget, and, if need be, to forgive the past, and cordially unite with our political brethren in sustaining for the future the good old cause of Democracy. It must be a source of deep and lasting pleasure to every patriotic heart that our beloved country has so happily passed through the late trying and dangerous crisis. The volcano has been extinguished, I trust, forever; and the man who would apply a firebrand, at the present moment, to the combustible materials which still remain, may produce an eruption to overwhelm both the Constitution and the Union.
With sentiments of high and grateful respect,
I remain your fellow citizen, JAMES BUCHANAN.
[TO JOHN NELSON, WM. F. GILES, JOHN O. WHARTON, JOHN MORRIS, CARROLL SPENCE, AND OTHER CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE.]
WHEATLAND, near LANCASTER, February 3, 1852.
GENTLEMEN:—
In returning home through your city on Saturday last, I had the unexpected honor of receiving your kind invitation to partake of a public dinner at such time as might best suit my own convenience. For this distinguished and valuable token of your regard, please to accept my most grateful acknowledgments; and, whilst regretting that circumstances, which it would be too tedious to explain, will deprive me of the pleasure of meeting you at the festive board, you may rest assured that I shall ever highly prize the favorable opinion you express of my poor public services.
To the city of Baltimore I have ever been attached by strong ties. In early life I had selected it as the place where to practice my profession; and nothing prevented me from carrying this purpose into effect but my invincible reluctance, at the last moment, to leave my native State. The feeling which prompted me in 1814, during the last war with Great Britain, to march as a private to Baltimore, a circumstance to which you kindly allude, resulted from a patriotism so universal throughout Pennsylvania, that the honor which may fall to the lot of any one of the thousands of my fellow-citizens who volunteered their services on that trying occasion, scarcely deserves to be mentioned.
If I rightly read “the signs of the times,” there has seldom been a period when the Democratic party of the country, to which you and I are warmly attached, was in greater danger of suffering a defeat than at the present moment. In order to avert this catastrophe, we must mutually forget and forgive past dissensions, suffer “bygones to be bygones,” and commence a new career, keeping constantly in view the ancient and long established landmarks of the party. Most, if not all the great questions of policy which formerly divided us from our political opponents, have been settled in our favor. No person, at this day, thinks of re-establishing another national bank, or repealing the Independent Treasury, or distributing the proceeds of the public lands among the several States, or abolishing the veto power. On these great and important questions, the Whigs, after a long and violent struggle, have yielded; and, for the present, at least, would seem to stand upon the Democratic platform. The compromise measures are now a “finality”—those who opposed them honestly and powerfully, and who still believe them to be wrong, having patriotically determined to acquiesce in them for the sake of the Union, provided they shall be faithfully carried into execution.
On what issues, then, can we go before the country and confidently calculate upon the support of the American people at the approaching Presidential election? I answer unhesitatingly that we must fall back, as you suggest, upon those fundamental and time-honored principles which have divided us from our political opponents since the beginning, and which from the very nature of the Federal Constitution, must continue to divide us from them until the end. We must inscribe upon our banners a sacred regard for the reserved rights of the States—a strict construction of the Constitution—a denial to Congress of all powers not clearly granted by that instrument, and a rigid economy in public expenditures.
These expenditures have now reached the enormous sum of fifty millions of dollars per annum, and, unless arrested in their advance by the strong arm of the Democracy of the country, may, in the course of a few years, reach one hundred millions. The appropriation of money to accomplish great national objects sanctioned by the Constitution, ought to be on a scale commensurate with our power and resources as a nation—but its expenditure ought to be conducted under the guidance of enlightened economy and strict responsibility. I am convinced that our expenses might be considerably reduced below the present standard, not only without detriment, but with positive advantage both to the government and the people.
An excessive and lavish expenditure of public money, though in itself highly pernicious, is as nothing when compared with the disastrous influence it may exert upon the character of our free institutions. A strong tendency towards extravagance is the great political evil of the present day; and this ought to be firmly resisted. Congress is now incessantly importuned from every quarter to make appropriations for all sorts of projects. Money, money from the National Treasury is constantly demanded to enrich contractors, speculators, and agents; and these projects are gilded over with every allurement which can be imparted to them by ingenuity and talent. Claims which had been condemned by former decisions and had become rusty with age have been again revived, and have been paid, principal and interest. Indeed there seems to be one general rush to obtain money from the Treasury on any and every pretence.
What will be the inevitable consequence of such lavish expenditures? Are they not calculated to disturb the nicely adjusted balance between the Federal and State Governments, upon the preservation of which depend the harmony and efficiency of our system? Greedy expectants from the Federal Treasury will regard with indifference, if not with contempt, the governments of the several States. The doctrine of State rights will be laughed to scorn by such individuals, as an obsolete abstraction unworthy of the enlightened spirit of the age. The corrupting power of money will be felt throughout the length and breadth of this land; and the Democracy, led on by the hero and sage of the Hermitage, will have in vain put down the Bank of the United States, if the same fatal influence for which it was condemned, shall be exerted and fostered by means drawn from the Public Treasury.
To be liberal with their own money but sparing of that of the Republic was the glory of distinguished public servants among the ancient Romans. When this maxim was reversed, and the public money was employed by artful and ambitious demagogues to secure their own aggrandizement, genuine liberty soon expired. It is true that the forms of the Republic continued for many years; but the animating and inspiring soul had fled forever. I entertain no serious apprehensions that we shall ever reach this point, yet we may still profit by their example.
With sentiments of the highest respect, I remain your friend and fellow-citizen,
JAMES BUCHANAN.
To these should be added an address made at a festival in Philadelphia on the 11th of January, 1851, on the establishment of a line of steamships between that city and Liverpool. The account is taken from the journals of the time.
After Governor Johnston had concluded, Morton McMichael came forward, and said that he had been instructed by the Committee of Arrangements to propose the health of an eminent Pennsylvanian who was then present—one who had represented his State in the National legislative councils, and had occupied a chief place in the administration of the National Government, and in regard to whom, however political differences might exist, all agreed that his high talents, his unsullied integrity, and his distinguished public services had justly placed him in the foremost rank, not only of Pennsylvanians, but of all Americans. He therefore gave
The health of the Hon. James Buchanan.
When Mr. Buchanan rose to reply, there was a whirlwind of cheers and applause. In the midst of it the band struck up a favorite and complimentary air, at the end of which the cheering was renewed, and several minutes elapsed before he could be heard.
Mr. Buchanan, after making his acknowledgments to the company for the kind manner in which he had been received, proceeded to speak as follows:—
What a spectacle does this meeting present! It must be a source of pride and gratification to every true-hearted Pennsylvanian. Here are assembled the executive and legislative authorities of the commonwealth, several members from the State to the present Congress, as well as those elected to the next, and the Board of Canal Commissioners, enjoying the magnificent hospitality of the city and the incorporated districts adjacent—all of which, in fact, constitute but one great city of Philadelphia.
What important event in the history of Philadelphia is this meeting intended to celebrate? Not a victory achieved by our arms over a foreign foe. Not the advent amongst us of a great military captain fresh from the bloody fields of his glory; but the arrival here of a peaceful commercial steamer from the other side of the Atlantic. This welcome stranger is destined, as we all trust, to be the harbinger of a rapidly increasing foreign trade between our own city and the great commercial city of Liverpool. All hail to Captain Matthews and his gallant crew! Peace, as well as war, has its triumphs; and these, although they may not be so brilliant, are far more enduring and useful to mankind.
The establishment of a regular line of steamers between these two ports will prove of vast importance both to the city of Philadelphia and the State at large. And here, let me observe, that the interests of the city and the State are identical—inseparable. Like man and wife, when a well-assorted couple, they are mutually dependent. The welfare and prosperity of the one are the welfare and prosperity of the other. “Those whom Heaven has joined together, let not man put asunder.” If any jealousies, founded or unfounded, have heretofore existed between them, let them be banished from this day forward and forever. Let them be in the “deep bosom of the ocean buried.”
The great Central Railroad will furnish the means of frequent and rapid intercommunication between the city and the State. In the course of another year, Philadelphia will be brought within twelve or fourteen hours of our Great Iron City of the West—a city of as much energy and enterprise for the number of inhabitants, as any on the face of the earth; and, I might add, of as warm and generous hospitality. I invite you all, in the name of the people of the interior, to visit us oftener than you have done heretofore. You shall receive a hearty welcome. Let us become better acquainted, and we shall esteem each other more.
But will this great undertaking to extend the foreign commerce of Philadelphia with Europe, by means of regular lines of steamers, prove successful? To doubt this is to doubt whether the capital, intelligence, and perseverance, which have assured signal success to Philadelphia in every other industrial pursuit, shall fail when applied to steam navigation on the ocean. But after to-night there can be “no such word as fail” in our vocabulary. We have put our hand to the plough, and we must go ahead. We dare not, because we cannot, look back without disgrace; whilst success in foreign commerce will be the capsheaf—the crowning glory of Philadelphia.
The distance of Philadelphia from the ocean, and the consequent length of river navigation, have hitherto constituted an obstacle to her success in foreign trade. Thanks to the genius of Fulton, this obstacle has been removed, and the noble Delaware, for every purpose of foreign commerce, is as if it were an arm of the sea. We learn from the highest authority, that of the pioneer who was an officer in one of the first steamers which ever crossed the Atlantic, and who has successfully completed his ninety-ninth voyage, that the difference in time from Liverpool between New York and Philadelphia is only about twenty hours. This is comparatively of no importance, and cannot have the slightest effect on the success of the enterprise.
Fulton was a native citizen of Pennsylvania. He was born in the county where I reside. And shall not the metropolis of the native State of that extraordinary man who, first of the human race, successfully applied steam power to navigation, enjoy the benefits of this momentous discovery which has changed the whole face of the civilized world? Philadelphia, in her future career, will gloriously answer this question.
Philadelphia enjoys many advantages for the successful pursuit of foreign commerce. Her population now exceeds 400,000; and it is a population of which we may be justly proud. It is of no mushroom growth; but has advanced steadily onward. Her immense capital is the result of long years of successful industry and enterprise. Strength and durability characterize all her undertakings. She has already achieved distinguished success in manufactures, in the mechanic arts, in domestic commerce, and in every other industrial pursuit, and in the natural progress of events, she has now determined to devote her energies to foreign commerce.
And where is there a city in the world, whose ship-yards produce finer vessels? Whether for beauty of model, rapidity of sailing, or durability, Philadelphia built vessels have long enjoyed the highest character. Long as I have been in the public councils, I have never known a vessel of war built in this city, not fully equal to any of her class afloat on the waters of the world. A few weeks since I had the pleasure of examining the steamer Susquehanna, and I venture to say, that a nobler vessel can nowhere be found. She will bear the stars and the stripes triumphantly amid the battle and the breeze. May we not hope that Philadelphia steamers will, ere long, be found bearing her trade and her name on every sea, and into every great commercial port on the face of this earth?
The vast resources of the State which will be poured into the lap of Philadelphia, will furnish the materials of an extensive foreign commerce. And here, in the presence of this domestic family Pennsylvania circle, may we not indulge in a little self-gratulation, and may we not be pardoned, if nobody else will praise us, for praising ourselves. We have every reason to be proud of our State; and perhaps we ought to cherish a little more State pride than we possess. This, when not carried to excess, when it scorns to depreciate a rival, is a noble and useful principle of action. It is the parent of generous emulation in the pursuit of all that is excellent, all that is calculated to adorn and bless mankind. It enkindles the desire in us to stand as high as the highest among our sister States, in the councils of our country, in the pursuit of agriculture and manufactures and every useful art. This honorable feeling of State pride, particularly when the Pennsylvanian is abroad, out of his native land, will make his heart swell with exultation, if he finds that Philadelphia has become a great commercial city, her flag waving over every sea, her steamers to be seen in every port—an elevated position in which Philadelphia, if she but wills it, can undoubtedly be placed.
The great and good founder of our State, whose precept and whose practice was “peace on earth, and good will to man,” immediately after he had obtained the royal charter, in the spirit of prophetic enthusiasm declared, “God will bless, and make it the seed of a nation. I shall have a tender care of the government that it be well laid at first.”
How gloriously this prediction has been verified! God has blessed it, and the seed which the founder sowed has borne the richest fruit. We are indeed a nation, confederated with thirty other sovereign nations or States by the most sacred political instrument in the annals of mankind, called the Constitution of the United States. Besides, we are truly the keystone of this vast confederacy, and our character and position eminently qualify us to act as a mediator between opposing extremes. Placed in the centre, between the North and the South, with a population distinguished for patriotism and steady good sense, and a devoted love to the Union, we stand as the days man, between the extremes, and can declare with the voice of power to both, hitherto shalt thou go, and no further. May this Union endure forever, the source of innumerable blessings to those who live under its beneficent sway, and the star of hope to millions of down-trodden men throughout the world!
Bigotry has never sacrificed its victims at the shrine of intolerance in this our favored State. When they were burning witches in Massachusetts, honestly believing at the time they were doing God’s service, William Penn, in 1684, presided at the trial of a witch. Under his direction, the verdict was: “The prisoner is guilty of the common fame of being a witch; but not guilty as she stands indicted.” And “in Penn’s domain, from that day to this,” says the gifted historian, “neither demon nor hag ever rode through the air on goat or broomstick.”
From the first settlement of the province until the present moment, the freedom of conscience established by the founder, has been perfect. Religion has always been a question exclusively between man and his Creator, and every human being has been free to worship his Maker according to the dictates of his own conscience.
Bigotry, madly assuming to itself an attribute belonging to the Almighty, has never attempted to punish any one of his creatures for not adapting his belief to its own standard of faith. We have great cause to be proud of the early history of Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania, more than any other State of the Union, has been settled by emigrants from all the European nations. Our population now exceeds two millions and a quarter; but we cannot say that it is composed of the pure Anglo-Saxon race. The English, the Germans, the Scotch Irish, the Irish, the Welsh, the French, and emigrants from every other European country have all intermingled upon our happy soil. We are truly a mixed race. And is not this a cause for self-gratulation? Providence, as if to designate his will that families and nations should cultivate extended intercourse with each other, has decreed that intermarriage in the same family shall eventually produce a miserable and puny race, both in body and in mind; whilst intermarriages among entire strangers have been signally blessed. May it then not be probable that the intermixture of the natives of the different nations is calculated to produce a race superior to any one of the elements of which it is composed. Let us hope that we possess the good qualities of all, without a large share of the evil qualities of either. Certain it is that in Pennsylvania we can boast of a population which for energy, for patient industry, and for strict morality, are unsurpassed by the people of any other country.
And what is her condition at present? Heaven has blessed us with a climate which, notwithstanding its variations, is equal to almost any other on the face of the earth, and a soil capable of furnishing all the agricultural products of the temperate zone. And how have we improved these advantages? In agriculture we have excelled. I have myself been over a good portion of the best cultivated parts of the world; but never anywhere, in any country, have I witnessed such evidences of real substantial comfort and prosperity, such farm-houses and barns, as are to be found in Pennsylvania. It is true we cannot boast of baronial castles, and of extensive parks and pleasure grounds, and of all the other appendages of wealth and aristocracy which beautify and adorn the scenery of other countries. These can only exist in countries where the soil is monopolized by wealthy proprietors and where the farms are consequently occupied by a dependent tenantry. Thank Heaven! in this country, every man of industry and economy, with the blessings of Providence upon his honest labor, can acquire a freehold for himself, and sit under his own vine and his own fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.
Then in regard to our mineral wealth. We have vast masses of coal and iron scattered with a profuse hand under the surface of our soil. These are far more valuable than the golden sands and golden ore of California. The patient labor necessary to extract these treasures from the earth, and bring them to market, strengthens the sinews of the laborer, makes him self-reliant and dependent upon his own exertions, infuses courage into the heart, and produces a race capable of maintaining their liberties at home and of defending their country against any and every foreign foe. Look at your neighboring town of Richmond. There three millions of tons of coal are annually brought to market, and the domestic tonnage employed for sending it abroad exceeds the whole foreign tonnage of the city of New York. All these vast productions of our agriculture and our mines are the natural aliments of foreign commerce for the city of Philadelphia.
But this is not all. Our Central Railroad will soon be completed; and when this is finished, it will furnish the avenue by which the productions of the great West will seek a market in Philadelphia. It will connect with a chain of numerous other railroads, penetrating the vast valley of the Mississippi in different directions, which will bring the productions of that extended region to seek a market in Philadelphia.
And with these unexampled materials for foreign commerce, is it possible that the city of Philadelphia will hold back? Will she not employ her capital in a vigorous effort to turn to her own advantage all these elements of wealth which Providence has placed within her reach? What is the smallest share of foreign commerce to which she is legitimately entitled? It is at least to import into Philadelphia all the foreign goods necessary for the supply of Pennsylvania and the far West, which seek her markets for their productions. She is bound, by every principle of interest and duty, to bring to her own wharves this amount of foreign trade, and never as a Pennsylvanian shall I rest satisfied until she shall have attained this measure of success. Shall she then tamely look on and suffer her great rival city, of which every American ought to be proud, to monopolize the profit and advantages to which she is justly and fairly entitled? Shall New York continue to be the importing city for Philadelphia? Shall she any longer be taunted with the imputation that so far as foreign trade is concerned, she is a mere provincial and dependent city? She can, if she but energetically wills it, change this course of trade so disadvantageous to her character and her interests; and the proceedings of this meeting afford abundant assurances that from this day forth she is destined to enter upon a new and glorious career. She must be prepared to encounter and to overcome serious competition. She must therefore nerve her arm for the struggle. The struggle is worthy of her most determined efforts.
II. 1852
THE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATIONS OF 1852—ELECTION OF GENERAL FRANKLIN PIERCE TO THE PRESIDENCY—BUCHANAN’S COURSE IN REGARD TO THE NOMINATION AND THE ELECTION—HIS EFFORTS TO DEFEAT THE WHIG CANDIDATE.
In arraying themselves for the Presidential election of 1852, the Democratic and the Whig parties might have had an equal or a nearly equal reason to look for success, if they had been equally consistent with their professed principles on the subject of the compromise measures of 1850. But while the Democrats, both by their “platform” and their candidate, gave the people of the country reason to believe that the great national settlement of 1850 was to be adhered to, the Whigs, although promising as much by their “platform,” did not, in the person of their candidate and his apparent political connections, afford the same grounds of confidence. The nominating convention of the Democrats was the first to be held. It assembled at Baltimore on the 1st of June, 1852. Mr. Buchanan was one of the principal candidates for the nomination, but it soon became apparent that neither he, General Cass, Mr. Douglas, Mr. Dickinson, Governor Marcy, or any other of the more prominent leaders of the party would receive it. The candidate finally agreed upon was General Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire, a younger man than most of the others. He had been a Senator in Congress from that State for five years preceding 1842, and had served with spirit in the Mexican war as a Brigadier General of Volunteers. As a candidate for the Presidency, he represented in the fullest and most unqualified manner the resolution adopted by the convention as a part of its “platform,” and which pledged him and his party to “resist all attempts at renewing in Congress, or out of it, the agitation of the slavery question, under whatever shape or color the attempt may be made.”
On the other hand, the Whig convention, which assembled at Baltimore on the 16th of June, nominated General Winfield Scott, to the exclusion of Mr. Webster and President Fillmore, after fifty-two ballotings; and although the resolutions, with a strength equal to that of the Democratic “platform,” affirmed the binding character of the compromise measures of 1850, and opposed all further agitation of the questions thus settled, as dangerous to the peace of the country, seventy delegates from free States, who had voted steadily for General Scott as the candidate, recorded their votes against this resolution, and many Whig papers in the North refused to be bound by it, and treated it with utter contumely. The result was the election of General Pierce as President, and William R. King of Alabama as Vice President, by the almost unprecedented majority of one hundred and five electoral votes more than was necessary for a choice. General Scott obtained the electoral votes of but four States, Massachusetts, Vermont, Kentucky and Tennessee; forty-two in all.
The reader will be interested to learn from the following private correspondence how Mr. Buchanan felt and acted before and after the nomination of General Pierce, and also how one of his prominent rivals, Governor Marcy, felt and acted towards him and others. It is refreshing to look back to the good nature and cool philosophy which could be exhibited by such men in regard to the great stake of the Presidency:
[GOVERNOR MARCY TO MR. BUCHANAN.]
ALBANY, May 31, 1852.
MY DEAR SIR:—
When your very kind letter of the 19th inst. was received, my time was much taken up by several transient persons passing through this place to Baltimore for a certain grave purpose. I delayed a reply to it until this annoyance should be over, but before that happened, I was unexpectedly called to New York, and have but just returned. This is my excuse for a seeming neglect.
I assure you I rejoice as much as you do at the removal of all obstructions, real or imaginary, to the resumption of our free and friendly correspondence. I needed not your assurance to satisfy me that your course towards me had been fair and liberal, and you do me but justice in believing mine has been the same toward you.
Perhaps there has been a single departure from it, which in candor I am bound to confess, and hope to be able to avoid.
On being called to New York a few days ago, when the delegates were passing on to Baltimore, Mrs. Marcy proposed to accompany me, but as she is a zealous advocate of yours, and on that subject has a propagandist’s spirit, I did not wish to have her associated too intimately with these delegates, particularly such of them as had favorable inclinations towards me. I suggested, therefore, that it would be best for her to delay for a short time her visit.
This little battery (excuse a military figure of speech) has kept up a brisk fire for you. To this I have not made much objection, but I did not wish to do anything myself to put it in a position where it would bear particularly on my friends in this critical moment of the contest. I submit to your candor to decide whether, if you had a wife—would that you had one—a glib-tongued wife, who was ever pressing my pretensions over your own, would you not have manœuvered a little to restrict her operations, under reversed, but otherwise similar circumstances? If you declare against my course in this instance, I shall think you err, and ascribe your error to the fact that for want of experience you do not know the potency of such an adversary. An enemy in the camp is more dangerous than one outside of it.
While in New York, I conversed with many delegates from various sections of the country and of all kinds of preferences. From what I heard, I became more and more apprehensive of serious difficulties at Baltimore. If it be mere preferences the convention will have to contend with, it might get on without much trouble, but I thought I discovered a strong feeling of antagonism in too many of the delegates, particularly towards those who stand in a hopeful position. Still, I cherish a strong hope of an auspicious result to the party.
If you, who have such fair prospects, have schooled yourself into a sort of philosophical indifference as to the result, you can readily conceive how complaisantly I, who scarcely have a place on the list of those that hope they shall receive it, look upon the result. Those who never climb up cannot reasonably dread to break their limbs by a fall.
You, too, have got into a “Scott correspondence.” I have read your letter with pleasure and satisfaction; it goes the whole figure as it ought to at this time. I had no difficulty in my response except in regard to the exercise of the veto power. I cannot but think that is a promise “not fit to be made,” but any objection to meeting it directly would have been construed to mean more than was intended, and I responded to that as I did to the other interrogatories.
Very much to my surprise, but not so much to my regret, I find in the Journal of Commerce of Saturday, two of my private letters, written last summer to a leading barn-burner, Hon. John Fine, formerly a M. C. from Governor Wright’s county. They will serve to vindicate my course and repel the charge much urged against me by Mr. Dickinson and a few others, of having compromised my position on the adjustment measure in order to conciliate that section of the party.
The course I pursued towards them, and from which I have never swerved, but have succeeded in carrying out, is clearly disclosed in these letters. I had no agency in bringing them out. I have not seen them since they were written, and did not know that they were to be published.
Mr. Dickinson and a few of his friends are very decided—not to say bitter—against me, and scarcely less so against all the other candidates except General Cass. They are professedly for him. Mr. D.’s friends—it would be uncharitable to say he himself has any such thoughts—hope to bring about his nomination, and are shaping things so far as they can for such a result. They believe that his and their advocacy of General Cass, and sturdy opposition to all others, will give him nearly all of the General’s friends in the event he has to be abandoned, an event which will not deeply grieve them; and they flatter themselves that the great favor with which Mr. D. is regarded in the South will render it easy to detach from you and transfer to him most of your supporters in that quarter. If you and General Cass are killed off, and he inherits the estate of both, his fortune will certainly be made. I do not comment upon the practicability of this theory. Well, if he is nominated, we must turn in and do what we can for him. Here, where he has been so bitter against the C——rs and against me, because they are willing to give me their support—where he denounces them as not belonging to the Democratic party—we shall have a hard task on our hands, and can hardly hope to give him the vote of the State; it will therefore be the more necessary that you and your friends should secure for him that of Pennsylvania. I know it is not kind to speculate on the chances of another rising upon your downfall, and therefore I will dismiss the subject; nor is it friendly to trouble you with this long letter at a critical conjuncture, when you want your time to cheer and guide your friends at Baltimore.
My epistle would be defective if it did not contain Mrs. M.’s express desire to be kindly remembered to you.
Yours truly, W. L. MARCY.
[MARCY TO BUCHANAN.]
ALBANY, June 6, 1852.
MY DEAR SIR:—
In my most hopeful mood, if it can be truly said I have been in such a state of mind, I did not look to anything but a remote contingent remainder. I cannot, therefore, say that for myself I feel any disappointment at the result of the convention.
None of its proceedings—not even some of the latter ballottings—changed my settled convictions. There was a time when reflecting sober-minded men felt more than I expected they would feel at the prospect of success of Young America. Some of the agents and agencies at work in that direction caused considerable alarm.
I hope the course of my few friends in the convention has given no dissatisfaction. If they had earlier quitted me, they could not have gone together for any one, though some would have gone for you. I fear more than half would have acted with the friends of Cass and Douglas. They were about equally divided between hunkers and barn-burners, and it seems to me that no course they could have taken could have changed the result.
About the time the ballotting commenced, I met with a passage in the last number of the Edinburgh Review which struck me as ominous of your fate, and as it is as good consolation as I can offer you, I will extract it, though it is rather long:
“Men (says Chamfort, a French writer) are like the fiends of Milton—they must make themselves dwarfs before they can enter into the Pandemonium of political life in a Republic. (Perhaps, if nature has made them dwarfs, it is the same thing.) Even in America it is notorious that men of this stamp (men of pre-eminent genius and abilities) are all but systematically excluded from high public office, and at best she recognizes only a single Webster among a wilderness of Jacksons and Harrisons, Taylors and Scotts.”
“And they must learn per force, painful as the truth must be, that commanding talents, especially of their order, are not really in request or needed for the ordinary work of democracy or autocracy.” I protest against the error in classing Jackson, yet there is in this extract some consolation for yourself and General Cass.
It does not suit my case, and moreover I am not in a condition to require consolation either from profane or sacred writings.
What do you think of the nomination of General Pierce? For our own State, I think it is about as well as any other that could have been made. I do not like to make an exception. We cannot make much out of his military services, but he is a likeable man, and has as much of “Young America” as we want.
I should like to read a letter of sage reflections from you about this time, as you are of my sect—a political optimist, not a better scholar—I know it will not take you long to digest your disappointment; but what will your State feel and say in regard to the result? This is a matter of public concernment. I should like to have your speculations on that point.
There is a person in my house who has been more solicitous about the ballotting on your account than on mine and at times exhibited much exultation at your prospects. Her disappointment is greater than that of any other one under its roof.
I console her by an assurance of what I really feel, that you or any one else, so far as happiness is concerned, are better off without a nomination than with one, even if it was sure to be followed by an election.
Yours truly, WM. L. MARCY.
[MR. BUCHANAN TO THE HON. DAVID R. PORTER.]
WHEATLAND, near LANCASTER, June 4, 1852.
MY DEAR SIR:—
From the result of the ballottings yesterday, I deem it highly improbable that I shall receive the nomination. The question will doubtless be finally decided before this can reach you; and I desire to say in advance that my everlasting gratitude is due to the Pennsylvania delegation, the Virginia delegation, and the other Southern delegations for their adherence to me throughout the ballottings of yesterday. I can say, with the most sincere truth, that I feel far more deeply the disappointment of my friends than my own disappointment. This has not, and will not, cost me a single pang. After a long and stormy public life, I shall go into final retirement without regret, and with a perfect consciousness that I have done my duty faithfully to my country in all the public situations in which I have been placed. I had cherished the belief that the Democracy of Pennsylvania had claims upon the Democracy of the country, which if asserted by the proper men in the proper spirit would be recognized in my favor. It seems I have been entirely mistaken both as regards my own standing and the influence of my State. I should not have believed this, had not our claims been presented and urged by a faithful and able delegation, fully equal, if not superior, to any which it was in the power of the State to send.
It is possible, should the nomination for the Presidency fall upon a Southern gentleman, that a proposition may be made to give Pennsylvania the Vice Presidency. Should such a contingency arise, which is not very probable, I shall not, under any circumstances, consent to the employment of my name in connection with that office. Indeed should I be nominated for it by the convention, I would most assuredly decline. It is the very last office under the Government I would desire to hold, and it would be no honor bestowed on good old Pennsylvania to have it conferred upon one of her sons.
When I speak of final retirement, I only mean that I shall never hold another office. I shall always feel and take an interest in favor of the Democratic cause; and this not only for the sake of principle, but to enable me to serve friends to whom I owe so much.
From your friend, very respectfully, JAMES BUCHANAN.
[MR. BUCHANAN TO THE HON. CAVE JOHNSON.]
WHEATLAND, near LANCASTER, June 24, 1852.
MY DEAR SIR:—
If it were possible for me to complain of your conduct, I should give you a good scolding for not performing your promise. We were all anxiously expecting you at Wheatland from day to day; and if you had informed me you could not come I certainly should have met you in Philadelphia. I was very anxious to see you, and now God only knows when we shall meet. Whilst life endures, however, gratitude for your friendship and support shall remain deeply engraved on my heart.
I never felt any longing or anxious desire to be the President, and my disappointment did not cost me a single pang. My friends were faithful and true, and their efforts deserved if they could not command success. Personally, I am entirely satisfied with the result. When opportunity offers, I hope you will not fail to present my grateful acknowledgments to Generals Laferty and Polk, and to Messrs. Smith, Thomas and Shepherd, for their kind and valuable support in the hour of trial.
It is vain to disguise the fact that Pennsylvania is, to say the least, a doubtful State. I much fear the result. If defeated, no blame shall attach to me. I will do my duty to the party and the country. Both personally and politically General Pierce and Colonel King are highly acceptable to myself. What an inconsistent race the Whigs are! They have now ostensibly abandoned their old principles, and placed themselves on the Democratic platform—Fugitive Slave Law and all. From this we may expect river and harbor improvements intended to catch the Southwest; and such a modification of a revenue tariff as they knew would exactly correspond with the wishes of the Democratic ironmasters of Pennsylvania. I, however, indulge the hope, nay, the belief, that Pierce and King can be elected without the vote of Pennsylvania.
I was in my native county of Franklin a few days ago, and whilst there went to see a respectable farmer and miller, who had ever been a true and disinterested Democrat. I had been told he would not vote for Pierce and King, and being both a personal and political friend of my own, I thought I could change his purpose. In conversation he very soon told me he would never vote for Pierce. I asked if he would abandon the principles of his life and vote for the Whig candidate. He said he never had given and never would give a Whig vote. I reasoned with him a long time, but in vain. He said the Democracy of the country ought not to suffer the national convention to usurp the right of making any man they pleased a candidate before the people. That if the people yielded this, then a corrupt set of men who got themselves elected delegates, might, in defiance of the people’s will, always make a President to suit their own views. That the Democracy had but one mode of putting this down, and that was, not to ratify the choice of the convention. He said that for himself he had felt very much inclined to oppose Mr. Polk for this reason, but had yielded and given him a cordial support; but if the same game were successfully played a second time, then the national convention and not the people would select the President, and the most gross corruption and fraud would be the consequence. He disliked both General Cass and Mr. Douglas; but said he would have supported either, because they were known, their claims had been publicly discussed, and each had a large body of friends in the Democratic party, and there must be a yielding among the friends of the different candidates brought forward by the people of the country.
These were the reasons which my friend gave in the course of a long conversation. I state them to you, not that the withholding of his individual vote is of any great importance, but to show how many Democrats feel. I had heard the same reasons before among the people, but not so fully discussed; and my letter, published in the Union of yesterday morning, had a special view to these objections.
They could have scarcely made a respectable fight against me in Pennsylvania. In many counties my nomination would have shivered the Whig party. In this county, where the Whig majority at a full election is 5,000, I do not believe they could have obtained a majority of 500. But this is all past and gone.
Miss Hetty has but little expectation of being able to procure you a suitable housekeeper. She will try, however, and should she fall upon one, will write to you.
Please to present my kindest regards to Mrs. Garland and the little boys and girls, and believe me ever to be,
Your faithful and grateful friend, JAMES BUCHANAN.
[MR. BUCHANAN TO JOHN BINNS, ESQ.]
WHEATLAND, near LANCASTER, July 26, 1852.
MY DEAR SIR:—
Although I have too long omitted to answer your kind letter, yet you may rest assured I sympathized with you deeply in your affliction for the loss of her who had so long been the partner of your joys and your sorrows.
My own disappointment did not cost me a single pang. I felt it far more on account of my friends than myself. Faithful and devoted as they have been, it would have afforded me heartfelt pleasure to testify my gratitude by something more substantial than words. Although I should have assumed the duties of the office with cheerful confidence, yet I know from near observation that it is a crown of thorns. Its cares carried Mr. Polk to a premature grave, and the next four years will probably embrace the most trying period of our history. May God grant us a safe deliverance! With all due admiration for the military services of General Scott, I should consider his election a serious calamity for the country.
General Pierce is a sound radical Democrat of the old Jeffersonian school, and possesses highly respectable abilities. I think he is firm and energetic, without which no man is fit to be President. Should he fall into proper hands, he will administer the Government wisely and well. Heaven save us from the mad schemes of “Young America!”
From your friend, very respectfully, JAMES BUCHANAN.
[MR. BUCHANAN TO NAHUM CAPEN, ESQ.]
WHEATLAND, near LANCASTER, June 26, 1852.
MR DEAR SIR:—
Many thanks for your kind letter. I felt neither mortified nor much disappointed at my own defeat. Although “the signs of the times” had been highly propitious immediately before the Baltimore Convention, I am too old a political navigator to rely with explicit confidence upon bright skies for fair weather. The Democracy of my own great State are mortified and disappointed, but I trust that ere long these feelings will vanish, and we shall be able to present a solid and invincible column to our political opponents.
The Presidency is a distinction far more glorious than the crown of any hereditary monarch in Christendom; but yet it is a crown of thorns. In the present political and critical position of our country, its responsibilities will prove to be fearful. I should have met them with cheerful confidence, whilst I know I shall be far more happy in a private station, where I expect to remain.
With my ardent wishes for the success of the History of Democracy, I remain
Very respectfully your friend, JAMES BUCHANAN.
[MR. BUCHANAN TO ALEXANDER McKEEVER, ESQ.]
WHEATLAND, near LANCASTER, July 26, 1852.
MY DEAR SIR:—
I have received and perused your kind letter with much satisfaction, and, like you, I am far better satisfied with the nomination of General Pierce than I would have been with that of General Cass or any of the other candidates. I sincerely and ardently desire his election, as well as the defeat of General Scott, and shall do my duty throughout the contest in Pennsylvania in every respect, except in going from county to county to make stump speeches.
It is my intention to address my fellow-citizens of this county, on some suitable occasion, on the Presidential election, and express my opinions freely.
My recommendations to the governor were but little regarded, but I made but very few. I can say with truth that your disappointment mortified me very much, because upon every principle of political justice and policy you were entitled to the place. Should it ever be in my power to serve you, I shall eagerly embrace the opportunity.
It is impossible, as yet, to form any accurate conjecture as to what will be Scott’s majority in this county; but I cannot believe it will reach that of General Taylor. I am glad to learn your opinion that the majority in Delaware county will be less than it was in 1848. Pierce and King can be elected without the vote of Pennsylvania, but it would be a burning shame for the Democracy of the Keystone to be defeated on this occasion.
From your friend, very respectfully, JAMES BUCHANAN.
The most important service rendered by Mr. Buchanan to his party in this election—and with him a service to his party was alike a service to his country—was a speech made at Greensburgh in Pennsylvania, on the 7th of October, 1852, in opposition to the election of General Scott. It deserves to be reproduced now, both on account of its clear exhibition of the political history of that period and the nature of some of the topics which it discussed.
FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS: I thank you most sincerely for the cordial and enthusiastic cheers with which you have just saluted me. I am proud, on this occasion, to acknowledge my deep obligations to the Democratic party of Westmoreland county. The generous and powerful support which I have received from your great and glorious Democracy throughout my public career shall ever remain deeply engraved on my heart. I am grateful for the past, not for what is to be in future. I ask no more from my country than what I have already enjoyed. May peace and prosperity be your lot throughout life, and may “The Star in the West” continue to shine with increasing splendor, and ever benign influence on the favored Western portion of our Commonwealth for ages to come!
I congratulate you, fellow-citizens, upon the nomination of Franklin Pierce and William R. King, for the two highest offices in your gift. This nomination has proved to be a most fortunate event for the Democratic party of the country. It has produced unanimity everywhere in our great and glorious party; and when firmly united we can stand against the world in arms. It has terminated, I trust forever, the divisions which existed in our ranks; and which, but a few short months ago, portended dire defeat in the present Presidential contest. The North, the South, the East and the West are now generous rivals, and the only struggle amongst them is which shall do the most to secure the triumph of the good old cause of Democracy, and of Franklin Pierce and William R. King, our chosen standard bearers.
And why should we not all be united in support of Franklin Pierce? It is his peculiar distinction, above all other public men within my knowledge, that he has never had occasion to take a single step backwards. What speech, vote, or sentiment of his whole political career has been inconsistent with the purest and strictest principles of Jeffersonian Democracy? Our opponents, with all their vigilance and research, have not yet been able to discover a single one. His public character as a Democrat is above all exception. In supporting him, therefore, we shall do no more than sustain in his person our dear and cherished principles.
Our candidate, throughout his life, has proved himself to be peculiarly unselfish. The offices and honors which other men seek with so much eagerness, have sought him only to be refused. He has either positively declined to accept, or has resigned the highest stations which the Federal Government or his own native State could bestow upon him.
Indeed, the public character of General Pierce is so invulnerable that it has scarcely been seriously assaulted. Our political opponents have, therefore, in perfect desperation, been driven to defame his private character. At first, they denounced him as a drunkard, a friend of the infamous anti-Catholic test in the Constitution of New Hampshire, and a coward. In what have these infamous accusations resulted? They have already recoiled upon their inventors. The poisoned chalice has been returned to their own lips. No decent man of the Whig party will now publicly venture to repeat these slanders.
Frank Pierce a coward! That man a coward, who, when his country was involved in a foreign war, abandoned a lucrative and honorable profession and all the sweets and comforts of domestic life in his own happy family, to become a private volunteer soldier in the ranks! How preposterous! And why a coward?
According to the testimony of General Scott himself, he was in such a sick, wounded, and enfeebled condition, that he was “just able to keep his saddle!” Yet his own gallant spirit impelled him to lead his brigade into the bloody battle of Churubusco. But his exhausted physical nature was not strong enough to sustain the brave soul which animated it, and he sank insensible on the field in front of his brigade. Was this evidence of cowardice? These circumstances, so far from being an impeachment of his courage, prove conclusively that he possesses that high quality in an uncommon degree. Almost any other man, nay, almost any other brave man, in his weak and disabled condition, would have remained in his tent; but the promptings of his gallant and patriotic spirit impelled him to rush into the midst of the battle. To what lengths will not party rancor and malignity proceed when such high evidences of indomitable courage are construed into proofs of cowardice? How different was General Scott’s opinion from that of the revilers of Franklin Pierce! It was on this very occasion that he conferred upon him the proud title of “the gallant Brigadier-General Pierce.”
The cordial union of the Democratic party throughout the country presents a sure presage of approaching victory. Even our political opponents admit that we are in the majority when thoroughly united. And I venture now to predict that, whether with or without the vote of Pennsylvania, Franklin Pierce and William R. King, should their lives be spared, will as certainly be elected President and Vice President of the United States on the first Tuesday in November next, as that the blessed sun shall rise on that auspicious day. We feel the inspiration of victory from the infallible indications of public opinion throughout our sister States.
Shall this victory be achieved without the voice or vote of Pennsylvania? No President has ever yet been elected without her vote. Shall this historical truth be reversed, and shall Pierce and King be elected in November, despite the vote of the good old Keystone? God bless her! No—never, never, shall the Democracy of our great and glorious State be subjected to this disgrace.
And yet, strange to say, the Whigs at Washington and the Whigs throughout every State of the Union claim the vote of Pennsylvania with the utmost apparent confidence. To secure her vote was one of the main inducements for the nomination of General Scott over the head of Millard Fillmore. Is there one unprejudiced citizen of any party in the United States, who can lay his hand upon his heart and declare that he believes General Scott would make as good and as safe a President as Mr. Fillmore? No, fellow-citizens, all of us must concur in opinion with Mr. Clay, that Fillmore had superior claims and qualifications to those of Scott for the highest civil station. Availability, and availability alone, produced the nomination of Scott.
The Whigs well knew that the Democrats of the Keystone were in the majority. What must then be done to secure her vote? Pennsylvania Democrats must be seduced from their party allegiance—they must be induced to abandon the political altars at which they have so long worshipped—they must be persuaded to renounce the principles of Jefferson and of Jackson, by the nomination of a military hero; and this hero, too, a most bitter and uncompromising Whig. General Scott is none of your half-way Whigs—he is not like General Taylor, a Whig, but not an ultra Whig. He goes the whole. Is there a single Whig doctrine, or a single Whig principle, however odious to the Democracy, to which he is not devoted, which he has not announced and taught under his own hand? If there be, I have never heard it mentioned. Nay, more: these odious doctrines are with him not merely strong opinions, but they are absolute convictions, rules of faith and of practice. The Bank of the United States, the Bankrupt Law, the distribution of the proceeds of the public lands among the States, the abolishment of the veto power from the Constitution; in short, all the Whig measures against which the Democracy of the country have always waged incessant war—are so many articles of General Scott’s political creed. When asked, in October, 1841, whether, “if nominated as a candidate for the Presidency, would you accept the nomination?” after expressing his strong approbation of all the Whig measures to which I have just referred, as well as others of a similar character, he answers: “I beg leave respectfully to reply—Yes; provided that I be not required to renounce any principles professed above. My principles are convictions.”
I will do him the justice to declare that he has never yet recanted or renounced any one of these principles. They are still convictions with him; and yet the Democracy of Pennsylvania are asked to recant and renounce their own most solemn and deliberate convictions, and vote for a candidate for the Presidency, merely on account of his military fame, who, if elected, would exert the power and influence of his administration to subvert and to destroy all the essential principles which bind us together as members of the great and glorious Democratic party of the Union. Is not the bare imputation, much more the confident belief, that the Democrats of Pennsylvania will renounce their birthright for such a miserable mess of pottage, the highest insult which can be offered to them? The Whigs, in effect, say to you: We know you are Democrats—we know you are in the majority; but yet we believe you will renounce the political faith of your fathers, that you may shout hosannas to a successful general, and bow down before the image of military glory which we have erected for the purpose of captivating your senses.
Thank Heaven! thus far, at least, these advocates of availability have been disappointed. The soup societies and the fuss and feather clubs have yet produced but little impression on the public mind. They have failed even to raise enthusiastic shouts among the Whigs, much less to make any apostates from the Democratic ranks.
What a subject it is for felicitation in every patriotic heart, that the days have passed away, I trust, forever, when mere military services, however distinguished, shall be a passport to the chief civil magistracy of the country!
I would lay down this broad and strong proposition, which ought in all future time to be held sacred as an article of Democratic faith, that no man ought ever to be transferred by the people from the chief command of the army of the United States to the highest civil office within their gift. The reasons for this rule of faith to guide the practice of a Republican people are overwhelming.
The annals of mankind, since the creation, demonstrate this solemn truth. The history of all the ruined republics, both of ancient and modern times, teaches us this great lesson. From Cæsar to Cromwell, and from Cromwell to Napoleon, this history presents the same solemn warning,—beware of elevating to the highest civil trust the commander of your victorious armies. Ask the wrecks of the ruined republics scattered all along the tide of time, what occasioned their downfall; and they will answer in sepulchral tones, the elevation of victorious generals to the highest civil power in the State. One common fate from one common cause has destroyed them all. Will mankind never learn wisdom from the experience of past generations? Has history been written in vain? Mr. Clay, in his Baltimore speech of 1827, expressed this great truth in emphatic terms, when he implored the Almighty Governor of the world, “to visit our favored land with war, with pestilence, with famine, with any scourge other than military rule, or a blind and heedless enthusiasm for a military renown.” He was right in the principle, wrong in its application. The hero, the man of men to whom it applied, was then at the Hermitage,—a plain and private farmer of Tennessee. He had responded to the call of his country when war was declared against Great Britain, and had led our armies to victory; but when the danger had passed away, he returned with delight to the agricultural pursuits of his beloved Hermitage. Although, like Franklin Pierce, he had never sought civil offices and honors, yet he was an influential and conspicuous member of the convention which framed the constitution of Tennessee, was their first Representative and their first Senator in Congress,—afterwards a Judge of their Supreme Court,—then again a Senator in Congress, which elevated station he a second time resigned, from a love of retirement. He was brought almost literally from the plough, as Cincinnatus had been, to assume the chief civil command. The same observations would apply to the illustrious and peerless Father of his Country, as well as to General Harrison. They were soldiers, only in the day and hour of danger, when the country demanded their services; and both were elevated from private life, from the shades of Mount Vernon and the North Bend, to the supreme civil magistracy of the country. Neither of them was a soldier by profession, and both had illustrated high civil appointments. General Taylor, it is true, had been a soldier, and always a soldier, but had never risen to the chief command. It remained for the present Whig party to select as their candidate for the Presidency the commanding General of the army, who had been a man of war, and nothing but a man of war from his youth upwards. This party is now straining every nerve to transfer him from the headquarters of the army, to the chair of state, which has been adorned by Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Jackson, without even a momentary resignation of his present high office,—without the least political training,—without any respite, without any breathing time between the highest military and the highest civil honor. With what tremendous force does the solemn warning of Mr. Clay apply to the case of General Scott!
Far be it from me to say or to insinuate that General Scott would have either the ability or the will to play the part of Cæsar, of Cromwell, or of Bonaparte. Still, the precedent is dangerous in the extreme. If these things can be done in the green tree, what will be done in the dry? If the precedent can be established in the comparative infancy and purity of our institutions, of elevating to the Presidency a successful commander-in-chief of our armies, what may be the disastrous consequences when our population shall number one hundred millions, and when our armies in time of war may be counted by hundreds of thousands. In those days, some future military chieftain, desirous of obtaining supreme power by means of an election to the Presidency, may point back to such a precedent and say, that in the earlier and purer days of the Republic, our ancestors did not fear to elevate the commander of their conquering armies to this, the highest civil station. Let us not forge chains in advance for our descendants.
The fathers of the Republic were deeply alive to these great truths. They were warned by the experience of past times that liberty is Hesperian fruit, and can only be preserved by watchful jealousy. Hence in all their constitutions of government, and in all their political writings, we find them inculcating, in the most solemn manner, a jealousy of standing armies and their leaders, and a strict subordination of the military to the civil power. But even if there were no danger to our liberties from such a precedent, the habit of strict obedience and absolute command acquired by the professional soldier throughout a long life, almost necessarily disqualifies him for the administration of our Democratic Republican Government. Civil government is not a mere machine, such as a regular army. In conducting it, allowance must be made for that love of liberty and spirit of independence which characterize our people. Such allowances can never be made,—authority can never be tempered with moderation and discretion, by a professional soldier, who has been accustomed to have his military orders obeyed with the unerring certainty of despotic power.
Again:—What fatal effects would it not have on the discipline and efficiency of the army to have aspirants for the Presidency among its principal officers? How many military cliques would be formed—how much intriguing and electioneering would exist in a body which ought to be a unit, and have no other object in view except to obey the lawful command of the President and to protect and defend the country? If all the political follies of General Scott’s life were investigated, and these are not few, I venture to say that nearly the whole of them have resulted from his long continued aspirations for the Presidency. At last, he has obtained the Whig nomination. He has defeated his own constitutional commander-in-chief. The military power has triumphed over the civil power. The Constitution declares that “the President shall be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States,” but the subordinate, the actual commander of the army, has supplanted his superior. What a spectacle is this; and how many serious reflections might it inspire! In times of war and of danger, what fatal consequences might result to the country from the fact, that the President and the commanding General of the army are rival and hostile candidates for the Presidency! But I shall not pursue this train of remark. It is my most serious conviction, that General Scott would have stood far higher, both before the present generation and posterity, had he never been a candidate for the Presidency. The office which he now holds, and deservedly holds, ought to satisfy the ambition of any man. This the American people will determine by a triumphant majority on the first Tuesday of November next. This will prove to be one of the most fortunate events in our history—auspicious at the present time, and still more auspicious for future generations. It will establish a precedent, which will, I trust, prevent future commanders-in-chief of the American army from becoming candidates for the Presidential office.
Again:—To make the army a hot bed for Presidential aspirants will be to unite the powerful influence of all its aspiring officers in favor of foreign wars, as the best means of acquiring military glory, and thus placing themselves in the modern line of safe precedents, as candidates for the Presidency and for other high civil offices. The American people are sufficiently prone to war without any such stimulus. But enough of this.
I shall now proceed to discuss more minutely the civil qualifications of General Scott for the Presidency. It is these which immediately and deeply concern the American people, and not his military glory. Far be it from me, however, to depreciate his military merits. As an American citizen, I am proud of them. They will ever constitute a brilliant page in the historical glory of our country. The triumphant march of the brave army under his command, from Vera Cruz to the city of Mexico, will be ever memorable in our annals. And yet he can never be esteemed the principal hero of the Mexican war. This distinction justly belongs to General Taylor. It was his army which at Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, and Monterey, first broke the spirit of the Mexican troops; and the crowning victory of Buena Vista completely disorganized the Mexican army. There Santa Anna, with 20,000 men, the largest, the best and the bravest army which Mexico has ever sent into the field, was routed by less than five thousand of our troops. To the everlasting glory of our volunteer militia, this great, this glorious victory, was achieved by them, assisted by only four hundred and fifty-three regulars. The Mexican army was so disorganized—the spirit of the Mexican people was so subdued, by the unparallelled victory of Buena Vista, that the way was thus opened for the march from Vera Cruz to Mexico. Yet God forbid that I should, in the slightest degree, detract from the glory so justly due to Scott’s army and its distinguished commander in the battles which preceded their triumphant entry into the capital of Mexico.
But I repeat, my present purpose is to deal with General Scott as a civilian—as a candidate for the Presidency, and not as a military commander.
The sun presents dark spots upon its disc; and the greatest men who have ever lived, with the exception of our own Washington, have not been without their failings. Surely General Scott is not an exception to the common lot of humanity. In his temper he is undoubtedly irritable and jealous of rivals; whilst the Presidency, above all other stations on earth, requires a man of firm and calm temper, who, in his public conduct, will never be under the control of his passions.
General Scott has quarrelled with General Wilkinson—he has quarrelled with General Gaines—he has quarrelled with General Jackson—he has quarrelled with De Witt Clinton—he has quarrelled with the administration of John Quincy Adams—he has quarrelled with the people of Florida to such a degree that General Jackson was obliged reluctantly to recall him from the command of the army in the Seminole war—he has quarrelled with General Worth, the Marshal Ney of our military service—he has quarrelled with General Pillow—he has quarrelled with the gallant and lamented Duncan—and unless report speaks falsely, he has quarrelled with General Taylor. Whenever any military man has approached the rank of being his rival for fame, he has quarrelled with that man. Now, I shall not pretend to decide, whether he has been in the right or in the wrong, in all or in any of these quarrels; but this I shall say, that a man possessing such forethought, discretion and calm temper as the Presidential office requires, might and would have avoided many or most of these difficulties. A plain and sensible neighbor of mine asked me, in view of these facts, if I did not think, should General Scott be elected President, he would play the devil and break things?
General Scott is, beyond all question, suspicious, when the President of the United States, above all other men, ought to look upon events with no prejudiced or jaundiced eye. No man ever exhibited this trait of character in a stronger light than he has done towards the administration of Mr. Polk. He was selected by the President to lead our armies in Mexico, with my humble though cordial assent. The political life or death of the administration depended upon his success. Our fate, both in the estimation of the present times and throughout all posterity, depended upon his success. His defeat would have been our ruin. And yet he most strangely conceived the notion, that for the purpose of destroying him we were willing to destroy ourselves. Hence his belief of a fire in the rear more formidable than the fire in the front. Hence his belief that, jealous of his glory, we did not exert ourselves to furnish him the troops and munitions of war necessary for the conquest of Mexico. Did unjust and unfounded suspicion ever extend thus far in the breast of any other mortal man? The admirable and unanswerable letter of Governor Marcy, of April 21, 1848, in reply to his complaints, triumphantly vindicates the administration of Mr. Polk against all these extraordinary charges. Let any man carefully and dispassionately read that letter, and say, if he can, that General Scott, in self-control, temper and disposition, is fit to become the successor to General Washington, in the Presidential chair.
The world knows, everybody who has approached him knows, that General Scott is vainglorious to an excessive degree. Indeed, his vanity would be strikingly ridiculous, had he not performed so many distinguished military services as almost to justify boasting. This, however, is an amiable weakness; and whilst it does not disqualify him from performing the duties of a President, this itself renders it morally impossible that he should ever reach that station. Modesty combined with eminent merit always secures popular applause; but the man who becomes the trumpeter of his own exploits, no matter how high his deserts may be, can never become an object of popular enthusiasm and affection. General Scott’s character, in this respect, is perfectly understood by the instinctive good sense of the American people. “Fuss and Feathers!” a volume could not more accurately portray the vanity of his character than this soubriquet by which he is universally known. His friends affect to glory in this title, but with all their efforts they can never render it popular. Napoleon was endeared to his army by his designation of “the little Corporal;” General Jackson, by that of “Old Hickory;” and General Taylor was “Rough and Ready;” but what shall we say to “Fuss and Feathers?” Was such a soubriquet ever bestowed upon a General who enjoyed the warm affections of his army? It raises no shout,—it awakens no sympathy,—it excites no enthusiasm,—it falls dead upon the heart of an intelligent people.
In order further to illustrate the want of civil qualifications of General Scott for the Presidency, I propose next to discuss his famous political letters. In these he has written his own political history. “Oh! that mine enemy would write a book!” was an exclamation of old. General Scott’s epistles have accomplished this work, though I deny that he has any enemies among the American people.
In 1848, when speaking of these letters, Thurlow Weed, who at the present moment is one of General Scott’s most able, distinguished, and efficient supporters, employs the following language: “In the character of General Scott there is much, very much to commend and admire. But the mischief is, there is weakness in all he says or does about the Presidency. Immediately after the close of the campaign of 1840, he wrote a gratuitous letter, making himself a candidate, in which all sorts of unwise things were said ‘to return and plague his friends, if he should be a candidate.’ And since that time, with a fatuity that seizes upon men who get bewildered in gazing at the White House, he has been suffering his pen to dim the glories achieved by his sword.”
The letter to which special allusion is made must be his famous letter of October 25, 1841. Though not an “old Fogy,” I retain a vivid recollection of the circumstances under which this letter was written. It made its appearance the month after the termination of the famous extra session of Congress, which had been convened by the proclamation of General Harrison. This session commenced on the 31st May, and terminated on the 13th September, 1841.
And here, permit me to say, that I do not believe the history of legislative bodies, in this or any other country, ever presented more argumentative, eloquent, and powerful debating than was exhibited throughout this session. Nearly all the important political questions which had divided the two great parties of the country from the beginning were most ably discussed. Never did any public body of the same number present a stronger array of matured talent than the Senate of that day. There were Clay, Berrien, Clayton, Mangum, Archer, Preston, and Southard on the Whig side; and Benton, Calhoun, Wright, Woodbury, Walker, Pierce, and Linn on the side of the Democrats, and these men were in the meridian of their glory. I would advise every young Democrat within the sound of my voice to procure and carefully study the debates of this session.
Mr. Clay was, as he deserved to be, the lord of the ascendant in the Whig ranks. The Whig majority of both houses was controlled by his spirit. He was their acknowledged leader, and went to work in dashing style. Within a brief period, he carried all the great Whig measures triumphantly through Congress. The Independent Treasury was repealed; the proceeds of the public lands were distributed among the States; the Bankrupt Law was passed; and an old-fashioned Bank of the United States would have been established, had it not been for the veto of John Tyler, a man who has never been as highly estimated as he deserves, either by the Democratic party or the country.
Mr. Clay left the Senate, at the close of the session, the acknowledged leader and the favorite Presidential candidate of the great Whig party. Under these circumstances, it became necessary for General Scott to do something to head his great rival and prevent him from remaining master of the field. He must prove himself to be as good a Whig as Henry Clay, and in addition a much better Anti-Mason. It was the common remark of the day, when his letter of October, 1841, appeared, that he had out-whigged even Henry Clay. This is the “gratuitous letter, making himself a candidate, in which all sorts of unwise things were said to ‘return and plague his friends, if he should be a candidate.’”
This letter is not addressed to any individual, but is an epistle general to the faithful; and I must do him the justice to say that in it he has concealed nothing from the public eye. After some introductory remarks, it is divided into seven heads, which, with their subdivisions, embrace all the articles of Whig faith as understood at that day; and in addition, the author presents his views on “secret or oath-bound societies.”
I shall briefly review some of these articles of General Scott’s political faith:
1. “The Judiciary.” General Scott expresses his convictions that the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, on all constitutional questions, should be considered final and conclusive by the people, and especially by their functionaries, “except, indeed, in the case of a judicial decision enlarging power and against liberty.” And how is such a decision to be corrected? Why, forsooth, “any dangerous error of this sort, he says, can always be easily corrected by an amendment of the Constitution, in one of the modes prescribed by that instrument itself.” Easily corrected! It might be so if a military order could accomplish the object; but an amendment of the Constitution of the United States, whether fortunately or unfortunately for the country, is almost a political impossibility. In order to accomplish it, in by far the least impracticable of the two modes prescribed, the affirmative action of two-thirds of both Houses of Congress and of the Legislatures of three-fourths of the several States is required. With these obstacles in the way, when will an amendment of the Constitution ever be made?
But why did such a reverence for the decisions of the Supreme Court become an article of General Scott’s faith? Simply because General Jackson had vetoed the Bank of the United States, believing in his conscience, such an institution to be unconstitutional. He had sworn before his God and his country to support the Constitution; and he could not, without committing moral perjury, approve a bill, which in his soul he believed to be a violation of this great charter of our liberties. He could not yield his honest convictions, simply because the Supreme Court had expressed the opinion that Congress possesses the power to charter such a bank.
But, according to the logic of General Scott, General Jackson and Mr. Tyler, when bills to charter a Bank of the United States were presented to them, had no right to form or express any opinion on the subject of their constitutionality. The Supreme Court had done this for them in advance. This court is to be the constitutional conscience-keeper of the President. “Practically, therefore (says General Scott), for the people and especially their functionaries (of whom the President is the highest) to deny, to disturb, or impugn, principles thus constitutionally established, strike me as of evil example, if not of a direct revolutionary tendency.” A Bank of the United States must be held constitutional, by the people and their functionaries, as an article of faith, until two-thirds of both Houses of Congress and three-fourths of the State legislatures shall reverse the decision of the Supreme Court by an amendment of the Constitution. The President must then wait before he can exercise the right of judging for himself until doomsday. On the same principle, we must all now hold, as an article of faith, that the odious and infamous sedition law of the reign of terror is constitutional, because the judiciary have so affirmed, and this decision never has been, and never will be, reversed by a constitutional amendment. This is double-distilled Whiggery of the most sublimated character. Truly, “there is weakness in all that General Scott says or does about the Presidency.”
Let us never forget that a Bank of the United States is a fixed idea with the Whig party, which nothing can ever remove. On this subject, like the old Bourbons, they forget nothing and learn nothing. They are inseparably joined to this idol. They believe that a concentration of the money power of the country, in the form of such a bank, is necessary to secure the ascendency of the Whig party in the Government; and there is nothing more certain in futurity than that they will establish such a bank, should they ever obtain the power. Experience has taught us a lesson on this subject which we ought never to forget. Throughout the political campaign of 1840, which resulted in the election of General Harrison, it was nowhere avowed by the Whigs, that they intended to charter a Bank of the United States. This was carefully concealed from the public eye. On the contrary, many of their distinguished leaders declared themselves hostile to such an institution, and one of them, Mr. Badger, afterwards a member of the cabinet, indignantly pronounced the assertion that General Harrison was in favor of such a bank to be a falsehood. But mark the sequel. No sooner was Harrison elected and a majority secured in both Houses of Congress, than the Whigs immediately proceeded in hot haste, at the extra session, to pass a bill establishing a Bank of the United States, which would have become a law, but for the veto of John Tyler. What we have witnessed in 1841, we shall again witness in 1853, the veto only excepted, should General Scott be elected President and be sustained by a Whig majority in both Houses of Congress.
2. “The Executive Veto.” To abolish this veto power is another article of General Scott’s political faith, as announced in his letter of October, 1841. To be more precise, the General would have the Constitution amended for the second time, in the same epistle, so as to overcome the Executive veto “by a bare majority in each House of Congress of all the members elected to it—say for the benefit of reflection, at the end of ten days from the return of the bill.” What a farce! An Executive veto to be overcome and nullified by a bare majority of the very Congress which had but ten days before sent the same bill to the President for his approval! Better, far better, adopt the manly course of abolishing the veto altogether, than to resort to this subterfuge.
But why has the abolishment of the Executive veto become an article of Whig faith? Simply because General Jackson and Mr. Tyler each vetoed bills to establish a Bank of the United States! “Still harping on my daughter.” The Whigs have determined to destroy the veto power, which has twice prevented them from creating an institution which they love above all other political objects. The veto power has saved the country from the corrupt and corrupting influence of a bank; and it is this alone which has rendered it so odious to the Whig party.
This power is the least dangerous of all the great powers conferred by the Constitution upon the President; because nothing but a strong sense of public duty and a deep conviction that he will be sustained by the people can ever induce him to array himself against a majority of both Houses of Congress. It has been exercised but in comparatively few instances since the origin of the Federal Government; and I am not aware that it has ever been exercised in any case, which has not called forth the approving voice of a large majority of the American people. Confident I am, it is highly popular in Pennsylvania.
“Rotation in office” is the next head of General Scott’s letter. Throughout the Presidential contest, which resulted in the election of General Harrison, it was the fashion of the Whigs to proscribe proscription; and to denounce Democratic Presidents for removing their political enemies and appointing their political friends to office. General Scott, in his letter, comes up to the Whig standard in this, as in all other respects. In his profession of faith, he could not even avoid a fling against the hero and the sage then in retirement at the Hermitage. He says: “I speak on this head from what I witnessed in 1829-30 (the commencement of General Jackson’s administration), of the cruel experiments on a large scale, then made upon the sensibilities of the country, and the mischiefs to the public interests which early ensued.”
But what was the Whig practice upon the subject after they had obtained power? General Jackson was magnanimous, kind-hearted and merciful, and to my own knowledge he retained a very large proportion of Whig clerks in the public offices at Washington. I ask how many Democrats now remain in those offices? Nay, the present administration has even proscribed old widows whose husbands had been Democrats. In the city of Lancaster, they removed from the post-office an old lady of this character, who had performed her duties to the entire satisfaction of the public of all parties, to make way for a political (I admit a respectable political) friend. To the credit of General Taylor’s memory be it spoken, he refused to make war upon this old lady.
But in this respect, a change has come over the spirit of General Scott’s dream. Of this the Whigs are satisfied. If they were not, small would be his chance—much smaller even than it now is, of reaching the Presidential chair. In his letter, accepting the nomination, he says:—“In regard to the general policy of the administration, if elected, I should, of course, look among those who may approve that policy, for the agents to carry it into execution; and I would seek to cultivate harmony and fraternal sentiment throughout the Whig party, without attempting to reduce its members by proscription to exact conformity to my own views!”
“Harmony and fraternal sentiment throughout the Whig party!” His charity, though large for Whigs, does not extend to Democrats. He knows, however, that his own party are divided into supporters of himself for his own sake, whilst spitting upon the platform on which he stands—and those who love the platform so well that for its sake they have even consented, though reluctantly, to acquiesce in his nomination—into those Free Soil Whigs who denounce the Fugitive Slave Law, and those Whigs who are devoted heart and soul to its maintenance. In this dilemma, he will not attempt to reduce the discordant brethren by proscription to exact conformity to his own views. Southern Whigs and Northern Free Soilers are therefore both embraced within the broad sweep of his charity. He seeks to cultivate harmony and fraternal sentiment among the Seward Whigs and the National Whigs by seating them all together at the same table to enjoy the loaves and the fishes. But woe to the vanquished—woe to the Democrats! They shall not even receive a single crumb which may fall from the table of the Presidential banquet.
“One Presidential Term,” is the subject which he next discusses. Here he boggles at one Presidential term. He seems reluctant to surrender the most elevated and the most lucrative office, next to that of President, and this, too, an office for life, for the sake of only four years in the White House. He again, therefore, for the third time, in the same letter, proposes to amend the Constitution, just as if this were as easy as to wheel a division of his army on a parade day, so as to extend the Presidential term to six years. Four years are too short a term for General Scott. It must be prolonged. The people must be deprived of the power of choosing their President at the end of so brief a period as four years. But such an amendment of the Constitution, he ought to have known, was all moonshine. The General, then, declines to pledge himself to serve but for one term, and this for the most extraordinary reason. I shall quote his own words; he says:—“But I do not consider it respectful to the people, nor otherwise proper, in a candidate to solicit favor on a pledge that, if elected, he will not accept a second nomination. It looks too much like a bargain tendered to other aspirants—yield to me now; I shall soon be out of your way; too much like the interest that sometimes governs the cardinals in the choice of a Pope, many voting for themselves first, and, if without success, finally for the most superannuated, in order that the election may sooner come round again.”
He was, then, you may be sure, still a Native American.
To say the very least, this imputation of selfishness and corruption against the cardinals in the election of a Pope, is in bad taste in a political letter written by a candidate for the Presidency. It was in exceedingly bad taste, in such an epistle, thus to stigmatize the highest dignitaries of the ancient Catholic church, in the performance of their most solemn and responsible public duty to God, on this side of eternity. From my soul, I abhor the practice of mingling up religion with politics. The doctrine of all our Constitutions, both Federal and State, is, that every man has an indefeasible right to worship his God, according to the dictates of his own conscience. He is both a bigot and a tyrant who would interfere with that sacred right. When a candidate is before the people for office, the inquiry ought never even to be made, what form of religious faith he professes; but only, in the language of Mr. Jefferson, “Is he honest; is he capable?” Far be it from me to charge or even insinuate that General Scott would desire to introduce religion into party politics; and yet I consider it exceedingly improper for him, in a political letter, when a candidate for the Presidency, to have made this charge against the venerable cardinals of the Catholic church. Such a charge, emanating from so high a source, could not fail to wound the feelings of a large and highly respectable Christian community. This has necessarily, to some extent, brought religious discussions into the Presidential contest.
“Leading measures of the late extra session of Congress.” This is the next head of General Scott’s epistle, to which I advert. He swallows all those leading measures at a single gulp. “If,” says he, “I had had the honor of a vote on the occasion, it would have been given in favor of the Land Distribution Bill, the Bankrupt Bill, and the second bill for creating a Fiscal Corporation, having long been under a conviction that in peace, as in war, something efficient in the nature of a Bank of the United States, is not only ‘necessary and proper,’ but indispensable to the successful operations of the Treasury!”
The Land Distribution Bill. This is emphatically a high toned Whig measure, which had been once crushed by General Jackson’s message of December, 1833. Mr. Clay, its illustrious author, was the very essence, the life and soul of Whiggery. It proposes to distribute the proceeds of the public lands among the several States. It proposes to surrender to the several States that immense and bountiful fund provided by our ancestors, which is always our surest resource, in times of war and danger, when our revenue from imports fails. In the days of Jackson, Van Buren and Polk, the Democratic doctrine was,—I fear it is not so at present,—to preserve this fund in the common Treasury, as a sacred trust, to enable Congress to execute the enumerated powers conferred upon them by the Constitution, for the equal benefit of all the States and the people. Should Congress give away the public lands to the States, they will deprive themselves of the power of bestowing land bounties upon the soldiers and the sailors who fight the battles of your country, and of granting liberal terms of purchase to those hardy pioneers who make the wilderness to bloom and to blossom as the rose. What will become of this policy if you distribute the proceeds of these lands among the States? Then every State will have a direct interest in preventing any donations of the public lands, either to old soldiers or actual settlers; because every acre thus given will so much lessen the dividend to each of the States interested. Should this Distribution Bill ever prevail, it will make the States mere dependencies upon the central Government for a large portion of their revenue, and thus reduce these proud Democratic sovereignties to the degrading position of looking to the Treasury of the United States for their means of support. In the language of General Jackson, “a more direct road to consolidation cannot be devised.” Such a state of dependence, though exactly in accordance with the centralizing Whig policy, has ever been abhorred by the Democrats. But the Distribution Bill is one of the principles, one of the “convictions,” of General Scott; and so let it pass.
We come now to the Bankrupt Bill, a purely Whig measure, to which General Scott gives his adhesion.—And such a bill! In no legitimate sense of the word, was this a bankrupt law. It was merely a new mode of paying old debts; and the easiest mode which was ever devised for this purpose in any civilized country. The expansions and contractions of the Bank of the United States,—the inundations of bank paper and of shinplasters which spread over the country, had given birth to a wild and reckless spirit of speculation, that ruined a great number of people. The speculators wanted to pay their debts in the easiest manner, and the Whigs wanted their votes. This was the origin of the bankrupt law. It ruined a great many honest creditors; it paid off a great many honest debts with moonshine. If my memory serves me, debts to the amount of $400,000,000 were discharged in this manner. The law, however, from its practical operation, soon became so odious to the people, that they demanded its repeal. It was stricken from the statute book, amidst the execrations of the people, by the very same Congress which had enacted it, in one year and one month from the day on which it went into effect. And this is the bill for which General Scott declares he would have voted, had he been a member of Congress.
Next in order, we come to the Bank of the United States. If General Scott “had had the honor of a vote, it would have been given for the second bill creating a Fiscal Corporation.”
Surely the General could never have carefully read this bill. In derision, it was termed at the time, the “Kite Flying Fiscality.” It was a mere speculators’ bank, and no person believed it could ever become a law. In truth, it was got up merely for the purpose of heading John Tyler, and when reported to the House, it was received, according to the National Intelligencer, with shouts of laughter.
It originated in this manner. A bill had at first passed Congress to create a regular old-fashioned Bank of the United States. This bill was vetoed by John Tyler. Afterwards the second bill, or Kite Flying Fiscality, was prepared by the Whigs to meet some portions of Mr. Tyler’s veto message, and if possible render it ridiculous. The bill was passed and was vetoed by President Tyler, as everybody foresaw it would be. But how General Scott got his head so befogged as to prefer this thing to the first bill, is a matter of wonder. I venture to say he was the only Whig in the United States who held the same opinion.
This closes General Scott’s confession of Whig faith; and surely it is sufficiently ample and specific to gratify the most rabid Whig in the land. But the General had another string to his bow. It was necessary not only that he should be as good a Whig as Henry Clay, but that he should be something besides, something over and above a mere Whig, in order to render himself more available than his great rival. Hence the concluding head of his famous epistle, which, like the postscript of a lady’s letter, contains much of the pith and marrow of the whole. It is entitled “Secret or Oath-bound Societies.” In it he declares, although a Mason, that he had “not been a member of a Masonic lodge for thirty odd years, nor a visitor of any lodge since, except one,—now more than sixteen years ago.” And such is his abhorrence for secret societies, that for twenty-eight years he had not even visited one of those literary societies in our colleges, whose practice it is to adopt a few secret signs by which their members in after life can recognize each other.
In order, then, to render himself a more available candidate than Henry Clay, it was necessary that his net should have a broader sweep than that of the great Kentuckian. It was necessary that he should be as good a Whig and a far better Anti-Mason. The Anti-Masonic party was then powerful in Pennsylvania as well as in other Northern States. This party numbered in its ranks many old Democrats, and to these Mr. Clay was not very acceptable. The Anti-Masons were more active and more energetic than the Whigs. A distinguished Anti-Mason of our State is reported once to have said, that they were the locomotive, and the Whigs the burden train. How were they to be enlisted in the ranks of Scott? The great Kentuckian, with that independent spirit which characterized him, never yielded to the advances of the Anti-Masons. He was a Mason himself as well as General Scott; but the General lent a far more kindly ear to this new party. Hence his remarks on secret or oath-bound societies. This confession of his faith proved to be entirely satisfactory; and the Anti-Masons have ever since proved to be his devoted friends. He thus captured a large division of the forces which were unfriendly to Mr. Clay. But for the purpose of embracing the new recruits, it became necessary to coin a more comprehensive name than simply that of Whigs.
He doubtless thought that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Hence, in his famous letter, he announced himself to be a Democratic Whig. A white blackbird—a Christian unbeliever. This name was sufficiently comprehensive to embrace all men of all parties. He became all things to all men, that he might gain proselytes. I say what I know, when I declare that this letter, and attempt to supplant the veteran statesman of Kentucky, was a subject of severe criticism at the time in Washington city, among men of all parties. Surely, in the language of Thurlow Weed, “there is weakness in all he says or does about the Presidency.”
But a good general is always fertile in expedients. His coup-d’œil embraces the whole field of battle, and he is ever ready to take advantage of any occurrence which may enable him to seize the victory. A new political party styling itself the Native American party, began to loom up in an imposing manner and to present a formidable aspect. This party must be conciliated. The Native Americans must be prevailed upon to unite their forces with the Whigs and Anti-Masons, and thus to form a grand combined army. It therefore became necessary for General Scott to write a second epistle, which he seems to have done with all the ardor and enthusiasm of heartfelt sincerity. This is dated from Washington city, on the 10th of November, 1844, and is in answer to a letter addressed to him, “in behalf of several hundred Native American Republicans,” by Geo. W. Reed, Esq., of Philadelphia. This second epistle proved to be as successful in enlisting the Native Americans under his banner, as the first epistle had been in enlisting the Anti-Masons. And why should it not? The General pledged himself, in the strongest terms, to every dogma which this new party had most at heart.
He dates his Native Americanism back more than eight years, to “the stormy election in the spring of 1836,” and his views “were confirmed in the week [Nov. 1840] when Harrison electors were chosen in New York.” It was on this occasion in 1840, that, “fired with indignation,” he sat down with two friends in the Astor House, “to draw up an address, designed to rally an American party.” What has become of this address? How precious would it be? I fear it is forever lost to the world! It would be one of the greatest curiosities of modern literature. How withering must have been its attack upon the poor foreigners! We can judge somewhat of its spirit by his epistle to Mr. Reed. Other Native Americans were satisfied to restore the naturalization law of “the reign of terror,” and to prohibit foreigners from becoming citizens until after a residence of fourteen years. Not so with General Scott. He went a bow-shot beyond. His mind inclined to “a total repeal of all Acts of Congress on the subject,”—to a total denial forever of all political rights to every human being, young, middle-aged, and old, who had happened to be born in a foreign country.
Having thus placed himself rectus in curia, as the lawyers would say, with the Native American party, he then proceeds, as their god-father, to give them a proper name. In this I do not think his choice was fortunate. It was a difficult task. It must embrace within its ample outline both Whigs and Anti-Masons, and yet have so much of the odor of Native Americanism as to make its savor sweet in the nostrils of the new party. He says, “I should prefer assuming the designation of American Republicans, as in New York, or Democratic Americans, as I would respectfully suggest. Democratic Americans would include all good native American citizens devoted to our country and its institutions; and would not drive from us naturalized citizens, who, by long residence, have become identified with us in feelings and interest.”
“Democratic Americans!” What a name for a Native American party! When all the records of our past history prove that American Democrats have ever opened wide their arms to receive foreigners flying from oppression in their native land, and have always bestowed upon them the rights of American citizens, after a brief period of residence in this country. The Democratic party have always gloried in this policy, and its fruits have been to increase our population and our power with unexampled rapidity, and to furnish our country with vast numbers of industrious, patriotic and useful citizens. Surely the name of ‘Democratic Americans’ was an unfortunate designation for the Native American party!
But General Scott was not content to be considered merely as a proselyte to Native Americanism. He claimed the glory of being the founder of the party. He asserts his claim to this distinguished honor, which no individual will now dispute with him, in the postscript to his letter of November, 1844, which was read on the 4th of February, 1847, before the National Convention of Native American Delegates, at Pittsburg. In this he says, “writing, however, a few days ago, to my friend Mayor Harper of New York, I half jocosely said, that I should claim over him and others the foundership of the new party, but that I had discovered this glory, like every other American excellence, belonged to the Father of his Country.”
The Native American party an ‘American excellence,’ and the glory of its foundership, belongs to George Washington! No, fellow-citizens, the American people will rise up with one accord to vindicate the memory of that illustrious man from such an imputation. As long as the recent memory of our revolutionary struggle remained vividly impressed on the hearts of our countrymen, no such party could have ever existed. The recollection of Montgomery, Lafayette, De Kalb, Kosciusko, and a long list of foreigners, both officers and soldiers, who freely shed their blood to secure our liberties, would have rendered such ingratitude impossible. Our revolutionary army was filled with the brave and patriotic natives of other lands, and George Washington was their commander-in-chief. Would he have ever closed the door against the admission of foreigners to the rights of American citizens? Let his acts speak for themselves. So early as the 26th of March, 1790, General Washington, as President of the United States approved the first law which ever passed Congress on the subject of naturalization; and this only required a residence of two years, previous to the adoption of a foreigner as an American citizen. On the 29th January, 1795, the term of residence was extended by Congress to five years, and thus it remained throughout General Washington’s administration, and until after the accession of John Adams to the Presidency. In his administration, which will ever be known in history as the reign of terror, as the era of alien and sedition laws, an act was passed on the 18th of June, 1798, which prohibited any foreigner from becoming a citizen until after a residence of fourteen years, and this is the law, or else perpetual exclusion, which General Scott preferred, and which the Native American party now desire to restore.
The Presidential election of 1800 secured the ascendency of the Democratic party, and under the administration of Thomas Jefferson, its great apostle, on the 14th of April, 1802, the term of residence previous to naturalization was restored to five years, what it had been under General Washington, and where it has ever since remained. No, fellow-citizens, the Father of his Country was never a ‘Native American.’ This ‘American excellence’ never belonged to him.
General Scott appears to have been literally infatuated with the beauties of Native Americanism. On the 12th November, 1848, he addressed a letter in answer to one from a certain “Mr. Hector Orr, printer,” who appears to have been the editor of a Native American journal in Philadelphia. This letter is a perfect rhapsody from beginning to end. Among other things equally extravagant, the General says: “A letter from him (Benjamin Franklin) were he alive, could not have refreshed me more than that before my eyes. It gives a new value to any little good I have done or attempted, and will stimulate me to do all that may fall in the scope of my power in the remainder of my life.” What a letter must this have been of Mr. Hector Orr, printer! What a pity it has been lost to the world! The General concluded by requesting Mr. Orr to send him “the history of the Native party by the Sunday School Boy,” and also to consider him a subscriber to his journal.
But soon there came a frost—a chilling frost. Presto, pass, and General Scott’s Native Americanism is gone like the baseless fabric of a vision. Would that it left no trace behind! The celebrated William E. Robinson, of New York, is the enchanter who removes the spell.
The Whig National Convention of 7th June, 1848, was about to assemble. General Scott was for the third time about to be a candidate before it for nomination as President. This was an important—a critical moment. Native Americanism had not performed its early promise. It was not esteemed “an American excellence,” even by the Whig party. General Scott was in a dilemma, and how to extricate himself from it was the question. The ready friendship of Mr. Robinson hit upon the lucky expedient. On the 8th May, 1848, he addressed a letter to General Scott, assuming that the General entertained “kind and liberal views towards our naturalized citizens.” The General answered this letter on the 29th May, 1848, just ten days before the meeting of the Whig Philadelphia Convention; and what an answer! After declaring in the strongest terms that Mr. Robinson had done him no more than justice in attributing to him “kind and liberal views toward our naturalized citizens,” he proceeds: “It is true that in a case of unusual excitement some years ago, when both parties complained of fraudulent practices in the naturalization of foreigners, and when there seemed to be danger that native and adopted citizens would be permanently arrayed against each other in hostile faction, I was inclined to concur in the opinion then avowed by leading statesmen, that some modification of the naturalization laws might be necessary, in order to prevent abuses, allay strife and restore harmony between the different classes of our people. But later experience and reflection have entirely removed this impression, and dissipated my apprehensions.”
The man who had warmly embraced Native Americanism so early as 1836, and had given it his enthusiastic support for twelve years thereafter—who next to Washington had claimed to be the founder of this “American excellence;” who, “fired with indignation,” had in conjunction with two friends in 1840, prepared an address in his parlor at the Astor House in New York, designed to rally an American party; who had, in 1844, hesitated between extending the period of residence before naturalization to fourteen years, and a total and absolute exclusion of all foreigners from the rights of citizenship forever, his mind inclining to the latter; who had in the same year elevated Hector Orr, the Native American printer, to the same level with our great revolutionary statesman and patriot, Benjamin Franklin—this same individual, in 1848, declares to Mr. Robinson, that he had formerly been merely “inclined to concur in the opinion then avowed by leading statesmen, that some modification of the naturalization laws might be necessary.”
“Oh! what a fall was there, my countrymen!”
And what caused this sudden, this almost miraculous change of opinion? Why, forsooth, in his recent campaign in Mexico, the Irish and the Germans had fought bravely in maintaining our flag in the face of every danger. But had they not fought with equal bravery throughout our revolutionary struggle, and throughout our last war with Great Britain? General Scott could not possibly have been ignorant of this fact. Chippewa and Lundy’s Lane both attest their gallant daring in defence of the stars and stripes of our country.
The General now seems determined, if possible, to efface from the memory of man that he had ever been a Native American. His present devotion to our fellow-citizens of foreign birth knows no bounds. He is determined to enlist them under his banner, as he formerly enlisted the Anti-Masons and Native Americans.
Official business, it seems, required him to visit the Blue Licks of Kentucky; but yet, it is passing strange, that he chose to proceed from Washington to that place by the circuitous route of the great Northern Lakes. This deviation from a direct military line between the point of his departure and that of his destination has enabled him to meet and address his fellow-citizens on the way, at Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and other points both in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Should the published programme of his route be carried into effect, he will, on his return to Washington from the Blue Licks, pass through Buffalo, and throughout the entire length of the Empire State. Nobody, however, can for a single moment suspect—this would be uncharitable—that his visit to the small and insignificant States of Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York, when merely on his way from Washington city to Kentucky could at this particular period have had any view to the Presidential election! Far be it from me to indulge such a suspicion; and yet it is strange that General Scott, throughout his whole route, speaks and acts just as General Scott would have done had he been on an electioneering tour. He has everywhere bestowed especial favor upon our adopted fellow-citizens; but at Cleveland he surpassed himself, and broke out into a rhapsody nearly as violent as that in which he had indulged in favor of Hector Orr, the Native American printer. At Cleveland, an honest Irishman in the crowd shouted a welcome to General Scott. Always ready to seize the propitious moment, the General instantly exclaimed: “I hear that rich brogue; I love to hear it. It makes me remember noble deeds of Irishmen, many of whom I have led to battle and to victory.” The General has yet to learn that my father’s countrymen, (I have ever felt proud of my descent from an Irishman,) though they sometimes do blarney others, are yet hard to be blarneyed themselves, especially out of their Democracy. The General, unless I am greatly mistaken, will discover that Irish Democrats, however much, in common with us all, they may admire his military exploits, will never abandon their political principles, and desert their party, for the sake of elevating him or any other Whig candidate to the Presidency.
One other remark:—Were it within the limits of possibility to imagine, which it is not, that our Washingtons, our Jeffersons, or our Jacksons, could have set out on an electioneering tour for themselves, when candidates for the Presidency,—I ask, would they have met and addressed their fellow-citizens on such topics, and in such a style, as General Scott has selected? No! friends and fellow-citizens, gravity, solemnity, and the discussion of great questions of public policy, affecting the vital interests of the country, would have illustrated and marked their progress.
General Scott, in his political opinions, is prone to extremes. Not content with having renounced Native Americanism, not satisfied to occupy the broad, just and liberal platform in favor of naturalization, on which the Democratic party have stood, ever since the origin of the Government, he leaves this far behind. In his letter, accepting the nomination of the Whig Convention, he declares himself in favor of such an alteration in our naturalization laws, as would admit foreigners to the rights of citizenship, who, in time of war, had served a single year in the army or navy. This manifests a strange, an unaccountable ignorance of the Federal Constitution. Did he not know that the power of Congress was confined to the establishment of “an uniform rule of naturalization?” “Uniform” is the word. Congress have no power to make exceptions in favor of any class of foreigners; no power to enact that one man shall be naturalized after a residence of a single year, and that another shall reside five years before he can attain this privilege. What uniformity would there be in requiring five years residence from the honest and industrious foreigner, who remains usefully employed at home, and in dispensing with this requisition in favor of the foreigner who has enlisted and served for one year in the army or navy? General Scott, in order to accomplish his object, must resort to a fourth amendment of the Constitution. He would make this sacred instrument a mere nose of wax, to be twisted, and turned, and bent in any direction which the opinion or caprice of the moment might dictate.
After this review, I ask you, fellow-citizens, what confidence can be reposed in the political opinions of General Scott? Is there anything in them of that firm, stable, consistent and enlightened character which ought to distinguish the man into whose hands you are willing to entrust the civil destinies of our great, glorious and progressive country? What security have our adopted citizens that he may not to-morrow relapse into Native Americanism? For twelve long years, and this, too, at a period of life when the judgment ought to be mature, he remained faithful and true to the Native American party; giving it all the encouragement and support which his high character and influence could command; and he only deserted it in 1848, at the approach of the Whig National Convention. And what opinion must the Native Americans hold of the man, who, after having been so long one of their most ardent and enthusiastic leaders, abandoned them at the time of their utmost need? Above all, does Winfield Scott possess that calm and unerring judgment, that far-seeing sagacity, and that prudence, never to be thrown off its guard, which we ought to require in a President of the United States?
That General Scott is a great military man, the people of this country will ever gratefully and cheerfully acknowledge. History teaches us, however, that but few men, whose profession has been arms and arms alone from early youth, have possessed the civil qualifications necessary wisely to govern a free people. Of this we have had some experience in the case of General Taylor, who was both an honest man and a pure patriot; but like General Scott, had always been a soldier and nothing but a soldier. It is true that a few favored mortals, emancipating themselves from the military fetters by which they had been bound, have displayed high talents as statesmen. Napoleon Bonaparte is the most remarkable example of this class; but his statesmanship was unfortunately displayed in the skill with which he forged fetters for his country.
As an American citizen, proud of the military exploits of General Scott, I wish from my soul he had never become a candidate for the Presidency. The defects in his character as a statesman, which it has now become an imperative duty to present to the people of the country, would then have been forgotten and forever buried in oblivion. But for this, he would have gone down to posterity without a cloud upon his glory. And, even now, it is fortunate for his future fame, as well as for the best interests of his country, that he can never be elected President of the United States.
A few words on the subject of General Scott’s connection with the Free Soilers, and I shall have done. And in the first place, let me say that I do not believe, and therefore shall not assert, that he is himself a Free Soiler. On the contrary, I freely admit we have satisfactory proof, that whilst the Compromise Measures were pending before Congress and afterwards, he expressed his approbation of them, but this only in private conversations among his friends. But was this all the country had a right to expect from General Scott?
The dark and portentous cloud raised by the Abolitionists and fanatics, which had for many years been growing blacker and still blacker, at length seemed ready to burst upon our devoted heads, threatening to sweep away both the Constitution and the Union. The patriots of the land, both Whigs and Democrats, cordially united their efforts to avert the impending storm. At this crisis, it became the duty of every friend of the Union to proclaim his opinions boldly. This was not a moment for any patriot to envelop himself in mystery. Under such appalling circumstances, did it comport with the frankness of a soldier, for General Scott to remain silent; or merely to whisper his opinions to private friends from the South? A man of his elevated station and commanding influence ought to have thrown himself into the breach. But the Presidency was in view; and he was anxious to secure the votes of the Free Soil Whigs of the Seward school, in the National Convention. Mr. Fillmore, his competitor, had spoken out like a man in favor of the Compromise, and had thus done his duty to his country. He was, for this very reason, rejected by the Whig National Convention, and General Scott was nominated by the votes and influence of the Northern Free Soil Whigs.
But the Northern Free Soilers had not quite sufficient strength to secure his nomination. To render this certain, it was necessary to enlist a small detachment of Southern Whig delegates. This task was easily accomplished. To attain his object, General Scott had merely to write a brief note to Mr. Archer.
This was evidently not intended for the public eye, certainly not for the Free Soilers. It was, therefore, most reluctantly extracted from the breeches pocket of John M. Botts, and was read to the Convention, as we are informed, amid uproarious laughter. In this note, General Scott, with characteristic inconsistency, whilst declaring his determination to write nothing to the Convention, or any of its individual members, at this very moment, in the same note, does actually write to Mr. Archer, a member of the Convention, that should the honor of a nomination fall to his lot, he would give his views on the Compromise Measures in terms at least as strong in their favor, as those which he had read to Mr. Archer himself but two days before. This pledge which, on its face, was intended exclusively for Governor Jones, Mr. Botts, and Mr. Lee, etc., all of them Southern Whigs, proved sufficient to detach a small division of this wing of the party from Mr. Fillmore, and these, uniting with the whole body of the Northern Free Soilers, succeeded in nominating General Scott. After the nomination had been thus made, the General immediately proceeded to accept it, “with the resolutions annexed;” and one of these resolutions is in favor of the faithful execution of all the measures of the Compromise, including the Fugitive Slave Law.
Now, fellow-citizens, I view the finality of the Compromise as necessary to the peace and preservation of the Union. I say finality; a word aptly coined for the occasion. The Fugitive Slave Law is all the South have obtained in this Compromise. It is a law founded both upon the letter and the spirit of the Constitution; and a similar law has existed on our statute book ever since the administration of George Washington. History teaches us that but for the provision in favor of the restoration of fugitive slaves, our present Constitution never would have existed. Think ye that the South will ever tamely surrender the Fugitive Slave Law to Northern fanatics and Abolitionists?
After all, then, the great political question to be decided by the people of the country is, will the election of Scott, or the election of Pierce, contribute most to maintain the finality of the Compromise and the peace and harmony of the Union?
Scott’s Northern supporters spit upon and execrate the platform erected by the Whig National Convention. They support General Scott, not because of their adherence to this platform, but in spite of it. They have loudly expressed their determination to agitate the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law, and thus bring back upon the country the dangerous excitement which preceded its passage. They will not suffer the country to enjoy peace and repose, nor permit the Southern States to manage their own domestic affairs, in their own way, without foreign interference.
Who can doubt that these dangerous men will participate largely in the counsels of General Scott, and influence the measures of his administration? To them he owes his election, should he be elected. He is bound to them by the ties of gratitude. He is placed in a position where he would be more or less than a man, if he could withdraw himself from their influence. Indeed, he has informed us in advance, in the very act of accepting the nomination, that he would seek to cultivate harmony and fraternal sentiment throughout the Whig party, without attempting to reduce its numbers by proscription to exact conformity to his own views. What does this mean, if not to declare that the Free Soil Whigs of the North, and the Compromise Whigs of the South, shall share equally in the honors and offices of the Administration? In the North, where by far the greatest danger of agitation exists, the offices will be bestowed upon those Whigs who detest the Compromise, and who will exert all the influence which office confers, to abolish the Fugitive Slave Law. To this sad dilemma has General Scott been reduced.
On the other hand, what will be our condition should General Pierce be elected? He will owe his election to the great Democratic party of the country,—a party truly national, which knows no North, no South, no East, and no West. They are everywhere devoted to the Constitution and the Union. They everywhere speak the same language. The finality of the Compromise, in all its parts, is everywhere an article of their political faith. Their candidate, General Pierce, has always openly avowed his sentiments on this subject.
He could proudly declare, in accepting the nomination, that there has been no word nor act of his life in conflict with the platform adopted by the Democratic National Convention. Should he be elected, all the power and influence of his administration will be exerted to allay the dangerous spirit of fanaticism, and to render the Union and the Constitution immortal. Judge ye, then, between the two candidates, and decide for yourselves.
And now, fellow-citizens, what a glorious party the Democratic party has ever been! Man is but the being of a summer’s day, whilst principles are eternal. The generations of mortals, one after the other, rise and sink and are forgotten; but the principles of Democracy, which we have inherited from our revolutionary fathers, will endure to bless mankind throughout all generations. Is there any Democrat within the sound of my voice—is there any Democrat throughout the broad limits of good and great old Democratic Pennsylvania, who will abandon these sacred principles for the sake of following in the train of a military conqueror, and shouting for the hero of Lundy’s Lane, Cerro Gordo, and Chapultepec?
“Remember, O my friends! the laws, the rights, The gen’rous plan of power deliver’d down, From age to age, by your renown’d forefathers, So dearly bought, the price of so much blood; O! Let it never perish in your hands, But piously transmit it to your children.”