Life of James Buchanan, fifteenth president of the United States

Preface

-VJOTWITHSTANDIXG the proverbial tendency of bio- _L.l graj)liers to contract what Macaulay lias called "the disease of admiration," no one who can lay claim to any strength of mind need allow the fear of such an imputation to prevent him from doing justice to a public man whose life, for whatever reason, he has undertaken to write. But that my readers may judge of the degree of my exposure to this malady, a frank explanation of the circumstances under which I came to write this work is due both to them and to myself.

In the summer of 1880, the executoi'S and the nearest sunaving relatives of Mr. Buchanan asked me to allow them to place in my hands the whole collection of his private papers, with a view to the preparation of a biographical and historical work concerning his public and private life. This duty could not have been undertaken by me, without an explicit understanding that I was to treat the subject in an entirely independent and impartial spirit. To be of much value, the work, as I conceived, must necessarily be, to some extent, a history of the times in which Mr. Buchanan acted an important part as a public man. IMoreover, although I had been for far the greater part of this period an attentive observer of public affairs, I had no special interest in Mr. Buchanan's fame, and was never personally known to him. I could have no object, therefore, of any kind, tr subserve, save the truth of history ; nor did the representajy PREFACE.

tives of Mr, Buchanan desire me, in assuming the office of his biographer, to undertake that of an official eulogist. I have souo-ht for information, aside from the papers of the late President, in many quarters where I knew that I could obtain it ; but the opinions, inferences and conclusions contained in these volumes are exclusively my own, excepting in the few instances in which I have expressly cjuoted those of other persons. No one has exercised or endeavored to exercise the slightest influence over what I have said of Mr, Buchanan, and I acknowledge and have felt no loyalty to his reputation beyond the loyalty that every man owes to justice and to truth,

I have thought it proper to say this much concerning my relations to the family of Mr, Buchanan, for two reasons. The President, by his will, appointed as his biographer a personal friend, the late Mr. William B, Keed of Philadelphia, in whom he had great confidence, and who Avas a very accomplished writer. But Mr. Keed was prevented by private misfortunes from doing anything more than to examine Mr. Buchanan's voluminous papers, and to prepare two introductory chapters of the intended Life. Of these I could make no use, as they did not accord with my method of treating the subject. After Mr, Reed had surrendered the task which he had undertaken, the papers were placed in the hands of the late Judge John Cadwallader of Philadelphia, another personal friend of the President. This gentleman died before he had begun to write the proposed work ; and when the papers, which had been placed in his hands by the executors, came into mine, along with another large collection from Wheatland, I had to subject them to an entirely new arrangement and classification, before anything could be done. In resorting to a stranger as the biographer of Mr. Buchanan, his executors and friends did what circumstances had rendered unavoidable. The only assurance I can give is that I have had no reason to be otherwise than strictly faithful

to what I believe to be the truth concerning the whole of Mr. Buchanan's career.

The other reason for a candid explanation of my relation to this subject will occur to every one. Mr. Buchanan's administration of the Government during the four years which preceded the commencement of our civil war, is a topic upon which friends and foes have widely differed. But no unprejudiced person who now examines the facts can doubt that, in many minds, injustice has been done to him. Perhaps this was inevitable, considering that a sectional civil war, of vast magnitude and attended with great bitterness, followed immediately after his retirement from office, when a political party whicli had been in opposition to his administration came for the first time into the full control of the Federal Government. It was in the nature of things— or rather, I should say, it was in the nature of manthat those who succeeded to the Government should have charged upon the outgoing administration that they had been remiss in their public duty ; and that under the example of men in high places, there should have grown up a popular belief that Mr. Buchanan fovored the secession of the Southern States, either purposely, or by lack of the proper energy to meet it in its incipient stages. Charges of this kind found popular credence in a time of unexampled excitement ; and since the w^ar was ended, there have been, and doubtless there still are, many persons who regard President Buchanan as a man who could have saved the country from a frightful civil war, if he had had the wish and the energy to nip Secession in the bud.

Such, at all events, were the reproaches wdth which many of his countrymen pursued him into retirement, and continued to follow him to his grave. Denied as he was a hearing while he lived, because the perils and turmoils of the immediate present unfitted men to look dispassionately back into the past, he may well have desired that in some calmer time, wdien he had gone

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where there is neither ignorance, nor prejudice, nor rancor, some one should " read liis cause aright to the unsatisfied." To that better time he looked forward with an undoubting faith in the ultimate justice of his country. I believe that the time which he anticipated has come ; and that nothing more than a proper examination of the facts is now needed, to insure for him all the vindication that he could ever have desired.

In regard to this and to every other part of his life, I have found it an interesting task to trace the history of a man whose public and private character were always pure, whose patriotism was co-extensive with his whole country, whose aims were high, and who was habitually conscientious in the discharge of every obhgation. My estimate of his abilities and power as a statesman has risen with every investigation that I have made ; and it is, in my judgment, not too much to say of him as a President of the United States, that he is entitled to stand very high on the catalogue— not a large one— of those who have had the moral courage to encounter misrepresentation and obloquy, rather than swerve from the line of duty which tbeir convictions marked out for them.

I must say a few words in explanation of my method of describing important public transactions, the interest in which attaches both to the events and to an individual who has borne a chief part in them. There are two modes of historical writino-. One is to make a narrative of the course of a foreign negotiation, for example, or of any other public action, without quoting despatches or documents. The other, which scarcely rises above the dignity of compilation, is to let the story be told mainly by the documents. But in biography, where the interest centres for the nonce in some principal actor, I conceive that the better course is to unite the two methods, by so much of description as is needful to illustrate the documents, and by so much of quotation as is needful to give force to the

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vll narrative. It often happens, however, that the private letters which a person in high official station receives or writes, are quite valuable to the elucidation of official papers and official acts, as they certainly may render a description more lively than it would be without them. The collection of Mr. Buchanan's papers is exceedingly rich in private correspondence, both with persons towards whom he stood in official, and with other persons towards whom he stood in only social, relations ; and I have drawn largely upon these materials. Whether I have accomplished the object at which I have aimed, the reader will judge. It is for me to do no more than to apprise him that I have endeavored to write for his instruction and his entertainment, as well as to render justice to the person whose life I have described. To vindicate in all things the public policy of the party with which he acted, has not been my aim. I have only sought to exhibit it in its true relation to the history of the times. Sincerity and strength of conviction were as characteristic of those to whom Mr. Buchanan was politically opposed, as they were of his political associates.

It is perhaps almost superfluous for me to say that it would have been impracticable for me within the limits of these two volumes to give an account of every debate in Congress in which Mr. Buchanan took part, or of every transaction with which he was connected as a foreign minister, as Secretary of State, or as President. Such of his speeches as I have quoted at length have been selected because of the interest that still attaches to the subject, or some part of it, or because they illustrate his powers as a debater ; and in making selections or quotations from his dij^lomatic papers, I have been unavoidably confined to those which related to critical questions in our foreig-n relations. It was equally impracticable for me to touch upon the connections which he had with numerous political persons in the course of a public life of forty years. I have drawn a

Yiii PREFACE,

necessary line, and have drawn it between tliose v.'ith whom he stood in some important official relation, or who occupied important public positions, and tliose who belong in the category of politicians more or less prominent and active, with whom all very eminent public men have more or less to do ; including the former and excluding the latter. But of course I have varied this rule in the case of friends who stood in personal rather than political relations with him.

It remains for me to give a description of the materials of which I have made use, and to make the customary acknowledgments to those who supplied them.

Any man who has been in public life for a long period of time, and has attained to the highest public stations, must necessarily have accumulated a vast amount of materials of the highest importance to the elucidation of his own history and of the history of the times in which he has acted. Mr. Buchanan had a habit of preserving nearly everything that came into his hands. The mass of his private correspondence is enormous. I can hardly specify the number of letters that I have had to read, in order to form an adequate idea of the state of the public mind in the opposite sections of the Union during the period when he first had to encounter the secession movement. My recollection of the condition of public opinion at such junctures was pretty vivid, but I could not venture to trust to it without examining the best evidence ; for undoubtedly the best evidence of public opinion was to be found in the private letters which at such periods reached the President from all cjuartcrs of the country. Many hundreds of such letters have been examined, in order to write, and to write con-ectly, a very few pages. Mr. Buchanan had also another habit of great utility. Although he did not always keep a regular diary or journal, he rarely held an important conversation, or was engaged in a critical transaction, without writing down an account of it with his own hand

PREFACE. ix

immediately caffcerward. These extremely valuable memoranda will be found to throw great light upon many matters that have hitherto been left in obscurity, or have been entirely misrepresented. He was also an indefatigable letter- writer ; and of those of his own letters of which he did not keep copies, he procured many from his correspondents after his retirement to Wheatland. He wrote freely, easily, and I should think rapidly. His familiar letters rarely received or required much correction ; but his official productions were polished with great care.

The principal mass of these papers, along with the public documents which were connected with them, was collected by Mr. Buchanan himself, in the interval between his retirement from the Presidency and his death. This collection was placed in my hands by his brother and executor, the Rev. Edward Y. Buchanan, D.D., of Philadelphia. Another large collection came to me from Mr. and Mrs. Henry E. Johnston, the present possessors of Wheatland. Mrs. Johnston enriched the collection of papers which were sent to me from Wheatland, by adding to them a great quantity of her uncle's letters to herself, of which she kindly permitted me to take copies.

From James Buchanan Henry, Esq., nephew of the President, and for some time his private secretary, and from Miss Buchanan, daughter of the Eev. Dr. Buchanan, I have received interesting contributions, which have found their place in my work.

l^ext to these, the immediate relatives of President Buchanan, I am indebted to the Hon. Jeremiah S. Black, Attorney-General and afterwards Secretary of State during Mr. Buchanan's Presidency, for important information. I am under like obligations to Brinton Coxe and Joseph B. Baker, Esqs., of Philadelphia, friends of the late President.

And finally, from my own valued friend of many years, Samuel L. M. Barlow, Esq., of Xew York, I have received two very interesting contributions, which are quoted and credited

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in their appropriate places. I am also under a similar obligation to W. U. Ilensel, Esq., of Lancaster, and to George Plumer Smith, Esq., of Philadelphia. Nor should I omit to mention the name of Iliram B. Swarr, Esq., co-executor with Dr. Buchanan, and the confidential lawyer of the late President, at Lancaster, as one who has very materially aided my researches.

New York, May 1, 1883.

Contents

PAGE

Birth and Parentage — Early Education and College Life — Study of tlie

Law Admission to the Bar — Settles in Lancaster — A Volunteer in the

Chapter I. 1791— 1820

BIRTH Airo PABENTAGE— EARLY EDUCATION AND COLLEGE LIFE — STUDY OF THE LAW — ADMISSION TO THE EAR — SETTLES IN LANCASTER — A VOLUNTEER IN THE WAR OF 1812 — ENTERS THE LEGISLATURE OF PENNSYLVANIA — EARLY DISTINCTION — PROFESSIONAL INCOME — RE- TIRES FROM PUBLIC LIFE — DISAPPOINTMENT IN LOVE — RE-ENTERS PUBLIC LIFE — ELECTED TO CONGRESS.

A UTOBIOGEAPHY, when it exists, usually furnishes the ~L\. most interesting and reliable information of at least the early life of any man. Among the papers of Mr. Buchanan, there remains a fragment of an autobiography, without date, written however, it is supposed, many years before his death. This sketch, for it is only a sketch, ends with the year 1816, when he was at the age of twenty-five. I shall quote from it, in connection with the events of this part of his life, adding such further elucidations of its text as the other materials within my reach enable me to give.

The following is the account which Mr. Buchanan gives of his birth and parentage :

" My father, James Buchanan, was a native of the county Donegal, in the kingdom of Irehmd. His family was respectable ; but their pecuniary circumstances were limited. He emigrated to the United States before the date of the Definitive Treaty of Peace with Great Britain ; having sailed

from in the brig Providence, bound for Philadelphia, in 1783. He

was then in the twenty-second year of his age. Immediately after his arrival in Philadephia, he proceeded to the house of his maternal uncle, Mr. Joshua Russel, in York county. After spending a short time there, he became an assistant in the store of Mr. John Tom, at Stony Batter, a I.— 1 a LIFE OF JAMES BUCHAI^AN.

country place at tbe foot of the North Mountain, then in Cumberland (now in Franklin county.)

" He commenced business for liimself, at the same place, about the beginning of the year 1788; and on the 16th of April, in the same year, -was married to Elizabeth Speer. My father was a man of practical judgment, and of great industry and perseverance. He had received a good English education, and had that kind of knowledge of mankind which prevented him from being ever deceived in his business. With these qualifications, with the facility of obtaining goods on credit at Baltimore at that early period, and with the advantages of his position, it being one of a very few spots where the people of the western counties came with jjack horses loaded with wheat to purchase and carry home salt and other necessaries, his circumstances soon improved. He bought the Dunwoodie farm for £1500 in 1794, and had previously purchased the property on which he resided at the Cove Gap.

"I was bom aFthTs~'place on the 23d of April, 1791, being my father's second child.- My father moved from the Cove Gaj) to Mercersburg, a distance of between three and four miles, in the autumn of 1796, and began business in Mercersburg in the autumn of 1798. For some years before his death, which occurred on the 11th of June, 1831, he had quite a large mercantile business, and devoted much of liis time and attention to superintending nis farm, of which he was very fond. He was a man of great native force of character. He was not only respected, but beloved by everybody who approached him. In his youth, he held the commission of a justice of the peace; but finding himself so overrun with the business of this office as to interfere with his private affairs, he resigned his commission. A short time before his death, he again received a commission of the peace from Governor Hiester. He was a kind father, a sincere friend, and an honest and religious man.

"My mother, considering her limited opportunities in early life, was a remarkable woman. The daughter of a country farmer, engaged in household employment from early life until after my father's death, she yet found time to read much, and to reflect deeply on what she read. She had a great fondness for poetry, and could repeat with ease all the passages in her favorite authors which struck her fancy. These were Milton, Pope, Young, Cowper, and Thomson. I do not think, at least until a late period of her life, she had ever read a criticism on any one of these authors, and yet such was the correctness of her natural taste that she had selected for herself, and could repeat, every passage in them which has been admired.

" She was a sincere and devoted Christian from the time of my earliest recollection, and had read much on the subject of theology ; and what she read once, she remembered forever. For her sons, as they successively "•rew up, she was a delightful and instructive companion. She would argue with them, and often gain the victory ; ridicule them in any folly or

PARENTAGE. 3

eccentricity ; excite their ambition, by presenting to them in glowing colors men who had been useful to their country or their kind, as objects of imitation, and enter into all their joys and sorrows. Her early habits of laborious industry, she could not be induced to forego — whilst she had anything to do. My father did everything he could to prevent her from laboring in her domestic concerns, but it was all in vain. I have often, during the vacations at school or college, sat in the room with her, and whilst she was (entirely from her own choice) busily engaged in homely domestic employments, 4iave spent hours pleasantly and instructively in conversing with her. She was a woman of great firmness of character and bore the afflictions of her later life with Christian philosophy. After my father's death, she lost her two sons, William and George Washington, two young men of great jiromise, and a favorite daughter. These afflictions withdrew her affections gradually more and more from the things of this world — and she died on the 14th of May, 1833, at Greensburg, in the calm but firm assurance that she was going home to heFTatheFlind her God. It was chiefly to her influence that her sons were indebted for a liberal education. Under Providence, I attribute any little distinction which I may have acquired in the world to the blessing which He conferred upon me in granting me such a mother."

The parents of Mr. Buchanan were both of Scotch-Irish descent, and Presbyterians. At what time this branch of the Buchanan family emigrated from Scotland to Ireland is not known ; but John Buchanan, the grandfather of the President, who was a farmer in the county of Donegal in Ireland, married Jane Eussel, about the middle, of the last century. She was a daughter of Samuel Kussel, who was also a farmer of Scotch- Presbyterian descent in the same county. James Buchanan, their son, and father of the President, was brought up by his mother's relatives. Elizabeth Speer, the President's mother, was the only daughter of James Speer, who was also of Scotch- Presbyterian ancestry, and who emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1756. James Speer and his wife (Mary Patterson) settled at first on a farm ten miles from Lancaster, and afterwards at the foot of the South Mountain between Chambersburg and Gettysburg. It is told in some memoranda which now lie before me, that in 1779, James Speer left the " Covenanted Church," on account of difficulties with Mr. Dobbins, his pastor, and was afterwards admitted to full communion in the Presbyterian congregation under the care of the Rev. John Black. This incident sufficiently indicates the kind of religious atmosphere in which Mrs. Buchanan grew up ; and the letters of both parents to their son, from which I shall have occasion to quote frequently, afibrd abundant evidence of that deep and peculiar piety which characterized the sincere Christians of their denomination. They were married on the 16th of April, 1Y88, when Mrs. Buchanan was just twenty-one, and her husband twenty-seven. Eleven children were born to them between 1789 and 1811. James, the future President, was born April 23d, 1791. Of his early education and his college life, he gives this account :

" After having received a tolerably good English education, I studied the Latin and Greek languages at a school in Mercersburg. It was first kept by the Rev. James R. Sharon, then a student of divinity with Dr. John King, and afterwards by a Mr. McConnell and Dr. Jesse Magaw, then a student of medicine, and subsequently my iM'other-in-law. I was sent to Dickinson College in the fall of 1807, where I entered the junior class.

" The college was in a wretched condition ; and I have often regretted that I had not been sent to some other institution. Tiiere was no efficient discipline, and the young men did pretty much as they pleased. To be a sober, plodding, industrious youth was to incur the ridicule of the mass of the students. Without much natural tendency to become dissipated, and chiefly from the example of others, and in order to be considered a clever and a spirited youth, I engaged in every sort of extravagance and mischief in which the greatest proficients of the college indulged. Unlike the rest of this class, however, I was always a tolerably hard student, and never was deficient in my college exercises.

" A circumstance occurred, after I had been a year at college, which made a strong and lasting impression upon me. During the September vacation, in the year 1808, on a Sabbath moniing, whilst I was sitting in the room with my father, a letter was brought to him. He opened it, and read it, and I observed that his countenance fell. He then handed it to me and left th3 room, and I do not recollect that he ever afterwards spoke to me on the subject of it. It was from Dr. Davidson, the Principal of Dickinson College. He stated that, but for the respect Avhicli the faculty entertained for my father, I would have been expelled from college on account of disorderly conduct. That they had borne with me as best they could until that period ; but that they would not receive me again, and that the letter was written to save him the mortification of sending me back and having me rejected. Mortified to the soul, I at once determined upon my course. Dr. John King was at the time pastor of the congregation to which my

COLLEGE LIFE.

r)arents belonged. He came to that congregatiop shortly after the Revolu- Ton tndcon?.nued to be its pastor until his death. He had either n.amed or baptized all its members. He participated in their joys as well as their sorrows, and had none of the gloomy bigotry which too often passes in hese d^ys for superior sanctity. He was, I believe, a trustee of the colleo-e, and enjoyed great and extensive influence wherever he was known. To him I applied with the greatest confidence in my extremity. He gave me a gentle lecture-the more efficient on that account. He then proposed to L, thatif I would pledge my honor to him to behave better at college than I had done, he felt such confidence in me that he ^^^^l^ pledge himself to Dr. Davidson on my behalf, and he did not doubt that I would be permitted to return. I cheerfully complied with this condition ; Dr. King arrTncred the matter, and I returned to college, without any questions beincTasked • and afterwards conducted myself in such a manner as, at least, to p^'revent any formal complaint. At the public examination, previous to the commencement, I answered without difficulty every question which was propounded to me. At that time there were two honors conferred by the college. It was the custom for each of the two societ.es to presen a candidaterand the faculty decided which of them should have the first honor and the second was conferred upon the other candidate as a matter of course I had set mv heart upon obtaining the highest, and the society to which I belonged unanimously presented me as their candidate. As 1 believed that this society, from the superior scholarship of its membei^ was entitled to both, on my motion we presented two candidates to e faculty The consequence was, that they rejected me altogether, gave the first honor to the candidate of the opposite society, and the second to Mr Robert Lavertv, now of Chester county, assigning as a reason tor reiecting my claims'that it would have a bad tendency to confer an honor of the college upon a student who had shown so little respect as I had done for the rules of the college and for the protessors.

''I have scarcely ever been so much mortified at any occurrence of my life as at this disappointment, nor has friendship ever been manifes ed totards me in a more striking manner than by all the -embers of th society to which I belonged. Mr. Laverty, at once, mthe -^^^ W J^ ner offered to yield me the second honor, which, however, I dec ined to Lit The other members of the society belonging to the senior class wouM have united with me in refusing to speak at the approachmg com- Tencement, but I was unwilling to place them in this situation on my account, and more especially as several of them were designed for the nSL;. I held out myself for some time, but at last yielded on receiving rSnd communication from the professors. I left college, however, feeling but little attachment towards the Alma Mater."

In regard to the danger of liis expulsion from the college, which Mr. Buchanan has frankly recorded in his autobiographi-

C LIFE OF JAMES BUCHANAN.

cal fragment, I find no other reference to it. But I have seen in the note-books of his studies and in the notes which he kept of lectures that he attended, abundant proof that he was, as he says, "a tolerably hard student." He seems to have had a strong propensity to logic and metaphysics, and of these studies there are copious traces in his own handwriting. The incident whicli he relates concerning his disappointment in not receiving one of the highest of the college honors at his graduating " commencement," is thus touched upon in a letter from his father :

Merceesbupg, September C, 1809.

Dear Son: —

Yours is at hand (though without date) -which mortifies us very much for your disappointment, in being deprived of both honors of the college, especially when your prospect was so fair for one of them, and more so when it was done by the professors who are acknowledged by the world to be the best judges of the talents and merits of the several students under their care. I am not disposed to censure your conduct in being ambitious to have the first honors of the college ; but as it was thought that Mr. F. and yourself were best entitled to them, you and he ought to have coml^ounded the matter so as to have left it to the disposition of your several societies, and been contented with their choice. The partiality you complain of in the professors is, no doubt, an unjust thing in them, and perhaps it has proceeded from some other cause than that which you are disposed to ascribe to them.