For the moment our concern is how the
division manifested itself among the heads of the party at
Washington.
The President took the first of the three courses. He held it
with the nervous clutch of a weak nature until overmastered by
two grim men who gradually hypnotized his will. The
turning-point for Buchanan, and the last poor crisis in his
inglorious career, came on Sunday, December 30th. Before that
day arrived, his vacillation had moved his friends to pity and
his enemies to scorn. One of his best friends wrote privately,
"The President is pale with fear"; and the hostile point of view
found expression in such comments as this, "Buchanan, it is said,
divides his time between praying and crying. Such a perfect
imbecile never held office before."
With the question what to do about the forts hanging over his
bewildered soul, Buchanan sent a message to Congress on December
4, 1860, in which he sought to defend the traditional evasive
policy of his party. He denied the constitutional right of
secession, but he was also denied his own right to oppose such a
course. Seward was not unfair to the mental caliber of the
message when he wrote to his wife that Buchanan showed
"conclusively that it is the duty of the President to execute the
laws--unless somebody opposes him; and that no State has a right
to go out of the Union unless it wants to.
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