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Details
BUCHANAN, James. Autograph letter signed ("James Buchanan") as former President, to James H. Beardsley, Wheatland, near Lancaster, 10 March 1864. 1¼ pages, 8vo, integral blank, minor fold repairs.
BUCHANAN CLAIMS "AMPLE JUSTIFICATION OF MY CONDUCT" DURING THE SECESSION CRISIS
"THE ABUSE I HAVE RECEIVED HAS NEVER DISTURBED MY TRANQUILITY." Three years after leaving office in the midst of a Secession crisis he did little to resolve, the former President is grateful for a supportive letter citing a speech by "Mr. Dawson...an excellent man." Dawson did what few before or after him have been prepared to do: he defended Buchanan's passive handling of the secession crisis during the agonizingly long interregnum between Lincoln's November 1860 election and his March 1861 inauguration. "What he says on my behalf," Buchanan notes, "was well timed and to the point; but he had not the materials in his possession for an ample justification of my conduct. These will some day be placed before the Public. In the mean time, the abuse I have received has never disturbed my tranquility. Conscious that I have faithfully served my country, I do not fear its final award."
The most ardent proponent of the "ignore it and it will go away" approach to slavery and secession, Buchanan told Congress in his last annual message, "All for which the slave States have ever contended, is to be let alone and permitted to manage their domestic institutions in their own way." He denounced secessionists as "revolutionaries" but did nothing when they violently fought off the first attempt at resupplying Fort Sumter in January 1861. And he was equally scornful of abolitionists who, he said, had no more right to interfere with slavery in the southern states than they did "with similar institutions in Russia or Brazil."
BUCHANAN CLAIMS "AMPLE JUSTIFICATION OF MY CONDUCT" DURING THE SECESSION CRISIS
"THE ABUSE I HAVE RECEIVED HAS NEVER DISTURBED MY TRANQUILITY." Three years after leaving office in the midst of a Secession crisis he did little to resolve, the former President is grateful for a supportive letter citing a speech by "Mr. Dawson...an excellent man." Dawson did what few before or after him have been prepared to do: he defended Buchanan's passive handling of the secession crisis during the agonizingly long interregnum between Lincoln's November 1860 election and his March 1861 inauguration. "What he says on my behalf," Buchanan notes, "was well timed and to the point; but he had not the materials in his possession for an ample justification of my conduct. These will some day be placed before the Public. In the mean time, the abuse I have received has never disturbed my tranquility. Conscious that I have faithfully served my country, I do not fear its final award."
The most ardent proponent of the "ignore it and it will go away" approach to slavery and secession, Buchanan told Congress in his last annual message, "All for which the slave States have ever contended, is to be let alone and permitted to manage their domestic institutions in their own way." He denounced secessionists as "revolutionaries" but did nothing when they violently fought off the first attempt at resupplying Fort Sumter in January 1861. And he was equally scornful of abolitionists who, he said, had no more right to interfere with slavery in the southern states than they did "with similar institutions in Russia or Brazil."