also, succeeded Cobb; Judge Black was moved
into the State Department; and Edwin M. Stanton of Pennsylvania followed
Black as attorney-general. Mr. Floyd, than whom no Secessionist has left
a name in worse odor at the North, had at first advised against any
"rash movement" in the way of secession, on the ground that Mr.
Lincoln's administration would "fail, and be regarded as impotent for
good or evil, within four months after his inauguration." None the less
he had long been using his official position in the War Department to
send arms into the Southern States, and to make all possible
arrangements for putting them in an advantageous position for
hostilities. Fortunately about this time the famous defalcation in the
Indian Department, in which he was guiltily involved, destroyed his
credit with the President, and at the same time he quarreled with his
associates concerning Anderson's removal to Fort Sumter. On December 29
he resigned, and the duties of his place were laid for a while upon
Judge Holt, the postmaster-general.

On Sunday morning, December 30, there was what has been properly called
a cabinet crisis. The South Carolina commissioners, just arrived in
Washington, were demanding recognition, and to treat with the government
as if they were representatives of a foreign power. The President
declined to receive them in a diplomatic character, but offered to act
as go-between betwixt them and Congress. The President's advisers,
however, were in a far less amiable frame of mind, for their blood had
been stirred wholesomely by the secession of South Carolina and the
presence of these emissaries with their insolent demands. Mr. Black, now
at the head of the State Department, had gone through much the same
phases of feeling as General Cass. In November he had been "emphatic in
his advocacy of coercion," but afterward had approved the President's
message and even declared forcible coercion to be "_ipso facto_ an
expulsion" of the State from the Union; since then he had drifted back
and made fast at his earlier moorings. On this important Sunday morning
Mr. Buchanan learned with dismay that either his reply to the South
Carolinians must be substantially modified, or Mr. Black and Mr. Stanton
would retire from the cabinet. Under this pressure he yielded. Mr. Black
drafted a new reply to the commissioners, Mr. Stanton copied it, Holt
concurred in it, and, in substance, Mr. Buchanan accepted it. This
affair constituted,