ts own existence, and the Union might crumble
and fall while its constituted authorities stood paralyzed and
impotent.

This construction was all that the extremists of the South desired.
With so much conceded, they had every thing in their own hands.
They could march out of the Union at their own will and caprice,
without resistance from the National Government, and they could
come back upon such conditions as, with the President's aid, they
might extort from an alarmed and weakening North. Assured by the
language of the President that they could with impunity defy the
constitutional authority of the government, the Secessionists were
immeasurably encouraged. The Southern men had for three generations
been cherishing the belief that they were as a class superior to
Northern men, and they were more than ever confirmed in this pleasing
illusion when they saw a Northern President, with the power of the
nation in his hands, deliberately affirming that he could exercise
no authority over or against them.

Men who, under the wholesome restraint of executive power, would
have refrained from taking aggressive steps against the National
Government, were by Mr. Buchanan's action forced into a position
of hostility. Men in the South, who were disposed to avoid extreme
measures, were by taunt and reproach driven into the ranks of
Secession. They were made to believe, after the President's message,
that the South would be ruined if she did not assert a position
which the National authority confessed it had no right and no means
to contest. The Republicans had been taunting Southern men with
the intention of using only bluster and bravado, and if they should
now fail to take a decisive step in the direction of Disunion, they
felt that it would be a humiliating retraction of all they had said
in the long struggle over slavery. It would be an invitation to
the Abolitionists and fanatics of the North, to deal hereafter with
the South, and with the question of slavery, in whatever manner
might seem good in their sight. No weapon of logic could have been
more forcible; and, wielded as it was by Southern leaders with
skill and courage, they were able to consolidate the public opinion
and control the political action of their section.

The evil effects of Mr. Buchanan's message were not confined to
the slave States. It did incalculable harm in the free States.
It fixed in the minds of tens of thousands of Northern men who were