any attack that
may be made.... Colonel Huger designs, I think, leaving Charleston for
Washington to-morrow night. He is more hopeful of a settlement of
impending difficulties without bloodshed than I am."

CHAPTER XXII

THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

Less than a month intervened between the November election at which
Lincoln had been chosen and the annual session of Congress, which would
meet on the first Monday of December, and it was necessary at once to
begin the preparation of the annual message. A golden opportunity
presented itself to President Buchanan. The suffrages of his
fellow-citizens had covered his political theories, his party measures,
and his official administration with condemnation, in an avalanche of
ballots.[1] But the Charleston conspirators had within a very few days
created for him a new issue overshadowing all the questions on which
he had suffered political wreck. Since the 6th of November the campaign
of the Border Ruffians for the conquest of Kansas, and the wider
Congressional struggle for the possession of the Territories, might be
treated as things of the past. Even had they still been pending issues,
they paled into insignificance before the paramount question of
disunion. Face to face with, this danger, the adherents of Lincoln, of
Douglas, of Bell, and the fraction of the President's own partisans in
the free-States would be compelled to postpone their discords and as
one man follow the constitutional ruler in a constitutional defense of
the laws, the flag, and the territory of the Union.

Without change of position, without recantation of principle, without
abatement even of declared party doctrine, honestly executing only the
high mandate of the Constitution, he could turn from the old issues and
take up the new. A single stride, and from the flying leader of a
discomfited rout he might become the mailed hero of an overpowering
host. Tradition, patriotism, duty, the sleepless monition of a solemn
official oath, all summoned him to take this step, and the brilliant
example set by President Jackson--an incident forever luminous in
American history--assured him of the plaudits of posterity.

Unfortunately for himself and for his country, President Buchanan had
neither the intellectual independence nor the courage required for such
an act of moral heroism. Of sincere patriotism and of blameless
personal rectitude, he had reached political eminence by slow promotion
through senio