and so on, are written down by the diarist in a sense
different from that in which they were spoken, or the President and
several of his counselors underwent an amazing change of sentiment.
But in a general way they show us that on the fourth day after
Lincoln's election the Buchanan Cabinet was already divided into
hostile camps. Cass of Michigan, Secretary of State, Toucey of
Connecticut, Secretary of the Navy, Black of Pennsylvania,
Attorney-General, and Holt of Kentucky, Postmaster-General, were
emphatic Unionists; while Cobb of Georgia, Secretary of the Treasury,
Thompson of Mississippi, Secretary of the Interior, and Floyd of
Virginia, Secretary of War, were secessionists--the latter yet
professing devotion to the Union, but with such ifs and buts as left
sufficiently clear evidence of his inevitable drift to disloyalty.

All impulses of prudence and patriotism ought to have moved the
President to reconstruct his Cabinet. But instead of some energetic
executive act of this character, he seems to have applied himself to
the composition of a political essay to teach the North its duty; as
if his single pen had power to change the will of the people of the
United States upon a point which they had decided by their votes only
four days previously after six years of discussion. In the draft of
this document, which he read to his Cabinet on November 10, we have
the important record that "it inculcated submission to Lincoln's
election, and intimated the use of force to coerce a submission to his
rule"--positions which Floyd records were "met with extravagant
commendations from General Cass, Governor Toucey, Judge Black, and Mr.
Holt." This was a true touchstone; it instantly brought out not only
the open secessionism of Cobb and Thompson, but the disguised
disloyalty of Floyd.

It is a strange historical phenomenon that, with the President and a
majority of the Cabinet in this frame of mind, the South should have
been permitted to organize rebellion. The solution seems to lie in the
temporizing feebleness of Buchanan and in the superior finesse and
daring conspiracy of Cobb, Thompson, and Floyd.

Many indications make it evident that a long factional struggle took
place over the preparation of the President's message. The telegraph
announced several protracted Cabinet sessions; and as early as the
21st of November the points under discussion and the attitude of the
President and his several official advisers were accu