rately
foreshadowed in the newspapers. Nor were these momentous deliberations
confined to the Cabinet proper. All the varieties of suggestion and
contradictory counsels which were solicited or tendered we may never
learn, and yet we know enough to infer the highest extremes and
antagonisms of doctrine and policy. Jefferson Davis, the future chief
of the rebellion, came on the one hand at the urgent call of his
fellow-conspirators; Edwin M. Stanton, afterwards Buchanan's
Attorney-General and Lincoln's Secretary of War,[4] was on the other
hand called in by Mr. Buchanan himself, to help him through, the
intricate maze of his perplexed opinions and inclinations. How many
others may have come voluntarily or by summons it is impossible to
guess. Many brains and hands, however, must have joined in the work,
since the document is such a heterogeneous medley of conflicting
theories, irreconcilable doctrines, impracticable and irrelevant
suggestions. For at length the hesitating and bewildered President,
unable to decide and impotent to construct, seems to have made his
message a patchwork from the contributions of his advisers, regular
and irregular, with the inevitable effect, not to combine and
strengthen, but to weaken and confuse the warring thoughts and alien
systems.

Aside from the mere recapitulation of department reports, the message
of President Buchanan delivered to Congress on the 4th of December
occupied itself mainly with two subjects--slavery and disunion. On the
question of slavery it repeated the assertions and arguments of the
Buchanan faction of the Democratic party during the late Presidential
campaign, charging the present peril entirely upon the North. As a
remedy it recommended an amendment to the Federal Constitution
expressly[5] recognizing slavery in States which had adopted or might
adopt it, and also expressly giving it existence and protection in the
Federal Territories. The proposal was simply childish. Precisely this
issue had been decided at the Presidential election; to do this would
be to reverse the final verdict of the ballot-box.[6]

On the question of disunion or secession, the message raised a vague
and unwarrantable distinction between the infractions of law and
allegiance by individuals, and the infractions of law and allegiance
by the commonwealth, or body politic denominated a State. Under the
first head it held: That the Union was designed to be perpetual; that
the Federal Governme