they had also been largely
instrumental in bringing about the unofficial truce at Charleston. If,
amid all his fears, Mr. Buchanan retained any sensibility, he must
have been profoundly shocked at the cool dissimulation with which Mr.
Cobb, everywhere recognized as a Cabinet officer of great ability, had
assisted in committing the Administration to these fatal doctrines and
measures, and then abandoned it in the moment of danger. "My
withdrawal," he wrote to the President, "has not been occasioned by
anything you have said or done. Whilst differing from your message
upon some of its theoretical doctrines, as well as from the hope so
earnestly expressed that the Union can be preserved, there was no
practical result likely to follow which required me to retire from
your Administration. That necessity is created by what I feel it my
duty to do; and the responsibility of the act, therefore, rests alone
upon myself." Ignoring the fact that the Treasury was prosperous and
solvent when he took charge of it, and that at the moment of his
leaving it could not pay its drafts, Mr. Cobb, five days later,
published a long and inflammatory address to the people of Georgia,
concluding with this exhortation: "I entertain no doubt either of your
right or duty to secede from the Union. Arouse, then, all your manhood
for the great work before you, and be prepared on that day to announce
and maintain your independence out of the Union, for you will never
again have equality and justice in it."

[Sidenote] G.T. Curtis, "Life of James Buchanan." Vol. II., p. 399.

The President had scarcely found a successor for Mr. Cobb when the
head of his Cabinet, Lewis Cass, Secretary of State, tendered his
resignation also, and retired from the Administration. Mr. Cass had
held many offices of distinction, had attained high rank as a
Democratic leader, and had once been a Presidential candidate. His
resignation was, therefore, an event of great significance from a
political point of view. The incident brings into bold relief the
mental reservations under which Buchanan's paradoxical theories had
been concurred in by his Cabinet. A private memorandum, in Mr.
Buchanan's handwriting, commenting on the event, makes the following
emphatic statement: "His resignation was the more remarkable on
account of the cause he assigned for it. When my late message (of
December, 1860) was read to the Cabinet before it was printed, General
Cass expressed his unreserv