olina and had given a
lead to Unionist sympathy, he would have consolidated public opinion in
the North, and he would have greatly strengthened those in the South who
remained averse to secession. There would have been a considerable
further secession, but in all likelihood it would not have become so
formidable as it did. As it was, the movement for secession proceeded
with all the proud confidence that can be felt in a right which is not
challenged, and the people of the South were not aware, though shrewd
leaders like Jefferson Davis knew it well, of the risk they would
encounter till they had committed themselves to defying it.

The problem before Buchanan was the same which, aggravated by his failure
to deal with it, confronted Lincoln when he came into office, and it must
be clearly understood. The secession of South Carolina was not a
movement which could at once be quelled by prompt measures of repression.
Even if sufficient military force and apt forms of law had existed for
taking such measures they would have united the South in support of South
Carolina, and alienated the North, which was anxious for conciliation.
Yet it was possible for the Government of the Union, while patiently
abstaining from violent or provocative action, to make plain that in the
last resort it would maintain its rights in South Carolina with its full
strength. The main dealings of the Union authorities with the people of
a State came under a very few heads. There were local Federal Courts to
try certain limited classes of issues; jurors, of course, could not be
compelled to serve in these nor parties to appear. There was the postal
service; the people of South Carolina did not at present interfere with
this source of convenience to themselves and of revenue to the Union.
There were customs duties to be collected at the ports, and there were
forts at the entrance of the harbour in Charleston, South Carolina, as
well as forts, dockyards and arsenals of the United States at a number of
points in the Southern States; the Government should quietly but openly
have taken steps to ensure that the collection should go on unmolested,
and that the forts and the like should be made safe from attack, in South
Carolina and everywhere else where they were likely to be threatened.
Measures of this sort were early urged upon Buchanan by Scott, the
Lieutenant-General (that is, Second in Command under the President) of
the Army, who had been the o