by our rights, our
equality, our honor, and by the Union under the Constitution. I believe
this is the only way to save it; and we can do it."

But this "still small voice" of conscience and of reason, heard like a
whisper from the mouths of Stephens in Georgia, and Magoffin in
Kentucky, was drowned in the clamor and tumult of impassioned harangues
and addresses, and the drumming and tramp of the "minute men" of South
Carolina, and other military organizations, as they excitedly prepared
throughout the South for the dread conflict at arms which they
recklessly invited, and savagely welcomed.

We have seen how President Andrew Jackson some thirty years before, had
stamped out Nullification and Disunion in South Carolina, with an iron
heel.

But a weak and feeble old man--still suffering from the effects of the
mysterious National Hotel poisoning--was now in the Executive Chair at
the White House. Well-meaning, doubtless, and a Union man at heart, his
enfeebled intellect was unable to see, and hold firm to, the only true
course. He lacked clearness of perception, decision of character, and
nerve. He knew Secession was wrong, but allowed himself to be persuaded
that he had no Constitutional power to prevent it. He had surrounded
himself in the Cabinet with such unbending adherents and tools of the
Slave-Power, as Howell Cobb of Georgia, his Secretary of the Treasury,
John B. Floyd of Virginia, as Secretary of War, Jacob Thompson of
Mississippi, as Secretary of the Interior, and Isaac Toucy of
Connecticut, as Secretary of the Navy, before whose malign influence the
councils of Lewis Cass of Michigan, the Secretary of State, and other
Union men, in and out of the Cabinet, were quite powerless.

When, therefore, the Congress met (December 3, 1860) and he transmitted
to it his last Annual Message, it was found that, instead of treating
Secession from the Jacksonian standpoint, President Buchanan feebly
wailed over the threatened destruction of the Union, weakly apologized
for the contemplated Treason, garrulously scolded the North as being to
blame for it, and, while praying to God to "preserve the Constitution
and the Union throughout all generations," wrung his nerveless hands in
despair over his own powerlessness--as he construed the Constitution--to
prevent Secession! Before writing his pitifully imbecile Message,
President Buchanan had secured from his Attorney-General (Jeremiah S.
Black of Pennsylvania) an opin