converted, so that
there was practically no opposition. In a burst of passionate zeal the
independence of South Carolina was proclaimed on December 20, 1860, by
an ordinance of secession.

Simultaneously, by one of those dramatic coincidences which make history
stranger than fiction, Lincoln took a step which supplemented this
action and established its tragic significance. What that step was will
appear in a moment.

Even before the secession began, various types of men in politics had
begun to do each after his kind. Those whom destiny drove first into a
corner were the lovers of political evasion. The issue was forced upon
them by the instantaneous demand of the people of South Carolina for
possession of forts in Charleston Harbor which were controlled by the
Federal Government. Anticipating such a demand, Major Robert Anderson,
the commandant at Charleston, had written to Buchanan on the 23d of
November that "Fort Sumter and Castle Pinckney must be garrisoned
immediately, if the Government determines to keep command of this
harbor."

In the mind of every American of the party of political evasion, there
now began a sad, internal conflict. Every one of them had to choose
among three courses: to shut his eyes and to continue to wail that the
function of government is to do nothing; to make an end of political
evasion and to come out frankly in approval of the Southern position;
or to break with his own record, to emerge from his evasions on the
opposite side, and to confess himself first and before all a supporter
of the Union. One or another of these three courses, sooner or later,
every man of the President's following chose. We shall see presently the
relative strength of the three groups into which that following broke
and what strange courses sometimes tragic, sometimes comic--two of the
three pursued. For the moment our concern is how the division manifested
itself among the heads of the party at Washington.

The President took the first of the three courses. He held it with the
nervous clutch of a weak nature until overmastered by two grim men who
gradually hypnotized his will. The turning-point for Buchanan, and the
last poor crisis in his inglorious career, came on Sunday, December
30th. Before that day arrived, his vacillation had moved his friends to
pity and his enemies to scorn. One of his best friends wrote privately,
"The President is pale with fear"; and the hostile point of view found
expression