his own party, followed by the threatened rebellion of the men
to whom he largely owed his election, and with it what moral authority
he might be supposed to possess. Had Lincoln been able to take command
in November he might, by a combination of firmness and conciliation,
have checked the Secessionist movement. Buchanan, perhaps, could do
little; but that little he did not do.

When all fair allowance has been made for the real difficulties of his
position it must be owned that the President cut a pitiable figure. What
was wanted was a strong lead for the Union sentiment of all the States
to rally to. What Buchanan gave was the most self-confessedly futile
manifesto that any American President has ever penned. His message to
the Congress began by lecturing the North for having voted Republican.
It went on to lecture the people of South Carolina for seceding, and to
develop in a lawyer-like manner the thesis that they had no
constitutional right to do so. This was not likely to produce much
effect in any case, but any effect that it might have produced was
nullified by the conclusion which appeared to be intended to show, in
the same legal fashion, that, though South Carolina had no
constitutional right to secede, no one had any constitutional right to
prevent her from seceding. The whole wound up with a tearful
demonstration of the President's own innocence of any responsibility for
the troubles with which he was surrounded.

It was not surprising if throughout the nation there stirred a name and
memory, and to many thousands of lips sprang instinctively and
simultaneously a single sentence: "Oh for one hour of Jackson!"

General Scott, who was in supreme command of the armed forces of the
Union, had, as a young man, received Jackson's instructions for "the
execution of the laws" in South Carolina. He sent a detailed
specification of them to Buchanan; but it was of no avail. The great
engine of democratic personal power which Jackson had created and
bequeathed to his successors was in trembling and incapable hands. With
a divided Cabinet--for his Secretary of State, Cass, was for vigorous
action against the rebellious State, while his Secretary for War, Floyd,
was an almost avowed sympathizer with secession--and with a President
apparently unable to make up his own mind, or to keep to one policy from
hour to hour, it was clear that South Carolina was not to be dealt with
in Jackson's fashion. Clay's alternative metho