John G. Nicolay, The Outbreak of Rebellion

[31] the pendency of such debate as the proposition might provoke in Congress. It would have thrust a firebrand into Congress, to complicate and divide every faction and element in politics except their own friends; in short, it would have made Washington City the principal centre of revolution. Fortunately for the country, their blindness lost to secession its only possible chance of peaceful success.

Under the impression that Mr. Buchanan was completely within the domination of the Cabinet cabal, the commissioners made an angry complaint against Anderson, and haughtily demanded “explanations,” threatening that, if these were not satisfactory, they would suspend their negotiations. Such a threat from applicants for recognition and favor was the very acme of stupidity and maladdress.

Anderson little suspected-perhaps never knew-how narrowly he escaped disavowal and disgrace by the President of the United States, for his act of fidelity and patriotism. The conspirators had shrewdly calculated on their influence over Mr. Buchanan. For two days he hesitated, leaning evidently to the counsels of his secession advisers. There were protracted Cabinet sessions, acrimonious debates, and a final struggle between the President's disloyal counsellors from the South and the loyal ones from the North, over the possession and control of their temporizing, vacillating chief. It was not till the latter were on the point of resigning that the President was brought to a direct decision against the conspirators; even then, but for an outside complication, the result might have been doubtful. For about a week Floyd and Thompson had both been in bad odor. A transaction, in which near a million dollars' worth of Indian Trust Bonds were abstracted from a safe in the Interior Department and replaced by Floyd's premature acceptances, looked so much like official theft that it was occupying the