James Buchanan, Buchanan's administration on the eve of the rebellion

[85] a sin, and rendering slaveholders odious. Numerous abolition petitions had been presented to Congress, from session to session, portraying slavery as a grievous sin against God and man. The Fugitive Slave Law enacted by the first Congress, as well as that of 1850, for the security of their property, had been nullified by the Personal Liberty Acts of Northern Legislatures, and by the organized assistance afforded by abolitionists for the escape of their slaves. Wilmot provisos had been interposed to defeat their constitutional rights in the common Territories, and even after these rights had been affirmed by the Supreme Court, its decision had been set at naught not only by the Republican but by the Douglas party. ‘The irrepressible conflict’ of Senator Seward, and the Helper book, both portending the abolition of slavery in the States, had been circulated broadcast among the people. And finally the desperate fanatic, John Brown, inflamed by these teachings, had invaded Virginia, and murdered a number of her peaceful citizens, for the avowed purpose of exciting a servile insurrection; and although he had expiated his crimes on the gallows, his memory was consecrated by the abolitionists, as though he had been a saintly martyr.

In the midst of these perils the South had looked with hope to the action of the Democratic National Convention at Charleston, but in this they had been sadly disappointed. This series of events had inflamed the Southern mind with intense hostility against the North, and enabled the disunion agitators to prepare it for the final catastrophe.

It was not until after the breaking up of the Democratic party at Charleston and Baltimore, that the masses, even in the cotton States, always excepting South Carolina, could be induced to think seriously of seceding from the Union. The border States, with Virginia in the front rank, although much dissatisfied with the course of events at the North, still remained true to the Federal Government.