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| James Buchanan. |
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with William Pennington, the Speaker, in the chair, was opened with prayer by its Chaplain, the Rev. Thomas H. Stockton, who fervently thanked God for the “blessings we have enjoyed within this Union--natural blessings, civil blessings, spiritual blessings, social blessings, all kinds of blessings — such blessings as were never enjoyed by any other people since the world began.”
Committees were appointed by each House to inform the President of its organization, and readiness to receive any communication from him. These reported that he would send in to them a written message at noon on Tuesday.1 At the appointed hour, the President's private Secretary, A. J. Glossbrenner, appeared below the bar of the Senate, and announced that he was there by direction of the Chief Magistrate, “to deliver to the Senate a message in writing.”
The House of Representatives also received it. It was read to both Houses, and then its parts were referred to appropriate committees, in the usual manner.
The telegraph carried the President's Message quickly to every part of the land.
The people sat down to read it with eagerness, and arose from its perusal with brows saddened with the gravest disappointment.
This feeling was universal.
The Message was full of evidences of faint-hearted-ness and indecision in points where courage and positive convictions should have been apparent in its treatment of the great topic then filling all hearts and minds, and bore painful indications that its author was involved in some perilous dilemma into which he had fallen, and was anxiously seeking a way of escape.
The method chosen was most unwise and unfortunate.
It recoiled fearfully upon the public character of the venerable President; and, in the estimation of thoughtful men, a reputation gained by many important and useful public services, during a long and active life, was laid in ruins.
In the second paragraph of his Message, the President began the consideration of the troubles which then beset the nation.
After recounting some of the blessings then enjoyed by the people, he asked, “Why is it, then, that discontent now so extensively prevails, and the Union of the States, which is the source of all these blessings, is threatened with destruction?”
He answered his own question, by alleging, in contradiction of the solemn assurances of leaders in the rising revolt
to the contrary, that “the long-continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of Slavery in the Southern States” 2 had produced these estrangements and
1 During the administrations of George Washington and John Adams, the message or speech of the President, at the opening of each session of Congress, was read to them by the Chief Magistrate in person. Mr. Jefferson abandoned this practice when he came into office, because it seemed to be a too near imitation of the practice of the monarchs of England in thus opening the sessions of Parliament in person.
2 Senator Hammond, of South Carolina, and others, publicly declared, long before the rebellion broke out, that the discussion of the subject of Slavery at the North had been very useful. After speaking of the great value of Slavery to the Cotton-growing States, Mr. Hammond observed:--“Such has been for us the happy results of the Abolition discussion. So far our gain has been immense from this contest, savage and malignant as it has been. Nay, we have solved already the question of Emancipation, by this re-examination and exposition of the false theories of religion, philanthropy, and political economy, which embarrassed the fathers in their day. . , . At the North, and in Europe, they cried havoc, and let loose upon us all the dogs of war. And how stands it now? Why, in this very quarter of a century, our slaves have doubled in numbers, and each slave has More than doubled in value.” --Speech at Barnwell Court House, Oct. 27, 1858.
In July 1859, Alexander H. Stephens, in a speech in Georgia, said he was not one of those who believed that the South had sustained any injury by those agitations. “So far,” he said, “from the institution of African Slavery in our section being weakened or rendered less secure by the discussion, my deliberate judgment is, that it has been greatly strengthened and fortified.” Senator R. M. T. Hunter, of Virginia, said, in 1860:--“In many respects, the results of that discussion have not been adverse to us.” Earl Russell said, in a letter to Lord Lyons, in May, 1861, “that one of the Confederate Commissioners told him, that the principal of the causes which led to secession was not Slavery, but the very high price which, for the sake of protecting the Northern manufacturers, the South were obliged to pay for the manufactured goods. which they required.” George Fitzhugh, a leading publicist of Virginia, in an article in De Bow's Review (the acknowledged organ of the Slave interest) for February, 1861, commenting on the Message, said;--“It is a gross mistake to suppose that Abolition is the cause of dissolution between the North and the South. The Cavaliers, Jacobites, and the Huguenots, who settled the South, naturally hate, contemn, and despise the Puritans, who settled the North. The former are master races — the latter a slave race, the descendants of the Saxon serfs.” The Charleston Mercury, the chief organ of the conspirators in South Carolina, scorning the assertion that any thing so harmless as the “Abolition twaddle” had caused any sectional feeling, declared substantially that it was an abiding consciousness of the degradation of the “Chivalric Southrons” being placed on an equality in government with the “boors of the North,” that made “Southern gentlemen” desire disunion. It said, haughtily, “We are the most aristocratic people in the world. Pride of caste, and color, and privilege makes every man an aristocrat in feeling. Aristocracy is the only safeguard of liberty.” These testimonies against the President's assertions might be multiplied by scores.
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