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

[100] resolved to pursue, as a citizen, in the approaching Presidential election. These were themes entirely foreign to a military report, and equally foreign from the official duties of the Commanding General. Furthermore, the ‘Views’ were published to the world by the General himself, on the 18th January, 1861, in the ‘National Intelligencer,’ and this without the consent or even previous knowledge of the President.This was done at a critical moment in our history, when the cotton States were seceding one after the other. The reason assigned by him for this strange violation of official confidence toward the President, was the necessity for the correction of misapprehensions which had got abroad, ‘both in the public prints and in public speeches,’ in relation to the ‘Views.’

The General commenced his ‘Views’ by stating that, ‘To save time the right of secession may be conceded, and instantly balanced by the correlative right on the part of the Federal Government against an interior State or States to reestablish by force, if necessary, its former continuity of territory.’ He subsequently explains and qualifies the meaning of this phrase by saying: ‘It will be seen that the ‘Views’ only apply to a case of secession that makes a gapin the present Union. The falling off (say) of Texas, or of all the Atlantic States, from the Potomac South [the very case which has since occurred], was not within the scope of General Scott's provisional remedies.’ As if apprehending that by possibility it might be inferred he intended to employ force for any other purpose than to open the way through this gap to a State beyond, still in the Union, he disclaims any such construction, and says: ‘The foregoing views eschew the idea of invading a seceded State.’ This disclaimer is as strong as any language he could employ for the purpose.

To sustain the limited right to open the way through the gap, he cites, not the Constitution of the United States, but the last chapter of Paley's ‘Moral and Political Philosophy,’ which, however, contains no allusion to the subject.

The General paints the horrors of civil war in the most gloomy colors, and then proposes his alternative for avoiding them. He exclaims:

But break this glorious Union by whatever