Mr. Thompson, the Secretary of the Interior, thought well of the plan of calling for a general convention—­thought his State (Mississippi) about equally divided between the union and disunion men.  He deprecated the idea of force, and said any show of it by the Government would instantly make Mississippi a unit in favor of disunion.

Mr. Toucey, Secretary of the Navy, thought well of the appeal for the convention—­coincided in an opinion I had expressed, that retaliatory State measures would prove most availing for bringing the Northern fanatics to their senses.

I expressed myself decidedly opposed to any rash movement, and against the idea of secession at this time.  I did so because I think that Lincoln’s administration will fail, and be regarded as impotent for good or evil within four months after his inauguration.  We are to meet to-morrow at 1 o’clock.

  [Sidenote] Pollard, “Life and Times of Robert E. Lee,” etc., pp.
  790-94.

November 10 ...  We had a Cabinet meeting to-day, at which the President read a very elaborate document, prepared either as a part of his message or as a proclamation.  It was well written in the main, and met with extravagant commendation from General Cass, Governor Toucey, Judge Black, and Mr. Holt.  Cobb, Thompson, and myself found much to differ from in it,—­Cobb because it inculcated submission to Lincoln’s election and intimated the use of force to coerce a submission to his rule, and because it reprehended the policy of the Kansas-Nebraska bill; Thompson because of the doctrine of acquiescence and the hostility to the secession doctrine.  I objected to it because I think it misses entirely the temper of the Southern people and attacks the true State-Rights doctrine on the subject of secession.  I do not see what good can come of the paper, as prepared, and I do see how much mischief may flow from it.

It is an open question whether we may accept these extracts at their full literal import.  Either the words “coerce,” “submission,” “use of force,” and so on, are written down by the diarist in a sense different from that in which they were spoken, or the President and several of his counselors underwent an amazing change of sentiment.  But in a general way they show us that on the fourth day after Lincoln’s election the Buchanan Cabinet was already divided into hostile camps.  Cass of Michigan, Secretary of State, Toucey of Connecticut, Secretary of the Navy, Black of Pennsylvania, Attorney-General, and Holt of Kentucky, Postmaster-General, were emphatic Unionists; while Cobb of Georgia, Secretary of the Treasury, Thompson of Mississippi, Secretary of the Interior, and Floyd of Virginia, Secretary of War, were secessionists—­the latter yet professing devotion to the Union, but with such ifs and buts as left sufficiently clear evidence of his inevitable drift to disloyalty.