The issue and argument were wholly false and irrelevant.  No State had yet seceded.  Execute such laws of the United States as were in acknowledged vigor, and disunion would be impossible.  Buchanan needed only to do what he afterwards so truthfully asserted Lincoln had done.[8] But through his inaction, and still more through his declared want of either power or right to act, disunion gained two important advantages—­the influence of the Executive voice upon public opinion, and especially upon Congress; and the substantial pledge of the Administration that it would lay no straw in the path of peaceful, organized measures to bring about State secession.

  [Sidenote] Correspondence, N.Y.  “Evening Post”.

  [Sidenote] Washington “Constitution” of December 19, 1860.

  [Sidenote] London “Times,” Jan. 9, 1851.

The central dogma of the message, that while a State has no right to secede, the Union has no right to coerce, has been universally condemned as a paradox.  The popular estimate of Mr. Buchanan’s proposition and arguments was forcibly presented at the time by a jesting criticism attributed to Mr. Seward.  “I think,” said the New York Senator, “the President has conclusively proved two things:  (1) That no State has the right to secede unless it wishes to; and (2) that it is the President’s duty to enforce the laws unless somebody opposes him.”  No less damaging was the explanation put upon his language by his political friends.  The recognized organ of the Administration said:  “Mr. Buchanan has increased the displeasure of the Lincoln party by his repudiation of the coercion theory, and his firm refusal to permit a resort to force as a means of preventing the secession of a sovereign State.”  Nor were intelligent lookers-on in foreign lands less severe in their judgment:  “Mr. Buchanan’s message,” said the London “Times,” a month later, “has been a greater blow to the American people than all the rant of the Georgian Governor or the ‘ordinances’ of the Charleston Convention.  The President has dissipated the idea that the States which elected him constitute one people.”

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[1] There were 3,832,240 opposition popular votes against 847,953 for
Breckinridge and Lane, the Presidential ticket championed by Mr.
Buchanan and his adherents.

[2] Printed in “The Early Life, Campaigns, and Public Services of Robert E. Lee, with a record of the campaigns and heroic deeds of his companions in arms, by a distinguished Southern journalist.” 8vo.  E.B.  Treat, publisher, New York, 1871; p. 789; article, Major-General John B. Floyd.  It says:  “Among his private papers examined after his death the fragment of a diary was found, written in his own hand, and which is here copied entire.”  The diary also bears internal evidence of genuineness.

[3] The astounding mysteries and eccentricities of politics find illustration in the remarkable contrast between this recorded impulsive and patriotic expression of Attorney-General Black on November 7, and his labored official opinion of an apparently opposite tenor, certified to the President under date of November 20.  See “Opinions of the Attorneys-General.”  Vol.  IX., p. 517.