Matters looked even worse for the Union cause in Congress than in the country.  Occasionally some irritated Northern Republican shot out words of spirit; but the prevalent desire was for conciliation, compromise, and concession, while some actually adopted secession doctrines.  For example, Daniel E. Sickles, in the House, threatened that the secession of the Southern States should be followed by that of New York city; and in fact the scheme had been recommended by the Democratic mayor, Fernando Wood, in a message to the Common Council of the city on January 6; and General Dix conceived it to be a possibility.  In the Senate Simon Cameron declared himself desirous to preserve the Union “by any sacrifice of feeling, and I may say of principle.”  A sacrifice of political principle by Cameron was not, perhaps, a serious matter; but he intended the phrase to be emphatic, and he was a leading Republican politician, had been a candidate for the presidential nomination, and was dictator in Pennsylvania.  Even Seward, in the better days of the middle of January, felt that he could “afford to meet prejudice with conciliation, exaction with concession which surrenders no principle, and violence with the right hand of peace;” and he was “willing, after the excitement of rebellion and secession should have passed away, to call a convention for amending the Constitution.”

This message of Buchanan marked the lowest point to which the temperature of his patriotism fell.  Soon afterward, stimulated by heat applied from outside, it began to rise.  The first intimation which impressed upon his anxious mind that he was being too acquiescent towards the South came from General Cass.  That steadfast Democrat, of the old Jacksonian school, like many of his party at the North, was fully as good a patriot and Union man as most of the Republicans were approving themselves to be during these winter months of vacillation, alarm, and compromise.  In November he was strenuously in favor of forcibly coercing a seceding State, but later assented to the tenor of Mr. Buchanan’s message.  The frame of mind which induced this assent, however, was transitory; for immediately he began to insist upon the reinforcement of the garrisons of the Southern forts, and on December 13 he resigned because the President refused to accede to his views.  A few days earlier Howell Cobb had had the grace to resign from the Treasury, which he left entirely empty.  In the reorganization Philip F. Thomas of Maryland, a Secessionist also, succeeded Cobb; Judge Black was moved into the State Department; and Edwin M. Stanton of Pennsylvania followed Black as attorney-general.  Mr. Floyd, than whom no Secessionist has left a name in worse odor at the North, had at first advised against any “rash movement” in the way of secession, on the ground that Mr. Lincoln’s administration would “fail, and be regarded as impotent for good or evil, within four months after his inauguration.”  None the less he had long been using his official position