Buchanan’s opponent for the presidency was John C. Fremont, and there was a great stir and bustle among the people who were supposed to support him, but Buchanan won easily, and at once found himself in the midst of the most perplexing difficulties.  Kansas was in a state of civil war; two days after his inauguration the Supreme Court handed down the famous Dred Scott decision, declaring the right of any slave-holder to take his slaves as property into any territory; while the young Republican party was siding openly with the abolitionists, and, a very firebrand in a powder-house, in 1859, John Brown seized Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, and attempted to start a slave insurrection.  Now a slave insurrection was the one thing which the South feared more than any other—­it was the terror which was ever present.  And so John Brown’s mad attempt excited a degree of hysteria almost unbelievable.

Small wonder that Buchanan was soon at his wits’ ends.  His sympathies were with the slave-holders; he doubted his right to coerce a seceding state; his friendships were largely with southern statesmen—­and yet, to his credit be it stated, on January 8, 1860, after secession had become a thing assured, he seems suddenly to have seen his duty clearly, and in a special message, declared his intention to collect the revenues and protect public property in all the states, and to use force if necessary.  Taken all in all, his attitude in those trying days was a creditable one—­as creditable as could be expected from any average man.  What the time needed was a genius, and fortunately one rose to the occasion.  Buchanan, harried and despondent, must have breathed a deep sigh of relief when he surrendered the helm to the man who had been chosen to succeed him—­the man, by some extraordinary chance, in all the land best fitted to steer the ship of state to safety—­the man who was to be the dominant figure of the century in American history.

SUMMARY

Washington, George.  Born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, February 22 (old style, February 11), 1732; sent on a mission to the French beyond the Alleghenies, 1753-54; appointed lieutenant-colonel, 1754; defeated by the French at Fort Necessity, July 3, 1754; aide-de-camp to Braddock, 1755; commanded on the frontier, 1755-57; led the advance-guard for the reduction of Fort Duquesne, 1758; married Martha Custis, January 9, 1759; delegate to Continental Congress, 1774-75; appointed commander-in-chief of the continental forces, June 15, 1775; assumed command of the army, July 3, 1775; compelled evacuation of Boston, March 17, 1776; defeated at battle of Long Island, August 27, 1776; defeated at White Plains, October 28, 1776; surprised the British at Trenton, December 26, 1776; won the battle of Princeton, January, 1777; defeated at Brandywine and Germantown in 1777; at Valley Forge, during the winter of 1777-78; won the battle of Monmouth, June 28, 1778; captured Yorktown