Джон Апдайк - Memories of the Ford Administration

On December 10th, the South Carolina Congressmen returned, with a fifth, W. W. Boyce, from Winnsboro, added to their number. As requested, they presented a written statement. It read, TO HIS EXCELLENCY JAMES BUCHANAN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: In compliance with our statement to you yesterday, we now express to you our strong convictions that neither the constituted authorities nor any body of the people of the State of South Carolina will either attack or molest the United States forts in the harbor of Charleston previously to the action of the Convention, and, we hope and believe, not until an offer has been made through an accredited representative to negotiate for an amicable arrangement of all matters between the State and the Federal Government; provided that no reinforcements shall be sent into those forts, and their relative military status remain as at present .

Squintingly the old chief made his way through the verbiage. “I do not like the word ‘provided,’ ” he at last said. “I cannot restrict the Presidential freedom with guarantees. Further, your delegation has no official status and cannot bind anyone to its terms.”

Boyce said, “By ‘relative military status’ we mean that the transfer of the Moultrie garrison to Fort Sumter would be the equivalent of a reinforcement and would justify an attack.”

Buchanan’s squint narrowed, as if he were threading a needle eye. On the one hand, he devoutly wished to avoid tipping the South Carolinians into attack; on the other, he had a legal conception of the Presidency that was narrow yet vivid, a strip of prerogatives and duties the Constitution had left standing between the Congress and the courts. In his cracked wheezing tenor of a habitual compromiser’s voice, he at last offered, “Though I can pledge you nothing, I can state to you that it is my policy not to alter the status quo .”

McQueen stepped forward, like the paw of a predator instinctively shooting out. “May we have that in writing, Mr. President?”

But the old man was not to be so easily caught. Though weariness rested on his face like a veil of cheesecloth, he looked up with an alertness excited by technical parrying. “After all,” he purred, “this is a matter of honor among gentlemen. You have no status, until South Carolina declare independence, and only Congress, not the President, has the power to deal with federal property. I do not know that any paper or writing is necessary. We understand each other.”

Keitt stated in his barking baritone, “I doubt that we do. Mr. President, you have determined to let things remain as they are, and not to send reinforcements; but suppose you should hereafter change your policy for any reason, what then?”

Buchanan smiled, and tapped their written assurance on his desk. “Then I would first return to you this paper.”

When the men had gone, he took their memorandum and wrote on the back his version of the meeting, and of a little meeting that followed it: Afterwards Messrs. McQueen and Bonham called, in behalf of the delegation, and gave me the most positive assurance that the forts and public property would not be molested until after commissioners had been appointed to treat with the Federal Government in relation to the public property, and until the decision was known. I informed them that what would be done was a question for Congress and not for the Executive. That if they [the forts] were assailed, this would put them [the South Carolinians] completely in the wrong, and making them the authors of the civil war. They [McQueen and Bonham] gave the same assurances to Messrs. Floyd, Thompson, and others .

The next day he wrote the brief memorandum Tuesday, 11th December, 1860, General Cass announced to me his purpose to resign . The same day, Senators Gwin and Slidell came calling. Slidell did almost all the talking. “Buchanan,” he said, “I am astounded to be told that you refused the South Carolina delegation a simple promise not to reinforce the forts, after they had extended to you any number of manly and generous assurances!”

“Which they had no authority to extend. And they asked, Senator, for what the President cannot give.”

“Your hand is weak, and growing weaker. Georgia is going, and the Gulf States cannot stay. Why stick at these forts, when a continent teeters?” [Slidell: The wily and unscrupulous political king of Louisiana, a native New Yorker with a tempestuous and irregular youth. Just two years younger than Buchanan, he displayed white hair, a red, whiskey-scorched complexion, and an occasional glint, above the sharp arched nose, of the steely-eyed glamour that had hypnotized the slightly older, more cautious and scrupulous man. Slidell by ingenuities of voter transfer had assured Louisiana for Polk in ’44; in ’45 had acted as emissary to Mexico from Buchanan’s State Department, as the two nations approached war; in ’53 he had seized upon the Senate seat impetuous Soulé had to vacate in accepting the mission to Spain. Pierce had won his enmity by prosecuting a henchman; in ’56 he and Bright and Bayard and Benjamin had engineered Buchanan’s nomination. Slidell will be appointed the Confederacy’s Ambassador to France; he will be seized in the famous Trent affair aboard a British vessel heading out of Nassau; his machinations in the court of Napoleon III will not achieve French recognition or significant assistance; he will die in Cowes, England, in 1871, his request in 1866 for permission to return to Louisiana having been left unanswered by the first President Johnson.]

Buchanan adjusted the angle of his head to give Slidell a steady gaze, and said, “Sadly, Senator, do I perceive that you, too, would tip us toward disunion. That Keitt, and Rhett, and Yancy, and other discontented small fry seek to manufacture opportunities within upheaval I can comprehend; but that you, and Toombs, and Davis, who held sway over the Union’s capital — no. I can no longer give ear to your advice. I regret that I needed it so long.”

“That advice made you President.”

“And would unmake me, as President, now.”

“Buchanan, don’t be an imbecile. Your interest has always lain south, and still lies there.”

“ Mr . James Buchanan, as a seeker of his own interest, is dead. There remains only the President of the United States. He has many duties to perform. Sir, you are excused. I thank you most gratefully for the favor of your views.”

The next day, the 12th, General Scott at last was well enough to appear in Washington. He was informed by Senator Lyman Trumbull that Buchanan was planning the surrender of Fort Moultrie and ought to be gibbeted. He advised Buchanan to send a force of three hundred men to Fort Moultrie immediately. In his Mr. Buchanan’s Administration on the Eve of Rebellion , Buchanan wrote: It is scarcely a lack of charity to infer that General Scott knew at the time when he made this recommendation (on the 15th December) that it must be rejected. The President could not have complied with it, the position of affairs still remaining unchanged, without at once reversing his entire policy, and without a degree of inconsistency amounting almost to self-stultification . Also, the army, hamstrung by Congress, scarcely existed: Our army was still out of reach on the remote frontiers, and could not be withdrawn, during midwinter, in time for this military operation. Indeed, the General had never suggested such a withdrawal. He knew that had this been possible, the inhabitants on our distant frontiers would have been immediately exposed to the tomahawk and scalping knife of the Indians .

Cass’s letter of resignation, dated December 12th but not delivered until the 15th, cited his decided opinion, which for some time past I have urged at various meetings of the Cabinet, that additional troops should be sent to reinforce the forts in the harbor of Charleston, with a view to their better defence should they be attacked, and that an armed vessel should likewise be ordered there, to aid, if necessary, in the defence . Reading this, Buchanan managed a bitter laugh. “Where was this fine bravado when he sat in Cabinet dozing off beneath his wig?” he asked Attorney-General Black, who as the storm mounted had drawn closer to Buchanan’s side, like Edgar to Lear’s. “When the Cabinet discussed my message to the Congress earlier this month, his only criticism was that I didn’t emphasize strongly enough the in ability of Congress to make war upon a state; I strengthened it to suit him. I have often had occasion to remember what General Jackson said to me of Cass, when he sent him to Paris; he said, ‘Cass decides nothing for himself, but comes to me constantly with great bundles of paper.’ Well, Black, we’ll no longer have to write his dispatches for him.”