Джон Апдайк - Memories of the Ford Administration

Black [harshly masculine; big-boned, shaggy-browed; ornate and avid in thought: Raymond Massey more than Jason Robards] said, “I understand he already regrets his resignation, and would like it retracted.”

“Indeed? Quickly, then, write me a letter of acceptance full of courteous and patriotic flowers. I have a new Secretary of State: you, Mr. Black.” Buchanan felt almost merry, at the thought of being rid of Cass. Though old himself, he disliked old men.

Black protested, “I pray you to reconsider. General Cass’s resignation, which you can undo in a word, will give fuel to your enemies, as he is a Northern name of long-standing repute. He consented to serve your cause when he was past the age of usual retirement; now, on second thought, he wishes to serve with you to the end.”

“He is a dropsical old dotard who spoiled the nomination for me in ’48 and again in ’52, with Cameron’s wicked conniving. Let him go, and take his place. If all else desert us, we’ll hold the fort with none but friends from the Keystone State!”

“Mr. President, if your determination is perfectly fixed, let me urge as my replacement as Attorney General my assistant, Edwin Stanton of Pittsburgh. He is incomparably informed upon the great land cases presently coming before the Supreme Court, and in my estimation his work as government counsel in California proved him the most brilliant lawyer in the land.”

“But he is not well versed, I believe, in constitutional theory. He is an abolitionist, and his temper has made him many enemies. I have it from more than one source that Stanton is not to be trusted.”

“An un-looked-for stricture, Mr. President, from one who so long trusted Howell Cobb, and who still trusts John Floyd.”

Buchanan felt, as Black’s excessively orotund and increasingly confident voice invaded his aural canals, undermined; his political constitution was being reformed, as if in the course of a cancerous disease, by these resignations and substitutions. His true substance had been left behind in John Passmore’s Lancaster, in Nicholas’s St. Petersburg, in the tobacco-brown and claret-red rooms he had shared with Senator King, in the glittering London he and Harriet had so charmed. “Floyd is a muddler, perhaps,” he weakly admitted, “but not a villain.”

“In his capacity as Secretary of War,” said Black, “it is villainous to muddle as Floyd has done.”

As always with these high-toned actors, Buchanan reflected to himself, there is overstatement, with the nuance of precise truth lost in the stampede of assertions and action. Floyd was a good man, but how tedious to explain in exactly what way! Wearily the President waved events onward. “Very well — Stanton is our soldier. My heart can just barely rise to this, Jeremiah. I approach the Biblical age, and should be composing myself to mingle my physical substance with the dust. Instead, a fight beckons, against the very men whom I have counted first among my friends.”

[Notes to myself, in late 1976:]

SHAME. Shame as the emotion of this endless December, creeping in, suffusing. Buchanan’s need for silence, for peace, for space to pray. His prayers as a long soak in trepidation, hedged about as he is with bloody alternatives. His sense of layers peeling back, to reveal the shameful sinful incorrigible substance of the earth. His own life as one long trespass, beneath the gilt, gentility, success, etc. The odd sense of drawing closer to God through disgrace, terror, calumny, embarrassment. SHAME the taste of authenticity since la Chute , since Adam and Eve. Primitive chemical experiments remembered from Dickinson College days. JB’s sense of soaking, tasting, this liquid substance. Gets drunk on it. Do a prayer for him?

[My text staggered on:]

The next day, December 16th, Secretary of the Interior Thompson [an energetic Mississippian, remember?] came to Buchanan and said his state had appointed him agent to visit North [ sic , not South] Carolina, to discuss the secession movement. The President was much criticized then and later for granting permission for him to go, as if furthering the secession movement via a Cabinet member. But he had approved only in the belief that Thompson’s mission was to prevent rather than precipitate secession, having been assured by Thompson as to the moderation of his views: Thompson believed, contrary to Buchanan’s message to the Congress on December 3rd, that a right of secession did exist, but that this right came into existence only when there was sufficient cause, and sufficient cause did not yet exist.

December 16th, Buchanan wrote to George M. Wharton saying: I have no word of encouragement to give you in regard to Southern secession. I still hope the storm may blow over; but there are no indications of it at present.… My information is not encouraging from any quarter.… The North are not yet impressed with a just sense of the danger. I have been warning them for years of what would finally be the result of their agitation; but Cassandra-like, all in vain.… P.S. I need not say that I consider secession to be revolution. This is the first letter I have penned upon the subject, & it is for yourself alone .

On December 17th, Horace Greeley’s New-York Daily Tribune ran an editorial [ not headlined, as Klein has it] which began: There is a rumor in town, apparently derived from responsible sources at Washington, to the effect that President Buchanan is insane! This is probably not true, though in view of his course through the last six eventful weeks, the confirmation of the report would afford no reason for astonishment. More lamentable imbecility, or more deliberate treachery, was never seen. At every step he has contributed to the disruption of the Republic; and if, as Mr. Cobb declared, he shall prove to be the last President of the existing Union, it will be due to either his own weakness or wickedness quite as much as to any other cause. Let him be pronounced a lunatic, and he may stand at the bar of history relieved of a crime with scarce an equal in the records of human frailty and depravity . The editorial ended, With [General Cass’s] resignation the last vestige of dignity and of true patriotism seems to have left the Executive, and it would be a relief to the country and would alleviate Mr. Buchanan’s own reputation in the future, if he could now be proved insane . Henry Adams wrote from Washington to his brother Charles, of gossip from New York, Toward the close of the day a report was circulated that President Buchanan had gone insane, and stocks rose.… Poor old Buchanan! I don’t see but what he’ll have to be impeached. The terror here among the inhabitants is something wonderful to witness .

[Eds.: Could be shortened, but I put these quotes in to show what snide and supercilious pricks the so-called good guys, on the p.c. anti-slavery side, were. The entire Greeley editorial could be an appendix in 8-point, if you choose to publish. To get it I travelled all the way to the Boston Public Library — a little room at a corner of the musty courtyard where six of the crapulous homeless dozed; a plump omniscient girl of Asian ancestry behind the desk; a complicated call slip to fill out; a heavy spool of gray microfilm that sang in the projector like a missile homing in; then, Greeley!]

On the morning of December 20th, Buchanan received a communication from his old friend, the Palmetto State’s new governor, Francis Wilkinson Pickens; it was delivered to the White House by the marshal for South Carolina, D. H. Hamilton, accompanied by William H. Trescot. Trescot, that same morning, had had his resignation as Assistant Secretary of State (a position enlarged in importance by Cass’s limitations) accepted and was now acting openly on behalf of South Carolina. The letter asked that Pickens be allowed to send a small force, not exceeding twenty-five men and an officer, to take possession of Fort Sumter immediately, in order to give a feeling of safety to the community.… If something of the kind be not done, I cannot answer for the consequences .