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some twenty or thirty speeches, and was almost immediately thereafter chosen to represent the new Pacific state in the national Senate, where he soon took a prominent part in the proceedings of Congress; and then, in a few months more, the brilliant orator, the ardent patriot, the gallant soldier, disappeared forever from the view of men amid the smoke and toil of battle.

PRESIDENTIAL CONTEST OF 1856.

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CHAPTER XII.

Some farther Notice of the "Irrepressible Conflict" Theory.-Analysis of the Condition of Parties at the Time of Mr. Buchanan's Inauguration.-Statement of the Election Results during the first Year of his Administration. Historic Recital of some important Facts which occurred during the Summer of 1857, anterior to Mr. Buchanan's succumbing to the Dictation of the Secession Leaders.-Efforts to reanimate his Courage made at that Period, all of which signally failed.— Recital of Particulars connected with the Lecompton Struggle in Congress. Some Scenes, both amusing and painful, which at that time had their progress in Washington.-Remarkable banqueting Scene, in which Mr. Seward bore the principal Part.-Last Interview between Mr. Buchanan and the Author, in which some startling Revelations were made.

THE fancied "irrepressible conflict of antagonistic elements imbedded in our complex frame of government," if such a necessary and inevitable conflict ever had an existence, must be recognized as having displayed itself first to the public view, in a distinct and menacing form, about the year 1835, when the first abolition associations were formed in England, and in the Northern States of the American Union, for the eradication of African Slavery wheresoever it had gained footing, and especially in the Southern States of the Union, where, wisely or unwisely, our fathers had yielded to it, in all the states at least, as no one denied until recently, organic guarantees of protection; which conflict must be supposed to have farther developed itself during the eventful thirteen years which intervened between 1835 and 1848, when

non-intervention became a fundamental principle of the National Democratic creed; which would seem to have been held for a few years in a state of feeble and harmless suppression under the firm and sage administration of Millard Fillmore; and to have enjoyed another season. of temporary and feverish vigor in consequence of the impolitic introduction in Congress of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and the maniacal administration of Mr. Pierce, which daringly aimed to consolidate, extend, and perpetuate African slavery by incessant agitation, and by the corrupt distribution of official patronage among the avowed champions of free soil in the North, whose opposition it was vainly hoped to buy up and terminate. And now a second opportunity was presented of suppressing the outbreaking lawlessness of sectional faction, both in the North and in the South, by returning to the constitutional pathways so plainly marked out by the compromise leaders of 1850, and the grand conservative principles of mutual forbearance and reciprocal justice embodied in the Federal Constitution. Mr. Buchanan had triumphed in the presidential election of 1856. The united vote of the Democratic and American parties in that election. constituted a decided majority of the whole popular vote of the nation. It was evident that the great body of voters who had supported Fillmore in that contest would be ready to co-operate heartily with the new administration, if that administration should show itself true to the principles of finality and non-intervention upon which Mr. Buchanan himself had professed to accept the high executive station into which he was in a few days to be inducted. Between the period of his being chosen presi

MR. BUCHANAN'S INAUGURATION.

221 dent and the day of his official inauguration, the public mind was filled with intense curiosity as to the course of policy which the new president might ultimately adopt. There was much speculation afloat also in reference to the persons whom he might call around him as members of his cabinet. Sound, practical statesmen earnestly hoped that he would be more wise in the selection of his cabinet advisers than Mr. Pierce had been, and that there would be neither sectionalist, nor local demagogue, nor political changeling, nor concealed abolitionist, hypocritically professing to be a genuine States-right Democrat, to be found in close official alliance with the newly-made president. A letter appeared about this time in the newspapers over the signature of A. G. Brown, of Mississippi, a gentleman of very extreme views upon the slav ery question, and who had been an ardent advocate of disunion in 1851, which described an interview which he had just held with Mr. Buchanan at his own residence in Pennsylvania; which letter was not a little startling in some of its statements, considering Mr. Brown's own political antecedents, his known eager desire for the forcible extension of slavery into the territories by congressional instrumentality, and the interpretation which he was understood to have affixed to Mr. Calhoun's political teachings. This letter concluded with the following statement in reference to Mr. Buchanan: "In my judgment, he is as worthy of Southern confidence and Southern votes as ever Mr. Calhoun was."

The inauguration scene occurred upon the 4th day of March, 1857, and James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania, was proclaimed President, and John C. Breckenridge Vice

President of the United States of America. Mr. Buchanan's inaugural address, with very slight exceptions, was a highly unexceptionable document. It embodied sound national views in clear and forcible diction, and was admirably received by the country. Scarcely a whisper of disapproval or of distrust was any where breathed. The Southern slaveholding class, ever more conservative in their views and feelings than the noisy and shallow demagogues in the two houses of Congress and elsewhere, who have for twenty years past put themselves forward as its special and exclusive champions, was entirely satisfied with Mr. Buchanan's solemn assurance that no unconstitutional infraction of their rights would receive his sanction. The Free-soil faction, so recently and so signally defeated, seemed well-nigh crushed out of existence, and its leaders appeared to be every where meditating its formal disbandment. The American party were prepared enthusiastically to rally to the support of an administration which stood pledged to pursue a course of policy which they did not doubt would renew that delightful era of repose and general fraternal feeling in which they had so much rejoiced while Mr. Fillmore had occupied the presidential chair. The fierce sectional leaders of the South saw plainly that this was not altogether a favorable moment to originate the disor ganizing movements which some of them had long meditated, and confidently hoped in the end, either by adroit persuasion or by thundering menaces of opposition, or by both of these combined, they might be yet able to mould Mr. Buchanan to their purposes, whom they took care to remind very early that he had owed his election to the

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