Mr. Buchanan, the last President of the old school, would as soon have
thought of aiding in the establishment of a monarchy among us as of
accepting the doctrine of coercing the States into submission to the
will of a majority, in mass, of the people of the United States. When
discussing the question of withdrawing the troops from the port of
Charleston, he yielded a ready assent to the proposition that the
cession of a site for a fort, for purposes of public defense, lapses,
whenever that fort should be employed by the grantee against the State
by which the cession was made, on the familiar principle that any grant
for a specific purpose expires when it ceases to be used for that
purpose. Whether on this or any other ground, if the garrison of Fort
Sumter had been withdrawn in accordance with the spirit of the
Constitution of the United States, from which the power to apply
coercion to a State was deliberately and designedly excluded, and if
this had been distinctly assigned as a reason for its withdrawal, the
honor of the United States Government would have been maintained intact,
and nothing could have operated more powerfully to quiet the
apprehensions and allay the resentment of the people of South Carolina.
The influence which such a measure would have exerted upon the States
which had not yet seceded, but were then contemplating the adoption of
that extreme remedy, would probably have induced further delay; and the
mellowing effect of time, with a realization of the dangers to be
incurred, might have wrought mutual forbearance--if, indeed, anything
could have checked the madness then prevailing among the people of the
Northern States in their thirst for power and forgetfulness of the
duties of federation.
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