He writes as follows:
"You say that the fort was garrisoned for our protection, and is
held for the same purposes for which it has been ever held since
its construction. Are you not aware, that to hold, in the
territory of a foreign power, a fortress against her will,
avowedly for the purpose of protecting her citizens, is perhaps
the highest insult which one government can offer to another?
But Fort Sumter was never garrisoned at all until South Carolina
had dissolved her connection with your Government. This garrison
entered it in the night, with every circumstance of secrecy,
after spiking the guns and burning the gun-carriages and cutting
down the flag-staff of an adjacent fort, which was then
abandoned. South Carolina had not taken Fort Sumter into her own
possession, only because of her misplaced confidence in a
Government which deceived her."
Thus, during the remainder of Mr. Buchanan's Administration, matters
went rapidly from bad to worse. The old statesman, who, with all his
defects, had long possessed, and was entitled still to retain, the
confidence due to extensive political knowledge and love of his country
in all its parts--who had, in his earlier career, looked steadily to the
Constitution, as the mariner looks to the compass, for guidance--retired
to private life at the expiration of his term of office, having effected
nothing to allay the storm which had been steadily gathering during his
administration.
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