e beaten at the next election. He reminded
the Southern leaders moreover that in the whole history of the
Federal Government "no single Act had ever passed Congress, unless
the Missouri Compromise be an exception, impairing in the slightest
degree the rights of the South to their property in slaves." The
Missouri Compromise had been repealed, so that the entire body of
national statutes, from the origin of the government to that hour
was, according to President Buchanan, guiltless of transgression
against the rights of slave-holders. Coming from such a source,
the admission was one of great historic value.

The President found that the chief grievance of the South was in
the enactments of the free States known as "personal liberty laws."
When the Fugitive-slave Law subjected the liberty of citizens to
the decision of a single commissioner, and denied jury trial to a
man upon the question of sending him to lifelong and cruel servitude,
the issue throughout the free States was made one of self-preservation.
Without having the legal right to obstruct the return of a fugitive
slave to his servitude, they felt not only that they had the right,
but that it was their duty, to protect free citizens in their
freedom. Very likely these enactments, inspired by an earnest
spirit of liberty, went in many cases too far, and tended to produce
conflicts between National and State authority. That was a question
to be determined finally and exclusively by the Federal Judiciary.
Unfortunately Mr. Buchanan carried his argument beyond that point,
coupling it with a declaration and an admission fatal to the
perpetuity of the Union. After reciting the statutes which he
regarded as objectionable and hostile to the constitutional rights
of the South, and after urging their unconditional repeal upon the
North, the President said: "The Southern States, standing on the
basis of the Constitution, have a right to demand this act of
justice from the States of the North. Should it be refused, then
the Constitution, to which all the States are parties, will have
been willfully violated by one portion of them in a provision
essential to the domestic security and happiness of the remainder.
In that event, the injured States, after having used all peaceful
and constitutional means to obtain redress, would be justified in
revolutionary resistance to the government of the Union."

By this declaration the President justified, and in effect advised,