condemning. In fact, Anderson acted on his own responsibility, and
incurred the blame of the Minister of War, who advised in full council
the surrender of the forts.

The American Government is as timid as the seceded States are resolute.
Our generation, which has witnessed sad spectacles, has never yet,
perhaps, contemplated any more humiliating. Ministers, one of whom,
hardly out of the Cabinet, has gone to preside over the secession
convention at Montgomery, and another of whom has taken care to pave the
way in advance for the revolt of the South, and to secure for it the
resources of money, arms, and munitions, which it was about to need;
ministers who vote openly for the insurgents, whose financial intrigues
have been proved by investigation, and whose electoral manoeuvres,
duplicated by embezzlement of public money, have ended in a sort of
political treason, disavowed only by General Cass; a Cabinet, in the
last extremity, still essaying to continue its former course by killing
with its veto the bill adopted by the Legislature of Nebraska to
prohibit slavery in its Territory; a Government falling apart by
piecemeal, for fear of compromising itself by resisting some part of the
South: do you know of any thing so shameful? Mr. Buchanan will end as he
began: for four years, he has been struggling to obtain an extension of
slavery; for a month, he has been favoring the plans of separation, by
opposing his force of inertia to the growing indignation of the North.

Being unable to prevent every thing, he does at least what he can:
forced to send some reinforcements, he speedily withdraws them in a
manner seemingly designed to render easy the attack on Fort Sumter and
to discourage Major Anderson. In the hands of a President who understood
his duties, things would have gone on very differently. In the first
place, the South would have known on what to rely, and would have been
reminded of the message of General Jackson in 1833, exacting the
_immediate_ disbanding of its troops; next, preliminary measures of
precaution would not have been systematically neglected; lastly, at the
first symptom of revolt, a sufficient number of ships of war would have
been sent to Charleston to insure the regular collection of taxes and
respect for the Federal property. Nothing is so pacific as resolution:
face to face with a strong Government, we look twice before launching
into adventures; but, with Mr. Buchanan, it was almost impossible