pressing him for
some instant concession, that he always said his prayers before deciding
any important matter of State. His previous dealings with Kansas would
suggest to us robust unscrupulousness, but it seems that he had quite
given his judgment over into the keeping of a little group of Southern
Senators. Now that he was deprived of this help, he had only enough will
left to be obstinate against other advice. It is suggested that he had
now but one motive, the desire that the struggle should break out in his
successor's time rather than his own. Even this is perhaps to judge
Buchanan's notorious and calamitous laches unfairly. Any action that he
took must to a certain extent have been provocative, and he knew it, and
he may have clung to the hope that by sheer inaction he would give time
for some possible forces of reason and conciliation to work. If so, he
was wrong, but similar and about as foolish hopes paralysed Lincoln's
Cabinet (and to a less but still very dangerous degree Lincoln himself)
when they took up the problem which Buchanan's neglect had made more
urgent. Buchanan had in this instance the advantage of far better
advice, but this silly old man must not be gibbeted and Lincoln left free
from criticism for his part in the same transaction. Both Presidents
hesitated where to us who look back the case seems clear. The
circumstances had altered in some respects when Lincoln came in, but it
is only upon a somewhat broad survey of the governing tendencies of
Lincoln's administration and of its mighty result in the mass that we
discover what really distinguishes his slowness of action in such cases
as this from the hesitation of a man like Buchanan. Buchanan waited in
the hope of avoiding action, Lincoln with the firm intention to see his
path in the fullest light he could get.

From an early date in November, 1860, every effort was made, by men too
numerous to mention, to devise if possible such a settlement of what were
now called the grievances of the South as would prevent any other State
from following the example of South Carolina. Apart from the intangible
difference presented by much disapprobation of slavery in the North and
growing resentment in the South as this disapprobation grew louder, the
solid ground of dispute concerned the position of slavery in the existing
Territories and future acquisitions of the United States Government; the
quarrel arose from the election of a President p