eption, decision of character, and
nerve. He knew Secession was wrong, but allowed himself to be persuaded
that he had no Constitutional power to prevent it. He had surrounded
himself in the Cabinet with such unbending adherents and tools of the
Slave-Power, as Howell Cobb of Georgia, his Secretary of the Treasury,
John B. Floyd of Virginia, as Secretary of War, Jacob Thompson of
Mississippi, as Secretary of the Interior, and Isaac Toucy of
Connecticut, as Secretary of the Navy, before whose malign influence the
councils of Lewis Cass of Michigan, the Secretary of State, and other
Union men, in and out of the Cabinet, were quite powerless.

When, therefore, the Congress met (December 3, 1860) and he transmitted
to it his last Annual Message, it was found that, instead of treating
Secession from the Jacksonian standpoint, President Buchanan feebly
wailed over the threatened destruction of the Union, weakly apologized
for the contemplated Treason, garrulously scolded the North as being to
blame for it, and, while praying to God to "preserve the Constitution
and the Union throughout all generations," wrung his nerveless hands in
despair over his own powerlessness--as he construed the Constitution--to
prevent Secession! Before writing his pitifully imbecile Message,
President Buchanan had secured from his Attorney-General (Jeremiah S.
Black of Pennsylvania) an opinion, in which the latter, after touching
upon certain cases in which he believed the President would be justified
in using force to sustain the Federal Laws, supposed the case of a State
where all the Federal Officers had resigned and where there were neither
Federal Courts to issue, nor officers to execute judicial process, and
continued: "In that event, troops would certainly be out of place, and
their use wholly illegal. If they are sent to aid the Courts and
Marshals there must be Courts and Marshals to be aided. Without the
exercise of these functions, which belong exclusively to the civil
service, the laws cannot be executed in any event, no matter what may be
the physical strength which the Government has at its command. Under
such circumstances, to send a military force into any State, with orders
to act against the people, would be simply making War upon them."

Resting upon that opinion of Attorney-General Black, President Buchanan,
in his Message, after referring to the solemn oath taken by the
Executive "to take care that the laws be faithfully e