In November he had been "emphatic in
his advocacy of coercion," but afterward had approved the President's
message and even declared forcible coercion to be "_ipso facto_ an
expulsion" of the State from the Union; since then he had drifted back
and made fast at his earlier moorings. On this important Sunday morning
Mr. Buchanan learned with dismay that either his reply to the South
Carolinians must be substantially modified, or Mr. Black and Mr. Stanton
would retire from the cabinet. Under this pressure he yielded. Mr. Black
drafted a new reply to the commissioners, Mr. Stanton copied it, Holt
concurred in it, and, in substance, Mr. Buchanan accepted it. This
affair constituted, as Messrs. Nicolay and Hay well say, "the
President's virtual abdication," and thereafterward began the "cabinet
regime." Upon the commissioners this chill gust from the North struck so
disagreeably that, on January 2, they hastened home to their
"independent nation." From this time forth the South covered Mr.
Buchanan with contumely and abuse; Mr. Benjamin called him "a senile
executive, under the sinister influence of insane counsels;" and the
poor old man, really wishing to do right, but stripped of friends and of
his familiar advisers, and confounded by the views of new counselors,
presented a spectacle for pity.
On January 8 Mr. Thompson, secretary of the interior, resigned, and the
vacancy was left unfilled.
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