The President informed Congress that "the long-continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of slavery in the Southern States has at last produced its natural effect. . . . The time has arrived so much dreaded by the Father of his Country, when hostile geographical parties have been formed." He declared that he had "long foreseen and often forewarned" his countrymen of "the impending danger." Apparently arguing the case for the Southern extremists, the President believed that the danger "does not proceed solely from the attempt to exclude slavery from the Territories, nor from the efforts to defeat the execution of the Fugitive-slave Law." Any or all of these evils, he said, "might have been endured by the South," trusting to time and reflection for a remedy. "The immediate peril," Mr. Buchanan informed the country, "arises from the fact that the long-continued agitation in the free States has at length produced its malign influence on the slaves, and inspired them with vague notions of freedom. Hence a sense of security no longer exists around the family altar. The feeling of peace at home has given place to apprehensions of servile insurrections, and many a matron throughout the South retires at night in dread of what may befall herself and her children before morning." The President was fully persuaded that "if this apprehension of domestic danger should extend and intensify itself, disunion will become inevitable."
Having thus stated what he believed to be the grievances of the South, Mr. Buchanan proceeded to give certain reasons why the slave- holders should not break up the government. His defensive plea for the North was worse, if worse were possible, than his aggressive statements on behalf of the South. "The election of any one of our fellow-citizens to the office of President," Mr. Buchanan complacently asserted, "does not of itself afford just cause for dissolving the Union." And then he adds an extraordinary qualification: "This is more especially true if his election has been effected by a mere plurality, and not a majority, of the people, and has resulted from transient and temporary causes, which may probably never again occur." Translated into plainer language, this was an assurance to the Southern Disunionists that they need not break up the government at that time, because Mr. Lincoln was a minority President, and was certain to be 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.