East Saginaw courier. (East Saginaw, Mich.) 1859-18??, 1865-12-06
G he q ourie r,
"wednesday. DECEMBER 0, lses.
President Buchanan's vindication.

with the following Introductory COM
ments. Next week we shall print the
chapters mentioned without curtail-
ment:
The patience with which Mr.. b.
cHAYAN has submitted to obloquy when
he had such means of vindication, is
accounted for in his preface by his
nnwillingness, while the war lasted,
10 do anything which might embarrass
President LINCOLN. His book WAS writ
t.n soon after his retirement from the
presidency. Had he becn taken away,
It's posthumous publication would have
vindicated his memory; hut we con-
gratulate him that he has lived Ia
publish il himself, in time to receive
from his contemporaries that justice
which will be done him by history.
Mr.. BucHANAS's message Of Decem-
her, 1860, has been misrepresented at
the North, but it was correctly under
stood at the South, and SO offended
the secession leaders in Washington
that his intercourse with them was
completely interrupted during the last
two months of his administration
Its ideas in respect to coercion were
repeated with great clearness and con-
densation by Senator JOHNSON, of len
nessee (now President,) in speech
delivered by him that winter, from
which Mr.. BUCHANAN makes peril
nent extract. He always upheld the
authority of the federal government
to compel the inhabitants of the
States, 10y military force, to obey the
laws.
President BUCHANAN has been per-
sistently accused of feebleness and
imbecility in neglecting to put strong
rarrisons in the Southern forts; in
failing to assume toward the South a
high attitude of military menace; and
in not preventing Secretary FLOYD sup
plying the South with arms taken
from Northern arsenals. These charges
have beon industriously circulated by
common rumor, and more than once
made in print 10y so renowned an OH
Ger as General ScoTT All these charges
are triumphantly refuted by the en-
l'resident-everybody will regret to
see with how much damage to the
reputation for accuracy of their chief
author. .
There was certainly discreditable
and improvident imbecility in that
threatening crisis; but it lay at the
door of Congress-, not of the Presi-
dent. The blindness and infatuation
of that body was as disgraceful as it
was astonishing. With State after
State seeding, and the whole South
full of the hustle of military prepare
ton, no law was passed authorizing
the President to raise an additional
s,idier, or appropriating dollar to
pay one. The incoming administra-
ton was left as helpless and destitute
rs the outgoing; and when Sumpter
was fired ON and captured, President
LINCOLN was compelled, in the stress
Of the emergency, to raise troops with
out the authority of law. Why did
not President BUCHANAN do the same:
l'or two sufficient reasons, the crisis
iustifying so bold step had not comes
and even if it had, Congress ,cds ~
session and could have supplied the
authority.
President BUCHANAN, rs carly as the
9Th of January, sent special message
to Congress laying before them the
alarming state of tho country, and
submitting to their decision the noces.
sity of efficient military preparation
On the 10th, this message was referred
10 a special committee of which Mr.
REYNOLDS was chairman he reported
a bill ON the Both, and killed his orr
bill by withdrawing IL, tho same day
with the appreciation of the House
Mr.. STANTON, of Ohio, chairman o.
the Military Committee, afterwards
reportcd bill for putting the govern.
this mas killed by Tie House. Still an
other bill was reported, but action Oh
it was postponed till the last day bu
ono of the session, phen the House re.
),sod TO suspend The raies to take IL up
mir. LINCOLN had previously arrived
in Washington, fresh from making
speeches in which he declared thai
nobody was hurt, and it was by the
motion of his intimate friend, Mr.
CoRwrN, that action on this subject
was finally defeated. The friends Of
the new President must have been, al
that time, very confident of a peaceful
settlement, and have deemed all mill
tary preparation needless, even as a
precautionary measure.
1t was the purpose of President
BUCHANAN to collect the revenue al
Charleston at all hazards, even if he
had to establish the custom-house on
a vessel of war, at the mouth of the
harbor. But the collector of that port
resigned on the passage of tho ordin-
ance of secession, and no steps could
he taken without n successor. The
President on the I'd of January sent
to the Senate the name of Mr.. McIN-
TIRE of Pennsylvania, but that body
neper confirmed the nomination, thus leav-
ing the administration destitute even
of the civil machinery for executing
the laws. u-r In
Mr.. BUCHANAN had determined to
hold Fort Sumpter, and took such
measures to that end as the laws
would permit him. Early in Decem-
Der, the war steamer Brooklyn was
ordered to Hampton Roads in readi-
ness to sail on any day at a few hours
notice, with three hundred disciplined
soldiers, provisions, and munitions to
reinforce Sumpter. Assistant-Adju-
tant-General BUELL. was dispatched to
Charleston with verbal orders to Major
ANDERSON, which he reduced to writ
ing at Fort Moultrie, requiring him
to make a resolute defense of Sumpter
4