Litchfield enquirer., 1868-06-11
James Buchanan.
We are willing to leave Mr. Buchanan to his friends

We are willing to leave MT. Buchanan to his friends:-
 President Buchanan strove, vainly, perhaps weakly to p2eIfy when pacifcation had ceased te
 It was unfortunate for him that his last days o public hfe-as the highest officer on earth-shoulc have been clouded by failure in position unpre cedented in any history, and for which no ordina " share of firmness was sufficient. His share ot that quality was not extraordinary.-HarIforC Times.
 Mr. B. was sound and patriotic statesman ing, in some degree, the qualities that constitute personal popularity.-Nea0 HdUen Register That some portion of his executive action during the agitation of the war question may have been erroneous, we are not prepared to deny
 His action certainly different from that of Gen. eral Jackson, but Mir. Buchanan was of different temperament, although no less patriotic than the Times.
 His administration was marked at every step by complication Of errors and misfortunes. He in- her1ted the Kansas question, but failed to adjust It with success. sarcastic and ill advised letter of ten llnes arrayed Douglas against him on the 1u-fated Lecompton controversy. Extricated in part at last, from the difficulty, through the ex- traordlnary skill of Alexander H. Stephens by the passage of the English Bill, and thus defeating the Lttle Giant" of the Vest instead of concilia- ting his baffled but still powerful foe he resolved in spite of the entreatles ofmany ofhs best friends
 
 Douglas of the Senate, even though Lincoln should be his successor. In this, he signaly failed; Doug las was reelected; became candidate before the Charleston Convention, where he was bitterly op- posed by MT. Buchanans friends. The fierce con tention shivered the Convention; the Democratic party was divided; Lincoln was elected; civil war came, and the end is not yet. Both by tempera- ment and by age Mir. Buchanan was wholly unfit ted for the revolutionary tempest which beat upon him during the last months of his administration His patriotic purposes and impulses no man has any right to question; but he failed utterly to meet the crisis. Demonstrating with logical exactitude the unconsttutionality of coercion, he yet denied the right of secession and ignoring the fact of se- cession, did nothing; but, lying upon tho waters of revolution, hugo but powerless hulk he drift ed with the current till the 4th of March, and dis appeared His successor dr1fted on, too crying out at every surge of the waves that s'nobody was hurt" but he drifted speedily and straightway in- to civil war. What MT. Buchanan should have done, what he could have done it is now mere matter of speculation to inquire. But William the Silent, a William the Third, Lord Chatham, or an Andrew Jackson-any one worthy of place in the grand array of ''God's eternal men"-Would have done something, and done it with command ing promptitude and efficiency. But this, and all else which pertains to the great American Revolu- tion of 1861, we commit to the high and impartial tribunal of history for solemn and, ,igent nq6est, and a judgment from which there is no appeal Vallaa.dtgbana in tue Dayton Ledger.