The Somerset herald. [volume] (Somerset, Pa.) 1870-1936, 1886-05-12
Conspirafors In the Cabinet of Prrsl.
cent buchanan

Prom Logan'znsx took: The Great CcnspLaey.
/ We have seen how President An
drew jackson, some thirty years be-
fore, had stamped out Notification
and Disunion in South Carolina.
with an iron hand.
But a weak and feeble old man
still suffering from the effects of the
mysterious National Hotel poisoning
was now In the Executive. Chair at
the White House. Well-meanine,
doubtless, and q Union man at heart,
his enfeebled intellect was unable to
see, and hold firm to, the only true
course. He lacked clearness of per-
ception, decision Of character, and
nerve. He knew Secession was
wrong, but allowed himself to be
persuaded that he had no Constitu-
tionsl power to prevent IT, He had
surrounded himself in the Cabine:
with such unbending adherents and
tools of the Slave-Power, as Howell
Cobb of Georgia his Secretary of the
Treasury John B. Floyd of Virgin
la as Secretary of War; Jacob
Thompson of Missouri as Secretary
OF the Interior, and Isaac Toucy of
Connecticut as Secretary of the Ma
w, before whose malign influence
the counsels of Lewis Cass of Michi-
gan, the Secretary of State and other
Union men in and out of the Cabi-
net, were quite powerless.
When, therefore, the Congress met
i December 3, 1S60,) and he trans
mitted to it his last annual message,
It was found that, instead of treating
Secession from the Jacksonian stand
point. President Buchanan feebly
walled over the threatened destruc-
ton Of the Union, weakly apologiz-
ed for the contemplated Treason,
garrulously scolded the North as be-
ing TO blame for it, and while pray
/ ing to God to ''preferve the Consti-
tuition and the Union throughout all
I generations, wrung his nerveiess
hands in despair over his own pow
erlessnesss-as he construed the
Constitution-to prevent the seces-
sion Before writing his pitiful i'm
beetle Message, President Buchanan
had secured from his Attorney Gen.
eral Jeremiah s. Black of Pennsyl-
vania) an opinion in which the lat
ter, after touching upon certain cas-
es in which he believed the President
would be justified in using force to
sustain the Federal Laws, supposes
the case of a State where all the
Federal Officers had resigned and
where there were neither Federal
Courts to issue, nor officers to exc
cute judicial process, and continued:
In that eUeHt, troops would certain
ly De out of place, and their uss
'ckolly illegal If they are sent to
aid the Courts and Marshalls, there
must BE- Courts and MarshaIs 70 be
aided. Without the exercise of these
functions, which belong exclusively
to the civil service, the laws cannot
be executed 10 any event, no matter
what mag be tbs physical strength
which the Government has at its
command. Under such cjrcums.aR-
ces- 70 send military force INTO any
State, 'cih orders to act agaias! he
people, could be simply making Var
upon them.
Resting upon that opinion Of At
torney-General Black, President Bu-
chanan, in his Message, after referr-
ing to the solemn oath taken by the
Executive TO take care that the
laws be faithfully executed" and
stating that there we're now no long,
er any Federal Officers in South Car
olina, through whose agency he
could keep that oath, took up the
laws Of February %, 1875, and
March 3. 1907, as ''the only Acts of
Congress on the Statute-book bear
ing upon the subject" which author
ize the president, after he shall have
ascertained that the Marshal, with
his posse coRlit0tUs, IS unable TO exc
cute civil or criminal process in any
particular case, 20 call out the Mill
tia and employ the Army and Navy
TO aid him in performing this service,
having first. by Proclamation, COM
manded the insurgents TO disperse
and retire peaceably to their resDee-
tive abodes. within a limited time"
and thereupon held that This duty
cannot, by possibility, be performed
IN a State where no judicial autbori-
ty exists to issue process, and where
there Is no Marshal to execute il;
and where, even if there were such
an officer, the entire population
would constitute one solid comblna-
ton to resist him"
Thus, in President Bu-
chanan's judgment, while, in anoth-
er part OF bis Message, be had de-
clared that no State had any right,
Constitutional or otherwise, to Sc
cede from that Union, which was
designed :or all time-yet, if any
State concluded thus wrongfully 10
Secede, there existed no power in
the Union, by the exercise of force
TO preserve itself from instant disso-
luton How im0ecile the reason
ing, how impOtent the conclusion.
compared with that of President
Jackson, thirty years before, in his
proclamation against Notification
and Secession. wherein that sturdy
patriot declared to the South Caro-
linians that compared to Disunion,
all other evils are light, because that
brings with it an accumulation of
all. that "Disunion by armed force
is Treason, and that he was deter
mined 'to execute the Laws" and
to preserve the Union ~