Eyewitness 1860: Anxiety rises as South steers toward secession
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President James Buchanan: tense times
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Christmas 1860 was one of the most anxious times in the history of the United States. Following the election of Abraham Lincoln on Nov. 6, secessionists throughout the South, led by South Carolina, had begun organizing conventions to vote on withdrawal from the union.
President James Buchanan, who believed that secession was illegal but that there was nothing he could do to stop it, appeared paralyzed. Still, he would remain president and continue to set national policy for the next two critical months.
The Pittsburgh Gazette, which had strongly supported Lincoln's candidacy, had long given up on Buchanan, the only native-born Pennsylvanian to be elected president.
When the president called for a national day of fasting and prayer, Russell Errett, the editor of the Gazette, wrote that the country's "great sin against Heaven [had been] in electing JAMES BUCHANAN to the Presidency."
His administration "had been a crime from the beginning to the end," he wrote on Dec. 18. Its "weakness, vacillation and temporizing policy" had emboldened traitors "in five or six Southern states" who threatened to break up the union. "[I]nstead of invoking the arm of the law to punish their treason, he invokes us to come up before God ... confess our sins in voting for LINCOLN, and pray for divine help to enable us to conquer the stubborn convictions of our heart."
By mid-December, talk of secession had advanced beyond words with federal garrisons outside Charleston, S.C., under virtual siege. The state's governor had warned President Buchanan not to make any efforts to resupply or reinforce with more troops Forts Moultrie and Sumter.
The garrisons were commanded by Major Robert Anderson. The Gazette reported that his wife had visited Buchanan "a few days ago and remonstrated that he had placed her husband where he must be murdered or degraded."
First Published December 12, 2010 12:00 am
