To restore sectional harmony, “All that is necessary… and all for which the slave States have ever contended, is to be let alone and permitted to manage their domestic institutions in their own way. Hence a sense of security no longer exists around the family altar.” The message began optimistically, with Buchanan noting that “the country has been eminently prosperous in all its material interests,” thereby producing “plenty of smiles throughout the land.” But if such prosperity was spreading, “Why is it, then, that discontent now so extensively prevails, and the Union of the States, which is the source of all these blessings, is threatened with destruction?”īuchanan placed much blame on the northern states: “The long-continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of slavery in the Southern States has at length produced its natural effects,” and consequently, “hostile geographical parties have been formed.” Buchanan asserted that “violent agitation of the slavery question throughout the North for the last quarter of a century has at length produced its malign influence on the slaves and inspired them with vague notions of freedom. Congress assembling in Washington, the lame-duck president would issue his last report on the state of the union before leaving office in March.

Now, with the lame-duck session of the Thirty-sixth U.S. The country had long waited for President James Buchanan to publicly address the rising tide of Republicanism in the North and the secessionist response in the South.

Hard Fall by James Buchanan