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Show Five-Minute Chats About Our Presidents By JAMES MORGAN . r 3 A BACHELOR PRESIDENT ; " 1791 April 23, James Buchanan born in Franklin county, Pa. 1815-16 Member of the iegisla-ture. iegisla-ture. 1819 Tragic death of his betrothed, be-trothed, Annie C. Coleman. Cole-man. 1821-31 Member of congress. 1832-34 Minister to Russia. 1834-45 Senator. 1845-49 Secretary of state. 1853 56 Minister to Great Britain. 1856 Democratic nominee for president. i 0 JAMES BUCHANAN was the last president to wrap his neck in a nock, as Monroe was the last to wear knee-breeches and he was the last Df an era. An age passed away as he passed out of the White House. After Buchanan's birth at a Pennsylvania Penn-sylvania log cabin, his fatlier, who ivas an Irish Immigrant, prospered as it country storekeeper and was able to send his son to college. But the -ollege sent him back as a wild spirit that It could not tame. The pastor Of the scandalized family begged and obtained a chance for the wayward youth, who improved it so well that he graduated first in his class. Nevertheless, Never-theless, the still unforgiving faculty denied him the honors of his rank. This would be but a dull story of law and politics were it not for a Afi ffM V- 7 f s 1 - James Buchanan, single tragic episode which cast a shadow ccr the whole after life of our bachelor president, the only president presi-dent to die a bachelor. A young woman, wom-an, to whom Buchanan was engaged in early manhood, a daughter of the wealthiest family in the county, wrote him a letter of dismissal under the spell of a jealousy which had beeu aroused by gossips. Pride on both sides kept the two apart until their separation was made irrevocable by her sudden death probably jy suicide. sui-cide. In grief and horror, the young lover wrote to the father of the dead girl, begging the privilege of looking upon her remains and of following them to the grave. But the letter was returned to him unopened. I- our aud forty years passed, and Buchanan went to his grave without ever having taken any other woman to his 'heart. When his executors opened the papers, which the aged ex-president had left in a bank vault, they found among them a little packet pack-et of treasured love letters from his sweetheart of long ago. But in accordance ac-cordance with the request written on the outside, those faded mementoes of his only love were burned without breaking the seal on them. Buchanan was by no means a crabbed crab-bed old bachelor. He remained always al-ways most courteously attentive to women, though with a perfect impartiality. impar-tiality. Nor did he keep bachelor's hall. At Wheatland, his country place near Lancaster, Pa., he brought up, from early childhood, the orphaned son of one of his sisters and the orphaned daughter of another, who became, as Miss Harriet Lane, one of the most admired mistresses of the White House. After Buchanan had risen to top rank at the Pennsylvania bar, with a practice that brought him as much as $12,000 in a year, he entered politics. poli-tics. Starting as a Federalist, he became be-came a Democrat only tit the death of the patty of his first choice. He was elected to the legislature and to congress ; was thrice elected to the senate; served as minister to Kussla and Great Britain and was secretary of state in Polk's cabinet. For 20 years an unsuccessful candidate can-didate for the presidential nomination, nomina-tion, the veteran politician had all but given up hope when at last It came to him unsought iu 1S3G on his return from a long absence as American Ameri-can minister In London. As he accepted ac-cepted It, he sighed that the honor had been denied htm until he was too old to enjoy it, "when all the friends I loved and wanted to reward are dead and all Ihe enemies I bated and had marked for punishment are turned my friends." ADRIFT IN A STORM O Q 1857 March 4, James Buchanan inaugurated 15th president, presi-dent, aged sixty-five. March 5, Dred Scott decision. de-cision. 1859 Aug. 5, Completion of Atlantic At-lantic cable. Oct. 16, John Brown's aid. 1861 Feb. 4, the Southern Confederacy Con-federacy formed. March 4, Buchanan retired from the presidency. 1868 June 1, died at Wheat-land, Wheat-land, Pa., aged seventy, seven, O 0 BECAUSE the drama of history, like t:.at of the theater, must have its heroes and villains, James Buchnnan has been painted all black in the opening scene of the Civil war, loaded down with all the weaknesses and sins of his generation and banished ban-ished forever into the wilderness. Anyone Any-one can see now, with the aid of hindsight, hind-sight, what Buchanan should have done, but not what he could have done. The North Itself, in the bewildering winter of 1SG0-61 was far from agreed that secession could or should be stopped by force. "Let the Union slide." the abolitionists said. "Let the erring brethren go," said Horace Greeley. Gree-ley. "Wayward sisters, depart In peace," General Scott would have said to the seceding states. In common with the politicians of his fast vanishing time Buchanan clung to the Idea that freedom rather than slavery was to blame for all the trouble. He had not gone with Doug-Ins Doug-Ins and the northern wing of the divided di-vided Democrats in the campaign of 1S00, but had sided with the southerners southern-ers and voted for Breckinridge. When th3 first state seceded he was already within ten weeks of the end of his term, with a hostile congress In front of him and behind him a country as irresolute as himself. As he saw the Union falling to pieces he hoped on that it could be patched together again by another old-fashioned compromise. com-promise. All the while there were southern members of his cabinet who were staying in Washington only to ship federal war supplies south and to aid in the preparations for destroying destroy-ing the government. Edwin M. Stanton of Ohio, although himself a Breckinridge Democrat, bluntly warned Buchanan: "You are sleeping on a volcano. The ground Is mined nil around nnd under you and ready to explode, and without prompt and energetic action yon will be the last president of the United States." "Mr. Stanton," pleaded the feeble old man, "for God':: sake come in and help me." The first day that Stanton took his seat at Buchanan's cabinet table he told the secretary of war, Floyd of Virginia, that he "ought to be hanged on a gallows higher than Haman's" for having ordered Major Anderson, without with-out the knowledge of the president, to stay in a defenseless old fort at Charleston harbor instead of transferring trans-ferring himself to Fort Sumter, as the major had done in defiance of orders. Before the middle of January the cabinet was reorganized and Buehannn was surrounded by stanch Union men, who swept him along at a pace which sometimes left him breathless. The new secretary of the treasury, John A. Dix, quietly reported one day that he had sent to New Orleans his now famous message: "If any man attempts at-tempts to haul down the American flag shoot him on the spot." "Did you write such a letter as that?" Buchanan exclaimed. "No," Dix replied, "I telegraphed it." Had Buchanan beeu a man of iron instead of putty, probably he could have done no good in that chaotic interregnum between the election and inauguration of his successor. If he had taken any step which should have hastened Virginia and Maryland into revolt there would have been no national na-tional capital on March 4, 1S61. The retiring president would only have made heavier, perhaps impossible, the task which he wearily laid upon a stouter soul when he transferred the presidency to Lincoln and sadly tottered tot-tered into the shadows. (Copyright, 1920, by James Morgan.) |