Pledge

IN WASHINGTON THE NATION’S TURMOIL BUFFETED BUCHANAN’S cabinet. On Saturday, December 8, Howell Cobb, his treasury secretary, resigned and cast his lot with his home state of Georgia.

Soon afterward, Lewis Cass, Buchanan’s secretary of state, also resigned, but out of anger at Buchanan for doing nothing to halt South Carolina’s drive toward secession. He had urged Buchanan to act quickly and aggressively to quash the nascent rebellion, just as Andrew Jackson had done in the nullification crisis of 1832. But Buchanan was no Jackson. He wanted above all to exit the White House while the nation was still at peace. Frustrated by Buchanan’s passivity, Cass resigned. “The people in the South are mad; the people in the North asleep,” Cass said. “The president is pale with fear.”

That Saturday, a delegation of four South Carolina congressmen called on Buchanan and made it clear to him just how critical the matter of the forts in Charleston Harbor had become. The meeting led to an informal agreement whose meaning and validity were anything but certain—the result of wishful thinking among the Carolinians, and Buchanan’s persistent need to avoid conflict.

Buchanan suggested “for prudential reasons” that the congressmen summarize the meeting in writing. The next day, Sunday, December 9, they delivered a one-paragraph recapitulation in which they stated that South Carolina would not attack the forts before the results of both the upcoming secession convention and subsequent negotiations as to the disposition of federal property in the state, “provided that no reinforcement shall be sent into those Forts and their relative military status remains as at present.”

Buchanan returned their letter with a brief memorandum scrawled on back in which he told them that if Carolina forces attacked the forts, “this would put them completely in the wrong” and would make them “the authors of the Civil War.” He also balked at the word “provided,” which, as he wrote later in his own summary of the meeting, “might be construed into an agreement on my part which I never would make.” The congressmen, according to Buchanan’s account, replied that “nothing was further from their intention; they did not so understand it.” They further acknowledged that they were not acting as official representatives of their state, but on their own authority as individuals.

Nonetheless, the delegation came away certain that Buchanan had made a concrete pledge to preserve the military status quo in Charleston Harbor, and they communicated this to Carolina authorities.

Buchanan saw it differently: “I considered it as nothing more in effect than the promise of highly honorable gentlemen to exert their influence for the purpose expressed.”

By injecting honor into the equation, this “alleged pledge,” as Buchanan called it, would in short order advance the nation one more step toward war.