$10,000,000. Mr. Buchanan recommended to congress to send assistance to the constitutional government in Mexico, which had been forcibly superseded by military rule, but which still held the allegiance of the majority of the people, and to enforce redress for the wrongs of our citizens. He saw very clearly that, unless active measures should be taken by the government of the United States to reach a power with which a settlement of all claims and difficulties could be effected, some other nation would undertake to establish a government in Mexico, and the United States would then have to interfere, not only to secure the rights of their citizens, but to assert the principle of the Monroe doctrine. He also instructed the Mexican minister, Mr. McLane, to make a “Treaty of Transit and Commerce” and a “convention to enforce treaty stipulations, and to maintain order and security in the territory of the republics of Mexico and the United States.” But congress took no notice of the president's recommendation, and refused to ratify the treaty and the convention. Mexico was left to the interference of Louis Napoleon; the establishment of an empire, under Maximilian, followed, for the embarrassment of President Lincoln's administration while we were in the throes of our civil war, and the claims of American citizens were to all appearance indefinitely postponed. Our relations with Spain were also in a very unsatisfactory condition at the beginning of Mr. Buchanan's term. There were many just claims of our citizens against the Spanish government for injuries received in Cuba, and Mr. Buchanan succeeded in having a “convention concluded at Madrid in 1860, establishing a joint commission for the final adjudication and payment of all the claims of the respective parties.” The senate refused to ratify this convention also, probably because of the intense excitement against slavery, the convention having authorized the presenting before the commissioners of a Spanish claim against the United States for the value of certain slaves. In the settlement of claims against the government of Paraguay the president's firm policy was seconded by congress, and he was authorized to send a commissioner to that country accompanied by “a naval force sufficient to exact justice should negotiation fail.” This was entirely successful; full indemnification was obtained without any resort to arms. Mr. Buchanan's negotiations with China, conducted through William B. Reed as minister, were also successful; a treaty was concluded in 1858, which established very satisfactory commercial relations with that country and secured the liquidation of all claims. June 22, 1860, Mr. Buchanan vetoed a bill “to secure homesteads to actual settlers in the public domain, and for other purposes.” The other purposes contemplated donations to the states. The ground of the veto was that the power “to dispose of” the territory of the United States did not authorize congress to donate public lands to the states for their domestic purposes. In the senate the bill failed to receive the two thirds majority necessary to pass it over the veto. In internal affairs the preceding administration of President Pierce had left a legacy of trouble to his successor in the repeal of the Missouri compromise, which was followed by a terrible period of lawlessness and bloodshed in Kansas, under what was called “squatter sovereignty,” the slavery and the anti-slavery parties among the settlers struggling for supremacy. The pro-slavery party sustained the territorial government and obtained control of its legislature. The anti-slavery party repudiated this legislature and held a convention at Topeka to institute an opposition government. Congress had recognized the authority of the territorial government, and Mr. Buchanan, as president, had no alternative but to recognize and uphold it also. The fact that the legislature of that government was in the hands of the pro-slavery party made the course he adopted seem as if he favored their pro-slavery designs, while, in truth, he had no object to subserve but to sustain, as he was officially obliged to sustain, the government that congress had recognized as the lawful government of the territory. Now, throughout the north, the press and the pulpit began to teem with denunciations of the new president, who had not allowed revolutionary violence to prevail over the law of the land, and this was kept up throughout his administration. The anti-slavery party gained ground, and the election of 1860 resulted in the triumph of Mr. Lincoln. Mr. Buchanan was a conservative and far-seeing man, who, though opposed to slavery, believed that the blind and fanatical interference of the northern abolitionists in the domestic affairs of the southern states would excite the latter in a manner dangerous to the peace and prosperity of the union. His messages constantly recommended conciliatory legislative measures; but congress paid no attention to his advice. Finally the election of Mr. Lincoln was seized upon as the signal in South Carolina for the breaking out of her old doctrine of secession. She passed her ordinance of secession on 20 Dec., 1860. Mr. Buchanan never for a moment admitted that a state had any power to secede from the union. South Carolina had once and forever adopted and ratified the constitution of the United States, and he maintained that she had by this act permanently resigned certain powers to the federal government, and that she could not, by her own will and without the consent of the other states, resume those powers and declare herself independent. She could, if actually oppressed by the general government, seek to redress her wrongs by revolution; but never by secession. He refused to receive, in their assumed official capacity, the commissioners sent by South Carolina, in December, 1860, to treat with him as with a foreign power. In October, 1860, before the election, Mr. Buchanan received from Gen. Scott, the general-in-chief of the army, a communication saying that, in the event of Mr. Lincoln's election, Gen. Scott anticipated that there would be a secession of one or more of the southern states; and that, from the general rashness of the southern character, there was danger of a “preliminary” seizure of certain southern forts. This paper became known as “General Scott's Views.” It was the foundation, at a later period, of a charge that President Buchanan had been warned by Gen. Scott of the danger of leaving the southern forts without sufficient garrisons to prevent surprises, and that he had neglected this warning. Mr. Buchanan, who had publicly denied the right of secession, could not furnish the southern states with any justification of such a proceeding by prematurely reenforcing the forts as if he anticipated secession. But, even if the president had wished to adopt such a measure, there were, as Gen. Scott himself said, but five companies of regular troops, or 400 men, available for the garrisoning of nine fortifications in six highly excited southern states. The remainder of the army was scattered over the western plains. Scott's views were clearly impracticable, and produced no impression upon the president's mind.
Mr. Buchanan has been often and severely reproached for a “temporizing policy” and a want
