On Preserving the Union

BUCHANAN, James (1791-1868). Autograph letter signed ("James Buchanan") to "My dear Miss Stockwell," Wheatland, 22 February 1868. One page, 203 x 126mm. In the final year of his life, James Buchanan offers a supporter a quote from one of his most significant statements on the dissolution of the Union , first published on 19 November 1850, two months after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850—the most controversial piece of legislation to emerge from the Compromise of 1850. And while the more stringent provisions of the fugitive slave law enraged northern abolitionists, Democrats celebrated the measure in November 1850 at the Great Union Meeting in Philadelphia. On 19 November, Buchanan published an open letter to the meeting which was held two days later. Below his polite letter, in which he writes of his "pleasure to furnish you my autograph, in compliance with your request," he pens the opening and closing of that address in which he denounced sectional agitation of the north as injurious to the south: "'I am not one of those who can ever consent to calculate the value of the union. Its benefits and its blessings are inestimable. God forbid that fanaticism should ever apply a torch to this, the grandest and most glorious temple which has ever been erected to political freedom on the face of the earth x x x If the Almighty Ruler of the Universe has, in his Providence, destined the dissolution of the Union, as a punishment for the sins of the Nation, I hope, before that day, I may gathered to my fathers, and never witness the sad catastrophe.' November 1850" Despite his wishes, Buchanan did live to witness the Union's dissolution at the close of his one term as President in 1860. His inability to stem the tide of secession in the wake of Abraham Lincoln's election is one of the many factors that have led numerous historians to name him one of the worst U.S. Presidents in history.

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