with the Southern members in favor of all pro-slavery and other mistaken acts. He ardently approved the annexation of Texas, and was in such cordial sympathy with President Polk concerning the Mexican war, that he enlisted in one of the earliest volunteer regiments. He was shortly after made colonel of the Ninth regiment, and was commissioned brigadier-general before he departed for the seat of war. The appointment, however, was justified by his bravery and wisdom on the battle-field; and at the close of the war he returned to his home and his law practice, covered with laurels.

In 1852, he was nominated by the Democrats for the presidency, and elected by an overwhelming majority. In his inaugural address he foreshadowed his future blind policy. He argued that slavery was recognized by the Constitution; that therefore the Fugitive Slave law was right, and should be carried out; and he denounced all agitation of the slavery question. Among the most important events of the administration were the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the organization of the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, under the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the negotiation by Commodore Perry of our first treaty with the hitherto unknown country of Japan. It was about this time that the troubles between the anti-slavery and proslavery citizens of Kansas began; and on January 24, 1856, President Pierce sent a message to Congress declaring the formation of a free State government in Kansas an act of rebellion. The President's course in relation to the border troubles, as they were then called, gave great offense, and justly, to a very large part of the North, although antislavery tenets were then by no means popular. There is little doubt, however, that his evident southern proclivities

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helped to defeat Pierce for renomination; for sectional feeling, which resulted later in civil war, was already beginning to run high. As long as he remained the Executive, Pierce did his utmost to prevent the new States, Kansas especially, from being free, and when he retired, on March 4, 1857, he left the way open for his weak-kneed successor, James Buchanan, to do the same.

After leaving the White House, Pierce made a protracted European tour, and returned to New Hampshire about the beginning of the Rebellion. During its progress he declared in a public speech his entire sympathy with the South. He passed into a retirement which became practically oblivion, and died at Concord, October 8, 1869.

Personally he was amiable, courteous, and refined, and much liked by his intimate friends; but his peculiar bias prevented him from comprehending both sides of a question.

CHAPTER XLIV.

JAMES BUCHANAN, FIFTEENTH PRESIDENT OF THE

UNITED STATES.

An Unpopular Administration -James Buchanan's Early History Sent to Congress at Twenty-nine - The Weakest of Presidents His Total Inadequacy for the Great Emergency in Which He was Placed - Shrewd for His Own Interest - An Admirer and Follower of Jackson Without His Will or Courage The Anti-Slavery Excitement in Kansas — The Cause of the Civil War Inherent in the Constitution - The Nation on the Eve of a Conflict - Admission by Buchanan of the Right of the Southern States to Secede A Pitiful Spectacle of Imbecility - General Relief at the End of His Administration.

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O administration, unless it was John Tyler's, has ever been so unpopular as James Buchanan's. Odious throughout the North on account of what was declared to be his cowardly and treacherous yielding to the outrageous and rebellious acts of the South, it was, towards its close, bitterly condemned by the South, which accused him of perfidy to them in sustaining the unconstitutional aggressions of the North. He shared the fate of most men who, in times of fierce dissension between two great parties, try, in a feeble and vacillating way, to avoid offending either, and end by offending both. The best that can be said of Buchanan is that, placed in a most difficult and crit