James Buchanan
25th President of the United States
15th under the US Constitution
continued

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It has often been asked, Why did Mr. Buchanan suffer state after state to go out of the union ? Why did he not call on the north for volunteers, and put down rebellion in its first stage ? The president had no power to call for volunteers under any existing law; congress, during the whole winter, refused to pass any law to provide him with men or money. In the application of all the means that he had for protecting the public property, he omitted no step that could have been taken with safety, and, at the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, Maj. Anderson not only held Fort Sumter, but had held it down to that time in perfect confidence that he could maintain his position.

On 9 March, 1861, Mr. Buchanan returned to his home at Wheatland, a view of which appears above, rejoicing to be free from the cares of a long and responsible public life, and welcomed by an immense gathering of his neighbors and the citizens of Lancaster. Here he lived quietly for the remaining seven years of his life, taking, however, a lively interest in public affairs and always supporting, with his influence as a private citizen, the maintenance of the war for the restoration of the union. His health was generally good throughout his whole life. After his final return to Wheatland he began to be attacked occasionally by rheumatic gout, and this malady at last terminated his life in his seventy-eighth year. His remains were interred in a cemetery near Lancaster. 

No man was ever treated with greater injustice than he was during the last seven years of his life by a large part of the public. Men said he was a secessionist; he was a traitor; he had given away the authority of the government; he had been weak and vacillating; he had shut his eyes when men about him, the very ministers of his cabinet, were plotting the destruction of the union; he was old and timid; he might have crushed an incipient rebellion, and he had encouraged it. But he bore all this with patience and dignity, forbearing to say anything against the new administration, and confident that posterity would acknowledge that he had done his duty. In 1862 General Scott, who made several statements concerning the president's management of the Fort Sumter affairs during the last winter of his administration, which Mr. Buchanan successfully refuted, attacked him. 

Mr. Buchanan's loyalty to the constitution of the United States was unbounded. He was not a man of brilliant genius, nor did he ever do any one thing to make his name illustrious and immortal, as Webster did when he defended the constitution against the heresy of nullification. But in the course of a long, useful, and consistent life, filled with the exercise of talents of a fine order and uniform ability, he had made the constitution of his country the object of his deepest affection, the constant guide of all his public acts. He published a vindication of the policy of his administration during the last months of his term, "Buchanan's Administration" (New York, 1866). See "Life of President Buchanan," by George Tieknor Curtis (2 vols., New York, 1883).