Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. II.djvu/293

 JAMES BUCHANAN 235 islative 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 December 20, 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 with out 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. Bu chanan 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 &quot;preliminary&quot; seizure of certain southern forts. This paper became known as