Buchanan's administration was the veto of a similar measure, at the bidding of his Southern masters; and the friends of the policy had learned in the struggle of a dozen years that its success was not possible while slavery ruled the government.
Julian criticizes Buchanan's administration for blocking a measure that would have benefited anti-slavery efforts.
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The laws regulating the ownership and disposition of landed property not only affect the well-being but frequently the destiny of a people.
No situation could well be more deplorable than that which obliges a man to pay heavy black- mail as the only means of saving his property from legal confiscation by another; and the moral ravages of a code which allows this can not be…
It is not a mistake merely, but a great misfortune, that our laws touching so delicate and vital a question as the ownership and transfer of mineral lands were not so framed as to avert these frightful evils.
He was unquestionably honest and patriotic, and the fact that he was a poor man, and a plain farmer of the West, could properly form no objection to his character or his fitness for the Presidency.
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