Without a moment's hesitation he now broke all the associations of a lifetime, and stood by the Union without qualification or condition.

He at once imparted spirit and energy into the service,--giving to the administration of this department a policy of pronounced loyalty to the government.

No act of his useful and honorable life has been so widely known or will be so long remembered as his dispatch to the Treasury agent at New Orleans to take possession of a revenue cutter whose commander was suspected of disloyalty and of a…

The time for executive acts of a more pronounced character was directly after the Presidential election, when the first symptoms of resistance to national authority were visible in the South.

But the force that will arrest the first slow revolution of a wheel cannot stand before it when, by unchecked velocity, it has acquired a destructive momentum.

The measures which might have secured repression in November would only have produced explosion in January.

The people of the North could not persuade themselves that the proceedings in the Southern States would lead to any thing more serious than hostile demonstrations, which would end, after coaxing and compromise, in a return to the Union.

Buchanan had possessed the unconquerable will of Jackson or the stubborn courage of Taylor, he could have changed the history of the revolt against the Union.

Always an admirable adviser where prudence and caution were the virtues required, he was fatally wanting in a situation which demanded prompt action and strong nerve.

His fame would have been more enviable if he had never been elevated to the Presidency.

He stood firmly by his State in accordance with the political creed in which he had been reared, but looked back with tender regret to the Union whose destiny he had wished to share and under the protection of whose broader nationality he…

They were all men of intelligence, some of them conspicuously able; and it seems incredible that they could have persuaded themselves that a great government could be dissolved without shock and without resistance.

But the majority of the utterances were by men who meant all they said; who, if they did not anticipate a bloody conflict, were yet prepared for it, and who were too deeply stirred by resentment and passion to give due heed to consequences.

He warned the North that they were dealing with "a nation, and not with a faction.

Nullification was a remedy inside of the Union; secession a remedy outside.

He expressed himself as against the theory of nullification, and explained that, so far from being identified with secession, the two are antagonistic principles.

I will have equality or war." He denounced Mr.

Lincoln as "an enemy to the human race, deserving the execration of all mankind.

This will be war, and we shall meet it with different but equally efficient weapons.

What will you be when emasculated by the withdrawal of fifteen States, and warred upon by them with active and inveterate hostility?

The State of Louisiana was formed from territory which had been bought and paid for by the United States out of the common treasury of the whole people.

Whatever specious plea might be made for the independent and separate sovereignty of the old thirteen States, the argument could not apply to Louisiana.

No one could maintain that Louisiana had ever enjoyed a separate sovereignty of any kind, nominal or real.

The United States might or might not admit Louisiana to the Union, for the General Government was sole judge as to time and expediency--but when once admitted, the power of the State was greater than the power of the Government which…

Their philosophy seems to have been that the General Government had been paid in full by the privilege of nurturing new States, of improving their rivers and harbors, of building their fortifications, of protecting them in peace, of…