Harrisburg Daily Patriot and Union, December 6, 1860

At no previous period of our national history has the message of the President of the United States been looked for with more solicitude than was the last annual message of Mr. Buchanan; for it was felt that upon his recommendation might depend the future of the country, and that the issues of peace or civil war were, to a great extent, in his hands. The whole tener of the message is calculated to soothe the asperities now threatening to disrupt the Union. If any man in the country has the right to speak with authority to the South it is JAMES BUCHANAN, as President of the United States and head of the Democratic party; for in his official capacity he has ever been faithful to all his constitutional obligations, and as a party leader has endeavored to bring about those just concessions which, had they been granted, would have saved the country from the perils that now environ it. His position as an officer and a man demand[s] that his counsels should fall with great weight upon the people of the Southern States, now contemplating revolution as the last remedy against real or fancied oppression.

The President traces our present difficulties to their true source when he attributes them to the persistent agitation of years against the system of negro slavery as it exists in the Southern States, and to the alarming sense of insecurity growing out of that agitation. Before the Republican party existed there was a band of organized agitators in the Northern States devoted to running away negroes and inciting servile insurrections at the South—and the evil has been growing and extending, until it culminated in the formation of a sectional Northern party, thoroughly imbued and entirely controlled by hostility to the institutions of the Southern States. It is true that the platforms and creeds of the Republican party profess loyalty to the spirit of the Constitution, and disclaim any intention of interfering with the domestic institutions of the Southern States. But professions weigh nothing when contrasted with facts. While a party exists with the paramount idea of hostility to slavery, it necessarily encourages every form of that hostility, and must be held responsible for every degree of its manifestation. Since the organization of the Republican party the Abolitionists have ceased to exist in this latitude as a seperate party, because they merged themselves in the Republicans, deeming that the best means of promoting their ultimate objects. Every form and degree of Abolitionism has flourished and developed under the fostering care of this Republican party, which, when confronted with the fruits of its own teaching, meekly points to its platform, and says, "we mean no harm to the Southern States."—Turning from fair words to foul deeds, the Southern people find that the consequences of Republicanism are—the encouragement of Abolitionism, which does not hesitate to avow hostility to slavery wherever it exists; the enactment of unconstitutional laws by Republican Legislatures to nullify the fugitive slave law; the circulation of incendiary publications throughout the South, calculated, if not designed, to encourage servile insurrections, and endanger the lives of the Southern people; the promotion of John Brown raids, and the subjection of the Southern States and people to a position of inferiority. These are unmistakably indicated as the consequences of the existence of the Republican party, which, however moderate its professions, cannot escape direct responsibility for what it promotes or encourages, and is naturally judged by the Southern people from its fruits, and not from its platforms. The fact is apparent that while these things continue the Union cannot endure. It has sustained the pressure for many years; but we have at last reached a point when the bond of union must be broken, unless the pressure upon it is immediately abated—and the first step to be taken in lightening the cargo which threatens to sink the ship, is to throw overboard the personal liberty acts that now disgrace the statute books of so many Northern States controlled by the Republican party.

The President shows conclusively that secession is not a remedy conferred upon any State by the Constitution against the encroachments of the General Government, but that it would be a revolutionary step, only justifiable "as the last desperate remedy of a despairing people, after every other constitutional means of conciliation has been exhausted."

Notwithstanding that the message takes grounds against the constitutional right of any State to secede from the Union, the position is maintained that the Constitution has delegated to Congress no power to coerce a State into submission; and this doctrine is fortified with powerful arguments. We do not see how they can be controverted. The proceedings of the Convention that framed the Constitution—the very highest authority—show that "Mr. Edmund Randolph's plan, which was the ground work of the Constitution, contained a clause to authorize the coercion of any delinquent State. But this clause was struck out at the suggestion of Madison, who showed that a State could be coerced only by military force; that the use of military force against a State as such would be in the nature of a declaration of war; and that a state of war might be regarded as operating the abrogation or dissolution of all pre-existing ties between the belligerent parties, and it would be of itself the dissolution of the Union." Thus it appears that the idea of coercing disobedient States was proposed in the Constitutional Convention and rejected.

But the President advances one step further in the argument. Suppose a State can be coerced, how are we to govern it afterwards? Shall we invite the people to elect Senators and Representatives after they are subdued and conquered? or shall we hold them as subjects, and not as equals? How can we subdue the unconquerable will? and how can we practically annul the maxim that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed? Such a process would undermine the foundations of the government and destroy the principles upon which it is reared more certainly than to admit the want of coercive power in the general government.

The President concludes that portion of the message relating to our domestic troubles by suggesting that they may be settled by amending the Constitution, in the way provided by that instrument, so as to secure to the South the rights for which she contends.

It would be well for the country, in this the hour of her peril, when embittered sectional feeling has brought us to the very verge of dissolution, and possibly of civil war, if both sections would profit by the patriotic advice of the President of the United States, and agree to perpetuate this Union by mutual forbearance and concession. Let the South pause before striking the last fatal blow at the Union, and await the time when a returning sense of justice shall induce the North to concede all her just demands, and make her continuance in the Union more desirable than a separate Government. Let the North cease its unmanly aggressions—repeal its unconstitutional statutes—stop its reckless agitation against an institution for which it is not responsible and over which it has no control—overthrow any man or party that seeks to perpetuate strife—and the Union may yet be preserved, and even made stronger and more enduring by reason of the shock it has endured. But without this spirit of concession and mutual forbearance, there is nothing to hope for in the immediate future but contention and disunion.