With secession in sight his one aim was to get out of the White House before the scrap began.

He was of course on terms of intimacy with all the secession leaders, especially Mr.Slidell, of Louisiana, like himself a Northerner by birth, and Mr.Mason, a thick-skulled, ruffle-shirted Virginian.

It was not in him or in Mr.
Pierce, with their antecedents and associations, to be uncompromising Federalists.

There was no clear law to go on.

Moderate men were in a muck of doubt just what to do.