The feeling of peace at home has given place to apprehensions of servile insurrections, and many a matron throughout the South retires at night in dread of what may befall herself and her children before morning." The President was fully persuaded that "if this apprehension of domestic danger should extend and intensify itself, disunion will become inevitable." PRESIDENT BUCHANAN AND THE SOUTH.
Having thus stated what he believed to be the grievances of the South, Mr.Buchanan proceeded to give certain reasons why the slave- holders should not break up the government.

His defensive plea for the North was worse, if worse were possible, than his aggressive statements on behalf of the South.

"The election of any one of our fellow-citizens to the office of President," Mr.Buchanan complacently asserted, "does not of itself afford just cause for dissolving the Union." And then he adds an extraordinary qualification: "This is more especially true if his election has been effected by a mere plurality, and not a majority, of the people, and has resulted from transient and temporary causes, which may probably never again occur." Translated into plainer language, this was an assurance to the Southern Disunionists that they need not break up the government at that time, because Mr.Lincoln was a minority President, and was certain to be beaten at the next election.

He reminded the Southern leaders moreover that in the whole history of the Federal Government "no single Act had ever passed Congress, unless the Missouri Compromise be an exception, impairing in the slightest degree the rights of the South to their property in slaves." The Missouri Compromise had been repealed, so that the entire body of national statutes, from the origin of the government to that hour was, according to President Buchanan, guiltless of transgression against the rights of slave-holders.

Coming from such a source, the admission was one of great historic value.
The President found that the chief grievance of the South was in the enactments of the free States known as "personal liberty laws." When the Fugitive-slave Law subjected the liberty of citizens to the decision of a single commissioner, and denied jury trial to a man upon the question of sending him to lifelong and cruel servitude, the issue throughout the free States was made one of self-preservation.
Without having the legal right to obstruct the return of a fugitive slave to his servitude, they felt not only that they had the right, but that it was their duty, to protect free citizens in their freedom.