Mr.
Buchanan gave way, and permitted Judge Black, and his associates Holt and Stanton, to frame a reply for the administration.
THE PRESIDENT AND THE SOUTHERN LEADERS.
Jefferson Davis, Mr.Toombs, Mr.Benjamin, Mr.Slidell, who had been Mr.Buchanan's intimate and confidential advisers, and who had led him to the brink of ruin, found themselves suddenly supplanted, and a new power installed at the White House.

Foiled, and no longer able to use the National Administration as an instrumentality to destroy the National life, the Secession leaders in Congress turned upon the President with angry reproaches.

In their rage they lost all sense of the respect due to the Chief Magistrate of the Nation, and assaulted Mr.Buchanan with coarseness as well as violence.

Senator Benjamin spoke of him as "a senile Executive under the sinister influence of insane counsels." This exhibition of malignity towards the misguided President afforded to the North the most convincing and satisfactory proof that there had been a change for the better in the plans and purposes of the Administration.

They realized that it must be a deep sense of impending danger which could separate Mr.Buchanan from his political associations with the South, and they recognized in his position a significant proof of the desperate determination to which the enemies of the Union had come.
The stand taken by Judge Black and his loyal associates was in the last days of December, 1860.