“Such is my opinion still. I could, therefore, meet you only as private gentlemen of the highest character, and was entirely willing to communicate to Congress any proposition you might have to make to that body upon the subject. Of this you were well aware. It was my earnest desire that such a disposition might be made of the whole subject by Congress, who alone possess the power, as to prevent the inauguration of a civil war between the parties in regard to the possession of the Federal forts in the harbor of Charleston.” Further correspondence followed between the President and other seceding State Commissioners, and the attitude of the former led to the following changes in his Cabinet: December 12th, 1860, LEWIS CASS resigned as Secretary of State, because the President declined to reinforce the forts in Charleston harbor. December 17th, JEREMIAH S. BLACK was appointed his successor. December 10th, HOWELL COBB, resigned as Secretary of the Treasury—“his duty to Georgia requiring it.” December 12th, PHILIP F. THOMAS was appointed his successor, and resigned, January 11th, 1861, because differing from the President and a majority of the Cabinet, “in the measures which have been adopted in reference to the recent condition of things in South Carolina,” especially “touching the authority, under existing laws, to enforce the collection of the customs at the port of Charleston.” January 11th, 1861, JOHN A. DIX appointed his successor. 29th, JOHN B. FLOYD resigned as Secretary of War, because, after the transfer of Major Anderson’s command from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter, the President declined “to withdraw the garrison from the harbor of Charleston altogether.” December 31st, JOSEPH HOLT, Postmaster-General, was entrusted with the temporary charge of the War Department, and January 18th, 1861, was appointed Secretary of War. January 8th, 1861, JACOB THOMPSON resigned as Secretary of the Interior, because “additional troops, he had heard, have been ordered to Charleston” in the Star of the West. December 17th, 1860, JEREMIAH S. BLACK resigned as Attorney-General, and EDWIN M. STANTON, December 20th, was appointed his successor. January 18th, 1861, JOSEPH HOLT resigned as Postmaster-General, and HORATIO KING, February 12th, 1861, was appointed his successor. President Buchanan, in his annual message of December 3d, 1860, appealed to Congress to institute an amendment to the constitution recognizing the rights of the Southern States in regard to slavery in the territories, and as this document embraced the views which subsequently led to such a general discussion of the right of secession and the right to coerce a State, we make a liberal quotation from it:—