Life of James Buchanan, Fifteenth President of the United States. v. 1 (of 2)Curtis, George Ticknor
History
Life of James Buchanan, Fifteenth President of the United States. v. 1 (of 2)
Curtis, George Ticknor
Buchanan, James, 1791-1868
Mrs. E—— talks much of you, and if she knew I was writing, would have me
add her kindest message—indicative of the interest she feels. Farewell.
AMOS ELLMAKER.
In the course of Mr. Buchanan’s long subsequent political career, this
incident in his early life was often alluded to in partisan newspapers,
and in that species of literature called “campaign documents,”
accompanied by many perversions and misrepresentations. These
publications are each and all unworthy of notice. On one occasion, after
he had retired to Wheatland, and when he had passed the age of seventy,
he was shown by a friend a newspaper article, misrepresenting, as usual,
the details of this affair. He then said, with deep emotion, that there
were papers and relics which he had religiously preserved, then in a
sealed package in a place of deposit in the city of New York, which
would explain the trivial origin of this separation.[4] His executors
found these papers inclosed and sealed separately from all others, and
with a direction upon them in his handwriting, that they were to be
destroyed without being read. They obeyed the injunction, and burnt the
package without breaking the seal. It happened, however, that the
original of the letter addressed by Mr. Buchanan to the young lady’s
father, before her funeral, was not contained in this package. It was
found in his private depositaries at Wheatland; and it came there in
consequence of the fact that it was returned by the father unread and
unopened.
It is now known that the separation of the lovers originated in a
misunderstanding, on the part of the lady, of a very small matter,
exaggerated by giddy and indiscreet tongues, working on a peculiarly
sensitive nature. Such a separation, the commonest of occurrences, would
have ended, in the ordinary course, in reconciliation, when the parties
met, if death had not suddenly snatched away one of the sufferers, and
left the other to a life-long grief. But under the circumstances, I feel
bound to be governed by the spirit of Mr. Buchanan’s written instruction
to his executors, and not to go into the details of a story which show
that the whole occurrence was chargeable on the folly of others, and not
on either of the two whose interests were involved.
Among the few survivors of the circle to which this young lady belonged,
the remembrance of her sudden death is still fresh in aged hearts. The
estrangement of the lovers was but one of those common occurrences that
are perpetually verifying the saying, hackneyed by everlasting
repetition, that “the course of true love never did run smooth.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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