I have thought it proper to say this much concerning my relations to the family of Mr. Buchanan, for two reasons. The President, by his will, appointed as his biographer a personal friend, the late Mr. William B. Reed of Philadelphia, in whom he had great confidence, and who was a very accomplished writer. But Mr. Reed was prevented by private misfortunes from doing anything more than to examine Mr. Buchanan’s voluminous papers, and to prepare two introductory chapters of the intended Life. Of these I could make no use, as they did not accord with my method of treating the subject. After Mr. Reed had surrendered the task which he had undertaken, the papers were placed in the hands of the late Judge John Cadwallader of Philadelphia, another personal friend of the President. This gentleman died before he had begun to write the proposed work; and when the papers, which had been placed in his hands by the executors, came into mine, along with another large collection from Wheatland, I had to subject them to an entirely new arrangement and classification, before anything could be done. In resorting to a stranger as the biographer of Mr. Buchanan, his executors and friends did what circumstances had rendered unavoidable. The only assurance I can give is that I have had no reason to be otherwise than strictly faithful to what I believe to be the truth concerning the whole of Mr. Buchanan’s career. The other reason for a candid explanation of my relation to this subject will occur to every one. Mr. Buchanan’s administration of the Government during the four years which preceded the commencement of our civil war, is a topic upon which friends and foes have widely differed. But no unprejudiced person who now examines the facts can doubt that, in many minds, injustice has been done to him. Perhaps this was inevitable, considering that a sectional civil war, of vast magnitude and attended with great bitterness, followed immediately after his retirement from office, when a political party which had been in opposition to his administration came for the first time into the full control of the Federal Government. It was in the nature of things—or rather, I should say, it was in the nature of man—that those who succeeded to the Government should have charged upon the outgoing administration that they had been remiss in their public duty; and that under the example of men in high places, there should have grown up a popular belief that Mr. Buchanan favored the secession of the Southern States, either purposely, or by lack of the proper energy to meet it in its incipient stages. Charges of this kind found popular credence in a time of unexampled excitement; and since the war was ended, there have been, and doubtless there still are, many persons who regard President Buchanan as a man who could have saved the country from a frightful civil war, if he had had the wish and the energy to nip Secession in the bud.