forts, in anticipation of their seizure. History does not, or should not, pass upon the conduct of statesmen in highly responsible positions, by pronouncing in this _ex post facto_ manner on what they ought to have anticipated, when men of equally good opportunities for looking forward did not anticipate what subsequently occurred. It was not the belief of the leading public men in the Republican party, before the election of Mr. Lincoln, the men who were likely to be associated with him in the Government, that there would be any secession. If they had believed it, they would certainly have been guilty of great recklessness if they had not acted upon that belief, at least so far as to warn the country, in their respective spheres, to be prepared for such an event. It is one of the most notorious truths in the whole history of that election, that the political supporters of Mr. Lincoln scouted the idea that there was any danger of secession to be apprehended. General Scott’s suggestion of such danger to Mr. Buchanan, in the month of October, 1860, and the impracticable advice which he then gave, if it had been published before the election, would have been laughed at by every Republican statesman in the country, or would have been indignantly treated as a work of supererogation, unnecessarily suggesting that the election of the Republican candidate was to be followed by an attempted disruption of the Union. Undoubtedly, as the event proved, the political friends of Mr. Lincoln were too confident that no secession would be attempted; and into that extreme confidence they were led by their political policy, which did not admit of their allowing the people of the North to believe that there could be any serious danger to the country in their political triumph. If the people of the North had believed in that danger, the Republican candidate would not have been elected. It did not become the Republican leaders, therefore, after the election, and it never can become any one who has inherited their political connection, to blame Mr. Buchanan for not taking extraordinary precautions against an event which the responsible leaders of the party, prior to the election, treated as if it were out of all the bounds of probability.[65] Footnote 65: It will be seen that I do not regard the election of Mr. Lincoln as a defiance of the South, nor do I consider that the threats of secession, so far as such threats were uttered in the South, had much to do with the success of the Republican candidate. Multitudes of men voted for that candidate in no spirit of defiance towards the South, and his popular vote would have been much smaller than it was, if it had been believed at the North that his election would be followed by an attempted disruption of the Union.