_Mr. Buchanan’s Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion._ New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1866. This book will hereafter be referred to as “_Mr. Buchanan’s Defence_.” The history and reasons for this publication will be found in a future chapter. Such, since the period of Mr. Lincoln’s election, having been the condition of the Southern States, the “views” of General Scott, addressed before that event to the Secretary of War, on the 29th and 30th October, 1860, were calculated to do much injury in misleading the South. From the strange inconsistencies they involve, it would be difficult to estimate whether they did most harm in encouraging or in provoking secession. So far as they recommended a military movement, this, in order to secure success, should have been kept secret until the hour had arrived for carrying it into execution. The substance of them, however, soon reached the Southern people. Neither the headquarters of the army at New York, nor afterwards in Washington, were a very secure depository for the “views,” even had it been the author’s intention to regard them as confidential. That such was not the case may be well inferred from their very nature. Not confined to the recommendation of a military movement, by far the larger portion of them consists of a political disquisition on the existing dangers to the Union; on the horrors of civil war and the best means of averting so great a calamity; and also on the course which their author had resolved to pursue, as a citizen, in the approaching Presidential election. These were themes entirely foreign to a military report, and equally foreign from the official duties of the Commanding General. Furthermore, the “views” were published to the world by the General himself, on the 18th January, 1861, in the _National Intelligencer_, and this _without the consent or even previous knowledge of the President_. This was done at a critical moment in our history, when the cotton States were seceding one after the other. The reason assigned by him for this strange violation of official confidence toward the President, was the necessity for the correction of misapprehensions which had got abroad, “both in the public prints and in public speeches,” in relation to the “views.”