Could you make a trip over the county and ascertain the state of public opinion? I should esteem it a very great favor if you would; and in that event, I should insist that you shall not spend your own money in supporting me. This would be both unreasonable and unjust. If you could pass a few days in this manner, you would confer a favor upon me which I trust I may some day be able to repay. But you must not go at all unless at my expense. Your services will place me under obligations which I shall never forget without expending your own money for my benefit. If you should ascertain that the county is against me and cannot be carried, as the Perry _Democrat_ indicates, then it would be useless to make the effort. If it can be carried, then we must go to work and have the proper concert of action to bring my friends to the county meeting. Will you let me hear from you soon on this subject, and believe me ever to be sincerely and gratefully your friend, JAMES BUCHANAN. HON. GEORGE BLATTENBERGER. P.S.—Jos. Bailey, who is a strange, capricious man, is now against me, though in 1843 he was one of my warmest friends and supporters, as you will perceive by the address which I send you. What have I done since? Buchanan entered the Presidency earnestly determined to end the slavery agitation, but unfortunately he hoped to end it by the unqualified success of slavery in all of the new Territories and the right of transit through the free States of slaves as servants. The Dred Scott decision was foreshadowed in his inaugural address, and he and the pro-slavery statesmen of that time were confident that the Republican ebullition of 1856 was a mere tidal wave that would speedily perish, and that the South would be so strongly entrenched for the defence of slavery that it could not be successfully assailed. He was elected by the South; he was the strictest of strict constructionists on all Constitutional questions, and he naturally sustained the South in going far beyond what his judgment approved in the efforts to force slavery into Kansas and Nebraska.