President Buchanan, whose term of office expired March 4, 1861, after numerous badly disguised attempts at duplicity with the Confederate authorities, or more properly, with the authorities of some of the States constituting the Confederacy, and after a contemptibly weak and driveling policy of evasion, had left the negotiations between the two Governments in a most unsatisfactory and confused condition. A brief summary of Mr. Buchanan's conduct affords a most singular exhibition of mingled imbecility, timidity, and disingenuousness. His course, until the meeting of Congress, in December, 1860, was understood to be in thorough accord with that of the States' Rights party of the South. In that party were his most trusted advisers, both in and out of the Cabinet, and it had given to his administration a consistent and cordial support. Like them, he was pledged to the preservation of a _constitutional Union_, and also to a full recognition of the perils which menaced the South, resulting from the late sectional triumph. In his opening message he condemned the exercise of secession as unauthorized and illegal, but denied emphatically the right of coercion. Yet, in the sequel, he proved, equally with the Republican party, an enemy to peaceable secession. When South Carolina was preparing for secession, Mr. Buchanan entered into a solemn understanding with a delegation of several of her most prominent citizens, that, upon condition that the people and authorities of that State should refrain from hostile demonstrations, no reinforcements should be sent to the forts in Charleston harbor, and that "_their relative military status should remain as at present_." Yet, when Major Anderson, in positive violation of this agreement, removed his forces from the weaker forts to Fort Sumter, Mr. Buchanan refused to order him back. Having broken one stipulation, he now determined to disregard the other, and, under the pretense of "provisioning a starving garrison," Mr. Buchanan attempted to send troops to Sumter.[22] But the conduct of Mr. Buchanan, weak, offensive, and disgusting, as it was to both North and South, becomes simply pitiable, when contrasted with the greater magnitude of the perfidy of the Lincoln government.