President Buchanan, old, weak and cowardly, promised to use no force against the rebels, but to leave everything to Congress. His Secretary of War, Mr. Floyd, of Virginia, was a traitor, secretly helping the slave States to arm against the general government. His Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Cobb, of Georgia, also conspired with the disunionists, and finally resigned to take part in the rebellion. His Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Thompson, of Mississippi, actually acted as a rebel commissioner to spread the doctrine of secession while he was still in the Cabinet. The Assistant Secretary of State, Mr. Trescott, was another member of the great plot. Within two months, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas had followed South Carolina out of the Union. Forts, arsenals, post offices and custom houses were captured, the Stars and Stripes lowered, and the rebel flag hoisted. Before Lincoln could be inaugurated, the seceded States had organized a Confederate government, with Jefferson Davis for President. With treason in his Cabinet, and armed rebellion openly preached in Congress, the bewildered, rabbit-hearted Buchanan did nothing to defend the national sovereignty. He was no traitor--simply a poltroon, without character, convictions or courage enough to assert the plain powers of his office, and willing to shelter his cringing soul and dishonored responsibilities behind a paramount authority which he pretended to find in Congress. Imagine Lincoln, sitting in far-away Springfield, helpless to act, while Buchanan permitted a foreign government to be set up within the United States, and promised to use no force against the rebels lest war might follow. Think of the newly-chosen leader of the American people compelled to silence and impotence while the President refused to send relief to loyal Major Anderson and his handful of soldiers besieged in Fort Sumter by rebels whose arms had been furnished by the government they sought to destroy! The lines in Lincoln’s face deepened. His eyes grew more sorrowful. The stooping shoulders stooped still lower. There was that in his look sometimes that compelled mingled awe and pity. For Lincoln loved his country with the love that a father has for his child, and the pent-up agony that showed in his lean visage as he watched the attempt to break up the great republic might not yet find utterance. It was useless for him to repeat that he did not hate the South; that he did not favor the political and social equality of negroes and whites; that he was not an abolitionist; that, although he considered slavery wrong and would oppose its extension to Kansas and all other free soil of the United States, he would do nothing to interfere with it in the States where it had Constitutional rights. Yet he waited patiently and silently, believing that he could persuade the South that he was not an enemy, and in that time of slow anguish his soul turned to God for help.