James Buchanan: Fourth Annual Message to Congress

James Buchanan delivered his Fourth Annual Message to Congress in December 1860 in the wake of Abraham Lincoln's election to the U.S. presidency. Strife between the North and South had risen to fever pitch by 1860, with South Carolina on the verge of becoming the first state to secede from the Union. Although Buchanan understood that it was the responsibility of the executive to ensure that the laws of the land “be faithfully executed,” he stepped back from this duty, saying that the existing divisive conditions rendered the government helpless to intervene. While he denied the legal right of states to secede, he held that the federal government could not prevent them from doing so. Only by ceasing abolitionist agitation over slavery and recognizing that it is constitutionally protected, he states, could a crisis be averted.