Buchanan

“ Buchanan never gives way. In all circumstances he is cool, calculating, unruffled; he measures the full meaning and effect of every sentence; he can be fierce and withering, and still maintain a calm and composed demeanour. ”

“ Things more ugly than any related of poor Mary were possible enough—as no one knew better than Buchanan—in that very French court in which Mary had been brought up; things as ugly were possible in Scotland then, and for at least a century later; and while we may hope that Buchanan has overstated his case, we must not blame him too severely for yielding to a temptation common to all men of genius when their creative power is roused to its highest energy by a great cause and a great indignation. ”

“ John Buchanan, above mentioned as dying before his father, George Buchanan of that ilk, was twice married, first to the Lord Livingston’s daughter, by whom he had one son, George, who succeeded his grandfather. The son, Sir George Buchanan, married Mary Graham, daughter of the Earl of Monteith, and had, with two daughters, a son, Sir John Buchanan of that ilk. Sir John married Anabella Erskine, daughter of Adam, commendator of Cambuskenneth, a son of the Master of Mar. He had a son, George, his successor, and a daughter married to Campbell of Rahein. ”

“ Buchanan makes man the measure of the universe and its centre. He sees the centre of man in the human brain, and from that point strikes out an infinite, glorious future, in which all those infinite possibilities now slumbering within it, will develope themselves into life and harmony on earth and in the universe. Amid severe daily labour and many anxieties he reposes in this view, as in the sabbath-festival of his spirit. ”

“ An old man like Buchanan, well acquainted with the wiles of logic and the pretexts of state, was more likely to use an advantage in which there is a certain grim humour, and to take the adversary in his own toils, than such an inexperienced politician as young Mar, or any of the undistinguished nobles who carried out that stratagem. Whether Buchanan supported his old pupil, Mar, in his attempt to seize the governorship of the castle and the King's person out of the hands of his uncle, or in what aspect he was regarded when Morton returned to the head of affairs, we have no means of knowing. ”

“ Whether the readings from Livy went on all this time we have no record; but when Queen Mary married Darnley, and when her son was born, Buchanan would still seem to have occupied the position of Court poet, and celebrated both events by copies of verses as flattering, as well as elegant, as the dedication. From the first of these we may quote the lines in which Buchanan proves, notwithstanding his long absence and cosmopolitan training, that the native brag of the Scot was as strong in him as if he had never left his native shores. ”

“ There is good ground for the remark that the Merry Exploits of George Buchanan ‘is a terrible libel on an eminent man; never was mental greatness so “let down” in the popular estimation as by this vulgar performance; by and through which Buchanan’s humble countrymen were taught, not to look up to him, but down upon him as a coarse buffoon.’ [30] It must be admitted, however, that there is strong reason to suspect that many of the stories were current before the issue of the chap-book, but it, of course, would help to perpetuate the libels. ”

“ There is a long stretch of wet sand yonder where the broad Firth ought to be, and something chill and disconsolate, speaking of early winter, is in that gusty inconsistent breeze, which already carries past them a yellow leaf or two, dead so soon; but Helen Buchanan, wayward and inconsistent too, has bright life in her eyes, and sees nothing sad in all she looks upon. ”

“ After Buchanan had been toiling up the Hill of Knowledge for nearly two Months, and sending hot Bulletins back to the Old Folks, his Father decided to visit him and give him some Encouragement.
"The Poor Boy must be lonesome down there among all those Strangers," said Father. "I'll drop in on him and brighten him up."
So Father landed in the College Town and inquired for Buchanan, but no one had heard of such a Person. ”

“ President Buchanan was the very personification of the political species then known as the “Northern man with Southern principles,” that is, a Northern politician always ready to do the bidding of the slave-holding interest. I had been introduced to Mr. Buchanan with a multitude of other people at a White-House reception and taken a good look at him while after the hand-shaking he conversed with some Senators. ”

“ About twelve or thirteen years before the date of our last chapters, a young man from Glasgow, with his wife and one child, came as lodgers to a humble road-side cottage not far from the town of Fendie, and very near the Waterside. Walter Buchanan was an invalid. A delicate, sensitive man by nature, whose fine nervous organization was of that kind which is akin to weakness and not to strength—for there are both varieties—his health had been broken by the confinement and harassing labour of his vocation as a clerk in a mercantile office. ”

“ Sarcastically contrasting his coldness with Buchanan’s enthusiasm: “Your lover,” said she, “is, without doubt, most disinterested!—His eager desire for your happiness is shown in every part of his conduct!—Such warmth—such delicacy! How happy would a girl like my Calantha be with such a husband!—What filial piety distinguishes the whole of his behaviour!—Obey your father, is the burthen of his creed! He seems even to dread the warmth of your affection!—He trembles when he thinks into what 115 imprudence it may carry you!—Why, he is a perfect model, is he not? ”

“ Buchanan retired to his home at Wheatland, near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he died on the 1st of June 1868. His mistakes as president have been so emphasized as to obscure the fact that he was a man of unimpeachable honesty, of the highest patriotism, and of considerable ability. He never married. ”

“ Buchanan, to the day of his death, expressed to me his abiding conviction that the American people would, in due time, come to regard his course as the only one which at that time promised any hope of saving the nation from a bloody and devastating war, and would recognize the integrity and wisdom of his course in administering the Government for the good of the whole people, whether North or South. ”

“ I shall not labour the point of one stage of his performance being preparatory to another.
Of course I do not mean to say that Buchanan did all this consciously and systematically; that he deliber [Pg 29] ately prepared abroad, and then came and deliberately performed at home. Few men, especially men of Buchanan’s type, shape their lives on such lines of exact and exhaustive purpose. I leave out of account the unhappily large class who foolishly, and even wickedly, throw away their lives, and have hardly ever tried or desired to make a better of it. ”

“ At the close of Polk’s Administration, Buchanan retired to private life at his country home, called Wheatland, just outside of Lancaster. A niece and nephew were taken into his home and raised as his own children.
When Pierce became President, on March 4, 1853, Buchanan was sent as United States Minister to England. On his return from this 290mission he was nominated and elected to the presidency, and inaugurated March 4, 1857.
Buchanan clung to the idea that freedom rather than slavery was to blame for all the trouble. ”

“ Buchanan returned to his home at Wheatland, rejoicing to be free from the cares of a long and responsible public life, and welcomed by an immense gathering of his neighbors and the citizens of Lancaster. Here he lived quietly for the remaining seven years of his life, taking, however, a lively interest in public affairs, and always supporting, with his influence, as a private citizen, the maintenance of the war for the restoration of the union. His health was generally good throughout his whole life. ”

“ Buchanan may have made mistakes. If I had discovered them I should not have hesitated to point them out. But that his policy was sound; that it was the only policy that could have had any chance of preserving the Union without a civil war; that his motive was eminently patriotic; that with a serene and superb patience he incurred the risk of obloquy and misrepresentation for the sake of his country; all this should be the judgment of any impartial mind. Nay, more: I do not hesitate to say that no man can justly accuse him of vacillation, weakness, or timidity. ”

“ Buchanan, an intellectual, eccentric little man, full of life and human love, who greatly interests me by his personal character and by the large views which he takes in his Neurology and Analysis of the human brain, “of the immense possibilities of man,” allowing at the same time wide scope to the freedom of the human will. Buchanan is, in a high degree, a spiritualist, and he regards spiritual powers too as the most potent agents of all formation ”

“ Wearying of Irish life after 1877, Buchanan presently settled in London, which thenceforth remained his headquarters. His literary activity was now at its height. His most powerful novel, 'God and the Man,' a vivid study of a family feud, appeared in 1881, and hardly a year passed till near his death without the issue of a new book of fiction from his pen. He did not abandon poetry, but published less. For the opening of the Glasgow International Exhibition in May 1888 he composed a patriotic ode, which was set to music by Sir Alexander Mackenzie. ”

“ Buchanan was harassed on every side, when his patriotism was doubted, when his hands—eager to hold steady the reins of Government—were tied fast by the apathy of Congress and the indifference of the Northern people, his mind was lightened of much of its load of anxiety by the consciousness that his niece faithfully represented him in his drawing-room, and that his patriotism and good sense would never suffer by any conversational lapse of hers. ”

“ Buchanan unquestionably did belong, to the higher class of statesmen, had to act with a wise circumspection on this subject of slavery. There was nothing that such a man could do, if he regarded his public duty with an American statesman’s sense of public obligation, but to stand aloof from and to discountenance what was wrong in the doings of the anti-slavery agitators. ”

“ The Anglo-American can indeed cut down, and grub up all this waving forest, and make a stump speech, and vote for Buchanan on its ruins, but he cannot converse with the spirit of the tree he fells, he cannot read the poetry and mythology which retire as he advances. He ignorantly erases mythological tablets in order to print his handbills and town-meeting warrants on them. ”

“ In 1560 or 1561 he returned to Scotland, and in April 1562 we find him installed as tutor to the young queen Mary, who was accustomed to read Livy with him daily. Buchanan now openly joined the Protestant, or Reformed Church, and in 1566 was appointed by the earl of Murray principal of St Leonard’s College, St Andrews. ”

“ We have before us, and will be called soon to follow to the grave, the mortal remains of James Buchanan, the fifteenth President of the United States; who, after taking an active part in the politics of this great nation for half a century, having filled the highest places of honor and trust in the gift of his country, and having represented her for a long time with prominent distinction in the diplomacy of the civilized world, has now, at the advanced age of almost four score years, been gathered to his fathers, and enrolled on the catalogue of the great and illustrious dead. ”

“ Buchanan is a bachelor, and not yet past the age at which bachelors cease to be interesting; which accounts sufficiently for his being universally beloved, even by those who are opposed to him in politics. Indeed, I heard it positively asserted, more than four years ago, that he was “too much of a gentleman,” and “had remained too long in the Senate,” to continue much longer an advocate of democracy. This was evidently among the on dits, which, as far as regards the conclusion, had not the least foundation in it. Mr. Buchanan is, at this moment, as sound a democrat as ever ”

“ Of the last mentioned class the most notorious is George Buchanan, a man who owed his life to her clemency, who had been enriched by her warm-hearted liberality, who had penned his most polished verses in praise of her distinguished beauty and virtues, but who, when misfortune fell upon her, sold his venal pen to her enemies, and clothed in classical Latin the calumnies by which they hoped to overthrow her cause and establish their own. Now, students of this period of Scottish history know that Buchanan has been convicted of calumny in many particulars of Mary's life. ”

“ Few men of any country have had such versatility of talent, and have in life found tasks so varied as George Buchanan and Robert Wallace. No other Scotsman known to me, through credible report or in the flesh, has had the personal experience that would enable him so well to understand and interpret the personal experience of George Buchanan. Both were pre-eminent in the university learning of their respective eras, which had little in common except Latin; scholastic logic and metaphysic being the dominating study of Buchanan’s days, as inductive positive science is of ours. ”

“ Buchanan’s journey from Washington to Wheatland:
Local pride and personal admiration for Mr. Buchanan had always contributed to his strength at home in popular contests. In the County of Lancaster, which to this day remains one of the strongholds of the anti-Democratic party, Mr. Buchanan received 8731 votes to 6608 for Fremont and 3615 for Fillmore. In the city the utmost hopes of his friends were more than realized by a plurality of 1196, about four times the usual Democratic majority, and a majority over Fillmore and Fremont of 864. ”

“ It may be objected that men like Buchanan and Erasmus did not act honestly in remaining silent and conforming members of a system which they secretly regarded as in many vital respects false, and an imposture upon the world. Of course, it is to be said for Buchanan that he did ultimately come out of it; but then, why not sooner? Why did he not earlier follow the lead of Luther and Calvin and Knox? [Pg 103] For one thing, it must be remembered that even these great heroes of veracity had probably their reticences. At all events, they have left to us the legacy of an incompletely performed work. ”