1861_ The Civil War Awakening - Adam Goodheart [234]
48. In Buchanan’s time, it went without saying that only white citizens were welcome. That would change just a few years later. On January 2, 1864, The New York Times reported: “Years ago had any colored man presented himself at the White House, at the President’s levee, seeking an introduction to the Chief Magistrate of the nation, he would, in all probability, have been roughly handled for his impudence. Yesterday four colored men, of genteel exterior and with the manners of gentlemen, joined in the throng that crowded the Executive mansion, and were presented to the President of the United States.” The custom of the New Year’s Day levee had been inaugurated by George and Martha Washington (while Philadelphia was the nation’s capital) and was maintained by every subsequent president through Herbert Hoover.
49. David Herbert Donald, Lincoln at Home: Two Glimpses of Abraham Lincoln’s Family Life (New York, 2000), pp. 8–9; Betty C. Monkman, The White House: Its Historic Furnishings and First Families (New York, 2000), pp. 111–23; Esther Singleton, The Story of the White House (New York, 1907), vol. 2, pp. 56–59; Pryor, Reminiscences, pp. 47–53.
50. Donald, Lincoln at Home, pp. 8–9; Michael Burlingame, ed., At Lincoln’s Side: John Hay’s Correspondence and Selected Writings (Carbondale, 2008), p. 118; Singleton, The Story of the White House, vol. 2, pp. 56–57; Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 2, 1861; New York Herald, Jan. 3, 1861; Wisconsin Daily Patriot, Jan. 16, 1861.
51. Pryor, Reminiscences, pp. 21–23.
52. Stampp, And the War Came, pp. 46–47.
53. Buchanan to Jackson, June 22, 1832, in George Ticknor Curtis, Life of James Buchanan, Fifteenth President of the United States (New York, 1883), pp. 142–43.
54. Singleton, The Story of the White House, vol. 2, p. 40; Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, March 14, 1857, quoted in Homer T. Rosenberger, “Inauguration of President Buchanan a Century Ago,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, vol. 57/59 (1957–59), pp. 104–05.
55. John B. Floyd, Diary, Nov. 7–13, 1860, in Edward A. Pollard, Lee and His Lieutenants (New York, 1866), pp. 790–94; Philip Gerald Auchampbaugh, James Buchanan and His Cabinet on the Eve of Secession (Lancaster, Pa., 1926), pp. 130–39; James Buchanan, Mr. Buchanan’s Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion (New York, 1866), pp. 108–14; John Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History (New York, 1890), vol. 2, pp. 358ff.
56. Quoted in Nevins, The Ordeal of the Union, vol. 4, p. 353; Stampp, And the War Came, p. 56.
57. Floyd, Diary, Nov. 8, 1860, in Pollard, Lee and His Lieutenants, p. 791; “Narrative and Letter of William Henry Trescot, Concerning the Negotiations Between South Carolina and President Buchanan in December, 1860,” American Historical Review, vol. 13, no. 3 (April 1908), pp. 528–56; Samuel W. Crawford, The History of the Fall of Fort Sumter, and the Genesis of the Civil War (New York, 1887), pp. 20–35; Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, vol. 2, chap. 23, passim; Detzer, Allegiance, p. 70.
58. In a self-justification written afterward, Trescot justified his and Floyd’s conduct with the rationale that the moment the Union, as a compact of independent states, began to dissolve, the federal government also dissolved. So, he continued complacently, “to apply the words treason and treachery therefore to the conduct of the Southern Members of Mr. B’s Cabinet is to borrow a technical language from Foreign Governments which has no true application to the circumstances of our own.” (Trescot, “Narrative and Letter,” pp. 551–52.)
59. OR I, vol. 1, pp. 125–26.
60. Trescot, “Narrative and Letter,” pp. 543–44. Not long after, Trescot finally left Washington for good, and stopped on his way out of town to bid farewell to Buchanan’s attorney general, the Pennsylvania Unionist Jeremiah Black. As they talked over the events of the past two months, the attorney general admitted amiably that the Southerners had played their