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hoped to make a positive contribution was that of Anglo-American relations; here he still considered himself master of his own house. “He began by repeating an observation he often makes to me,” reported Lyons after their meeting, “that it has been his great ambition to be able to say at the end of his administration that he had left no question with Great Britain unsettled; that for the first time since the Revolution ‘the docket was clear.’ ” Yet even in this, Buchanan feared that events were conspiring against him.

Ten months earlier, in June 1859, a domestic pig on San Juan Island in the Straits of Juan de Fuca had wandered from its enclosure into the potato patch of a neighboring farm. The patch belonged to Lyman Cutlar, one of twenty-five Americans living on the rugged, tree-lined island. Cutlar was tired of having his potatoes raided by the pig, and he settled the matter for good with a bullet. The pig’s owners happened to be British. They demanded compensation, and when Cutlar refused, they took their case to the governor of British Columbia. Unfortunately, it was unclear where the exact boundary lay between Washington State and the province of British Columbia. The arrival in July of a company from the 9th U.S. Infantry under Captain George Pickett appeared to settle the question, but then the British governor countered by dispatching a magistrate, Major John Fitzroy De Courcy, to the island. The major was a decorated veteran of the Crimean War, and fighting—rather than diplomacy—was his forte. He did not bother to hold a parley with Pickett, instead ordering him to leave the island or face arrest. Pickett refused and requested several hundred reinforcements. The governor sent several warships to reinforce De Courcy’s authority. Pickett’s men dug in, and the gunboats maneuvered into position.

Alarmed that the two nations could stumble into war over a dead pig, Lord Lyons and Secretary of State Lewis Cass immediately ordered the withdrawal of their respective troops. But the actual details surrounding the dispute were more difficult to resolve. Neither nation was willing to concede its right to the island. The best that Lyons and Cass could achieve was a compromise whereby each country would maintain a small company of soldiers on the island until the question was resolved.37 President Buchanan confessed to Lyons that he could not see any way to end the matter. “The People of the West Coast were becoming very excited,” he told Lyons, “and he really did not know what to do. He concluded by begging me to set my wits to work to devise some plan of coming to an amicable settlement.” Lyons promised to try, though he privately doubted that anything he suggested would be acceptable to the inhabitants of the West Coast.38

Lyons was still considering the problem when the Democratic Party convened in Charleston on April 23, 1859. A total of 630 delegates from around the country descended on the city to select the party’s presidential candidate for the election in November. The Southerners who openly advocated secession from the United States, known as the “Fire-eaters,” were determined to force the slavery debate into the open. William Yancey of Alabama had sufficiently recovered from the illness that had kept him from Lord Napier’s farewell ball to lead the way with his brilliant oratory. The Fire-eaters wanted the party to endorse a platform guaranteeing federal protection of slavery in all states and territories, including any new acquisitions such as Cuba or Honduras, but most Northern members of the party wanted to maintain the status quo. Yancey ostentatiously led a walkout of fifty delegates from the cotton states after the Northern majority voted down the proslavery platform. The convention ended in disarray, without a presidential nominee being selected.

It was obvious to all that the Fire-eaters were blackmailing the Democratic Party with the threat of a split unless their platform was adopted. The Southern Democrats in the Senate pleaded with Yancey and the others not to turn the election into a three-horse