Buchanan's advice, President Polk, in his first annual message, in December, 1845, reasserted the Monroe doctrine that no European nation should henceforth be allowed by the United States to plant any colony on the American continent or to interfere in any way in American affairs. This declaration was intended to frustrate the attempts of England to obtain a footing in the then Mexican province of California by an extensive system of colonization. England's aims were defeated for the time. Two years afterward, when the Mexican war was drawing to a close, Mr. Buchanan turned the attention of President Polk to the encroachments of the British government in Central America, under the operation of a protectorate over the kingdom of the Mosquito Indians. Great disturbances followed in Yucatan, and the Indians began a war of extermination against the whites. If not actually incited by the British authorities, the savages were known to be supplied with British muskets. The whites were reduced to such extremities that the authorities of Yucatan offered to transfer the dominion and sovereignty of the peninsula to the United States, as a consideration for defending it against the Indians, at the same time giving notice that if this offer should be declined they would make the same proposition to England and Spain. The president recommended to congress the appeal of Yucatan, but declined to recommend the adoption of any measure with a view to acquire the dominion and sovereignty over the peninsula. In April, 1847, the United States appointed a chargé d'affaires to Guatemala, and Mr. Buchanan instructed him to "promote, by his counsel and advice, should suitable occasions offer, the reunion of the states that formed the federation of Central America; to cultivate the most friendly relations with Guatemala and the other states of Central America; and to communicate to the state department all the information obtainable concerning the British encroachments upon the Mosquito kingdom." The new chargé was prevented from reaching Guatemala until late in Mr. Polk's administration, and the plan wisely conceived by Mr. Buchanan was not carried out. In the mean time the British government seized upon the port of San Juan de Nicaragua, the only good harbor along the coast. Instead of carrying out the policy of President Polk and Mr. Buchanan, the administration of President Taylor, without consulting the states of Central America, entered in 1850 into the Clayton

Bulwer treaty, the ambiguous language of which soon gave rise to such complications and misunderstandings between England and the United States that Mr. Buchanan was obliged to go, subsequently, as minister to London, to endeavor to unravel them. Instead of a simple provision requiring Great Britain absolutely to recede from the Mosquito protectorate, and to restore to Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica their respective territories, the treaty declared that neither of the parties should "make use of any protection which either affords or may afford, or any alliance which either has or may have, to or with any state or people, for the purpose of erecting or maintaining any fortifications, or of occupying, fortifying, or colonizing any part of Central America, or of assuming or exercising any dominion over the same." It soon became the British construction of this clause that it recognized the existence of the Mosquito protectorate for all purposes other than those expressly prohibited; and down to the time when Mr. Buchanan was sent by President Pierce as minister to England this claim was still maintained.

On the accession of the whig party to power under Taylor, in March, 1849, Mr. Buchanan retired for a time from official life. His home, from the age of eighteen, had been the city of Lancaster, where he owned a house. In the autumn of 1848 he purchased a small estate of twenty-two acres, known as Wheatland, about a mile from the town. The house was a substantial brick mansion, and, on Mr. Buchanan's retirement from the cabinet, this became his permanent abode when he was not. occupying an official residence in London or in Washington. Mr. Buchanan never married. The death of the lady whom he had intended to marry was a deep and lasting sorrow. The loss of his sister, Mrs. Lane, in 1839, and of her husband two years later, gave him the care of their four children; and the youngest of these, afterward widely known as Miss Harriet Lane, became an inmate of his household. James Buchanan Henry, the son of another sister, who died about the same time, was also taken into his family; and these two cousins were brought up by their uncle with the most wise and affectionate Mr. Buchanan's letters to his niece, begun when she was a school-girl, and, after Miss Lane had grown up, written almost daily during her absences from him, give a charming picture of his private life. During the few years of Mr. Buchanan's

care.

unofficial life, passed chiefly at Wheatland, he does not appear to have devoted much time to the law. His correspondence was large; and this, with a constant and lively interest in public affairs, rendered him, even in retirement, very busy. He lent considerable influence to his party as a private individual; but his exertions were not marked by purely partisan feeling. He strenuously

opposed the Wilmot proviso, which aimed at excluding slavery from all newly acquired territory; and favored Mr. Clay's "Compromise Measures of 1850," which provided for the admission of California

as a free state, and the abolition of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia; but, by the fugitive slave law, secured the return to their owners of slaves that had escaped into free states. He wrote many influential public letters, in one of which he declared that "two things are necessary to preserve the union from danger: 1. Agitation in the north on the subject of southern slavery must be rebuked and put down by a strong and enlightened public opinion; 2. The fugitive slave law must be enforced in its spirit." In the presidential election of 1852 Mr. Buchanan was a candidate for the democratic nomination; but Gen. Franklin Pierce received the nomination and was elected. The most important service rendered by Mr. Buchanan to his party in this election and with him a service to his party was alike a service to his country-was a speech made at Greensburgh, Pa., in October, 1852, in opposition to the election of Gen. Scott, the whig candidate. This speech exhibited in a very clear light the whole political history of that period, and asserted a principle which he said ought to be an article of democratic faith: "Beware of elevating to the highest civil trust the commander of your victorious armies," drawing a distinction between one "who had been a man of war, and nothing but a man of war from his youth upward," and such as had been "soldiers only in the day and hour of danger, when the country had demanded

their services, and who had already illustrated high civil appointments"; and then criticising exhaustively each of Gen. Scott's avowed political opinions, and quoting Mr. Thurlow Weed, "one of Gen. Scott's most able supporters," as acknowledging that "there was weakness in all Scott said or did about the presidency." When, in 1853, Franklin Pierce became president, he appointed Mr. Buchanan minister to England. Buchanan, though social in his nature, was a man of simple republican tastes, and the formality and etiquette of life at a foreign court, never agreeable, now, at the age of sixtytwo, appeared to him particularly distasteful; besides, he considered that his duty to his young relatives as well as to his only surviving brother, a clergyman in delicate health, required his presence at home. But with Mr. Buchanan duty to his country always outweighed every other consideration, and Mr. Pierce's urgent appeal to him to accept what was at that time a very important mission, at length prevailed. Mr. Buchanan sailed for England from New York on 5 Aug., 1853, and landed in Liverpool on the 17th. There were three important questions to be settled with England at this time: the first related to the fisheries; the second was the desire of England to establish reciprocal free trade in certain enumerated articles between the United States and the British North American provinces, and thus preserve their allegiance and ward off the danger of their annexation to the United States; and this Mr. Buchanan was very desirous to use as a powerful lever to secure the third point, which the United States earnestly desired, viz., the withdrawal of all British dominion in Central America, and the recognition of the Monroe doctrine, which the Clayton-Bulwer treaty had not firmly established. President Pierce considered it best that the reciprocity and fishery questions should be settled at Washington; but Mr. Buchanan was intrusted with the negotiation of the Central American question in London. Mr. Buchanan's main object was to develop and ascertain the precise differences between the two governments in regard to the construction of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, but the Crimean war so long delayed the negotiations with this country that nothing could be accomplished while he remained in England. As the war approached and when it was finally declared, the principles of neutrality, privateering, and many other topics came within the range of the discussion; and it was very much

in consequence of the views expressed by Mr. Buchanan to Lord Clarendon, and by the latter communicated to the British cabinet, that the course of England toward neutrals during that war became what it was. When Lord Clarendon, in 1854, presented to Mr. Buchanan a projet for a treaty between Great Britain, France, and the United States, making it piracy for neutrals to serve on board of privateers cruising against the commerce of either of the three nations when such nation was a belligerent, the very impressive reasons that Mr. Buchanan. opposed to it caused it to be abandoned. An American minister at the English court, at periods of exciting and critical questions between the two nations, is very likely to experience a considerable variation in the social barometer. But the strength of Mr. Buchanan's character, and the agreeable personal qualities which were in him united with the gravity of years and an experience of a very uncommon kind, overcame at all times any tendency to social unpleasantness that might have been caused by national feelings excited by temporary causes. Throughout his residence in England Mr. Buchanan was treated with marked attention, not only by society in general, but by the queen and the prince consort. Miss Lane joined him in the spring of 1854, and remained with him until the autumn of 1855.

Mr. Buchanan arrived in New York in April, 1856, and there met with a public reception from the authorities and people of the city, that evinced the interest that now began to be everywhere manifested in him as the probable future president. Prior to the meeting of the national democratic convention at Cincinnati in June, 1856, there was lack of organization on the part of Mr. Buchanan's political friends; and Mr. Buchanan himself, though willing to accept the nomination, made no efforts to secure it, and did not believe that he would receive it. The rival claimants were President Pierce and Senator Douglas, of Illinois. Chiefly through the efforts of Mr. Slidell, Mr. Buchanan was nominated. By this time the whig party had disappeared, the old party lines were obliterated, and the main political issue had come to be the question of slavery or no slavery in the territories. The anti-slavery party now called themselves republicans, and their candidate was Gen. Fremont. The result of the election shows, with great distinctness, the following facts: 1. That Mr. Buchanan was chosen president because he received the electoral votes of the