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BUCHANAN 381 ernments. lie was one of the earliest advo- cates of the annexation of Texas, arguing that " while it would afford that security to the southern and southwestern slave states which they have a right to demand, it would in some respects operate prejudicially upon their imme- diate pecuniary interests ; but to the middle and western, and more especially to the New England states, it would be a source of un- mixed prosperity. It would extend their commerce, promote tlieir manufactures, and increase tlieir wealth." Although the treaty of annexation received only 15 votes in the senate, after the election of President Polk Texas was finally admitted by joint resolutions passed three days before his inauguration. Mr. Buchanan was the only member of the committee on foreign relations in the senate who reported favorably on the admission. On the accession of Mr. Polk to the presidency Mr. Buchanan was appointed secretary of state, and had the initiation of those measures which he had hitherto defended as chairman of the committee on foreign relations in the senate. England and America had both claimed the whole northwestern territory. The protocol between Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Pakenham induced England to accept the compromise line of lat. 49 N. Mr. Buchanan had felt himself obliged to offer this line, because Mr. Tyler. had offered it be- fore him, but it was rejected by Mr. Paken- ham. Hereupon Mr. Buchanan, in an elabo- rate state paper, exhibited the claims of the United States to the whole territory, and con- cluded by a formal withdrawal of his offer. The British government shortly afterward pro- posed to settle the boundary question on the terms first proposed by Mr. Polk, declaring this to be its ultimatum. The president refer- red the proposition to congress, who advised its acceptance. During the Mexican war Mr. Buchanan's chief labors as secretary of state were directed to the avoidance of European intervention in the shape of mediation or guar- antees. At the close of Mr. Folk's adminis- tration, Mr. Buchanan retired to private life; but his views of passing events were freely ex- pressed, and he watched with apprehension the progress of the slavery agitation in the northern states. While yet in the cabinet of Mr. Polk, he had written his so-called Harvest Home letter to his friends in Pennsylvania, ad- vising the extension of the Missouri compromise line of lat. 36 30' N. to the Pacific ocean ; but the proposition, when introduced into congress, was voted down. At last, by the joint efforts of Clay, Webster, Oass, and tlieir' friends in both houses, the compromise measures of 1850 were passed. Soon afterward Mr. Buchanan wrote a letter to a union meeting held in Phil- adelphia, in which he fully approved them. One of the first acts of Mr. Pierce's adminis- tration was the appointment of Mr. Buchanan as minister to England (1853). A principal object of his mission was the Central American question, which the Clayton-Bulwer treaty had not settled. Mr. Buchanan discussed the whole matter in an elaborate and perspicacious proto- col. Our relations with Spain also came under his notice. Various causes of complaint had arisen on our part, and at last one of our ves- sels, the Black Warrior, was fired into by a Spanish war steamer on the coast of Cuba. President Pierce thought the opportunity had arrived for settling all difficulties at once by a proposal to purchase the island of Cuba at a price which would enable Spain to extricate herself from her financial embarrassments. This delicate negotiation was confided to Mr. Soul6, then our minister to the court of Ma- drid ; but the president thought it advisable that our ministers to England and France (Mr. Bu- chanan and Mr. Mason) should act in concert with Mr. Soule. The result was a meeting at Ostend, afterward adjourned to Aix-la-Cha- pelle, and the drawing up of a memorandum, sometimes spoken of as the Ostend manifesto, in which the ministers set forth the importance of Cuba to the United States, the advantages which would accrue to Spain from the sale of it at a fair price, the difficulty which Spain would encounter in endeavoring to keep pos- session of it by mere military power, the sym- pathy of the people of the United States with the inhabitants of the island, and finally, the possibility that Spain, as a last resort, might endeavor to Africanize Cuba, and become in- strumental in the reenacting of the scenes of Santo Domingo. They believed that in case Cuba was about to be transformed into another Santo Domingo, the example might act perni- ciously on the slave population of the southern states. In this case, they held that the instinct of self-preservation would call for the armed intervention of the United States, and we should be justified in wresting the island by force from Spain. Mr. Buchanan returned to the United States in April, 1856. The demo- cratic convention, held at Cincinnati in June following, nominated him unanimously for the presidency, and ho was elected, receiving 174 electoral votes from 19 states, against 114 for John C. Fremont, and 8 for Miliard Fillmore. He took an early opportunity to set forth his sentiments on the Kansas question. In a"n ad- dress to the students of Franklin and Marshall college at Lancaster, in November, 1856, he declared that the object of his administration would be to destroy any sectional party, wheth- er in the north or in the south, and to restore national and fraternal feeling between the dif- ferent sections. In his inaugural address, March 4, 1857, he clearly expressed himself on the subject of the slavery agitations and the mode in which the difficulties in Kansas were to be settled. He approved the Lecompton consti- tution, and on Feb. 2, 1858, addressed a spe- cial message to congress, asserting the power of the people of Kansas to " change their con- stitution within a brief period " after being ad- mitted into the Union, notwithstanding a clause