Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. II.djvu/281

JAMES BUCHANAN 223 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 enlight ened public opinion; 2. The fugitive slave law must be enforced in its spirit." In the presidential election of 1852 Mr. Bu chanan was a candidate for the democratic nomi nation; 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. Winfield 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 ele vating 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