2

End of Buchanan.

To-day at noon the administration of James Buchanan closes. It has been the most eventful and stirring one in our history, while its results have proven the most disastrous to the country. What we have thought of it we have recorded from time to time. Through its corruptions it disrupted and rendered powerless the great party which elected it. By its treachery to that party, by imbecility or sympathy with traitors, he has been chiefly instrumental in sundering the American Union. Prosperous and powerful beyond all precedent, Mr. Buchanan found the country when he took the presidential chair. — He leaves it divided — torn into wrangling fragments. History will record his presidential career as one marked at every step with treachery to friends, to party, and to principle, and he will be fortunate, indeed, if it does not record him treacherous to his country. He may be the last president of the United States. He is the first, certainly, who leaves the presidency "with none so poor as to do him reverence" — with no voice to commend his policy, and traitors only to exalt in his results.

God forgive him for the evil he has wrought, but may we "never look upon his like again."