What Mr. Buchanan proposes to do after the fourth of March.
--"E. B." writes from Washington to the Express as follows of the closing days of Mr. Buchanan's Administration, the reflections in which he indulges, how he proposes to ride with Old Abe to the Capitol on Monday, and then go home to Lancaster and join the Church. The little sketch of "E. B." is pregnant with instruction to those in high place, who unnecessarily abandon life-long and tried friends to gain some trivial point of trifling importance:‘ "It is popular to abuse Mr. Buchanan, for he has no power, and but few friends. The Republicans delight to call him tyrant, knave and rogue, and Democrats denounce him as an idiot, rogue, and an imbecile. But, in sober truth, he is none of these, but one who, after over forty years of public service, has made and lost more friends than perhaps any man who ever before held public office in the country. In six months after his election he quarrelled with some of his best personal and political friends, and later, with thousands more. Of a party of thirty-five life-long and attached men with whom he dined in Philadelphia, after his election and before his inauguration, not one now remains to call him friend, or to feel an interest in his future.
"The genius of the President seems to have been in repulsion rather than attraction, and hence no one honors the setting sun. Mr. Buchanan has (and to his credit be it spoken) felt all these changes of personal fortune much less than the sad condition of the country, which distinguishes his Administration above all which ever preceded it. Intimate acquaintances have seen, for three months past, that a real sorrow has been wearing upon the mind and heart of the President. He has declared for many weeks, here, that he should see the President elect inaugurated, hear his oath to support the Constitution, and then go to his home.
"In the midst of the great excitement and threatening danger here, he has said: I shall ride beside Mr. Lincoln, from the White House to the Capitol, even if it rains bullets. 'I shall then go to Lancaster, pass my days in retirement, and seek to find consolation and religion in the Church. Bitter sorrow has taught me that happiness can be found no where else.' Mr. Buchanan, therefore, purposes at once, upon his return to his old homestead, to become a member of the Presbyterian Church, in which he has usually worshipped. He feels — and let us attribute it rather to good than bad impressions — as deeply sorrowful for the condition of the country as the rest of us."
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