King Horatio Buchanan's Pre-War Actions Defended by Horatio KingHORATIO KING, Autograph Letter Signed, to Clarence W. Bowen, February 1, 1896, Washington, DC. 4 pp., 5" x 8"  Small tears on folds; very good.
  Excerpts "I thank you for your kind note of yesterday inclosing the Independent's notice of ‘Turning on the Light.' Its mild criticism shows that the writer does not entirely agree with me in my defence of President Buchanan, but I am far from complaining of it. I know how widespread was the prejudice against him, a great deal of which undoubtedly arose from the use of the unfortunate word ‘coercion,' which, had I been of the Cabinet at the time and heard his message of Decr 1860 read, I certainly should have advised against it."
  "I have paid not less than $1,400 for a 1000 edition of my book—a duty I felt (if you please) inspired to fulfil, without caring whether the outlay was returned to me or not. The present generation, at any rate the younger part, are ignorant of the historical facts I have been impressed to give. It is gratifying that the Press generally has spoken kindly of my undertaking, many saying that it has removed much of the prejudice against Mr. Buchanan."
  Historical Background In 1895, Horatio King, the last surviving member of James Buchanan's cabinet, published Turning on the Light: A Dispassionate Survey of President Buchanan's Administration from 1860 to Its Close. Its 419 pages included several letters by Buchanan never before published.
  In this letter, King refers to Buchanan's final state of the union address, delivered to Congress in writing on December 3, 1860. In that address, Buchanan wrote, "The question fairly stated is, Has the Constitution delegated to Congress the power to coerce a State into submission which is attempting to withdraw or has actually withdrawn from the Confederacy? If answered in the affirmative, it must be on the principle that the power has been conferred upon Congress to declare and to make war against a State. After much serious reflection I have arrived at the conclusion that no such power has been delegated to Congress or to any other department of the Federal Government." This view paralyzed Buchanan. No state had the right to secede, but the federal government had no power to do anything if a state did secede.
  In this letter to the publisher of The Independent, King thanks him for the mildly critical review in the magazine. The Independent published a brief notice of the book's publication in its October 3, 1895, issue and apparently provided a more thorough review later.
 
  Horatio King (1811-1897) was born in Maine and published a newspaper there as a young man. He moved to Washington, D.C., in 1839 and obtained a clerk's position in the post office department. In 1854, he was appointed Assistant Postmaster General. When Joseph Holt moved from the position of Postmaster General to Secretary of War in January 1861, King became Postmaster General for a month at the end of President James Buchanan's administration. He remained in Washington during the Civil War and served on the commission to implement emancipation in the District of Columbia. After the war, he practiced law in Washington and served as an officer of the Washington Monument Society in the 1880s. In 1895, he published an account of the final months of the Buchanan administration.
  Clarence W. Bowen (1852-1935) was born in Connecticut and graduated from Yale University in 1873. He joined the staff of The Independent magazine in New York in 1874 and purchased it in 1896. He sold it in 1912 to Hamilton Holt, who had been managing editor for ten years.
 
 
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