In Decem­ber 1860, Pres­i­dent Buchanan con­cen­trat­ed on his annu­al mes­sage amid esca­lat­ing ten­sions over South Car­oli­na’s poten­tial seces­sion. His assis­tant, William Hen­ry Trescot, a mem­ber of South Carolina’s aris­toc­ra­cy, played a cru­cial role in pro­vid­ing insights into the region’s griev­ances. Buchanan believed that South Car­oli­na would indeed secede, fear­ing vio­lent con­flict regard­ing fed­er­al forts in Charleston Har­bor. How­ev­er, Trescot expressed that the state’s seces­sion would be exe­cut­ed peace­ful­ly, akin to a busi­ness nego­ti­a­tion, promis­ing that South Car­oli­na would send rep­re­sen­ta­tives to sort out the sep­a­ra­tion with Con­gress.

When Buchanan com­plet­ed his address, he shared it with Sen­a­tor Jef­fer­son Davis, a promi­nent South­ern fig­ure. Davis sug­gest­ed revi­sions, and although he believed the final draft would align with South Car­oli­na’s con­sti­tu­tion­al right to secede, Buchanan con­tin­ued to make changes. He lat­er sent a copy of the address to Gov­er­nor Gist of South Car­oli­na through Trescot, who pre­dict­ed imme­di­ate seces­sion upon read­ing it.

Buchanan’s speech was pre­sent­ed to Con­gress on Decem­ber 4, gar­nish­ing sig­nif­i­cant atten­tion. He reflect­ed on the para­dox of wide­spread pros­per­i­ty con­trast­ed with soci­etal unrest, attribut­ing the dis­con­tent square­ly to the North’s anti­slav­ery agi­ta­tion, which erod­ed South­ern secu­ri­ty. He empha­sized that the solu­tion lay in allow­ing the South­ern states to man­age their domes­tic affairs with­out North­ern inter­fer­ence, ques­tion­ing the legit­i­ma­cy of seces­sion raised by fear alone, and posit­ing that con­sti­tu­tion­al rights did­n’t jus­ti­fy dis­in­te­gra­tion of the Union. In his view, seces­sion equat­ed to rev­o­lu­tion, jus­ti­fi­able only under egre­gious fed­er­al action.

The recep­tion of his address was notably dis­con­tent­ed, with Jef­fer­son Davis vow­ing to sev­er ties with Buchanan over his denial of seces­sion’s right and Abra­ham Lin­coln express­ing shock at Buchanan’s blame on the North for the cri­sis. Crit­ics like William Seward and the *New-York Times* con­demned the address, call­ing it incen­di­ary and a dere­lic­tion of duty, only exac­er­bat­ing the sec­tion­al con­flict. Buchanan’s rea­son­ing estab­lished a com­plex lega­cy of inac­tion and mis­judg­ment, encap­su­lat­ing the pre­car­i­ous state of the Union on the brink of civ­il war.