In Wash­ing­ton, the nation faced sig­nif­i­cant tur­moil as Pres­i­dent Buchanan’s cab­i­net expe­ri­enced tur­moil. On Decem­ber 8, How­ell Cobb, the trea­sury sec­re­tary, resigned, align­ing with his home state of Geor­gia. Short­ly after, Sec­re­tary of State Lewis Cass also resigned due to frus­tra­tion with Buchanan’s inac­tion regard­ing South Car­oli­na’s seces­sion efforts. Cass urged the pres­i­dent to take deci­sive action against the upris­ing, rem­i­nis­cent of Andrew Jack­son’s approach dur­ing the 1832 nul­li­fi­ca­tion cri­sis. How­ev­er, Buchanan pre­ferred to main­tain peace and leave the White House with­out con­flict, lead­ing to Cass’ res­ig­na­tion, who remarked, “The peo­ple in the South are mad; the peo­ple in the North asleep,” and not­ed Buchanan’s fear­ful demeanor.

On the same day, a group of four South Car­oli­na con­gress­men approached Buchanan to dis­cuss the crit­i­cal issue of the fed­er­al forts in Charleston Har­bor. They reached an infor­mal agree­ment that was ambigu­ous­ly defined, influ­enced by the con­gress­men’s hopes and Buchanan’s desire to avoid con­fronta­tion. Buchanan sug­gest­ed they sum­ma­rize their dis­cus­sions in writ­ing for “pru­den­tial rea­sons.” The next day, Decem­ber 9, they sub­mit­ted a short state­ment indi­cat­ing South Carolina’s inten­tion not to attack the forts before the upcom­ing seces­sion con­ven­tion, under the con­di­tion that no rein­force­ments were sent to the sites and that their mil­i­tary sta­tus remained unchanged.

Buchanan respond­ed with a memo indi­cat­ing that should South Car­oli­na forces attack, it would place them “com­plete­ly in the wrong,” hold­ing them respon­si­ble for the out­break of the Civ­il War. He expressed strong reser­va­tions about the term “pro­vid­ed,” con­cerned it could be con­strued as a com­mit­ment he was unwill­ing to make. The con­gress­men insist­ed that it was not their inten­tion to imply an offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tion of their state and acknowl­edged their indi­vid­ual author­i­ty in this mat­ter.

Despite Buchanan’s inter­pre­ta­tion, the del­e­ga­tion left believ­ing he had made a sol­id com­mit­ment to main­tain the mil­i­tary sta­tus quo at Charleston Har­bor, a belief that they con­veyed back to author­i­ties in South Car­oli­na. Buchanan, how­ev­er, con­sid­ered this as mere­ly “the promise of high­ly hon­or­able gen­tle­men” to assist in the mat­ter, call­ing the sup­posed pledge an hon­or-based com­mit­ment that would ulti­mate­ly pro­pel the nation clos­er to war.