Opening of the Presidential Campaign of 1860.
From the Philadelphia Evening Journal.
Washington, Saturday, Dec. 19, 1857.
Some facts have come to my knowledge within the past few days, which throw considerable light upon the recent policy of the Administration. Most people have expected the President to pursue a straightforward, independent and patriotic course, because, they say, he had attained the summit of his ambition, and does not look forward to second term of office. I have satisfactory information that there is already a strong combination of leading Democrats formed for the purpose of bringing Mr. Buchanan forward as a candidate for reelection. Whether the President himself is privy to his arrangement cannot, of course, be ascertained, at present; but upon the supposition that he gives it his countenance, the non-committalism of his message and his extraordinary anxiety to conciliate the fire-eating extremists of the South will be easily explained. Some of those who are most prominent in the movement, who, by the way, are principal exponents of the ultra-Southern sentiment, aver that Mr. Buchanan will be by far the most available candidate for the slaveholding interests, and they design to hold the combinations, thus early formed, over the heads of Douglas, Walker, Wise, Dickinson and other aspirants. The probabilities are, that in many respects the remainder of Mr. Buchanan’s Administration will resemble that of Mr. Pierce, in being marked by a succession of petty intrigues for reelection, all of which are doomed, beyond peradventure, to ultimate defeat. A second term is an obsolete idea in our politics.
