And so do I.
Message to the US Congress December 3, 1860 from President James Buchanan:
. "Why is it...that discontent now so extensively prevails, and the Union of the States...is threatened with destruction?
"The long-continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of slavery in the Southern States has at length produced its natural effects. The different sections of the Union are now arrayed against each other, and the time has arrived, so much dreaded by the Father of his Country, when hostile geographic parties have been formed.
"I have long foreseen and often forewarned my countrymen of the now impending danger. This does not proceed soley from the claim on the part of Congress or the Territorial legislatures to exclude slavery from the Territories, nor from the efforts of different States to defeat the execution of the fugitive-slave law.
"All or any of these evils might have been endured by the South without danger to the Union (as others have been) in the hope that time and reflection might apply the remedy.
"The immediate peril arises not so much from these causes as from the fact that the incessant and violent agitation of the slavery question throughout the North for the last quarter of a century has at length produced its malign influence on the slaves and inspired them with vague notions of freedom. Hence a sense of security no longer exists around the family altar. This feeling of peace at home has given place to apprehensions of servile insurrections. Many a matron throughout the South retires at night in dread of what may befall herself and children before the morning. Should this apprehension of domestic danger, whether real or imaginary, extend and intensify itself until it shall pervade the masses of the Southern people, then disunion will become inevitable.
It’s nice how the spineless POS buchanan wheedled on about how terrible secession was and what a horrible thing civil war would be and then kicked the can down the road (and in doing so virtually guaranteed that there would be a violent confrontation) so that the actual dirty deed would fall upon his successor to deal with.
What a putz!
So, we’ve skipped past what the secessionists actually said in late December 1860 (South Carolina) and early 1861 for the rest. Please note that Buchanan did not secede, but the various States did. I would consider what South Carolina, and Mississippi, and Texas, and Florida, and Georgia actually said as to why they are seceding over what Buchanan said would be the cause. But, if you read what Buchanan said, it implies that the South seceded because the mean people in the North hurt their little fe-fes, and not on the actual acts (no expansion of slavery to the Territories, lax enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act).
And, incidentally, Buchanan? Buchanan? He’s at or near the bottom on virtually every list of presidents. You’re using him as your basis, when he did the best portrayal of Nero fiddling while Rome burned ever done in the Western Hemisphere.