Before I go away I intend to get up a letter from Lord Clarendon and yourself, manifesting your sense of the manner in which Mr. Bates performed his duty as umpire. As he will accept no pay, it is as little as you can do, to say, “thank you, sir.”
I am informed there is a publisher in London about to publish the Central American correspondence in pamphlet form, believing it will yield him a profit.
I have just received a letter from Mason, written in excellent spirits, praising Mr. Wise, his new secretary. For poor me, this is sour grapes. Never forgetting my friend, Mrs. Marcy,
I remain yours very respectfully, JAMES BUCHANAN.
I did not receive your kind and friendly letter of the 21st ultimo until last evening, and although oppressed by my public duties to-day, I cannot suffer a steamer to depart without bearing you an answer.
We had been friends for many years before our friendship was suspended. The best course to pursue in renewing it again is to suffer bygones to be bygones. In this spirit I cordially accept your overtures, and shall forget everything unpleasant in our past relations. When we meet again, let us meet as though no estrangement had ever existed between us, and it shall not be my fault if we should not remain friends as long as we both may live. I wish you an honorable and useful career in the Senate.
I had hoped to return home with Miss Lane in October last, but a succession of threatening incidents has occurred in the relations between the two countries which has kept me here until the present moment. And even now I do not know when I can leave my post. My private business requires that I should be at home on the 1st of April, but no pecuniary consideration can induce me to desert my public duty at such a moment as the present. I trust, however, that by the next steamer I shall hear of the appointment of my successor.
In regard to the Presidency to which you refer, if my own wishes had been consulted, my name should never again have been mentioned in connection with that office. I feel, nevertheless, quite as grateful to my friends for their voluntary exertions in my favor during my absence, as though they had been prompted by myself. It is a consolation which I shall bear with me to my dying day, that the Democracy of my native state have sustained me with so much unanimity. I shall neither be disappointed nor in the slightest degree mortified should the Cincinnati Convention nominate another person; but in the retirement, the prospect of which is now so dear to me, the consciousness that Pennsylvania has stood by me to the last will be a delightful reflection. Our friends Van Dyke and Lynch have kept me advised of your exertions in my favor.