How deeply he felt her death is shown by extracts from a letter written to him by a friend in the latter part of December: [Pg 113] [Pg 113] “I am writing, I know not why, and perhaps had better not. I write only to speak of the awful visitation of Providence that has fallen upon you, and how deeply I feel it.... I trust to your philosophy and courage, and to the elasticity of spirits natural to most young men.... “The sun will shine again, though a man enveloped in gloom always thinks the darkness is to be eternal. Do you remember the Spanish anecdote? “A lady who had lost a favorite child remained for months sunk in sullen sorrow and despair. Her confessor, one morning visited her, and found her, as usual immersed in gloom and grief. ‘What,’ said he, ‘Have you not forgiven God Almighty?’ “She rose, exerted herself, joined the world again, and became useful to herself and her friends.” Time’s kindly touch heals many wounds, but the years seemed to bring to James Buchanan no surcease of sorrow. He was always under the cloud of that misunderstanding, and during his long political career, the incident frequently served as a butt for the calumnies of his enemies. It was freely used in “campaign documents,” [Pg 114]perverted, misrepresented, and twisted into every conceivable shape, though it is difficult to conceive how any form of humanity could ever be so base. [Pg 114] Next to the loss of the girl he loved, this was the greatest grief of his life. To see the name of his “dear, departed saint” dragged into newspaper notoriety was absolute torture. Denial was useless, and pleading had no effect. After he had retired to his home at Wheatland, and when he was past seventy—when Anne Coleman’s beautiful body had gone back to the dust, there was a long article in a newspaper about the affair, accompanied by the usual misrepresentations. To a friend, he said, with deep emotion: “In my safety-deposit box in New York there is a sealed package, containing papers and relics which will explain everything. Sometime, when I am dead, the world will know—and absolve.” But after his death, when his executors found the package, there was a direction [Pg 115]on the outside: “To be burned unopened at my death.”
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