James Buchanan delivered his Fourth Annual Message to Congress on December 3, 1860, in the wake of Abraham Lincoln’s election to the U.S. presidency. Strife between the North and South had risen to a fever pitch by 1860. Although Buchanan understood it was the executive’s responsibility to enforce the laws—that they “be faithfully executed”— he stepped back from this duty, claiming that existing divisive conditions rendered the government helpless to intervene. While he denied the legal right of states to secede, he held that the federal government could not stop them or forcibly hold them in the Union. Only by ceasing abolitionist agitation over slavery and recognizing that it was constitutionally protected, he stated, could a crisis be averted.