I think that I may safely rely upon my knowledge of what will be done, and you may rely upon my resignation as soon as that knowledge satisfies me of any move in a direction positively injurious to us, or altering the present condition of things to our disadvantage. When you pass through on Wednesday, however, I will speak to you more fully.

Yours,

W.H.T.

[Sidenote] Ibid.

THOS. F. DRAYTON TO GOVERNOR GIST. WASHINGTON, 19th Nov., 1860.

Mr. Buchanan, while he can discover no authority under the Constitution to justify secession by a State, on the other hand he can find no power to coerce one to return after the right of secession has been exercised. He will not allow entry or clearance of a vessel except through the Custom-house, to be established as soon as secession is declared, upon the deck of a man-of-war off the harbor of Charleston. He will enforce the collection of duties, not by navy, but by a revenue cutter, as our collector now would do if his authority was resisted. I will write to you more fully when I return from New York, where I go to-morrow at daylight, at the suggestion of the Secretary of War, who deems it important that I should go there to make arrangements for shipping the arms (should you still want them) from that point instead of this city ... Do send a copy of the list of arms at the arsenals to H.R. Lawton, Milledgeville, Ga. I am getting some smooth-bored muskets for Georgia, like the specimen I sent you.

[Sidenote] MS. Confederate Archives.

THOS. F. DRAYTON TO GOVERNOR GIST. WASHINGTON, 23d Nov., 1860.

I arrived here at 6 A.M. from New York, where I had gone at the suggestion of Mr. Floyd to engage Mr. G.B. Lamar, President of the Bank of the Republic, to make an offer to the Secretary for such a number of muskets as we might require. The Secretary at War was reluctant to dispose of them to me, preferring the intermediate agency. Mr. Lamar has consented to act accordingly, and to-day the Secretary has written to the commanding officer [at] Watervliet Arsenal to deliver five or ten thousand muskets (altered from flint to percussion) to Mr. Lamar's order. Mr. Lamar will pay the United States paymaster for them, and rely upon the State to repay him. I have been most fortunate in having been enabled to meet the payments for the arms through Mr. L., for I feel satisfied that without his intervention we could not have effected the purchase at this time.... I expect to return at daylight to-morrow to New York, for I am very anxious about getting possession of the arms at Watervliet, and forward them to Charleston. The Cabinet may break up at any moment, on differences of opinion with the President as to the rights of secession, and a new Secretary of War might stop the muskets going South, if not already on their way when he comes into office.

I will write to you again by the next mail. The impression here and elsewhere among many Southern men is, that our Senators have been precipitate in resigning; they think that their resignations should have been tendered from their seats after they had announced to the Senate that the State had seceded. Occupying their seats up to this period would have kept them in communication with Senators from the South and assisted very powerfully in shaping to our advantage coming events.

If any further quotation be necessary to show the audacity with which at least three Secretaries and one Assistant Secretary of Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet engaged in flagrant conspiracy in the early stages of rebellion, it may be found in an interview of Senator Clingman with the Secretary of the Interior, which the former has recorded in his "Speeches and Writings" as an interesting reminiscence. It may be doubted whether Secretary Thompson correctly reported the President as wishing him success in his North Carolina mission, but the Secretary is, of course, a competent witness to his own declarations and acts.

[Sidenote] T.L. Clingman, "Speeches and Writings," pp. 526, 527.

About the middle of December [1860] I had occasion to see the Secretary of the Interior on some official business. On my entering the room, Mr. Thompson said to me, "Clingman, I am glad you have called, for I intended presently to go up to the Senate to see you. I have been appointed a commissioner by the State of Mississippi to go down to North Carolina to get your State to secede, and I wished to talk with you about your Legislature before I start down in the morning to Raleigh, and to learn what you think of my chance of success." I said to him, "I did not know that you had resigned." He answered; "Oh, no, I have not resigned." "Then," I replied, "I suppose you resign in the morning." "No," he answered, "I do not intend to resign, for Mr. Buchanan wished us all to hold on, and go out with him on the 4th of March." "But," said I, "does Mr. Buchanan know for what purpose you are going to North Carolina?" "Certainly," he said, "he knows my object." Being surprised by this statement, I told Mr. Thompson that Mr. Buchanan was probably so much perplexed by his situation that he had not fully considered the matter, and that as he was already involved in difficulty, we ought not to add to his burdens; and then suggested to Mr. Thompson that he had better see Mr. Buchanan again, and by way of inducing him to think the matter over, mention what I had been saying to him. Mr. Thompson said, "Well, I can do so, but I think he fully understands it." In the evening I met Mr. Thompson at a small social party, and as soon as I approached him, he said, "I knew I could not be mistaken. I told Mr. Buchanan all you said, and he told me that he wished me to go, and hoped I might succeed." I could not help exclaiming, "Was there ever before any potentate who sent out his own Cabinet ministers to excite an insurrection against his Government!" The fact that Mr. Thompson did go on the errand, and had a public reception before the Legislature, and returned to his position in the Cabinet is known, but this incident serves to recall it.

To this sketch of the Cabinet cabal it is necessary to add the testimony of his participation, by one who, from first to last, was a principal and controlling actor. Jefferson Davis records that:

[Sidenote] Jefferson Davis, "Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government," Vol. I., pp. 57, 58, 59.

In November, 1860, after the result of the Presidential election was known, the Governor of Mississippi, having issued his proclamation convoking a special session of the Legislature to consider the propriety of calling a convention, invited the Senators and Representatives of the State in Congress to meet him for consultation as to the character of the message he should send to the Legislature when assembled.... While engaged in the consultation with the Governor just referred to, a telegraphic message was handed to me from two members of Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet, urging me to proceed "immediately" to Washington. This dispatch was laid before the Governor and the members of Congress from the State who were in conference with him, and it was decided that I should comply with, the summons ... On arrival at Washington, I found, as had been anticipated, that my presence there was desired on account of the influence which it was supposed I might exercise with the President (Mr. Buchanan) in relation to his forthcoming message to Congress. On paying my respects to the President, he told me that he had finished the rough draft of his message, but that it was still open to revision and amendment, and that he would like to read it to me. He did so and very kindly accepted all the modifications which I suggested. The message was, however, afterwards somewhat changed.

In the documents we have presented, though they manifestly form but the merest fragment of the secret correspondence which passed between the chief conspirators, and of the written evidence recorded by them in various forms, then and afterwards, we have a substantial unmasking of the combined occult influences which presided over the initiatory steps of the great American Rebellion—its central council—the master wheel of its machinery—and the connecting relation which caused all its subordinate parts to move in harmonious accord.

With the same mind to dictate a secession message to a Legislature and a non-coercion message to Congress—to assemble insurrectionary troops to seize Federal forts and withhold Government troops from their protection—to incite governors to rebellion and overawe a weak President to a virtual abdication of his rightful authority, history need not wonder at the surprising unity and early success of the conspiracy against the Union.

————— [1] Printed on pages 791 to 794 in "The Life and Times of Robert E. Lee," etc. By a distinguished Southern journalist. (E.A. Pollard, author of "The Lost Cause.")



CHAPTER XIX

FROM THE BALLOT TO THE BULLET

The secret circular of Governor Gist, of South Carolina, heretofore quoted, inaugurated the great American Rebellion a full month before a single ballot had been cast for Abraham Lincoln. This was but repeating in a bolder form the action taken by Governor Wise, of Virginia, during the Fremont campaign four years before. But, instead, as in that case, of confining himself to a proposed consultation among slave-State executives, Governor Gist proceeded almost immediately to a public and official revolutionary act.

On the 12th of October, 1860, he issued his proclamation convening the Legislature of South Carolina in extra session, "to appoint electors of President and Vice-President ... and also that they may, if advisable, take action for the safety and protection of the State." There was no external peril menacing either the commonwealth or its humblest citizen; but the significance of the phrase was soon apparent.

[Sidenote] South Carolina "House Journal," Called Session, 1860, pp. 10, 11.

A caucus of prominent South Carolina leaders is said to have been held on October 25, at the residence of Senator Hammond. Their deliberations remained secret, but the determination arrived at appears clearly enough in the official action of Governor Gist, who was present, and who doubtless carried out the plans of the assemblage. When the Legislature met on November 5 (the day before the Presidential election) the Governor sent them his opening message, advocating both secession and insurrection, in direct and undisguised language. He recommended that in the event of Lincoln's election, a convention should be immediately called; that the State should secede from the Federal Union; and "if in the exercise of arbitrary power and forgetful of the lessons of history, the Government of the United States should attempt coercion, it will be our solemn duty to meet force by force." To this end he recommended a reorganization of the militia and the raising and drilling an army of ten thousand volunteers. He placed the prospects of such a revolution in a most hopeful and encouraging light. "The indications from many of the Southern States," said he, "justify the conclusion that the secession of South Carolina will be immediately followed, if not adopted simultaneously, by them, and ultimately by the entire South. The long-desired cooeperation of the other States having similar institutions, for which the State has been waiting, seems to be near at hand; and, if we are true to ourselves, will soon be realized."

Governor Gist's justification of this movement as attempted was (in his own language) "the strong probability of the election to the Presidency of a sectional candidate by a party committed to the support of measures, which if carried out will inevitably destroy our equality in the Union, and ultimately reduce the Southern States to mere provinces of a consolidated despotism to be governed by a fixed majority in Congress hostile to our institutions."

This campaign declamation, used throughout the whole South with great skill and success, to "fire the Southern heart," was wholly defective as a serious argument.

As to the alleged destruction of equality, the North proposed to deny to the slave-States no single right claimed by the free-States. The talk about "provinces of a consolidated despotism to be governed by a fixed majority" was, in itself an absurd contradiction in terms, which repudiated the fundamental idea of republican government. The acknowledgment that any danger from anti-slavery "measures" was only in the future, negatived its validity as a present grievance. Hostility to "our institutions" was expressly disavowed by full constitutional recognition of slavery under State authority. The charge of "sectionalism" came with a bad grace from a State whose newspapers boasted that none but the Breckinridge ticket was tolerated within her borders, and whose elsewhere obsolete "institution" of choosing Presidential electors by the Legislature instead of by the people, combined with such a dwarfed and crippled public sentiment, made it practically impossible for a single vote to be cast for either Lincoln or Douglas or Bell—a condition mathematically four times as "sectional" as that of any State of the North.

Finally, the avowed determination to secede because a Presidential election was about to be legally gained by one of the three opposing parties, after she had freely and fully joined in the contest, was an indulgence of caprice utterly incompatible with any form of government whatever.

There is no need here to enter upon a discussion of the many causes which, had given to the public opinion of South Carolina so radical and determined a tone in favor of disunion. Maintaining persistence, and gradually gathering strength almost continuously since the nullification furor of 1832, it had become something more than a sentiment among its devotees: it had grown into a species of cult or party religion, for the existence of which no better reason can be assigned than that it sprang from a blind hero-worship locally accorded to John C. Calhoun, one of the prominent figures of American political history. As representative in Congress, Secretary of War under President Monroe, Vice-President of the United States under President John Quincy Adams, for many years United States Senator from South Carolina, and the radical champion of States Rights, Nullification, and Slavery, his brilliant fame was the pride, but his false theories became the ruin, of his State and section.

[Sidenote] South Carolina "House Journal," Called Session, 1860, pp. 16, 17.

Governor Gist and his secession coadjutors had evidently still a lingering hope that the election might by some unforeseen contingency result in the choice of Breckinridge. On no other hypothesis can we account for the fact that on the 6th of November, when Northern ballots were falling in such an ample shower for Lincoln, the South Carolina Legislature, with due decorum and statute regularity, appointed Presidential electors for the State, and formally instructed them to vote for Breckinridge and Lane. The dawn of November 7 dispelled these hopes. The "strong probability" had become a stubborn fact.

When the certain news of Lincoln's election finally came, it was hailed with joy and acclamation by both the leaders and the people of South Carolina. They had at length their much coveted pretext for disunion; and they now put into the enterprise a degree of earnestness, frankness, courage, and persistency worthy of a better cause. Public opinion, so long prepared, responded with enthusiasm to the plans and calls of the leaders. Manifestations of disloyalty became universal. Political clubs were transformed into military companies. Drill-rooms and armories were alive with nightly meetings. Sermons, agricultural addresses, and speeches at railroad banquets were only so many secession harangues. The State became filled with volunteer organizations of "minute men."

The Legislature, remaining in extra session, and cheered and urged on by repeated popular demonstrations and the inflamed speeches of the highest State officials, proceeded without delay to carry out the Governor's programme. In fact, the members needed no great incitement. They had been freshly chosen within the preceding month; many of them on the well-understood "resistance" issue. Their election took place on the 8th and 9th days of October, 1860. Since there was but one party in South Carolina, there could be no party drill; but a tyrannical and intolerant public sentiment usurped its place and functions. On the sixteen different tickets paraded in one of the Charleston newspapers, the names of the most pronounced disunionists were the most frequent and conspicuous. "Southern rights at all hazards," was the substance of many mottoes, and the palmetto and the rattlesnake were favorite emblems. There was neither mistaking nor avoiding the strong undercurrent of treason and rebellion here manifested, and the Governor's proclamation had doubtless been largely based upon it.

[Sidenote] South Carolina, "House Journal," Called Session, 1860, pp. 13, 14.

The first day's session of the Legislature (November 5) developed one of the important preparatory steps of the long-expected revolution. The Legislature of 1859 had appropriated a military contingent fund of one hundred thousand dollars, "to be drawn and accounted for as directed by the Legislature." The appropriation had been allowed to remain untouched. It was now proposed to place this sum at the control of the Governor to be expended in obtaining improved small arms, in purchasing a field battery of rifled cannon, in providing accouterments, and in furnishing an additional supply of tents; and a resolution to that effect was passed two days later, The chief measure of the session, however, was a bill to provide for calling the proposed State Convention, which it was well understood would adopt an ordinance of secession. There was scarcely a ripple of opposition to this measure. One or two members still pleaded for delay, to secure the cooeperation of Georgia, but dared not record a vote against the prevailing mania. The chairman of the proper committee on November 10 reported an act calling a convention "for the purpose of taking into consideration the dangers incident to the position of the State in the Federal Union," which unanimously became a law November 13, and the extra session adjourned to meet again in regular annual session on the 26th.

Meanwhile public excitement had been kept at fever heat by all manner of popular demonstrations. The two United States Senators and the principal Federal officials resigned their offices with a public flourish of their insubordinate zeal. An enthusiastic ratification meeting was given to the returning members of the Legislature. To give still further emphasis to the general movement a grand mass meeting was held at Charleston on the 17th of November. The streets were filled with the excited multitude. Gaily dressed ladies crowded balconies and windows, and zealous mothers decorated their children with revolutionary badges. There was a brisk trade in fire-arms and gunpowder. The leading merchants and prominent men of the city came forth and seated themselves on platforms to witness and countenance a formal ceremony of insurrection. A white flag, bearing a palmetto tree and the legend Animis opibusque parati (one of the mottoes on the State seal), was, after solemn prayer, displayed from a pole of Carolina pine. Music, salutes, and huzzahs filled the air. Speeches were addressed to "citizens of the Southern Republic." Orations and processions completed the day, and illuminations and bonfires occupied the night. The preparations were without stint. The proceedings and ceremonies were conducted with spirit and abandon. The rejoicings were deep and earnest. And yet there was a skeleton at the feast; the Federal flag, invisible among the city banners, and absent from the gay bunting and decorations of the harbor shipping, still floated far down the bay over a faithful commander and loyal garrison in Fort Moultrie.



CHAPTER XX

MAJOR ANDERSON

President Buchanan and his Administration could not, if they would, shut their eyes to the treasonable utterances and preparations at Charleston and elsewhere in the South; but so far neither the speeches nor bonfires nor palmetto flags, nor even the secession message of Governor Gist or the Convention bill of the South Carolina Legislature, constituted a statutory offense. For twelve years the threat of disunion had been in the mouths of the Southern slavery extremists and their Northern allies the most potent and formidable weapon of national politics. It was declaimed on the stump, elaborated in Congressional speeches, set out in national platforms, and paraded as a solemn warning in executive messages.

Mr. Buchanan had profited by the disunion cry both as politician and functionary; and now when disunion came in a practical and undisguised shape he was to a degree powerless to oppose it, because he was disarmed by his own words and his own acts. The disunionists were his partisans, his friends, and confidential counselors; they constituted a remnant of the once proud and successful party which, by his compliance and cooeperation in their interest, he had disrupted and defeated. Their programme hitherto had been the policy upon which he had staked the success or failure of his Administration, so that in addition to every other tie he was bound to them by the common sorrow of political disaster.



Being in such intimate relations and intercourse with the leaders of the Breckinridge wing of the Democratic party during the progress of the Presidential canvass, and that party being made up so exclusively of the extreme Southern Democrats, the President must have had constant information of the progress and development of the disunion sentiment and purpose in the South. He was not restricted as the other parties and the general public were to imperfect reports and doubtful rumors current in the newspapers.

But in addition there now came to him an official warning which it was a grave error to disregard. On October 29, one week before the election, the veteran Lieutenant-General Winfield Scott, General-in-Chief of the Army, communicated to him in writing his serious apprehensions of coming danger, and suggested such precautions as were then in the power of the Administration. Beginning life as a farmer's boy, collegian, and law student, General Scott from choice became a soldier, devoting himself to the higher aims of the profession of arms, and in a brilliant career of half a century had achieved world-wide renown as a great military captain. In the United States, however, the military is subordinated to the civic ambition, and Scott all his life retained a strong leaning to diplomacy and statesmanship, and on several important occasions gave his country valuable service in essentially civic functions. He had been the unsuccessful Presidential candidate of the Whig party in 1852, a circumstance which no doubt greatly increased his personal attention to current politics, then and afterwards. As the first military officer of the nation, he was also the watchful guardian of the public peace.

[Sidenote] Lieut.-General Winfield Scott, "Autobiography," Vol. I., p. 234.

The impending rebellion was not to him, as it was to the nation at large, a new event in politics. Many men were indeed aware, through tradition and history, that it was but the Calhoun nullification treason revived and pushed to a bolder extreme. To General Scott it was almost literally the repetition of an old experience. A generation before, he was himself a prominent actor in opposing the nullification plot. About the 4th of November, 1832, upon special summons, he was taken into a confidential interview by President Jackson, who, after asking Scott's military views upon the threatened rebellion of the nullifiers in Charleston harbor, by oral orders charged him with the duty of enforcing the laws and maintaining the supremacy of the Union; the President placing at his orders the troops and vessels necessary for this purpose. Scott accepted the trust and went to Charleston, and while humoring the nullification Quixotism existing there, he executed the purpose of his mission, by strengthening the defenses and reenforcing; the Federal forts.[1] His task was accomplished with the utmost delicacy, but with firmness. The rebellion was indeed abandoned upon pretense of compromise; but had a conflict occurred at that time the flag of the Union would probably not have been the first to be lowered in defeat.

It was, therefore, most fitting that in these new complications Lieutenant-General Scott should officially admonish President Buchanan. He addressed to him a paper entitled "Views suggested by the imminent danger (October 29, 1860) of a disruption of the Union by the secession of one or more of the Southern States"; and also certain supplementary memoranda the day after, to the Secretary of War, the two forming in reality but a single document. General Scott was at this time residing in New York City, and the missives were probably twenty-four hours in reaching Washington. This letter of the commander of the American armies written at such a crisis is full of serious faults, and is a curious illustration of the temper of the times, showing as it does that even in the mind of the first soldier of the republic the foundations of political faith were crumbling away. The superficial and speculative theories of Scott the politician stand out in unfavorable contrast to the practical advice of Scott the soldier.

Once break the Union by political madness, reasons Scott the politician, and any attempt to restore it by military force would establish despotism and create anarchy. A lesser evil than this would be to form four new confederacies out of the fragments of the old.[2] And on this theme he theorizes respecting affinities and boundaries and the folly of secession.

[Sidenote] "Mr. Buchanan's Administration," Appendix, p. 289.

The advice of Scott the soldier was wiser and more opportune. The prospect of Lincoln's election, he says, causes threats of secession. There is danger that certain forts of national value and importance, six totally destitute of troops, and three having only feeble and insufficient garrisons, may be seized by insurgents. "In my opinion all these works should be immediately so garrisoned as to make any attempt to take any one of them, by surprise or coup de main, ridiculous." There were five companies of regulars within reach, available for this service. This plan was provisional only; it eschewed the idea of invading a seceded State; and he suggested the collection of customs duties, outside of the cities.

[Sidenote] "Mr. Buchanan's Administration," p. 104.

[Sidenote] Buchanan, in the "National Intelligencer," Oct. 1, 1862.

Eight to ten States on the verge of insurrection—nine principal sea-coast forts within their borders, absolutely at the mercy of the first handful of street rabble that might collect, and only about four hundred men, scattered in five different and distant cities, available to reenforce them! It was a startling exhibit of national danger from one professionally competent to judge and officially entitled to advise. His timely and patriotic counsel President Buchanan treated with indifference and neglect. "From the impracticable nature of the 'Views,' and their strange and inconsistent character, the President dismissed them from his mind without further consideration." Such is Mr. Buchanan's own confession. He indulges in the excuse that to have then attempted to put these five companies in all or part of these nine forts "would have been a confession of weakness instead of an exhibition of imposing and overpowering strength." "None of the Cotton States had made the first movement towards secession. Even South Carolina was then performing all her relative duties, though most reluctantly, to the Government," etc. "To have attempted such a military operation with so feeble a force, and the Presidential election impending, would have been an invitation to collision and secession. Indeed, if the whole American army, consisting then of only sixteen thousand men, had been 'within reach' they would have been scarcely sufficient for this purpose."

The error of this reasoning was well shown by General Scott in a newspaper controversy which subsequently ensued.[3] He pointed out that of the nine forts enumerated by him, six, namely, Forts Moultrie and Sumter in Charleston harbor, Forts Pickens and McRae in Pensacola harbor, and Forts Jackson and St. Philip guarding the Mississippi below New Orleans, were "twin forts" on opposite sides of a channel, whose strength was more than doubled by their very position and their ability to employ cross and flanking fire in mutual support and defense. These works, together with the three others mentioned by General Scott, namely, Fort Morgan in Mobile harbor, Fort Pulaski below Savannah, and Fortress Monroe at Hampton Roads, were all, because of their situation at vital points, not merely works of local defense, but of the highest strategical value. The reenforcements advised would surely have enabled the Government to hold them until further defensive measures could have been arranged; and the effect of such possession on the incipient insurrection may be well imagined when we remember the formidable armaments afterwards employed in the reduction of such of them as were permitted, without an effort on the part of President Buchanan to prevent it, to be occupied by the insurgents.

But the warning to the Administration that the Southern forts were in danger came not alone from General Scott. Two of the works mentioned by him as of prime importance were Forts Moultrie and Sumter in Charleston harbor. There was still a third fort there, Castle Pinckney, in a better condition of repair and preparation than either of the former, and much nearer the city. Had it been properly occupied and manned, its guns alone would have been sufficient to control Charleston. But there was only an ordnance sergeant in Castle Pinckney, only an ordnance sergeant in Fort Sumter, and a partial garrison in Fort Moultrie. Both Sumter and Moultrie were greatly and Castle Pinckney slightly out of repair. During the summer of 1860 Congress made an appropriation for these works; and the engineer captain who had been in charge for two years had indeed been ordered to begin and prosecute repairs in the two forts.

[Sidenote] Report, F.J. Porter. W.R.[4] Vol. I., pp. 70-72.

[Sidenote] Craig to Floyd, Oct. 31, 1860, with Floyd's indorsement. W.R. Vol. I., pp. 67-8.

Captain J.G. Foster, the engineer to whom this duty was confided, was of New England birth and a loyal and devoted soldier. He began work on the 12th of September; and not foreseeing the consequences involved, employed in the different works between two and three hundred men, partly hired in Charleston, partly in Baltimore. There were in the several forts not only the cannon to arm them, but also considerable quantities of ammunition and other government property; and aware of the hum of secession preparation which began to fill the air in Charleston, Captain Foster in October asked the Ordnance Bureau at Washington for forty muskets, with which to arm twenty workmen in Fort Sumter and twenty in Castle Pinckney. "If," wrote the Chief of Ordnance to the Secretary of War, "the measure should on being communicated meet the concurrence of the commanding officer of the troops in the harbor, I recommend that I may be authorized to issue forty muskets to the engineer officer." Upon this recommendation, Secretary of War Floyd wrote the word "approved." Under the usual routine of peaceful times the questions went by mail to Colonel Gardner, then commander of the harbor, "Is it expedient to issue forty muskets to Captain Foster? Is it proper to place arms in the hands of hired workmen? Is it expedient to do so?"

[Sidenote] Gardner to Craig, November 5, 1860. W.R. Vol. I., pp. 68-9.

To this Colonel Gardner replied, under date of November 5, that, repeating what he had already written, his fears were not of any attack on the works, authorized by the city or State, but there was danger of such an attempt from a sudden tumultuary force; and that while in such an event forty muskets would be desirable, he felt "constrained to say that the only proper precaution—that which has no objection—is to fill these two companies with drilled recruits (say fifty men) at once, and send two companies from Old Point Comfort to occupy, respectively, Fort Sumter and Castle Pinckney."

[Sidenote] Dawson, "Historical Magazine," January, 1872, p. 37.

[Sidenote] F.J. Porter to Cooper, November 11, 1860. W.R. Vol. I., pp. 70-72.

His answer and recommendation were both business-like and soldierly, and contained no indications that justify any suspicion of his loyalty or judgment. Meanwhile, on the heels of this official call for reenforcements, came a still more urgent one. It is alleged on the one hand that complaints of the inefficiency of Colonel Gardner had reached Washington, and that, in consequence thereof, either the Secretary of War or the President sent for specific information in regard to it. Major Fitz John Porter, then Assistant Adjutant-General, on duty in the War Department, went in person to Charleston, and made the examination. There are, on the other hand, several vague allegations by the insurgents, to the substantial effect that this call for reenforcements was Colonel Gardner's real offense; leaving the implication that Major Fitz John Porter's inspection was purposely instituted to find reasons for removing the Colonel and thus frustrating the obligation to send him additional troops. The order for Major Porter's visit was made on November 6; he returned to Washington and made an oral statement, and on the 11th of November wrote out his report for the Department in due form.

[Sidenote] Doubleday, "Forts Sumter and Moultrie," p. 19.

According to this report, while Colonel Gardner had been remiss in a few minor details, he had in reality been vigilant, loyal, and efficient in main and important matters. He had foreseen the coming danger, had advised the Government, and called for reenforcements; had recommended not only strengthening the garrison of Moultrie, but the effective occupation of both Sumter and Castle Pinckney; and had made an effort in good faith to remove the public arms and goods from their exposed situation in the arsenal in the city of Charleston, to the security of the fort. Though Southern in feeling and pro-slavery in sentiment, he was true to his oath and his flag; and had he been properly encouraged and supported by his Government, would evidently have merited no reproach for inefficiency or indifference.

[Sidenote] 1860.

But the fatal entanglement of Buchanan's Administration with the slavery extremists had the double effect of weakening loyalty in army officers and building up rebellion among the Southern people. Instead of heeding the advice of Colonel Gardner to reenforce the forts, it removed him from command, and within two months the President submitted silently to the taunt of the South Carolina rebel commissioners that it was in punishment for his loyal effort to save the Government property. Whatever the motive may have been, the Government was now fully warned, as early as November 11, a week before the first secession jubilee in Charleston, and more than a month before the passage of the secession ordinance, of the imminence of the insurrection and danger to the forts. General Scott had warned it, Colonel Gardner had warned it, and now again Major Porter, its special and confidential agent, had not only repeated that warning, but his report had been made the basis of Government discussion in the change of commanders.

The action of the Government was unusually prompt. On November 11, as we have seen, Major Porter made his written report, and on the 13th he delivered to Major Robert Anderson in New York the order to take command of the forts and forces in Charleston harbor. Major Anderson, suitably qualified by meritorious service, age, and rank, was deemed especially acceptable for the position because he was a Kentuckian by birth, and related by marriage to a prominent family of Georgia. Such sympathies as might influence him were supposed to be with the South, and his appointment would not, therefore, grate harshly on the susceptibilities of the Charlestonians.

The statement, many times repeated, that he owned a plantation in the South is incorrect. He never owned a plantation in Georgia or anywhere else. On the death of his father he came into possession of a small number of slaves. These he liberated as soon as the proper papers could be executed and sent to him at his distant post; and he always afterwards helped them when they were in need and applied to him.[5]

[Sidenote] F.J. Porter to Dawson. "Historical Magazine," January, 1872, pp. 37, 38.

The army headquarters being then in New York, Major Anderson on the same day called on General Scott, and in conversation with the veteran General-in-Chief learned that army affairs were being carried on at Washington by Secretary Floyd, without consulting him. Under these circumstances Scott did not deem himself authorized to interfere even by suggestion. Nevertheless, the whole Charleston question seems to have been fully discussed, and the relative strength of the forts, and the possible necessity of occupying Sumter commented upon in such manner as no doubt produced its effect in the subsequent action of Anderson. Major Anderson next went to Washington, and received the personal instructions of Secretary Floyd, and returning thereafter to New York, General Scott in that city gave him on November 15th formal written orders to proceed to Fort Moultrie and take command of the post.

————— [1] His policy, frankly written in a friendly letter to a prominent nullifier, could scarcely provoke the most captious criticism:

"You have probably heard of the arrival of two or three companies at Charleston in the last six weeks, and you may hear that as many more have followed. There is nothing inconsistent with the President's message in these movements. The intention simply is that the forts in the harbor shall not be wrested from the United States.... The President, I presume, will stand on the defensive, thinking it better to discourage than to invite an attack—better to prevent than to repel one."—Lieut.-Gen. Winfield Scott, "Autobiography." Vol. I., p. 242.

[2] "All the lines of demarkation between the new Unions cannot be accurately drawn in advance, but many of them approximately may. Thus, looking to natural boundaries and commercial affinities, some of the following frontiers, after many waverings and conflicts, might perhaps become acknowledged and fixed:

"1. The Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay to the Atlantic. 2. From Maryland along the crest of the Alleghany (perhaps the Blue Ridge) range of mountains, to some point on the coast of Florida. 3. The line from say the head of the Potomac to the west or north-west, which it will be most difficult to settle. 4. The crest of the Rocky Mountains.

"The South-east Confederacy would, in all human probability, in less than five years after the rupture, find itself bounded by the first and second lines indicated above, the Atlantic, and the Gulf of Mexico, with its capital at say Columbia, South Carolina. The country between the second, third, and fourth of those lines would, beyond a doubt, in about the same time, constitute another Confederacy, with its capital at probably Alton or Quincy, Illinois. The boundaries of the Pacific Union are the most definite of all, and the remaining States would constitute the Northeast Confederacy with its capital at Albany."—Scott, "Views," printed in "Mr. Buchanan's Administration," pp. 287-288, Appendix.

[3] "But the ex-President sneers at my weak device for saving the forts. He forgets what the gallant Anderson did with a handful of men in Fort Sumter, and leaves out of the account what he might have done with a like handful in Fort Moultrie, even without further augmentation of men to divide between the garrisons. Twin forts on the opposite sides of a channel not only give a cross fire on the head of attack, but the strength of each is more than doubled by the flanking fire of the other."—Gen. Scott, in the "National Intelligencer" of November 12, 1862.

[4] (As reference to the Government publication, "War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies," will be so frequent in the course of this work, and under its full title would require so much space, the authors have decided to adopt the simple abbreviation "W.R.," as above. Where the number of the series is not mentioned, Series I. will always be implied.)

[5] We are indebted to Mrs. Anderson, not only for the correction of this error, but for permission to examine many private papers relating to Major Anderson's experience in Fort Sumter. It affords us the highest pleasure to add that though all her relatives in Georgia became secessionists, she remained enthusiastically and devotedly loyal to the Union, and that her letters carried constant cheer and encouragement to her husband during the months he was besieged in Charleston harbor.



CHAPTER XXI

THE CHARLESTON FORTS

[Sidenote] Foster to De Russey, November 24, 1860. W.R. Vol. I., p. 76.

Major Anderson reached Fort Moultrie and assumed command on the 21st of November, 1860. Having from his several interviews with the President, Secretary of War, and Lieutenant-General Scott become fully impressed with the importance of his trust, he proceeded as a first duty to acquaint himself thoroughly with his situation and resources. The great Charleston secession celebration on the 17th had been held while he was on his way; the glare of its illumination was extinguished, the smoke of its bonfires had been dissipated by the fresh Atlantic breezes, and its holiday insurgents had returned to the humdrum of their routine employments. It was, therefore, in uninterrupted quiet that on the 23d of November he in company with Captain Foster made a tour of inspection to the different forts, and on the same day wrote out and transmitted to the War Department a somewhat detailed report of what he saw with eyes fresh to the scenes and surroundings, which, as he already felt, were to become the subjects of his most intense solicitude. On the main point, indeed, there was no room for doubt. Agreeing with General Scott, with Colonel Gardner, and with Major Porter, he gave the Government its fourth warning that the harbor must be immediately and strongly reenforced.

[Sidenote] Anderson to Adjutant-General, November 23, 1860. W.R. Vol. I., p. 74.

... The garrison now in it [Moultrie] is so weak as to invite an attack, which is openly and publicly threatened. We are about sixty, and have a line of rampart of 1500 feet in length to defend. If beleaguered, as every man of the command must be either engaged or held on the alert, they will be exhausted and worn down in a few days and nights of such service as they would then have to undergo.

Such, in brief, was the condition of the fort he had been sent to hold. Moultrie was clearly the weak point of the situation. Already informed, to some extent at least, by the superior military genius of General Scott, in his recent interviews with that distinguished commander, Major Anderson now more forcibly, from personal inspection, comprehended its strong points. What was then perfectly obvious to the trained military insight of Scott and Anderson is now in the light of historical events quite as obvious to the civilian. Look at any good map of Charleston harbor, and it will be seen that the city lies on the extreme point of a tongue of land between the Ashley and Cooper rivers, every part being within easy range under the guns of Castle Pinckney, on a small island, three-quarters of a mile distant. Four miles to seaward is the mouth of the harbor, and nearly midway therein stood the more extensive and imposing work of Fort Sumter, its guns not only sweeping all the approaches and ship-channels, but the shores and islands on either hand. It needs but a glance at the map to see that with proper garrisons and armaments Fort Sumter commanded the harbor. and Castle Pinckney commanded the city.

If the Government could hitherto plead ignorance of these advantages against the rising insurrection, that excuse was no longer left after the report of Major Anderson. In this same report he calls attention to them in detail. Though not in a complete state of defense, he gives notice that Fort Sumter "is now ready for the comfortable accommodation of one company, and indeed for the temporary reception of its proper garrison. Captain Foster states that the magazines (four) are done and in excellent condition; that they now contain forty thousand pounds of cannon-powder and a full supply of ammunition for one tier of guns. This work [Sumter] is the key to the entrance of this harbor; its guns command this work [Moultrie], and could soon drive out its occupants. It should be garrisoned at once."

Still more strenuously does he insist upon the value of Castle Pinckney. "Castle Pinckney, a small casemated work, perfectly commanding the city of Charleston, is in excellent condition with the exception of a few repairs, which will require the expenditure of about five hundred dollars.... It is, in my opinion, essentially important that this castle should be immediately occupied by a garrison, say, of two officers and thirty men. The safety of our little garrison would be rendered more certain, and our fort would be more secure from an attack by such a holding of Castle Pinckney, than it would be from quadrupling our force. The Charlestonians would not venture to attack this place [Moultrie] when they knew that their city was at the mercy of the commander of Castle Pinckney.... If my force was not so very small I would not hesitate to send a detachment at once to garrison that work." So full of zeal was Major Anderson that the Government should without delay augment its moral and material strength, that in default of soldiers he desired to improvise a garrison for it by sending there a detachment of thirty laborers in charge of an officer, vainly hoping to supply them with arms and instruct them in drill, and hold the work until reenforcements should come. Having in detail proposed protective measures, he again, in the same letter, forcibly presents the main question of the hour to the Secretary of War, whose weakness and treachery were as yet unsuspected.

[Sidenote] Anderson to Adjutant General, Nov. 23, 1860. W.R. Vol. I., pp. 75-6.

Fort Sumter and Castle Pinckney must be garrisoned immediately if the Government determines to keep command of this harbor. I need not say how anxious I am—indeed determined, so far as honor will permit—to avoid collision with the citizens of South Carolina. Nothing, however, will be better calculated to prevent bloodshed than our being found in such an attitude that it would be madness and folly to attack us.... The clouds are threatening and the storm may break upon us at any moment. I do, then, most earnestly entreat that a reenforcement be immediately sent to this garrison, and that at least two companies be sent at the same time to Fort Sumter and Castle Pinckney—half a company, under a judicious commander, sufficing, I think, for the latter work.... With these three works garrisoned as requested, and with a supply of ordnance stores, for which I shall send requisitions in a few days, I shall feel that, by the blessing of God, there may be a hope that no blood will be shed, and that South Carolina will not attempt to take these forts by force, but will resort to diplomacy to secure them. If we neglect, however, to strengthen ourselves, she will, unless these works are surrendered on their first demand, most assuredly immediately attack us.

[Sidenote] Adjutant-General to Anderson, Nov. 24, 1860. W.R. Vol. I., p. 76.

[Sidenote] Ibid., Nov 28, 1860, W.R. Vol. I., p. 77.

If Major Anderson had added no further word to the clear and straightforward statement and recommendation thus far quoted, his professional judgment and manly sense of duty would stand honorably vindicated before posterity. But his language of loyalty, of wisdom, of humanity, of soldierly devotion, which ought to have elicited a reply as inspiring as a drum-roll or a trumpet-blast, brought him no kindred echo. There was fear in the Executive Mansion, conspiracy in the Cabinet, treason and intrigue in the War Department. Chilling instructions came that he might employ civilians in fatigue and police duty, and that he might send his proposed party of laborers to Castle Pinckney. Meanwhile some of his suggestions would be under consideration; besides, he was cautioned to send his communications to the Adjutant-General or Secretary of War, with the evident purpose to forestall and prevent any patriotic order or suggestion which might otherwise reach him from General Scott.

Nevertheless, Anderson did not weary in his manifest duty. His letters of November 28 and December 1, though perhaps not as full and urgent, are substantial repetitions of his former recommendations. The growing excitement of the Charleston populace and the increasing danger to the forts are restated with emphasis. He says that there appears to be a romantic desire urging the South Carolinians to have possession of Fort Moultrie. Various reports come, that as soon as the State should secede the forts would be demanded, and if not surrendered, they would be taken. All rumors and remarks indicate a fixed purpose to have these works. The Charlestonians are drilling nightly, and making every preparation for the fight which they say must take place.

[Sidenote] Anderson to Adjutant-General, Nov. 28, 1860. W.R. Vol. I., pp. 78-9.

[Sidenote] Ibid., Dec. 1, 1860. W.R. Vol. I. pp. 81-2.

Once more he repeated that the security of Fort Moultrie would be more greatly increased by throwing garrisons into Castle Pinckney and Fort Sumter than by anything that could be done in strengthening its own defenses. He sent a detailed report of his command to force again upon the attention of the Department his fatal deficiency in numbers, and to show the practical impossibility of repelling an assault, or resisting a siege with any reasonable hope of success. His letters reached the same inevitable conclusion: "The question for the Government to decide—and the sooner it is done the better—is, whether, when South Carolina secedes, these forts are to be surrendered or not. If the former, I must be informed of it, and instructed what course I am to pursue. If the latter be the determination, no time is to be lost in either sending troops, as already suggested, or vessels of war to this harbor. Either of these courses may cause some of the doubting States to join South Carolina. I shall go steadily on preparing for the worst, trusting hopefully in the God of battles to guard and guide me in my course."

While Anderson was thus penning the plain issue, as it lay in the clear light of a soldier's conception of right and conviction of duty, another pen was framing the reply agreed upon by the President and his advisers at Washington. Major Anderson might have faith in the God of battles, but what faith could he have in a Government holding one-third of a vast continent peopled by thirty millions of freemen which could not or would not, in face of the most urgent reiterated appeals and the most imminent and palpable necessity, send him two or three companies of recruits, when the possession of three forts, the peace of a city, the allegiance of a State, if not the tremendous alternative of civil war, hung in the balance?

[Sidenote] Adjutant-General to Anderson, Dec. 1, 1860. W.R. Vol. I., pp. 82, 83.

"It is believed,"—so ran the reply, and apparently the final decision of the Government,—"from information thought to be reliable, that an attack will not be made on your command, and the Secretary has only to refer to his conversation with you, and to caution you that should his convictions unhappily prove untrue, your actions must be such as to be free from the charge of initiating a collision. If attacked, you are, of course, expected to defend the trust committed to you to the best of your ability. The increase of the force under your command, however much to be desired, would, the Secretary thinks, judging from the recent excitement produced on account of an anticipated increase, as mentioned in your letter, but add to that excitement and might lead to serious results."

This renunciation by the War Department of the proper show of authority and power, demanded by plain necessity and repeatedly urged by its trusted agents, must have touched the pride of Anderson and his brother officers. But a still deeper humiliation was in store for them, The same letter brought him the following notice: "The Secretary of War has directed Brevet Colonel Huger to repair to this city as soon as he can safely leave his post, to return there in a short time. He desires you to see Colonel Huger, and confer with him prior to his departure on the matters which have been confided to each of you."

[Sidenote] Abner Doubleday, "Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie," p. 42.

Colonel Huger was an ordnance officer of the army, then stationed for duty in Charleston, of distinguished connections in that city, and having on that account as well as personally great local influence.

What the precise nature of the instructions were, which the Department sent him, does not appear from any accessible correspondence. The result of the action which the two officers took thereunder is, however, less doubtful.

It appears to have been, in effect, a mission by two army officers of honorable rank, in obedience to direct commands from the Secretary of War, to humbly beg the Charlestonians not to assault the forts. Major Anderson on his part dismisses the distasteful mission with a significantly curt report: "I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt on the 4th of your communication of the 1st instant. In compliance therewith I went yesterday to the city of Charleston to confer with Colonel Huger, and I called with him upon the Mayor of the city, and upon several other prominent citizens. All seemed determined, as far as their influence or power extends, to prevent an attack by a mob on our fort; but all are equally decided in the opinion that the forts must be theirs after secession."

What a bitter confession for a brave and sensitive soldier, who knew that with half a company of artillerymen in Castle Pinckney, as he had vainly demanded, the Charleston mob, with the conspiring Governor and insurgent secession convention, would have been compelled to accept from him, as the representative of a forbearing Government, the safety of their roof-trees and the security of their hearthstones.

[Sidenote] Anderson to Adjutant-General, Dec. 6, 1860. W.R. Vol. I., pp. 87, 88.

But, his duty was to obey, and so he resigned himself without a murmur to the hard conditions which had fallen to his lot. "I shall, nevertheless," adds Anderson, "knowing how excitable this community is, continue to keep on the qui vive and, as far as is in my power, steadily prepare my command to the uttermost to resist any attack that may be made.... Colonel Huger designs, I think, leaving Charleston for Washington to-morrow night. He is more hopeful of a settlement of impending difficulties without bloodshed than I am."



CHAPTER XXII

THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

Less than a month intervened between the November election at which Lincoln had been chosen and the annual session of Congress, which would meet on the first Monday of December, and it was necessary at once to begin the preparation of the annual message. A golden opportunity presented itself to President Buchanan. The suffrages of his fellow-citizens had covered his political theories, his party measures, and his official administration with condemnation, in an avalanche of ballots.[1] But the Charleston conspirators had within a very few days created for him a new issue overshadowing all the questions on which he had suffered political wreck. Since the 6th of November the campaign of the Border Ruffians for the conquest of Kansas, and the wider Congressional struggle for the possession of the Territories, might be treated as things of the past. Even had they still been pending issues, they paled into insignificance before the paramount question of disunion. Face to face with, this danger, the adherents of Lincoln, of Douglas, of Bell, and the fraction of the President's own partisans in the free-States would be compelled to postpone their discords and as one man follow the constitutional ruler in a constitutional defense of the laws, the flag, and the territory of the Union.

Without change of position, without recantation of principle, without abatement even of declared party doctrine, honestly executing only the high mandate of the Constitution, he could turn from the old issues and take up the new. A single stride, and from the flying leader of a discomfited rout he might become the mailed hero of an overpowering host. Tradition, patriotism, duty, the sleepless monition of a solemn official oath, all summoned him to take this step, and the brilliant example set by President Jackson—an incident forever luminous in American history—assured him of the plaudits of posterity.

Unfortunately for himself and for his country, President Buchanan had neither the intellectual independence nor the courage required for such an act of moral heroism. Of sincere patriotism and of blameless personal rectitude, he had reached political eminence by slow promotion through seniority, not by brilliancy of achievement. He was a politician, not a statesman. Of fair ability, and great industry in his earlier life, the irresolution and passiveness of advancing age and physical infirmity were now upon him. Though from the free-State of Pennsylvania, he saw with Southern eyes and heard with Southern ears, and had convinced himself that the South was acting under the impulse of resentment arising from deliberate and persistent injuries from the North.

The fragment of an autograph diary of John B. Floyd, Secretary of War,[2] affords the exact evidence of the temper in which President Buchanan officially confronted the rebellion of the Southern States. The following are extracts from entries, on several days, beginning with November 7, 1860, the day following the Presidential election:

WASHINGTON CITY, November 7, 1860.

... The President wrote me a note this evening, alluding to a rumor which reached the city to the effect that an armed force had attacked and carried the forts in Charleston harbor. He desired me to visit him, which I did, and assured him that the rumor was altogether without foundation, and gave it as my opinion that there was no danger of such an attempt being made. We entered upon a general conversation upon the subject of disunion and discussed the probabilities of it pretty fully. We concurred in the opinion that all indications from the South looked as if disunion was inevitable. He said that whilst his reason told him there was great danger, yet his feelings repelled the conviction of his mind.

Judge Black, the Attorney-General, was present during a part of the conversation, and indicated an opinion, that any attempt at disunion by a State should be put down by all the power of the Government.[3]

November 9 ... A Cabinet meeting was held as usual at I o'clock; all the members were present, and the President said the business of the meeting was the most important ever before the Cabinet since his induction into office. The question, he said, to be considered and discussed, was as to the course the Administration should advise him to pursue in relation to the threatening aspect of affairs in the South, and most particularly in South Carolina. After a considerable amount of desultory conversation, he asked the opinions of each member of the Cabinet as to what should be done or said relative to a suggestion which he threw out. His suggestion was that a proposition should be made for a general convention of the States as provided for under the Constitution, and to propose some plan of compromising the angry disputes between the North and the South. He said if this were done, and the North or non-slaveholding States should refuse it, the South would stand justified before the whole world for refusing longer to remain in a confederacy where her rights were so shamefully violated. He said he was compelled to notice at length the alarming condition of the country, and that he would not shrink from the duty.

General Cass spoke with earnestness and much feeling about the impending crisis—admitted fully all the great wrongs and outrages which had been committed against the South by Northern fanaticism, and deplored it. But he was emphatic in his condemnation of the doctrine of secession by any State from the Union. He doubted the efficacy of the appeal for a convention, but seemed to think it might do well enough to try it. He spoke warmly in favor of using force to coerce a State that attempted to secede.

Judge Black, the Attorney-General, was emphatic in his advocacy of coercion, and advocated earnestly the propriety of sending at once a strong force into the forts in Charleston harbor, enough to deter, if possible, the people from, any attempt at disunion. He seemed to favor the idea of an appeal for a general convention of all the States.

Governor Cobb, the Secretary of the Treasury, declared his very decided approbation of the proposition for two reasons—first, that it afforded the President a great opportunity for a high and statesmanlike treatment of the whole subject of agitation, and the proper remedies to prevent it; secondly, because, in his judgment, the failure to procure that redress which the South would be entitled to and would demand (and that failure he thought certain), would tend to unite the entire South in a decided disunion movement. He thought disunion inevitable, and under present circumstances most desirable.

Mr. Holt, the Postmaster-General, thought the proposition for the convention dangerous, for the reason that if the call should be made and it should fail to procure redress, those States which now are opposed to secession might find themselves inclined, from a feeling of honor, to back the States resolving on disunion. Without this common demand and common failure he thought there would be no such danger of united action, and therefore a stronger prospect of some future plan of reconciliation.

Mr. Thompson, the Secretary of the Interior, thought well of the plan of calling for a general convention—thought his State (Mississippi) about equally divided between the union and disunion men. He deprecated the idea of force, and said any show of it by the Government would instantly make Mississippi a unit in favor of disunion.

Mr. Toucey, Secretary of the Navy, thought well of the appeal for the convention—coincided in an opinion I had expressed, that retaliatory State measures would prove most availing for bringing the Northern fanatics to their senses.

I expressed myself decidedly opposed to any rash movement, and against the idea of secession at this time. I did so because I think that Lincoln's administration will fail, and be regarded as impotent for good or evil within four months after his inauguration. We are to meet to-morrow at 1 o'clock.

[Sidenote] Pollard, "Life and Times of Robert E. Lee," etc., pp. 790-94.

November 10 ... We had a Cabinet meeting to-day, at which the President read a very elaborate document, prepared either as a part of his message or as a proclamation. It was well written in the main, and met with extravagant commendation from General Cass, Governor Toucey, Judge Black, and Mr. Holt. Cobb, Thompson, and myself found much to differ from in it,—Cobb because it inculcated submission to Lincoln's election and intimated the use of force to coerce a submission to his rule, and because it reprehended the policy of the Kansas-Nebraska bill; Thompson because of the doctrine of acquiescence and the hostility to the secession doctrine. I objected to it because I think it misses entirely the temper of the Southern people and attacks the true State-Rights doctrine on the subject of secession. I do not see what good can come of the paper, as prepared, and I do see how much mischief may flow from it.

It is an open question whether we may accept these extracts at their full literal import. Either the words "coerce," "submission," "use of force," and so on, are written down by the diarist in a sense different from that in which they were spoken, or the President and several of his counselors underwent an amazing change of sentiment. But in a general way they show us that on the fourth day after Lincoln's election the Buchanan Cabinet was already divided into hostile camps. Cass of Michigan, Secretary of State, Toucey of Connecticut, Secretary of the Navy, Black of Pennsylvania, Attorney-General, and Holt of Kentucky, Postmaster-General, were emphatic Unionists; while Cobb of Georgia, Secretary of the Treasury, Thompson of Mississippi, Secretary of the Interior, and Floyd of Virginia, Secretary of War, were secessionists—the latter yet professing devotion to the Union, but with such ifs and buts as left sufficiently clear evidence of his inevitable drift to disloyalty.

All impulses of prudence and patriotism ought to have moved the President to reconstruct his Cabinet. But instead of some energetic executive act of this character, he seems to have applied himself to the composition of a political essay to teach the North its duty; as if his single pen had power to change the will of the people of the United States upon a point which they had decided by their votes only four days previously after six years of discussion. In the draft of this document, which he read to his Cabinet on November 10, we have the important record that "it inculcated submission to Lincoln's election, and intimated the use of force to coerce a submission to his rule"—positions which Floyd records were "met with extravagant commendations from General Cass, Governor Toucey, Judge Black, and Mr. Holt." This was a true touchstone; it instantly brought out not only the open secessionism of Cobb and Thompson, but the disguised disloyalty of Floyd.

It is a strange historical phenomenon that, with the President and a majority of the Cabinet in this frame of mind, the South should have been permitted to organize rebellion. The solution seems to lie in the temporizing feebleness of Buchanan and in the superior finesse and daring conspiracy of Cobb, Thompson, and Floyd.

Many indications make it evident that a long factional struggle took place over the preparation of the President's message. The telegraph announced several protracted Cabinet sessions; and as early as the 21st of November the points under discussion and the attitude of the President and his several official advisers were accurately foreshadowed in the newspapers. Nor were these momentous deliberations confined to the Cabinet proper. All the varieties of suggestion and contradictory counsels which were solicited or tendered we may never learn, and yet we know enough to infer the highest extremes and antagonisms of doctrine and policy. Jefferson Davis, the future chief of the rebellion, came on the one hand at the urgent call of his fellow-conspirators; Edwin M. Stanton, afterwards Buchanan's Attorney-General and Lincoln's Secretary of War,[4] was on the other hand called in by Mr. Buchanan himself, to help him through, the intricate maze of his perplexed opinions and inclinations. How many others may have come voluntarily or by summons it is impossible to guess. Many brains and hands, however, must have joined in the work, since the document is such a heterogeneous medley of conflicting theories, irreconcilable doctrines, impracticable and irrelevant suggestions. For at length the hesitating and bewildered President, unable to decide and impotent to construct, seems to have made his message a patchwork from the contributions of his advisers, regular and irregular, with the inevitable effect, not to combine and strengthen, but to weaken and confuse the warring thoughts and alien systems.

Aside from the mere recapitulation of department reports, the message of President Buchanan delivered to Congress on the 4th of December occupied itself mainly with two subjects—slavery and disunion. On the question of slavery it repeated the assertions and arguments of the Buchanan faction of the Democratic party during the late Presidential campaign, charging the present peril entirely upon the North. As a remedy it recommended an amendment to the Federal Constitution expressly[5] recognizing slavery in States which had adopted or might adopt it, and also expressly giving it existence and protection in the Federal Territories. The proposal was simply childish. Precisely this issue had been decided at the Presidential election; to do this would be to reverse the final verdict of the ballot-box.[6]

On the question of disunion or secession, the message raised a vague and unwarrantable distinction between the infractions of law and allegiance by individuals, and the infractions of law and allegiance by the commonwealth, or body politic denominated a State. Under the first head it held: That the Union was designed to be perpetual; that the Federal Government is invested with sovereign powers on special subjects, which can only be opposed or abrogated by revolution; that secession is unconstitutional, and is, therefore, neither more nor less than revolution; that the Executive has no right to recognize the secession of a State; that the Constitution has established a perfect government in all its forms, legislative, executive, and judicial, and this government, to the extent of its powers, acts directly upon the individual citizen of every State and executes its own decrees by the agency of its own officers; and, finally, that the Executive cannot be absolved from his duty to execute the laws.

But, continued the President, the laws can only be executed in certain prescribed methods, through the agency of courts, marshals, posse comitatus, aided, if necessary, by the militia or land and naval forces. The means and agencies, therefore, fail, and the performance of this duty becomes impraticable, when, as in South Carolina, universal public sentiment has deprived him of courts, marshals, and posse. Present laws being inadequate to overcome a united opposition, even in a single State, Congress alone has the power to decide whether they can be effectually amended.[7]

It will be seen from the above summary, that the whole of the President's rambling discussion of the first head of the disunion question resulted logically in three ultimate conclusions: (1) That South Carolina was in revolt; (2) that the Constitution, the laws, and moral obligation all united gave the Government the right to suppress this revolt by executing the laws upon and against the citizens of that State; (3) that certain defects in the laws paralyzed their practical enforcement.

Up to this point in his argument, his opinions, whatever may be thought of their soundness, were confined to the legitimate field of executive interpretation, and such as in the exercise of his official discretion he might with undoubted propriety communicate to Congress. But he had apparently failed to satisfy his own conscience in thus summarily reasoning the executive and governmental power of a young, compact, vigorous, and thoroughly organized nation of thirty millions of people into sheer nothingness and impotence. How supremely absurd was the whole national panoply of commerce, credit, coinage, treaty power, judiciary, taxation, militia, army and navy, and Federal fag, if, through the mere joint of a defective law, the hollow reed of a secession ordinance could inflict a fatal wound!



[Sidenote] Appendix, "Globe," Dec. 3, 1860, p. 3.

The President proceeds, therefore, to discuss the second head of the disunion question, by an attempt to formulate and define the powers and duties of Congress with reference to the threatened rebellion. He would not only roll the burden from his own shoulders upon the National Legislature, but he would by volunteer advice instruct that body how it must be borne and disposed of. Addressing Congress, he says in substance: "You may be called upon to decide the momentous question, whether you possess the power by force of arms to compel a State to remain in the Union.... The question, fairly stated, is: Has the Constitution delegated to Congress the power to coerce a State into submission which is attempting to withdraw, or has actually withdrawn, from the Confederacy! If answered in the affirmative, it must be on the principle that the power has been conferred upon Congress to declare and make war against a State. After much serious reflection I have arrived at the conclusion that no such power has been delegated to Congress, or to any other department of the Federal Government.... It may be safely asserted that the power to make war against a State is at variance with the whole spirit and intent of the Constitution.... But if we possessed this power, would it be wise to exercise it under existing circumstances?... Our Union rests upon public opinion, and can never be cemented by the blood of its citizens shed in civil war.... Congress possesses many means of preserving it by conciliation; but the sword was not placed in their hand to preserve it by force."

Why did the message thus leap at one bound without necessary connection or coherence from the discussion of executive to those of legislative powers? Why waste words over doubtful theories when there was pressing need to suggest practical amendments to the statute whose real or imaginary defects Mr. Buchanan had pointed out? Why indulge in lamentations over the remote possibility that Congress might violate the Constitution, when the occasion demanded only prompt preventive orders from the Executive to arrest the actual threatened violation of law by Charleston mobs? Why talk of war against States when the duty of the hour was the exercise of acknowledged authority against insurrectionary citizens?

The issue and argument were wholly false and irrelevant. No State had yet seceded. Execute such laws of the United States as were in acknowledged vigor, and disunion would be impossible. Buchanan needed only to do what he afterwards so truthfully asserted Lincoln had done.[8] But through his inaction, and still more through his declared want of either power or right to act, disunion gained two important advantages—the influence of the Executive voice upon public opinion, and especially upon Congress; and the substantial pledge of the Administration that it would lay no straw in the path of peaceful, organized measures to bring about State secession.

[Sidenote] Correspondence, N.Y. "Evening Post".

[Sidenote] Washington "Constitution" of December 19, 1860.

[Sidenote] London "Times," Jan. 9, 1851.

The central dogma of the message, that while a State has no right to secede, the Union has no right to coerce, has been universally condemned as a paradox. The popular estimate of Mr. Buchanan's proposition and arguments was forcibly presented at the time by a jesting criticism attributed to Mr. Seward. "I think," said the New York Senator, "the President has conclusively proved two things: (1) That no State has the right to secede unless it wishes to; and (2) that it is the President's duty to enforce the laws unless somebody opposes him." No less damaging was the explanation put upon his language by his political friends. The recognized organ of the Administration said: "Mr. Buchanan has increased the displeasure of the Lincoln party by his repudiation of the coercion theory, and his firm refusal to permit a resort to force as a means of preventing the secession of a sovereign State." Nor were intelligent lookers-on in foreign lands less severe in their judgment: "Mr. Buchanan's message," said the London "Times," a month later, "has been a greater blow to the American people than all the rant of the Georgian Governor or the 'ordinances' of the Charleston Convention. The President has dissipated the idea that the States which elected him constitute one people."

————— [1] There were 3,832,240 opposition popular votes against 847,953 for Breckinridge and Lane, the Presidential ticket championed by Mr. Buchanan and his adherents.

[2] Printed in "The Early Life, Campaigns, and Public Services of Robert E. Lee, with a record of the campaigns and heroic deeds of his companions in arms, by a distinguished Southern journalist." 8vo. E.B. Treat, publisher, New York, 1871; p. 789; article, Major-General John B. Floyd. It says: "Among his private papers examined after his death the fragment of a diary was found, written in his own hand, and which is here copied entire." The diary also bears internal evidence of genuineness.

[3] The astounding mysteries and eccentricities of politics find illustration in the remarkable contrast between this recorded impulsive and patriotic expression of Attorney-General Black on November 7, and his labored official opinion of an apparently opposite tenor, certified to the President under date of November 20. See "Opinions of the Attorneys-General." Vol. IX., p. 517.

[4] "It was while these plans for a coup d'etat before the 4th of March were being matured in the very Cabinet itself and in the presence of a President too feeble to resist them and too blind oven to see them, that Mr. Stanton was sent for by Mr. Buchanan to answer the question, 'Can a State be coerced?' For two hours he battled, and finally scattered for the time being the heresies with which secession had filled the head of that old broken-down man. He was requested to prepare an argument in support of the power, to be inserted in the forthcoming message."—Hon. H.L. Dawes, in the "Boston Congregationalist." See "Atlantic Monthly," October, 1870, p. 468.

[5] Slavery existed by virtue of express enactments in the several constitutions of the slave States, but the Constitution of the United States gave it only implied recognition and toleration.

[6] "It was with some surprise, I confess, that I read the message of the President. The message laid down certain conditions as those upon which alone the great Confederacy of the United States could be preserved from disruption. In so doing the President appeared to be preparing beforehand an apology for the secession. Had the conditions, indeed, been such as the Northern States would be likely to accept, the message might have been considered one of peace. But it seems very improbable that the Northern States should now, at the moment of their triumph, and with large majorities of Republicans in their assemblies, submit to conditions which, during many years of struggle, they have rejected or evaded."—Lord John Russell to Lord Lyons, December 26, 1860. British Blue Book.

[7] The logic of the message breaks down by the palpable omission to state the well-known fact that, though every citizen of South Carolina, or any other State, might refuse to accept or execute the office of United States marshal, or, indeed, any Federal office, the want could be immediately lawfully supplied by appointing any qualified citizen of any other State, who might lawfully and properly lead either a posse, or Federal forces, or State militia, to put down obstruction of the Federal laws, insurrection, or rebellion. President Buchanan admitted his own error, and repudiated his own doctrine, when on January 2, following, he nominated a citizen of Pennsylvania for the office of collector of the port of Charleston, South Carolina.

Sections two and three of the Act of February 28, 1795, authorize the President, when the execution of the laws is obstructed by insurrection too powerful for courts and marshals, to call forth the militia of any and all the States, first and primarily to "suppress such combinations," and, secondly, "to cause the laws to be duly executed, and the use of militia so to be called forth may be continued, if necessary, until the expiration of thirty days after the commencement of the then next session of Congress." In performing this duty the act imposes but a single condition or prerequisite on the Executive: he shall "by proclamation command the insurgents to disperse." These sections are complete, harmonious, self-sufficient, and, in their chief provisions, nowise dependent upon or connected with any other section or clause of the act. They place under the President's command the whole militia, and by a subsequent law (March 3, 1807) also the entire army and navy of the Union, against rebellion. The assertion that the army can only follow a marshal and his writ in case of rebellion, is not only unsupported by the language of the act, but utterly refuted by strong implication. The last section repeals a former provision limiting the President's action to cases of insurrection of which United States judges shall have given him notice, and thereby remits him to any and all of his official sources of information. Jackson's famous force bill only provided certain supplementary details; it directly recognized and invoked the great powers of the Act of 1795, and expiring by limitation, left its wholesome plenitude and broad original grant of authority unrepealed and unimpaired.