This instrument was modelled on the Constitution of the United States.

It forbade the importation of negroes of the African race from any foreign country, other than the slaveholding States or Territories of the United States. Then following, for the first time probably in the history of nations, the proposed new Republic dedicated itself to eternal slavery, thus:

"No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves, shall be passed."(108)

Singularly enough, the astute friends of the institution of slavery, knowing and avowing that it could not survive competition with the free, well-paid labor necessary to manufacturing industries, and knowing also that slavery was only adapted to rural pursuits, not to skilled mechanical labor, and desiring to plant human slavery permanently in the new nation, removed from all possibility of competition with anything that might, by dignifying labor, build up wealth as witnessed in the great Northern cities and thus endanger slavery, sought to protect it by a clause incorporated in their organic act, prohibiting any form of tariff to protect home industries.

"Nor shall any duties or taxes on importations from foreign nations be laid to promote or foster any branch of industry."(109)

Cotton was ever to be "King" in the Confederacy.

Mississippi's "Declaration of the Immediate Causes" justifying secession with perfect honesty announced:

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest in the world. . . . A blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition or a dissolution of the Union."

The best, most candid, conservative, and comprehensive statement in explanation and vindication of the Confederate Constitution, the purposes and objects of the nation and people to be governed by and under it, is found in a speech of Vice-President Stephens at Savannah, Georgia, delivered ten days (March 21, 1861) after its adoption.

Here is a single extract:

"The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this as the rock upon which the old Union would split. He was right. What was conjecture with him is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him, and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the Constitution, was the prevailing idea at the time. The Constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly used against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of the races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a government built upon it: when the 'storms came and the wind blew, it fell.'

"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner stone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man. That slavery— subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all the other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics."

This is a fair and truthful exposition of the fundamental principles of the Confederacy, fallacious as they were.

North Carolina, after her people had voted down a convention to consider the question of secession at an extra session of her Legislature, called a convention which, on May 21, 1861, when the war had begun, passed an Ordinance of Secession without submission to a vote of her people.

Virginia through her Legislature called a convention which, April 17, 1861, passed an Ordinance of Secession in secret session, subject to ratification by a vote of her people. This was after Sumter had been fired on.

The vote was taken June 25th, and the Ordinance was ratified.

Arkansas defeated in convention an Ordinance for secession March 18, but passed one May 6, 1861, without a vote of her people.

Tennessee, by a vote of her people, February 8, 1861 (67,360 to 54,156) voted against a convention, but her Legislature (May 7, 1861) in secret session adopted a "Declaration of Independence and Ordinance dissolving her Federal relations," subject to a vote of her people on June 8th. The vote being for separation, her Governor, June 24, 1861, declared the State out of the Union.(110)

This was the last State of the eleven to secede. All these four ratified the Confederate Constitution and joined the already-formed Confederacy.

The seceded States early passed laws authorizing the organization of their militia, and making appropriations for defence against coercion, and providing for the seizure of United States forts, arsenals, and other property within their respective limits, and later, that they should be turned over to the Confederate States.

Some of the States by law provided severe penalties against any of their citizens holding office under the Government of the United States. Virginia, in July, 1861, in convention, passed an ordinance declaring that any citizen of Virginia holding office under the old Government should be forever banished from that State, and if he undertook to represent the State in the Congress of the United States, he should, in addition, be guilty of treason and his property confiscated.

The other Border States failed to break up their relation to the Union, though in all of them (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri) various irregular expedients were resorted to, to declare them a part of the Confederacy. From their people, however, much material and moral support was given to the Confederate cause.

(101) Jefferson's Works, viii., p. 403.—Notes on Virginia.

(102) Lincoln (Nicolay and Hay), vol. ii., pp. 299-314.

(103) Annual Cyclopaedia (Appleton), 1861, p. 123.

(104) For this letter, see Lincoln (N. and H.), vol. ii., p. 306.

(105) The prophecy: "The rebellion, which began where Charleston is, shall end where Charleston was," was fulfilled.

For a vivid, though sad description of Charleston at the end of the war, by an eye-witness, see Civil war in Am. (Draper), vol. i, p. 564. Andrew's Hall, where the first Ordinance passed, and the Institute in which it was signed, were then charred rubbish.

The Demon war had been abroad in Charleston—who respects not life or death.

(106) Sam Houston was the rightful Governor of Texas in 1861, but on the adoption of an Ordinance of Secession (February 24, 1861) he declined to take an oath of allegiance to the new government and was deposed by a convention March 16, 1861. Just previous to the vote of the State on ratifying the ordinance, at Galveston, before an immense, seething, secession audience, with few personal friends to support him, in face of threatened violence, he denounced the impolicy of Secession, and painted a prophetic picture of the consequences that would result to his State from it. He said:

"Let me tell you what is coming on the heels of secession. The time will come when your fathers and husbands, your sons and brothers, will be herded together like sheep and cattle, at the point of the bayonet, and your mothers and wives, your sisters and daughters, will ask: Where are they? You may, after the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds and thousands of precious lives, succeed, if God is not against you, in winning Southern independence. But I doubt it. It is a bare possibility at best. I tell you that while I believe, with you, in the doctrine of state rights, the North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people, as you are, for the live in cooler climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction, where great interests are involved, they move with the steady momentum of a giant avalanche, and what I fear is that they will overwhelm the South with ignoble defeat."

During this speech a horse in a team near by grew restive, and kicked out of harness, but was soon beaten to submission by his driver. Houston seized on the incident for an illustration, saying: "That horse tried a little practical secession—See how speedily he was whipped back into the Union." This quick-witted remark brought him applause from unsympathetic hearers.

Houston refused to recognize any Secession authority, and a few days subsequent to his deposition retired to his home near Huntsville, without friends, full of years, weak in body, suffering from wounds received in his country's service, but strong in soul, and wholly undismayed, though mourning his State's folly. In front of his house on the prairie he mounted a four-pound cannon, saying: "Texas may go to the devil and ruin if she pleases, but she shall not drag me along with her." History does not record another such incident. To the credit of the Secessionists, they respected the age and valor of the old hero, and did not molest, but permitted him to hold his personal "fortress" until his death, which occurred July 26, 1863 (three weeks after Vicksburg fell), in his seventy-first year.

He died satisfied the Confederacy and secession would soon be overthrown and the Union preserved.

(107) Lincoln (N. and H.), vol. iii, pp. 180-1.

(108) Con., Art. I., Sec. 9, pars. 1, 4.

(109) Confederate Con., Art. I., Sec. 8, par. 1.

(110) McPherson's Hist. of the Rebellion, pp. 4-8.

XXIV ACTION OF RELIGIOUS DENOMINATIONS, ETC.—1860-1

Significant above all other of the great events resulting from the secession of the Southern States was the dissolution of the great religious denominations in the United States.(111)

First, the Old School Presbyterian Church Synod of South Carolina, early as December 3, 1860, declared for a slave Confederacy. This was followed by other such synods in the South, all deciding for separation from the Church North. The Baptists in Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina were equally prompt in taking similar action.

Likewise the Protestant Episcopal Church, in a General Convention, held in Columbia, South Carolina, after having endorsed the Confederacy, adopted a "Constitution of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America"; all its Southern bishops being present and approving, save Bishop Leonidas Polk of Louisiana, who was absent, a Major-General in the Confederate army.(112)

The Methodist Episcopal Church South endorsed disunion and slavery; it had, however, in 1845, separated from the Methodist Church North.

The Roman Catholic Church, through Bishop Lynch, early in 1861, espoused the Confederate cause, and he, later, corresponded with the Pope of Rome in its interests, receiving a conciliatory answer in the Pope's name by Cardinal Antonelli.

The Young Men's Christian Association of New Orleans, May 22, 1861, issued an Address to the Young Men's Christian Associations of North America, declaring secession justifiable, and protesting, "in the name of Christ and his divine teachings," against waging war against the Southern States and their institutions.

Later, in 1863, the "Confederate clergy" issued a most memorable "Address to Christians throughout the World," likewise protesting against further prosecution of the war; declaring that the Union was forever dissolved, and specially pointing out "the most indefensible act growing out of the inexcusable war" to be

"The recent proclamation of the President of the United States seeking the emancipation of the slaves of the South."

And saying further:

"It is in our judgment a suitable occasion for solemn protest on the part of the people of God throughout the world."

Thus encouraged and upheld, the new Confederacy, with slavery for its "corner-stone," defiantly embarked.

The counter-action of the Church North was equally emphatic for freedom, and the Union of the States under one flag and one God.(113)

It is appropriate in connection with the attitude of the religious people of the country toward slavery and the Confederacy, and the war to preserve the one and to establish the other, to quote from President Lincoln's valedictory Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865), in which he refers to the attitude of opposing parties, the cause of the conflict, and to each party invoking God's aid.

"Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invoked His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us 'judge not that we be not judged.' The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully.

"The Almighty has His own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offences. For it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray that this mighty scourge of woe may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled up by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'

"With malice toward none, with charity for all; with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations."

(111) Hist. of Rebellion (McPherson), 508-520.

(112) He was, as Lieutenant-General, June 14, 1864, killed by a shell, at Marietta, Ga., while reconnoitering the Union lines.

(113) Hist. of Rebellion (McPherson), pp. 460-508.

XXV PROPOSED CONCESSIONS TO SLAVERY—BUCHANAN'S ADMINISTRATION AND CONGRESS—1860-1

The manner of receiving and treating the secession of the States by the administration of Buchanan and the Thirty-Sixth Congress can only here have a brief notice. There was a pretty general disposition to make further concessions and compromises to appease the disunion sentiment of the South. His administration was weak and vacillating. Two serious attempts at conciliation were made. President Buchanan, in his last Annual Message (December 4, 1860), while declaring that the election of any one to the office of President was not a just cause for dissolving the Union, and while denying that "Secession" could be justified under the Constitution, yet announced his conclusion that the latter had not "delegated to Congress the power to coerce a State into submission which is attempting to withdraw, or has actually withdrawn, from the Confederacy"; that coercion was "not among the specific and enumerated powers granted to Congress." He did not think it was constitutional to preserve the Constitution or the Union of the States. This view was held by most leaders of his party at the time and throughout the ensuing war; not so, however, by the rank and file.

Buchanan did not believe that self-preservation inhered in the Constitution or the Union.

The President in this Message suggested an explanatory amendment to the Constitution: (1) To recognize the right of property in slaves in the States where it existed; (2) to protect this right in the Territories until they were admitted as States with or without slavery; (3) a like recognition of the right of the master to have his escaped slave delivered up to him; and (4) declaring all unfriendly State laws impairing this right unconstitutional.

This was the signal for the presentation of a numerous brood of propositions to amend the Constitution in the interest of slavery, and by way of concessions to the South.

A committee of thirty-three, one from each State, of which Thomas Corwin of Ohio was chairman, was (December 4, 1860) appointed to consider the part of the President's Message referred to.

Mr. Noel of Missouri proposed to instruct this committee to report on the expediency of abolishing the office of President, and in lieu thereof establishing an Executive Council of three, elected by districts composed of contiguous States—each member armed with a veto power; and he also proposed to restore the equilibrium of the States by dividing slave States into two or more.

Mr. Hindman of Arkansas proposed to amend the Constitution so as to expressly recognize slavery in the States; to protect it in the Territories; to allow slaves to be transported through free States; to prohibit representation in Congress to any State passing laws impairing the Fugitive-Slave Act; giving slave States a negative upon all acts relating to slavery, and making such amendment unalterable.

Mr. Florence of Pennsylvania and Mr. Kellogg of Illinois each proposed to amend the Constitution "granting the right to hold slaves in all territory south of 36 deg. 30', and prohibiting slavery in territory north of this line," etc.

Mr. Vallandigham of Ohio proposed a long amendment to the Constitution, the central idea of which was a division of the Union into four sections, with a complicated and necessarily impracticable plan of voting in Congress, and of voting for the election of President and Vice-President.

These are only samples of the many propositions to amend the Constitution, but they will suffice for all. None of them had the approval of both Houses of Congress.

There were many patriotic propositions offered looking to the preservation of the Union as it was. They too failed.

The great committee reported (January 14, 1861) five propositions. The first a series of resolutions declaratory of the duty of Congress and the government to the States, and in relation to slavery; the second an amendment to the Constitution relating to slavery; the third a bill for the admission of New Mexico, including therein Arizona, as a State; the fourth a bill amending and making more efficient the Fugitive-Slave Law, among other things giving the United States Commissioner ten dollars whether he remanded or discharged the alleged fugitive; and the fifth a bill for the rendition of fugitives from justice. These several propositions (save the fifth, which was rejected) passed the House, the proposed constitutional amendment of the committee being amended on motion of Mr. Corwin before its passage.

None of the propositions were considered in the Senate save the second, and even this one did not receive the support of the secessionists still lingering in Congress.

The proposition to amend the Constitution passed both Houses by the requisite two thirds vote. It read:

"Art. XIII. No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of any State."

Two States only—Maryland and Ohio (114)—ratified this proposed amendment. It was needless, and, if adopted, would have taken no power from Congress, which any respectable party had ever claimed it possessed, but the amendment was tendered to answer the false cry that slavery in the slave States was in danger from Congressional action.

(What a contrast between this proposed Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution and the Thirteenth Amendment adopted four years later! The former proposed to establish slavery forever; the latter abolished it forever.)

The resolutions of John J. Crittenden in the Senate proposed various amendments to the Constitution, among others to legalize slavery south of 36 deg. 30'; to admit States from territory north of that line, with or without slavery; to prohibit the abolition of slavery in the States and also in the District of Columbia so long as it existed in Virginia or Maryland, such abolition even then to be only with the consent of the inhabitants of the District and with compensation to the slave owners; to require the United States to pay for fugitive slaves who were prevented from arrest or return to slavery by violence and intimidation, and to make all the provisions of the Constitution, including the proposed amendments, unchangeable forever. The Crittenden resolutions, at the end of much debate, and after various votes on amendments proposed thereto, failed (19 to 20) in the Senate, and therefore were never considered in the House.(115)

It was claimed at the time that had the Congressmen from the Southern States remained and voted for the Corwin and Crittenden propositions the Constitution might have been amended, giving slavery all these guarantees.

(114) Joint resolution of ratification, Ohio Laws, 1861, p. 190.

(115) Hist. of Rebellion (McPherson), pp. 57-67.

XXVI PEACE CONFERENCE—1861

By appointments of governors or legislatures, commissioners from each of twenty States, chosen at the request of the Legislature of Virginia, met in Washington, February 4, 1861, in a "Peace Conference."(116) Ex-President John Tyler of Virginia was made President, and Crafts J. Wright of Ohio Secretary.(117)

It adjourned February 27th, having agreed to recommend to the several States amendments to the Constitution, in substance: That north of 36 deg. 30' slavery in the Territories shall be, and south of that line it shall not be, prohibited; that neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature shall pass any law to prevent slaves from being taken from the States to the Territories; that no Territory shall be acquired by the United States, except by discovery and for naval stations, without the consent of a majority of the Senators from the slave and also from the free States; that Congress shall have no power to abolish slavery in any State, nor in the District of Columbia without the consent of Maryland; nor to prohibit Congressmen from taking their slaves to and from said District; nor the power to prohibit the free transportation of slaves from one slave State or Territory to another; that bringing slaves into the District of Columbia for sale, or to be placed in depot for transfer and sale at other places, is prohibited; that the clauses in the Constitution and its amendments relating to slavery shall never be abolished or amended without the consent of all the States; and that Congress shall provide by law for paying owners for escaped slaves where officers, whose duty it was to arrest them, were prevented from arresting them or returning them to their owners after being arrested.

"The Peace Conference" was composed of 133 members, among whom were some of the most eminent men of the country, though generally, however, only conservatives from each section were selected as members. Its remarkable recommendations were made with considerable unanimity, voting in the conference being by States, the Continental method.

Wm. Pitt Fessenden and Lot M. Morrill of Maine, Geo. S. Boutwell of Massachusetts, David Dudley Field and Erastus Corning of New York, Frederick T. Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, David Wilmot of Pennsylvania, Reverdy Johnson of Maryland, John Tyler, Wm. C. Rives, and John A. Seddon of Virginia, Wm. O. Butler, James B. Clay, James Guthrie, and Charles A. Wickcliffe of Kentucky, C. P. Wolcott, Salmon P. Chase, John C. Wright, Wm. S. Groesback, Franklin T. Backus, Reuben Hitchcock, Thomas Ewing (Sen.), and Valentine B. Horton of Ohio, Caleb B. Smith and Godlove S. Orth of Indiana, John M. Palmer and Burton C. Cook of Illinois, and James Harlan and James W. Grimes of Iowa were of the number. Many of them were then, or afterwards, celebrated as statesmen; and some of them subsequently held high rank as soldiers.

March 2, 1861, the "Peace Conference" propositions were offered twice to the Senate, and each time overwhelmingly defeated, as they had been, on the day preceding, by the House.(118)

There were many other propositions offered, considered, and defeated, to wit: Propositions from the Senate Committee of thirteen appointed December 18, 1860; propositions of Douglas, Seward, and others; also propositions from a meeting of Senators and members from the border, free, and slave States, all relating to slavery, and proposed with a view of stopping the already precipitated secession of States.(119)

Some of these propositions were exasperatingly humiliating, and only possibly justifiable by the times.

Though Lincoln's election as President was claimed to be a good cause for secession, and though much of the compromise talk was to appease his party opponents as well as the South, he was opposed to bargaining himself into the office to which the people had elected him. With respect to this matter (January 30, 1861) he said:

"I will suffer death before I will consent, or advise my friends to consent, to any concession or compromise which looks like buying the privilege of taking possession of the government to which we have a constitutional right."

We have now done with legislation, attempted legislation, and constitutional amendments to protect and extend slavery in the Republic. Slavery appealed to war, and by the inexorable decree of war its fate must be decided.

The Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln (January 1, 1863) and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1865) freed all slaves in the Union; the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) provided that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside"; and the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) gave the right to vote to all citizens of the United States regardless of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." These are all simply the decrees of war, written in the organic law of the United States at the end of the national four years' baptism of blood. Embodied in them are no concessions or compromises; the evil was torn out by the roots, and the Christian world, the progressive civilization of the age, and the consciences of enlightened mankind now approve what was done.

The war, with its attendant horrors and evils, was necessary to terminate the deep-seated, time-honored, and unholy institution of human slavery, so long embedded in our social, political, and commercial relations, and sustained by our prejudices, born of a selfish disposition, common to white people, to esteem themselves superior to others.

The history of emancipation and of these constitutional amendments belongs, logically, to periods during and at the end of the war.

There are, however, two important acts relating to slavery which passed Congress during the War of the Rebellion, not strictly the result of that war, though incident to it, which must be mentioned.

(116) Kansas joined later, and Michigan, California, and Oregon were not represented; nor were the then seceded Southern States, or Arkansas, represented.

(117) Blaine (Twenty Years of Congress, vol. i., p. 269), says: "Puleston, a delegate from Pennsylvania, a subject of Queen Victoria, later (1884) of the British Parliament, was chosen Secretary of the Conference."—This is an error. He was not a delegate: only one of several assistant secretaries.

On the next page of Blaine's book he falls into another error in saying the Wilmot Proviso was embodied (1848) in the Oregon territorial act. It was never embodied in any act. The sixth section of the Ordinance of 1787 is embodied in that act word for word.

(118) Hist. of Rebellion (McPherson), pp. 68-9.

(119) Ibid., p. 76.

XXVII DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA—SLAVERY ABOLISHED—1862

The District of Columbia, acquired by the United States in 1791 for the purpose of founding the city of Washington as the permanent Federal Capital, was, by the laws of Virginia and Maryland, slave territory. The District was originally ten miles square, and included the city of Alexandria. Later (1846) the part acquired from Virginia (about forty square miles) was retroceded to that State. Congress had complete jurisdiction over it, though the laws of Maryland and Virginia, for some purposes, were continued in force. It was, however, from the beginning claimed that Congress had the right to abolish slavery within its boundaries.

Congress is given the right "to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever over such District."(120) But slavery was claimed to be excepted because of its peculiar character.

The institution of slavery was therefore perpetuated in the District, and in the Capital of the Republic slave-marts existed where men and women were sold from the auction block, and families were torn asunder and carried to different parts of the country to be continued in bondage. In the shadow of the Capitol the voice of the auctioneer proclaiming in the accustomed way the merits of the slave commingled with that of the statesmen in the Halls of Congress proclaiming the boasted liberty of the great American Republic! Daniel Drayton (1848) was tried in the District for the larceny of seventy-four human beings, his crime consisting of affording means (in the schooner Pearl) for their escape to freedom.(121)

Under the laws of the District many others were punished for like offences.

As late as 1856, when the sculptor Crawford furnished a design for the Statue of Liberty to crown the dome of the Capitol, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis ordered the "liberty cap" struck from the model, because in art it had an "established origin in its use as a badge of the freed slave."(122)

We have seen how much the consciences of just men were shocked, and how assiduously such men labored to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and with what tenacity the slave party fought to maintain it there, and even by constitutional amendments to fix it there forever.

But when slavery had brought the country to war, the emancipation of slaves in the District was early considered.

Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, December 16, 1861, introduced a bill in the Senate, which, after a most memorable debate in both Houses of Congress, passed, and on April 16, 1862, became a law, with the approval of President Lincoln. This act emancipated forthwith all the slaves of the District, and annulled the laws of Maryland over it relating to slavery and all statutes giving the cities of Washington and Georgetown authority to pass ordinances discriminating against persons of color.

(120) Con. U. S., Art. I., Sec. 8, par. 17.

(121) Drayton did not succeed in the attempt to afford these slaves means to escape. He was tried on two indictments for larceny, convicted, and on each sentenced to ten years in the penitentiary. The Circuit Court reversed these convictions on the erroneous charge of the trial judge (Crawford), to the effect that a man might be guilty of larceny of property—slaves—without the intent to appropriate it to his own use. On re-trial Drayton was acquitted on the larceny indictments; but verdicts were taken against him on seventy-four indictments for transporting slaves—not a penitentiary offense—and he was sentenced to pay a fine of $10,000, and to remain in prison until paid. He was most ably defended by Horace Mann of Boston, and J. M. Carlisle of Washington, D. C., either as volunteer counsel or employed by Drayton's friends, he being poor. There were 115—41 for larceny, 64 for transportation—indictments against Drayton, which led Mr. Mann to remark of the threatened penalty: "Methuselah himself must have been caught young in order to survive such a sentence."—Slavery, Letters, etc. (Mann), p. 93.

President Fillmore, being defeated in 1852 for nomination for President, pardoned Drayton after four years' and four months' imprisonment, which pardon, it was claimed, defeated Scott, the Whig nominee, at the polls.—Memoir of Drayton, p. 118.

(122) Correspondence in War Department between Davis and Quartermaster- General Meigs.

The present nondescript hood, giving the statue crowning the dome its appearance, in some views, of a wild Indian, was substituted for the Liberty cap.

XXVIII SLAVERY PROHIBITED IN THE TERRITORIES—1862

Growing out of the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, the question was raised by Lovejoy of Illinois and others as to the duty of Congress to declare freedom national and slavery sectional; and also to prohibit slavery in all the Territories of the Union.

A bill was passed, which (June 19, 1862) was approved by the President, and became the last general law of Congress on the subject of slavery in the Territories. It reads:

"That from and after the passage of this act there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the Territories of the United States, now existing, or which may at any time hereafter be formed or acquired by the United States, otherwise than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted."

By this act the principles of the Ordinance of 1787 (sixth section) were applied universally to all existing and to be acquired territory of the United States.

It was only, in effect, Jefferson's Ordinance of 1784, defeated by one vote in the old Congress, the loss of which he deplored so much. His benign purpose to restrict slavery was delayed seventy- eight years—until blood flowed to sanction it.

XXIX BENTON'S SUMMARY

We close this already too long history of human slavery in the United States with Thomas H. Benton's summary of the "cardinal points" in the aggressive policy of the impetuous South in pushing forward slavery as a cause for disunion. He wrote, four years anterior to the Rebellion of 1861, with a prophetic pen, nibbed by the experience of a Senator for thirty years, and as a slaveholder. He had actively participated in most of the events of which he speaks, and was personally familiar with all of them.(123)

"But I am not now writing the history of the present slavery agitation—a history which the young have not learnt, and the old have forgotten, and which every American ought to understand. I only indicate cardinal points to show its character; and of these a main one remains to be stated. Up to Mr. Pierce's administration the plan had been defensive—that is to say, to make the secession of the South a measure of self-defence against the abolition encroachments, aggressions, and crusades of the North. In the time of Mr. Pierce, the plan became offensive—that is to say, to commence the expansion of slavery, and the acquisition of territory to spread it over, so as to overpower the North with new slave States, and drive them out of the Union. In this change of tactics originated the abrogation of the Missouri Compromise, the attempt to purchase one half of Mexico, and the actual purchase of a large part; the design to take Cuba; the encouragement to Kinney and to Walker in Central America; the quarrels with Great Britain for outlandish coasts and islands; the designs upon the Tehuantepec, the Nicaragua, the Panama, and the Darien routes; and the scheme to get a foothold in the Island of San Domingo. The rising in the free States in consequence of the abrogation of the Missouri Compromise checked these schemes, and limited the success of the disunionists to the revival of the agitation which enables them to wield the South against the North in all the Federal elections and Federal legislation. Accidents and events have given this part a strange pre-eminence— under Jackson's administration proclaimed for treason; since, at the head of the government and of the Democratic party. The death of Harrison, and the accession of Tyler, was their first great lift; the election of Mr. Pierce was their culminating point. It not only gave them the government, but power to pass themselves for the Union party, and for democrats; and to stigmatize all who refused to go with them as disunionists and abolitionists. And to keep up this classification is the object of the eleven pages of the message which calls for this Review—unhappily assisted in that object by the conduct of a few real abolitionists (not five per centum of the population of the free States); but made to stand, in the eyes of the South, for the whole."

(123) Hist., etc., Ex., Dred Scott Case, pp. 184-5.

XXX PROPHECY AS TO SLAVERY'S FATE: ALSO AS TO DISUNION

We are approaching the period for the fulfilment of prophecy in relation to the perpetuity of human slavery in the United States.

We summarize a few of the prophecies made by distinguished American statesmen and citizens. George Washington, Patrick Henry, and other Virginia statesmen and slaveholders at the close of the Revolution predicted that slaves would be emancipated, or they would acquire their freedom violently. These patriots advocated emancipation. The stumbling-block to abolition in Virginia at that time was, what to do with the blacks. The white population could not reconcile themselves to the idea of living on an equality with them, as they deemed they must if the blacks were free. As early as 1782 Jefferson expressed his serious forebodings:

"Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. . . .

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever. The way, I hope, is preparing, under the auspices of Heaven, for a total emancipation."

The anti-slavery societies when they first met in annual convention (1804) proclaimed that

"Freedom and slavery cannot long exist together."

John Quincy Adams, in 1843, prophesied:

"I am satisfied slavery will not go down until it goes down in blood."(124)

Abraham Lincoln, at the beginning of his celebrated debate with Douglas (1858) expressed his belief that this nation could not exist "half slave and half free." He had, however, made the same declaration in a letter to a Kentucky friend to whom he wrote:

"Experience has demonstrated, I think, that there is no peaceful extinction of slavery in prospect for us. . . .

"On the question of liberty as a principle, we are not what we have been. When we were the political slaves of King George, and wanted to be free, we called the maxim that 'all men are created equal' a self-evident truth; but now, when we have grown fat, and have lost all dread of being slaves ourselves, we have become so greedy to be masters that we call the maxim 'a self-evident lie.' The Fourth of July has not quite dwindled away; it is still a great dy for burning fire-crackers. That spirit which desired the peaceful extinction of slavery has itself become extinct with the occasion and the men of the Revolution. . . . So far as peaceful, voluntary emancipation is concerned, the condition of the negro slave in America, scarcely less terrible to the contemplation of the free mind, is now as fixed and hopeless of change for the better as that of lost souls of the finally impenitent. The autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown, and proclaim his subjects free Republicans, sooner than will our masters voluntarily give up their slaves.

"Our political problem now is, 'Can we as a nation continue together permanently—forever—half slave, and half free'? The problem is too mighty for me. May God in his mercy superintend the solution."

(Under God, within ten years after this was written, Lincoln was the instrument for the solution of the mighty problem!)

This was a fitting prelude to his speech on slavery at Springfield, Illinois (June, 1858), wherein he said:

"In my opinion it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.'

"I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other."(125)

Seward of New York compressed the issue between freedom and slavery into a single sentence in his Rochester speech (October 25, 1858):

"It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either an entirely slave holding nation or entirely a free labor nation."(126)

But statesmen were not the only persons who predicted the downfall of slavery in the Republic; not the only persons who contributed to that end, nor yet the only persons who foretold its overthrow in blood.

The institution had grown to arrogant and intolerant as to brook no opposition, and its friends did not even seek to clothe its enormities.

A leading Southern journal, in 1854, honestly expressed the affection in which slavery was held:

"We cherish slavery as the apple of our eye, and we are resolved to maintain it, peaceably, if we can, forcibly, if we must."(127)

The clergy and religious people of the North came to believe slavery must, in the mill of justice, be ground to a violent death, in obedience to the will of God.

Theodore Parker, the celebrated Unitarian divine, a personal friend of John Brown, on hearing, in Rome, of his failure, trial, and sentence to the scaffold, in a letter to Francis Jackson of Boston, November 24, 1859, gave vent to what was then regarded as fanatical prophecy, but now long since fulfilled:

"The American people will have to march to rather severe music, I think, and it is better for them to face it in season. A few years ago it did not seem difficult, first to check slavery, and then to end it without bloodshed. I think this cannot be done now, nor ever in the future. All the great charters of Humanity have been writ in blood. I once hoped that American Democracy would be engrossed in less costly ink; but it is plain, now, that our pilgrimage must lead through a Red Sea, wherein many a Pharoah will go under and perish. . . .

"Slavery will not die a dry death. It may have as many lives as a cat; at last, it will dies like a mad dog in a village, with only the enemies of human kind to lament its fate, and they too cowardly to appear as mourners."(128)

Parker was fast descending, from broken health, into the grave, but in the wildest of his dreams he did not peer into futurity far enough to see that within a single decade the "sin of the nation" would be washed out, root and branch, in blood; and that in Virginia —the State that hung John Brown—at the home of its greatest Governor, Henry A. Wise, there would be seen "a Yankee school-marm" teaching free negroes—sons of Africa—to read and write—to read the Holy Bible, and she the humble daughter of "Old John Brown."(129)

One sample of prophecy of what disunion would be, we give from a speech of Henry Winter Davis of Maryland:

"It would be an act of suicide, and sane men do not commit suicide. The act itself is insanity. It will be done, if ever, in a fury and madness which cannot stop to reason. Dissolution means death, the suicide of Liberty, without a hope of resurrection—death without the glories of immortality; with no sister to mourn her fall, none to wrap her decently in her winding-sheet and bear her tenderly to a sepulchre—dead Liberty, left to all the horrors of corruption, a loathsome thing, with a stake through the body, which men shun, cast out naked on the highway of nations, where the tyrants of the earth who feared her living will mock her dead, passing by on the other side, wagging their heads and thrusting their tongues in their cheeks at her, saying, 'Behold her now, how she that was fair among the nations is fallen! is fallen!'— and only the few wise men who loved her out of every nation will shed tears over her desolation as they pass, and cast handfuls of earth on her body to quiet her manes, while we, her children, stumble about our ruined habitations to find dishonorable graves wherein to hide our shame. Dissolution? How shall it be? Who shall make it? Do men dream of Lot and Abraham parting, one to the east and the other to the west, peacefully, because their servants strive? That States will divide from States and boundary lines will be marked by compass and chain? Sir, that will be a portentous commission that shall settle that partition, for cannon will be planted at the corners and grinning skeletons be finger- posts to point the way. It will be no line gently marked on the bosom of the Republic—some meandering vein whence generations of her children have drawn their nourishment—but a sharp and jagged chasm, rending the hearts of commonwealths, lacerated and smeared with fraternal blood. On the night when the stars of her constellation shall fall from heaven the blackness of darkness forever will settle on the liberties of mankind in this Western World. This is dissolution! If such, Sir, is dissolution seen in a glass darkly, how terrible will it be face to face? They who reason about it are half crazy now. They who talk of it do not mean it, and dare not mean it. They who speak in earnest of a dissolution of this Union seem to me like children or madmen. He who would do such a deed as that would be the maniac without a tongue to tell his deed, or reason to arrest his steps—an instrument of mad impulse impelled by one idea to strike his victim. Sir, there have been maniacs who have been cured by horror at the blood they have shed."(130)

This eloquent, patriotic, word-picture of dissolution, intended to deter those who so impetuously and glibly talked of it, was not, as the sequel proved, overdrawn. When delivered it was not generally believed that a dissolution of the Union could or would be attempted. In the Presidential campaigns of 1856 and 1860, as well as in Congress, there was much eloquence displayed in line with the above; few of the orators, however, believed that dissolution, with all the wild terrors of war, was near at hand. But there were some men in public life who early comprehended the destiny awaiting the politically storm-racked Republic, and as it approached, boldly gave the opinion that "a little blood-letting would be good for the body politic."(131)

The story of the war which secession inaugurated remains to be in part narrated in succeeding chapters, portraying the impetuous rush to battle; the unparalleled heroism of the mighty hosts on either side; the slaughter of men; the hell of suffering; the bitter tears; the incalculable sorrow; the billions expended; the destruction of property; the alternating defeats and triumphs; the final victory of the Union arms; the overthrow of state-rights, nullification, secession—disunion; the emancipation of four million human slaves, and the annihilation in the United States of the institution of slavery, including all its baleful doctrines, whether advanced by partisan, pro-slavery statesmen, or advocated by learned politicians, or upheld by church or clergy in the name of the prophets of Holy Writ or of Christ and his Apostles, or expounded by a tribunal clothed in the ermine, majesty, dignity, and power of the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

Abraham Lincoln, whose beautiful character is illumined in the intense light of a third of a century of heightened civilization, will be immortalized through all time as God's chiefest instrument in accomplishing the end.

In closing this chapter we desire again to remind the reader that in 1861 the Congress of the United States, by a two thirds majority in each branch, voted to so amend the Constitution as to make forever unalterable its provisions for the recognition and perpetuation of human bondage; that if the amendment thus submitted had been ratified by three fourths of the States, this nation would have been the first and only one in the history of the world wherein the right to enslave human beings was fundamental and decreed to be eternal.

This amendment, guaranteeing perpetual slavery, was the tender made by Union men in 1861 to avert disunion and war. It was the humiliating and unholy pledge offered to a slave-loving people to induce them to remain true to the Constitution and the Union. In the providence of God the amendment was not ratified, nor was a willingness to accept it shown by the defiant South. On the contrary, it was spurned by it with singular unanimity and deserved contempt. A nation to be wholly slave was alone acceptable to the disunionists; and to establish such a nation the hosts were arrayed on the one side; to preserve and perpetuate the Union and to overthrow the would-be slave nation, they were also, thank God, arrayed on the other.

This was the portentous issue made up—triable by the tribunal of last resort from which there is no earthly appeal.

Promptly, even enthusiastically, did the South respond to the summons to battle, and with a heroism worthy of a better cause did it devote life and property to the maintenance of the Confederacy. But from mountain, hillside, vale, plain, and prairie, from field, factory, counting-house, city, village, and hamlet, from all professions and occupation alike came the sons of freedom, with the cry of "Union and Liberty," under one flag, to meet the opposing hosts, heroically ready to make the necessary sacrifice that the unity of the American Republic should be preserved.

The effort to establish a slave nation in the afternoon of the nineteenth century resulted in a civil war unparalleled in magnitude, and the bloodiest in the history of the human race. In the eleven seceding States the authority of the Constitution was thrown off; the National Government was defied; former official oaths of army, navy, and civil officers were disregarded, and other oaths were taken to support another government; the public property of the United States was seized in the seceding States as of right, Cabinet officers of the President assisting in the plunder; Senators and Representatives in Congress, while yet holding seats, making laws, and drawing pay, plotted treason, and, later, defiantly joined the Confederacy; sequestration acts were passed by the Confederate Congress, and citizens of the United States were made aliens in the Confederacy, and their property there was confiscated, and debts due loyal men North were collected for the benefit of the Confederate Treasury; piratical vessels, with the aid and connivance of boastful civilized monarchies of Europe, destroyed our commerce and drove our flag from the high seas; above a half million of men fell in battle, and another half million died of wounds and disease incident to war; above sixty thousand Union soldiers died in Southern prisons; the direct cost of the Rebellion, paid from the United States Treasury, approximated seven billions of dollars, and the indirect cost to the loyal people, in property destroyed, etc., was at least equal to seven billions more. Fairly estimated, slaves not considered, the people of the seceding States expended and lost in the prosecution and devastations of the war more than double the expenditures and losses of the North; imagination cannot compass or language portray the suffering and sorrow, agony and despair, which pervaded the whole land. All this to settle the momentous question, whether or not human slavery should be fundamental as a domestic, social, and political institution.

Thus far slavery has been our theme, and the war for the suppression of the Rebellion only incidentally referred to, but in succeeding chapters slavery will only be incidentally referred to, and the war will have such attention as the scope of the narrative permits.

(124) Life of Seward, vol. i., p. 672.

(125) A. Lincoln, Complete Works, vol. i., pp. 215, 240, 251.

(126) Seward's Works, vol. iv, p. 289.

(127) Hist. U. S. (Rhodes), vol. i, p. 469.

(128) Life of Parker (Weiss), vol. ii., p. 172-4 (406).

(129) Civil War in America (Draper), vol. i, 565-6.

(130) Speech of Henry Winter Davis, House of Representatives, Aug. 7, 1856.

(131) Zachariah Chandler, 1860.

CHAPTER II Sumter Fired on—Seizure by Confederates of Arms, Arsenals, and Forts—Disloyalty of Army and Navy Officers—Proclamation of Lincoln for Seventy-Five Thousand Militia, and Preparation for War on Both Sides

The Star of the West, a merchant vessel, was sent from New York, with the reluctant consent of President Buchanan, by Lieutenant- General Winfield Scott, Commander-in-Chief of the army, to carry re-enforcements and provisions to Fort Sumter. As this vessel attempted to enter Charleston harbor (January 9, 1861) a shot was fired across its bows which turned it back, and its mission failed. "Slapped in the mouth" was the opprobrious epithet used to express this insult to the United States. This was not the shot that summoned the North to arms. It was, however, the first angry gun fired by a citizen of the Union against his country's flag, and it announced the dawn of civil war. When this shot was fired, only South Carolina had passed an Ordinance of Secession; the Confederate States were not yet formed.

On the night of December 26, 1860, Major Robert Anderson, in command of the land forces, forts, and defences at Charleston, South Carolina, being threatened by armed secession troops, and regarding his position at Fort Moultrie, on Sullivan's Island, untenable if attacked from the land side, as a matter of precaution, without order from his superiors, but possessing complete authority within the limits of his command, removed his small force, consisting of only sixty-five soldiers, from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter, where, at high noon of the next day, after a solemn prayer by his chaplain, the Stars and Stripes were run up on a flagstaff, to float in triumph only for a short time, then to be insulted and shot down, not to again be unfurled over the same fort until four years of war had intervened.

An ineffectual effort was made by Governor Pickens of South Carolina to induce Major Anderson by his demands and threats to return to his defenceless position at Fort Moultrie. President Buchanan, at the instigation of his Secretary of War, Floyd, was on the point of ordering him to do so, but when the matter was considered in a Cabinet meeting, other counsels prevailed, and Floyd made this his excuse for leaving the Cabinet.( 1) Fortunately, his place was filled by Hon. Joseph Holt of Kentucky, a Union man of force, energy, will power, and true courage, who, later, became Judge- Advocate-General U.S.A., serving as such until after the close of the war.

To the end of Buchanan's administration, Sumter was held by Major Anderson with his small force, and around it centered the greatest anxiety. It was the policy of the South to seize and occupy all forts, arsenals, dock-yards, public property, and all strongholds belonging to the United States located within the limits of seceded States, and to take possession of arms and material of war as though of right belonging to them. The right and title to United States property thus located were not regarded. Louisiana seized the United States Mint at New Orleans, and turned over of its contents $536,000 in coin to the Confederate States treasury, for which she received a vote of thanks from the Confederate Congress.( 2) All the forts of the United States within or on the coast of the then seceded States, save Forts Sumter and Pickens, were soon, with their armament and military supplies, in possession of and manned by Southern soldiers. At first seizures were made by State authority alone, but on the organization, at Montgomery, of the Confederacy (February 8, 1861) it assumed charge of all questions between the seceded States and the United States relating to the occupation of forts and other public establishments; and, March 15th, the Confederacy called on the States that had joined it to cede to it all the forts, etc., thus seized, which was done accordingly.

On February 28th the Confederate Congress passed an act under which President Davis assumed control of all military operations and received from the seceding States all the arms and munitions of war acquired from the United States and all other material of war the States of the Confederacy saw proper to turn over to him.

A letter from the Chief of Ordnance of the United States Army to Secretary of War Holt, of date, January 15, 1861, shows that, commencing in 1859, under orders from Secretary of War Floyd, 115,000 muskets were transferred from the Springfield (Mass.) and Watervliet (N. Y.) arsenals to arsenals South; and, under like orders, other percussion muskets and rifles were similarly transferred, all of which were seized, together with many cannon and other material of war, by the Confederate authorities.( 3)

Harper's Ferry, and the arsenal there, with its arms and ordnance stores, were seized by the Confederates, April 18, 1861, and the machinery and equipment for manufacturing arms, not burned, was taken South.

The arsenal at Fayetteville, N. C., was also seized, April 22, 1861.

In February, 1861, Beauregard ( 4) was commissioned by Davis a Brigadier-General, and ordered to Charleston, South Carolina, to organize an army. Other officers were put in commission by the Confederacy, and a large force was soon mustering defiantly for the coming struggle.

Beauregard took command at Charleston, March 1st, three days before Lincoln was inaugurated President of the United States.( 5)

Disloyalty extended to the army and navy.

The regular army was small, and widely scattered over the Western frontiers and along the coasts of lake and ocean. March 31, 1861, it numbered 16,507, including 1074 officers. Some officers had joined the secession movement before this date.

The disaffection was among the officers alone. Two hundred and eighty-two officers resigned or deserted to take service in the Confederate Army; of these 192 were graduates of West Point Military Academy, and 178 of the latter became general officers during the war.( 6)

The number of officers, commissioned and warrant, who left the United States Navy and entered the Confederate service was, approximately, 460.( 7)

To the credit of the rank and file of the regular army, and of the seamen in the navy, it is, on high authority, said that:

"It is worthy of note that, while in this government's hour of trial large numbers of those in the army and navy who have been favored with the offices have resigned and proved false to the hand which had pampered them, not one common soldier or common sailor is known to have deserted his flag."( 8)

David E. Twiggs, a Brevet Major-General, on February 18, 1861, surrendered, at San Antonio, Texas, all the military posts and other property in his possession; and this after receiving an order relieving him from command. He was an old and tried soldier of the United States Army, and his example was pernicious in a high degree.

There were few, however, who, like him, took the opportunity to desert and at the same time to do a dishonorable official act calculated to injure the government they had served.

March 5, 1861, Twiggs was given a grand reception in New Orleans; salutes were fired in honor of his recent treachery.( 9) President Buchanan, to his credit, through Secretary of War Holt, March 1st, dismissed him from the army.(10)

It is a curious fact that this order of dismissal was signed by S. Cooper, Adjutant-General of the United States Army (a native of New Jersey), who, six days later, resigned his position, hastened to Montgomery, Alabama, and there accepted a like office in the Confederate government. Disloyalty among prominent army officers seemed, for a time, the rule.(11)

It was industriously circulated, not without its effect, that General Winfield Scott had deserted his country and flag to take command of the Confederate Army. To his honor it must be said, however, that he never faltered, and the evidence is overwhelming that he never entertained a thought of joining his State—Virginia. He early foresaw that disunion and war were coming, and not only deprecated them but desired to strengthen the United States Government and to avert both. Only his great age prevented his efficiently leading the Union armies.

George H. Thomas, like General Scott, was a native of Virginia. He was also unjustly charged with having entertained disloyal notions and to have contemplated joining the South, but later both Scott and Thomas were bitterly denounced by secessionists for not going with Virginia into the Rebellion.

Officers connected with the United States Revenue Service stationed in Southern cities were, generally, not only disloyal, but property in their custody was without scruple turned over to the Confederate authorities. The revenue cutters under charge and direction of the Secretary of the Treasury were not only seized, but their commanding officers in many cases deserted to the Confederacy and surrendered them. A notable example is that of Captain Breshwood, who commanded the revenue cutter Robert McClelland, stationed at New Orleans. When ordered, January 29, 1861, to proceed with her to New York, he refused to obey. This led John A. Dix, Secretary of the Treasury, to issue his celebrated and patriotic "Shoot-him- on-the-spot" order.(12) Louisiana had not at that time seceded, but the cutter, with Captain Breshwood, went into the Confederacy. So of all other such vessels coming within reach of the now much- elated, over-confident, and highly excited Confederate authorities.

Before the end of February, 1861, the "Pelican Flag" was flying over the Custom-House, Mint, City Hall, and everywhere in Louisiana. At the New Orleans levees ships carried every flag on earth except that of the United States. The only officer of the army there at the time who was faithful to the country was Col. C. L. Kilburn, of the Commissary Department, and he was preparing to escape North.(13)

So masterful had become the spirit of the South, born of the nature of the institution of slavery, that many disinclined to disunion were carried away with the belief that it was soon to be an accomplished fact, and that those who had favored it would alone be the heroes, while those who remained with the broken Union would be socially and forever ostracized. There were also many, indeed, who seriously entertained the belief that the North, made up as it was of merchants, manufacturers, farmers, and laborers, and with the education and disposition to follow pursuits incident to money- getting by their own personal efforts, would not be willing to engage in war, and thus destroy their prospects. There were also others who regarded Northern men as cowards, who, even if willing to fight, would not at best be equal, a half dozen of them, to one Southern man. These false notions were sincerely entertained. The Southern people regarded slavery as ennobling to the white race, and free white labor as degrading to the people of the free States, and hence were confident of their own superiority in arms and otherwise. There were even some people North who had so long heard the Southern boasts of superior courage that they half believed in it themselves, until the summons to arms dispelled all such illusions.

To the half credit of most of the officers of the United States army, and many of the navy, it may be said that when they determined to desert their country and flag they resigned their commissions, or at least tendered them, so they might go into rebellion with some color of excuse.

The War Department was generally, even under Lincoln's administration, gracious enough in most cases to accept such resignations, even when it knew or suspected the purpose for which they were tendered. Lieut. Julius A. De Lagnel, of the artillery, a Virginian, who remained long enough in the Union to be surrendered to Secession authorities (not discreditable to himself) at Fayetteville, North Carolina, with the North Carolina arsenal (April 22, 1861) informed the writer since the war that, on sending his resignation to the War Department, he followed it to the Adjutant-General's office, taking with him some bags of coin he had in the capacity of disbursing officer, for the purpose of making a settlement. He found Adjutant- General Lorenzo Thomas not in good humor, and when requested to direct him to a proper officer to settle his accounts, Thomas flew at him furiously, ordered him to drop his coin-bags, and decamp from his presence and from the Department, which he did accordingly. His accounts were thus summarily settled. (We shall soon hear of De Lagnel again.)

Captain James Longstreet, of Georgia, who became a Lieutenant- General in the C.S.A., and one of the ablest fighting generals in either army, draws a rather refined distinction as to the right of an officer to resign his commission and turn enemy to his country, while denying the right of a non-commissioned officer or private soldier to quit the army in time of rebellion to follow his State.

Longstreet was stationed at Albuquerque, New Mexico, when Sumter was fired on. On receiving the news of its capture he resigned and went South, through Texas, to join his State, or rather, as it proved, to join the Confederate States Army.

He says his mind was relieved by information that his resignation was accepted, to take effect June 1st. He tells us a sergeant from Virginia and other soldiers wished to accompany him, but he would not entertain that proposition; he explained to them that they could not go without authority of the War Department, but it was different with commissioned officers; they could resign, and when their resignations were accepted could do as they pleased, while the sergeant and his comrades were bound by their oaths to the term of their enlistment.(14)

It might be hard to construct a more satisfactory constitutional or moral theory than this for persons situated as were Captain Longstreet and others, disposed as they were to desert country and comrades for the newly formed slave Confederacy; yet if the secession of the native State of an officer is sufficient to dissolve allegiance he has sworn to maintain, it requires a delicate discrimination to see why the common soldier might not also be absolved from his term contract and oath for the same reasons.

There is a point of honor as old as organized warfare, that in the presence of danger or threatened danger it is an act of cowardice for an officer to resign for any but a good physical cause.

The better way is to justify, or if that cannot be done, to excuse as far as possible, the desertion of the Union by army and navy officers on the ground that the times were revolutionary, when precedents could not be followed, and legal and moral rights were generally disregarded. Such periods come occasionally in the history of nations. They are properly called rebellions, when they fail.

"Rebellion, indeed, appears on the back of a flying enemy, but revolution flames on the breastplate of the victorious warriors."(15)

Robert E. Lee, born in Virginia, of Revolutionary stock, had won reputation as a soldier in the Mexican War. He was fifty-four years of age, a Colonel of the First Cavalry, and, though in Washington, was but recently under orders from the Department of Texas. There is convincing evidence that General Scott and Hon. Frank P. Blair tendered him the command of the army of the United States in the impending war. This is supposed to have caused him to hesitate as to his course. In a letter (April 20, 1861) to a sister he deplores the "state of revolution into which Virginia, after a long struggle, has been drawn," saying:

"I recognize no necessity for this state of things, . . . yet in my own person I had to meet the question whether I would take part against my native State. With all my devotion to the Union, and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. I have, therefore, resigned my commission in the army, and, save in defence of my native State, with the hope that my poor services will never be needed, I hope I may never be called on to draw my sword."

On the same day, in a letter to General Scott accompanying his resignation, he says: "Save in defence of my State, I never desire to draw my sword."

Lee registered himself, March 5, 1861, in the Adjutant-General's office as Brevet-Colonel and Lieutenant-Colonel Second Cavalry.(16) He was nominated, March 21, 1861, by President Lincoln, Colonel First Cavalry, and on March 23d the nomination was confirmed by the Senate. He was then commissioned by the President, Colonel, March 25th, to rank from March 16, 1861; he received this commission March 28th, and accepted it by letter March 30, 1861. Seven States had then seceded from the Union, and the Confederate States of America had existed since February 8, 1861.

Three weeks after (April 20th) Lee accepted this last commission he tendered his resignation in the United States Army. It did not reach the Secretary of War until April 24th, nor was it accepted until April 27th, to take effect April 25, 1861.(17)

Lee, however, accepted, April 22nd, a commission as Major-General in the "Military and Naval Forces of Virginia," assuming command of them by direction of Governor John Letcher, April 23, 1861.

It thus appears that two months and a half after the Confederate States were formed Robert E. Lee accepted President Lincoln's commission in the U.S.A.; then twenty-four days later, and pending the acceptance of his resignation, took command of forces hostile to the Federal Union. He, April 24th, gave instructions to a subordinate: "Let it be known that you intend no attack; but invasion of our soil will be considered an act of war."

He did not have Longstreet's consolation of knowing his resignation had been accepted before he abandoned his rank and duties in the United States Army; nor had his State yet seceded from the Union. Virginia did not enter into any relations with the Confederacy until April 25, 1861, and then only conditionally. Her convention passed an Ordinance of Secession April 17th, to take effect, if ratified by the votes of her people, at an election to be held May 23, 1861. An election held in Virginia the previous February resulted in choosing to a convention a very large majority of delegates opposed to secession. The convention, March 17th—90 to 45—rejected an Ordinance of Secession. Virginia's people were, until coerced by her disloyal State Governor, faithful to the Union of Washington. The fact remains that Lee, before his State voted to secede, accepted a commission in the army of the Confederacy, and took an oath to support its laws and Constitution, and thenceforth drew his sword to overthrow the Union of his fathers and to establish a new would-be nation under another flag. His son, G. W. Custis Lee, did not resign from the U.S.A. until May 2, 1861. Fitzhugh Lee also accepted a commission from Lincoln, and resigned (May 21, 1861) after his illustrious uncle.

It is hard to understand how fundamental principles in government and individual patriotism and duty may be made, on moral or political grounds, to depend on the conduct of the temporary authorities of a State, or even on the voice of its people.

The action of Robert E. Lee in leaving the United States Army, and his reasons therefor, serve to show how and why many other army and navy officers abandoned their country's service. The Confederacy promptly recognized these "seceding officers," and for the most part gave them, early, high rank, and otherwise welcomed them with enthusiasm.

It is probably that the slowness of promotion in time of peace, in both the army and navy of the United States, caused many officers to resign and seek, with increased rank, new fortunes and renown in war.

It is not to be denied that the custom of hospitably treating officers while serving in the South, and otherwise socially recognizing them and their families, had won many to love the Southern people and their gallant ways. This, at least, held the most of the Southern-born officers to their own States, though in some cases, and perhaps in many, they did not believe in slavery.

It may be said also that the generally cold business character of the well-to-do Northern people, and their social indifference to one another, and especially to officers and their families serving at posts and in cities, did not attach them to the North. An officer in the regular service in time of peace, having no hope of high promotion before he reaches old age, has but little, save social recognition of himself and family, to make him contented and happy. This somewhat helpless condition makes him grateful for attentions shown, and jealous of inattention.

Turning more directly to the military situation on Lincoln's inauguration, we find Major Anderson holding Sumter, but practically in a state of siege, the Confederate authorities having assembled a large army at Charleston under Beauregard. Fort Moultrie and Castle Pinckney had been seized and manned; heavy ordnance had been placed in them, and batteries had been established commanding Fort Sumter.

Finally, on April 7th, Anderson was forbidden to purchase fresh provisions for his little band. On April 10th, Captain G. V. Fox, an ex-officer of the navy, sailed with a relief expedition, consisting of four war-ships, three steam-tugs, and a merchant steamer, having on board two hundred men and the necessary supplies of ammunition and provisions.

Beauregard and the Confederate authorities hearing promptly of Captain Fox's expedition and destination, on April 11th, formally demanded of Major Anderson the evacuation of Fort Sumter, which demand was refused.

At 4.30 o'clock, April 12th, a signal shell was fired at Fort Sumter from a mortar battery on James Island, and, immediately after, hostile guns were opened from batteries on Morris Island, Sullivan's Island, and Fort Moultrie, which were responded to from Fort Sumter.

This signal shell opened actual war; its discharge was, figuratively speaking, heard around the world; it awakened a lethargic people in the Northern States of the Union; it caused many who had never dreamed of war to prepare for it; it set on fire the blood of a people, North and South, of the same race, not to cool down until a half-million of men had been consumed in the fierce heat of battle; it was the opening shot intended to vindicate and establish human slavery as the essential pillar of a new-born nation, the first and only one on earth formed solely to eternally perpetuate human bondage as a social and fundamental political institution; but, in reality, this shot was also a signal to summon the friends of human freedom to arms, and to a battle never to end until slavery under the Constitution of the restored Union should cease to exist.

Captain Fox's expedition was not organized as he had planned it, and though it reached its destination off Sumter an hour before the latter was fired on, it could not, from want of light boats or tugs, send to the fort the needed supplies or men. Major Anderson, after two days' bombardment, was therefore forced to agree to evacuate the fort, which he accordingly did on Sunday afternoon, April 14th, after having saluted the flag as it was lowered.(18)

There were men North as well as South who censured President Lincoln and his advisers for not, as was at one time contemplated, peacefully evacuating Fort Sumter, thus removing the immediate cause for bringing on hostilities, and leaving still more time for compromise talk and Northern concession. But the Union was already dissolved so far as the seceding States were able to do it, and a peaceable restoration of those States to loyalty and duty was then plainly impossible.

South Carolina was the first to secede, and it is more than probable that President Lincoln clearly discerned that the overt act of assailing the Union by war would take place at Charleston. So long as surrenders of public property went on without resistance, the Confederacy was growing stronger and more defiant, and in time foreign recognition might come. It was much better for the Union cause for the first shot to be fired by Confederate forces in taking United States public property than by United States forces in retaking it after it had been lost.

The people North had wavered, not in their loyalty to the Union, but in their judgment as how to preserve it, or whether it could be preserved at all, until Sumter came, then firmness of conviction took immediate possession of them, and life and treasure alike thenceforward devoted to the maintenance of Federal authority. Of course, there was a troublesome minority North, who, either through political perversity, cowardice, or disloyalty, never did support the war, at least willingly. It was noticeable, however, that many of these were, through former residence or family relationship, imbued with pro-slavery notions and prejudice against the negro.

It should be said, also, that there were many in the North, born in slave States, who were the most pronounced against slavery. And there were those also, even in New England, who had never had an opportunity of being tainted with slavery, who opposed the coercion of the seceding States, and who would rather have seen the Union destroyed than saved by war. Again, long contact and co- operation of certain persons North with Southern slave-holders politically, and bitter opposition to President Lincoln and his party, made many reluctant to affiliate with the Union war-party. Some were too weak to rise above their prejudices, personal and political. Some were afraid to go to battle. There was also, though strangely inconsistent, a very considerable class of the early Abolitionists of the Garrison-Smith-Phillips school who did not support the war for the Union, but who preferred the slave- holding States should secede, and thus perpetuate the institution of slavery in America—the very thing, on moral grounds, such Abolitionists had always professed a desire to prevent. They opposed the preservation of the Union by coercion. They thus laid themselves open to the charge that they were only opposed to slavery in the Union, leaving it to flourish wherever it might outside of the Union. This position was not only inconsistent, but unpatriotic. The persons holding these views gave little or no moral or other support to the war for the preservation of the integrity of the Republic.

There were many loyal men in the South, especially in sections where slavery did not dominate. In the mountain regions of the South, opposition to secession was the rule, notably in Western Virginia, Eastern Kentucky, Eastern Tennessee, and Western North Carolina. There were also loyal men in Northern Alabama and Georgia. But wherever the determined spirit of the slave-holding disunionists controlled, as in the cities and more densely populated parts of the South, though the slave-holding population was even therein the minority, the white community was forced to array themselves with the Confederates. There were many South who, at first, determined to oppose disunion, but who succumbed to the pressure, under the belief that the Confederacy was an accomplished fact, or that the North either would not or could not fight successfully, and would be beaten in battle. Boasts of superiority and the great display and noisy preparation for war were misleading to those who only witnessed one side of the pending conflict. The North had, up to Sumter, been slow to act, and this was not reassuring to the friends of the Union South, or, perhaps, anywhere. The proneness of mankind to be on the successful side has shown itself in all trying times. It is only the virtue of individual obstinacy that enables the few to go against an unjust popular clamor.

But political party ties North were the hardest to break. Those who had been led to political success generally by the pro-slavery politicians of the South could not easily be persuaded that coercion did not mean, in some way, opposition to themselves and their past party principles. Though patriotism was the rule with persons of all parties North, there were yet many who professed that true loyalty lay along lines other than the preservation of the Union by war. These even, after Sumter fell, pretended to, and possibly did, believe what the South repudiated, to wit: That by the siren song of peace it could be wooed back to loyalty under the Constitution. There were, of course, those in the North who honestly held that the Abolitionists by their opposition to slavery and its extension into the Territories had brought on secession, and that such opposition justified it. This number, however, was at first not large, and as the war progressed it grew less and less. It should be remembered that coercion of armed secession was not undertaken to abolish slavery or to alter its status in the slave States. The statement, however, that the destruction of slavery was the purpose and end in view was persistently put forth as the justifying cause for dissolving the Union of States. The cry that the war on the part of the North was "an abolition war," that it was for "negro equality," had its effect on the more ignorant class of free laborers in both sections. There is an inherent feeling of or desire for superiority in all races, and this weakness, if it is such, is exceedingly sensitive to the touch of the demagogue.

There were those high in authority in the Confederate councils who were not entirely deluded by the apparent indifference and supineness of the Northern people. When Davis and his Cabinet held a conference (April 9th) to consider the propriety of firing on Fort Sumter, there was not entire unanimity on the question. Robert Toombs, Secretary of State, is reported to have said:

"The firing on that fort will inaugurate a civil war greater than any the world has yet seen; and I do not feel competent to advise you."(19)

And later in the conference Toombs, in opposing the attack on Sumter, said:

"Mr. President, at this time it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountain to ocean, and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal."(20)

The taking of Fort Sumter was the signal for unrestrained exultation of the part of the Secessionists. They for a time gave themselves up to the wildest demonstrations of joy. The South now generally looked upon the Confederacy as already established. The Confederate flag floated over Sumter in place of the Stars and Stripes. At the Catholic cathedral in Charleston a Te Deum was celebrated with great pomp, and the Episcopal bishop there attributed the event to the "infinite mercy of God, who specially interposed His hand in behalf of their righteous cause."

The taking of Sumter was undoubtedly the most significant event of the age. The achievement was bloodless; not a man was killed or a drop of blood spilled by a hostile shot, yet in inaugurated a war that freed four millions of God's people.(21)

Montgomery, the temporary Capital of the Confederacy, wildly celebrated the event as the first triumph.

Bloodless was Sumter; but the war it opened was soon to swallow up men by the thousand.

Fort Pickens, in Pensacola Harbor, now only remained in the possession of the United States of all the forts or strongholds in the seceded South.

This fortification was taken possession of by Lieut. A. J. Slemmer of the United States Army, and though in great danger of being attacked and taken, it was successfully reinforced on April 23, 1861, and never fell into Confederate hands. At a special session of the Confederate Congress at Montgomery (May 21, 1861), Richmond, Virginia, was made the Capital of the Confederacy, and the Congress adjourned to meet there.

Howell Cobb (late Buchanan's Secretary of the Treasury), the President of this Congress, with some of the truth of prophecy defiantly said:

"We have made all the necessary arrangements to meet the present crisis. Last night we adjourned to meet in Richmond on the 20th of July. I will tell you why we did this. The 'Old Dominion,' as you know, has at last shaken off the bonds of Lincoln, and joined her noble Southern sisters. Her soil is to be the battle-ground, and her streams are to be dyed with Southern blood. We felt that her cause was our cause, and that if she fell we wanted to die by her."

How was the news of the failure to reinforce Sumter, and of its being fired on and taken possession of by a rebellious people, received in the North? The evacuation of Fort Sumter was known in Washington and throughout the country almost as soon as at Charleston. Hostilities could no longer be averted, save by the ignominious surrender of all the blood-bought rights of the founders of the Republic.

It must not be assumed that the President of the United States had not already calculated on the probabilities of war. The portentous clouds had been long gathering, and the certain signs of the impending battle-storm had been discerned by Lincoln and his advisers. He had prepared, as best he could under the circumstances, to meet it. The long suspense was now broken. This was some relief. There were to be no more temporizing, no more compromises, no more offers of concession to slavery or to disunionists. The doctrine of the assumed right of a State, at will, and for any real or pretended grievance, to secede from and to dissolve its relation with the Union of the States, and to absolve itself from all its constitutional relations and obligations, was now about to be tried before a tribunal that would execute its inexorable decree with a power from which there is no appeal. Mercy is not an attribute of war, either in its methods or decisions. The latter must stand in the end as against the conquered. From war there is no appeal but to war. Time and enlightenment may modify or alter the mandates of war, but in this age of civilization and knowledge, neither nations nor peoples move backward. Ground gained for freedom or humanity, in politics, science, literature, or religion, is held, and from this fresh advances may be made. Needless cruelty may be averted in the conduct of war, but mercy is not an element in the science of destroying life and shedding blood on the battle-field.

Sunday, April 14th (though bearing date the 15th), the same day Sumter was evacuated, President Lincoln issued his proclamation, reciting that the laws of the United States had been and then were opposed and their execution obstructed in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by ordinary judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the marshals by law; he called for seventy-five thousand of the militia of the several States of the Union; appealed to all loyal citizens to maintain the honor, integrity, and existence of the National Union, and "the perpetuity of popular government, and to redress wrongs already long enough endured." "The first service," the proclamation recites, "assigned to the forces called forth will probably be to repossess the forts, places, and property which have been seized from the Union."

It commanded the persons composing the combinations referred to, "to disperse and retire peaceably to their respective abodes within twenty days."

It called Congress to convene Thursday, July 4, 1861, in extraordinary session, "to consider and determine such measures as, in their wisdom, the public safety and interest may seem to demand."

This proclamation was the first announcement by President Lincoln of a deliberate purpose to preserve the integrity of the Republic by a resort to arms. In his recent Inaugural Address he had, almost pathetically, pleaded for peace—for friendship; and there is no doubting that his sincere desire was to avoid bloodshed. He then had no thought of attacking slavery, but rather to protect and grant it more safeguards in the States where it existed. Later, on many occasions, when the war had done much to inflame public sentiment in the North against the South, he publicly declared he would save the "Union as it was." His most pronounced utterance on this point was:

"I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored, the nearer the Union will be 'the Union as it was.' If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that."(22)

But Abraham Lincoln was not understood in 1861, nor even later during the war, and not fully during life, by either his enemies or his personal or party friends. The South, in its leadership, was implacable in the spirit of its hostility, but the masses, even there, in time came to understand his true purposes and sincere character.

Two days after the call for seventy-five thousand troops, President Davis responded to it by proclaiming to the South that President Lincoln had announced the intention of "invading the Confederacy with an armed force for the purpose of capturing its fortresses, subverting its independence, and subjecting the free people thereof to a foreign power." In the same proclamation he invited persons to take service in private armed vessels on the high seas, tendering to such persons as would accept them commissions or letters of marque and reprisal.

At this time a military spirit had been aroused throughout the seceded States, and a large number of well-equipped Southern troops were already in the field, chiefly at Charleston and Pensacola—in all (including about 16,000 on their way to Virginia) about 35,000. The field, staff, and general officers in charge of these troops were mainly graduates of West Point or other military schools; even the captains of companies were many of them educated in the institutions referred to. It is not to be denied that a higher military spirit existed in the South than in the North prior to the war. The young men from plantations were more generally unemployed at active labor, and hence had more time to cultivate a martial spirit than the hard-working young men of the North.

The summons to arms found the North unprepared so far as previous spirit and training were concerned; yet it did not hesitate, and troops were, within two days, organized and on their way from several of the States to the defense of Washington. The 6th Massachusetts was fired upon by a riotous mob in the streets of Baltimore on April 19th. On every side war levies and preparations for war went forward. The farm, the shop, the office, the counting- room, the professions, the schools and colleges, the skilled and the unskilled in all kinds of occupation, gave up of their best to fill the patriotic ranks. The wealthy, the well-to-do, and the poor were found in the same companies and regiments, on a common footing as soldiers, and often men theretofore moving in the highest social circles were contentedly commanded by those of the humblest social civil life.

The companies were, as a general rule, commanded by men of no previous military training, though wherever a military organization existed it was made a nucleus for a volunteer company. Often indifferent men, with a little skill in drilling soldiers, and with no other known qualifications, were sought out and eagerly commissioned by governors of States as field officers, a colonelcy often being given to such persons. A volunteer regiment was considered fortunate if it had among its field officers a lieutenant from the regular army, or even a person from civil life who had gained some little military experience.

General officers were too often, from apparent necessity, taken from those who had more influence than military skill. Some of these, however, by patient toil, coupled with zeal and brains, performed valuable service to their country and won honorable names as soldiers. But the most of them made only moderate officers and fair reputations. War develops and inspires men, and if it continues long, great soldiers are evolved from its fierce conflicts.

Accidental good fortune in war sometimes renders weak and unworthy men conspicuous. Accidental bad fortune in war often overtakes able, worthy, honest, honorable men of the first promise and destroys them.(23) Very few succeed in a long war through pure military genius alone, if there is such a thing. Many, in the heat of battle- field experiences and in campaigns are inspired with the common sense that makes them, through success, really great soldiers. The indispensable quality of personal bravery, commonly supposed sufficient to make a man a valuable officer, is often of the smallest importance. A merely brave, rash man in the ranks may be of some value as an inspiring example to his immediate comrades, but he is hardly equal for that purpose to the intelligent soldier who obeys orders, and, though never reckless, yet, through a proper amount of individual pride, does his whole duty without braggadocio.

A mere dashing officer is more and more a failure, and unfitted to command, in proportion as he is high in rank. Rash personal conduct which might be tolerated in a lieutenant would in a lieutenant- general be conclusive of his unfitness to hold any general command. Of course, there are rare emergencies when an officer, let his rank be what it may, should lead in an assault or forlorn hope, or rush in to stay a panic among his own troops.