5: Secession
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In tracing American history from 1854 to 1860 we cannot fail to
observe that it reduces itself chiefly to a problem in that
science which politicians understand so well--applied psychology.
Definite types of men moulded by the conditions of those days are
the determining factors--not the slavery question in itself; not,
primarily, economic forces; not a theory of government, nor a
clash of theories; not any one thing; but the fluid, changeful
forces of human nature, battling with circumstances and
expressing themselves in the fashion of men's minds. To say this
is to acknowledge the fatefulness of sheer feeling. Davis
described the situation exactly when he said, in 1860, "A
sectional hostility has been substituted for a general
fraternity." To his own question, "Where is the remedy?" he gave
the answer, "In the hearts of the people." There, after all, is
the conclusion of the whole matter. The strife between North and
South had ceased to be a thing of the head; it had become a thing
of the heart. Granted the emotions of 1860, the way in which our
country staggered into war has all the terrible fascination of a
tragedy on the theme of fate.
That a secession movement would begin somewhere in the South
before the end of 1860 was a foregone conclusion. South Carolina
was the logical place, and in South Carolina the inevitable
occurred. The presidential election was quickly followed by an
election of delegates, on the 6th of December, to consider in
convention the relations of the State with the Union. The
arguments before the Convention were familiar and had been
advocated since 1851. The leaders of the disunionists were the
same who had led the unsuccessful movement of ten years before.
The central figure was Rhett, who never for a moment had wavered.
Consumed his life long by the one idea of the independence of
South Carolina, that stern enthusiast pressed on to a triumphant
conclusion. The powers which had defeated him in 1851 were now
either silent or converted, so that there was practically no
opposition. In a burst of passionate zeal the independence of
South Carolina was proclaimed on December 20, 1860, by an
ordinance of secession.
Simultaneously, by one of those dramatic coincidences which make
history stranger than fiction, Lincoln took a step which
supplemented this action and established its tragic significance.
What that step was will appear in a moment.
Even before the secession began, various types of men in politics
had begun to do each after his kind. Those whom destiny drove
first into a corner were the lovers of political evasion. The
issue was forced upon them by the instantaneous demand of the
people of South Carolina for possession of forts in Charleston
Harbor which were controlled by the Federal Government.
Anticipating such a demand, Major Robert Anderson, the commandant
at Charleston, had written to Buchanan on the 23d of November
that "Fort Sumter and Castle Pinckney must be garrisoned
immediately, if the Government determines to keep command of this
harbor."
In the mind of every American of the party of political evasion,
there now began a sad, internal conflict. Every one of them had
to choose among three courses: to shut his eyes and to continue
to wail that the function of government is to do nothing; to make
an end of political evasion and to come out frankly in approval
of the Southern position; or to break with his own record, to
emerge from his evasions on the opposite side, and to confess
himself first and before all a supporter of the Union. One or
another of these three courses, sooner or later, every man of the
President's following chose. We shall see presently the relative
strength of the three groups into which that following broke and
what strange courses sometimes tragic, sometimes comic--two of
the three pursued. For the moment our concern is how the
division manifested itself among the heads of the party at
Washington.
The President took the first of the three courses. He held it
with the nervous clutch of a weak nature until overmastered by
two grim men who gradually hypnotized his will. The
turning-point for Buchanan, and the last poor crisis in his
inglorious career, came on Sunday, December 30th. Before that
day arrived, his vacillation had moved his friends to pity and
his enemies to scorn. One of his best friends wrote privately,
"The President is pale with fear"; and the hostile point of view
found expression in such comments as this, "Buchanan, it is said,
divides his time between praying and crying. Such a perfect
imbecile never held office before."
With the question what to do about the forts hanging over his
bewildered soul, Buchanan sent a message to Congress on December
4, 1860, in which he sought to defend the traditional evasive
policy of his party. He denied the constitutional right of
secession, but he was also denied his own right to oppose such a
course. Seward was not unfair to the mental caliber of the
message when he wrote to his wife that Buchanan showed
"conclusively that it is the duty of the President to execute the
laws--unless somebody opposes him; and that no State has a right
to go out of the Union unless it wants to."
This message of Buchanan's hastened the inevitable separation of
the Democratic party into its elements. The ablest Southern
member of the Cabinet, Cobb, resigned. He was too strong an
intellect to continue the policy of "nothing doing" now that the
crisis had come. He was too devoted a Southerner to come out of
political evasion except on one side. On the day Cobb resigned
the South Carolina Representatives called on Buchanan and asked
him not to make any change in the disposition of troops at
Charleston, and particularly not to strengthen Sumter, a fortress
on an island in the midst of the harbor, without at least giving
notice to the state authorities. What was said in this interview
was not put in writing but was remembered afterward in different
ways with unfortunate consequences.
Every action of Buchanan in this fateful month continued the
disintegration of his following. Just as Cobb had to choose
between his reasonings as a Democratic party man and his feelings
as a Southerner, so the aged Cass, his Secretary of State, and an
old personal friend, now felt constrained to choose between his
Democratic reasoning and his Northern sympathies, and resigned
from the Cabinet on the 11th of December. Buchanan then turned
instinctively to the strongest natures that remained among his
close associates. It is a compliment to the innate force of
Jeremiah S. Black, the Attorney-General, that Buchanan advanced
him to the post of Secretary of State and allowed him to name as
his successor in the Attorney-Generalship Edwin M. Stanton. Both
were tried Democrats of the old style, "let-'em-alone" sort; and
both had supported the President in his Kansas policy. But each,
like every other member of his party, was being forced by
circumstances to make his choice among the three inevitable
courses, and each chose the Northern side. At once the question
of the moment was whether the new Secretary of State and his
powerful henchmen would hypnotize the President.
For a couple of weeks the issue hung in the balance. Then there
appeared at Washington commissioners from South Carolina
"empowered to treat...for the delivery of forts...and other real
estate" held by the Federal Government within their State. On
the day following their arrival, Buchanan was informed by
telegraph that Anderson had dismantled Fort Moultrie on the north
side of the harbor, had spiked its guns, and had removed its
garrison to the island fortress, Sumter, which was supposed to be
far more defensible. At Charleston his action was interpreted as
preparation for war; and all South Carolinians saw in it a
violation of a pledge which they believed the President had given
their congressmen, three weeks previous, in that talk which had
not been written down. Greatly excited and fearful of designs
against them, the South Carolina commissioners held two
conferences with the President on the 27th and 28th of December.
They believed that he had broken his word, and they told him so.
Deeply agitated and refusing to admit that he had committed
himself at the earlier conference, he said that Anderson had
acted on his own responsibility, but he refused to order him back
to the now ruined Fort Moultrie. One remark which he let fall
has been remembered as evidence of his querulous state of mind:
"You are pressing me too importunately" exclaimed the unhappy
President; "you don't give me time to consider; you don't give me
time to say my prayers; I always say my prayers when required to
act upon any great state affair." One remembers Hampden "seeking
the Lord" about ship money, and one realizes that the same act
may have a vastly different significance in different
temperaments.
Buchanan, however, was virtually ready to give way to the demand
of the commissioners. He drew up a paper to that effect and
showed it to the Cabinet. Then the turning-point came. In a
painful interview, Black, long one of his most trusted friends,
told him of his intention to resign, and that Stanton would go
with him and probably also the Postmaster-General, Holt. The
idea of losing the support of these strong personalities
terrified Buchanan, who immediately fell into a panic. Handing
Black the paper he had drawn up, Buchanan begged him to retain
office and to alter the paper as he saw fit. To this Black
agreed. The demand for the surrender of the forts was refused;
Anderson was not ordered back to Moultrie; and for the brief
remainder of Buchanan's administration Black acted as prime
minister.
A very powerful section of the Northern democracy, well typified
by their leaders at Washington, had thus emerged from political
evasion on the Northern side. These men, known afterwards as War
Democrats, combined with the Republicans to form the composite
Union party which supported Lincoln. It is significant that
Stanton eventually reappeared in the Cabinet as Lincoln's
Secretary of War, and that along with him appeared another War
Democrat, Gideon Welles, Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy. With
them, at last, Douglas, the greatest of all the old Democrats of
the North, took his position. What became of the other factions
of the old Democratic party remains to be told.
While Buchanan, early in the month, was weeping over the
pitilessness of fate, more practical Northerners were grappling
with the question of what was to be done about the situation. In
their thoughts they anticipated a later statesman and realized
that they were confronted by a condition and not by a theory.
Secession was at last a reality. Which course should they take?
What strikes us most forcibly, as we look back upon that day, is
the widespread desire for peace. The abolitionists form a
conspicuous example. Their watchword was "Let the erring sisters
go in peace." Wendell Phillips, their most gifted orator, a
master of spoken style at once simple and melodious, declaimed
splendidly against war. Garrison, in "The Liberator", followed
his example. Whittier put the same feeling into his verse:
They break the links of Union; shall we light
The flames of hell to weld anew the chain
On that red anvil where each blow is pain?
Horace Greeley said in an editorial in the "New York Tribune":
"If the cotton states shall decide that they can do better out of
the Union than in it, we shall insist on letting them go in
peace. Whenever a considerable section of our Union shall
deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive
measures designed to keep them in. We hope never to live in a
republic where one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets."
The Democrats naturally clung to their traditions, and, even when
they went over, as Black and Stanton did, to the Anti-Southern
group, they still hoped that war would not be the result.
Equally earnest against war were most of the Republicans, though
a few, to be sure, were ready to swing the "Northern hammer."
Summer prophesied that slavery would "go down in blood." But the
bulk of the Republicans were for a sectional compromise, and
among them there was general approbation of a scheme which
contemplated reviving the line of the Missouri Compromise, and
thus frankly admitting the existence of two distinct sections,
and guaranteeing to each the security of its own institutions.
The greatest Republican boss of that day, Thurlow Weed, came out
in defense of this plan.
No power was arrayed more zealously on the side of peace of any
kind than the power of money. It was estimated that two hundred
millions of dollars were owed by Southerners to Northerners.
War, it was reasoned, would cause the cancellation of these
obligations. To save their Southern accounts, the moneyed
interests of the North joined the extremists of Abolition in
pleading to let the erring sisters go in peace, if necessary,
rather than provoke them to war and the confiscation of debts.
It was the dread of such an outcome--which finally happened and
ruined many Northern firms--that caused the stock-market in New
York to go up and down with feverish uncertainty. Banks
suspended payment in Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia.
The one important and all-engrossing thing in the mind's eye of
all the financial world at this moment was that specter of unpaid
Southern accounts.
At this juncture, Senator Crittenden of Kentucky submitted to the
Senate a plan which has been known ever since as the Crittenden
Compromise. It was similar to Weed's plan, but it also provided
that the division of the country on the Missouri Compromise line
should be established by a constitutional amendment, which would
thus forever solidify sectionalism. Those elements of the
population generally called the conservative and the responsible
were delighted. Edward Everett wrote to Crittenden, "I saw with
great satisfaction your patriotic movement, and I wish from the
bottom of my heart it might succeed"; and August Belmont in a
letter to Crittenden spoke for the moneyed interest: "I have yet
to meet the first Union-loving man, in or out of politics, who
does not approve your compromise proposition...."
The Senate submitted the Compromise to a Committee of Thirteen.
In this committee the Southern leaders, Toombs and Davis, were
both willing to accept the Compromise, if a majority of the
Republican members would agree. Indeed, if the Republicans would
agree to it, there seemed no reason why a new understanding
between the sections might not be reached, and no reason why
sectionalism, if accepted as the basis of the government, might
not solve the immediate problem and thus avert war.
In this crisis all eyes were turned to Seward, that conspicuous
Republican who was generally looked upon as the real head of his
party. And Seward, at that very moment, was debating whether to
accept Lincoln's offer of the Secretaryship of State, for he
considered it vital to have an understanding with Lincoln on the
subject of the Compromise. He talked the matter over with Weed,
and they decided that Weed should go to Springfield and come to
terms with Lincoln. It was the interview between Weed and
Lincoln held, it seems, on the very day on which the Ordinance of
Secession was adopted--which gave to that day its double
significance.
Lincoln refused point-blank to accept the compromise and he put
his refusal in writing. The historic meaning of his refusal, and
the significance of his determination not to solve the problem of
the hour by accepting a dual system of government based on
frankly sectional assumptions, were probably, in a measure, lost
on both Weed and Seward. They had, however, no misunderstanding
of its practical effect. This crude Western lawyer had certain
ideas from which he would not budge, and the party would have to
go along with him. Weed and Seward therefore promptly fell into
line, and Seward accepted the Secretaryship and came out in
opposition to the Compromise. Other Republicans with whom
Lincoln had communicated by letter made known his views, and
Greeley announced them in The Tribune. The outcome was the solid
alignment of all the Republicans in Congress against the
Compromise. As a result, this last attempt to reunite the
sections came to nothing.
Not more than once or twice, if ever, in American history, has
there been such an anxious New Year's Day as that which ushered
in 1861. A few days before, a Republican Congressman had written
to one of his constituents: "The heavens are indeed black and an
awful storm is gathering...I see no way that either North or
South can escape its fury." Events were indeed moving fast
toward disaster. The garrison at Sumter was in need of supplies,
and in the first week of the new year Buchanan attempted to
relieve its wants. But a merchant vessel, the Star of the West,
by which supplies were sent, was fired upon by the South Carolina
authorities as it approached the harbor and was compelled to turn
back. This incident caused the withdrawal from the Cabinet of
the last opposition members--Thompson, of Mississippi, the
Secretary of the Interior, and Thomas, of Maryland, the Secretary
of the Treasury. In the course of the month five Southern States
followed South Carolina out of the Union, and their Senators and
Representatives resigned from the Congress of the United States.
The resignation of Jefferson Davis was communicated to the Senate
in a speech of farewell which even now holds the imagination of
the student, and which to the men of that day, with the Union
crumbling around them, seemed one of the most mournful and
dramatic of orations. Davis possessed a beautiful, melodious
voice; he had a noble presence, tall, erect, spare, even ascetic,
with a flashing blue eye. He was deeply moved by the occasion;
his address was a requiem. That he withdrew in sorrow but with
fixed determination, no one who listened to him could doubt.
Early in February, the Southern Confederacy was formed with Davis
as its provisional President. With the prophetic vision of a
logical mind, he saw that war was inevitable, and he boldly
proclaimed his vision. In various speeches on his way South, he
had assured the Southern people that war was coming, and that it
would be long and bloody.
The withdrawal of these Southern members threw the control of the
House into the hands of the Republicans. Their realization of
their power was expressed in two measures which also passed the
Senate; Kansas was admitted--as a State with an anti-slavery
constitution; and the Morrill tariff, which they had failed to
pass the previous spring, now became law. Thus the Republicans
began redeeming their pledges to the anti-slavery men on the one
hand and to the commercial interest on the other. The time had
now arrived for the Republican nominee to proceed from
Springfield to Washington. The journey was circuitous in order
to enable Lincoln to speak at a number of places. Never before,
probably, had the Northern people felt such tense strain as at
that moment; never had they looked to an incoming President with
such anxious doubt. Would he prevent war? Or, if he could not
do that, would he be able to extricate the country--Heaven alone
knew how!--without a terrible ordeal? Since his election,
Lincoln had remained quietly at Springfield. Though he had
influenced events through letters to Congressmen, his one
conspicuous action during that winter was the defeat of the
Crittenden Compromise. The Southern President had called upon
his people to put their house in order as preparation for war.
What, now, had Lincoln to say to the people of the North?
The biographers of Lincoln have not satisfactorily revealed the
state of his mind between election and inauguration. We may
safely guess that his silence covered a great internal struggle.
Except for his one action in defeating the Compromise, he had
allowed events to drift; but by that one action he had taken upon
himself the responsibility for the drift. Though the country at
that time did not fully appreciate this aspect of the situation,
who now can doubt that Lincoln did? His mind was always a lonely
one. His very humor has in it, so often, the note of solitude,
of one who is laughing to make the best of things, of one who is
spiritually alone. During those months when the country drifted
from its moorings, and when war was becoming steadily more
probable, Lincoln, after the manner of the prophets, wrestled
alone with the problems which he saw before him. From the little
we know of his inward state, it is hard for us to conclude that
he was happy. A story which is told by his former partner, Mr.
Herndon, seems significant. As Lincoln was leaving his
unpretentious law-office for the last time, he turned to Mr.
Herndon and asked him not to take down their old sign. "Let it
hang there undisturbed," said he. "Give our clients to
understand that the election of a President makes no difference
in the firm.... If I live, I'm coming back some time, and then
we'll go right on practising law as if nothing had happened."
How far removed from self-sufficiency was the man whose thoughts,
on the eve of his elevation to the Presidency, lingered in a
provincial law office, fondly insistent that only death should
prevent his returning some time and resuming in those homely
surroundings the life he had led previous to his greatness. In a
mood of wistfulness and of intense preoccupation, he began his
journey to Washington. It was not the mood from which to strike
fire and kindle hope. To the anxious, listening country his
speeches on the journey to Washington were disappointing.
Perhaps his strangely sensitive mind felt too powerfully the
fatefulness of the moment and reacted with a sort of lightness
that did not really represent the real man. Be that as it may,
he was never less convincing than at that time. Nor were people
impressed by his bearing. Often he appeared awkward, too much in
appearance the country lawyer. He acted as a man who was ill at
ease and he spoke as a man who had nothing to say. Gloom
darkened the North as a consequence of these unfortunate
speeches, for they expressed an optimism which we cannot believe
he really felt, and which hurt him in the estimation of the
country. "There is no crisis but an artificial one," was one of
his ill-timed assurances, and another, "There is nothing going
wrong.... There is nothing that really hurts any one." Of his
supporters some were discouraged; others were exasperated; and an
able but angry partisan even went so far as to write in a private
letter, "Lincoln is a Simple Susan."
The fourth of March arrived, and with it the end of Lincoln's
blundering. One good omen for the success of the new
Administration was the presence of Douglas on the inaugural
platform. He had accepted fate, deeply as it wounded him, and
had come out of the shattered party of evasion on the side of his
section. For the purpose of showing his support of the
administration at this critical time, he had taken a place on the
stand where Lincoln was to speak. By one of those curious little
dramatic touches with which chance loves to embroider history,
the presence of Douglas became a gracious detail in the memory of
the day. Lincoln, worn and awkward, continued to hold his hat in
his hand. Douglas, with the tact born of social experience,
stepped forward and took it from him without--exposing Lincoln's
embarrassment.
The inaugural address which Lincoln now pronounced had little
similarity to those unfortunate utterances which he had made on
the journey to Washington. The cloud that had been over him,
whatever it was, had lifted. Lincoln was ready for his great
labor. The inaugural contained three main propositions. Lincoln
pledged himself not to interfere directly or indirectly with
slavery in the States where it then existed; he promised to
support the enforcement of the fugitive slave law; and he
declared he would maintain the Union. "No State," said he, "upon
its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union.... To the
extent of my ability I shall take care, as the Constitution
itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be
faithfully executed in all the States.... In doing this, there
need be no bloodshed or violence; and there shall be none, unless
it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to
me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and
places belonging to the government." Addressing the Southerners,
he said: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and
not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government
will not assail you.... We are not enemies but friends.... The
mystic cords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and
patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone, all over
this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when
again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of
our nature."
Gentle, as was the phrasing of the inaugural, it was perfectly
firm, and it outlined a policy which the South would not accept,
and which, in the opinion of the Southern leaders, brought them a
step nearer war. Wall Street held the same belief, and as a
consequence the price of stocks fell.
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