Mr. Corwin of Ohio wished a declaration from Congress that it was "highly inexpedient to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia unless with the consent of the States of Maryland and Virginia." Mr. Winter Davis suggested the Congress should request the States to revise their statutes with a view to repeal all personal-liberty bills, and further that the Fugitive-slave Law be so amended as to secure trial by jury to the fugitive slave, not in the free State where he was arrested, but in the slave State to which he might be taken. Mr. Morrill of Vermont offered a resolution declaring that all accessions of foreign territory shall hereafter be made by treaty stipulation, and that no treaty shall be ratified until it had received the legislative assent of two-thirds of all the States of the Union, and that neither Congress nor any Territorial Legislature shall pass any law establishing or prohibiting slavery in any Territory thus acquired until it shall have sufficient population to entitle it to admission to the Union. Mr. Houston of Alabama urged the restitution of the Missouri line of 36° 30´. There was in the judgment of many Southern men a better opportunity to effect an adjustment on this line of partition than upon any other basis that had been suggested. But the plea carried with it a national guaranty and protection of slavery on the southern side of the line, and its effect would inevitably have been in a few years to divide the Republic from ocean to ocean. Mr. Taylor of Louisiana wanted the Constitution so amended that the rights of the slave-holder in the Territories could be guarantied, and further amended so that no person, "unless he was of the Caucasian race and of pure and unmixed blood," should ever be allowed to vote for any officer of the National Government.
Mr. Charles Francis Adams proposed that the Constitution of the United States be so amended that no subsequent amendment thereto, "having for its object any interference with slavery, shall originate with any State that does not recognize that relation within its own limits, or shall be valid without the assent of every one of the States composing the Union." No Southern man, during the long agitation of the slavery questions extending from 1820 to 1860, had ever submitted so extreme a proposition as that of Mr. Adams. The most precious muniment of personal liberty never had such deep embedment in the organic law of the Republic as Mr. Adams now proposed for the protection of slavery. The well-grounded jealousy and fear of the smaller States had originally secured a provision that their right to equal representation in the Senate should never be taken from them even by an amendment of the Constitution. Mr. Adams now proposed to give an equal safeguard and protection to the institution of slavery. Yet the proposition was opposed by only three members of the committee of thirty-three,—Mason W. Tappan of New Hampshire, Cadwallader C. Washburn of Wisconsin, and William Kellogg of Illinois.
After a consideration of the whole subject, the majority of the committee made a report embodying nearly every objectionable proposition which had been submitted. The report included a resolution asking the States to repeal all their personal-liberty bills, in order that the recapture and return of fugitive slaves should in no degree be obstructed. It included an amendment to the Constitution as proposed by Mr. Adams. It offered to admit New Mexico, which then embraced Arizona, immediately, with its slave-code as adopted by the Territorial Legislature,—thus confirming and assuring its permanent character as a slave State. It proposed to amend the Fugitive-slave Law by providing that the right to freedom of an alleged fugitive should be tried in the slave State from which he was accused of fleeing, rather than in the free State where he was seized. It proposed, according to the demand of Mr. Toombs, that a law should be enacted in which all offenses against slave property by persons fleeing to other States should be tried where the offense was committed, making the slave-code, in effect, the test of the criminality of the act,—an act which, in its essential character, might frequently be one of charity and good will.
These propositions had the precise effect which, in cooler moments, their authors would have anticipated. They humiliated the North without appeasing or satisfying the South. Five Southern members made a minority report in which still further concessions were demanded. They submitted what was known as the Crittenden Compromise, demanding six amendments to the Constitution for the avowed purpose of placing slavery under the guardianship and protection of the National Government, and, after the example of Mr. Adams's proposed amendment, intrenching the institution where agitation could not disturb it, where legislation could not affect it, where amendments to the Constitution would be powerless to touch it.
—The first amendment proposed that in "all the territory of the United States south of the old Missouri line, either now held or to be hereafter acquired, the slavery of the African race is recognized as existing, not to be interfered with by Congress, but to be protected as property by all the departments of the Territorial Government during its continuance."
—The second amendment declared that "Congress shall have no power to interfere with slavery even in those places under its exclusive jurisdiction in the slave States."
—The third amendment took away from Congress the exclusive jurisdiction over the District of Columbia, as guarantied in the Constitution, declaring that Congress should "never interfere with slavery in the District, except with the consent of Virginia and Maryland, so long as it exists in the State of Virginia or Maryland, nor without the consent of the inhabitants of the District, nor without just compensation for the slaves. Nor shall Congress prohibit officers of the General Government nor members of Congress from bringing with them their slaves to the District, holding them there during the time their duties may require them to remain, and afterwards taking them from the District."
—The fourth amendment prohibited Congress from interfering with the transportation of slaves from one State to another, or from one State to any Territory south of the Missouri line, whether that transportation be by land, by navigable river, or by the sea.
—The fifth amendment conferred upon Congress the power, and prescribed its duty, to provide for the payment to the owner of a fugitive slave his full value from the National Treasury, in all cases where the marshal was prevented from arresting said fugitive by violence or intimidation, or where the fugitive, after arrest, was rescued by force.
—The sixth amendment provided for a perpetual existence of the five amendments just quoted, by placing them beyond the power of the people to change or revise—declaring that "no future amendment to the Constitution shall ever be passed that shall affect any provision of the five amendments just recited; that the provision in the original Constitution which guaranties the count of three- fifths of the slaves in the basis of representation, shall never be changed by any amendment; that no amendment shall ever be made which alters or impairs the original provision for the recovery of fugitives from service; that no amendment shall be made that shall ever permit Congress to interfere in any way with slavery in the State where it may be permitted."
Before Mr. Corwin submitted his report, Mr. Charles Francis Adams appears to have become disgusted with his own proposition for the amendment of the Constitution. This disgust was caused by the refusal of the Southern members of the committee to agree to the declaration that "peaceful acquiescence in the election of the Chief Magistrate, accomplished in accordance with every legal and constitutional requirement, is the paramount duty of every good citizen of the United States." The proposition of Mr. Adams to this effect was amended by Mr. Millson of Virginia, who substituted "high and imperative" for "paramount." But even in this modified form, seven Southern members asked to be excused from voting upon it, and Mr. Adams seems wisely to have thought that "if there could not be agreement on a proposition so fundamental and essential as that, it was of no use to seek any remedy for the existence of evils by legislation of Congress." Mr. Adams, therefore, made a report dissenting from the committee, stating that he had changed his course, and now declined to recommend the very measures which he had in good faith offered. This was on the 14th of January.
On the 31st of January Mr. Adams changed his course again, and returned to the unqualified support of the measures proposed by the committee. In his speech of that date, he asked, addressing the South, "How stands the case, then? We offer to settle the question finally in all of the present territory that you claim, by giving you every chance of establishing Slavery that you have any right to require of us. You decline to take the offer because you fear it will do you no good. Slavery will not go there. Why require protection where you will have nothing to protect? . . . All you appear to desire it is for New Mexico. Nothing else is left. Yet you will not accept New Mexico at once, because ten years of experience have proved to you that protection has been of no use thus far." These are somewhat extraordinary words in 1861 from a man who in 1850 had, as a Conscience Whig, declined to support Mr. Webster for making in advance the same statements, and for submitting arguments that were substantially identical.
During the debate, in which Mr. Adams arraigned the Disunionists of the South with considerable power, he was somewhat embarrassed by a Southern member who quoted resolutions which Mr. Adams had introduced in the Massachusetts Legislature in 1844, and which had been passed by that body, respecting the annexation of Texas. He had declared therein, just as Josiah Quincy had declared with reference to the acquisition of Louisiana, "that the power to unite an independent foreign State with the United States is not among the powers delegated to the General Government by the Constitution of the United States." He declared, further, that "the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, faithful to the compact between the people of the United States, according to the plain meaning and intent in which it was understood and acceded to by them, is sincerely anxious for its preservation; and that it is determined, as it doubts not other States are, to submit to undelegated powers in no body of men on earth; and that the project of the annexation of Texas, unless resisted on the threshold, may tend to drive these States into a dissolution of the Union." This resolution of Mr. Adams was unfortunate in every respect for his position in the debate on that day, since it really included and justified every constitutional heresy entertained by Mr. Calhoun, and claimed for the State of Massachusetts every power of secession or dissolution which was now asserted by the Southern States.
Mr. Webster, in one of his ablest speeches (in reply to Mr. Calhoun in February, 1833), devoted his great powers to demonstrating that the Constitution was not "a compact," and that the people of the States had not "acceded" to it. Mr. Adams had unfortunately used the two words which, according to Mr. Webster, belonged only to the lexicon of disloyalty. "If," said Mr. Webster, "in adopting the Constitution nothing was done butacceding to a compact, nothing would seem necessary in order to break it up but tosecede from the same compact." "Accession," as a word applied to political association, implies coming into a league, treaty, or confederacy. "Secession" implied departing from such league or confederacy. Mr. Adams had further declared that the people of Massachusetts are "faithful to the compact according to the plain meaning and intent in which it was understood by them." But according to Mr. Webster, and in accordance with the principles absolutely essential to maintain a constitutional government, Massachusetts had no part or lot in deciding the question which Mr. Adams's resolution covered. If Massachusetts reserved to herself the right to determine the sense in which she understood her accession to the compact of the Federal Government, she gave full warrant to South Carolina to determine for herself the sense of the compact to which she acceded, and therefore justified the action of the Southern States. Whether Texas was constitutionally or unconstitutionally annexed to the Union was no more to be decided by Massachusetts than the constitutionality of the prohibition of Slavery north of the Missouri line was to be decided by South Carolina. The position of Mr. Adams in 1844 had therefore returned to plague its inventor in 1861, and in a certain sense to weaken the position of the loyal States.
Various reports were submitted by members of the minority, of no special significance, differing often on immaterial points. The members from California and Oregon who represented the Breckinridge party of the North, united in a recommendation for a general convention to be called under the authority of the Constitution, to propose such amendments as would heal all existing differences, and afford sufficient guaranties to the growing interests of the government and people. The only bold words spoken were in the able report by Cadwallader C. Washburn of Wisconsin and Mason W. Tappan of New Hampshire. They made an exhaustive analysis of the situation in plain language. They reviewed ably and conclusively the report made by Mr. Corwin for the majority of the committee, and spoke as became men who represented the justice and the power of a great Republic. They vindicated the conduct of the General Government, and showed that the Union was not to be preserved by compromises nor by sacrifice of principle. They regarded the discontent and hostility in the South as without just cause, and intimated that those States might purchase at a high price some valuable information to be learned only in the school of experience. They embodied their entire recommendations in a single resolution in which they declared that the provisions of the Constitution were ample for the preservation of the Union; that it needed to be obeyed rather than amended; and that "our extrication from present difficulties is to be looked for in efforts to preserve and protect the public property and enforce the laws, rather than in new guaranties for particular interests, or in compromises, or concessions to unreasonable demands."
When the report of the committee of thirty-three came before the House for action, the series of resolution were first tested by a motion to lay upon the table, which was defeated by a vote of nearly two to one; and after angry debate running through several days, the resolutions, which were only directory in their character, were adopted by a large majority. When the constitutional amendment was reached, Mr. Corwin substituted for that which was originally draughted by Mr. Adams, an amendment declaring that "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 said State." This was adopted by a vote of 133 to 65. It was numbered as the thirteenth amendment to the Federal Constitution, and would have made slavery perpetual in the United States, so far as any influence or power of the National Government could affect it. It intrenched slavery securely in the organic law of the land, and elevated the privilege of the slave-holder beyond that of the owner of any other species of property. It received the votes of a large number of Republicans who were then and afterwards prominent in the councils of the party. Among the most distinguished were Mr. Sherman of Ohio, Mr. Colfax, Mr. C. F. Adams, Mr. Howard of Michigan, Mr. Windom of Minnesota, and Messrs. Moorhead and McPherson of Pennsylvania. The sixty-five negative votes were all Republicans whom the excitement of the hour did not drag from their moorings, and many of whom have since done, as they had done before, signal service for their party and their country. Thaddeus Stevens was at their head, and he was sustained by the two Washburns, by Bingham of Ohio, by Roscoe Conkling, by Anson Burlingame, by Owen Lovejoy, by Marston and Tappan of New Hampshire, by Galusha A. Grow, by Reuben E. Fenton, and by others who, if less conspicuous, were not less deserving.
When the proposition reached the Senate, it was adopted by a vote of 24 to 12, precisely the requisite two-thirds. Among those who aided in carrying it were Hunter of Virginia, Nicholson of Tennessee, Sebastian of Arkansas, and Gwin of California, who soon after proceeded to join the Rebellion. Eight Republican senators, Anthony of Rhode Island, Baker of Oregon, Dixon and Foster of Connecticut, Grimes and Harlan of Iowa, Morrill of Maine, and Ten Eyck of New Jersey, voted in the affirmative. Only twelve out of twenty-five Republican senators voted in the negative. Mr. Seward, Mr. Fessenden, Mr. Collamer, and others among the weightiest Republican leaders are not recorded as voting. As pairs were not announced, it may be presumed that they consented to the passage of the amendment. Before the resolution could reach the States for concurrence, either by convention or Legislature, the evidences of Southern outbreak had so increased that all such efforts at conciliation were seen to be vain, and in the end they proved hurtful. Only two States, Maryland and Ohio, gave their assent to the amendment. In the New- England States it was rejected, and in many it was not acted upon. Whoever reads the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution as it now stands, and compares it with the one which was proposed by the Thirty-sixth Congress, will be struck with the rapid revolution of public sentiment, and will not be at a loss to draw some useful lessons as to the course of public opinion and the conduct of public men in times of high excitement.
The propositions of the committee of thirty-three to admit New Mexico as a slave State, and to amend the Fugitive-slave Law, were both passed by the House, but were defeated or not acted upon in the Senate. In that body the efforts of the friends of conciliation were mainly confined to the Crittenden compromise which has already been outlined in the proceedings of the House. But for the eminent respectability of the venerable senator from Kentucky, his propositions would have had short consideration. They were of a character not to be entertained by a free people. They dealt wholly in the finding of new guaranties for slavery, without attempting to intimate the possible necessity of new guaranties for freedom. Perhaps the most vicious feature in this whole series of proposed amendments to the Constitution was the guaranty of slavery against the power of Congress in all territory of the United States south of 36° 30´. This offered a premium upon the acquisition of territory, and was an encouragement to schemes of aggression against friendly powers south of the United States, which would always have had the sympathy and support of one-half the Union, and could hardly have been resisted by any moral power of the General Government. It would have opened anew the old struggle for equality between free States and slave States, and would in all probability have led the country to war within three years from its adoption,—war with Mexico for the border States of that Republic, war with Spain for the acquisition of Cuba. This would have followed as matter of policy with Southern leaders, whether they intended to abide in the Union, or whether they intended, at some more advantageous and opportune moment, to secede from it. If they concluded to remain, their political power in the National Government would have been greatly increased from the acquisition of new States. If they desired to secede, they would have acquired a much more formidable strength and vastly larger area by the addition of Southern territory to which the Crittenden propositions would not only have invited but driven them.
While these propositions were under discussion, Mr. Clark of New Hampshire offered as a substitute the resolution with which Messrs. Washburn and Tappan had closed their report in the House,—a resolution of which Mr. Clark was the author, and which he had previously submitted to the consideration of the Senate. The test question in the Senate was whether Mr. Clark's resolution should be substituted for the Crittenden proposition, and this was carried by a vote of 25 to 23. The twenty-five were all Republicans; the twenty-three were all Democrats, except Mr. Crittenden of Kentucky and Mr. Kennedy of Maryland, who had been supporters of Mr. Bell in the Presidential election. It is a fact worthy of note that six senators from the extreme Southern States sat in their seats and refused to vote on the proposition. Had they chosen they could have defeated the action. But they believed, with a certain consistency and wisdom, that no measure could be of value to the South unless it had the concurrence of senators from the North; and with this motive they imposed upon the Republicans of the Senate the responsibility of deciding the Crittenden proposition. It was matter of congratulation with Republicans who did not lose their judgment in that trying season, that the Senate stood firmly against the fatal compromise which was urged by so many strong influences. Much was forgiven for other unwise concessions, so long as this was definitely rejected.
Meanwhile a body of men had assembled in the National Capital upon the invitation of the State of Virginia, for the purpose of making an earnest effort to adjust the unhappy controversy. The Peace Congress, as it was termed, came together in the spirit in which the Constitution was originally formed. Its members professed, and no doubt felt, an earnest desire to afford to the slave-holding States, consistently with the principles of the Constitution, adequate guaranties for the security of their rights. Virginia's proposition was brought to the National Capital by Ex-President John Tyler, deputed by his State to that honorable duty. In response to the invitation twenty-one States, fourteen free and seven slave, had sent delegates, who assembled in Washington on the 4th of February, 1861. After remaining in session some three weeks, the Peace Congress submitted an article of amendment to the Constitution, contained in seven sections, making as many distinct propositions.
—The first section restored the line of the Missouri Compromise as it was before the repeal in 1854.
—The second provided that no further acquisition of territory should be made except by the consent of a majority of all the senators from the slave-holding States and a majority of all the senators from the free States.
—The third declared that no amendment to the Constitution shall be made interfering with Slavery in the States, nor shall Congress prohibit it in the District of Columbia, nor interfere with the inter-State slave-trade, nor place any higher rate of taxation on slaves than upon land. At the same time it abolished the slave- trade in the District of Columbia.
—The fourth provided that no construction of the Constitution shall prevent any of the States aiding, by appropriate legislation, in the arrest and delivery of fugitive slaves.
—The fifth forever prohibited the foreign slave-trade.
—The sixth declared that the amendments to the Constitution herein proposed shall not be abolished or changed without the consent of all the States.
—The seventh provided for the payment from the National Treasury for all fugitive slaves whose recapture is prevented by violence.
These propositions met with little favor in either branch of Congress. Mr. Crittenden, finding that he could not pass his own resolutions, endeavored to substitute these, but could induce only six senators to concur with him. In the House there was no action whatever upon the report. The venerable Ex-President was chosen to preside over the deliberations of the conference, but was understood not to approve the recommendations. Far as they went, they had not gone far enough to satisfy the demands of Virginia, and still less the demands of the States which had already seceded. It is a curious circumstance that one of the delegates from Pennsylvania, Mr. J. Henry Puleston, was not a citizen of the United States, but a subject of Queen Victoria, and is now (1884), and has been for several years, a member of the British Parliament.
To complete the anomalies and surprises of that session of Congress, it is necessary to recall the fact, that, with a Republican majority in both branches, Acts organizing the Territories of Colorado, Dakota, and Nevada were passed without containing a word of prohibition on the subject of slavery. From the day that the administration of Mr. Polk began its career of foreign acquisition, the question of slavery in the Territories had been a subject of controversy between political parties. When the Missouri Compromise was repealed, and the Territories of the United States north of the line of 36° 30´ were left without slavery inhibition or restriction, the agitation began which ended in the overthrow of the Democratic party and the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States. It will therefore always remain as one of the singular contradictions in the political history of the country, that, after seven years of almost exclusive agitation on this one question, the Republicans, the first time they had the power as a distinctive political organization to enforce the cardinal article of their political creed, quietly and unanimously abandoned it. And the abandoned it without a word of explanation. Mr. Sumner and Mr. Wade and Mr. Chandler, the most radical men in the Senate on the Republican side, sat still and allowed the bill to be passed precisely as reported by James S. Green of Missouri, who had been the ablest defender of the Breckinridge Democracy in that body. In the House, Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, Mr. Owen Lovejoy, the Washburns, and all the other radical Republicans vouchsafed no word explanatory of this extraordinary change of position.
If it be said in defense of this course that all the Territories lay north of 36° 30´, and were therefore in no danger of slavery, it only introduces fresh embarrassment by discrediting the action of the Republican party in regard to Kansas, and discrediting the earnest and persistent action of the anti-slavery Whigs and Free- Soilers, who in 1848 successfully insisted upon embodying the Wilmot Proviso in the Act organizing the Territory of Oregon. Surely, if an anti-slavery restriction were needed for Oregon, it was needed for Dakota which lay in the same latitude. Beyond doubt, if the Territory of Kansas required a prohibition against slavery, the Territory of Colorado and the Territory of Nevada, which lay as far south, needed it also. To allege that they could secure the President's approval of the bills in the form in which they were passed, and that Mr. Buchanan would veto each and every one of them if an anti-slavery proviso were embodied, is to give but a poor excuse, for, five days after the bills received the Executive signature, Mr. Buchanan went out of office, and Abraham Lincoln was installed as President.
If, indeed, it be fairly and frankly admitted, as was the fact, that receding from the anti-slavery position was part of the conciliation policy of the hour, and that the Republicans did it the more readily because they had full faith that slavery never could secure a foothold in any of the Territories named, it must be likewise admitted that the Republican party took precisely the same ground held by Mr. Webster in 1850, and acted from precisely the same motives that inspired the 7th of March speech. Mr. Webster maintained for New Mexico only what Mr. Sumner now admitted for Colorado and Nevada. Mr. Webster acted from the same considerations that now influenced and controlled the judgment of Mr. Seward. As matter of historic justice, the Republicans who waived the anti- slavery restriction should at least have offered and recorded their apology for any animadversions they had made upon the course of Mr. Webster ten years before. Every prominent Republican senator who agreed in 1861 to abandon the principle of the Wilmot Proviso in organizing the Territories of Colorado and Nevada, had, in 1850, heaped reproach upon Mr. Webster for not insisting upon the same principle for the same territory. Between the words of Mr. Seward and Mr. Sumner in the one crisis and their votes in the other, there is a discrepancy for which it would have been well to leave on record an adequate explanation. The danger to the Union, in which they found a good reason for receding from the anti-slavery restriction on the Territories, had been cruelly denied to Mr. Webster as a justifying motive. They found in him only a guilty recreancy to sacred principle for the same act which in themselves was inspired by devotion to the Union.
It was certainly a day of triumph for Mr. Douglas. He was justified in his boast that, after all the bitter agitation which followed the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, the Republicans adopted his principle and practically applied its provisions in the first Territory which they had the power to organize. Mr. Douglas had been deprived of his chairmanship of the Committee of Territories by the Southern leaders, and his place had been given to James S. Green of Missouri. His victory therefore was complete when Mr. Seward waived the anti-slavery guaranty on behalf of the Republicans, and when Mr. Green waived the pro-slavery guaranty on behalf of the Breckinridge Democracy. It was the apotheosis of Popular Sovereignty, and Mr. Douglas was pardonable even for an excessive display of self-gratulation over an event so suggestive and so instructive. Mr. Grow, the chairman of Territories in the House, frankly stated that he had agreed with Mr. Green, chairman of Territories in the Senate, that there should be no reference whatever to the question of slavery in any of the Territorial bills. It cannot be denied that this action of the Republican party was a severe reflection upon that prolonged agitation for prohibition of slavery in the Territories by Congressional enactment. A surrender of the principle with due explanation of the reasons, properly recorded for the instruction of those who should come after, would have left the Republican party in far better position than did the precipitate retreat which they made without a word of apology, without an attempt at justification.
If receding from the anti-slavery creed of the Republican party was intended as a conciliation to the South, the men who made the movement ought to have seen that it would prove ineffectual. The Republicans no more clearly perceived that they risked nothing on the question of slavery in organizing those Territories without restriction, than the Southern leaders perceived that they would gain nothing by it. In vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird. The South had realized their inability to compete with Northern emigration by their experience in attempting to wrest Kansas from the control of free labor. They were not to be deluded now by a nominal equality of rights in Territories where, in a long contest for supremacy, they were sure to be outnumbered, outvoted, and finally excluded by organic enactment. The political agitation and the sentimental feeling on this question were therefore exposed on both sides,—the North frankly confessing that they did not desire a Congressional restriction against slavery, and the South as frankly conceding that the demand they had so loudly made for admission to the Territories was really worth nothing to the institution of slavery. The whole controversy over the Territories, as remarked by a witty representative from the South, related to an imaginary negro in an impossible place.
James Stephens Green, who was so prominent in this legislation, who prepared and reported the bills, and who was followed by a unanimous Senate, terminated his public service on the day Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated. He was then but forty-four years of age, and had served only four years in the Senate. He died soon after. No man among his contemporaries had made so profound an impression in so short a time. He was a very strong debater. He had peers, but no master, in the Senate. Mr. Green on the one side and Mr. Fessenden on the other were the senators whom Douglas most disliked to meet, and who were the best fitted in readiness, in accuracy, in logic, to meet him. Douglas rarely had a debate with either in which he did not lose his temper, and to lose one's temper in debate is generally to lose one's cause. Green had done more than any other man in Missouri to break down the power of Thomas H. Benton as a leader of the Democracy. His arraignment of Benton before the people of Missouri in 1849, when he was but thirty-two years of age, was one of the most aggressive and successful warfares in our political annals. His premature death was a loss to the country. He was endowed with rare powers which, rightly directed, would have led him to eminence in the public service.
It would be unjust to the senators and representatives in Congress to leave the impression that their unavailing efforts at conciliating the South were any thing more or less than a compliance with a popular demand which overspread the free States. As soon as the election was decided in favor of Mr. Lincoln, and the secession movement began to develop in the South, tens of thousands of those who had voted for the Republican candidates became affrighted at the result of their work. This was especially true in the Middle States, and to a very considerable extent in New England. Municipal elections throughout the North during the ensuing winter showed a great falling-off in Republican strength. There was, indeed, in every free State what might, in the political nomenclature of the day, be termed an utter demoralization of the Republican party. The Southern States were going farther than the people had believed was possible. The wolf which had been so long used to scare, seemed at last to have come. Disunion, which had been so much threatened and so little executed, seemed now to the vision of the multitude an accomplished fact,—a fact which inspired a large majority of the Northern people with a sentiment of terror, and imparted to their political faith an appearance of weakness and irresolution.
Meetings to save the Union upon the basis of surrender of principle were held throughout the free States, while a word of manly resistance to the aggressive disposition of the South, or in re-affirmation of principles so long contended for, met no popular response. Even in Boston, Wendell Phillips needed the protection of the police in returning to his home after one of his eloquent and defiant harangues, and George William Curtis was advised by the Republican mayor of Philadelphia that his appearance as a lecturer in that city would be extremely unwise. He had been engaged to speak on "The Policy of Honesty." But so great had been the change in popular feeling in a city which Mr. Lincoln had carried by a vast majority, that the owner of the hall in which Mr. Curtis was to appear, warned him that a riot was anticipated if he should speak. Its doors were closed against him. This was less than five weeks after Mr. Lincoln was elected, and the change of sentiment in Philadelphia was but an index to the change elsewhere in the North.
The South, meanwhile, had been encouraged in the work of secession by thousands of Democrats who did not desire or look for the dissolution of the Union, but wished to plot of secession to go far enough, and the danger to the Union to become just imminent enough, to destroy their political opponents. Men who afterwards attested their loyalty to the Union by their lives, took part in this dangerous scheme of encouraging a revolt which they could not repress. They apparently did not comprehend that lighted torches cannot be carried with safety through a magazine of powder; and, though they were innocent of intentional harm, they did much to increase an evil which was rapidly growing beyond all power of control. As already indicated, the position of President Buchanan and the doctrines of his message had aided in the development of this feeling in the North. It was further stimulated by the commercial correspondence between the two sections. The merchants and factors in the South did not as a class desire Disunion, and they were made to believe that the suppression of Abolitionism in the North would restore harmony and good feeling. Abolitionism was but another name for the Republican party, and in business circles in the free State that party had come to represent the source of all our trouble. These men did not yet measure the full scope of the combination against the Union, and persisted in believing that its worst enemies were in the North. The main result of these misconceptions was a steady and rapid growth of strength throughout the slave States in the movement for Secession.
Fruitless and disappointing as were the proceedings of this session of Congress on the subjects which engrossed so large a share of public attention, a most important change was accomplished in the revenue laws,—a change equivalent to a revolution in the economic and financial system of the government. The withdrawal of the Southern senators and representatives left both branches of Congress under the control of the North, and by a considerable majority under the direction of the Republican party. In the preceding session of Congress the House, having a small Republican majority, had passed a bill advancing the rate of duties upon foreign importations. This action was not taken as an avowed movement for protection, but merely as a measure to increase the revenue. During Mr. Buchanan's entire term the receipts of the Treasury had been inadequate to the payment of the annual appropriations by Congress, and as a result the government had been steadily incurring debt at a rate which was afterwards found to affect the public credit at a critical juncture in our history. To check this increasing deficit the House insisted on a scale of duties that would yield a larger revenue, and on the 10th of May, 1860, passed the bill. In the Senate, then under the control of the Democratic party, with the South in the lead, the bill encountered opposition. Senators from the Cotton States thought they saw in it the hated principle of protection, and protection meant in their view, strength and prestige for the manufacturing States of the North. The bill had been prepared in committee and reported in the House by a New- England member, Mr. Morrill of Vermont, which of itself was sufficient in the eyes of many Southern men to determine its character and its fate.
Mr. Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia was at the time Chairman of the Senate Committee of Finance. He was a man of sturdy common sense, slow in his methods, but strong and honest in his processes of reasoning. He advanced rapidly in public esteem, and in 1839, at thirty years of age, was chosen Speaker of the House of Representatives. He was a sympathizer with the South-Carolina extremists, and coalesced with the Whigs to defeat the regular Democrats who were sustaining the Administration of Mr. Van Buren. In 1847 Mr. Hunter was chosen senator from Virginia, and served continuously till the outbreak of the war. He was a conservative example of that class of border State Democrats who were blinded to all interests except those of slavery.
The true wealth of Virginia, in addition to her agriculture and in aid of it, lay in her vast deposits of coal and iron, in her extensive forests, in her unsurpassed water power. Her natural resources were beyond computation, and suggested for her a great career as a commercial and manufacturing State. Her rivers on the eastern slope connected her interior with the largest and finest harbor on the Atlantic coast of North America, and her jurisdiction extended over an empire beyond the Alleghanies. Her climate was salubrious, and so temperate as to forbid the plea always used in justification of negro slavery in the Cotton States, that the white man could not perform agricultural labor. A recognition of Virginia's true destiny would point to Northern alliances and Northern sympathies. Mr. Hunter's sympathies were by birth and rearing with the South. The alliances he sought looked towards the Gulf and not towards the Lakes. Any measure which was displeasing to South Carolina or Alabama was displeasing to Mr. Hunter, and he gave no heed to what might be the relations of Virginia with the New England, Middle, and Western States. He measured the policy of Virginia by the policy of States whose geographical position, whose soil, climate, products, and capacities were totally different from hers. By Mr. Hunter's policy, Virginia could sell only slaves to the South. A more enlightened view would have enabled Virginia to furnish a large proportion of the fabrics which the Southern States were compelled to purchase in communities far to the north of her. Mr. Hunter was no doubt entirely honest in this course. He was upright in all his personal and political relations, but he could not forget that he was born a Southern man and a slave-holder. He had a full measure of that pride in his State so deeply cherished by Virginians. At the outset of his public career he became associated with Mr. Calhoun, and early imbibed the doctrines of that illustrious senator, who seldom failed to fascinate the young men who fell within the sphere of his personal influence.
Mr. Hunter therefore naturally opposed the new tariff, and under his lead all action upon it was defeated for the session. This conclusion was undoubtedly brought about by considerations outside of the legitimate scope of the real question at issue. The struggle for the Presidency was in progress, and any concession by the slave States on the tariff question would weaken the Democratic party in the section where its chief strength lay, and would correspondingly increase the prestige of Lincoln's supporters in the North and of Mr. Fillmore's followers in the South. Mr. Hunter had himself just received a strong support in the Charleston convention for the Presidency, securing a vote almost equal to that given to Douglas. This was an additional tie binding him to the South, and he responded to the wishes of that section by preventing all action on the tariff bill of the House pending the Presidential struggle of 1860.
But the whole aspect of the question was changed when at the ensuing session of Congress the senators and representatives from the Cotton States withdrew, and betook themselves to the business of establishing a Southern Confederacy. Mr. Hunter's opposition was not relaxed, but his supporters were gone. Opposition was thus rendered powerless, and the first important step towards changing the tariff system from low duties to high duties, from free-trade to protection, was taken by the passage of the Morrill Bill on the second day of March, 1861. Mr. Buchanan was within forty-eight hours of the close of his term and he promptly and cheerfully signed the bill. He had by this time become not only emancipated from Southern thraldom but in some degree embittered against Southern men, and could therefore readily disregard objections from that source. His early instincts and declarations in favor of a protective policy doubtless aided him in a conclusion which a year before he could not have reached without a conflict in his Cabinet that would probably have ended in its disruption.
The passage of the Morrill Tariff was an event which would almost have marked an era in the history of the government if public attention had not been at once absorbed in struggles which were far more engrossing than those of legislative halls. It was however the beginning of a series of enactments which deeply affected the interests of the country, and which exerted no small influence upon the financial ability of the government to endure the heavy expenditure entailed by the war which immediately followed. Theories were put aside in the presence of a great necessity, and the belief became general that in the impending strain on the resources of the country, protection to home industry would be a constant and increasing strength to the government.
On the passage of the bill in the Senate, on the 20th of February, the yeas were 25 and the nays 14. No Democratic senator voted in the affirmative and no Republican senator in the negative. It was not only a sharp division on the party line but almost equally so on the sectional line. Mr. Douglas, Mr. Rice of Minnesota, Mr. Latham of California, and Mr. Lane of Oregon were the only Northern senators who united with the compact South against the bill. Senators from Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas were still taking part in the proceedings. Mr. Crittenden of Kentucky and Mr. Kennedy of Maryland were favorable to the policy of protection, but on this bill they withheld their votes. They had not abandoned all hope of an adjustment of the Disunion troubles, and deemed the pending measure too radical a change of policy to be adopted in the absence of the senators and representatives from seven States so deeply interested. Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, sympathizing warmly with the Republicans on all questions relating to the preservation of the Union, was too firmly wedded to the theory of free-trade to appreciate the influence which this measure would exert in aid of the national finances.
The test vote in the House was taken on the 27th of February, on a motion made by Mr. Branch of North Carolina to lay the bill on the table. Only 43 votes were given in favor, while 102 were recorded against this summary destruction of the measure. The sectional line was not so rigidly maintained as it was in the House. Of the hostile vote 28 were from the South and 15 from the North. The Virginia delegation, following Mr. Hunter's example, voted solidly in opposition. The Southern men who voted for the bill were in nearly every instance distinguished for their hostility to secession. John A. Gilmer of North Carolina, Thomas A. R. Nelson, and William B. Stokes of Tennessee, William C. Anderson, Francis M. Bristow, Green Adams, and Laban T. Moore of Kentucky, separated from their section, and in their support of a protective tariff openly affiliated with the North.
The Morrill Tariff, as it has since been popularly known, was part of a bill whose title indicates a wider scope than the fixing of duties on imports. It provided also for the payment of outstanding Treasury notes and authorized a loan. These additional features did little to commend it to those who were looking to an alliance with the Secessionists, nor did the obvious necessity of money for the national Treasury induce the ultra disciples of free-trade in the North to waive their opposition to a measure which distinctly looked to the establishment of protection. It was a singular combination of circumstances which on the eve of the Southern revolt led to the inauguration of a policy that gave such industrial and financial strength to the Union in its hour of dire necessity, in the very crisis of its fate.
Mr. Lincoln's Journey from Springfield to Washington.—Speeches on the Way.—Reaches Washington.—His Secret Journey.—Afterwards regretted.—Precautions for his Safety.—President Buchanan.— Secretary Holt.—Troops for the Protection of Washington.—Inauguration of Mr. Lincoln.—Relief to the Public Anxiety.—Inaugural Address. —Hopefulness and Security in the North.—Mr. Lincoln's Appeal to the South.—Fails to appease Southern Wrath.—Dilemma of the South. —The New Cabinet.—The "Easy Accession" of Former Times.—Seward Secretary of State.—Chase at the Head of the Treasury.—Radical Republicans dissatisfied.—Influence of the Blairs.—Comment of Thaddeus Stevens.—The National Flag in the Confederacy.—Flying at only Three Points.—Defenseless Condition of the Government.— Confidence of Disunion Leaders.—Extra Session of the Senate.— Douglas and Breckinridge.—Their Notable Debate.—Douglas's Reply to Wigfall.—His Answer to Mason.—Condition of the Territories.— Slavery not excluded by Law.—Public Opinion in Maine, 1861.—Mr. Lincoln's Difficult Task.—His Wise Policy.—His Careful Preparation. —Statesmanship of his Administration.
When Southern confidence was at its height, and Northern courage at its lowest point, Mr. Lincoln began his journey from Springfield to Washington to assume the government of a divided and disorganized Republic. His speeches on the way were noticeable for the absence of all declaration of policy or purpose touching the impending troubles. This peculiarity gave rise to unfavorable comments in the public press of the North, and to unfounded apprehensions in the popular mind. There was fear that he was either indifferent to the peril, or that he failed to comprehend it. The people did not understand Mr. Lincoln. The failure to comprehend was on their part, not on his. Had he on that journey gratified the aggressive friends of the Union who had supported him for the Presidency, he would have added immeasurably to the serious troubles which already confronted him. He had the practical faculty of discerning the chief point to be reached, and then bending every energy to reach it. He saw that the one thing needful was his regular, constitutional inauguration as President of the United States. Policies both general and in detail would come after that. He could not afford by imprudent forwardness of speech or premature declaration of measures to increase the embarrassment which already surrounded him. "Let us do one thing at a time and the big things first" was his homely but expressive way of indicating the wisdom of his course.
A man of ordinary courage would have been overwhelmed by the task before him. But Mr. Lincoln possessed a certain calmness, firmness, and faith that enabled him to meet any responsibility, and to stand unappalled in any peril. He reached Washington by a night journey, taken secretly much against his own will and to his subsequent chagrin and mortification, but urged upon him by the advice of those in whose judgment and wisdom he was forced to confide. It is the only instance in Mr. Lincoln's public career in which he did not patiently face danger, and to the end of his life he regretted that he had not, according to his own desire, gone through Baltimore in open day, trusting to the hospitality of the city, to the loyalty of its people, to the rightfulness of his cause and the righteousness of his aims and ends. He came as one appointed to a great duty, not with rashness, not with weakness, not with bravado, not with shrinking, but in the perfect confidence of a just cause and with the stainless conscience of a good man. Threats that he never should be inaugurated had been numerous and serious, and it must be credited to the administration of Mr. Buchanan, that ample provision had been made for the protection of the rightful ruler of the nation.
The active and practical loyalty of Joseph Holt in this crisis deserves honorable mention. When, at the close of December, 1860, he succeeded Mr. Floyd as Secretary of War, no troops were stationed in Washington or its neighborhood. After consultation with General Scott, then in command of the army, and with the full approval of President Buchanan, Secretary Holt thought it wise to make precautions for the safety of the National Capital. Seven companies of artillery and one company of sappers and miners were accordingly brought to Washington. This movement gave offense to the Southern men who still remained in Congress, and Mr. Branch of North Carolina offered a resolution declaring that "the quartering of troops around the capital was impolitic and offensive," and that, "if permitted, it would be destructive of civil liberty, and therefore the troops should be forthwith removed." The House laid the resolution on the table by a vote of 125 to 35. Ex-President Tyler had formally complained to the President from the Peace Congress, that United- States troops were to march in the procession which was to celebrate the 22d of February. When so many of the Southern people were engaged in seizing the forts and other property of the government, it was curious to witness their uneasiness at the least display of power on the part of the National Government.
The tone of Secretary Holt's report to the President in regard to the marshaling of troops in the National Capital was a manifestation of courage in refreshing contrast with the surrounding timidity. He stated in very plain language that "a revolution had been in progress for the preceding three months in several of the Southern States;" that its history was one of "surprise, treacheries, and ruthless spoliations;" that forts of the United States had been captured and garrisoned, and "hostile flags unfurled from the ramparts;" that arsenals had been seized, and the arms which they contained appropriated to the use of the captors; that more than half a million of dollars, found in the mint of New Orleans, had been unscrupulously applied to replenish the treasury of Louisiana; that a conspiracy had been entered into for the armed occupation of Washington as part of the revolutionary programme; and that he could not fail to remember that, if the early admonitions in regard to the designs of lawless men in Charleston Harbor had been acted on, and "adequate re-enforcements sent there before the revolution began, the disastrous political complications which ensued might not have occurred."
The inauguration of Mr. Lincoln was an immense relief to the country. There had been an undefined dread throughout the Northern States, colored and heightened by imagination, that Mr. Lincoln would in some way, by some act of violence or of treachery, be deprived of the Presidency, and the government thrown into anarchy. Mr. Breckinridge was the Vice-President, and there had been a vague fear that the count of the electoral votes, over which he presided, would in some way be obstructed or tampered with, and that the regularity of the succession might be interrupted, and its legitimacy stained. But Mr. Breckinridge had performed his official duty with scrupulous fidelity, and Mr. Lincoln had been declared by him, in the presence of the two Houses of Congress, to be lawfully and constitutionally elected President of the United States. Anarchy and disorder in the North would at that time have proved so advantageous to the leaders of Secession, that the apprehension was firmly fixed in the Northern mind that some attempt would be made to bring it about. The very fact, therefore, that Mr. Lincoln was in possession of the office, that he was quietly living in the Executive mansion, that the Senate of the United States was in session, with a quorum present, ready to act upon his nominations, imported a new confidence and opened a new prospect to the friends of the Union.
The Inaugural address added to the feeling of hopefulness and security in the North. It effectually removed every trace of unfavorable impression which had been created by Mr. Lincoln's speeches, and gave at once a new view and an exalted estimate of the man. He argued to the South, with persuasive power, that the institution of Slavery in the States was not in danger by his election. He admitted the full obligation under the Constitution for the return of fugitive slaves. He neither affirmed nor denied any position touching Slavery in the Territories. He was fully aware that many worthy, patriotic citizens desired that the National Constitution should be amended; and, while he declined to make any recommendation, he recognized the full authority of the people over the subject, and said he should favor rather than oppose a fair opportunity for them to act upon it. He expressed a preference, if the Constitution was to be amended, for a general convention rather than for action through State Legislatures. He so far departed from his purpose not to speak of particular amendments as to allude to the one submitted by the late Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States; and he said that, holding such a provision to be now implied in the Constitution, he had no objection to its being made express and irrevocable. He pleaded earnestly, even tenderly, with those who would break up the Union. "In your hands," said he, "my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without yourselves being the aggressors. You can have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect, and defend it. I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our bonds of affection."
While the effect produced by the Inaugural in the North was so auspicious, no corresponding impression was made in the South. Mr. Lincoln's concise and candid statement of his opinions and purposes in regard to Slavery, his majestic and unanswerable argument against Secession, and his pathetic appeal to the people and States of the South, all alike failed to win back the disaffected communities. The leaders of the Secession movement were only the more enraged by witnessing the favor with which Mr. Lincoln's position was received in the North. The declaration of the President that he should execute the laws in all parts of the country, as required by his oath, and that the jurisdiction of the nation under the Constitution would be asserted everywhere and constantly, inspired the doubting with confidence, and gave to the people of the North a common hope and a common purpose in the approaching struggle. The address left to the seceding States only the choice of retiring from the position they had taken, or of assuming the responsibilities of war. It was clear that the assertion of jurisdiction by two separate governments over the same territory and people must end in bloodshed. In this dilemma was the South placed by the Inaugural address of President Lincoln. Mr. Buchanan had admitted the right of Secession, while denying the wisdom of its exercise; but the right when exercised carried jurisdiction with it. Hence it was impossible for Mr. Buchanan to assert jurisdiction and attempt its exercise over the territory and people of the seceding States. But Mr. Lincoln, by his Inaugural address, set himself free from all logical entanglements. His emphatic words were these: "I therefore consider that, in view of the Constitution and the laws, the Union is unbroken; and 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. . . . I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as a declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend and maintain itself."
Mr. Lincoln constituted his Cabinet in a manner at least unusual if not unprecedented. It had been the general practice of Presidents, from the first organization of the government, to tender the post of Secretary of State to the man considered to be next in prominence to himself in the party to which both belonged. In the earlier history of the country, the expected successor in the Executive office was selected. This was indeed for a long period so uniform that the appointment to the State Department came to be regarded as a designation to the Presidency. In political phrase, this mode of reaching the coveted place was known as the "easy accession." By its operation Madison succeeded Jefferson, Monroe succeeded Madison, John Quincy Adams succeeded Monroe. After successful application for a quarter of a century the custom fell into disfavor and, by bitter agitation, into disuse. The cause of its overthrow was the appointment of Henry Clay to the State Department, and the baseless scandal of a "bargain and sale" was invented to deprive Mr. Clay of the "easy accession." After a few years, when National Conventions were introduced, it became the habit of the President to tender the State Department to a leading or prominent competitor for the Presidential nomination. Thus General Harrison offered the post to Mr. Clay, who declined; and then to Mr. Webster, who accepted. President Polk appointed Mr. Buchanan. President Pierce appointed Mr. Marcy. President Buchanan appointed General Cass.
Following in the same line, Mr. Lincoln now invited his chief rival,Mr. Seward, to the State Department. But his courtesy did not stopthere. He was generous beyond all example to his rivals. He calledSalmon P. Chase to the Treasury, appointed Simon Cameron to theWar Department, and made Edward Bates of Missouri Attorney-General.These were the three who, next to Mr. Seward, received the largestvotes of the minority in the convention which nominated Mr. Lincoln.The Cabinet was completed by the appointment of Gideon Welles ofConnecticut Secretary of the Navy, Caleb B. Smith of IndianaSecretary of the Interior, and Montgomery Blair of Maryland Postmaster-General.
The announcement of these names gave fair satisfaction to the party, though the most advanced and radical element of the Republicans regarded its composition with distrust. There had been strong hope on the part of the conservative friends of the Union that some prominent man from the Cotton States would be included in the Cabinet, and overtures were undoubtedly made to that effect directly after the election in November. But the rapidly developing revolt against the Union made such an appointment undesirable if not altogether impracticable. By the time of the inauguration it was found that such an olive-branch from the President would exert no influence over the wild passions which had been aroused in the South. The name most frequently suggested was that of Mr. John A. Gilmer of North Carolina, who was a sincere friend of the Union, and did all in his power to avert a conflict; but his appointment to the Cabinet would have destroyed him at home, without bringing strength at that crisis to the National cause.
The opinions and characteristics of each member of the Cabinet were very closely scanned and criticised. Mr. Seward was known to be fully committed to the policy of conciliation towards the South, and to the adoption of every measure consistent with the honor of the country to avert war and induce the return of the seceding States. Mr. Chase was understood to favor a moderate policy, but did not go so far as Mr. Seward. Mr. Cameron sympathized with Mr. Seward more than with Mr. Chase. Mr. Bates was extremely conservative, but a zealous friend of the Union, and a lifelong disciple of Mr. Clay. Mr. Welles was of Democratic antecedents, a follower of Van Buren and Wright, an associate of John M. Niles, anti-slavery in principle, a strict constructionist, instinctively opposed to Mr. Seward, readily co-operating with Mr. Chase. His appointment was a surprise to New-England Republicans who expected a much more prominent member of the party to be called to the Cabinet. It was understood that the selection was due to the counsel of Vice- President Hamlin, who soon after had such serious differences with Mr. Welles that a state of absolute non-intercourse existed between them during the whole period of his incumbency of the Navy Department. Mr. Caleb B. Smith had been prominent in the House of Representatives when Mr. Lincoln was a member, had been popular as a public speaker in the West, but had no aptitude for so serious a task as the administration of a great department, and did not long retain his position.
Mr. Blair was appointed as a citizen of Maryland. This gave serious offense to many of Mr. Lincoln's most valued supporters, and was especially distasteful to the Union men of Maryland, with Henry Winter Davis at their head. They regarded Mr. Blair as a non- resident, as not in any sense identified with them, and as disposed from the outset to foment disturbance where harmony was especially demanded. Mr. Bates had been appointed from Missouri largely by the influence of Francis P. Blair, Jr.; and the border-State Republicans were dissatisfied that the only two members of the Cabinet from the slave States had been appointed apparently without any general consultation among those who were best fitted to give the President advice on so important a matter. The extreme men in the Republican party, of the type of Benjamin F. Wade and Owen Lovejoy, believed that the Cabinet was so constituted as to insure what they termed "a disgraceful surrender to the South." It was a common saying at the time in Washington, among the radical Republicans, that Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet did not contain three as absolute and strong defenders of the Union as Dix, Holt, and Stanton, who had just retired with Mr. Buchanan. Thaddeus Stevens, with his accustomed sharpness of speech, said the Cabinet was composed of an assortment of rivals whom the President appointed from courtesy, one stump-speaker from Indiana, and two representatives of the Blair family.
In the seven States which constituted the original Southern Confederacy, the flag of the United States was flying at only three points on the day of Mr. Lincoln's inauguration. The army of the United States still held Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston; Fort Pickens, opposite the Pensacola Navy Yard; and Key West, the extreme southern point of Florida. Every other fort, arsenal, dock- yard, mint, custom-house, and court-house had been seized by the Confederacy, and turned to hostile use. Fort Moultrie, Castle Pinckney, and the United-States arsenal at Charleston had been seized by the troops of South Carolina; Forts Jackson and Pulaski, and the United-States arsenal at Augusta, by the troops of Georgia; the Chattahoochee and St. Augustine arsenals and the Florida forts, by the troops of that State; the arsenal at Baton Rouge, and Forts Jackson and St. Philip, together with the New-Orleans mint and custom-house, by the troops of Louisiana; the Little-Rock arsenal by the troops of Arkansas; Forts Johnson and Caswell by the troops of North Carolina; and General Twiggs had traitorously surrendered to the State of Texas all the military stores in his command, amounting in value to a million and a half of dollars. By these means the seceding States had come into possession of all the artillery, small arms, ammunition, and supplies of war needed for immediate use, and were well prepared for the opening of the campaign. On the part of the government there was no such preparation. Indeed the government did not at that moment have twelve thousand available troops against the most formidable rebellion in history. Its whole navy could not make one large squadron, and its most effective ships were at points remote from the scene of conflict. The revenues of the country were not then yielding more than thirty millions per annum, and the credit was so low that one per cent. a month had been paid by the retiring administration for the funds necessary to close its unfortunate career.
In view of all these facts, it cannot be matter of wonder that the Disunion leaders in the South laughed to scorn any efforts on the part of the Government of the United States to arrest their progress, much less to subdue them, and enforce their return to the Union. North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and Arkansas had not yet seceded. The Union sentiment was strong in each one of these States, and the design of Mr. Lincoln was to pursue a policy so mild and conciliatory as to win them to the side of the government. Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri were excited by strong minorities who desired to aid the South, while no strong element in their population was ready to take decisive measures for the Union. Palliation, conciliation, concession, compromise, were the only words heard, and the almost universal opinion in the South, shared largely by the North, was that to precipitate war would be to abandon the last hope for restoration of the Union.
The extra session of the Senate, called by Mr. Buchanan for the convenience of the new administration, assembled on the 4th of March. All the Southern States were represented in full except those which had members in the Confederate Congress at Montgomery, and from one of these—the State of Texas—both senators, John Hemphill and Louis T. Wigfall, were present. Texas was indeed represented in the Congress of the Confederate States at Montgomery and in the Congress of the United States at Washington at the same time. Some excuse was given for the continuance of the senators by an alleged lack of completeness in the secession proceedings of their State; but to the apprehension of the ordinary mind, a secession that was complete enough to demand representation at Montgomery was complete enough to end it at Washington. The Texas senators, therefore, did not escape the imputation of seizing a mere pretext for remaining at Washington somewhat in the character of spies upon the new administration. John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky and Thomas L. Clingman of North Carolina took the usual oath to support the Constitution—Clingman for his second term, Breckinridge for his first. Salmon P. Chase was sworn in as senator from Ohio, and retired the next day to the Treasury Department. John Sherman was his successor. Among the new senators who entered, and who afterwards became conspicuous, were Howe of Wisconsin and Baker of Oregon. The session was only for Executive purposes, and of course possessed no legislative power; but the debates were of interest and of value to the country.
Mr. Douglas, with the characteristic boldness of a leader and with a patriotism which did him honor, defended the Inaugural address of Mr. Lincoln against the assault of opposition senators. In reply to Wigfall of Texas, who wished to know Douglas's views upon certain points of policy, he said, "I do not choose to proclaim what my policy would be, in view of the fact that the senator does not regard himself as the guardian of the honor and the interests of my country, but is looking to the interests of another which he thinks is in hostility. It would hardly be good policy or wisdom for me to reveal what I think ought to be our policy to one who may so soon be in the councils of the enemy and in the command of his armies." Being pressed by Wigfall to know what he would advise the President to do in the critical condition of Fort Sumter, Douglas sarcastically answered that he "should have no hesitancy in replying to the senator from Texas if that senator held himself bound by his oath to support the Constitution of the United States, and to protect and aid the honor of the country instead of communicating it to the enemy to be used against us." It was a vast gain to the Union that Douglas spoke so boldly in defense of Mr. Lincoln; and it was significant that Wigfall received imputations upon his honor without threats of a duel, and without even using the language of resentment.
Mr. Mason of Virginia came to the aid of Wigfall in the debate, but fared badly at the hands of Douglas. He asked Douglas to define what should be done in this crisis in regard to Fort Sumter. "If the senator from Virginia," said Douglas, "had voted right in the last Presidential election, I should have been, perhaps, in a position to-day to tell him authoritatively what ought to be done. Not occupying that position, I must refer the senator from Virginia to those who have been intrusted by the American people, according to the Constitution, with the decision of that question." The speech of Wigfall had given great offense, and the castigation administered by Douglas was heartily responded to throughout the North. Wigfall had boasted that he owed no allegiance to the government; that he was a foreigner and owed allegiance to another government. On the next day, reciting these words as a preamble, Mr. Foster of Connecticut moved "that Louis T. Wigfall be and hereby is expelled from the Senate." Mr. Clingman of North Carolina moved as a substitute a declaration that "Texas having seceded from the Union, and being no longer one of the United States, is not entitled to be represented in this body." After a brief debate, the resolutions were referred to the Judiciary by the votes of Republican senators, who, not wishing to precipitate any issue prematurely, and persuaded that Wigfall's presence was helping rather than harming the Union cause, concluded to let the matter rest.
A notable debate took place between Breckinridge and Douglas, in which the issues that had led to the disruption of the Democracy in the late Presidential election were, in a certain sense, fought over again. Mr. Breckinridge's speech was carefully prepared, and presented the Southern side in a tone of dignity and confidence; but the reply of Douglas exhibited his superiority as a debater. Breckinridge had declared that whatever settlement be made of other questions, there must be a concession to the South of the right to emigrate into all the Territories, or at least an equitable partition of the National Domain. In reply, Douglas reminded him that the South had, by the action of a Republican Congress, the full right to emigrate into all the territory of the United States; and that, with the consent of the Republican Congress, every inch of the territory of the United States south of the thirty-seventh degree of latitude was at that hour open to slavery. "So far," said he, "as the doctrine of popular sovereignty and non-intervention is concerned, the Colorado Bill and the Nevada Bill and the Dakota Bill are identically the same with the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and in its precise language." The answer was at once a complete destruction of the argument of Breckinridge, and a severe indictment of the Republican party. Never before in the existence of the Federal Government had its territory been so open, by Congressional enactment and by judicial decision, to the slave-holder as on the day that Abraham Lincoln assumed the office of President of the United States. It is a singular fact that, on the eve of the utter destruction of the institution of Slavery, its legal status was stronger than ever before in the history of the government, and the area over which it might lawfully spread was far larger than at any previous period. Douglas showed in this debate how absolutely groundless was the excuse of slave-holders for basing secession or revolution upon the failure to acquire their rights in the Territories, when never before had their rights in the Territories been so absolutely complete.