The most alarming feature of the situation to reflecting men in the North was that, so far as known, all the members of Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet approved the destructive doctrines of the message. But as the position of the President was subjected to examination and criticism by the Northern press, uneasiness was manifested in Administration circles. It was seen that if the course foreshadowed by Mr. Buchanan should be followed, the authority of the Union would be compelled to retreat before the usurpations of seceding States, and that a powerful government might be quietly overthrown, without striking one blow of resistance, or uttering one word of protest. General Cass was the first of the Cabinet to feel the pressure of loyalty from the North. The venerable Secretary of State, whose whole life had been one of patriotic devotion to his country, suddenly realized that he was in a false position. When it became known that the President would not insist upon the collection of the national revenue in South Carolina, or upon the strengthening of the United-States forts in the harbor of Charleston, General Cass concluded that justice to his own reputation required him to separate from the Administration. He resigned on the twelfth of December,—nine days after Mr. Buchanan had sent his fatal message to Congress.
Judge Black, who had from the beginning of the Administration been Mr. Buchanan's chief adviser, now became so by rank as the successor of General Cass in the State Department. He was a man of remarkable character. He was endowed by nature with a strong understanding and a strong will. In the profession of the law he had attained great eminence. His learning had been illustrated by a prolonged service on the bench before the age at which men, even of exceptional success at the bar, usually attract public observation. He had added to his professional studies, which were laborious and conscientious, a wide acquaintance with our literature, and had found in its walks a delight which is yielded to few. In history, biography, criticism, romance, he had absorbed every thing in our language worthy of attention. Shakspeare, Milton, indeed all the English poets, were his familiar companions. There was not a disputed passage or an obscure reading in any one of the great plays upon which he could not off-hand quote the best renderings, and throw original light from his own illumined mind. Upon theology he had apparently bestowed years of investigation and reflection. A sincere Christian, he had been a devout and constant student of the Bible, and could quote its passages and apply its teachings with singular readiness and felicity. To this generous store of knowledge he added fluency of speech, both in public address and private communication, and a style of writing which was at once unique, powerful, and attractive. He had attained unto every excellence of mental discipline described by Lord Byron. Reading had made him a full man, talking a ready man, writing an exact man. The judicial literature of the English tongue may be sought in vain for finer models than are found in the opinions of Judge Black when he sat, and was worthy to sit, as the associate of John Bannister Gibson, on the Supreme Bench of Pennsylvania.
In political opinion he was a Democrat, self-inspired and self- taught, for his father was a Whig who had served his State in Congress. He idolized Jefferson and revered Jackson as embodying in their respective characters all the elements of the soundest political philosophy, and all the requisites of the highest political leadership. He believed in the principles of Democracy as he did in a demonstration of Euclid,—all that might be said on the other side was necessarily absurd. He applied to his own political creed the literal teachings of the Bible. If Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had held slaves without condemnation or rebuke from the Lord of hosts, he believed that Virginia, Carolina, and Georgia might do the same. He found in the case of Onesiums, St. Paul's explicit approval of the Fugutive-slave Law of 1850, and in the cruel case of Passmore Williamson he believed himself to be enforcing the doctrines of the New Testament. Personally unwilling to hold even a beast of burden in oppressive bondage, nothing could induce him to condemn slave-holding in those whose conscience permitted them to practice it. In the Abolitionists he found the chief disturbers of the Republic, and he held New England answerable to posterity and to God for all the heresies which afflicted either Church or State. He had an uncompromising hostility to what are termed New- England ideas, though the tenderest ties of his life were of New- England origin. "The New-Englander individually I greatly affect," he often said, "but, in the mass, I judge them to be stark mad." "I think, too," he would add, "that if you are going to make much of a New-Englander, he should, like Dr. Johnson's Scotchman, be caught young."
To his native State Judge Black was devotedly attached. He inherited the blood of two strong elements of its population,—the German and the Scotch-Irish,—and he united the best characteristics of both in his own person. He had always looked upon Pennsylvania as the guardian of the Federal Union, almost as the guarantor of its safety and its perpetuity. He spoke of her as the break-water that protected the slave States from the waves of radicalism which were threatening to ingulf Southern institutions. The success of the Republican party in 1860 he regarded as a portent of direst evil, —indeed, as a present disaster, immeasurably sorrowful. The excitement in the Southern States over the probability of Mr. Lincoln's election he considered natural, their serious protest altogether justifiable. He desired the free States to be awakened to the gravity of the situation, to be thoroughly alarmed, and to repent of their sins against the South. He wished it understood from ocean to ocean that the position of the Republican party was inconsistent with loyalty to the Union, and that its permanent success would lead to the destruction of the government. It was not unnatural that with these extreme views he should be carried beyond the bounds of prudence, and that, in his headlong desire to rebuke the Republican party as enemies of the Union, he should aid in precipitating a dissolution of the government before the Republicans could enter upon its administration. He thus became in large degree responsible for the unsound position and the dangerous teachings of Mr. Buchanan. In truth some of the worst doctrines embodied in the President's evil message came directly from an opinion given by Judge Black as Attorney-General, and, made by Mr. Buchanan still more odious and more dangerous by the quotation of a part and not the whole.
It was soon manifest however to Judge Black, that he was playing with fire, and that, while he was himself desirous only of arousing the country to the dangers of anti-slavery agitation, Mr. Buchanan's administration was every day effectually aiding the Southern conspiracy for the destruction of the Union. This light dawned on Judge Black suddenly and irresistibly. He was personally intimate with General Cass, and when that venerable statesman retired from the Cabinet to preserve his record of loyalty to the Union, Judge Black realized that he was himself confronted by an issue which threatened his political destruction. Could he afford, as Secretary of State, to follow a policy which General Cass believed would destroy his own fame? General Cass was nearly fourscore years of age, with his public career ended, his work done. Judge Black was but fifty, and he had before him possibly the most valuable and most ambitious period of his life. He saw at a glance that if General Cass could not be sustained in the North-West, he could not be sustained in Pennsylvania. He possessed the moral courage to stand firm to the end, in defiance of opposition and regardless of obloquy, if he could be sure he was right. But he had begun to doubt, and doubt led him to review with care the position of Mr. Buchanan, and to examine its inevitable tendencies. He did it with conscience and courage. He had none of that subserviency to Southern men which had injured so many Northern Democrats. Until he entered the Cabinet in 1857, he had never come into personal association with men from the slave-holding States, and his keen observation could not fail to discern the inferiority to himself of the four Southern members of the Cabinet.
Judge Black entered upon his duties as Secretary of State on the 17th of December,—the day on which the Disunion convention of South Carolina assembled. He found the malign influence of Mr. Buchanan's message fully at work throughout the South. Under its encouragement only three days were required by the convention at Charleston to pass the Ordinance of Secession, and four days later Governor Pickens issued a proclamation declaring "South Carolina a separate, sovereign, free, and independent State, with the right to levy war, conclude peace, and negotiate treaties." From that moment Judge Black's position towards the Southern leaders was radically changed. They were no longer fellow-Democrats. They were the enemies of the Union to which he was devoted: they were conspirators against the government to which he had taken a solemn oath of fidelity and loyalty.
Judge Black's change, however important to his own fame, would prove comparatively fruitless unless he could influence Mr. Buchanan to break with the men who had been artfully using the power of his administration to destroy the Union. The opportunity and the test came promptly. The new "sovereign, free, and independent" government of South Carolina sent commissioners to Washington to negotiate for the surrender of the national forts, and the transfer of the national property within her limits. Mr. Buchanan prepared an answer to their request which was compromising to the honor of the Executive and perilous to the integrity of the Union. Judge Black took a decided and irrevocable stand against the President's position. He advised Mr. Buchanan that upon the basis of that fatal concession to the Disunion leaders he could not remain in his Cabinet. It was a sharp issue, but was soon adjusted. Mr. Buchanan gave way, and permitted Judge Black, and his associates Holt and Stanton, to frame a reply for the administration.
Jefferson Davis, Mr. Toombs, Mr. Benjamin, Mr. Slidell, who had been Mr. Buchanan's intimate and confidential advisers, and who had led him to the brink of ruin, found themselves suddenly supplanted, and a new power installed at the White House. Foiled, and no longer able to use the National Administration as an instrumentality to destroy the National life, the Secession leaders in Congress turned upon the President with angry reproaches. In their rage they lost all sense of the respect due to the Chief Magistrate of the Nation, and assaulted Mr. Buchanan with coarseness as well as violence. Senator Benjamin spoke of him as "a senile Executive under the sinister influence of insane counsels." This exhibition of malignity towards the misguided President afforded to the North the most convincing and satisfactory proof that there had been a change for the better in the plans and purposes of the Administration. They realized that it must be a deep sense of impending danger which could separate Mr. Buchanan from his political associations with the South, and they recognized in his position a significant proof of the desperate determination to which the enemies of the Union had come.
The stand taken by Judge Black and his loyal associates was in the last days of December, 1860. The re-organization of the Cabinet came as a matter of necessity. Mr. John B. Floyd resigned from the War Department, making loud proclamation that his action was based on the President's refusal to surrender the national forts in Charleston Harbor to the Secession government of South Carolina. This manifesto was not necessary to establish Floyd's treasonable intentions toward the government; but, in point of truth, the plea was undoubtedly a pretense, to cover reasons of a more personal character which would at once deprive him of Mr. Buchanan's confidence. There had been irregularities in the War Department tending to compromise Mr. Floyd, for which he was afterwards indicted in the District of Columbia. Mr. Floyd well knew that the first knowledge of these shortcomings would lead to his dismissal from the Cabinet. Whatever Mr. Buchanan's faults as an Executive may have been, his honor in all transactions, both personal and public, was unquestionable, and he was the last man to tolerate the slightest deviation from the path of rigid integrity.
Mr. Thompson, the Secretary of the Interior, followed Mr. Floyd after a short interval. Mr. Cobb had left the Treasury a few days before General Cass resigned from the Cabinet, and had gone to Georgia to stimulate her laggard movements in the scheme of destroying the government. His successor was Philip Francis Thomas of Maryland, who entered the Cabinet as a representative of the principles whose announcement had forced General Cass to resign. The change of policy to which the President was now fully committed, forced Mr. Thomas to retire, after a month's service. He frankly stated that he was unable to agree with the President and his chief advisers "in reference to the condition of things in South Carolina," and therefore tendered his resignation. Mr. Thomas adhered to the Union, and always maintained an upright and honorable character, but his course at that crisis deprived him subsequently of a seat in the United-States Senate, though at a later period he served in the House as representative from Maryland.
Mr. Cobb, Mr. Floyd, and Mr. Thompson had all remained in the Cabinet after the Presidential election in November, in full sympathy, and so far as was possible in full co-operation, with the men in the South who were organizing resistance to the authority of the Federal Government. Neither those gentlemen, nor any friend in their behalf, ever ventured to explain how, as sworn officers of the United States, they could remain at their posts consistently with the laws of honor,—laws obligatory upon them not only as public officials who had taken a solemn oath of fidelity to the Constitution, but also as private gentlemen whose good faith was pledged anew every hour they remained in control of the departments with whose administration they had been intrusted. Their course is unfavorably contrasted with that of many Southern men (of whom General Lee and the two Johnstons were conspicuous examples), who refused to hold official positions under the National Government a single day after they had determined to take part in the scheme of Disunion.
By the re-organization of the Cabinet, the tone of Mr. Buchanan's administration was radically changed. Judge Black had used his influence with the President to secure trustworthy friends of the Union in every department. Edwin M. Stanton, little known at the time to the public, but of high standing in his profession, was appointed Attorney-General soon after Judge Black took charge of the State Department. Judge Black had been associated with Stanton personally and professionally, and was desirous of his aid in the dangerous period through which he was called to serve.
Joseph Holt, who, since the death of Aaron V. Brown in 1859, had been Postmaster-General, was now appointed Secretary of War, and Horatio King of Maine, for many years the upright first assistant, was justly promoted to the head of the Post-office Department. Mr. Holt was the only Southern man left in the Cabinet. He was a native of Kentucky, long a resident of Mississippi, always identified with the Democratic party, and affiliated with its extreme Southern wing. Without a moment's hesitation he now broke all the associations of a lifetime, and stood by the Union without qualification or condition. His learning, his firmness, and his ability, were invaluable to Mr. Buchanan in the closing days of his administration.
General John A. Dix of New York was called to the head of the Treasury. He was a man of excellent ability, of wide experience in affairs, of spotless character, and a most zealous friend of the Union. He found the Treasury bankrupt, the discipline of its officers in the South gone, its orders disregarded in the States which were preparing for secession. He at once imparted spirit and energy into the service,—giving to the administration of this department a policy of pronounced loyalty to the government. No act of his useful and honorable life has been so widely known or will be so long remembered as his dispatch to the Treasury agent at New Orleans to take possession of a revenue cutter whose commander was suspected of disloyalty and of a design to transfer his vessel to the Confederate service. Lord Nelson's memorable order at Trafalgar was not more inspiring to the British navy than was the order of General Dix to the American people, when, in the gloom of that depressing winter, he telegraphed South his peremptory words, "If any man attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot."
Thus reconstructed, the Cabinet as a whole was one of recognized power,—marked by high personal character, by intellectual training, by experience in affairs, and by aptitude for the public service. There have been Cabinets perhaps more widely known for the possession of great qualities; but, if the history of successive administrations from the origin of the government be closely studied, it will be found that the re-organized Cabinet of President Buchanan must take rank as one of exceptional ability.
For the remaining two months of Mr. Buchanan's administration the destinies of the country were in the keeping of these constitutional advisers. If in any respect they failed to come to the standard of a loyalty that was quickened by subsequent developments, they no doubt fairly represented the demand of the Northern States at the time. There was everywhere the most earnest desire to avert a conflict, and an unwillingness to recognize the possibility of actual war. The majority of the Republican party in both branches of Congress was not advocating a more decided or more aggressive course with the South, during the months of January and February, than the Cabinet, with Judge Black at its head, was pursuing. The time for executive acts of a more pronounced character was directly after the Presidential election, when the first symptoms of resistance to national authority were visible in the South. If the new Cabinet had been then in power, the history of the civil revolt might have been different. But the force that will arrest the first slow revolution of a wheel cannot stand before it when, by unchecked velocity, it has acquired a destructive momentum. The measures which might have secured repression in November would only have produced explosion in January.
The change of position on the part of Mr. Buchanan was not left to inference, or to the personal assurance of the loyal men who composed his re-organized Cabinet. He announced it himself in a special message to Congress on the 8th of January, 1861. The tone was so different from the message of December, that it did not seem possible that the two could have been written by the same man. It was evident from many passages in the second message that he was trying to reconcile it with the first. This was the natural course suggested by the pride of one who overrated the virtue of consistency. The attempt was useless. The North with unaffected satisfaction, the South with unconcealed indignation, realized that the President had entirely escaped from the influences which dictated the first message. He now asserted that, "as the Chief Executive under the Constitution of the United States," he had no alternative but "to collect the public revenues, and to protect the public property, so far as this might be practicable under existing laws." Remarking that his province "was to execute, and not to make, the laws," he threw upon Congress the duty "of enlarging their provisions to meet exigencies as they may occur." He declared it as his own conviction that "the right and the duty to use military force defensively against those who resist the federal officers in the execution of their legal functions, and against those who assail the property of the Federal Government, are clear and undeniable." Conceding so much, the mild denial which the President re-asserted, of "the right to make aggressive war upon any State," may be charitably tolerated; for, under the defensive power which he so broadly approved, the whole force of national authority could be used against a State aggressively bent upon Secession.
The President did not fail to fortify his own position at every point with great force. The situation had become so serious, and had "assumed such vast and alarming proportions, as to place the subject entirely above and beyond Executive control." He therefore commended "the question, in all its various bearings, to Congress, as the only tribunal possessing the power to meet the existing exigency." He reminded Congress that "to them belongs exclusively the power to declare war, or to authorize the employment of military force in all cases contemplated by the Constitution." Not abandoning the hope of an amicable adjustment, the President pertinently informed Congress that "they alone possess the power to remove grievances which might lead to war, and to secure peace and union." As a basis of settlement, he recommended a formal compromise by which "the North shall have exclusive control of the territory above a certain line, and Southern institutions shall have protection below that line." This plan, he believed, "ought to receive universal approbation." He maintained that on Congress, and "on Congress alone, rests the responsibility." As Congress would certainly in a few days be under the control of the Republicans in both branches,—by the withdrawal of senators and representatives from the seceding States,—Mr. Buchanan's argument had a double force. Not only was he vindicating the position of the Executive and throwing the weight of responsibility on the Legislative Department of the government, but he was protecting the position of the Democratic party by saying, in effect, that the President chosen by that party stood ready to approve and to execute any laws for the protection of the government and the safety of the Union which a Republican Congress might enact.
A certain significance attached to the date which the President had selected for communicating his message to Congress. It was the eighth day of January, the anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans, celebrated that year with enthusiastic demonstrations in honor of the memory of Andrew Jackson, who had, on a memorable occasion not unlike the present, sworn an emphatic oath that "the Federal Union must and shall be preserved." There was also marked satisfaction throughout the loyal States with Mr. Buchanan's assurance of the peace of the District of Columbia on the ensuing 4th of March, on the occasion of Mr. Lincoln's inauguration. He did not himself "share in the serious apprehensions that were entertained of disturbance" on that occasion, but he made this declaration, which was received in the North with hearty applause: "In any event, it will be my duty to preserve the peace, and this duty shall be performed."
The change of sentiment towards Mr. Buchanan after the delivery of the special message, was as marked in the North as it was in the South, though in the opposite direction. It would not be true to say that any thing like popularity attended the President in his new position; but the change of feeling was so great that the Legislature of Massachusetts, on the 23d of January, 1861, adopted resolutions in which they declared that they regarded "with unmingled satisfaction the determination evinced in the recent firm and patriotic special message of the President of the United States to amply and faithfully discharge his constitutional duty of enforcing the laws, and preserving the integrity of the Union." The Legislature "proffered to the President, through the Governor of the Commonwealth, such aid in men and money as he may require to maintain the authority of the National Government." These resolutions were forwarded to Mr. Buchanan by Governor Andrew. They were only one of many manifestations which the President received of approval of his course.
The Massachusetts Legislature was radically Republican in both branches, and even in making a reference to "men and money" as requisite to maintain the Union, they had gone farther than the public sentiment at that time approved. Coercive measures were generally condemned. A few days after the action of the Legislature, a large meeting of the people of Boston, held in Faneuil Hall, declared that they "depended for the return of the seceding States, and the permanent preservation of the Union, on conciliatory counsels, and a sense of the benefits which the Constitution confers on all the States, and not on military coercion." They declared that they shrunk "with horror from the thought of civil war between the North and the South."
It must always be remembered that the disbelief in ultimate secession was nearly universal throughout the free States. The people of the North could not persuade themselves that the proceedings in the Southern States would lead to any thing more serious than hostile demonstrations, which would end, after coaxing and compromise, in a return to the Union. But with this hope of final security there was, on the part of the great mass of the people in the free States, the gravest solicitude throughout the winter of 1860-61, and a restless waiting and watching for a solution of the troubles. Partisan leaders were busy on both sides seeking for an advantage that might survive the pending trials. Northern Democrats in many instances sought to turn the occasion to one of political advantage by pointing out the lamentable condition to which anti-slavery agitation had brought the country. This was naturally answered by Republicans with defiance, and with an affected contempt and carelessness of what the South might do. Much that was written and much that was spoken throughout the North during that winter, both by Democrats and Republicans, would have remained unwritten and unspoken if they had realized the seriousness and magnitude of the impending calamity.
In a final analysis and true estimate of Mr. Buchanan's conduct in the first stages of the revolt, the condition of the popular mind as just described must be taken into account. The same influences and expectations that wrought upon the people were working also upon him. There were indeed two Mr. Buchanans in the closing months of the administration. The first was Mr. Buchanan of November and December, angered by the decision of the Presidential election and more than willing that the North, including his own State, should be disciplined by fright to more conservative views and to a stricter observance of what he considered solemn obligations imposed by the Constitution. If the Southern threat of resistance to the authority of the Union had gone no farther than this, Mr. Buchanan would have been readily reconciled to its temporary violence, and would probably have considered it a national blessing in disguise.—The second was Mr. Buchanan of January and February, appalled by surrounding and increasing perils, grieved by the conduct of Southern men whom he had implicitly trusted, overwhelmed by the realization of the evils which had obviously followed his official declarations, hoping earnestly for the safety of the Union, and yet more disturbed and harrowed in his mind than the mass of loyal people who did not stand so near the danger as he, or so accurately measure its alarming growth. The President of December with Cobb and Floyd and Thompson in his Cabinet, and the President of January with Dix and Stanton and Holt for his councilors, were radically different men. No true estimate of Mr. Buchanan in the crisis of his public career can ever be reached if this vital distinction be overlooked.
It was Mr. Buchanan's misfortune to be called to act in an emergency which demanded will, fortitude, and moral courage. In these qualities he was deficient. He did not possess the executive faculty. His life had been principally devoted to the practice of law in the most peaceful of communities, and to service in legislative bodies where he was borne along by the force of association. He had not been trained to prompt decision, had not been accustomed to exercise command. He was cautious and conservative to the point of timidity. He possessed ability of a high order, and, though he thought slowly, he could master the most difficult subject with comprehensive power. His service of ten years in the House and an equal period in the Senate was marked by a conscientious devotion to duty. He did not rank with the ablest members of either body, but always bore a prominent part in important discussions and maintained himself with credit.
It was said of Mr. Buchanan that he instinctively dreaded to assume responsibility of any kind. His keenest critic remarked that in the tentative period of political issues assumed by his party, Mr. Buchanan could always be found two paces to the rear, but in the hour of triumph he marched proudly in the front rank. He was not gifted with independence or self-assertion. His bearing towards Southern statesmen was derogatory to him as a man of spirit. His tone towards administrations of his own party was so deferential as almost to imply a lack of self-respect. He was not a leader among men. He was always led. He was led by Mason and Soulé into the imprudence of signing the Ostend Manifesto; he was led by the Southern members of his Cabinet into the inexplicable folly and blunder of indorsing the Lecompton iniquity; he was led by Disunion senators into the deplorable mistake contained in his last annual message. Fortunately for him he was led a month later by Black and Holt and Stanton to a radical change of his compromising position.
If Mr. Buchanan had possessed the unconquerable will of Jackson or the stubborn courage of Taylor, he could have changed the history of the revolt against the Union. A great opportunity came to him but he was not equal to it. Always an admirable adviser where prudence and caution were the virtues required, he was fatally wanting in a situation which demanded prompt action and strong nerve. As representative in Congress, as senator, as minister abroad, as Secretary of State, his career was honorable and successful. His life was singularly free from personal fault or short-coming. He was honest and pure-minded. His fame would have been more enviable if he had never been elevated to the Presidency.
Congress during the Winter of 1860-61.—Leave-taking of Senators and Representatives.—South Carolina the First to secede.—Her Delegation in the House publish a Card withdrawing.—Other States follow.—Mr. Lamar of Mississippi.—Speeches of Seceding Senators. —Mr. Yulee and Mr. Mallory of Florida.—Mr. Clay and Mr. Fitzpatrick of Alabama.—Jefferson Davis.—His Distinction between Secession and Nullification.—Important Speech by Mr. Toombs.—He defines Conditions on which the Union might be allowed to survive.—Mr. Iverson's Speech.—Georgia Senators withdraw.—Insolent Speech of Mr. Slidell of Louisiana.—Mr. Judah P. Benjamin's Special Plea for his State.—His Doctrine of "A Sovereignty held in Trust."— Same Argument of Mr. Yulee for his State.—Principle of State Sovereignty.—Disproved by the Treaty of 1783.—Notable Omission by Secession Senators.—Grievances not stated.—Secession Conventions in States.—Failure to state Justifying Grounds of Action.— Confederate Government fail likewise to do it.—Contrast with the Course of the Colonies.—Congress had given no Cause.—Had not disturbed Slavery by Adverse Legislation.—List of Measures Favorable to Slavery.—Policy of Federal Government steadily in that Direction. —Mr. Davis quoted Menaces, not Acts.—Governing Class in the South. —Division of Society there.—Republic ruled by an Oligarchy.— Overthrown by Election of Lincoln.—South refuses to acquiesce.
No feature of the extraordinary winter of 1860-61 is more singular in retrospect than the formal leave-taking of the Southern senators and representatives in their respective Houses. Members of the House from the seceding States, with few exceptions, refrained from individual addresses, either of farewell or defiance, but adopted a less demonstrative and more becoming mode. The South-Carolina representatives withdrew on the 24th of December (1860), in a brief card laid before the House by Speaker Pennington. They announced that, as the people of their State had "in their sovereign capacity resumed the powers delegated by them to the Federal Government of the United States," their "connection with the House of Representatives was thereby dissolved." They "desired to take leave of those with whom they had been associated in a common agency, with mutual regard and respect for the rights of each other." They "cherished the hope" that in future relations they might "better enjoy the peace and harmony essential to the happiness of a free and enlightened people."
Other delegations retired from the House in the order in which their States seceded. The leave-taking, in the main, was not undignified. There was no defiance, no indulgence of bravado. The members from Mississippi "regretted the necessity" which impelled their State to the course adopted, but declared that it met "their unqualified approval." The card was no doubt written by Mr. L. Q. C. Lamar, and accurately described his emotions. He stood firmly by his State in accordance with the political creed in which he had been reared, but looked back with tender regret to the Union whose destiny he had wished to share and under the protection of whose broader nationality he had hoped to live and die. A few Southern representatives marked their retirement by speeches bitterly reproaching the Federal Government, and bitterly accusing the Republican party; but the large majority confined themselves to the simpler form of the card.
Whether the ease and confidence as to the future which these Southern representatives manifested was really felt or only assumed, can never be known. They were all men of intelligence, some of them conspicuously able; and it seems incredible that they could have persuaded themselves that a great government could be dissolved without shock and without resistance. They took leave with no more formality than that with which a private gentleman, aggrieved by discourteous treatment, withdraws from a company in which he feels that he can no longer find enjoyment. Their confidence was based on the declarations and admissions of Mr. Buchanan's message; but they had, in effect, constructed that document themselves, and the slightest reflection should have warned them that, with the change of administration to occur in a few weeks, there would be a different understanding of Executive duty, and a different appeal to the reason of the South.
The senators from the seceding States were more outspoken than the representatives. They took the opportunity of their retirement to say many things which, even for their own personal fame, should have been left unsaid. A clear analysis of these harangues is impossible. They lacked the unity and directness of the simple notifications with which the seceding representatives had withdrawn from the House. The valedictories in the Senate were a singular compound of defiance and pity, of justification and recrimination. Some of the speeches have an insincere and mock-heroic tone to the reader twenty years after the event. They appear to be the expressions of men who talked for effect, and who professed themselves ready for a shock of arms which they believed would never come. But the majority of the utterances were by men who meant all they said; who, if they did not anticipate a bloody conflict, were yet prepared for it, and who were too deeply stirred by resentment and passion to give due heed to consequences.
On the 21st of January the senators from Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi formally withdrew from the Senate. Their speeches showed little variety of thought, consisting chiefly of indictments against the free States for placing the government under the control of an anti-slavery administration. Mr. Yulee was the first to speak. He solemnly announced to the Senate that "the State of Florida, though a convention of her people, had decided to recall the powers which she had delegated to the Federal Government, and to assume the full exercise of all her sovereign rights as an independent and separate community." At what particular period in the history of the American continent Florida had enjoyed "sovereign rights," by what process she had ever "delegated powers to the Federal Government," or at what time she had ever been "an independent and separate community," Mr. Yulee evidently preferred not to inform the Senate. His colleague, Mr. Mallory, implored the people of the North not to repeat the fatal folly of the Bourbons by imagining that "the South would submit to the degradation of a constrained existence under a violated Constitution." Mr. Mallory regarded the subjugation of the South by war as impossible. He warned the North that they were dealing with "a nation, and not with a faction."
Mr. Clement C. Clay, Jr., of Alabama, boasted that in the convention which adopted the Ordinance of Secession in his State there was not one friend of the Union; and he resented with indignation what he termed the offensive calumny of the Republicans in denouncing slavery and polygamy as twin relics of barbarism. The action of Alabama, he said, was not from "sudden, spasmodic, and violent passion." It was the conclusion her people had reached "after years of enmity, injustice, and injury at the hands of their Northern brethren." Instead of causing surprise, "it is rather matter of reproach that they have endured so much and so long, and have deferred this act of self-defense until to-day." Mr. Clay's speech was insulting and exasperating to the last degree. His colleague, Mr. Fitzpatrick, a man of better tempter, showed reserve and an indisposition to discuss the situation. He contented himself with the expression of a general concurrence in the views of Mr. Clay, adding no word of bitterness himself. He said that he "acknowledged loyalty to no other power than to the sovereign State of Alabama." But for the pressure brought upon him, Mr. Fitzpatrick would have been glad to retain his seat in the Senate and wait the course of events. He was not in his heart a Disunionist, as his colleague was. He would have accepted the nomination for the Vice-Presidency on the ticket with Douglas the preceding year, if the whole political power of the Cotton States had not opposed his wishes and forced him into the support of Breckinridge.
Jefferson Davis expressed his concurrence in the action of the people of Mississippi. He believed that action was necessary and proper, but would "have felt himself equally bound if his belief had been otherwise." He presented an analysis of the difference between the remedies of nullification and secession. Nullification was a remedy inside of the Union; secession a remedy outside. He expressed himself as against the theory of nullification, and explained that, so far from being identified with secession, the two are antagonistic principles. Mr. Calhoun's mistake, according to Mr. Davis, was in trying to "nullify" the laws of the Union while continuing a member of it. He intimated that President Jackson would never have attempted to "execute the laws" in South Carolina as he did against the nullifiers in 1832, if the State had seceded, and that therefore his great example could not be quoted in favor of "coercion." It is not believed that Mr. Davis had the slightest authority for this aspersion upon the memory of Jackson. It seems rather to have been a disingenuous and unwarranted statement of the kind so plentifully used at the time for the purpose of "firing the Southern heart."
There had been an impression in the country that Mr. Davis was among the most reluctant of those who engaged in the secession movement; but in his speech he declared that he had conferred with the people of Mississippi before the step was taken, and counseled them to the course which they had adopted. This declaration was a great surprise to Northern Democrats, among whom Mr. Davis had many friends. For several years he had been growing in favor with a powerful element in the Democracy of the free States, and, but for the exasperating quarrel of 1860, he might have been selected as the Presidential candidate of his party. No man gave up more than Mr. Davis in joining the revolt against the Union. In his farewell words to the Senate, there was a tone of moderation and dignity not unmixed with regretful and tender emotions. There was also apparent a spirit of confidence and defiance. He evidently had full faith that he was going forth to victory and to power.
Mr. Toombs of Georgia did not take formal leave, but on the 7th of January delivered a speech which, though addressed to the Senate of the United States, was apparently intended to influence public sentiment in Georgia, where there was an uncomfortable halting in the progress of secession. The speech had special interest, not alone from Mr. Toombs's well-known ability, but because it was the only presentation of the conditions on which the scheme of Disunion might be arrested, and the Cotton States held fast in their loyalty to the government,—conditions which, in the language of Mr. Toombs, would "restore fraternity and peace and unity to all of us." It was not believed that Mr. Toombs had the faintest expectation that his proposition would receive favorable consideration in the free States. His point would be fully gained by showing that the free States would not accept conditions which Georgia had the right to exact as the basis of her remaining in the Union. Once firmly persuaded that she was deprived of her constitutional rights, Georgia could the more easily be led or forced into secession.
The first condition prescribed by Mr. Toombs was, that in all the territory owned or to be acquired by the United States, slave property should be securely protected until the period of the formation of a State government, when the people could determine the question for themselves. The second condition was, that property in slaves should be entitled to the same protection from the Government of the United States in all its departments everywhere, which is extended to other property, provided that there should be no interference with the liberty of a State to prohibit or establish slavery within its limits. The third condition was, that persons committing crimes against slave property in one State, and fleeing to another, should be delivered up in the same manner as persons committing crimes against other forms of property, and that the laws of the State from which such persons flee should be the test of the criminality of the act. The fourth condition was, that fugitive slaves should be surrendered under the Act of 1850 without being entitled to a writ ofhabeas corpus, or trial by jury, or other obstructions in the States to which they might flee. The fifth and last demand was, that Congress should pass efficient laws for the punishment of all persons in any of the States who should in any manner aid or abet invasion or insurrection in any other State, or commit any other act against the law of nations tending to disturb the tranquility of the people or government of any other State. Without the concession of these points Mr. Toombs said the Union could not be maintained. If some satisfactory arrangement should not be made, he was for immediate action. "We are," he said, "as ready to fight now as we ever shall be. I will have equality or war." He denounced Mr. Lincoln as "an enemy to the human race, deserving the execration of all mankind."
Three weeks later the Georgia senators withdrew. Georgia had on the 19th of January, after much dragooning, passed the Ordinance of Secession, and on the 28th, Mr. Alfred Iverson, the colleague of Mr. Toombs, communicated the fact to the Senate in a highly inflammatory speech. He proclaimed that Georgia was the sixth State to secede, that a seventh was about to follow, and that "a confederacy of their own would soon be established." Provision would be made "for the admission of other States," and Mr. Iverson assured the Senate that within a few months "all the slave-holding States of the late confederacy of the United States will be united together in a bond of union far more homogenous, and therefore more stable, than the one now being dissolved." His boasting was unrestrained, but his conception of the contest which he and his associates were inviting was pitiably inadequate. "Your conquest," said he, addressing the Union senators, "will cost you a hundred thousand lives and a hundred millions of dollars."
The conclusion of Mr. Iverson's harangue disclosed his fear that after all Georgia might prefer the old Union. "For myself," said he, "unless my opinions greatly change, I shall never consent to the reconstruction of the Federal Union. The Rubicon is passed, and with my consent shall never be recrossed." But these bold declarations were materially qualified by Mr. Iverson when he reflected on the powerful minority of Union men in Georgia, and the general feeling in that State against a conflict with the National Government. "In this sentiment," said he, "I may be overruled by the people of my State and of the other Southern States." . . . "Nothing, however, will bring Georgia back except a full and explicit recognition and guaranty of the safety and protection of the institution of domestic slavery." This was the final indication of the original weakness of the secession cause in Georgia, and of the extraordinary means which were taken to impress the people of that State with the belief that secession would lead to reconstruction on a basis of more efficient protection to the South and greater strength to the whole Union.
On the 4th of February Mr. Slidell and Mr. Benjamin delivered their valedictories as senators from Louisiana. Mr. Slidell was aggressively insolent. He informed the Senate that if any steps should be taken to enforce the authority of the Union in the seceded States, they would be resisted. "You may," he said, "under color of enforcing your laws and collecting your revenue, blockade our ports. This will be war, and we shall meet it with different but equally efficient weapons. We will not permit the consumption or introduction of any of your manufactures. Every sea will swarm with our privateers, the volunteer militia of the ocean." He confidently expected foreign aid. "How long," he asked, "will the great naval powers of Europe permit you to impede their free intercourse with their best customers, and to stop the supply of the great staple which is the most important basis of their manufacturing industry?" "You were," said he, adding taunt to argument, "with all the wealth of this once great confederacy, but a fourth or fifth rate naval power. What will you be when emasculated by the withdrawal of fifteen States, and warred upon by them with active and inveterate hostility?"
In a tone of patronizing liberality, Mr. Slidell gave assurance that the new confederacy would recognize the rights of the inhabitants of the valley of the Mississippi and its tributaries to free navigation, and would guarantee to them "a free interchange of agricultural production without impost, and the free transit from foreign countries of every species of merchandise, subjected only to such regulations as may be necessary for a protection of the revenue system which we may establish." Had Mr. Slidell been less inspired by insolence, and more largely endowed with wisdom, he would have remembered that when the Union contained but six millions of people, they were willing to fight any one of three great European powers for freedom of access to the sea for the inhabitants of the valley of the Mississippi, and that it was from the first a physical impossibility to close it or in any way restrict it against the rights of the North-West. The people of that section, even without the prestige of the national flag, were immeasurably stronger than the people of the South-West, and were, unaided, fully competent to fight their way to the ocean over any obstacles which the powers behind Mr. Slidell could interpose. In the mere matching of local strength, it was sheer folly for the States of the lower Mississippi to attempt to control the mouth of that river.
Mr. Judah P. Benjamin spoke in a tone of moderation as contrasted with the offensive dictation of Mr. Slidell. He devoted himself mainly to answering an argument which came instinctively to every man's mind, and which bore with particular severity upon the action of Louisiana. Mr. Benjamin brought his eminent legal ability to the discussion, but failed even to satisfy himself. The State of Louisiana was formed from territory which had been bought and paid for by the United States out of the common treasury of the whole people. Whatever specious plea might be made for the independent and separate sovereignty of the old thirteen States, the argument could not apply to Louisiana. No one could maintain that Louisiana had ever enjoyed a separate sovereignty of any kind, nominal or real. She had been originally owned by France, had been sold to Spain, had been sold back again to France, and had been bought by the United States. These sales had been made without protest from any one, and the title conferred at each transfer was undisputed, the sovereignty of the purchasing power undeniable.
Confronting these facts, and realizing the difficulty they presented, Mr. Benjamin was reduced to desperate straits for argument. "Without entering into the details of the negotiation," he said, "the archives of our State Department show the fact to be that although the domain, the public lands and other property of France in the ceded province, were conveyed by absolute title to the United States, the sovereignty was not conveyedotherwise than in trust." This peculiar statement of a sovereignty that was "conveyed in trust" Mr. Benjamin attempted to sustain by quoting the clause in the treaty which gave the right of the people of Louisiana to be incorporated into the Union "on terms of equality with the other States." From this he argued that the sovereignty of theTerritoryof Louisiana held in trust by the Federal Government, and conveyed to theStateof Louisiana on her admission to the Union, was necessarily greater than the National sovereignty. Indeed, Mr. Benjamin recognized no "Nation" in the United States and no real sovereignty in the General Government which was but the agent of the sovereign States. It properly and logically followed, according to Mr. Benjamin, that the "sovereignty held in trust," might, when conferred, be immediately and rightfully employed to destroy the life of the trustee. The United States might or might not admit Louisiana to the Union, for the General Government was sole judge as to time and expediency—but when once admitted, the power of the State was greater than the power of the Government which permitted the State to come into existence. Such were the contradictions and absurdities which the creed of the Secessionists inevitably involved, and in which so clever a man as Mr. Benjamin was compelled to blunder and flounder.
Pursuing his argument, Mr. Benjamin wished to know whether those who asserted that Louisiana had been bought by the United States meant that the United States had the right based on that fact to sell Louisiana? He denied in every form that there had ever been such a purchase of Louisiana as carried with it the right of sale. "I deny," said he, "the fact on which the argument is founded. I deny that the Province of Louisiana or the people of Louisiana were ever conveyed to the United States for a price as property that could be bought or sold at will." However learned Mr. Benjamin may have been in the law, he was evidently ill informed as to the history of the transaction of which he spoke so confidently. He should have known that the United States, sixteen years after it bought Louisiana from France, actually sold or exchanged a large part of that province to the King of Spain as part of the consideration in the purchase of the Floridas. He should have known that at the time the Government of the United States disposed of a part of Louisiana, there was not an intelligent man in the world who did not recognize its right and power to dispose of the whole. The theory that the United States acquired a less degree of sovereignty over Louisiana than was held by France when she transferred it, or by Spain when she owned it, was never dreamed of when the negotiation was made. It was an afterthought on the part of the hard-pressed defenders of the right of secession. It was the ingenious but lame device of an able lawyer who undertook to defend what was indefensible.
Mr. Yulee of Florida had endeavored to make the same argument on behalf of his State, feeling the embarrassment as did Mr. Benjamin, and relying, as Mr. Benjamin did, upon the clause in the treaty with Spain entitling Florida to admission to the Union. Mr. Benjamin and Mr. Yulee should both have known that the guaranty which they quoted was nothing more and nothing less than the ordinary condition which every enlightened nation makes in parting with its subjects or citizens, that they shall enter into the new relation without discrimination against them and with no lower degree of civil rights than had already been enjoyed by those who form the nation to which they are about to be annexed. Louisiana, when she was transferred to the United States, received no further guaranty than Napoleon in effect gave to Spain at the treaty of San Ildefonso, or than the Spanish Bourbons had given to the French Bourbons in the treaty of 1763 at the close of the Seven Years' War. In each of the three transfers of the sovereignty of Louisiana, the same condition was perfectly understood as to the rights of the inhabitants. Mr. Benjamin drew the conclusion which was not only diametrically wrong in morals, but diametrically erroneous in logic. Instead of inferring that a State, situated as Louisiana was, should necessarily become greater than the power which purchased it, simply because other States in the Union which she joined had assumed such power, a discriminating mind of Mr. Benjamin's acuteness should have seen that the very position proved the reverse of what he stated, and demonstrated, in the absurdity of Louisiana's secession, the equal absurdity of the secession of South Carolina and Georgia.
It seemed impossible for Mr. Benjamin or for any other leader of Southern opinion to argue the question of State rights fairly or dispassionately. They had been so persistently trained in the heresy that they could give no weight to the conclusive reasoning of the other side. The original thirteen, they averred, were "free, sovereign, and independent States," acknowledged to be such by the King of Great Britain in the Treaty of peace in 1783. The new States, so the argument ran, were all admitted to the Union of terms of equality with the old. Hence all were alike endowed with sovereignty. Even the historical part of this argument was strained and fallacious. Much was made in the South of Mr. Toombs's declaration that "the original thirteen" were as "independent of each other as Australia and Jamaica." So indeed they were as long as they remained British Colonies. Their only connection in that condition was in their common dependence on the Crown. But the first step towards independence of the Crown was to unite. From that day onward they were never separate. Nor did the King of Great Britain acknowledge the "independence and sovereignty" of the thirteen individual and separate States. The Treaty of peace declares that "His Majesty acknowledges the said United States [naming them] to be free, sovereign, and independent States."—not separately and individually, but the "saidUnitedStates." The King then agrees that "the following are and shall be the boundaries of the said United States,"—proceeding to give, not the boundaries of each State, but the boundaries of the whole as one unit, one sovereignty, one nationality. Last of all, the commissioners who signed the treaty with the King's commissioner were not acting for the individual States, but for theUnitedStates. Three of them, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay, were from the North, and Henry Laurens from the South. The separate sovereignties whose existence was so persistently alleged by Mr. Benjamin and Mr. Toombs were not represented when independence was conceded. Mr. Benjamin's conclusion, therefore, was not only illogical, but was completely disproved by plain historical facts.
It seems never to have occurred to Mr. Benjamin, or to Mr. Yulee, or to the Texas senators, or to the Arkansas senators, that the money paid from a common treasury of the nation gave any claim to National sovereignty. Their philosophy seems to have been that the General Government had been paid in full by the privilege of nurturing new States, of improving their rivers and harbors, of building their fortifications, of protecting them in peace, of defending them in war. The privilege of leading the new communities through the condition of Territorial existence up to the full majesty of States, was, according to secession argument, sufficient compensation, and removed all shadow of the title or the sovereignty of the National Government, the moment the inhabitants thus benefitted announced their desire to form new connections. Louisiana had cost fifteen millions of dollars at a time when that was a vast sum of money. It had cost five millions of money and the surrender of a province, to purchase Florida, and nearly a hundred millions more to extinguish the Indian title, and make the State habitable for white men. Texas cost the National Treasury ninety millions of dollars in the war which was precipitated by her annexation, and ten millions more paid to her in 1850, in adjustment of her boundary trouble. All these States apparently regarded the tie that bound them to the National Government as in no degree mutual, as imposing no duty upon them. By some mysterious process still unexplained, the more they gained from connection with the National authority, the less was their obligation thereto, the more perfect their right to disregard and destroy the beneficent government which had created them and fostered them.
In all the speeches delivered by the senators from the seceding States, there was no presentation of the grievances which, in their own minds, justified secession. This fact elicited less notice at the time than it calls forth in retrospect. Those senators held in their hands in the beginning, the fate of the secession movement. If they had advised the Southern States that it was wiser and better to abide in the Union, and at least to wait for some overt act of wrong against the slave States, the whole movement would have collapsed. But they evidently felt that this would be a shrinking and cowardly policy after the numerous manifestoes they had issued. South Carolina had taken the fatal step, and to fail in sustaining her would be to co-operate in crushing her. While these motives and aims are intelligible, it seems utterly incredible that not one of the senators gave a specification of the wrongs which led the South to her rash step. Mr. Toombs recounted the concessions on which the South would agree to remain; but these were new provisions and new conditions, never intended by the framers of the Federal Constitution; and they were abhorrent to the civilization of the nineteenth century.
Mr. Toombs, Mr. Jefferson Davis, and Mr. Benjamin were the three ablest senators who spoke in favor of secession. Not one of them deemed it necessary to justify his conduct by a recital of the grounds on which so momentous a step could bear the test of historic examination. They dealt wholly in generalities as to the past, and apparently based their action on something that was to happen in the future. Mr. John Slidell sought to give a strong reason for the movement, in the statement that, if Lincoln should be inaugurated with Southern assent, the 4th of March would witness, in various quarters, outbreaks among the slaves which, although they would be promptly suppressed, would carry ruin and devastation to many a Southern home. It was from Mr. Slidell that Mr. Buchanan received the information which induced him to dwell at length in his annual message on this painful feature of the situation. But it was probably an invention of Mr. Slidell's fertile brain—imposed upon the President and intended to influence public sentiment in the North. It was in flat contradiction of the general faith in the personal fealty of their slaves, so constantly boasted by the Southern men,—a faith abundantly justified by the subsequent fact that four years of war passed without a single attempt to servile insurrection. At the time of the John Brown disturbance the South resented the imputation of fear, made upon it by the North. If now the danger was especially imminent, Southern leaders were solely to blame. They would not accept the honorable assurance of the Republican party and of the President-elect that no interference with slavery in the States was designed. They insisted in all their public addresses that Mr. Lincoln was determined to uproot slavery everywhere, and they might well fear that these repeated declarations had been heard and might be accepted by their slaves.
The omission by individual senators to present the grievances which justified secession is perhaps less notable then the same omission by the conventions which ordained secession in the several States. South Carolina presented, as a special outrage, the enactment of personal-liberty bills in the free States, and yet, from the foundation of the Federal Government, she had probably never lost a slave in consequence of these enactments. In Georgia the attempt at justification reached the ludicrous when solemn charge was made that a bounty had been paid from the Federal Treasury to New-England fishermen. The tariff was complained of, the navigation laws were sneered at. But these were all public policies which had been in operation with Southern consent and largely with Southern support, throughout the existence of the Republic. When South Carolina attempted, somewhat after the illustrious model of the Declaration of Independence, to present justifying reasons for her course, the very authors of the document must have seen that it amounted only to a parody.
Finding no satisfactory exhibit of grievances, either in the speeches of senators or in the declarations of conventions, one naturally infers that the Confederate Government, when formally organized at Montgomery in February, must have given a full and lucid statement to the world of the reasons for this extraordinary movement. When our fathers were impelled to break their loyalty to the English king, and to establish an independent government, they declared in the very fore-front of the document which contained their reasons, that "when it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires thatthey should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." They followed this assertion with an exhibit of causes which, in the judgment of the world, has been and ever will be, a complete justification of their revolutionary movement.
The Confederate Government saw fit to do nothing of the kind. Their Congress put forth no declaration or manifesto, and Jefferson Davis in his Inaugural as President utterly failed—did not even attempt—to enumerate the grounds of complaint upon which the destruction of the American Union was based. He said that "the declared compact of the Union from which we have withdrawn was to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. And when, in the judgment of the sovereign States now composing this confederacy, it has been perverted from the purposes for which it was ordained, and ceases to answer the ends for which it was established, a peaceful appeal to the ballot-box declared, that, so far as they were concerned, the government created by that compact should cease to exist. In this they merely assert the right which the Declaration of Independence of 1776 defined to be inalienable." But in what manner, at what time, by what measure, "justice, domestic tranquillity, common defense, the general welfare," had been destroyed by the government of the Union, Mr. Jefferson Davis did not deign to inform the world to whose opinion he appealed.
Mr. Jefferson, in draughting the Declaration of Independence which Davis quotes as his model, said "the history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States." What would have been thought of Mr. Jefferson if he had stopped there and adduced no instance and given no proof of his serious indictment against George III.? But Mr. Jefferson and his fellow-patriots in that great Act proceeded to submit their proof to the judgment of a candid world. They recited twenty-eight distinct charges of oppression and tyranny, depriving them of rights to which they were entitled as subjects of the Crown under the British Constitution. From that hour to this, there has been no disproval of the truth of these charges or of the righteousness of the resistance to which our forefathers resorted. It would have been well for the dignity of the Southern Confederacy in history if one of its many able men had placed on record, in an authentic form, the grounds upon which, and the grievances for which, destruction of the Union could be justified.
In his message to the Confederate Congress, Mr. Davis apparently attempted to cure the defects of his Inaugural address, and to give a list of measures which he declared to have been hostile to Southern interests. But it is to be observed that not one of these measures had been completed. They were merely menaced or foreshadowed. As matter of fact, emphasized by Mr. Buchanan in his message, and known to no one better than to Mr. Davis, not a single measure adverse to the interests of slavery had been passed by the Congress of the United States from the foundation of the government. If the Missouri Compromise of 1820 be alleged as an exception to this sweeping assertion, it must be remembered that that compromise was a Southern and not a Northern measure, and was a triumph of the pro-slavery members of Congress over the anti-slavery members; and that its constitutionality was upheld by the unanimous voice of the Cabinet in which Mr. Crawford of Georgia and Mr. Calhoun of South Carolina were leading members.
On the other hand, the policy of the government had been steadily in favor of slavery; and the measures of Congress which would strengthen it were not only numerous, but momentous in character. They are familiar to every one who knows the simplest elements of our national history. The acquisition of Louisiana, the purchase of Florida, the Mexican war, were all great national movements which resulted in strengthening the slave power. Every demand which the South made for protection had been conceded. More stringent provisions for the return of fugitive slaves were asked, and a law was enacted trampling under foot the very spirit of liberty, and putting in peril the freedom of men who were citizens of Northern States. The Missouri Compromise, passed with the consent and support of the South, was repealed by Southern dictation the moment its operation was found to be hostile to the spread of slavery. The rights of slavery in the Territories required judicial confirmation, and the Supreme Court complied by rendering the famous decision in the case of Dred Scott. Against all these guaranties and concessions for the support of slavery, Mr. Davis could quote, not anti-slavery aggressions which had been made, but only those which might be made in the future.
This position disclosed the real though not the avowed cause of the secession movement. Its authors were not afraid of an immediate invasion of the rights of the slave-holder in the States, but they were conscious that the growth of the country, the progress of civilization, and the expansion of our population, were all hostile to their continued supremacy as the governing element in the Republic. The South was the only section in which there was distinctively a governing class. The slave-holders ruled their States more positively than ever the aristocratic classes ruled England. Besides the distinction of free and slave, or black and white, there was another line of demarcation between white men that was as absolute as the division between patrician and plebeian. The nobles of Poland who dictated the policy of the kingdom were as numerous in proportion to the whole population as the rich class of slave-holders whose decrees governed the policy of their States. It was, in short, an oligarchy which by its combined power ruled the Republic. No President of any party had ever been elected who was opposed to its supremacy. The political revolution of 1860 had given to the Republic an anti-slavery President, and the Southern men refused to accept the result. They had been too long accustomed to power to surrender it to an adverse majority, however lawful or constitutional that majority might be. They had been trained to lead and not to follow. They were not disciplined to submission. They had been so long in command that they had become incapable of obedience. Unwillingness to submit to Constitutional authority was the controlling consideration which drove the Southern States to the desperate design of a revolution, peaceful they hoped it would be, but to a revolution even if it should be one of blood.
Congress in the Winter of 1860-61.—The North offers Many Concessions to the South.—Spirit of Conciliation.—Committee of Thirteen in the Senate.—Committee of Thirty-three in the House.—Disagreement of Senate Committee.—Propositions submitted to House Committee.— Thomas Corwin's Measure.—Henry Winter Davis.—Justin S. Morrill— Mr. Houston of Alabama.—Constitutional Amendment proposed by Charles Francis Adams.—Report of the Committee of Thirty-three.— Objectionable Measures proposed.—Minority Report by Southern Members.—The Crittenden Compromise proposed.—Details of that Compromise.—Mr. Adams's Double Change of Ground.—An Old Resolution of the Massachusetts Legislature.—Mr. Webster's Criticism Pertinent. —Various Minority Reports.—The California Members.—Washburn and Tappan.—Amendment to the Constitution passed by the House.—By the Senate also.—New Mexico.—The Fugitive-slave Law.—Mr. Clark of New Hampshire.—Peace Congress.—Invited by Virginia.—Assembles in Washington.—Peace Measures proposed.—They meet no Favor in Congress.—Territories of Colorado, Dakota, and Nevada originated. —Prohibition of Slavery abandoned.—Republicans in Congress do not ask it.—Explanation required.—James S. Green of Missouri.— His Character as a Debater.—Northern Republicans frightened at their own Success.—Anxious for a Compromise.—Dread of Disunion. —Northern Democrats.—Dangerous Course pursued by them.—General Demoralization of Northern Sentiment.
While the Secession leaders were engaged in their schemes for the disruption of the National Government and the formation of a new confederacy, Congress was employing every effort to arrest the Disunion tendency by making new concessions, and offering new guaranties to the offended power of the South. If the wild precipitation of the Southern leaders must be condemned, the compromising course of the majority in each branch of Congress will not escape censure,—censure for misjudgment, not for wrong intention. The anxiety in both Senate and House to do something which should allay the excitement in the slave-holding section served only to develop and increase its exasperation and its resolution. A man is never so aggressively bold as when he finds his opponent afraid of him; and the efforts, however well meant, of the National Congress in the winter of 1860-61 undoubtedly impressed the South with a still further conviction of the timidity of the North, and with a certainty that the new confederacy would be able to organize without resistance, and to dissolve the Union without war.
Congress had no sooner convened in December, 1860, and received the message of Mr. Buchanan, with its elaborate argument that the National Government possessed no power to coerce a State, than in each branch special committees of conciliation were appointed. They were not so termed in the resolutions of the Senate and House, but their mission was solely one of conciliation. They were charged with the duty of giving extraordinary assurances that Slavery was not to be disturbed, and of devising measures which might persuade Southern men against the rashness on which they seemed bent. In the Senate they raised a committee of thirteen, representing the number of the original States of the Union. In the House the committee was composed of thirty-three members, representing the number of States then existing. In the Senate, Mr. Powell of Kentucky was chairman of the committee of thirteen, which was composed of seven Democrats, five Republicans, and the venerable Mr. Crittenden of Kentucky, who belonged to neither party. It contained the most eminent men in the Senate of all shades of political opinion. In the House, Thomas Corwin was made chairman, with a majority of Republicans of the more conservative type, a minority of Democrats, and Mr. Henry Winter Davis of Maryland, who held a position similar to that occupied by Mr. Crittenden in the Senate.
The Senate committee promptly disagreed, and before the close of December reported to the Senate their inability to come to any conclusion. The committee of thirty-three was more fortunate, or perhaps unfortunate, in being able to arrive at a series of conclusions which tended only to lower the tone of Northern opinion without in the least degree appeasing the wrath of the South. The record of that committee is one which cannot be reviewed with pride or satisfaction by any citizen of a State that was loyal to the Union. Every form of compromise which could be suggested, every concession of Northern prejudice and every surrender of Northern pride, was urged upon the committee. The measures proposed to the committee by members of the House were very numerous, and those suggested by the members of the committee themselves seemed designed to meet every complaint made by the most extreme Southern agitators. The propositions submitted would in the aggregate fill a large volume, but a selection from the mass will indicate the spirit which had taken possession of Congress.