



Produced by David Widger





                          THE GREAT CONSPIRACY

                         Its Origin and History

                                 Part 2

                                   BY

                               JOHN LOGAN



                              CHAPTER VI.

                     THE GREAT CONSPIRACY MATURING.

THE 6th of November, 1860, came and passed; on the 7th, the prevailing
conviction that Lincoln would be elected had become a certainty, and
before the close of that day, the fact had been heralded throughout the
length and breadth of the Republic.  The excitement of the People was
unparalleled.  The Republicans of the North rejoiced that at last the
great wrong of Slavery was to be placed "where the People could rest in
the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction!"  The
Douglas Democracy, naturally chagrined at the defeat of their great
leader, were filled with gloomy forebodings touching the future of their
Country; and the Southern Democracy, or at least a large portion of it,
openly exulted that at last the long-wished-for opportunity for a revolt
of the Slave Power, and a separation of the Slave from the Free States,
was at hand.  Especially in South Carolina were the "Fire-eating"
Southrons jubilant over the event.

     ["South Carolina rejoiced over the election of Lincoln, with
     bonfires and processions."  p. 172, Arnold's "Life of Abraham
     Lincoln."

     "There was great joy in Charleston, and wherever 'Fire Eaters' most
     did congregate, on the morning of November 7th.  Men rushed to
     shake hands and congratulate each other on the glad tidings of
     Lincoln's election.  * * *  Men thronged the streets, talking,
     laughing, cheering, like mariners long becalmed on a hateful,
     treacherous sea, whom a sudden breeze had swiftly wafted within
     sight of their longed-for haven."  p. 332, vol. i., Greeley's
     American Conflict.]

Meanwhile any number of joint resolutions looking to the calling of a
Secession Convention, were introduced in the South Carolina Legislature,
sitting at Columbia, having in view Secession contingent upon the
"cooperation" of the other Slave States, or looking to immediate and
"unconditional" Secession.

On the evening of November 7th, Edmund Ruffin of Virginia--a Secession
fanatic who had come from thence in hot haste--in response to a
serenade, declared to the people of Columbia that: "The defense of the
South, he verily believed, was only to be secured through the lead of
South Carolina;" that, "old as he was, he had come here to join them in
that lead;" and that "every day delayed, was a day lost to the Cause."
He acknowledged that Virginia was "not as ready as South Carolina;" but
declared that "The first drop of blood spilled on the soil of South
Carolina would bring Virginia, and every Southern State, with them."  He
thought "it was perhaps better that Virginia, and all other border
States, remain quiescent for a time, to serve as a guard against the
North.  * * *  By remaining in the Union for a time, she would not only
prevent coercive legislation in Congress, but any attempt for our
subjugation."

That same evening came news that, at Charleston, the Grand Jury of the
United States District Court had refused to make any presentments,
because of the Presidential vote just cast, which, they said, had "swept
away the last hope for the permanence, for the stability, of the Federal
Government of these Sovereign States;" and that United States District
Judge Magrath had resigned his office, saying to the Grand Jury, as he
did so: "In the political history of the United States, an event has
happened of ominous import to fifteen Slave-holding States.  The State
of which we are citizens has been always understood to have deliberately
fixed its purpose whenever that event should happen.  Feeling an
assurance of what will be the action of the State, I consider it my
duty, without delay, to prepare to obey its wishes.  That preparation is
made by the resignation of the office I have held."

The news of the resignations of the Federal Collector and District
Attorney at Charleston, followed, with an intimation that that of the
Sub-Treasurer would soon be forthcoming.  On November 9th, a joint
resolution calling an unconditional Secession Convention to meet at
Columbia December 17th, was passed by the Senate, and on the 12th of
November went through the House; and both of the United States Senators
from South Carolina had now resigned their seats in the United States
Senate.

Besides all these and many other incitements to Secession was the fact
that at Milledgeville, Georgia, Governor Brown had, November 12th,
addressed a Georgian Military Convention, affirming "the right of
Secession, and the duty of other Southern States to sustain South
Carolina in the step she was then taking," and declaring that he "would
like to see Federal troops dare attempt the coercion of a seceding
Southern State!  For every Georgian who fell in a conflict thus incited,
the lives of two Federal Soldiers should expiate the outrage on State
Sovereignty"--and that the Convention aforesaid had most decisively
given its voice for Secession.

It was about this time, however, that Alexander H.  Stephens vainly
sought to stem the tide of Secession in his own State, in a speech
(November 14) before the Georgia Legislature, in which he declared that
Mr. Lincoln "can do nothing unless he is backed by power in Congress.
The House of Representatives is largely in the majority against him.  In
the Senate he will also be powerless.  There will be a majority of four
against him."  He also cogently said: "Many of us have sworn to support
it (the Constitution).  Can we, therefore, for the mere election of a
man to the Presidency--and that too, in accordance with the prescribed
forms of the Constitution--make a point of resistance to the Government,
and, without becoming the breakers of that sacred instrument ourselves,
withdraw ourselves from it?  Would we not be in the wrong?"

But the occasional words of wisdom that fell from the lips of the few
far-seeing statesmen of the South, were as chaff before the storm of
Disunion raised by the turbulent Fire-eaters, and were blown far from
the South, where they might have done some good for the Union cause,
away up to the North, where they contributed to aid the success of the
contemplated Treason and Rebellion, by lulling many of the people there,
into a false sense of security.  Unfortunately, also, even the ablest of
the Southern Union men were so tainted with the heretical doctrine of
States-Rights, which taught the "paramount allegiance" of the citizen to
the State, that their otherwise powerful appeals for the preservation of
the Union were almost invariably handicapped by the added protestation
that in any event--and however they might deplore the necessity--they
would, if need be, go with their State, against their own convictions of
duty to the National Union.

Hence in this same speech we find that Mr. Stephens destroyed the whole
effect of his weighty and logical appeal against Secession from the
Union, by adding to it, that, "Should Georgia determine to go out of the
Union I shall bow to the will of her people.  Their cause is my cause,
and their destiny is my destiny; and I trust this will be the ultimate
course of all."--and by further advising the calling of a Convention of
the people to decide the matter; thus, in advance, as it were, binding
himself hand and foot, despite his previous Union utterances, to do the
fell bidding of the most rampant Disunionists.  And thus, in due time,
it befell, as we shall see, that this "saving clause" in his "Union
speech," brought him at the end, not to that posture of patriotic
heroism to which he aspired when he adjured his Georgian auditors to
"let us be found to the last moment standing on the deck (of the
Republic), with the Constitution of the United States waving over our
heads," but to that of an imprisoned traitor and defeated rebel against
the very Republic and Constitution which he had sworn to uphold and
defend!

The action of the South Carolina Legislature in calling an Unconditional
Secession Convention, acted among the Southern States like a spark in a
train of gunpowder.  Long accustomed to incendiary resolutions of
Pro-Slavery political platforms, as embodying the creed of Southern men;
committed by those declarations to the most extreme action when, in
their judgment, the necessity should arise; and worked up during the
Presidential campaign by swarming Federal officials inspired by the
fanatical Secession leaders; the entire South only needed the spark from
the treasonable torch of South Carolina, to find itself ablaze, almost
from one end to the other, with the flames of revolt.

Governor after Governor, in State after State, issued proclamation after
proclamation, calling together their respective Legislatures, to
consider the situation and whether their respective States should join
South Carolina in seceding from the Union.  Kentucky alone, of them all,
seemed for a time to keep cool, and look calmly and reasonably through
the Southern ferment to the horrors beyond.  In an address issued by
Governor Magoffin of that State, to the people, he said:

"To South Carolina and such other States as may wish to secede from the
Union, I would say: The geography of this Country will not admit of a
division; the mouth and sources of the Mississippi River cannot be
separated without the horrors of Civil War.  We cannot sustain you in
this movement merely on account of the election of Mr. Lincoln.  Do not
precipitate by premature action into a revolution or Civil War, the
consequences of which will be most frightful to all of us.  It may yet
be avoided.  There is still hope, faint though it be.  Kentucky is a
Border State, and has suffered more than all of you.  * * *  She has a
right to claim that her voice, and the voice of reason, and moderation
and patriotism shall be heard and heeded by you.  If you secede, your
representatives will go out of Congress and leave us at the mercy of a
Black Republican Government.  Mr. Lincoln will have no check.  He can
appoint his Cabinet, and have it confirmed.  The Congress will then be
Republican, and he will be able to pass such laws as he may suggest.
The Supreme Court will be powerless to protect us.  We implore you to
stand by us, and by our friends in the Free States; and let us all, the
bold, the true, and just men in the Free and Slave States, with a united
front, stand by each other, by our principles, by our rights, our
equality, our honor, and by the Union under the Constitution.  I believe
this is the only way to save it; and we can do it."

But this "still small voice" of conscience and of reason, heard like a
whisper from the mouths of Stephens in Georgia, and Magoffin in
Kentucky, was drowned in the clamor and tumult of impassioned harangues
and addresses, and the drumming and tramp of the "minute men" of South
Carolina, and other military organizations, as they excitedly prepared
throughout the South for the dread conflict at arms which they
recklessly invited, and savagely welcomed.

We have seen how President Andrew Jackson some thirty years before, had
stamped out Nullification and Disunion in South Carolina, with an iron
heel.

But a weak and feeble old man--still suffering from the effects of the
mysterious National Hotel poisoning--was now in the Executive Chair at
the White House.  Well-meaning, doubtless, and a Union man at heart, his
enfeebled intellect was unable to see, and hold firm to, the only true
course.  He lacked clearness of perception, decision of character, and
nerve.  He knew Secession was wrong, but allowed himself to be persuaded
that he had no Constitutional power to prevent it.  He had surrounded
himself in the Cabinet with such unbending adherents and tools of the
Slave-Power, as Howell Cobb of Georgia, his Secretary of the Treasury,
John B. Floyd of Virginia, as Secretary of War, Jacob Thompson of
Mississippi, as Secretary of the Interior, and Isaac Toucy of
Connecticut, as Secretary of the Navy, before whose malign influence the
councils of Lewis Cass of Michigan, the Secretary of State, and other
Union men, in and out of the Cabinet, were quite powerless.

When, therefore, the Congress met (December 3, 1860) and he transmitted
to it his last Annual Message, it was found that, instead of treating
Secession from the Jacksonian standpoint, President Buchanan feebly
wailed over the threatened destruction of the Union, weakly apologized
for the contemplated Treason, garrulously scolded the North as being to
blame for it, and, while praying to God to "preserve the Constitution
and the Union throughout all generations," wrung his nerveless hands in
despair over his own powerlessness--as he construed the Constitution--to
prevent Secession!  Before writing his pitifully imbecile Message,
President Buchanan had secured from his Attorney-General (Jeremiah S.
Black of Pennsylvania) an opinion, in which the latter, after touching
upon certain cases in which he believed the President would be justified
in using force to sustain the Federal Laws, supposed the case of a State
where all the Federal Officers had resigned and where there were neither
Federal Courts to issue, nor officers to execute judicial process, and
continued: "In that event, troops would certainly be out of place, and
their use wholly illegal.  If they are sent to aid the Courts and
Marshals there must be Courts and Marshals to be aided.  Without the
exercise of these functions, which belong exclusively to the civil
service, the laws cannot be executed in any event, no matter what may be
the physical strength which the Government has at its command.  Under
such circumstances, to send a military force into any State, with orders
to act against the people, would be simply making War upon them."

Resting upon that opinion of Attorney-General Black, President Buchanan,
in his Message, after referring to the solemn oath taken by the
Executive "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed," and
stating that there were now no longer any Federal Officers in South
Carolina, through whose agency he could keep that oath, took up the laws
of February 28, 1795, and March 3, 1807, as "the only Acts of Congress
on the Statute-book bearing upon the subject," which "authorize the
President, after he shall have ascertained that the Marshal, with his
posse comitatus, is unable to execute civil or criminal process in any
particular case, to call out the Militia and employ the Army and Navy to
aid him in performing this service, having first, by Proclamation,
commanded the insurgents to 'disperse and retire peaceably to their
respective abodes, within a limited time'"--and thereupon held that
"This duty cannot, by possibility, be performed in a State where no
judicial authority exists to issue process, and where there is no
Marshal to execute it; and where even if there were such an officer, the
entire population would constitute one solid combination to resist him."
And, not satisfied with attempting to show as clearly as he seemed to
know how, his own inability under the laws to stamp out Treason, he
proceeded to consider what he thought Congress also could not do under
the Constitution.  Said he: "The question fairly stated, is: Has the
Constitution delegated to Congress the power to coerce into submission a
State which is attempting to withdraw, or has actually withdrawn, from
the Confederacy?  If answered in the affirmative, it must be on the
principle that the power has been conferred upon Congress to declare and
make War against a State.  After much serious reflection, I have arrived
at the conclusion that no such power has been delegated to Congress or
to any other department of the Federal Government."  And further:
"Congress possesses many means of preserving it (the Union) by
conciliation; but the sword was not placed in their hands to preserve it
by force."

Thus, in President Buchanan's judgment, while, in another part of his
Message, he had declared that no State had any right, Constitutional or
otherwise, to Secede from that Union, which was designed for all time
--yet, if any State concluded thus wrongfully to Secede, there existed no
power in the Union, by the exercise of force, to preserve itself from
instant dissolution!  How imbecile the reasoning, how impotent the
conclusion, compared with that of President Jackson, thirty years
before, in his Proclamation against Nullification and Secession, wherein
that sturdy patriot declared to the South Carolinians.  that "compared
to Disunion, all other evils are light, because that brings with it an
accumulation of all;" that "Disunion by armed force, is Treason;" and
that he was determined "to execute the Laws," and "to preserve the
Union!"

President Buchanan's extraordinary Message--or so much of it as related
to the perilous condition of the Union--was referred, in the House of
Representatives, to a Select Committee of Thirty-three, comprising one
member from each State, in which there was a very large preponderance of
such as favored Conciliation without dishonor.  But the debates in both
Houses, in which the most violent language was indulged by the Southern
Fire-eaters, as well as other events, soon proved that there was a
settled purpose on the part of the Slave-Power and its adherents to
resist and spit upon all attempts at placation.

In the Senate also (December 5), a Select Committee of Thirteen was
appointed, to consider the impending dangers to the Union, comprising
Senators Powell of Kentucky, Hunter of Virginia, Crittenden of Kentucky,
Seward of New York, Toombs of Georgia, Douglas of Illinois, Collamer of
Vermont, Davis of Mississippi, Wade of Ohio, Bigler of Pennsylvania,
Rice of Minnesota, Doolittle of Wisconsin, and Grimes of Iowa.  Their
labors were alike without practical result, owing to the irreconcilable
attitude of the Southrons, who would accept nothing less than a total
repudiation by the Republicans of the very principles upon which the
recent Presidential contest had by them been fought and won.  Nor would
they even accept such a repudiation unless carried by vote of the
majority of the Republicans.  The dose that they insisted upon the
Republican Party swallowing must not only be as noxious as possible, but
must absolutely be mixed by that Party itself, and in addition, that
Party must also go down on its knees, and beg the privilege of so mixing
and swallowing the dose!  That was the impossible attitude into which,
by their bullying and threats, the Slave Power hoped to force the
Republican Party--either that or "War."

Project after project in both Houses of Congress looking to Conciliation
was introduced, referred, reported, discussed, and voted on or not, as
the case might be, in vain.  And in the meantime, in New York, in
Philadelphia, and elsewhere in the North, the timidity of Capital showed
itself in great Conciliation meetings, where speeches were applauded and
resolutions adopted of the most abject character, in behalf of "Peace,
at any price," regardless of the sacrifice of honor and principles and
even decency.  In fact the Commercial North, with supplicating hands and
beseeching face, sank on its knees in a vain attempt to propitiate its
furious creditor, the South, by asking it not only to pull its nose, but
to spit in its face, both of which it humbly and even anxiously offered
for the purpose!*

     [Thus, in Philadelphia, December 13, 1860, at a great meeting held
     at the call of the Mayor, in Independence Square, Mayor Henry led
     off the speaking--which was nearly all in the same line-by saying:
     "I tell you that if in any portion of our Confederacy, sentiments
     have been entertained and cherished which are inimical to the civil
     rights and social institutions of any other portion, those
     sentiments should be relinquished."  Another speaker, Judge George
     W. Woodward, sneeringly asked: "Whence came these excessive
     sensibilities that cannot bear a few slaves in a remote Territory
     until the white people establish a Constitution?"  Another, Mr.
     Charles E. Lex (a Republican), speaking of the Southern People,
     said: "What, then, can we say to them? what more than we have
     expressed in the resolutions we have offered?  If they are really
     aggrieved by any laws upon our Statute-books opposed to their
     rights--if upon examination any such are found to be in conflict
     with the Constitution of these United States--nay, further, if they
     but serve to irritate our brethren of the South, whether
     Constitutional or not, I, for one, have no objection that they
     should instantly be repealed."  Another said, "Let us repeal our
     obnoxious Personal Liberty bills * * *; let us receive our brother
     of the South, if he will come among us for a little time, attended
     by his servant, and permit him thus to come."  And the resolutions
     adopted were even still more abject in tone than the speeches.]

But the South at present was too busy in perfecting its long-cherished
plans for the disruption of the Union, to more than grimly smile at this
evidence of what it chose to consider "a divided sentiment" in the
North.  While it weakened the North, it strengthened the South, and
instead of mollifying the Conspirators against the Union, it inspired
them with fresh energy in their fell purpose to destroy it.

The tone of the Republican press, too, while more dignified, was
thoroughly conciliatory.  The Albany Evening Journal,--[November 30,
1860]--the organ of Governor Seward, recognizing that the South, blinded
by passion, was in dead earnest, but also recognizing the existence of
"a Union sentiment there, worth cherishing," suggested "a Convention of
the People, consisting of delegates appointed by the States, in which it
would not be found unprofitable for the North and South, bringing their
respective griefs, claims, and proposed reforms, to a common
arbitrament, to meet, discuss, and determine upon a future"--before a
final appeal to arms.  So, too, Horace Greeley, in the New York
Tribune,--[November 9, 1860.]--after weakly conceding, on his own part,
the right of peaceable Secession, said: "But while we thus uphold the
practical liberty, if not the abstract right, of Secession, we must
insist that the step be taken, if it ever shall be, with the
deliberation and gravity befitting so momentous an issue.  Let ample
time be given for reflection; let the subject be fully canvassed before
the People; and let a popular vote be taken in every case, before
Secession is decreed."  Other leading papers of the Northern press, took
similar ground for free discussion and conciliatory action.

In the Senate, as well as the House of Representatives--as also was
shown by the appointment, heretofore mentioned, of Select Committees to
consider the gravity of the situation, and suggest a remedy--the same
spirit of Conciliation and Concession, and desire for free and frank
discussion, was apparent among most of the Northern and Border-State
members of those Bodies.  But these were only met by sneers and threats
on the part of the Fire-eating Secession members of the South.  In the
Senate, Senator Clingman of North Carolina, sneeringly said: "They want
to get up a free debate, as the Senator (Mr. Seward) from New York
expressed it, in one of his speeches.  But a Senator from Texas told me
the other day that a great many of these free debaters were hanging from
the trees of that country;" and Senator Iverson, of Georgia, said:
"Gentlemen speak of Concession, of the repeal of the Personal Liberty
bills.  Repeal them all to-morrow, and you cannot stop this revolution."
After declaring his belief that "Before the 4th of March, five States
will have declared their independence" and that "three other States will
follow as soon as the action of the people can be had;" he proceeded to
allude to the refusal of Governor Houston of Texas to call together the
Texas Legislature for action in accord with the Secession sentiment, and
declared that "if he will not yield to that public sentiment, some Texan
Brutus will arise to rid his country of this hoary-headed incubus that
stands between the people and their sovereign will!"  Then, sneering at
the presumed cowardice of the North, he continued: "Men talk about their
eighteen millions (of Northern population); but we hear a few days
afterwards of these same men being switched in the face, and they
tremble like sheep-stealing dogs!  There will be no War.  The North,
governed by such far-seeing Statesmen as the Senator (Mr. Seward) from
New York, will see the futility of this.  In less than twelve months, a
Southern Confederacy will be formed; and it will be the most successful
Government on Earth.  The Southern States, thus banded together, will be
able to resist any force in the World.  We do not expect War; but we
will be prepared for it--and we are not a feeble race of Mexicans
either."

On the other hand, there were Republicans in that Body who sturdily met
the bluster of the Southern Fire-eaters with frank and courageous words
expressing their full convictions on the situation and their belief that
Concessions could not be made and that Compromises were mere waste
paper.  Thus, Senator Ben Wade of Ohio, among the bravest and manliest
of them all, in a speech in the Senate, December 17, the very day on
which the South Carolina Secession Convention was to assemble, said to
the Fire-eaters: "I tell you frankly that we did lay down the principle
in our platform, that we would prohibit, if we had the power, Slavery
from invading another inch of the Free Soil of this Government.  I stand
to that principle to-day.  I have argued it to half a million of people,
and they stand by it; they have commissioned me to stand by it; and, so
help me God, I will! * * *  On the other hand, our platform repudiates
the idea that we have any right, or harbor any ultimate intention to
invade or interfere with your institutions in your own States.  * * *
It is not, by your own confessions, that Mr. Lincoln is expected to
commit any overt act by which you may be injured.  You will not even
wait for any, you say; but, by anticipating that the Government may do
you an injury, you will put an end to it--which means, simply and
squarely, that you intend to rule or ruin this Government.  * * *  As to
Compromises, I supposed that we had agreed that the Day of Compromises
was at an end.  The most solemn we have made have been violated, and are
no more.  * * *  We beat you on the plainest and most palpable issue
ever presented to the American people, and one which every man
understood; and now, when we come to the Capital, we tell you that our
candidates must and shall be inaugurated--must and shall administer this
Government precisely as the Constitution prescribes.  * * *  I tell you
that, with that verdict of the people in my pocket, and standing on the
platform on which these candidates were elected, I would suffer anything
before I would Compromise in any way."

In the House of Representatives, on December 10, 1860, a number of
propositions looking to a peaceful settlement of the threatened danger,
were offered and referred to the Select Committee of Thirty-three.  On
the following Monday, December 17, by 154 yeas to 14 nays, the House
adopted a resolution, offered by Mr. Adrian of New Jersey, in these
words:

"Resolved, That we deprecate the spirit of disobedience to the
Constitution, wherever manifested; and that we earnestly recommend the
repeal of all Statutes by the State Legislatures in conflict with, and
in violation of, that sacred instrument, and the laws of Congress passed
in pursuance thereof."

On the same day, the House adopted, by 135 yeas to no nays, a resolution
offered by Mr. Lovejoy of Illinois, in these words:

"Whereas, The Constitution of the United States is the Supreme law of
the Land, and ready and faithful obedience to it a duty of all good and
law-abiding citizens; Therefore:

"Resolved, That we deprecate the spirit of disobedience to the
Constitution, wherever manifested; and that we earnestly recommend the
repeal of all Nullification laws; and that it is the duty of the
President of the United States to protect and defend the property of the
United States."

     [This resolution, before adoption, was modified by declaring it to
     be the duty of all citizens, whether "good and law abiding" or not,
     to yield obedience to the Constitution, as will be seen by
     referring to the proceedings in the Globe of that date, where the
     following appears:

     "Mr. LOGAN.  I hope there will be no objection on this side of the
     House to the introduction of the [Lovejoy] resolution.  I can see
     no difference myself, between this resolution and the one
     [Adrian's] just passed, except in regard to verbiage.  I can find
     but one objection to the resolution, and that is in the use of the
     words declaring that all' law abiding' citizens should obey the
     Constitution.  I think that all men should do so.

     "Mr. LOVEJOY.  I accept the amendment suggested by my Colleague.

     "Mr. LOGAN.  It certainly should include members of Congress; but
     if it is allowed to remain all 'good and law abiding' citizens, I
     do not think it will include them.  [Laughter.]

     "The resolution was modified by the omission of those words."]

It also adopted, by 115 yeas to 44 nays, a resolution offered by Mr.
Morris of Illinois, as follows:

"Resolved by the House of Representatives: That we properly estimate the
immense value of our National Union to our collective and individual
happiness; that we cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment
to it; that we will speak of it as the palladium of our political safety
and prosperity; that we will watch its preservation with jealous
anxiety; that we will discountenance whatever may suggest even a
suspicion that it can, in any event, be abandoned, and indignantly frown
upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our
Country from the rest, or enfeeble the sacred ties which now link
together the various parts; that we regard it as a main pillar in the
edifice of our real independence, the support of tranquillity at home,
our peace abroad, our safety, our prosperity, and that very liberty
which we so highly prize; that we have seen nothing in the past, nor do
we see anything in the present, either in the election of Abraham
Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States, or from any other
existing cause, to justify its dissolution; that we regard its
perpetuity as of more value than the temporary triumph of any Party or
any man; that whatever evils or abuses exist under it ought to be
corrected within the Union, in a peaceful and Constitutional way; that
we believe it has sufficient power to redress every wrong and enforce
every right growing out of its organization, or pertaining to its proper
functions; and that it is a patriotic duty to stand by it as our hope in
Peace and our defense in War."




                              CHAPTER VII.

                           SECESSION ARMING.

While Congress was encouraging devotion to the Union, and its Committees
striving for some mode by which the impending perils might be averted
without a wholesale surrender of all just principles, the South Carolina
Convention met (December 17, 1860) at Columbia, and after listening to
inflammatory addresses by commissioners from the States of Alabama and
Mississippi, urging immediate and unconditional Secession, unanimously
and with "tremendous cheering" adopted a resolution: "That it is the
opinion of the Convention that the State of South Carolina should
forthwith Secede from the Federal Union, known as the United States of
America,"--and then adjourned to meet at Charleston, South Carolina.

The next day, and following days, it met there, at "Secession Hall,"
listening to stimulating addresses, while a committee of seven worked
upon the Ordinance of Secession.  Among the statements made by orators,
were several clear admissions that the rebellious Conspiracy had existed
for very many years, and that Mr. Lincoln's election was simply the
long-sought-for pretext for Rebellion.  Mr. Parker said: "It is no
spasmodic effort that has come suddenly upon us; it has been gradually
culminating for a long period of thirty years.  At last it has come to
that point where we may say, the matter is entirely right."  Mr. Inglis
said: "Most of us have had this matter under consideration for the last
twenty years; and I presume that we have by this time arrived at a
decision upon the subject."  Mr. Keitt said: "I have been engaged in
this movement ever since I entered political life; * * *  we have
carried the body of this Union to its last resting place, and now we
will drop the flag over its grave."  Mr. Barnwell Rhett said: "The
Secession of South Carolina is not an event of a day.  It is not
anything produced by Mr. Lincoln's election, or by the non-execution of
the Fugitive Slave Law.  It has been a matter which has been gathering
head for thirty years."  Mr. Gregg said: "If we undertake to set forth
all the causes, do we not dishonor the memory of all the statesmen of
South Carolina, now departed, who commenced forty years ago a war
against the tariff and against internal improvement, saying nothing of
the United States Bank, and other measures which may now be regarded as
obsolete."

On the 20th of December, 1860--the fourth day of the sittings--the
Ordinance of Secession was reported by the Committee, and was at once
unanimously passed, as also was a resolution that "the passage of the
Ordinance be proclaimed by the firing of artillery and ringing of the
bells of the city, and such other demonstrations as the people may deem
appropriate on the passage of the great Act of Deliverance and Liberty;"
after which the Convention jubilantly adjourned to meet, and ratify,
that evening.  At the evening session of this memorable Convention, the
Governor and Legislature attending, the famous Ordinance was read as
engrossed, signed by all the delegates, and, after announcement by the
President that "the State of South Carolina is now and henceforth a Free
and Independent Commonwealth;" amid tremendous cheering, the Convention
adjourned.  This, the first Ordinance of Secession passed by any of the
Revolting States, was in these words:

"An Ordinance to dissolve the Union between the State of South Carolina
and other States united with her, under the compact entitled the
'Constitution of the United States of America.'

"We the people of the State of South Carolina in Convention assembled,
do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, that the
Ordinance adopted by us in Convention on the 23rd day of May, in the
year of our Lord 1788, whereby the Constitution of the United States of
America was ratified, and also all Acts and parts of Acts of the General
Assembly of this State ratifying the amendments of the said
Constitution, are hereby repealed; and that the Union now subsisting
between South Carolina and other States, under the name of the United
States of America, is hereby dissolved."

Thus, and in these words, was joyously adopted and ratified, that solemn
Act of Separation which was doomed to draw in its fateful train so many
other Southern States, in the end only to be blotted out with the blood
of hundreds of thousands of their own brave sons, and their equally
courageous Northern brothers.

State after State followed South Carolina in the mad course of Secession
from the Union.  Mississippi passed a Secession Ordinance, January 9,
1861.  Florida followed, January 10th; Alabama, January 11th; Georgia,
January 18th; Louisiana, January 26th; and Texas, February 1st;
Arkansas, North Carolina, and Virginia held back until a later period;
while Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware, abstained
altogether from taking the fatal step, despite all attempts to bring
them to it.

In the meantime, however, South Carolina had put on all the dignity of
a Sovereign and Independent State.  Her Governor had a "cabinet"
comprising Secretaries of State, War, Treasury, the Interior, and a
Postmaster General. She had appointed Commissioners, to proceed to the
other Slave-holding States, through whom a Southern Congress was
proposed, to meet at Montgomery, Alabama; and had appointed seven
delegates to meet the delegates from such other States in that proposed
Southern Congress.  On the 21st of December, 1860, three Commissioners
(Messrs.  Barnwell, Adams, and Orr) were also appointed to proceed to
Washington, and treat for the cession by the United States to South
Carolina, of all Federal property within the limits of the latter.  On
the 24th, Governor Pickens issued a Proclamation announcing the adoption
of the Ordinance of Secession, declaring "that the State of South
Carolina is, as she has a right to be, a separate sovereign, free and
independent State, and as such, has a right to levy war, conclude peace,
negotiate treaties, leagues or covenants, and to do all acts whatsoever
that rightfully appertain to a free and independent State;" the which
proclamation was announced as "Done in the eighty-fifth year of the
Sovereignty and Independence of South Carolina."  On the same day (the
Senators from that State in the United States Senate having long since,
as we have seen, withdrawn from that body) the Representatives of South
Carolina in the United States House of Representatives withdrew.

Serious dissensions in the Cabinet of President Buchanan, were now
rapidly disintegrating the "official family" of the President.  Lewis
Cass, the Secretary of State, disgusted with the President's cowardice
and weakness, and declining to be held responsible for Mr. Buchanan's
promise not to reinforce the garrisons of the National Forts, under
Major Anderson, in Charleston harbor, retired from the Cabinet December
12th--Howell Cobb having already, "because his duty to Georgia required
it," resigned the Secretaryship of the Treasury, and left it bankrupt
and the credit of the Nation almost utterly destroyed.

On the 26th of December, Major Anderson evacuated Fort Moultrie,
removing all his troops and munitions of war to Fort Sumter--whereupon a
cry went up from Charleston that this was in violation of the
President's promise to take no step looking to hostilities, provided the
Secessionists committed no overt act of Rebellion, up to the close of
his fast expiring Administration.  On the 29th, John B. Floyd, Secretary
of War, having failed to secure the consent of the Administration to an
entire withdrawal of the Federal garrison from the harbor of Charleston,
also resigned, and the next day--he having in the meantime escaped in
safety to Virginia--was indicted by the Grand Jury at Washington, for
malfeasance and conspiracy to defraud the Government in the theft of
$870,000 of Indian Trust Bonds from the Interior Department, and the
substitution therefor of Floyd's acceptances of worthless
army-transportation drafts on the Treasury Department.

Jacob Thompson, Secretary of the Interior, also resigned, January 8th,
1861, on the pretext that "additional troops, he had heard, have been
ordered to Charleston" in the "Star of the West."--[McPherson's History
of the Rebellion, p. 28.]

Several changes were thus necessitated in Mr. Buchanan's cabinet, by
these and other resignations, so that by the 18th of January, 1861,
Jeremiah S. Black was Secretary of State; General John A. Dix, Secretary
of the Treasury; Joseph Holt, Secretary of War; Edwin M. Stanton,
Attorney General; and Horatio King, Postmaster General.  But before
leaving the Cabinet, the conspiring Southern members of it, and their
friends, had managed to hamstring the National Government, by scattering
the Navy in other quarters of the World; by sending the few troops of
the United States to remote points; by robbing the arsenals in the
Northern States of arms and munitions of war, so as to abundantly supply
the Southern States at the critical moment; by bankrupting the Treasury
and shattering the public credit of the Nation; and by other means no
less nefarious.  Thus swindled, betrayed, and ruined, by its degenerate
and perfidious sons, the imbecile Administration stood with dejected
mien and folded hands helplessly awaiting the coming catastrophe.

On December 28th, 1860, the three Commissioners of South Carolina having
reached Washington, addressed to the President a communication, in
which--after reciting their powers and duties, under the Ordinance of
Secession, and stating that they had hoped to have been ready to proceed
to negotiate amicably and without "hostile collision," but that "the
events--[The removal, to Fort Sumter, of Major Anderson's command, and
what followed.]--of the last twenty-four hours render such an assurance
impossible"--they declared that the troops must be withdrawn from
Charleston harbor, as "they are a standing menace which render
negotiation impossible," threatening speedily to bring the questions
involved, to "a bloody issue."

To this communication Mr. Buchanan replied at considerable length,
December 30th, in an apologetic, self-defensive strain, declaring that
the removal by Major Anderson of the Federal troops under his command,
from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter was done "upon his own responsibility,
and without authority," and that he (the President) "had intended to
command him to return to his former position," but that events had so
rapidly transpired as to preclude the giving of any such command;

     [The seizure by the Secessionists, under the Palmetto Flag, of
     Castle Pinckney and Fort Moultrie; the simultaneous raising of that
     flag over the Federal Custom House and Post Office at Charleston;
     the resignation of the Federal Collector, Naval Officer and
     Surveyor of that Port--all of which occurred December 27th; and the
     seizure "by force of arms," December 30th, of the United States
     Arsenal at that point.]

and concluding, with a very slight stiffening of backbone, by saying:
"After this information, I have only to add that, whilst it is my duty
to defend Fort Sumter as a portion of the public property of the United
States against hostile attacks, from whatever quarter they may come, by
such means as I may possess for this purpose, I do not perceive how such
a defense can be construed into a menace against the city of
Charleston."  To this reply of the President, the Commissioners made
rejoinder on the 1st of January, 1861; but the President "declined to
receive" the communication.

From this time on, until the end of President Buchanan's term of office,
and the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln as President, March 4th, 1861,
events crowded each other so hurriedly, that the flames of Rebellion in
the South were continually fanned, while the public mind in the North
was staggered and bewildered, by them.

On January 2nd, prior to the Secession of Georgia, Forts Pulaski and
Jackson, commanding Savannah, and the Federal Arsenal at Augusta,
Georgia, with two 12 pound howitzers, two cannon, 22,000 muskets and
rifles, and ammunition in quantity, were seized by Rebel militia.  About
the same date, although North Carolina had not seceded, her Governor
(Ellis) seized the Federal Arsenal at Fayetteville, Fort Macon, and
other fortifications in that State, "to preserve them" from mob-seizure.

January 4th, anticipating Secession, Alabama State troops seized Fort
Morgan, with 5,000 shot and shell, and Mount Vernon Arsenal at Mobile,
with 2,000 stand of arms, 150, 000 pounds of powder, some pieces of
cannon, and a large quantity of other munitions of war.  The United
States Revenue cutter, "Lewis Cass," was also surrendered to Alabama.

On the 5th, the Federal steamer "Star of the West," with reinforcements
and supplies for Fort Sumter, left New York in the night--and Secretary
Jacob Thompson notified the South Carolina Rebels of the fact.

On the 9th, the "Star of the West" appeared off Charleston bar, and
while steaming toward Fort Sumter, was fired upon by Rebel batteries at
Fort Moultrie and Morris Island, and struck by a shot, whereupon she
returned to New York without accomplishing her mission.  That day the
State of Mississippi seceded from the Union.

On the 10th, the Federal storeship "Texas," with Federal guns and
stores, was seized by Texans.  On the same day Florida seceded.

On the 11th, Forts Jackson and St. Philip, commanding the mouth of the
Mississippi River, and Fort Pike, dominating Lake Pontchartrain, were
seized by Louisiana troops; also the Federal Arsenal at Baton Rouge,
with 50,000 small arms, 4 howitzers, 20 heavy pieces of ordnance, 2
batteries, 300 barrels of powder, and other stores.  The State of
Alabama also seceded the same day.

On the 12th--Fort Marion, the coast surveying schooner "Dana," the
Arsenal at St. Augustine, and that on the Chattahoochee, with 500,000
musket cartridges, 300,000 rifle cartridges and 50,000 pounds of powder,
having previously been seized--Forts Barrancas and McRae, and the Navy
Yard at Pensacola, were taken by Rebel troops of Florida, Alabama and
Mississippi.  On the same day, Colonel Hayne, of South Carolina, arrived
at Washington as Agent or Commissioner to the National Government from
Governor Pickens of that State.

On the 14th, the South Carolina Legislature resolved "that any attempt
by the Federal Government to reinforce Fort Sumter will be regarded as
an act of open hostility, and a Declaration of War."

On the 16th, Colonel Hayne, of South Carolina, developed his mission,
which was to demand of the President the surrender of Fort Sumter to the
South Carolina authorities--a demand that had already been made upon,
and refused by, Major Anderson.

The correspondence concerning this demand, between Colonel Hayne and ten
Southern United States Senators;--[Senators Wigfall, Hemphill, Yulee,
Mallory, Jeff.  Davis, C. C. Clay, Fitzgerald, Iverson, Slidell, and
Benjamin.]--the reply of the President, by Secretary Holt, to those
Senators; Governor Pickens's review of the same; and the final demand;
consumed the balance of the month of January; and ended, February 6th,
in a further reply, through the Secretary of War, from the President,
asserting the title of the United States to that Fort, and declining the
demand, as "he has no Constitutional power to cede or surrender it."
Secretary Holt's letter concluded by saying: "If, with all the
multiplied proofs which exist of the President's anxiety for Peace, and
of the earnestness with which he has pursued it, the authorities of that
State shall assault Fort Sumter, and peril the lives of the handful of
brave and loyal men shut up within its walls, and thus plunge our Common
Country into the horrors of Civil War, then upon them and those they
represent, must rest the responsibility."

But to return from this momentary diversion: On the 18th of January,
Georgia seceded; and on the 20th, the Federal Fort at Ship Island,
Mississippi, and the United States Hospital on the Mississippi River
were seized by Mississippi troops.

On the 26th, Louisiana seceded.  On the 28th, Louisiana troops seized
all the quartermaster's and commissary stores held by Federal officials;
and the United States Revenue cutter "McClelland" surrendered to the
Rebels.

On February 1st, the Louisiana Rebels seized the National Mint and
Custom House at New Orleans, with $599,303 in gold and silver.  On the
same day the State of Texas seceded.

On February 8th, the National Arsenal at Little Rock, Arkansas, with
9,000 small arms, 40 cannon, and quantities of ammunition, was seized;
and the same day the Governor of Georgia ordered the National Collector
of the Port of Savannah to retain all collections and make no further
payments to the United States Government.*


     [It was during this eventful month that, certain United States
     troops having assembled at the National Capital, and the House of
     Representatives having asked the reason therefor, reply was made by
     the Secretary of War as follows:

     "WAR DEPARTMENT, February 18, 1861.
          [Congressional Globe, August 8, 1861, pp.  457,458]
     "SIR: On the 11th February, the House of Representatives adopted a
     resolution requesting the President, if not incompatible with the
     public interests, to communicate 'the reasons that had induced him
     to assemble so large a number of troops in this city, and why they
     are kept here; and whether he has any information of a Conspiracy
     upon the part of any portion of the citizens of this Country to
     seize upon the Capital and prevent the Inauguration of the
     President elect.'

     "This resolution having been submitted to this Department for
     consideration and report, I have the honor to state, that the body
     of troops temporarily transferred to this city is not as large as
     is assumed by the resolution, though it is a well-appointed corps
     and admirably adapted for the preservation of the public peace.
     The reasons which led to their being assembled here will now be
     briefly stated.

     "I shall make no comment upon the origin of the Revolution which,
     for the last three months, has been in progress in several of the
     Southern States, nor shall I enumerate the causes which have
     hastened its advancement or exasperated its temper.  The scope of
     the questions submitted by the House will be sufficiently met by
     dealing with the facts as they exist, irrespective of the cause
     from which they have proceeded.  That Revolution has been
     distinguished by a boldness and completeness of success rarely
     equaled in the history of Civil Commotions.  Its overthrow of the
     Federal authority has not only been sudden and wide-spread, but has
     been marked by excesses which have alarmed all and been sources of
     profound humiliation to a large portion of the American People.
     Its history is a history of surprises and treacheries and ruthless
     spoliations.  The Forts of the United States have been captured and
     garrisoned, and hostile flags unfurled upon their ramparts.  Its
     arsenals have been seized, and the vast amount of public arms they
     contained appropriated to the use of the captors; while more than
     half a million dollars, found in the Mint at New Orleans, has been
     unscrupulously applied to replenish the coffers of Louisiana.
     Officers in command of revenue cutters of the United States have
     been prevailed on to violate their trusts and surrender the
     property in their charge; and instead of being branded for their
     crimes, they, and the vessels they betrayed, have been cordially
     received into the service of the Seceded States.  These movements
     were attended by yet more discouraging indications of immorality.
     It was generally believed that this Revolution was guided and urged
     on by men occupying the highest positions in the public service,
     and who, with the responsibilities of an oath to support the
     Constitution still resting upon their consciences, did not hesitate
     secretly to plan and openly to labor for, the dismemberment of the
     Republic whose honors they enjoyed and upon whose Treasury they
     were living.  As examples of evil are always more potent than those
     of good, this spectacle of demoralization on the part of States and
     statesmen could not fail to produce the most deplorable
     consequences.  The discontented and the disloyal everywhere took
     courage.  In other States, adjacent to and supposed to sympathize
     in sense of political wrong with those referred to, Revolutionary
     schemes were set on foot, and Forts and arms of the United States
     seized.  The unchecked prevalence of the Revolution, and the
     intoxication which its triumphs inspired, naturally suggested
     wilder and yet more desperate enterprises than the conquest of
     ungarrisoned Forts, or the plunder of an unguarded Mint.  At what
     time the armed occupation of Washington City became a part of the
     Revolutionary Programme, is not certainly known.  More than six
     weeks ago, the impression had already extensively obtained that a
     Conspiracy for the accomplishment of this guilty purpose was in
     process of formation, if not fully matured.  The earnest endeavors
     made by men known to be devoted to the Revolution, to hurry
     Virginia and Maryland out of the Union, were regarded as
     preparatory steps for the subjugation of Washington.  This plan was
     in entire harmony with the aim and spirit of those seeking the
     subversion of the Government, since no more fatal blow at its
     existence could be struck than the permanent and hostile possession
     of the seat of its power.  It was in harmony, too, with the avowed
     designs of the Revolutionists, which looked to the formation of a
     Confederacy of all the Slave States, and necessarily to the
     Conquest of the Capital within their limits.  It seemed not very
     indistinctly prefigured in a Proclamation made upon the floor of
     the Senate, without qualification, if not exultingly, that the
     Union was already dissolved--a Proclamation which, however
     intended, was certainly calculated to invite, on the part of men of
     desperate fortunes or of Revolutionary States, a raid upon the
     Capital.  In view of the violence and turbulent disorders already
     exhibited in the South, the public mind could not reject such a
     scheme as at all improbable.  That a belief in its existence was
     entertained by multitudes, there can be no doubt, and this belief I
     fully shared.  My conviction rested not only on the facts already
     alluded to, but upon information, some of which was of a most
     conclusive character, that reached the Government from many parts
     of the Country, not merely expressing the prevalence of the opinion
     that such an organization had been formed, but also often
     furnishing the plausible grounds on which the opinion was based.
     Superadded to these proofs, were the oft-repeated declarations of
     men in high political positions here, and who were known to have
     intimate affiliations with the Revolution--if indeed they did not
     hold its reins in their hands--to the effect that Mr. Lincoln would
     not, or should not be inaugurated at Washington.  Such
     declarations, from such men, could not be treated as empty bluster.
     They were the solemn utterances of those who well understood the
     import of their words, and who, in the exultation of the temporary
     victories gained over their Country's flag in the South, felt
     assured that events would soon give them the power to verify their
     predictions.  Simultaneously with these prophetic warnings, a
     Southern journal of large circulation and influence, and which is
     published near the city of Washington, advocated its seizure as a
     possible political necessity.

     "The nature and power of the testimony thus accumulated may be best
     estimated by the effect produced upon the popular mind.
     Apprehensions for the safety of the Capital were communicated from
     points near and remote, by men unquestionably reliable and loyal.
     The resident population became disquieted, and the repose of many
     families in the city was known to be disturbed by painful
     anxieties.  Members of Congress, too-men of calm and comprehensive
     views, and of undoubted fidelity to their Country--frankly
     expressed their solicitude to the President and to this Department,
     and formally insisted that the defenses of the Capital should be
     strengthened.  With such warnings, it could not be forgotten that,
     had the late Secretary of War heeded the anonymous letter which he
     received, the tragedy at Harper's Ferry would have been avoided;
     nor could I fail to remember that, had the early admonitions which
     reached here in regard to the designs of lawless men upon the Forts
     of Charleston Harbor been acted on by sending forward adequate
     reinforcements before the Revolution began, the disastrous
     political complications that ensued might not have occurred.

     "Impressed by these circumstances and considerations, I earnestly
     besought you to allow the concentration, at this city, of a
     sufficient military force to preserve the public peace from all the
     dangers that seemed to threaten it.  An open manifestation, on the
     part of the Administration, of a determination, as well as of the
     ability, to maintain the laws, would, I was convinced, prove the
     surest, as also the most pacific, means of baffling and dissolving
     any Conspiracy that might have been organized.  It was believed too
     that the highest and most solemn responsibility resting upon a
     President withdrawing from the Government, was to secure to his
     successor a peaceful Inauguration.  So deeply, in my judgment, did
     this duty concern the whole Country and the fair fame of our
     Institutions, that, to guarantee its faithful discharge, I was
     persuaded no preparation could be too determined or too complete.
     The presence of the troops alluded to in the resolution is the
     result of the conclusion arrived at by yourself and Cabinet, on the
     proposition submitted to you by this Department.  Already this
     display of life and loyalty on the part of your Administration, has
     produced the happiest effects.  Public confidence has been
     restored, and the feverish apprehension which it was so mortifying
     to contemplate has been banished.  Whatever may have been the
     machinations of deluded, lawless men, the execution of their
     purpose has been suspended, if not altogether abandoned in view of
     preparations which announce more impressively than words that this
     Administration is alike able and resolved to transfer in peace, to
     the President elect, the authority that, under the Constitution,
     belongs to him.  To those, if such there be, who desire the
     destruction of the Republic, the presence of these troops is
     necessarily offensive; but those who sincerely love our
     Institutions cannot fail to rejoice that, by this timely precaution
     they have possibly escaped the deep dishonor which they must have
     suffered had the Capital, like the Forts and Arsenals of the South,
     fallen into the hands of the Revolutionists, who have found this
     great Government weak only because, in the exhaustless beneficence
     of its spirit, it has refused to strike, even in its own defense,
     lest it should wound the aggressor.

     "I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

                              "J. HOLT.
                         "Secretary of War,

     "THE PRESIDENT."]


On February 20th, Forts Chadbourne and Belknap were seized by the Texan
Rebels; and on the 22nd, the Federal General Twiggs basely surrendered
to them all the fortifications under his control, his little Army, and
all the Government stores in his possession--comprising $55,000 in
specie, 35,000 stand of arms, 26 pieces of mounted artillery, 44
dismounted guns, and ammunition, horses, wagons, forage, etc., valued at
nearly $2,000,000.

On the 2nd of March, the Texan Rebels seized the United States Revenue
cutter "Dodge" at Galveston; and on the 6th, Fort Brown was surrendered
to them.

Thus, with surrender after surrender, and seizure after
seizure, of its revenue vessels and fortifications and troops and arms
and munitions of war in the Southern States--with Fort Sumter invested
and at the mercy of any attack, and Fortress Monroe alone of all the
National strongholds yet safe--with State after State seceding--what
wonder that, while these events gave all encouragement to the Southern
Rebels, the Patriots of the North stood aghast at the appalling
spectacle of a crumbling and dissolving Union!

During this period of National peril, the debates in both branches of
Congress upon propositions for adjustment of the unfortunate differences
between the Southern Seceders and the Union, as has been already hinted,
contributed still further to agitate the public mind.  Speech after
speech by the ablest and most brilliant Americans in public life, for or
against such propositions, and discussing the rightfulness or
wrongfulness of Secession, were made in Congress day after day, and, by
means of the telegraph and the press, alternately swayed the Northern
heart with feelings of hope, chagrin, elation or despair.

The Great Debate was opened in the Senate on almost the very first day
of its session (December 4th, 1860), by Mr. Clingman, of North Carolina,
who, referring to South Carolina, declared that "Instead of being
precipitate, she and the whole South have been wonderfully patient."  A
portion of that speech is interesting even at this time, as showing how
certain phases of the Tariff and Internal Improvement questions entered
into the consideration of some of the Southern Secession leaders.  Said
he, "I know there are intimations that suffering will fall upon us of
the South, if we secede.  My people are not terrified by any such
considerations.  * * *  They have no fears of the future if driven to
rely on themselves.  The Southern States have more territory than all
the Colonies had when they Seceded from Great Britain, and a better
territory.  Taking its position, climate, and fertility into
consideration, there is not upon Earth a body of territory superior to
it.  * * *  The Southern States have, too, at this day, four times the
population the Colonies had when they Seceded from Great Britain.  Their
exports to the North and to Foreign Countries were, last year, more than
$300,000,000; and a duty of ten per cent. upon the same amount of
imports would give $30,000,000 of revenue--twice as much as General
Jackson's administration spent in its first year.  Everybody can see,
too, how the bringing in of $300,000,000 of imports into Southern ports
would enliven business in our seaboard towns.  I have seen with some
satisfaction, also, Mr. President, that the war made upon us has
benefitted certain branches of industry in my State.  There are
manufacturing establishments in North Carolina, the proprietors of which
tell me that they are making fifty per cent. annually on their whole
capital, and yet cannot supply one tenth of the demand for their
production.  The result of only ten per cent. duties in excluding
products from abroad, would give life and impetus to mechanical and
manufacturing industry, throughout the entire South.  Our people
understand these things, and they are not afraid of results, if forced
to declare Independence.  Indeed I do not see why Northern Republicans
should wish to continue a connection with us upon any terms.  * * *
They want High Tariff likewise.  They may put on five hundred per cent.
if they choose, upon their own imports, and nobody on our side will
complain.  They may spend all the money they raise on railroads, or
opening harbors, or anything on earth they desire, without interference
from us; and it does seem to me that if they are sincere in their views
they ought to welcome a separation."

From the very commencement of this long three-months debate, it was the
policy of the Southern leaders to make it appear that the Southern
States were in an attitude of injured innocence and defensiveness
against Northern aggression.  Hence, it was that, as early as December
5th, on the floor of the Senate, through Mr. Brown, of Mississippi, they
declared: "All we ask is to be allowed to depart in Peace.  Submit we
will not; and if, because we will not submit to your domination, you
choose to make War upon us, let God defend the Right!"

At the same time it was esteemed necessary to try and frighten the North
into acquiescence with this demand to be "let alone."  Hence such
utterances as those of Clingman and Iverson, to which reference has
already been made, and the especially defiant close of the latter's
speech, when--replying to the temperate but firm Union utterances of Mr.
Hale--the Georgia Senator said: "Sir, I do not believe there will be any
War; but if War is to come, let it come; we will meet the Senator from
New Hampshire and all the myrmidons of Abolitionism and Black
Republicanism everywhere upon our own soil; and, in the language of a
distinguished member from Ohio in relation to the Mexican War, we will
'welcome you with bloody hands to hospitable graves.'"

On the other hand, in order to encourage the revolting States to the
speedy commission of overt acts of Rebellion and violence, that would
precipitate War without a peradventure, utterances fell from Southern
lips, in the National Senate Chamber, like those of Mr. Wigfall, when he
said, during this first day of the debate: "Frederick the Great, on one
occasion, when he had trumped up an old title to some of the adjacent
territory, quietly put himself in possession and then offered to treat.
Were I a South Carolinian, as I am a Texan, and I knew that my State was
going out of the Union, and that this Government would attempt to use
force, I would, at the first moment that that fact became manifest,
seize upon the Forts and the arms and the munitions of war, and raise
the cry 'To your tents, O Israel, and to the God of battles be this
issue!"

And, as we have already seen, the Rebels of the South were not slow in
following the baleful advice to the letter.  But it was not many days
after this utterance when the Conspirators against the Union evidently
began to fear that the ground for Rebellion, upon which they had planted
themselves, would be taken from under their feet by the impulse of
Compromise and Concession which stirred so strongly the fraternal spirit
of the North.  That peaceful impulse must be checked and exasperated by
sneers and impossible demands.  Hence, on December 12th we find one of
the most active and favorite mouthpieces of Treason, Mr. Wigfall,
putting forth such demands, in his most offensive manner.

Said he: "If the two Senators from New York (Seward and King), the
Senator from Ohio (Wade), the two Senators from Illinois (Douglas and
Trumbull), the Senator from New Hampshire (Hale), the Senator from
Maine, and others who are regarded as representative men, who have
denied that by the Constitution of the United States, Slaves are
recognized as Property; who have urged and advocated those acts which we
regard as aggressive on the part of the People--if they will rise here,
and say in their places, that they desire to propose amendments to the
Constitution, and beg that we will vote for them; that they will, in
good faith, go to their respective constituencies and urge the
ratification; that they believe, if these Gulf States will suspend their
action, that those amendments will be ratified and carried out in good
faith; that they will cease preaching this 'irrepressible conflict'; and
if, in those amendments, it is declared that Slaves are Property, that
they shall be delivered up upon demand; and that they will assure us
that Abolition societies shall be abolished; that Abolition speeches
shall no longer be made; that we shall have peace and quiet; that we
shall not be called cut-throats and pirates and murderers; that our
women shall not be slandered--these things being said in good faith, the
Senators begging that we will stay our hand until an honest effort can
be made, I believe that there is a prospect of giving them a fair
consideration!"

Small wonder is it, that this labored and ridiculous piece of
impertinence was received with ironical laughter on the Republican side
of the Senate Chamber.  And it was in reference to these threats, and
these preposterous demands--including the suppression of the right of
Free Discussion and Liberty of the Press--that, in the same chamber
(January 7, 1861) the gallant and eloquent Baker said:

"Your Fathers had fought for that right, and more than that, they had
declared that the violation of that right was one of the great causes
which impelled them to the Separation.  * * *  Sir, the Liberty of the
Press is the highest safeguard to all Free Government.  Ours could not
exist without it.  It is with us, nay, with all men, like a great
exulting and abounding river, It is fed by the dews of Heaven, which
distil their sweetest drops to form it.  It gushes from the rill, as it
breaks from the deep caverns of the Earth.  It is fed by a thousand
affluents, that dash from the mountaintop to separate again into a
thousand bounteous and irrigating rills around.  On its broad bosom it
bears a thousand barks.  There, Genius spreads its purpling sail.
There, Poetry dips its silver oar.  There, Art, Invention, Discovery,
Science, Morality, Religion, may safely and securely float.  It wanders
through every land.  It is a genial, cordial source of thought and
inspiration, wherever it touches, whatever it surrounds.  Sir, upon its
borders, there grows every flower of Grace and every fruit of Truth.  I
am not here to deny that that Stream sometimes becomes a dangerous
Torrent, and destroys towns and cities upon its bank; but I am here to
say that without it, Civilization, Humanity, Government, all that makes
Society itself, would disappear, and the World would return to its
ancient Barbarism.

"Sir, if that were to be possible, or so thought for a moment, the fine
conception of the great Poet would be realized.  If that were to be
possible, though but for a moment, Civilization itself would roll the
wheels of its car backward for two thousand years.  Sir, if that were
so, it would be true that:

          'As one by one in dread Medea's train,
          Star after Star fades off th' ethereal plain,
          Thus at her fell approach and secret might,
          Art after art goes out, and all is night.
          Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before,
          Sinks to her second cause, and is no more.
          Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires,
          And, unawares, Morality expires.'

"Sir, we will not risk these consequences, even for Slavery; we will not
risk these consequences even for Union; we will not risk these
consequences to avoid that Civil War with which you threaten us; that
War which, you announce so deadly, and which you declare to be
inevitable.  * * *  I will never yield to the idea that the great
Government of this Country shall protect Slavery in any Territory now
ours, or hereafter to be acquired.  It is, in my opinion, a great
principle of Free Government, not, to be surrendered.

"It is in my judgment, the object of the great battle which we have
fought, and which we have won.  It is, in my poor opinion, the point
upon which there is concord and agreement between the great masses of
the North, who may agree in no other political opinion whatever.  Be he
Republican, or Democrat, or Douglas man, or Lincoln man; be he from the
North, or the West, from Oregon, or from Maine, in my judgment
nine-tenths of the entire population of the North and West are devoted,
in the very depths of their hearts, to the great Constitutional idea
that Freedom is the rule, that Slavery is the exception, that it ought
not to be extended by virtue of the powers of the Government of the
United States; and, come weal, come woe, it never shall be.

"But, sir, I add one other thing.  When you talk to me about Compromise
or Concession, I am not sure that I always understand you.  Do you mean
that I am to give up my convictions of right?  Armies cannot compel that
in the breast of a Free People.  Do you mean that I am to concede the
benefits of the political struggle through which we have passed,
considered politically, only?  You are too just and too generous to ask
that.  Do you mean that we are to deny the great principle upon which
our political action has been based?  You know we cannot.  But if you
mean by Compromise and Concession to ask us to see whether we have not
been hasty, angry, passionate, excited, and in many respects violated
your feelings, your character, your right of property, we will look;
and, as I said yesterday, if we have, we will undo it.  Allow me to say
again, if there be any lawyer or any Court that will advise us that our
laws are unconstitutional, we will repeal them.

"Now as to territory.  I will not yield one inch to Secession; but there
are things that I will yield, and there are things to which I will
yield.  It is somewhere told that when Harold of England received a
messenger from a brother with whom he was at variance, to inquire on
what terms reconciliation and peace could be effected between brothers,
he replied in a gallant and generous spirit in a few words, 'the, terms
I offer are the affection of a brother; and the Earldom of
Northumberland.'  And, said the Envoy, as he marched up the Hall amid
the warriors that graced the state of the King, 'if Tosti, thy brother,
agree to this, what terms will you allow to his ally and friend,
Hadrada, the giant.'  'We will allow,' said Harold, 'to Hadrada, the
giant, seven feet of English ground, and if he be, as they say, a giant,
some few inches more!' and, as he spake, the Hall rang with acclamation.

"Sir, in that spirit I speak.  I follow, at a humble distance, the ideas
and the words of Clay, illustrious, to be venerated, and honored, and
remembered, forever.  * * *  He said--I say: that I will yield no inch,
no word, to the threat of Secession, unconstitutional, revolutionary,
dangerous, unwise, at variance with the heart and the hope of all
mankind save themselves.  To that I yield nothing; but if States loyal
to the Constitution, if people magnanimous and just, desiring a return
of fraternal feeling, shall come to us and ask for Peace, for permanent,
enduring peace and affection, and say, 'What will you grant?  I say to
them, 'Ask all that a gentleman ought to propose, and I will yield all
that a gentleman ought to offer.'  Nay, more: if you are galled because
we claim the right to prohibit Slavery in territory now Free, or in any
Territory which acknowledges our jurisdiction, we will evade--I speak
but for myself--I will aid in evading that question; I will agree to
make it all States, and let the People decide at once.  I will agree to
place them in that condition where the prohibition of Slavery will never
be necessary to justify ourselves to our consciences or to our
constituents.  I will agree to anything which is not to force upon me
the necessity of protecting Slavery in the name of Freedom.  To that I
never can and never will yield."

The speeches of Seward, of Douglas, of Crittenden, of Andrew Johnson, of
Baker, and others, in behalf of the Union, and those of Benjamin, Davis,
Wigfall, Lane, and others, in behalf of Secession, did much toward
fixing the responsibility for the approaching bloody conflict where it
belonged.  The speeches of Andrew Johnson of Tennessee--who, if he at a
subsequent period of the Nation's history, proved himself not the
worthiest son of the Republic, at this critical time, at all events, did
grand service in the National Senate--especially had great and good
effect on the public mind in the Northern and Border States.  They were,
therefore, gall and wormwood to the Secession leaders, who hoped to drag
the Border States into the great Southern Confederacy of States already
in process of formation.

Their irritation was shown in threats of personal violence to Mr.
Johnson, as when Wigfall--replying February 7th, 1861, to the latter's
speech, said, "Now if the Senator wishes to denounce Secession and
Nullification eo nomine, let him go back and denounce Jefferson; let him
denounce Jackson, if he dare, and go back and look that Tennessee
Democracy in the face, and see whether they will content themselves with
riddling his effigy!"

It would seem also, from another part of Wigfall's reply, that the
speeches of Union Senators had been so effective that a necessity was
felt on the part of the Southern Conspirators to still further attempt
to justify Secession by shifting the blame to Northern shoulders, for,
while referring to the Presidential canvass of 1860--and the attitude of
the Southern Secession leaders during that exciting period--he said:
"We (Breckinridge-Democrats) gave notice, both North and South, that if
Abraham Lincoln was elected, this Union was dissolved.  I never made a
speech during the canvass without asserting that fact.  * * *  Then, I
say, that our purpose was not to dissolve the Union; but the dire
necessity has been put upon us.  The question is, whether we shall live
longer in a Union in which a Party, hostile to us in every respect, has
the power in Congress, in the Executive department, and in the Electoral
Colleges--a Party who will have the power even in the Judiciary.  We
think it is not safe.  We say that each State has the clear indisputable
right to withdraw if she sees fit; and six of the States have already
withdrawn, and one other State is upon the eve of withdrawing, if she
has not already done so.  How far this will spread no man can tell!"

As tending to show the peculiar mixture of brag, cajolery, and threats,
involved in the attitude of the South, as expressed by the same favorite
Southern mouthpiece, toward the Border-States on the one hand, and the
Middle and New England States on the other, a further extract from this
(February 7th) speech of the Texan Senator may be of interest.  Said he:

"With exports to the amount of hundreds of millions of dollars, our
imports must be the same.  With a lighter Tariff than any people ever
undertook to live under, we could have larger revenue.  We would be able
to stand Direct Taxation to a greater extent than any people ever could
before, since the creation of the World.  We feel perfectly competent to
meet all issues that may be presented, either by hostility from abroad
or treason at home.  So far as the Border-States are concerned, it is a
matter that concerns them alone.  Should they confederate with us,
beyond all doubt New England machinery will be worked with the water
power of Tennessee, of Kentucky, of Virginia and of Maryland; the Tariff
laws that now give New England the monopoly in the thirty-three States,
will give to these Border States a monopoly in the Slave-holding States.
Should the non-Slave-holding States choose to side against us in
organizing their Governments, and cling to their New England brethren,
the only result will be, that the meat, the horses, the hemp, and the
grain, which we now buy in Pennsylvania, in Ohio, in Indiana and
Illinois, will be purchased in Kentucky and in Western Virginia and in
Missouri.  Should Pennsylvania stand out, the only result will be, that
the iron which is now dug in Pennsylvania, will be dug in the mountains
of Tennessee and of Virginia and of Kentucky and of North Carolina.
These things we know.

"We feel no anxiety at all, so far as money or men are concerned.  We
desire War with nobody; we intend to make no War; but we intend to live
under just such a Government as we see fit.  Six States have left this
Union, and others are going to leave it simply because they choose to do
it; that is all.  We do not ask your consent; we do not wish it.  We
have revoked our ratification of the Treaty commonly known as the
Constitution of the United States; a treaty for common defense and
general welfare; and we shall be perfectly willing to enter into another
Treaty with you, of peace and amity.  Reject the olive branch and offer
us the sword, and we accept it; we have not the slightest objection.
Upon that subject we feel as the great William Lowndes felt upon another
important subject, the Presidency, which he said was neither to be
sought nor declined.  When you invade our soil, look to your own
borders.  You say that you have too many people, too many towns, too
dense a population, for us to invade you.  I say to you Senators, that
there is nothing that ever stops the march of an invading force, except
a desert.  The more populous a country, the more easy it is to subsist
an army."

After declaring that--"Not only are our non-Slaveholders loyal, but even
our <DW64>s are.  We have no apprehensions whatever of insurrection--not
the slightest.  We can arm our <DW64>s, and leave them at home, when we
are temporarily absent"--Mr. Wigfall proceeded to say: "We may as well
talk plainly about this matter.  This is probably the last time I shall
have an opportunity of addressing you.  There is another thing that an
invading army cannot do.  It cannot burn up plantations.  You can pull
down fences, but the <DW64>s will put them up the next morning.  The
worst fuel that ever a man undertook to make fire with, is dirt; it will
not burn.  Now I have told you what an invading army cannot do.  Suppose
I reverse the picture and tell you what it can do.  An invading army in
an enemy's country, where there is a dense population, can subsist
itself at a very little cost; it does not always pay for what it gets.
An invading army can burn down towns; an invading army can burn down
manufactories; and it can starve operatives.  It can do all these
things.  But an Invading army, and an army to defend a Country, both
require a military chest.  You may bankrupt every man south of North
Carolina, so that his credit is reduced to such a point that he could
not discount a note for thirty dollars, at thirty days; but the next
autumn those Cotton States will have just as much money and as much
credit as they had before.  They pick money off the cotton plant.  Every
time that a <DW64> touches a cotton-pod with his hand, he pulls a piece
of silver out of it, and he drops it into the basket in which it is
carried to the gin-house.  It is carried to the packing screw.  A bale
of cotton rolls out-in other words, five ten-dollar pieces roll out
--covered with canvas.  We shall never again make less than five million
bales of cotton.  * * *  We can produce five million bales of cotton,
every bale worth fifty dollars, which is the lowest market price it has
been for years past.  We shall import a bale of something else, for
every bale of cotton that we export, and that bale will be worth fifty
dollars.  We shall find no difficulty under a War-Tariff in raising an
abundance of money.  We have been at Peace for a very long time, We are
very prosperous.  Our planters use their cotton, not to buy the
necessaries of life, but for the superfluities, which they can do
without.  The States themselves have a mine of wealth in the loyalty and
the wealth of their citizens.  Georgia, Mississippi, any one of those
States can issue its six per cent. bonds tomorrow, and receive cotton in
payment to the extent almost of the entire crop.  They can first borrow
from their own citizens; they can tax them to an almost unlimited
extent; and they can raise revenue from a Tariff to an almost unlimited
extent.

"How will it be with New England?  where will their revenue come from?
From your Custom-houses?  what do you export?  You have been telling us
here for the last quarter of a century, that you cannot manufacture,
even for the home market, under the Tariffs which we have given you.
When this Tariff ceases to operate in your favor, and you have to pay
for coming into our markets, what will you export?  When your machinery
ceases to move, and your operatives are turned out, will you tax your
broken capitalist or your starving operative?  When the navigation laws
cease to operate, what will become of your shipping interest?  You are
going to blockade our ports, you say.  That is a very innocent game; and
you suppose we shall sit quietly down and submit to a blockade.  I speak
not of foreign interference, for we look not for it.  We are just as
competent to take Queen Victoria and Louis Napoleon under our
protection, as they are to take us; and they are a great deal more
interested to-day in receiving cotton from our ports than we are in
shipping it.  You may lock up every bale of cotton within the limits of
the eight Cotton States, and not allow us to export one for three years,
and we shall not feel it further than our military resources are
concerned.  Exhaust the supply of cotton in Europe for one week, and all
Europe is in revolution.

"These are facts.  You will blockade us!  Do you suppose we shall do
nothing, even upon the sea?  How many letters of marque and reprisal
would it take to put the whole of your ships up at your wharves to rot?
Will any merchant at Havre, or Liverpool, or any other portion of the
habitable globe, ship a cargo upon a New England, or New York, or
Philadelphia clipper, or other ship, when he knows that the seas are
swarming with letters of marque and reprisal?  Why the mere apprehension
of such a thing will cut you out of the Carrying Trade of the civilized
World.  * * *  I speak not of the absurdity of the position that you can
blockade our ports, admitting at the same time that we are in the Union.
Blockade is a remedy, as all writers on International law say, against a
Foreign Power with whom you are at War.  You cannot use a blockade
against your own people.  An embargo even, you cannot use.  That is a
remedy against a Foreign Nation with whom you expect to be at War.  You
must treat us as in the Union, or out of it.  We have gone out.  We are
willing to live at peace with you; but, as sure as fate, whenever any
flag comes into one of our ports, that has thirty-three stars upon it,
that flag will be fired at.  Displaying a flag with stars which we have
plucked from that bright galaxy, is an insult to the State within whose
waters that flag is displayed.  You cannot enforce the laws without
Coercion, and you cannot Coerce without War.

"These matters, then, can be settled.  How?  By withdrawing your troops;
admitting our right to Self-government clearly, unqualifiedly.  Do this,
and there is no difficulty about it.  You say that you will not do it.
Very well; we have no objection--none whatever.  That is Coercion.  When
you have attempted it, you will find that you have made War.  These,
Senators, are facts.  I come here to plead for Peace; but I have seen so
much and felt so much, that I am becoming at last, to tell the plain
truth of the matter, rather indifferent as to which way the thing turns.
If you want War, you can have it.  If you want Peace, you can get it;
but I plead not for Peace."

Meanwhile the Seceding States of the South were strengthening their
attitude by Confederation.  On February 4, 1861, the Convention of
Seceding States, called by the South Carolina Convention at the time of
her Secession, met, in pursuance of that call, at Montgomery, Alabama,
and on the 9th adopted a Provisional Constitution and organized a
Provisional Government by the election of Jefferson Davis of
Mississippi, as President, and Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, as
Vice-President; to serve until a Presidential election could be held by
the people of the Confederacy.

     [At a later day, March 11, 1861, a permanent Constitution for the
     "Confederate States" was adopted, and, in the Fall of the same
     year, Messrs.  Davis and Stephens were elected by popular vote, for
     the term of six years ensuing, as President and Vice-President,
     respectively, of the Confederacy.]

Mr. Davis almost at once left Jackson, Mississippi, for Montgomery,
where he arrived and delivered his Inaugural, February 17, having
received on his road thither a succession of ovations from the
enthusiastic Rebels, to which he had responded with no less than
twenty-five speeches, very similar in tone to those made in the United
States Senate by Mr. Wigfall and others of that ilk--breathing at once
defiance and hopefulness, while admitting the difficulties in the way
of the new Confederacy.

"It may be," said he, at Jackson, "that we will be confronted by War;
that the attempt will be made to blockade our ports, to starve us out;
but they (the Union men of the North) know little of the Southern heart,
of Southern endurance.  No amount of privation could force us to remain
in a Union on unequal terms.  England and France would not allow our
great staple to be dammed up within our present limits; the starving
thousands in their midst would not allow it.  We have nothing to
apprehend from Blockade.  But if they attempt invasion by land, we must
take the War out of our territory.  If War must come, it must be upon
Northern, and not upon Southern soil.  In the meantime, if they were
prepared to grant us Peace, to recognize our equality, all is well."

And, in his speech at Stevenson, Alabama, said he "Your Border States
will gladly come into the Southern Confederacy within sixty days, as we
will be their only friends.  England will recognize us, and a glorious
future is before us.  The grass will grow in the Northern cities, where
the pavements have been worn off by the tread of Commerce.  We will
carry War where it is easy to advance--where food for the sword and
torch await our Armies in the densely populated cities; and though they
may come and spoil our crops, we can raise them as before; while they
cannot rear the cities which took years of industry and millions of
money to build."

Very different in tone to these, were the kindly and sensible utterances
of Mr. Lincoln on his journey from Springfield to Washington, about the
same time, for Inauguration as President of the United States.  Leaving
Springfield, Illinois, February 11th, he had pathetically said:

"My friends: No one, not in my position, can realize the sadness I feel
at this parting.  To this people I owe all that I am.  Here I have lived
more than a quarter of a century.  Here my children were born, and here
one of them lies buried.  I know not how soon I shall see you again.  I
go to assume a task more difficult than that which has devolved upon any
other man since the days of Washington.  He never would have succeeded
except for the aid of Divine Providence, upon which he at all times
relied.  I feel that I cannot succeed without the same Divine blessing
which sustained him; and on the same Almighty Being I place my reliance
for support.  And I hope you, my friends, will all pray that I may
receive that Divine assistance, without which I cannot succeed, but with
which success is certain.  Again I bid you an affectionate farewell."

At Indianapolis, that evening, the eve of his birthday anniversary,
after thanking the assembled thousands for their "magnificent welcome,"
and defining the words "Coercion" and "Invasion"--at that time so
loosely used--he continued: "But if the United States should merely hold
and retake her own Forts and other property, and collect the duties on
foreign importation, or even withhold the mails from places where they
were habitually violated, would any or all of these things be 'Invasion'
or 'Coercion'?  Do our professed lovers of the Union, who spitefully
resolve that they will resist Coercion and Invasion, understand that
such things as these on the part of the United States would be
'Coercion' or 'Invasion' of a State?  If so, their idea of means to
preserve the object of their great affection would seem to be
exceedingly thin and airy."

At Columbus, Ohio, he spoke in a like calm, conservative, reasoning way
--with the evident purpose of throwing oil on the troubled waters--when
he said: "I have not maintained silence from any want of real anxiety.
It is a good thing that there is no more than anxiety; for there is
nothing going wrong.  It is a consoling circumstance that, when we look
out, there is nothing that really hurts anybody.  We entertain different
views upon political questions; but nobody is suffering anything.  This
is a consoling circumstance; and from it we may conclude that all we
want is time, patience, and a reliance on that God who has never
forsaken this People."

So, too, at Pittsburg, Pa., February 15th, he said, of "our friends," as
he termed them, the Secessionists: "Take even their own views of the
questions involved, and there is nothing to justify the course they are
pursuing.  I repeat, then, there is no crisis, except such an one as may
be gotten up at any time by turbulent men, aided by designing
politicians.  My advice to them, under the circumstances, is to keep
cool.  If the great American People only keep their temper both sides of
the line, the trouble will come to an end, and the question which now
distracts the Country be settled, just as surely as all other
difficulties, of a like character, which have been originated in this
Government, have been adjusted.  Let the people on both sides keep their
self-possession, and, just as other clouds have cleared away in due
time, so will this great Nation continue to prosper as heretofore."

And toward the end of that journey, on the 22nd of February
--Washington's Birthday--in the Independence Hall at Philadelphia, after
eloquently affirming his belief that "the great principle or idea that
kept this Confederacy so long together was * * * that sentiment in the
Declaration of Independence which gave Liberty not alone to the People
of this Country, but" he hoped "to the World, for all future time * * *
which gave promise that, in due time, the weight would be lifted from
the shoulders of all men"--he added, in the same firm, yet temperate and
reassuring vein: "Now, my friends, can this Country be saved on that
basis?  If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the
world, if I can help to save it.  If it cannot be saved on that basis,
it will be truly awful.  But, if this Country cannot be saved without
giving up that principle, I was about to say I would rather be
assassinated on this spot than surrender it.  Now in my view of the
present aspect of affairs, there need be no bloodshed or War.  There is
no necessity for it.  I am not in favor of such a course; and I may say,
in advance, that there will be no bloodshed, unless it be forced upon
the Government, and then it will be compelled to act in self-defense.  *
* * I have said nothing but what I am willing to live by, and, if it be
the pleasure of Almighty God, to die by."

Thus, as he progressed on that memorable journey from his home in
Illinois, through Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Columbus, Pittsburgh,
Cleveland, Erie, Buffalo, Albany, New York, Trenton, Newark,
Philadelphia, and Harrisburg-amid the prayers and blessings and
acclamations of an enthusiastic and patriotic people--he uttered words
of wise conciliation and firm moderation such as beseemed the high
functions and tremendous responsibilities to which the voice of that
liberty--and-union-loving people had called him, and this too, with a
full knowledge, when he made the Philadelphia speech, that the enemies
of the Republic had already planned to assassinate him before he could
reach Washington.

The prudence of his immediate friends, fortunately defeated the
murderous purpose--and by the simple device of taking the regular night
express from Philadelphia instead of a special train next day--to
Washington, he reached the National Capital without molestation early on
the morning of the 23rd of February.

That morning, after Mr. Lincoln's arrival, in company with Mr. Lovejoy,
the writer visited him at Willard's Hotel.  During the interview both
urged him to "Go right along, protect the property of the Country, and
put down the Rebellion, no matter at what cost in men and money."  He
listened with grave attention, and said little, but very clearly
indicated his approval of all the sentiments thus expressed--and then,
with the same firm and manly and cheerful faith in the outcome, he
added: "As the Country has placed me at the helm of the Ship, I'll try
to steer her through."

The spirit in which he proposed to accomplish this superhuman task, was
shown when he told the Southern people through the Civic authorities of
Washington on the 27th of February--When the latter called upon him
--that he had no desire or intention to interfere with any of their
Constitutional rights--that they should have all their rights under the
Constitution, "not grudgingly, but fully and fairly."  And what was the
response of the South to this generous and conciliatory message?
Personal sneers--imputations of Northern cowardice--boasts of Southern
prowess--scornful rejection of all compromise--and an insolent challenge
to the bloody issue of arms!

Said Mr. Wigfall, in the United States Senate, on March 2d, alluding to
Mr. Lincoln, "I do not think that a man who disguises himself in a
soldier's cloak and a Scotch cap (a more thorough disguise could not be
assumed by such a man) and makes his entry between day and day, into the
Capital of the Country that he is to govern--I hardly think that he is
going to look War sternly in the face.

     [Had Mr. Wigfall been able at this time to look four years into the
     future and behold the downfall of the Southern Rebellion, the
     flight of its Chieftains, and the capture of Jefferson Davis while
     endeavoring to escape, with his body enclosed in a wrapper and a
     woman's shawl over his head, as stated by Lieutenant-Colonel Stuart
     of Jefferson Davis's Staff, p. 756, vol. ii., Greeley's American
     Conflict--he would hardly have retailed this slander.]

"I look for nothing else than that the Commissioners from the
Confederated States will be received here and recognized by Abraham
Lincoln.  I will now predict that this Republican Party that is going to
enforce the Laws, preserve the Union, and collect Revenue, will never
attempt anything so silly; and that instead of taking Forts, the troops
will be withdrawn from those which we now have.  See if this does not
turn out to be so, in less than a week or ten days."

In the same insulting diatribe, he said: "It is very easy for men to
bluster who know there is going to be no danger.  Four or five million
people living in a territory that extends from North Carolina down to
the Rio Grande, who have exports to above three hundred million dollars,
whose ports cannot be blockaded, but who can issue letters of marque and
reprisal, and sweep your commerce from the seas, and who will do it, are
not going to be trifled with by that sensible Yankee nation.  Mark my
words.  I did think, at one time, there was going to be War; I do not
think so now.  * * *  The Star of the West swaggered into Charleston
harbor, received a blow planted full in the face, and staggered out.
Your flag has been insulted; redress it if you dare!  You have submitted
to it for two months, and you will submit to it for ever.  * * *  We
have dissolved the Union; mend it if you can; cement it with blood; try
the experiment! we do not desire War; we wish to avoid it.  * * *  This
we say; and if you choose to settle this question by the Sword, we feel,
we know, that we have the Right.  We interfere with you in no way.  We
ask simply that you will not interfere with us.  * * *  You tell us you
will keep us in the Union.  Try the experiment!"

And then, with brutal frankness, he continued: "Now, whether what are
called The Crittenden Resolutions will produce satisfaction in some of
these Border States, or not, I am unaware; but I feel perfectly sure
they would not be entertained upon the Gulf.  As to the Resolutions
which the Peace Congress has offered us, we might as well make a clean
breast of it.  If those Resolutions were adopted, and ratified by three
fourths of the States of this Union, and no other cause ever existed, I
make the assertion that the seven States now out of the Union, would go
out upon that."




                             CHAPTER VIII.

                       THE REJECTED OLIVE BRANCH.

While instructive, it will also not be devoid of interest, to pause
here, and examine the nature of the Crittenden Resolutions, and also the
Resolutions of the Peace Congress, which, we have seen, were spurned by
the Secession leaders, through their chief mouthpiece in the United
States Senate.

The Crittenden Compromise Resolutions * were in these words:

"A Joint Resolution proposing certain Amendments to the Constitution of
the United States:

"Whereas, serious and alarming dissensions have arisen between the
Northern and the Southern States, concerning the Rights and security of
the Rights of the Slaveholding States, and especially their Rights in
the common territory of the United States; and whereas, it is eminently
desirable and proper that these dissensions, which now threaten the very
existence of this Union, should be permanently quieted and settled by
Constitutional provisions which shall do equal justice to all Sections,
and thereby restore to the People that peace and good-will which ought
to prevail between all the citizens of the United States; Therefore:

"Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States of America, in Congress assembled, (two thirds of both Houses
concurring), the following articles be, and are hereby proposed and
submitted as amendments to the Constitution of the United States, which
shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of said
Constitution, when ratified by Conventions of three-fourths of the
several States:

"Article I.  In all the territory of the United States now held, or
hereafter to be acquired, situate north of latitude 36  30', Slavery or
involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, is prohibited,
while such territory shall remain under Territorial government.  In all
the territory south of said line of latitude, Slavery of the African
race is hereby recognized as existing, and shall not be interfered with
by Congress, but shall be protected as Property by all the departments
of the Territorial government during its continuance.  And when any
Territory, north or south of said line, within such boundaries as
Congress may prescribe, shall contain the population requisite for a
member of Congress, according to the then Federal ratio of
representation of the People of the United States, it shall, if its own
form of government be republican, be admitted into the Union, on an
equal footing with the original States; with or without Slavery, as the
Constitution of such new State may provide.

"Article II.  Congress shall have no power to abolish Slavery in places
under its exclusive jurisdiction, and situate within the limits of
States that permit the holding of Slaves.

"Article III.  Congress shall have no power to abolish Slavery within
the District of Columbia; so long as it exists in the adjoining States
of Virginia and Maryland, or either, nor without the consent of the
inhabitants, nor without just compensation first made to such owners of
Slaves as do not consent to such abolishment.  Nor shall Congress, at
any time, prohibit officers of the Federal government, or members of
Congress whose duties require them to be in said District, from bringing
with them their Slaves, and holding them as such during the time their
duties may require them to remain there, and afterward taking them from
the District.

"Article IV.  Congress shall have no power to prohibit or hinder the
Transportation of Slaves from one State to another, or to a Territory in
which Slaves are, by law, permitted to be held, whether that
transportation be by land, navigable rivers, or by the sea.

"Article V.  That in addition to the provisions of the third paragraph
of the second section of the fourth article of the Constitution of the
United States, Congress shall have power to provide by law, and it shall
be its duty to provide, that the United States shall pay to the owner
who shall apply for it, the full value of his Fugitive Slaves in all
cases where the Marshal, or other officer whose duty it was to arrest
said Fugitive, was prevented from so doing by violence or intimidation,
or where, after arrest, said Fugitive was rescued by force, and the
owner thereby prevented and obstructed in the pursuit of his remedy for
the recovery of his Fugitive Slave under the said clause of the
Constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof.

     ["No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws
     thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any Law or
     Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but
     shall be delivered up on claim of the Party to whom such Service or
     Labour may be due."--Art.  IV., Sec.  2, P 3, U. S. Constitution.]

"And in all such cases, when the United States shall pay for such
Fugitive, they shall have the Right, in their own name, to sue the
county in which said violence, intimidation, or rescue, was committed,
and recover from it, with interest and damages, the amount paid by them
for said Fugitive Slave.  And the said county, after it has paid said
amount to the United States, may, for its indemnity, sue and recover
from the wrong-doers or rescuers by whom the owner was prevented from
the recovery of his Fugitive Slave, in like manner as the owner himself
might have sued and recovered.

"Article VI.  No future amendment of the Constitution shall affect the
five preceding articles; nor the third paragraph of the second section
of the first article of the Constitution, nor the third paragraph  of
the second section of the fourth article of said Constitution; and no
amendment shall be made to the Constitution which shall authorize or
give to Congress any power to abolish or interfere with Slavery in any
of the States by whose laws it is or may be, allowed or permitted.

     ["Representatives and Direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the
     several States which may be included within this Union, according
     to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to
     the whole Number of Free Persons, including those bound to Service
     for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not Taxed, three-fifths
     of all Other Persons," etc.--Art. 1., Sec.  2, P 3, U. S.
     Constitution.]

"And whereas, also, besides those causes of dissension embraced in the
foregoing amendments proposed to the Constitution of the United States,
there are others which come within the jurisdiction of Congress, and may
be remedied by its legislative power; And whereas it is the desire of
Congress, as far as its power will extend, to remove all just cause for
the popular discontent and agitation which now disturb the peace of the
Country and threaten the stability of its Institutions; Therefore:

"1.  Resolved by the Senate and house of Representatives in Congress
assembled, that the laws now in force for the recovery of Fugitive
Slaves are in strict pursuance of the plain and mandatory provisions of
the Constitution, and have been sanctioned as valid and Constitutional
by the judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States; that the
Slaveholding States are entitled to the faithful observance and
execution of those laws; and that they ought not to be repealed, or so
modified or changed as to impair their efficiency; and that laws ought
to be made for the punishment of those who attempt, by rescue of the
Slave, or other illegal means, to hinder or defeat the due execution of
said laws.

"2.  That all State laws which conflict with the Fugitive Slave Acts of
Congress, or any other Constitutional Acts of Congress, or which, in
their operation, impede, hinder, or delay, the free course and due
execution of any of said Acts, are null and void by the plain provisions
of the Constitution of the United States; yet those State laws, void as
they are, have given color to practices, and led to consequences, which
have obstructed the due administration and execution of Acts of
Congress, and especially the Acts for the delivery of Fugitive Slaves;
and have thereby contributed much to the discord and commotion now
prevailing.  Congress, therefore, in the present perilous juncture, does
not deem it improper, respectfully and earnestly, to recommend the
repeal of those laws to the several States which have enacted them, or
such legislative corrections or explanations of them as may prevent
their being used or perverted to such mischievous purposes.

"3.  That the Act of the 18th of September, 1850, commonly called the
Fugitive Slave Law, ought to be so amended as to make the fee of the
Commissioner, mentioned in the eighth section of the Act, equal in
amount in the cases decided by him, whether his decision be in favor of,
or against the claimant.  And, to avoid misconstruction, the last clause
of the fifth section of said Act, which authorizes the person holding a
warrant for the arrest or detention of a Fugitive Slave to summon to his
aid the posse comitatus, and which declares it to be the duty of all
good citizens to assist him in its execution, ought to be so amended as
to expressly limit the authority and duty to cases in which there shall
be resistance, or danger of resistance or rescue.

"4.  That the laws for the suppression of the African Slave Trade, and
especially those prohibiting the importation of Slaves into the United
States, ought to be more effectual, and ought to be thoroughly executed;
and all further enactments necessary to those ends ought to be promptly
made."


The Peace Conference, or "Congress," it may here be mentioned, was
called, by action of the Legislature of Virginia, to meet at Washington,
February 4, 1861.  The invitation was extended to all of such "States of
this Confederacy * * *  whether Slaveholding or Non-Slaveholding, as are
willing to unite with Virginia in an earnest effort to adjust the
present unhappy controversies in the spirit in which the Constitution
was originally formed, and consistently with its principles, so as to
afford to the people of the Slaveholding States adequate guarantees for
the security of their rights"--such States to be represented by
Commissioners "to consider, and, if practicable, agree upon some
suitable adjustment."

The Conference, or "Congress," duly convened, at that place and time,
and organized by electing ex-President John Tyler, of Virginia, its
President.  This Peace Congress--which comprised 133 Commissioners,
representing the States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts,
Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware,
Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Kansas--remained in session until
February 27, 1861--and then submitted the result of its labors to
Congress, with the request that Congress "will submit it to Conventions
in the States, as Article Thirteen of the Amendments to the Constitution
of the United States, in the following shape:

"Section 1.  In all the present territory of the United States, north of
the parallel of 36  30' of north latitude, Involuntary Servitude, except
in punishment of crime, is prohibited.  In all the present territory
south of that line, the status of Persons held to Involuntary Service or
Labor, as it now exists, shall not be changed; nor shall any law be
passed by Congress or the Territorial Legislature to hinder or prevent
the taking of such Persons from any of the States of this Union to said
Territory, nor to impair the Rights arising from said relation; but the
same shall be subject to judicial cognizance in the Federal Courts,
according to the course of the common law.  When any Territory north or
south of said line, within such boundary as Congress may prescribe,
shall contain a population equal to that required for a member of
Congress, it shall, if its form of government be republican, be admitted
into the Union on an equal footing with the original States, with or
without Involuntary Servitude, as the Constitution of such State may
provide.

"Section 2.  No territory shall be acquired by the United States, except
by discovery and for naval and commercial stations, depots, and transit
routes, without the concurrence of a majority of all the Senators from
States which allow Involuntary Servitude, and a majority of all the
Senators from States which prohibit that relation; nor shall Territory
be acquired by treaty, unless the votes of a majority of the Senators
from each class of States hereinbefore mentioned be cast as a part of
the two-thirds majority necessary to the ratification of such treaty.

"Section 3.  Neither the Constitution, nor any amendment thereof, shall
be construed to give Congress power to regulate, abolish, or control,
within any State, the relation established or recognized by the laws
thereof touching Persons held to Labor or Involuntary Service therein,
nor to interfere with or abolish Involuntary Service in the District of
Columbia without the consent of Maryland, and without the consent of the
owners, or making the owners who do not consent just compensation; nor
the power to interfere with or prohibit Representatives and others from
bringing with them to the District of Columbia, retaining, and taking
away, Persons so held to Labor or Service; nor the power to interfere
with or abolish Involuntary Service in places under the exclusive
jurisdiction of the United States within those States and Territories
where the same is established or recognized; nor the power to prohibit
the removal or transportation of Persons held to Labor or Involuntary
Service in any State or Territory of the United States to any other
State or Territory thereof where it is established or recognized by law
or usage; and the right during transportation, by sea or river, of
touching at ports, shores, and landings, and of landing in case of
distress, shall exist; but not the right of transit in or through any
State or Territory, or of sale or traffic, against the laws thereof.
Nor shall Congress have power to authorize any higher rate of taxation
on Persons held to Labor or Service than on land.  The bringing into the
District of Columbia of Persons held to Labor or Service, for sale, or
placing them in depots to be afterwards transferred to other places for
sale as merchandize, is prohibited.

"Section 4.  The third paragraph of the second section of the fourth
article of the Constitution shall not be construed to prevent any of the
States, by appropriate legislation, and through the action of their
judicial and ministerial officers, from enforcing the delivery of
Fugitives from Labor to the person to whom such Service or Labor is due.

"Section 5.  The Foreign Slave Trade is hereby forever prohibited; and
it shall be the duty of Congress to pass laws to prevent the importation
of Slaves, Coolies, or Persons held to Service or Labor, into the United
States and the Territories from places beyond the limits thereof.

"Section 6.  The first, third, and fifth sections, together with this
section of these amendments, and the third paragraph of the second
section of the first article of the Constitution, and the third
paragraph of the second section of the fourth article thereof, shall not
be amended or abolished without the consent of all the States.

"Section 7.  Congress shall provide by law that the United States shall
pay to the owner the full value of the Fugitive from Labor, in all cases
where the Marshal, or other officer, whose duty it was to arrest such
Fugitive, was prevented from so doing by violence or intimidation from
mobs or riotous assemblages, or when, after arrest, such Fugitive was
rescued by like violence or intimidation, and the owner thereby deprived
of the same; and the acceptance of such payment shall preclude the owner
from further claim to such Fugitive.  Congress shall provide by law for
securing to the citizens of each State the privileges and immunities of
citizens in the several States."


To spurn such propositions as these--with all the concessions to the
Slave Power therein contained--was equivalent to spurning any and all
propositions that could possibly be made; and by doing this, the
Seceding States placed themselves--as they perhaps desired--in an
utterly irreconcilable attitude, and hence, to a certain extent, which
had not entered into their calculations, weakened their "Cause" in the
eyes of many of their friends in the North, in the Border States, and in
the World.  They had become Implacables.  Practically considered, this
was their great mistake.  The Crittenden Compromise Resolutions covered
and yielded to the Slaveholders of the South all and even more than they
had ever dared seriously to ask or hope for, and had they been open to
Conciliation, they could have undoubtedly carried that measure through
both Houses of Congress and three-fourths of the States.

     ["Its advocates, with good reason, claimed a large majority of the
     People in its favor, and clamored for its submission to a direct
     popular vote.  Had such a submission been accorded, it is very
     likely that the greater number of those who voted at all would have
     voted to ratify it.  * * *  The 'Conservatives,' so called, were
     still able to establish this Crittenden Compromise by their own
     proper strength, had they been disposed so to do.  The President
     was theirs; the Senate strongly theirs; in the House, they had a
     small majority, as was evidenced in their defeat of John Sherman
     for Speaker.  Had they now come forward and said, with authority:
     'Enable us to pass the Crittenden Compromise, and all shall be
     peace and harmony,' they would have succeeded without difficulty.
     It was only through the withdrawal of pro-slavery members that the
     Republicans had achieved an unexpected majority in either House.
     Had those members chosen to return to the seats still awaiting
     them, and to support Mr. Crittenden's proposition, they could have
     carried it without difficulty."--Vol. 360, Greeley's Am. Conflict.]

But no, they wilfully withdrew their Congressional membership, State by
State, as each Seceded, and refused all terms save those which involved
an absolute surrender to them on all points, including the impossible
claim of the "Right of Secession."

Let us now briefly trace the history of the Compromise measures in the
two Houses of Congress.

The Crittenden-Compromise Joint-Resolution had been introduced in the
Senate at the opening of its session and referred to a Select Committee
of Thirteen, and subsequently, January 16th, 1861, having been reported
back, came up in that body for action.  On that day it was amended by
inserting the words "now held or hereafter to be acquired" after the
words "In all the territory of the United States," in the first line of
Article I., so that it would read as given above.  This amendment--by
which not only in all territory then belonging to the United States, but
also by implication in all that might thereafter be acquired, Slavery
South of 36 30' was to be recognized--was agreed to by 29 yeas to 21
nays, as follows:

YEAS.--Messrs.  Baker, Bayard, Benjamin, Bigler, Bragg, Bright,
Clingman, Crittenden, Douglas, Fitch, Green, Gwin, Hemphill, Hunter,
Iverson, Johnson of Tennessee, Kennedy, Lane, Mason, Nicholson, Pearce,
Polk, Powell, Pugh, Rice, Saulsbury, Sebastian, Slidell and Wigfall--29.

NAYS.--Messrs.  Anthony, Bingham, Cameron, Chandler, Clark, Collamer,
Dixon, Doolittle, Durkee, Fessenden, Foot, Foster, Grimes, Hale, Harlan,
King, Latham, Seward, Simmons, Sumner, Ten Eyck, Trumbull, Wade and
Wilson--24.

The question now recurred upon an amendment, in the nature of a
substitute, offered by Mr. Clark, to strike out the preamble of the
Crittenden proposition and all of the resolutions after the word
"resolved," and insert:

"That the provisions of the Constitution are ample for the preservation
of the Union, and the protection of all the material interests of the
Country; that it needs to be obeyed rather than amended; and that an
extrication from our present dangers is to be looked for in strenuous
efforts to preserve the peace, protect the public property, and enforce
the laws, rather than in new Guarantees for particular interests,
Compromises for particular difficulties, or Concessions to unreasonable
demands.

"Resolved, That all attempts to dissolve the present Union, or overthrow
or abandon the present Constitution, with the hope or expectation of
constructing a new one, are dangerous, illusory, and destructive; that
in the opinion of the Senate of the United States no such Reconstruction
is practicable; and, therefore, to the maintenance of the existing Union
and Constitution should be directed all the energies of all the
departments of the Government, and the efforts of all good citizens."


Before reaching a vote on this amendment, Mr. Anthony, (January 16th)
made a most conciliatory speech, pointing out such practical objections
to the Crittenden proposition as occurred to his mind, and then,
continuing, said: "I believe, Mr. President, that if the danger which
menaces us is to be avoided at all, it must be by Legislation; which is
more ready, more certain, and more likely to be satisfactory, than
Constitutional Amendment.  The main difficulty is the Territorial
question.  The demand of the Senators on the other side of the Chamber,
and of those whom they represent, is that the territory south of the
line of the Missouri Compromise shall be open to their peculiar
Property.  All this territory, except the Indian Reservation, is within
the limits of New Mexico; which, for a part of its northern boundary,
runs up two degrees above that line.  This is now a Slave Territory;
made so by Territorial Legislation; and Slavery exists there, recognized
and protected.  Now, I am willing, as soon as Kansas can be admitted, to
vote for the admission of New Mexico as a State, with such Constitution
as the People may adopt.  This disposes of all the territory that is
adapted to Slave Labor or that is claimed by the South.  It ought to
settle the whole question.  Surely if we can dispose of all the
territory that we have, we ought not to quarrel over that which we have
not, and which we have no very honest way of acquiring.  Let us settle
the difficulties that threaten us now, and not anticipate those which
may never come.  Let the public mind have time to cool * * *.  In
offering to settle this question by the admission of New Mexico, we of
the North who assent to it propose a great Sacrifice, and offer a large
Concession.

"* * *  But we make the offer in a spirit of Compromise and good
feeling, which we hope will be reciprocated.  * * *  I appeal to
Senators on the other side, when we thus offer to bridge over full
seven-eighths of the frightful chasm that separates us, will you not
build the other eighth?  When, with outstretched arms, we approach you
so near that, by reaching out your hands you can clasp ours in the
fraternal grasp from which they should never be separated, will you,
with folded arms and closed eyes, stand upon extreme demands which you
know we cannot accept, and for which, if we did, we could not carry our
constituents?  * * * Together our Fathers achieved the Independence of
their Country; together they laid the foundations of its greatness and
its glory; together they constructed this beautiful system under which
it is our privilege to live, which it is our duty to preserve and to
transmit.  Together we enjoy that privilege; together we must perform
that duty.  I will not believe that, in the madness of popular folly and
delusion, the most benignant Government that ever blessed humanity is to
be broken up.  I will not believe that this great Power which is
marching with giant steps toward the first place among the Nations of
the Earth, is to be turned 'backward on its mighty track.'  There are no
grievances, fancied or real, that cannot be redressed within the Union
and under the Constitution.  There are no differences between us that
may not be settled if we will take them up in the spirit of those to
whose places we have succeeded, and the fruits of whose labors we have
inherited."

And to this more than fair proposition to the Southerners--to this
touching appeal in behalf of Peace--what was the response?  Not a word!
It seemed but to harden their hearts.

     [Immediately after Mr. Anthony's appeal to the Southern Senators, a
     motion was made by Mr. Collamer to postpone the Crittenden
     Resolutions and take up the Kansas Admission Bill.  Here was the
     chance at once offered to them to respond to that appeal--to make a
     first step, as it were.  They would not make it.  The motion was
     defeated by 25 yeas to 30 nays--Messrs. Benjamin and Slidell of
     Louisiana, Hemphill and Wigfall of Texas, Iverson of Georgia, and
     Johnson of Arkansas, voting "nay."  The question at once recurred
     on the amendment of Mr. Clark--being a substitute for the
     Crittenden Resolutions, declaring in effect all Compromise
     unnecessary.  To let that substitute be adopted, was to insure the
     failure of the Crittenden proposition.  Yet these same six Southern
     Senators though present, refused to vote, and permitted the
     substitute to be adopted by 25 yeas to 23 nays.  The vote of Mr.
     Douglas, who had been "called out for an instant into the
     ante-room, and deprived of the opportunity of voting "--as he
     afterwards stated when vainly asking unanimous consent to have his
     vote recorded among the nays-would have made it 25 yeas to 24 nays,
     had he been present and voting, while the votes of the six Southern
     Senators aforesaid, had they voted, would have defeated the
     substitute by 25 yeas to 30 nays.  Then upon a direct vote on the
     Crittenden Compromise there would not only have been the 30 in its
     favor, but the vote of at least one Republican (Baker) in addition,
     to carry it, and, although that would not have given the necessary
     two-thirds, yet it would have been a majority handsome enough to
     have ultimately turned the scales, in both Houses, for a peaceful
     adjustment of the trouble, and have avoided all the sad
     consequences which so speedily befell the Nation.  But this would
     not have suited the Treasonable purposes of the Conspirators.  Ten
     days before this they had probably arranged the Programme in this,
     as well as other matters.  Very certain it is that no time was lost
     by them and their friends in making the best use for their Cause of
     this vote, in the doubtful States of Missouri and North Carolina
     especially.  In the St. Louis journals a Washington dispatch,
     purporting (untruly however) to come from Senators Polk and Green,
     was published to this effect.

     "The Crittenden Resolutions were lost by a vote of 25 to 23.  A
     motion of Mr. Cameron to reconsider was lost; and thus ends all
     hope of reconciliation.  Civil War is now considered inevitable,
     and late accounts declare that Fort Sumter will be attacked without
     delay.  The Missouri delegation recommend immediate Secession."

     This is but a sample of other similar dispatches sent elsewhere.
     And the following dispatch, signed by Mr. Crittenden, and published
     in the Raleigh, N.  C., Register, to quiet the excitement raised by
     the telegrams of the Conspirators, serves also to indicate that the
     friends of Compromise were not disheartened by their defeat:

                    "WASHINGTON, Jan.  17th, 9 P. M.

     "In reply the vote against my resolutions will be reconsidered.
     Their failure was the result of the refusal of six Southern
     Senators to vote.  There is yet good hope of success.

                    "JOHN J. CRITTENDEN."


     There is instruction also to be drawn from the speeches of Senators
     Saulsbury, and Johnson of Tennessee, made fully a year afterward
     (Jan. 29-31, 1862) in the Senate, touching the defeat of the
     Crittenden Compromise by the Clark substitute at this time.
     Speaking of the second session of the Thirty-sixth Congress, Mr.
     Saulsbury said:

     "At that session, while vainly striving with others for the
     adoption of those measures, I remarked in my place in the Senate
     that--

     "'If any Gibbon should hereafter write the Decline and Fall of the
     American Republic, he would date its fall from the rejection by the
     Senate of the propositions submitted by the Senator from Kentucky.'

     "I believed so then, and I believe so now.  I never shall forget,
     Mr. President, how my heart bounded for joy when I thought I saw a
     ray of hope for their adoption in the fact that a Republican
     Senator now on this floor came to me and requested that I should
     inquire of Mr. Toombs, who was on the eve of his departure for
     Georgia to take a seat in the Convention of that State which was to
     determine the momentous question whether she should continue a
     member of the Union or withdraw from it, whether, if the Crittenden
     propositions were adopted, Georgia would remain in the Union.

     "Said Mr. Toombs:

     "'Tell him frankly for me that if those resolutions are adopted by
     the vote of any respectable number of Republican Senators,
     evidencing their good faith to advocate their ratification by their
     people, Georgia will not Secede.  This is the position I assumed
     before the people of Georgia.  I told them that if the party in
     power gave evidence of an intention to preserve our rights in the
     Union, we were bound to wait until their people could act.'

     "I communicated the answer.  The Substitute of the Senator from New
     Hampshire [Mr. Clark] was subsequently adopted, and from that day
     to this the darkness and the tempest and the storm have thickened,
     until thousands like myself, as good and as true Union men as you,
     Sir, though you may question our motives, have not only despaired
     but are without hope in the future."

     To this speech, Mr. Johnson of Tennessee subsequently replied as
     follows in the United States Senate (Jan.  31, 1862)

     "Sir, it has been said by the distinguished Senator from Delaware
     [Mr. Saulsbury] that the questions of controversy might all have
     been settled by Compromise.  He dealt rather extensively in the
     Party aspect of the case, and seemingly desired to throw the onus
     of the present condition of affairs entirely on one side.  He told
     us that, if so and so had been done, these questions could have
     been settled, and that now there would have been no War.  He
     referred particularly to the resolution offered during the last
     Congress by the Senator from New Hampshire [Mr. Clark], and upon
     the vote on that he based his argument.  * * *  The Senator told us
     that the adoption of the Clark amendment to the Crittenden
     Resolutions defeated the settlement of the questions of
     controversy; and that, but for that vote, all could have been peace
     and prosperity now.  We were told that the Clark amendment defeated
     the Crittenden Compromise, and prevented a settlement of the
     controversy.  On this point I will read a portion of the speech of
     my worthy and talented friend from California [Mr. Latham]; and
     when I speak of him thus, I do it in no unmeaning sense I intend
     that he, not I, shall answer the Senator from Delaware.  * * *  As
     I have said, the Senator from Delaware told us that the Clark
     amendment was the turning point in the whole matter; that from it
     had flowed Rebellion, Revolution, War, the shooting and
     imprisonment of people in different States--perhaps he meant to
     include my own.  This was the Pandora's box that has been opened,
     out of which all the evils that now afflict the Land have flown.  *
     * *  My worthy friend from California [Mr. Latham], during the last
     session of Congress, made one of the best speeches he ever made.  *
     * * In the course of that speech, upon this very point he made use
     of these remarks:

     "'Mr. President, being last winter a careful eye-witness of all
     that occurred, I soon became satisfied that it was a deliberate,
     wilful design, on the part of some representatives of Southern
     States, to seize upon the election of Mr. Lincoln merely as an
     excuse to precipitate this revolution upon the Country.  One
     evidence, to my mind, is the fact that South Carolina never sent
     her Senators here.'

     "Then they certainly were not influenced by the Clark amendment.

     "'An additional evidence is, that when gentlemen on this floor, by
     their votes, could have controlled legislation, they refused to
     cast them for fear that the very Propositions submitted to this
     body might have an influence in changing the opinions of their
     constituencies.  Why, Sir, when the resolutions submitted by the
     Senator from New Hampshire [Mr. Clark], were offered as an
     amendment to the Crittenden Propositions, for the manifest purpose
     of embarrassing the latter, and the vote taken on the 16th of
     January, 1861, I ask, what did we see?  There were fifty-five
     Senators at that time upon this floor, in person.  The Globe of the
     second Session, Thirty-Sixth Congress, Part I., page 409, shows
     that upon the call of the yeas and nays immediately preceding the
     vote on the substituting of Mr. Clark's amendment, there were
     fifty-five votes cast.  I will read the vote from the Globe:

     "'YEAS--Messrs.  Anthony, Baker, Bingham, Cameron, Chandler, Clark,
     Collamer, Dixon, Doolittle, Durkee, Fessenden, Foot, Foster,
     Grimes, Hale, Harlan, King, Seward, Simmons, Sumner, Ten Eyck,
     Trumbull, Wade, Wilkinson, and Wilson--25.

     "NAYS--Messrs.  Bayard, Benjamin, Bigler, Bragg, Bright, Clingman,
     Crittenden, Douglas, Fitch, Green, Gwin, Hemphill, Hunter, Iverson,
     Johnson of Arkansas, Johnson of Tennessee, Kennedy, Lane, Latham,
     Mason, Nicholson, Pearce, Polk, Powell, Pugh, Rice, Saulsbury,
     Sebastian, Slidell and Wigfall--30.

     "The vote being taken immediately after, on the Clark Proposition,
     was as follows:

     "YEAS--Messrs.  Anthony, Baker, Bingham, Cameron, Chandler, Clark,
     Collamer, Dixon, Doolittle, Durkee, Fessenden, Foot, Foster,
     Grimes, Hale, Harlan, King, Seward, Simmons, Sumner, Ten Eyck,
     Trumbull, Wade, Wilkinson and Wilson--25.

     "NAYS-Messrs.  Bayard, Bigler, Bragg, Bright, Clingman, Crittenden,
     Fitch, Green, Gwin, Hunter, Johnson of Tennessee, Kennefly, Lane,
     Latham, Mason, Nicholson, Pearce, Polk, Powell, Pugh, Rice,
     Saulsbury and Sebastian-23.

     "'Six senators retained their seats and refused to vote, thus
     themselves allowing the Clark Proposition to supplant the
     Crittenden Resolution by a vote of twenty-five to twenty-three.
     Mr. Benjamin of Louisiana, Mr. Hemphill and Mr. Wigfall of Texas,
     Mr. Iverson of Georgia, Mr. Johnson of Arkansas, and Mr. Slidell of
     Louisiana, were in their seats, but refused to cast their votes.'

     "I sat right behind Mr. Benjamin, and I am not sure that my worthy
     friend was not close by, when he refused to vote, and I said to
     him, 'Mr. Benjamin, why do you not vote?  Why not save this
     Proposition, and see if we cannot bring the Country to it?'  He
     gave me rather an abrupt answer, and said he would control his own
     action without consulting me or anybody else.  Said I: 'Vote, and
     show yourself an honest man.'  As soon as the vote was taken, he
     and others telegraphed South, 'We cannot get any Compromise.'  Here
     were six Southern men refusing to vote, when the amendment would
     have been rejected by four majority if they had voted.  Who, then,
     has brought these evils on the Country?  Was it Mr. Clark?  He was
     acting out his own policy; but with the help we had from the other
     side of the chamber, if all those on this side had been true to the
     Constitution and faithful to their constituents, and had acted with
     fidelity to the Country, the amendment of the Senator from New
     Hampshire could have been voted down, the defeat of which the
     Senator from Delaware says would have saved the Country.  Whose
     fault was it?  Who is responsible for it?  * * *  Who did it?
     SOUTHERN TRAITORS, as was said in the speech of the Senator from
     California.  They did it.  They wanted no Compromise.  They
     accomplished their object by withholding their votes; and hence the
     Country has been involved in the present difficulty.  Let me read
     another extract from this speech of the Senator from California

     "'I recollect full well the joy that pervaded the faces of some of
     those gentlemen at the result, and the sorrow manifested by the
     venerable Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Crittenden].  The record shows
     that Mr. Pugh, from Ohio, despairing of any Compromise between the
     extremes of ultra Republicanism and Disunionists, working
     manifestly for the same end, moved, immediately after the vote was
     announced, to lay the whole subject on the table.  If you will turn
     to page 443, same volume, you will find, when, at a late period,
     Mr. Cameron, from Pennsylvania, moved to reconsider the vote,
     appeals having been made to sustain those who were struggling to
     preserve the Peace of the Country, that the vote was reconsidered;
     and when, at last, the Crittenden Propositions were submitted on
     the 2d day of March, these Southern States having 'nearly all
     Seceded, they were then lost but by one vote.  Here is the vote:

     "YEAS-Messrs.  Bayard, Bigler, Bright, Crittenden, Douglas, Gwin,
     Hunter, Johnson of Tennessee, Kennedy, Lane, Latham, Mason,
     Nicholson, Polk, Pugh, Rice, Sebastian, Thomson and Wigfall--19.

     "'NAYS-Messrs.  Anthony, Bingham, Chandler, Clark, Dixon,
     Doolittle, Durkee, Fessenden, Foot, Foster, Grimes, Harlan, King,
     Morrill, Sumner, Ten Eyck, Trumbull, Wade, Wilkinson and Wilson--20.

     "'If these Seceding Southern senators had remained, there would
     have passed, by a large vote (as it did without them), an
     amendment, by a two-third vote, forbidding Congress ever
     interfering with Slavery in the States.  The Crittenden Proposition
     would have been indorsed by a majority vote, the subject finally
     going before the People, who have never yet, after consideration,
     refused Justice, for any length of time, to any portion of the
     Country.

     "'I believe more, Mr. President, that these gentlemen were acting
     in pursuance of a settled and fixed plan to break up and destroy
     this Government.'

     "When we had it in our power to vote down the amendment of the
     Senator from New Hampshire, and adopt the Crittenden Resolutions,
     certain Southern Senators prevented it; and yet, even at a late day
     of the session, after they had Seceded, the Crittenden Proposition
     was only lost by one vote.  If Rebellion and bloodshed and murder
     have followed, to whose skirts does the responsibility attach?

     "What else was done at the very same session?  The House of
     Representatives passed, and sent to this body, a Proposition to
     amend the Constitution of the United States, so as to prohibit
     Congress from ever hereafter interfering with the Institution of
     Slavery in the States, making that restriction a part of the
     Organic law of the Land.  That Constitutional Amendment came here
     after the Senators from seven States had Seceded; and yet it was
     passed by a two-third vote in the Senate.  Have you ever heard of
     any one of the States which had then Seceded, or which has since
     Seceded, taking up that Amendment to the Constitution, and saying
     they would ratify it, and make it a part of that instrument?  No.
     Does not the whole history of this Rebellion tell you that it was
     Revolution that the Leaders wanted, that they started for, that
     they intended to have?  The facts to which I have referred show how
     the Crittenden Proposition might have been carried; and when the
     Senators from the Slave States were reduced to one-fourth of the
     members of this body, the two Houses passed a Proposition to Amend
     the Constitution, so as to guarantee to the States perfect security
     in regard to the Institution of Slavery in all future time, and
     prohibiting Congress from legislating on the subject.

     "But what more was done?  After Southern Senators had treacherously
     abandoned the Constitution and deserted their posts here, Congress
     passed Bills for the Organization of three new Territories: Dakota,
     Nevada, and Colorado; and in the sixth section of each of those
     Bills, after conferring, affirmatively, power on the Territorial
     Legislature, it went on to exclude certain powers by using a
     negative form of expression; and it provided, among other things,
     that the Legislature should have no power to legislate so as to
     impair the right to private property; that it should lay no tax
     discriminating against one description of Property in favor of
     another; leaving the power on all these questions, not in the
     Territorial Legislature, but in the People when they should come to
     form a State Constitution.

     "Now, I ask, taking the Amendment to the Constitution, and taking
     the three Territorial Bills, embracing every square inch of
     territory in the possession of the United States, how much of the
     Slavery question was left?  What better Compromise could have been
     made?  Still we are told that matters might have been Compromised,
     and that if we had agreed to Compromise, bloody Rebellion would not
     now be abroad in the Land.  Sir, Southern Senators are responsible
     for it.  They stood here with power to accomplish the result, and
     yet treacherously, and, I may say, tauntingly they left this
     chamber, and announced that they had dissolved their connection
     with the Government.  Then, when we were left in the hands of those
     whom we had been taught to believe would encroach upon our Rights,
     they gave us, in the Constitutional Amendment and in the three
     Territorial Bills, all that had ever been asked; and yet gentlemen
     talked Compromise!

     "Why was not this taken and accepted?  No; it was not Compromise
     that the Leaders wanted; they wanted Power; they wanted to Destroy
     this Government, so that they might have place and emolument for
     themselves.  They had lost confidence in the intelligence and
     virtue and integrity of the People, and their capacity to govern
     themselves; and they intended to separate and form a government,
     the chief corner-stone of which should be Slavery, disfranchising
     the great mass of the People, of which we have seen constant
     evidence, and merging the Powers of Government in the hands of the
     Few.  I know what I say.  I know their feelings and their
     sentiments.  I served in the Senate here with them.  I know they
     were a Close Corporation, that had no more confidence in or respect
     for the People than has the Dey of Algiers.  I fought that Close
     Corporation here.  I knew that they were no friends of the People.
     I knew that Slidell and Mason and Benjamin and Iverson and Toombs
     were the enemies of Free Government, and I know so now.  I
     commenced the war upon them before a State Seceded; and I intend to
     keep on fighting this great battle before the Country, for the
     perpetuity of Free Government.  They seek to overthrow it, and to
     establish a Despotism in its place.  That is the great battle which
     is upon our hands.  * * *  Now, the Senator from Delaware tells us
     that if that (Crittenden) Compromise had been made, all these
     consequences would have been avoided.  It is a mere pretense; it is
     false.  Their object was to overturn the Government.  If they could
     not get the Control of this Government, they were willing to divide
     the Country and govern part of it."]


The Clark substitute was then agreed to, by 25 (Republican) yeas to 23
Democratic and Conservative (Bell-Everett) nays--6 Pro-Slavery Senators
not voting, although present; and then, without division, the Crittenden
Resolutions were tabled--Mr. Cameron, however, entering a motion to
reconsider.  Subsequently the action of the Senate, both on the
Resolutions and Substitute, was reconsidered, and March 2d the matter
came up again, as will hereafter appear.

Two days prior to this action in the Senate, Mr. Corwin, Chairman of the
Select Committee of Thirty-three, reported to the House (January 14th),
from a majority of that Committee, the following Joint Resolution:

"Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States of America in Congress assembled, That all attempts on the parts
of the Legislatures of any of the States to obstruct or hinder the
recovery and surrender of Fugitives from Service or Labor, are in
derogation of the Constitution of the United States, inconsistent with
the comity and good neighborhood that should prevail among the several
States, and dangerous to the Peace of the Union.

"Resolved, That the several States be respectfully requested to cause
their Statutes to be revised, with a view to ascertain if any of them
are in conflict with or tend to embarrass or hinder the execution of the
Laws of the United States, made in pursuance of the second section of
the Fourth Article of the Constitution of the United States for the
delivery up of Persons held to Labor by the laws of any State and
escaping therefrom; and the Senate and House of Representatives
earnestly request that all enactments having such tendency be forthwith
repealed, as required by a just sense of Constitutional obligations, and
by a due regard for the Peace of the Republic; and the President of the
United States is requested to communicate these resolutions to the
Governors of the several States, with a request that they will lay the
same before the Legislatures thereof respectively.

"Resolved, That we recognize Slavery as now existing in fifteen of the
United States by the usages and laws of those States; and we recognize
no authority, legally or otherwise, outside of a State where it so
exists, to interfere with Slaves or Slavery in such States, in disregard
of the Rights of their owners or the Peace of society.

"Resolved, That we recognize the justice and propriety of a faithful
execution of the Constitution, and laws made in pursuance thereof, on
the subject of Fugitive Slaves, or Fugitives from Service or Labor, and
discountenance all mobs or hindrances to the execution of such laws, and
that citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and
immunities of citizens in the several States.

"Resolved, That we recognize no such conflicting elements in its
composition, or sufficient cause from any source, for a dissolution of
this Government; that we were not sent here to destroy, but to sustain
and harmonize the Institutions of the Country, and to see that equal
justice is done to all parts of the same; and finally, to perpetuate its
existence on terms of equality and justice to all the States.

"Resolved, That a faithful observance, on the part of all the States, of
all their Constitutional obligations to each other and to the Federal
Government, is essential to the Peace of the Country.

"Resolved, That it is the duty of the Federal Government to enforce the
Federal Laws, protect the Federal property, and preserve the Union of
these States.

"Resolved, That each State be requested to revise its Statutes, and, if
necessary, so to amend the same as to secure, without Legislation by
Congress, to citizens of other States traveling therein, the same
protection as citizens of such States enjoy; and also to protect the
citizens of other States traveling or sojourning therein against popular
violence or illegal summary punishment, without trial in due form of
law, for imputed crimes.

"Resolved, That each State be also respectfully requested to enact such
laws as will prevent and punish any attempt whatever in such State to
recognize or set on foot the lawless invasion of any other State or
Territory.

"Resolved, That the President be requested to transmit copies of the
foregoing resolutions to the Governors of the several States, with a
request that they be communicated to their respective Legislatures."


This Joint Resolution, with amendments proposed to the same, came up in
the House for action, on the 27th of February, 1861--the same day upon
which the Peace Congress or Conference concluded its labors at
Washington.

The Proposition of Mr. Burch, of California, was the first acted upon.
It was to amend the Select Committee's resolutions, as above given, by
adding to them another resolution at the end thereof, as follows:

"Resolved, etc., That it be, and is hereby, recommended to the several
States of the Union that they, through their respective Legislatures,
request the Congress of the United States to call a Convention of all
the States, in accordance with Article Fifth of the Constitution, for
the purpose of amending said Constitution in such manner and with regard
to such subjects as will more adequately respond to the wants, and
afford more sufficient Guarantees to the diversified and growing
Interests of the Government and of the People composing the same."

This (Burch) amendment, however, was defeated by 14 yeas to 109 nays.

A Proposition of Mr. Kellogg, of Illinois, came up next for action.  It
was a motion to strike out all after the first word "That" in the
Crittenden Proposition--which had been offered by Mr. Clemens as a
substitute for the Committee Resolutions--and insert the following:

"The following articles be, and are hereby, proposed and submitted as
Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be
valid, to all intents and purposes as part of said Constitution, when
ratified by Conventions of three-fourths of the several States.

"Article XIII.  That in all the territory now held by the United States
situate north of latitude 36  30' Involuntary Servitude, except in the
punishment for crime, is prohibited while such territory shall remain
under a Territorial government; that in all the territory now held south
of said line, neither Congress nor any Territorial Legislature shall
hinder or prevent the emigration to said territory of Persons; held to
Service from any State of this Union, when that relation exists by
virtue of any law or usage of such State, while it shall remain in a
Territorial condition; and when any Territory north or south of said
line, within such boundaries as Congress may prescribe, shall contain
the population requisite for a member of Congress, according to the then
Federal ratio of representation of the People of the United States, it
may, if its form of government be Republican, be admitted into the Union
on an equal footing with the original States, with or without the
relation of Persons held to Service and Labor, as the Constitution of
such new State may provide.

"Article XIV.  That nothing in the Constitution of the United States, or
any amendment thereto, shall be so construed as to authorize any
Department of the Government to in any manner interfere with the
relation of Persons held to Service in any State where that relation
exists, nor in any manner to establish or sustain that relation in any
State where it is prohibited by the Laws or Constitution of such State.
And that this Article shall not be altered or amended without the
consent of every State in the Union.

"Article XV.  The third paragraph of the second section of the Fourth
Article of the Constitution shall be taken and construed to authorize
and empower Congress to pass laws necessary to secure the return of
Persons held to Service or Labor under the laws of any State, who may
have escaped therefrom, to the party to whom such Service or Labor may
be due.

"Article XVI.  The migration or importation of Persons held to Service
or Involuntary Servitude, into any State, Territory, or place within the
United States, from any place or country beyond the limits of the United
States or Territories thereof, is forever prohibited.

"Article XVII.  No territory beyond the present limits of the United
States and the Territories thereof, shall be annexed to or be acquired
by the United States, unless by treaty, which treaty shall be ratified
by a vote of two-thirds of the Senate."

The Kellogg Proposition was defeated by 33 yeas to 158
nays.

The Clemens Substitute was next voted on.  This embraced the whole of
the Crittenden Compromise Proposition, as amended in the Senate by
inserting the provision as to all territory "hereafter acquired," with
the addition of another proposed Article of Amendment to the
Constitution, as follows:

"Article VII.  Section I.  The elective franchise and the Right to hold
office, whether Federal, State, Territorial, or Municipal, shall not be
exercised by Persons who are, in whole or in part, of the African Race.

"Section II.  The United States shall have power to acquire from time to
time districts of country in Africa and South America, for the
colonization, at expense of the Federal Treasury, of such Free <DW64>s
and Mulattoes as the several States may wish to have removed from their
limits, and from the District of Columbia, and such other places as may
be under the jurisdiction of Congress."

The Clemens Substitute (or Crittenden Measure, with the addition of said
proposed Article VII.), was defeated by 80 yeas to 113 nays, and then
the Joint Resolution of the Select Committee as heretofore given--after
a vain attempt to table it--was passed by 136 yeas to 53 nays.

Immediately after this action, a Joint Resolution to amend the
Constitution of the United States, which had also been previously
reported by the Select Committee of Thirty-three, came before the House,
as follows:

"Be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States of America in Congress assembled, (two-thirds of both Houses
concurring), That the following Article be proposed to the Legislatures
of the several States as an Amendment to the Constitution of the United
States, which, when ratified by three-fourths of said Legislatures,
shall be valid, to all intents and purposes, as a part of the said
Constitution, namely:

"Article XII.  No amendment of this Constitution having for its object
any interference within the States with the relation between their
citizens and those described in Section II. of the First Article of the
Constitution as 'all other persons,' 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."

Mr. Corwin submitted an Amendment striking out all the words after
"namely;" and inserting the following:

"Article XII.  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."

Amid scenes of great disorder, the Corwin Amendment was adopted by 120
yeas to 61 nays, and then the Joint Resolution as amended, was defeated
(two-thirds not voting in the affirmative) by 123 yeas to 71 nays.  On
the following day (February 28th), amid still greater confusion and
disorder, which the Speaker, despite frequent efforts, was unable to
quell, that vote was reconsidered, and the Joint Resolution passed by
133 yeas to 65 nays--a result which, when announced was received with
"loud and prolonged applause, both on the floor, and in the galleries."

On the 2d of March, the House Joint Resolution just given, proposing an
Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting Congress from touching
Slavery within any State where it exists, came up in the Senate for
action.

Mr. Pugh moved to substitute for it the Crittenden Proposition.

Mr. Doolittle moved to amend the proposed substitute (the Crittenden
Proposition), by the insertion of the following, as an additional
Article:

"Under this Constitution, as originally adopted, and as it now exists,
no State has power to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United
States; but this Constitution, and all laws passed in pursuance of its
delegated powers, are the Supreme Law of the Land, anything contained in
any Constitution, Ordinance, or Act of any State, to the contrary
notwithstanding."

Mr. Doolittle's amendment was lost by 18 yeas to 28 nays.

Mr. Pugh's substitute (the Crittenden Proposition), was lost by 14 yeas
to 25 nays.

Mr. Bingham moved to amend the House Joint Resolution, by striking out
all after the word "resolved," and inserting the words of the Clark
Proposition as heretofore given, but the amendment was rejected by 13
yeas to 25 nays.

Mr. Grimes moved to strike out all after the word "whereas" in the
preamble of the House Joint Resolution, and insert the following:

"The Legislatures of the States of Kentucky, New Jersey, and Illinois
have applied to Congress to call a Convention for proposing Amendments
to the Constitution of the United States: Therefore,

"Be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States of America in Congress assembled, That the Legislatures of the
other States be invited to take the subject of such a Convention into
consideration, and to express their will on that subject to Congress, in
pursuance of the Fifth Article of the Constitution."

This amendment was also rejected, by 14 yeas to 25 nays.

Mr. Johnson, of Arkansas, offered, as an amendment to the House Joint
Resolution, the propositions submitted by the Peace Congress or
Conference, but the amendment was disagreed to by 3 yeas to 34 nays.

The House Joint Resolution was then adopted by 24 yeas to 12 nays.

Subsequently the Crittenden Proposition came up again as a separate
order, with the Clark substitute to it (once carried, but reconsidered),
pending.  The Clark substitute was then rejected by 14 yeas to 22 nays.

Mr. Crittenden then offered the Propositions of the Peace
Congress, as a substitute for his own-and they were rejected by 7 yeas
to 28 nays.

The Crittenden Proposition itself was then rejected, by
19 yeas to 20 nays.




                              CHAPTER IX.

                 SLAVERY'S SETTING, AND FREEDOM'S DAWN.

On that long last night of the 36th Congress--and of the Democratic
Administration--to the proceedings of which reference was made in the
preceding Chapter, several notable speeches were made, but there was
substantially nothing done, in the line of Compromise.  The only thing
that had been accomplished was the passage, as we have seen, by
two-thirds majority in both Houses, of the Joint Resolution proposing a
Constitutional Amendment prohibiting Congress from meddling with Slavery
in Slave States.  There was no Concession nor Compromise in this,
because Republicans, as well as Democrats, had always held that Congress
had no such power.  It is true that the Pro-slavery men had charged the
Republicans with ultimate designs, through Congress, upon Slavery in the
Slave States; and Mr. Crittenden pleaded for its passage as exhibiting a
spirit, on their part, of reconciliation; that was all.

In his speech that night--that memorable and anxious night preceding the
Inauguration of President Lincoln--the venerable Mr. Crittenden,
speaking before the Resolution was agreed to, well sketched the
situation when he said in the Senate: "It is an admitted fact that our
Union, to some extent, has already been dismembered; and that further
dismemberment is impending and threatened.  It is a fact that the
Country is in danger.  This is admitted on all hands.  It is our duty,
if we can, to provide a remedy for this.  We are, under the Constitution
and by the election of the People, the great guardians, as well as the
administrators of this Government.  To our wisdom they have trusted this
great chart.  Remedies have been proposed; resolutions have been
offered, proposing for adoption measures which it was thought would
satisfy the Country, and preserve as much of the Union as remained to us
at least, if they were not enough at once to recall the Seceding States
to the Union.  We have passed none of these measures.  The differences
of opinion among Senators have been such that we have not been able to
concur in any of the measures which have been proposed, even by bare
majorities, much less by that two-thirds majority which is necessary to
carry into effect some of the pacific measures which have been proposed.
We are about to adjourn.  We have done nothing.  Even the Senate of the
United States, beholding this great ruin around them, beholding
Dismemberment and Revolution going on, and Civil War threatened as the
result, have been able to do nothing; we have absolutely done nothing.
Sir, is not this a remarkable spectacle?  * * * How does it happen that
not even a bare majority here, when the Country trusted to our hands is
going to ruin, have been competent to devise any measure of public
safety?  How does it happen that we have not had unanimity enough to
agree on any measure of that kind?  Can we account for it to ourselves,
gentlemen?  We see the danger; we acknowledge our duty, and yet, with
all this before us, we are acknowledging before the world that we can do
nothing; acknowledging before the world, or appearing to all the world,
as men who do nothing!  Sir, this will make a strange record in the
history of Governments and in the history of the world.  Some are for
Coercion; yet no army has been raised, no navy has been equipped.  Some
are for pacification; yet they have been able to do nothing; the dissent
of their colleagues prevents them; and here we are in the midst of a
falling Country, in the midst of a falling State, presenting to the eyes
of the World the saddest spectacle it has ever seen.  Cato is
represented by Addison as a worthy spectacle, 'a great man falling with
a falling State,' but he fell struggling.  We fall with the ignominy on
our heads of doing nothing, like the man who stands by and sees his
house in flames, and says to himself, 'perhaps the fire will stop before
it consumes all.'"

One of the strong pleas made in the Senate that night, was by Mr.
Douglas, when he said: "The great issue with the South has been that
they would not submit to the Wilmot proviso.  The Republican Party
affirmed the doctrine that Congress must and could prohibit Slavery in
the Territories.  The issue for ten years was between Non-intervention
on the part of Congress, and prohibition by Congress.  Up to two years
ago, neither the Senator (Mason) from Virginia, nor any other Southern
Senator, desired affirmative legislation to protect Slavery.  Even up to
this day, not one of them has proposed affirmative legislation to
protect it.  Whenever the question has come up, they have decided that
affirmative legislation to protect it was unnecessary; and hence, all
that the South required on the Territorial question was 'hands off;
Slavery shall not be prohibited by Act of Congress.' Now, what do we
find?  This very session, in view of the perils which surround the
Country, the Republican Party, in both Houses of Congress, by a
unanimous vote, have backed down from their platform and abandoned the
doctrine of Congressional prohibition.  This very week three Territorial
Bills have been passed through both Houses of Congress without the
Wilmot proviso, and no man proposed to enact it; not even one man on the
other side of the Chamber would rise and propose the Wilmot proviso."

"In organizing three Territories," continued he, "two of them South of
the very line where they imposed the Wilmot proviso twelve years ago, no
one on the other side of the Chamber proposed it.  They have abandoned
the doctrine of the President-elect upon that point.  He said, and it is
on record, that he had voted for the Wilmot proviso forty-two times, and
would do it forty-two times more if he ever had a chance.  Not one of
his followers this year voted for it once.  The Senator from New York
(Mr. Seward) the embodiment of the Party, sat quietly and did not
propose it.  What more?  Last year we were told that the Slave Code of
New Mexico was to be repealed.  I denounced the attempted interference.
The House of Representatives passed the Bill, but the Bill remains on
your table; no one Republican member has proposed to take it up and pass
it.  Practically, therefore, the Chicago platform is abandoned; the
Philadelphia platform is abandoned; the whole doctrine for which the
Republican Party contended, as to the Territories, is abandoned,
surrendered, given up.  Non-intervention is substituted in its place.
Then, when we find that, on the Territorial question, the Republican
Party, by a unanimous vote, have surrendered to the South all they ask,
the Territorial question ought to be considered pretty well settled.
The only question left was that of the States; and after having
abandoned their aggressive policy as to the Territories, a portion of
them are willing to unite with us, and deprive themselves of the power
to do it in the States."

"I submit," said he, "that these two great facts--these startling,
tremendous facts--that they have abandoned their aggressive policy in
the Territories, and are willing to give guarantees in the States, ought
to be accepted as an evidence of a salutary change in Public Opinion at
the North.  All I would ask now of the Republican Party is, that they
would insert in the Constitution the same principle that they have
carried out practically in the Territorial Bills for Colorado, Dakota,
and Nevada, by depriving Congress of the power hereafter to do what
there cannot be a man of them found willing to do this year; but we
cannot ask them to back down too much.  I think they have done quite as
much within one year, within three months after they have elected a
President, as could be expected."

That Douglas and his followers were also patriotically willing to
sacrifice a favorite theory in the face of a National peril, was brought
out, at the same time, by Mr. Baker, when he said to Mr. Douglas: "I
desire to suggest (and being a little of a Popular Sovereignty man, it
comes gracefully from me) that others of us have backed down too, from
the idea that Congress has not the power to prohibit Slavery in the
Territories; and we are proposing some of us in the Crittenden
proposition, and some in the Amendment now before the Senate--to
prohibit Slavery by the Constitution itself, in the Territories;"--and
by Mr. Douglas, when he replied: "I think as circumstances change, the
action of public men ought to change in a corresponding degree.  * * * I
am willing to depart from my cherished theory, by an Amendment to the
Constitution by which we shall settle this question on the principles
prescribed in the Resolutions of the Senator from Kentucky."

     In the House, Mr. Logan, had, on the 5th of February, 1861, said:

     "Men, Sir, North and South, who love themselves far better than
     their Country, have brought us to this unhappy condition.  * * *
     Let me say to gentlemen, that I will go as far as any man in the
     performance of a Constitutional duty to put down Rebellion, to
     suppress Insurrection, and to enforce the laws; but when we
     undertake the performance of these duties, let us act in such a
     manner as will be best calculated to preserve and not destroy the
     Government, and keep ourselves within the bounds of the
     Constitution.  * * *  Sir, I have always denied, and do yet deny,
     the Right of Secession.  There is no warrant for it in the
     Constitution.  It is wrong, it is unlawful, unconstitutional, and
     should be called by the right name, Revolution.  No good, Sir, can
     result from it, but much mischief may.  It is no remedy for any
     grievance.

     "I hold that all grievances can be much easier redressed inside the
     Union than out of it.  * * *  If a collision must ensue between
     this Government and any of our own people, let it come when every
     other means of settlement has been tried and exhausted; and not
     then, except when the Government shall be compelled to repel
     assaults for the protection of its property, flag, and the honor of
     the Country.  * * *

     "I have been taught to believe that the preservation of this
     glorious Union, with its broad flag waving over us, as the shield
     for our protection on land and on sea, is paramount to all the
     Parties and platforms that ever have existed, or ever can exist.  I
     would, to-day, if I had the power, sink my own Party, and every
     other one, with all their platforms, into the vortex of ruin,
     without heaving a sigh or shedding a tear, to save the Union, or
     even stop the Revolution where it is."

     After enumerating the various propositions for adjustment, then
     pending in the House, to wit: that of Senator Crittenden; that of
     Senator Douglas; that of the Committee of Thirty-three; that of the
     Border States; and those of Representatives McClernand, Kellogg,
     and Morris, of Illinois, Mr. Logan took occasion to declare that
     "in a crisis like this" he was "willing to give his support to any
     of them," but his preference was for that of Mr. Morris.

     Said he: "He (Morris) proposes that neither Congress nor a
     Territorial Legislature shall interfere with Slavery in the
     Territories at all; but leaves the people, when they come to form
     their State Constitution, to determine the question for themselves.
     I think this is the best proposition, because it is a fair
     concession on all sides.  The Republicans give up their
     Congressional intervention; those who are styled 'Squatter
     Sovereigns' give up their Territorial legislative policy; and the
     Southern (Slave) protectionists give up their protection-
     intervention policy; thus every Party yields something.  With this
     proposition as an Article in the Constitution, it would satisfy
     every conservative man in this Union, both North and South, I do
     seriously and honestly believe.

     "Having indicated my preference of these propositions, and my
     reasons for that preference, I have said all I desire to say on the
     point, except to repeat again, that I will willingly vote for any
     of them, or make any other sacrifice necessary to save the Union.
     It makes no kind of difference to me what the sacrifice; if it will
     save my Country, I am ready to make it."  * * *

     "There are some in this Hall," said he, "that are almost ready to
     strike the Party fetters from their limbs, and assist in measures
     of Peace.  Halt not; take the step; be independent and free at
     once!  Let us overcome Party passion and error; allow virtue and
     good sense in this fateful hour to be triumphant; let us invoke
     Deity to interpose and prepare the way for our Country's escape
     from the perils by which we are now surrounded; and in view of our
     present greatness and future prospects, our magnificent and growing
     cities, our many institutions of learning, our once happy and
     prosperous People, our fruitful fields and golden forests, our
     enjoyment of all civil and religious blessings--let Parties die
     that these be preserved.  Such noble acts of patriotism and
     concession, on your part, would cause posterity to render them
     illustrious, and pause to contemplate the magnitude of the events
     with which they were connected.  * * * In the name of the patriotic
     sires who breasted the storms and vicissitudes of the Revolution;
     by all the kindred ties of this Country; in the name of the many
     battles fought for your Freedom; in behalf of the young and the
     old; in behalf of the Arts and Sciences, Civilization, Peace,
     Order, Christianity, and Humanity, I appeal to you to strike from
     your limbs the chains that bind them!  Come forth from that
     loathsome prison, Party Caucus; and in this hour--the most gloomy
     and disheartening to the lovers of Free Institutions that has ever
     existed during our Country's history--arouse the drooping spirits
     of our countrymen, by putting forth your good strong arms to assist
     in steadying the rocking pillars of the mightiest Republic that has
     ever had an existence."

     "Mr. Speaker," continued he, "a word or two more, and I am done.
     Revolution stalks over the Land.  States have rebelled against the
     constituted authorities of the Union, and now stand, sword in hand,
     prepared to vindicate their new nationality.  Others are preparing
     to take a similar position.  Rapidly transpiring events are
     crowding on us with fearful velocity.  Soon, circumstances may
     force us into an unnatural strife, in which the hand of brother
     shall be uplifted against brother, and father against son.  My God,
     what a spectacle!  If all the evils and calamities that have ever
     happened since the World began, could be gathered in one great
     Catastrophe, its horrors could not eclipse, in their frightful
     proportions, the Drama that impends over us.  Whether this black
     cloud that drapes in mourning the whole political heavens, shall
     break forth in all the frightful intensity of War, and make
     Christendom weep at the terrible atrocities that will be enacted
     --or, whether it will disappear, and the sky resume its wonted
     serenity, and the whole Earth be irradiated by the genial sunshine
     of Peace once more--are the alternatives which this Congress, in my
     judgment, has the power to select between."

In this same broad spirit, Mr. Seward, in his great speech of January
12th, had said: "Republicanism is subordinate to Union, as everything
else is and ought to be--Republicanism, Democracy, every other political
name and thing; all are subordinate-and they ought to disappear in the
presence of the great question of Union."  In another part of it, he had
even more emphatically said: "I therefore * * * avow my adherence to the
Union in its integrity and with all its parts, with my friends, with my
Party, with my State, with my Country, or without either, as they may
determine, in every event, whether of Peace or War, with every
consequence of honor or dishonor, of life or death.  Although I lament
the occasion, I hail with cheerfulness the duty of lifting up my voice
among distracted debates, for my whole Country and its inestimable
Union."  And as showing still more clearly the kindly and conciliatory
attitude of the great Republican leader, when speaking of those others
who seemed to be about to invoke revolutionary action to oppose--and
overthrow the Government--he said: "In such a case I can afford to meet
prejudice with Conciliation, exaction with Concession which surrenders
no principle, and violence with the right hand of Peace."

In the House of Representatives, too, the voice of patriotism was often
heard through the loud clamor and disorder of that most disorderly and
Treason-uttering session--was heard from the lips of statesmen, who rose
high above Party, in their devotion to the Union.  The calm,
dispassionate recital by Henry Winter Davis (of Maryland), of the
successive steps by which the Southern leaders had themselves created
that very "North" of whose antagonism they complained, was one of the
best of these, in some respects.  He was one of the great Select
Committee of Thirty-three, and it was (February 5th) after the
Resolutions, heretofore quoted, had been reported by it, that he
condensed the history of the situation into a nutshell, as follows:

"We are at the end of the insane revel of partisan license which, for
thirty years, has, in the United States, worn the mask of Government.
We are about to close the masquerade by the dance of death.  The Nations
of the World look anxiously to see if the People, ere they tread that
measure, will come to themselves.

         *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

"Southern politicians have created a North.  Let us trace the process
and draw the moral.

"The laws of 1850 calmed and closed the Slavery agitation; and President
Pierce, elected by the almost unanimous voice of the States, did not
mention Slavery in his first two Messages.  In 1854, the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise, at the instance of the South, reopened the
agitation.

"Northern men, deserted by Southern Whigs, were left to unite for
self-defense.

"The invasion of Kansas, in 1855 and 1856, from Missouri; the making a
Legislature and laws for that Territory, by the invaders; still further
united the Northern people.  The election of 1856 measured its extent.

"The election of Mr. Buchanan and his opening policy in Kansas, soothed
the irritation, and was rapidly demoralizing the new Party, when the
Pro-Slavery Party in Kansas perpetrated, and the President and the South
accepted, the Lecompton fraud, and again united the North more
resolutely in resistance to that invasion of the rights of
self-government.

"The South for the first time failed to dictate terms; and the People
vindicated by their votes the refusal of the Constitution.

"Ere this result was attained, the opinions of certain Judges of the
Supreme Court scattered doubts over the law of Slavery in the
Territories; the South, while repudiating other decisions, instantly
made these opinions the criterion of faithfulness to the Constitution;
while the North was agitated by this new sanction of the extremest
pretensions of their opponents.

"The South did not rest satisfied with their Judicial triumph.

"Immediately the claim was pressed for protection by Congress to
Slavery, declared by the Supreme Court, they said, to exist in all the
Territories.

"This completed the union of the Free States in one great defensive
league; and the result was registered in November.  That result is now
itself become the starting point of new agitation--the demand of new
rights and new guarantees.  The claim to access to the Territories was
followed by the claim to Congressional protection, and that is now
followed by the hitherto unheard of claim to a Constitutional Amendment
establishing Slavery, not merely in territory now held, but in all
hereafter held from the line of 36  30' to Cape Horn, while the debate
foreshadows in the distance the claim of the right of transit and the
placing of property in Slaves in all respects on the footing of other
property--the topics of future agitation.  How long the prohibition of
the importation of Slaves will be exempted from the doctrine of
equality, it needs no prophet to tell.

"In the face of this recital, let the imputation of autocratic and
tyrannical aspirations cease to be cast on the people of the Free
States; let the Southern people dismiss their fears, return to their
friendly confidence in their fellow-citizens of the North, and accept,
as pledges of returning Peace, the salutary amendments of the law and
the Constitution offered as the first fruits of Reconciliation."

But calmness, kindness, and courtesy were alike thrown away in both
Houses upon the implacable Southern leaders.  As the last day of that
memorable session, which closed in the failure of all peaceful measures
to restore the Union, slowly dawned--with but a few hours lacking of the
time when Mr. Lincoln would be inaugurated President of the United
States--Mr. Wigfall thought proper, in the United States Senate, to
sneer at him as "an ex-rail-splitter, an ex-grocery keeper, an
ex-flatboat captain, and an ex-Abolition lecturer"--and proceeded
to scold and rant at the North with furious volubility.

"Then, briefly," said he, "a Party has come into power that represents
the antagonism to my own Section of the Country.  It represents two
million men who hate us, and who, by their votes for such a man as they
have elected, have committed an overt act of hostility.  That they have
done."

"You have won the Presidency," said he, to the Republicans, "and you are
now in the situation of the man who had won the elephant at a raffle.
You do not know what to do with the beast now that you have it; and
one-half of you to-day would give your right arms if you had been
defeated. But you succeeded, and you have to deal with facts.  Our
objection to living in this Union, and therefore the difficulty of
reconstructing it, is not your Personal Liberty bills, not the
Territorial question, but that you utterly and wholly misapprehend
the Form of Government."

"You deny," continued he, "the Sovereignty of the States; you deny the
right of self-government in the People; you insist upon <DW64> Equality;
your people interfere impertinently with our Institutions and attempt to
subvert them; you publish newspapers; you deliver lectures; you print
pamphlets, and you send them among us, first, to excite our Slaves to
insurrection against their masters, and next, to array one class of
citizens against the other; and I say to you, that we cannot live in
peace, either in the Union or out of it, until you have abolished your
Abolition societies; not, as I have been misquoted, abolish or destroy
your school-houses; but until you have ceased in your schoolhouses
teaching your children to hate us; until you have ceased to convert your
pulpits into hustings; until you content yourselves with preaching
Christ, and Him crucified, and not delivering political harangues on the
Sabbath; until you have ceased inciting your own citizens to make raids
and commit robberies; until you have done these things we cannot live in
the same Union with you.  Until you do these things, we cannot live out
of the Union at Peace."

Such were the words--the spiteful, bitter words--with which this chosen
spokesman of the South saluted the cold and cloudy dawn of that day
which was to see the sceptre depart from the hands of the Slave Power
forever.

A few hours later, under the shadow of the main Pastern Portico of the
Capitol at Washington--with the retiring President and Cabinet, the
Supreme Court Justices, the Foreign Diplomatic Corps, and hundreds of
Senators, Representatives and other distinguished persons filling the
great platform on either side and behind them--Abraham Lincoln stood
bareheaded before full thirty thousand people, upon whose uplifted faces
the unveiled glory of the mild Spring sun now shone--stood reverently
before that far greater and mightier Presence termed by himself, "My
rightful masters, the American People"--and pleaded in a manly, earnest,
and affectionate strain with "such as were dissatisfied," to listen to
the "better angels" of their nature.

Temperate, reasonable, kindly, persuasive--it seems strange that Mr.
Lincoln's Inaugural Address did not disarm at least the personal
resentment of the South toward him, and sufficiently strengthen the
Union-loving people there, against the red-hot Secessionists, to put the
"brakes" down on Rebellion.  Said he:

"Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States,
that by the accession of a Republican Administration, their Property and
their Peace and personal security are to be endangered.  There has never
been any reasonable cause for such apprehension.  Indeed, the most ample
evidence to the contrary has all the while existed, and been open to
their inspection.  It is found in nearly all the published speeches of
him who now addresses you.  I do but quote from one of those speeches,
when I declare that 'I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to
interfere with the Institution of Slavery in the States where it
exists.'  I believe I have no lawful right to do so; and I have no
inclination to do so.  Those who nominated and elected me, did so with
the full knowledge that I had made this, and many similar declarations,
and had never recanted them.  * * *

"I now reiterate these sentiments; and in doing so, I only press upon
the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is
susceptible, that the Property, Peace, and Security of no Section are to
be in any wise endangered by the now incoming Administration.  I add,
too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution
and the laws, can be given, will be cheerfully given to all the States,
when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause--as cheerfully to one Section
as to another.

"I take the official oath to-day with no mental reservations, and with
no purpose to construe the Constitution or laws by any hypercritical
rules.  * * *

"A disruption of the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is now
formidably attempted.  I hold that, in contemplation of Universal Law,
and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual.
Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all
National Governments.  It is safe to assert that no Government proper
ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination.
Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National
Constitution, and the Union will endure forever--it being impossible to
destroy it, except by some action not provided for in the instrument
itself.

"Again, if the United States be not a Government proper, but an
Association of States in the nature of a contract merely, can it, as a
contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it?
One party to a contract may violate it--break it, so to speak; but does
it not require all, to lawfully rescind it?

"Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that,
in legal contemplation, the Union is perpetual, confirmed by the history
of the Union itself.  The Union is much older than the Constitution.  It
was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774.  It was
matured and continued in the Declaration of Independence in 1776.  It
was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States
expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the
Articles of Confederation, in 1778; and, finally, in 1787, one of the
declared objects, for ordaining and establishing the Constitution, was
'to form a more perfect Union.'  But, if destruction of the Union by
one, or by a part only, of the States, be lawfully possible, the Union
is less perfect than before, the Constitution having lost the vital
element of perpetuity.

"It follows, from these views, that no State, upon its own mere motion,
can lawfully get out of the Union; that Resolves and Ordinances to that
effect, are legally void; and that acts of violence within any State or
States against the authority of the United States, are insurrectionary
or revolutionary, according to circumstances.

"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 shall be faithfully executed in all the States.  * * *

"I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared
purpose of the Union, that it will Constitutionally defend and maintain
itself.

"In doing this, there need be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall
be none, unless it is forced upon the National Authority.

"The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the
property and places belonging to the Government, and to collect the
duties and imposts; but, beyond what may be necessary for these objects,
there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the People
anywhere.

"The mails, unless repelled, will continue to be furnished in all parts
of the Union.

                   *  *  *  *  *  *  *

"Is there such perfect identity of interests among the States to compose
a new Union, as to produce harmony only, and prevent renewed Secession?
Plainly, the central idea of Secession is the essence of anarchy.  A
majority, held in restraint by Constitutional checks and limitations and
always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and
sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a Free People.  Whoever
rejects it, does, of necessity, fly to anarchy, or to despotism.
Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent
arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority
principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left.

                    *  *  *  *  *  *  *

"Physically speaking, we cannot separate.  We cannot remove our
respective Sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall
between them.  A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the
presence and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of
our Country cannot do this.  They cannot but remain face to face; and
intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them.  Is
it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more
satisfactory after separation than before?  Can aliens make treaties,
easier than friends can make laws?  Can treaties be more faithfully
enforced between aliens, than laws can among friends?  Suppose you go to
War, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides,
and no gain on either you cease fighting, the identical old questions,
as to terms of intercourse, are again upon you.

"This Country, with its Institutions, belongs to the People who inhabit
it.  Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can
exercise their Constitutional right of amending it, or their
Revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.  I cannot be ignorant
of the fact that many worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of
having the National Constitution amended.  While I make no
recommendations of Amendments, I fully recognize the rightful authority
of the People over the whole subject, to be exercised in either of the
modes prescribed in the instrument itself; and I should, under existing
circumstances, favor, rather than oppose, a fair opportunity being
afforded the People to act upon it.  * * *

"The Chief Magistrate derives all his authority from the People, and
they have conferred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the
States.  The People themselves can do this also, if they choose; but the
Executive, as such, has nothing to do with it.  His duty is to
administer the present Government, as it came to his hands, and to
transmit it, unimpaired by him, to his successor.

                  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

" * * * While the People retain their virtue and vigilance, no
Administration, by any extreme of weakness or folly, can very seriously
injure the Government in the short space of four years.

"My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole
subject.  Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.  If there be an
object to hurry any of you, in hot haste, to a step which you would
never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time;
but no good object can be frustrated by it.  Such of you as are now
dissatisfied, still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the
sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the new
Administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change
either.  If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied, hold the
right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for
precipitate action.  Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm
reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored Land, are still
competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty.

"In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is
the momentous issue of Civil War.  The Government will not assault you.
You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors.  You
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.  We must not be
enemies.  Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds
of affection.  The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every
battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone,
all over this broad Land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when
again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our
nature."

Strange, indeed, must have been the thoughts that crowded through the
brain and oppressed the heart of Abraham Lincoln that night--his first
at the White House!

The city of Washington swarmed with Rebels and Rebel sympathizers, and
all the departments of Government were honey-combed with Treason and
shadowed with treachery and espionage.  Every step proposed or
contemplated by the Government would be known to the so-called
Government of the Confederate States almost as soon as thought of.  All
means, to thwart and delay the carrying out of the Government's
purposes, that the excuses of routine and red-tape admitted of, would be
used by the Traitors within the camp, to aid the Traitors without.

No one knew all this, better than Mr. Lincoln.  With no Army, no Navy,
not even a Revenue cutter left--with forts and arsenals, ammunition and
arms in possession of the Rebels, with no money in the National
Treasury, and the National credit blasted--the position must, even to
his hopeful nature, have seemed at this time desperate.  To be sure,
despite threats, neither few nor secret, which had been made, that he
should not live to be inaugurated, he had passed the first critical
point--had taken the inaugural oath--and was now duly installed in the
White House.  That was something, of course, to be profoundly thankful
for.  But the matter regarded by him of larger moment--the safety of the
Union--how about that?

How that great, and just, and kindly brain, in the dim shadows of that
awful first night at the White House, must have searched up and down and
along the labyrinths of history and "corridors of time," everywhere in
the Past, for any analogy or excuse for the madness of this Secession
movement--and searched in vain!

With his grand and abounding faith in God, how Abraham Lincoln must have
stormed the very gates of Heaven that night with prayer that he might be
the means of securing Peace and Union to his beloved but distracted
Country!  How his great heart must have been racked with the
alternations of hope and foreboding--of trustfulness and doubt!
Anxiously he must have looked for the light of the morrow, that he might
gather from the Press, the manner in which his Inaugural had been
received.  Not that he feared the North--but the South; how would the
wayward, wilful, passionate South, receive his proffered olive-branch?

Surely, surely,--thus ran his thoughts--when the brave, and gallant, and
generous people of that Section came to read his message of Peace and
Good-will, they must see the suicidal folly of their course!  Surely
their hearts must be touched and the mists of prejudice dissolved, so
that reason would resume her sway, and Reconciliation follow!  A little
more time for reflection would yet make all things right.  The young men
of the South, fired by the Southern leaders' false appeals, must soon
return to reason.  The prairie fire is terrible while it sweeps along,
but it soon burns out.  When the young men face the emblem of their
Nation's glory--the flag of the land of their birth--then will come the
reaction and their false leaders will be hurled from place and power,
and all will again be right.  Yea, when it comes to firing on the old,
old flag, they will not, cannot, do it!  Between the Compromise within
their reach, and such Sacrilege as this, they cannot waver long.

So, doubtless, all the long night, whether waking or sleeping, the mind
of this true-hearted son of the West, throbbed with the mighty weight of
the problem entrusted to him for solution, and the vast responsibilities
which he had just assumed toward his fellow-men, his Nation, and his
God.

And when, at last, the long lean frame was thrown upon the couch, and
"tired Nature's sweet restorer" held him briefly in her arms, the smile
of hopefulness on the wan cheek told that, despite all the terrible
difficulties of the situation, the sleeper was sustained by a strong and
cheerful belief in the Providence of God, the Patriotism of the People,
and the efficacy of his Inaugural Peace-offering to the South. But alas,
and alas, for the fallibility of human judgment and human hopes!
Instead of a message of Peace, the South chose to regard it as a message
of Menace;* and it was not received in a much better spirit by some of
the Northern papers, which could see no good in it--"no Union spirit in
it"--but declared that it breathed the spirit of Sectionalism and
mischief, and "is the knell and requiem of the Union, and the death of
hope."

     ["Mr. Lincoln fondly regarded his Inaugural as a resistless
     proffering of the olive branch to the South; the Conspirators
     everywhere interpreted it as a challenge to War."--Greeley's Am.
     Conflict, vol. i., p. 428.]


Bitter indeed must have been President Lincoln's disappointment and
sorrow at the reception of his Inaugural.  With the heartiest
forgiveness, in the noblest spirit of paternal kindness, he had
generously held out his arms, as far as they could reach, to clasp to
his heart--to the great heart of the Union--the rash children of the
South, if they would but let him.  It was more with sorrow, than in
anger, that he looked upon their contemptuous repulsion of his advances;
and his soul still reproachfully yearned toward these his Southern
brethren, as did that of a higher than he toward His misguided brethren,
when He cried: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets,
and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have
gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens
under her wings, and ye would not!"

On the day following his Inauguration, President Lincoln sent to the
United States Senate the names of those whom he had chosen to constitute
his Cabinet, as follows: William H. Seward, of New York, Secretary of
State; Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio, Secretary of the Treasury; Simon
Cameron, of Pennsylvania, Secretary of War; Gideon Welles, of
Connecticut, Secretary of the Navy; Caleb B.  Smith, of Indiana,
Secretary of the Interior; Edward Bates, of Missouri, Attorney General;
and Montgomery Blair, of Maryland, Postmaster General.

On the other hand, the President of the rebellious Confederacy,
Jefferson Davis, had partly constituted his Cabinet already, as follows:
Robert Toombs, of Georgia, Secretary of State; Charles G.  Memminger, of
South Carolina, Secretary of the Treasury; Leroy Pope Walker, of
Alabama, Secretary of War; to whom he afterwards added: Stephen R.
Mallory, of Florida, Secretary of the Navy; and John H. Reagan, of
Texas, Postmaster-General.




                               CHAPTER X.

                    THE WAR-DRUM "ON TO WASHINGTON"

Scarcely one week had elapsed after the Administration of Mr. Lincoln
began, when (March 11th) certain "Commissioners of the Southern
Confederacy" (John Forsyth, of Alabama, and Martin J. Crawford, of
Georgia), appeared at Washington and served a written request upon
the State Department to appoint an early day when they might present to
the President of the United States their credentials "from the
Government of the Confederate States of America" to the Government of
the United States, and open "the objects of the mission with which they
are charged."

Secretary Seward, with the President's sanction, declined official
intercourse with Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford, in a "Memorandum" (March
15th) reciting their request, etc., in which, after referring to
President Lincoln's Inaugural Address--forwarded to them with the
"Memorandum" he says: "A simple reference will be sufficient to satisfy
those gentlemen that the Secretary of State, guided by the principles
therein announced, is prevented altogether from admitting or assuming
that the States referred to by them have, in law or in fact, withdrawn
from the Federal Union, or that they could do so in the manner described
by Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford, or in any other manner than with the
consent and concert of the People of the United States, to be given
through a National Convention, to be assembled in conformity with the
provisions of the Constitution of the United States.  Of course, the
Secretary of State cannot act upon the assumption, or in any way admit,
that the so-called Confederate States constitute a Foreign Power, with
whom diplomatic relations ought to be established."

On the 9th of April, Messrs. Forsyth, Crawford and Roman--as
"Commissioners of the Southern Confederacy"--addressed to Secretary
Seward a reply to the "Memorandum" aforesaid, in which the following
passage occurs:

"The undersigned, like the Secretary of State, have no purpose to
'invite or engage in discussion' of the subject on which their two
Governments are so irreconcilably at variance.  It is this variance that
has broken up the old Union, the disintegration of which has only begun.

"It is proper, however, to advise you that it were well to dismiss the
hopes you seem to entertain that, by any of the modes indicated, the
people of the Confederate States will ever be brought to submit to the
authority of the Government of the United States.  You are dealing with
delusions, too, when you seek to separate our people from our
Government, and to characterize the deliberate, Sovereign act of that
people as a 'perversion of a temporary and partisan excitement.'  If you
cherish these dreams, you will be awakened from them, and find them as
unreal and unsubstantial as others in which you have recently indulged.

"The undersigned would omit the performance of an obvious duty were they
to fail to make known to the Government of the United States that the
people of the Confederate States have declared their independence with a
full knowledge of all the responsibilities of that act, and with as firm
a determination to maintain it by all the means with which nature has
endowed them as that which sustained their fathers when they threw off
the authority of the British Crown.

"The undersigned clearly understand that you have declined to appoint a
day to enable them to lay the objects of the mission with which they are
charged, before the President of the United States, because so to do
would be to recognize the independence and separate nationality of the
Confederate States.  This is the vein of thought that pervades the
memorandum before us.

"The truth of history requires that it should distinctly appear upon the
record, that the undersigned did not ask the Government of the United
States to recognize the independence of the Confederate States.  They
only asked audience to adjust, in a spirit of amity and peace, the new
relations springing from a manifest and accomplished revolution in the
Government of the late Federal Union.

"Your refusal to entertain these overtures for a peaceful solution, the
active naval and military preparation of this Government, and a formal
notice to the Commanding General of the Confederate forces in the harbor
of Charleston that the President intends to provision Fort Sumter by
forcible means, if necessary, are viewed by the undersigned, and can
only be received by the World, as a Declaration of War against the
Confederate States; for the President of the United States knows that
Fort Sumter cannot be provisioned without the effusion of blood.

"The undersigned, in behalf of their Government and people, accept the
gage of battle thus thrown down to them, and, appealing to God and the
judgment of mankind for the righteousness of their Cause, the people of
the Confederate States will defend their liberties to the last, against
this flagrant and open attempt at their subjugation to Sectional power."


Let us now, for a moment, glance at the condition of Fort Sumter, and of
the Government with regard to it:

On the 5th of March, the day after President Lincoln had taken his oath
of office, there was placed in his hands a letter of Major Anderson,
commanding at Fort Sumter, in which that officer, under date of the 28th
of February, expressed the opinion that "reinforcements could not be
thrown into that fort within the time for his relief rendered necessary
by the limited supply of provisions, and with a view of holding
possession of the same, with a force of less than twenty thousand good
and well-disciplined men."

     [President Lincoln's first Message, July 4, 1861.]

Lieutenant-General Winfield Scott concurred in that opinion, and as the
provisions in the Fort would be exhausted before any such force could be
raised and brought to the ground, evacuation and safe withdrawal of the
Federal garrison from the Fort became a Military necessity, and was so
regarded by the Administration.

"It was believed, however"--in the language of Mr. Lincoln himself, in
his first Message to Congress--"that to so abandon that position, under
the circumstances, would be utterly ruinous: that the necessity under
which it was to be done would not be fully understood; that by many it
would be construed as a part of a voluntary policy; that at home it
would discourage the friends of the Union, embolden its adversaries, and
go far to insure to the latter a recognition abroad; that in fact it
would be our National destruction consummated.  This could not be
allowed.  Starvation was not yet upon the garrison; and ere it would be
reached, Fort Pickens might be reinforced.  This last would be a clear
indication of policy, and would better enable the country to accept the
evacuation of Fort Sumter as a Military necessity."

Owing to misconception or otherwise, an order to reinforce Fort Pickens
was not carried out, and an expedition to relieve Fort Sumter was then
ordered to be dispatched.  On the 8th of April President Lincoln, by
messenger, notified Governor Pickens of South Carolina, "that he might
expect an attempt would be made to provision the fort; and that if the
attempt should not be resisted there would be no effort to throw in men,
arms, or ammunition, without further notice, or in case of an attack
upon the fort."

A crisis was evidently approaching, and public feeling all over the
Country was wrought up to the highest degree of tension and stood
tip-toe with intense expectancy.  The test of the doctrine of Secession
was about to be made there, in the harbor of Charleston, upon which the
eyes of Patriot and Rebel were alike feverishly bent.

There, in Charleston harbor, grimly erect, stood the octagon-shaped Fort
Sumter, mid-way of the harbor entrance, the Stars and Stripes proudly
waving from its lofty central flagstaff, its guns bristling on every
side through the casemates and embrasures, as if with a knowledge of
their defensive power.

About equidistant from Fort Sumter on either side of the
harbor-entrance, were the Rebel works at Fort Moultrie and Battery Bee
on Sullivan's Island, on the one side, and Cummings Point Battery, on
Morris Island, on the other-besides a number of other batteries facing
seaward along the sea-coast line of Morris Island.  Further in, on the
same side of the harbor, and but little further off from Fort Sumter,
stood Fort Johnson on James Island, while Castle Pinckney and a Floating
Battery were between the beleagured Fort and the city of Charleston.

Thus, the Federal Fort was threatened with the concentrated fire of
these well-manned Rebel fortifications on all sides, and in its then
condition was plainly doomed; for, while the swarming Rebels, unmolested
by Fort Sumter, had been permitted to surround that Fort with frowning
batteries, whose guns outnumbered those of the Fort, as ten to one, and
whose caliber was also superior, its own condition was anything but that
of readiness for the inevitable coming encounter.

That the officers' quarters, barracks, and other frame-work wooden
buildings should have been permitted to remain as a standing invitation
to conflagration from bombardment, can only be accounted for on the
supposition that the gallant officer in command, himself a Southerner,
would not believe it possible that the thousands of armed Americans by
whom he was threatened and encircled, could fire upon the flag of their
own native Country.  He and his garrison of seventy men, were soon to
learn the bitter truth, amid a tempest of bursting shot and shell, the
furnace-heat of crackling walls, and suffocating volumes of dense smoke
produced by an uncontrollable conflagration.

The Rebel leaders at Washington had prevented an attack in January upon
the forts in the harbor of Charleston, and at Pensacola.--[McPherson's
History of the Rebellion, p.  112.]--In consequence of which failure to
proceed to the last extremity at once, the energies of the Rebellion had
perceptibly diminished.

Said the Mobile Mercury: "The country is sinking into a fatal apathy,
and the spirit and even the patriotism of the people is oozing out,
under this do-nothing policy.  If something is not done pretty soon,
decisive, either evacuation or expulsion, the whole country will become
so disgusted with the sham of Southern independence that the first
chance the people get at a popular election they will turn the whole
movement topsy-turvy so bad that it never on Earth can be righted
again."

After the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, however, the Rebel authorities at
Montgomery lost no time, but strained every nerve to precipitate War.
They felt that there was danger to the cause of Secession in delay; that
there were wavering States outside the Confederacy, like Virginia, that
might be dragged into the Confederacy by prompt and bloody work; and
wavering States within, like Alabama, that must be kept in by similar
means.  Their emissaries were busy everywhere in the South, early in
April, preaching an instant crusade against the old flag--inciting the
people to demand instant hostilities against Fort Sumter--and to cross a
Rubicon of blood, over which there could be no return.

Many of the Rebel leaders seemed to be haunted by the fear (no doubt
well founded) that unless blood was shed--unless an impassable barrier,
crimsoned with human gore, was raised between the new Confederacy and
the old Union--there would surely be an ever-present danger of that
Confederacy falling to pieces.  Hence they were now active in working
the people up to the required point of frenzy.

As a specimen of their speeches, may be quoted that of Roger A. Pryor,
of Virginia, who, at Charleston, April 10, 1861, replying to a serenade,
said:--[Charleston Mercury's report.]

'Gentlemen, I thank you, especially that you have at last annihilated
this accursed Union [Applause] reeking with corruption, and insolent
with excess of tyranny.  Thank God, it is at last blasted and riven by
the lightning wrath of an outraged and indignant people.  [Loud
applause.]  Not only is it gone, but gone forever.  [Cries of, 'You're
right,' and applause.] In the expressive language of Scripture, it is
water spilt upon the ground, which cannot be gathered up.  [Applause.]
Like Lucifer, son of the morning, it has fallen, never to rise again.
[Continued applause.]

"For my part, gentlemen," he continued, as soon as he could be heard,
"if Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin to-morrow were to abdicate their
offices and were to give me a blank sheet of paper to write the
condition of re-annexation to the defunct Union, I would scornfully
spurn the overture.  * * *  I invoke you, and I make it in some sort a
personal appeal--personal so far as it tends to our assistance in
Virginia--I do invoke you, in your demonstrations of popular opinion, in
your exhibitions of official intent, to give no countenance to this idea
of reconstruction.  [Many voices, emphatically, 'never,' and applause.]

"In Virginia," resumed he, "they all say, if reduced to the dread
dilemma of this memorable alternative, they will espouse the cause of
the South as against the interest of the Northern Confederacy, but they
whisper of reconstruction, and they say Virginia must abide in the
Union, with the idea of reconstructing the Union which you have
annihilated.  I pray you, gentlemen, rob them of that idea.  Proclaim to
the World that upon no condition, and under no circumstances, will South
Carolina ever again enter into political association with the
Abolitionists of New England.  [Cries of 'never,' and applause.]

"Do not distrust Virginia," he continued; "as sure as tomorrow's sun
will rise upon us, just so sure will Virginia be a member of this
Southern Confederation.  [Applause.]  And I will tell you, gentlemen,
what will put her in the Southern Confederacy in less than an hour by
Shrewsbury clock--STRIKE A BLOW!  [Tremendous applause.]  The very
moment that blood is shed, old Virginia will make common cause with her
sisters of the South.  [Applause.]  It is impossible she should do
otherwise."

The question of the necessity of "Striking a Blow"--of the immediate
"shedding of blood"--was not only discussed before the Southern people
for the purpose of inflaming their rebellious zeal, but was also the
subject of excited agitation in the Confederate Cabinet at this time.

In a speech made by ex-United States Senator Clemens of Alabama, at
Huntsville, Alabama, at the close of the Rebellion, he told the
Alabamians how their State, which, as we have seen, was becoming
decidedly shaky in its allegiance to the "Sham of Southern
Independence," was kept in the Confederacy.

Said he: "In 1861, shortly after the Confederate Government was put in
operation, I was in the city of Montgomery.  One day (April 11, 1861) I
stepped into the office of the Secretary of War, General Walker, and
found there, engaged in a very excited discussion, Mr. Jefferson Davis
(the President), Mr. Memminger (Secretary of the Treasury), Mr. Benjamin
(Attorney-General), Mr. Gilchrist, a member of our Legislature from
Loundes county, and a number of other prominent gentlemen.  They were
discussing the propriety of immediately opening fire on Fort Sumter, to
which General Walker, the Secretary of War, appeared to be opposed.  Mr.
Gilchrist said to him, 'Sir, unless you sprinkle blood in the face of
the people of Alabama, they will be back in the old Union in less than
ten days!'  THE NEXT DAY GENERAL BEAUREGARD OPENED HIS BATTERIES ON
SUMTER, AND ALABAMA WAS SAVED TO THE CONFEDERACY."

On the 8th of April, G. T. Beauregard, "Brigadier General Commanding"
the "Provisional Army C. S. A."  at Charleston, S. C., notified the
Confederate Secretary of War (Walker) at Montgomery, Ala., that "An
authorized messenger from President Lincoln has just informed Gov.
Pickens and myself that provisions will be sent to Fort Sumter
peaceably, or otherwise by force."

On the 10th, Confederate Secretary Walker telegraphed to Beauregard: "If
you have no doubt of the authorized character of the agent who
communicated to, you the intention of the Washington Government to
supply Fort Sumter by force, you will at once demand its evacuation,
and, if this is refused, proceed, in such manner as you may determine,
to reduce it."  To this Beauregard at once replied: "The demand will be
made to-morrow at 12 o'clock."  Thereupon the Confederate Secretary
telegraphed again: "Unless there are special reasons connected with your
own condition, it is considered proper that you should make the demand
at an earlier hour."  And Beauregard answered: "The reasons are special
for 12 o'clock."

On the 11th General Beauregard notified Secretary Walker: "The demand
was sent at 2 P. M., and until 6 was allowed for the answer."  The
Secretary desiring to have the reply of Major Anderson, General
Beauregard telegraphed: "Major Anderson replies: 'I have the honor to
acknowledge the receipt of your communication demanding the evacuation
of this Fort, and to say in reply thereto that it is a demand with which
I regret that my sense of honor and of my obligation to my Government
prevent my compliance.'  He adds, verbally, 'I will await the first
shot, and, if you do not batter us to pieces, we will be starved out in
a few days.'"

To this, the Confederate Secretary at once responded with: "Do not
desire needlessly to bombard Fort Sumter.  If Major Anderson will state
the time at which, as indicated by himself, he will evacuate, and agree
that, in the mean time, he will not use his guns against us unless ours
should be employed against Fort Sumter, you are authorized thus to avoid
the effusion of blood.  If this or its equivalent be refused, reduce the
Fort, as your judgment decides to be the most practicable."

At 11 o'clock that night (April 11) General Beauregard sent to Major
Anderson, by the hands of his aides-de-camp, Messrs. Chesnut and Lee, a
further communication, in which, after alluding to the Major's verbal
observation, the General said: "If you will state the time at which you
will evacuate Fort Sumter, and agree that in the mean time you will not
use your guns against us unless ours shall be employed against Fort
Sumter, we shall abstain from opening fire upon you.  Col. Chesnut and
Capt. Lee are authorized by me to enter into such an agreement with you.
You are therefore requested to communicate to them an open answer."

To this, Major Robert Anderson, at 2.30 A.M. of the 12th, replied "that,
cordially uniting with you in the desire to avoid the useless effusion
of blood, I will, if provided with the necessary means of
transportation, evacuate Fort Sumter by noon on the 15th inst., should I
not receive prior to that time, controlling instructions from my
Government, or additional supplies, and that I will not in the mean time
open my fire upon your forces unless compelled to do so by some hostile
act against this Fort or the flag of my Government, by the forces under
your command, or by some portion of them, or by the perpetration of some
act showing a hostile intention on your part against this Fort or the
flag it bears."  Thereupon General Beauregard telegraphed Secretary
Walker: "He would not consent.  I write to-day."

At 3.20 A.M., Major Anderson received from Messrs.  Chesnut and Lee a
notification to this effect: "By authority of Brigadier General
Beauregard, commanding the Provisional Forces of the Confederate States,
we have the honor to notify you that he will open the fire of his
batteries on Fort Sumter in one hour from this time."  And a later
dispatch from General Beauregard to Secretary Walker, April 12,
laconically stated: "WE OPENED FIRE AT 4.30."

At last the hour and the minute had come, for which the Slave Power of
the South had for thirty years so impatiently longed.  At last the
moment had come, when all the long-treasured vengeance of the South
--outgrown from questions of Tariff, of Slavery, and of Secession--was to
be poured out in blood and battle; when the panoplied powers and forces
of rebellious confederated States, standing face to face with the
resolute patriotism of an outraged Union, would belch forth flame and
fury and hurtling missiles upon the Federal Fort and the old flag
floating o'er it.

And whose the sacrilegious hand that dared be first raised against his
Country and his Country's flag?  Stevens's mortar battery at Sullivan's
Island is ready to open, when a lean, long-haired old man, with eyes
blazing in their deep fanatical sockets, totters hastily forward and
ravenously seizing in his bony hands a lanyard, pulls the string, and,
with a flash and roar, away speeds the shrieking shell on its mission of
destruction; and, while shell after shell, and shot after shot, from
battery after battery, screams a savage accompaniment to the boom and
flash and bellow of the guns, that lean old man works his clutched
fingers in an ecstasy of fiendish pleasure, and chuckles: "Aye, I told
them at Columbia that night, that the defense of the South is only to be
secured through the lead of South Carolina; and, old as I am, I had come
here to join them in that lead--and I have done it."

     [Edmund Ruffin, see p.  100.  This theory of the necessity of South
     Carolina leading, had long been held, as in the following, first
     published in the New York Tribune, July 3, 1862, which, among other
     letters, was found in the house of William H.  Trescot, on
     Barnwell's Island, South Carolina, when re-occupied by United
     States troops:

     "VIRGINIA CONVENTION, May 3, 1851

     "My DEAR, SIR:--You misunderstood my last letter, if you supposed
     that I intended to visit South Carolina this Spring.  I am
     exceedingly obliged to you for your kind invitations, and it would
     afford me the highest pleasure to interchange in person, sentiments
     with a friend whose manner of thinking so closely agrees with my
     own.  But my engagements here closely confine me to this city, and
     deny me such a gratification.

     "I would be especially glad to be in Charleston next week, and
     witness the proceedings of your Convention of Delegates from the
     Southern Rights Associations.  The condition of things in your
     State deeply interests me.  Her wise foresight and manly
     independence have placed her, as the head of the South, to whom
     alone true-hearted men can look with any hope or pleasure.

     "Momentous are the consequences which depend upon your action.
     Which party will prevail?  The immediate Secessionists, or those
     who are opposed to separate State action at this time?  For my part
     I forbear to form a wish.  Were I a Carolinian, it would be very
     different; but when I consider the serious effects the decision may
     have on your future weal or woe, I feel that a citizen of a State
     which has acted as Virginia, has no right to interfere, even by a
     wish.

     "If the General Government allows you peaceably and freely to
     Secede, neither Virginia, nor any other Southern State, would, in
     my opinion, follow you at present.  But what would be the effect
     upon South Carolina?  Some of our best friends have supposed that
     it would cut off Charleston from the great Western trade, which she
     is now striking for, and would <DW44> very greatly the progress of
     your State.  I confess that I think differently.  I believe
     thoroughly in our own theories, and that, even if Charleston did
     not grow quite as fast in her trade with other States, yet the
     relief from Federal taxation would vastly stimulate your
     prosperity.  If so, the prestige of the Union would be destroyed,
     and you would be the nucleus for a Southern Confederation at no
     distant day.

     "But I do not doubt, from all I have been able toe to learn that the
     Federal Government would use force, beginning with the form most
     embarrassing to you, and least calculated to excite sympathy.  I
     mean a naval blockade.  In that event, could you stand the reaction
     feeling which the suffering commerce of Charleston would probably
     manifest?  Would you not lose that in which your strength consists,
     the union of your people?  I do not mean to imply an opinion, I
     only ask the question.

     "If you could force this blockade, and bring the Government to
     direct force, the feeling in Virginia would be very great.  I trust
     in God it would bring her to your aid.  But it would be wrong in me
     to deceive you by speaking certainly.  I cannot express the deep
     mortification I have felt at her course this Winter.  But I do not
     believe that the course of the Legislature is a fair expression of
     popular feeling.  In the East, at least, the great majority
     believes in the right of Secession, and feels the deepest sympathy
     with Carolina in her opposition to measures which they regard as
     she does.  But the West--Western Virginia--there is the rub!  Only
     60,000 slaves to 494,000 whites!  When I consider this fact, and
     the kind of argument which has been heard in this body, I cannot
     but regard with the greatest fear the question whether Virginia
     would assist Carolina in such an issue.

     "I must acknowledge, my dear sir, that I look to the future with
     almost as much apprehension as hope.  You well object to the term
     Democrat.  Democracy, in its original philosophical sense, is
     indeed incompatible with Slavery and the whole system of Southern
     society.  Yet, if you look back, what change will you find made in
     any of your State Constitutions, or in our legislation--that is, in
     its general course--for the last fifty years, which was not in the
     direction of this Democracy?  Do not its principles and theories
     become daily more fixed in our practice?  (I had almost said in the
     opinions of our people, did I not remember with pleasure the great
     improvement of opinion in regard to the abstract question of
     Slavery).  And if such is the case, what are we to hope in the
     future?  I do not hesitate to say that if the question is raised
     between Carolina and the Federal Government, and the latter
     prevails, the last hope of republican government, and, I fear, of
     Southern civilization, is gone.  Russia will then be a better
     government than ours.

     "I fear that the confusion and interruptions amid which I write
     have made this rather a rambling letter.  Do you visit the North in
     the Summer?  I would be very happy to welcome you to the Old
     Dominion.

     "I am much obliged to you for the offer to send me Hammond's Eulogy
     on Calhoun, but I am indebted to the author for a copy.

               "With esteem and friendship, yours truly,

                                   "M. R. H. GARNETT.

     "WM. H. TRESCOT, ESQ."]


Next morning's New York herald, in its Charleston dispatch of April 12,
announced to the World that "The first shot [fired at Fort Sumter] from
Stevens's battery was fired by the venerable Edmund Ruffin, of
Virginia," and added, "That ball will do more for the cause of
Secession, in Virginia, than volumes of stump speeches."

"Soon," says Greeley in his History, "the thunder of fifty heavy
breaching cannon, in one grand volley, followed by the crashing and
crumbling of brick, stone, and mortar around and above them, apprized
the little garrison that their stay must necessarily be short."

Says an eye-witness of the bombardment: "Shells burst with the greatest
rapidity in every portion of the work, hurling the loose brick and stone
in all directions, breaking the windows and setting fire to whatever
woodwork they burst against.  * * *  The firing from the batteries on
Cumming's Point was scattered over the whole of the gorge or rear of the
Fort, till it looked like a sieve.  The explosion of shells, and the
quantity of deadly missiles that were hurled in every direction and at
every instant of time, made it almost certain death to go out of the
lower tier of casemates, and also made the working of the barbette or
upper (uncovered) guns, which contained all our heaviest metal, and by
which alone we could throw shells, quite impossible.

"During the first day there was hardly an instant of time that there was
a cessation of the whizzing of balls, which were sometimes coming half a
dozen at once.  There was not a portion of the work which was not taken
in reverse from mortars.  * * *  During Friday, the officers' barracks
were three times set on fire by the shells and three times put out under
the most galling and destructive cannonade.

"For the fourth time, the barracks were set on fire early on Saturday
morning, and attempts were made to extinguish the flames; but it was
soon discovered that red-hot shot were being thrown into the Fort with
fearful rapidity, and it became evident that it would be impossible to
put out the conflagration.  The whole garrison was then set to work, or
as many as could be spared, to remove the powder from the magazines,
which was desperate work, rolling barrels of powder through the fire.  *
* *  After the barracks were well on fire, the batteries directed upon
Fort Sumter increased their cannonading to a rapidity greater than had
been attained before."

"About this time, the shells and ammunition in the upper
service-magazines exploded, scattering the tower and upper portions of
the building in every direction.  The crash of the beams, the roar of
the flames, and the shower of fragments of the Fort, with the blackness
of the smoke, made the scene indescribably terrific and grand.  This
continued for several hours.  * * * "

"There was not a portion of the Fort where a breath of air could be got
for hours, except through a wet cloth.  The fire spread to the men's
quarters on the right hand and on the left, and endangered the powder
which had been taken out of the magazines.  The men went through the
fire, and covered the barrels with wet cloths, but the danger of the
Fort's blowing up became so imminent that they were obliged to heave the
barrels out of the embrasures."

Major Anderson's official report tells the whole story briefly and well,
in these words:

               "STEAMSHIP BALTIC, OFF SANDY HOOK

               "April 18, 1861, 10.30 A.M., VIA NEW YORK.

"Having defended Fort Sumter for thirty-four hours, until the quarters
were entirely burnt, the main gates destroyed by fire, the gorge walls
seriously injured, the magazine surrounded by flames, and its door
closed from the effects of heat; four barrels and three cartridges of
powder only being available, and no provisions remaining but pork, I
accepted terms of evacuation offered by General Beauregard--being the
same offered by him on the 11th inst., prior to the commencement of
hostilities--and marched out of the Fort on Sunday afternoon, the 14th
instant, with colors flying and drums beating, bringing away company and
private property, and saluting my flag with fifty guns.

                         "ROBERT ANDERSON,
                    "Major 1st Artillery, Commanding.

"HON. SIMON CAMERON,
"Secretary of War, Washington."


During all this thirty-four hours of bombardment, the South rejoiced
with exceeding great joy that the time had come for the vindication of
its peculiar ideas of State and other rights, even though it be with
flames and the sword.  At Charleston, the people were crazy with
exultation and wine-feasting and drinking being the order of the day and
night.  But for the surrender, Fort Sumter would have been stormed that
Sunday night.  As it was, Sunday was turned into a day of general
jubilation, and while the people cheered and filled the streets, all the
Churches of Charleston celebrated, with more or less devotional fervor
and ceremony, the bloodless victory.

At Montgomery, the Chiefs of the Confederate Government were serenaded.
"Salvos of artillery were fired, and the whole population seemed to be
in an ecstasy of triumph."--[McPherson's History of the Rebellion, p.
114]

The Confederate Secretary of War, flushed with the success, predicted
that the Confederate flag "will, before the first of May, float over the
dome of the old Capitol at Washington" and "will eventually float over
Faneuil Hall, in Boston."

From Maryland to Mexico, the protests of Union men of the South were
unheard in the fierce clamor of "On to Washington!"

The Richmond Examiner said: "There never was half the unanimity among
the people before, nor a tithe of the zeal upon any subject, that is now
manifested to take Washington.  From the mountain tops and valleys to
the shores of the sea, there is one wild shout of fierce resolve to
capture Washington City at all and every human hazard."

So also, the Mobile Advertiser enthusiastically exclaimed:

"We are prepared to fight, and the enemy is not.  Now is the time for
action, while he is yet unprepared.  Let the fife sound 'Gray Jackets
over the Border,' and let a hundred thousand men, with such arms as they
can snatch, get over the border as quickly as they can.  Let a division
enter every Northern border State, destroy railroad connection to
prevent concentration of the enemy, and the desperate strait of these
States, the body of Lincoln's country, will compel him to a peace--or
compel his successor, should Virginia not suffer him to escape from his
doomed capital."

It was on Friday morning, the 12th of April, as we have seen, that the
first Rebel shot was fired at Fort Sumter.  It was on Saturday afternoon
and evening that the terms of surrender were agreed to, and on Sunday
afternoon that the Federal flag was saluted and hauled down, and the
surrender completed.  On Monday morning, being the 15th of April, in all
the great Northern Journals of the day appeared the following:

"PROCLAMATION.

"WHEREAS, the laws of the United States have been for some time past,
and now are, opposed, and the execution thereof obstructed, in the
States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi,
Louisiana, and Texas, by Combinations too powerful to be suppressed by
the ordinary course of Judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in
the Marshals by law; now, therefore I, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of the
United States, in virtue of the power in me vested by the Constitution
and the laws, have thought fit to call forth, and hereby do call forth,
the Militia of the several States of the Union to the aggregate number
of 75,000, in order to suppress said Combinations, and to cause the laws
to be duly executed.

"The details for this object will be immediately communicated to the
State authorities through the War Department.  I appeal to all loyal
citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid this effort to maintain the
honor, the integrity, and existence of our National Union, and the
perpetuity of popular government, and to redress wrongs already long
enough endured.  I deem it proper to say that the first service assigned
to the forces hereby called forth, will probably be to repossess the
forts, places, and property which have been seized from the Union; and
in every event the utmost care will be observed, consistently with the
objects aforesaid, to avoid any devastation, any destruction of, or
interference with, property, or any disturbance of peaceful citizens of
any part of the Country; and I hereby command the persons composing the
Combinations aforesaid, to disperse and retire peaceably to their
respective abodes, within twenty days from this date.

"Deeming that the present condition of public affairs presents an
extraordinary occasion, I do hereby, in virtue of the power in me vested
by the Constitution, convene both Houses of Congress.  The Senators and
Representatives are, therefore, summoned to assemble at their respective
chambers at twelve o'clock, noon, on Thursday, the 4th day of July next,
then and there to consider and determine such measures as, in their
wisdom, the public safety and interest may seem to demand.

"In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of
the United States to be affixed.

"Done at the city of Washington, this fifteenth day of April, in the
year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, and of the
independence of the United States the eighty-fifth.

"By the President:  ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

"WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State."


While in the North the official responses to this Call for troops were
prompt and patriotic, in the Border and Slave States, not yet in
Rebellion, they were anything but encouraging.

The reply of Governor Burton, of Delaware, was by the issue of a
proclamation "recommending the formation of volunteer companies for the
protection of the lives and property of the people of Delaware against
violence of any sort to which they may be exposed; the companies not
being subject to be ordered by the Executive into the United States
service--the law not vesting him with such authority--but having the
option of offering their services to the General Government for the
defense of its capital and the support of the Constitution and laws of
the Country."

Governor Hicks, of Maryland, in like manner, issued a proclamation for
Maryland's quota of the troops, but stated that her four regiments would
be detailed to serve within the limits of Maryland--or, for the defense
of the National Capital.

Governor Letcher, of Virginia, replied: "The militia of Virginia will
not be furnished to the powers at Washington for any such use or purpose
as they have in view.  Your object is to subjugate the Southern States,
and a requisition made upon me for such an object--an object, in my
judgment, not within the purview of the Constitution or the Act of 1795
--will not be complied with.  You have chosen to inaugurate Civil War,
and having done so, we will meet it in a spirit as determined as the
Administration has exhibited toward the South."

Governor Ellis, of North Carolina, replied to Secretary Cameron: "Your
dispatch is received, and, if genuine--which its extraordinary character
leads me to doubt--I have to say in reply that I regard the levy of
troops made by the Administration, for the purpose of subjugating the
States of the South, as in violation of the Constitution and a
usurpation of power.  I can be no party to this wicked violation of the
laws of the country, and to this War upon the liberties of a free
people.  You can get no troops from North Carolina.  I will reply more
in detail when your Call is received by mail."

Governor Magoffin, of Kentucky, replied: "Your dispatch is received.  In
answer I say emphatically, Kentucky will furnish no troops for the
wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern States."

Governor Harris, of Tennessee, replied: "Tennessee will not furnish a
single man for Coercion, but fifty thousand, if necessary, for the
Defense of our rights or those of our Southern brethren."

Governor Jackson, of Missouri, replied: "Your requisition is illegal,
unconstitutional, revolutionary, inhuman, diabolical and cannot be
complied with."

Governor Rector, of Arkansas, replied: "None will be furnished.  The
demand is only adding insult to injury."

Discouraging and even insulting as were most of these replies, the
responses of the Governors of the Free States were, on the other hand,
full of the ring of true martial Patriotism evoked by the fall of Sumter
and the President's first call for troops.  Twenty millions of Northern
hearts were stirred by that Call, as they had never before been stirred.
Party and faction became for the moment, a thing of the past.

The Governors of the Free States made instant proclamation for
volunteers, and the People responded not by thousands but by hundreds of
thousands.  New York, the Empire State, by her Governor and her
Legislature placed all her tremendous resources at the service of the
Union; and the great State of Pennsylvania, through Governor Curtin, did
the same.  Nor were the other States at all behind.

The Loyal North felt that Law, Order, Liberty, the existence of the
Nation itself was in peril, and must be both saved and vindicated.  Over
half a million of men--from the prairies of the West and the hills and
cities of the East--from farms and counting houses, from factories and
mines and workshops--sprang to arms at the Call, and begged to be
enrolled.  The merchants and capitalists throughout the North proffered
to the Government their wealth and influence and best services.  The
press and the people responded as only the press and people of a Free
land can respond--with all their heart and soul.  "Fort Sumter," said
one of the journals, "is lost, but Freedom is saved.  Henceforth, the
Loyal States are a unit in uncompromising hostility to Treason, wherever
plotted, however justified.  Fort Sumter is temporarily lost, but the
Country is saved.  Live the Republic!"

This, in a nutshell, was the feeling everywhere expressed, whether by
the great crowds that marched through the streets of Northern cities
with drums beating and banners flying--cheering wildly for the Union,
singing Union songs, and compelling those of doubtful loyalty to throw
out to the breeze from their homes the glorified Stars and Stripes--by
the great majority of newspapers--by the pulpit, by the rostrum, by the
bench, by all of whatever profession or calling in Northern life.  For
the moment, the voice of the Rebel-sympathizer was hushed in the land,
or so tremendously overborne that it seemed as if there was an absolute
unanimity of love for the Union.

Of course, in Border-States, bound to the South by ties of lineage and
intermarriage and politics and business association, the feeling could
not be the same as elsewhere.  There, they were, so to speak, drawn both
ways at once, by the beckoning hands of kindred on the one side, and
Country on the other!  Thus they long waited and hesitated, praying that
something might yet happen to save the Union of their fathers, and
prevent the shedding of brothers' blood, by brothers-hoping against
hope-waited, in the belief that a position of armed neutrality might be
permitted to them; and grieved, when they found this could not be.

Each side to the great Conflict-at-arms naturally enough believed itself
right, and that the other side was the first aggressor; but the judgment
of Mankind has placed the blame where it properly belonged--on the
shoulders of the Rebels.  The calm, clear statement of President
Lincoln, in his July Message to Congress, touching the assault and its
preceding history--together with his conclusions--states the whole
matter in such authentic and convincing manner that it may be said to
have settled the point beyond further controversy.  After stating that
it "was resolved to notify the Governor of South Carolina that he might
expect an attempt would be made to provision the Fort; and that if the
attempt should not be resisted there would be no effort to throw in men,
arms, or ammunition, without further notice, or in case of an attack on
the Fort," Mr. Lincoln continues: "This notice was accordingly given;
whereupon the Fort was attacked and bombarded to its fall, without even
awaiting the arrival of the provisioning expedition."

The President then proceeds: "It is thus seen that the assault upon and
reduction of Fort Sumter was, in no sense, a matter of self-defense on
the part of the assailants.  They well knew that the garrison in the
Fort could, by no possibility, commit aggression upon them.  They knew
--they were expressly notified--that the giving of bread to the few brave
and hungry men of the garrison was all which would on that occasion be
attempted, unless themselves, by resisting so much, should provoke more.
They knew that this Government desired to keep the garrison in the Fort
--not to assail them--but merely to maintain visible possession, and
thus to preserve the Union from actual and immediate dissolution
--trusting, as hereinbefore stated, to time, discussion, and the
ballot-box for final adjustment; and they assailed and reduced the Fort
for precisely the reverse object--to drive out the visible authority of
the Federal Union, and thus force it to immediate dissolution.

"That this was their object, the Executive well understood; and, having
said to them, in the Inaugural Address, 'you can have no conflict
without being yourselves the aggressors,' he took pains not only to keep
this declaration good, but also to keep the case so free from the power
of ingenious sophistry as that the World should not be able to
misunderstand it.

"By the affair at Fort Sumter, with its surrounding circumstances, that
point was reached.  Then and thereby the assailants of the Government
began the Conflict of arms, without a gun in sight or in expectancy to
return their fire, save only the few in the Fort sent to that harbor
years before for their own protection, and still ready to give that
protection in whatever was lawful.  In this act, discarding all else,
they have forced upon the Country, the distinct issue: 'Immediate
dissolution or blood.'

"And this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States.  It
presents to the whole family of Man the question whether a
Constitutional Republic or Democracy--a government of the People by the
same People--can or cannot maintain its territorial integrity against
its own domestic foes.  It presents the question whether discontented
individuals, too few in numbers to control administration according to
organic law in any case, can always, upon the pretences made in this
case, or on any other pretences, or arbitrarily without any pretence,
break up their Government, and thus practically put an end to free
government upon the earth.  It forces us to ask: 'Is there in all
republics, this inherent and fatal weakness?'  'Must a Government of
necessity be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak
to maintain its own existence?'

"So viewing the issue, no choice was left but to call out the War power
of the Government; and so to resist force, employed for its destruction,
by force, for its preservation."

The Call for Troops was made, as we have seen, on the 15th day of April.
On the evening of the following day several companies of a Pennsylvania
Regiment reported for duty in Washington.  On the 18th, more
Pennsylvania Volunteers, including a company of Artillery, arrived
there.

On the 19th of April, the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment--whose progress
through New York city had been triumphal-was suddenly and unexpectedly
assailed, in its passage through Baltimore, to the defense of the
National Capital, by a howling mob of Maryland Secessionists--worked up
to a pitch of States-rights frenzy by Confederate emissaries and
influential Baltimore Secession-sympathizers, by news of the sudden
evacuation of the Federal Arsenal at Harper's Ferry, and other exciting
tidings--and had to fight its way through, leaving three soldiers of
that regiment dead, and a number wounded, behind it.

     [At a meeting of the "National Volunteer Association," at Monument
     Square, Baltimore, the previous evening, says Greeley's History of
     the American Conflict, page 462, "None of the speakers directly
     advocated attacks on the Northern troops about to pass through the
     city; but each was open in his hostility to 'Coercion,' and
     ardently exhorted his hearers to organize, arm and drill, for the
     Conflict now inevitable.  Carr (Wilson C. N. Carr) said: 'I do not
     care how many Federal troops are sent to Washington; they will soon
     find themselves surrounded by such an army from Virginia and
     Maryland, that escape to their homes will be impossible; and when
     the 75,000 who are intended to invade the South shall have polluted
     that soil with their touch, the South will exterminate and sweep
     them from the Earth.' (Frantic cheering and yelling).  The meeting
     broke up with stentorian cheers for 'the South' and for 'President
     Davis."']

Ten companies of Philadelphia troops, reaching Baltimore at the same
time, unarmed, were also violently assailed by the crazy mob, and, after
a two hours' fight, reached the cars and returned to Philadelphia.

Washington City--already, by the Secession of Virginia, cut off from the
South--was thus practically cut off from the North as well; and to
isolate it more completely, the telegraph wires were cut down and the
railroad bridges burned.  A mere handful of regulars, the few volunteers
that had got through before the outbreak in Baltimore, and a small
number of Union residents and Government department clerks--these, under
General Winfield Scott, constituted the paltry force that, for ten days
after the Call for troops, held the National Capital.

Informed, as the Rebels must have been, by their swarming spies, of the
weakness of the Federal metropolis, it seems absolutely marvelous that
instant advantage was not taken of it.

The Richmond Examiner, of April 23d, said: "The capture of Washington
City is perfectly within the power of Virginia and Maryland, if Virginia
will only make the effort with her constituted authorities; nor is there
a single moment to lose.  * * *  The fanatical yell for the immediate
subjugation of the whole South is going up hourly from the united voices
of all the North; and, for the purpose of making their work sure, they
have determined to hold Washington City as the point whence to carry on
their brutal warfare.  Our people can take it--they will take it--and
Scott, the arch-traitor, and Lincoln, the Beast, combined, cannot
prevent it.  The just indignation of an outraged and deeply injured
people will teach the Illinois Ape to repeat his race and retrace his
journey across the borders of the Free <DW64> States still more rapidly
than he came.  * * *  Great cleansing and purification are needed and
will be given to that festering sink of iniquity, that wallow of Lincoln
and Scott--the desecrated city of Washington; and many indeed will be
the carcasses of dogs and caitiff that will blacken the air upon the
gallows before the great work is accomplished.  So let it be!"

But despite all this fanfaronade of brutal bluster, and various
movements that looked somewhat threatening, and this complete isolation
for more than a week from the rest of the World, the city of Washington
was not seized by the Rebels, after all.

This nervous condition of affairs, however, existed until the 25th--and
to General Benjamin F. Butler is due the chief credit of putting an end
to it.  It seems he had reached the Susquehanna river at Perryville,
with his Eighth Massachusetts Regiment on the 20th--the day after the
Sixth Massachusetts had been mobbed at Baltimore--and, finding his
further progress to Washington via Baltimore, barred by the destruction
of the bridge across the Susquehanna, etc., he at once seized a large
ferry steamer, embarked his men on her, steamed down the river and
Chesapeake Bay to Annapolis, the capital of Maryland, took possession of
the frigate Constitution, the Naval Academy, and the city itself,
gathered supplies, and being reinforced by the arrival by water of the
famous New York Seventh, and other regiments, repaired the branch
railroad to Annapolis Junction (on the main line of railroad between
Baltimore and Washington), and transferred his column from thence, by
cars, on the 25th, to the National Capital--soon thereafter also taking
military possession of Baltimore, which gave no further trouble to the
Union Cause.  In the meantime, however, other untoward events to that
Cause had happened.

Two days after the Call for troops, the Virginia Convention (April 17th)
secretly voted to Secede from the Union.  An expedition of Virginia
troops was almost at once started to capture the Federal Arsenal at
Harper's Ferry, which, as has already been intimated, was evacuated
hastily on the night of the 18th, by the handful of Union regulars
garrisoning it, after a futile effort to destroy the public property and
stores it held.  Another expedition was started to seize the Federal
Navy Yard at Norfolk--a rich prize, containing as it did, between 2,000
and 3,000 pieces of heavy ordnance (300 of them Dahlgrens), three old
line-of-battle ships and a number of frigates, including the Cumberland
and the fine forty-gun steam frigate Merrimac, together with thousands
of kegs of powder and immense stores of other munitions of war, and
supplies--that had cost in all some $10,000,000.  Without an enemy in
sight, however, this fine Navy Yard was shamefully evacuated, after
partly scuttling and setting fire to the vessels--the Cumberland alone
being towed away--and spiking the guns, and doing other not very
material damage.

So also, in North Carolina, Rebel influence was equally active.  On the
20th of April Governor Ellis seized the Federal Branch Mint at,
Charlotte, and on the 22d the Federal Arsenal at Fayetteville.  A few
days thereafter his Legislature authorized him to tender to Virginia
--which had already joined the Confederacy--or to the Government of the
Confederate States itself, the volunteer forces of North Carolina.  And,
although at the end of January the people of that State had decided at
the polls that no Secession Convention be held, yet the subservient
Legislature did not hesitate, on demand, to call one together which met
in May and ordained such Secession.

Thus, by the end of May, 1861, the Confederacy had grown to comprise
nine instead of seven States, and the Confederate troops were
concentrating on Richmond--whither the Rebel Government was soon to
remove, from Montgomery.

By this time also not only had the ranks of the regular Union Army been
filled and largely added to, but 42,000 additional volunteers had been
called out by President Lincoln; and the blockade of the Southern ports
(including those of Virginia and North Carolina) that had been
proclaimed by him, was, despite all obstacles, now becoming effectual
and respected.

Washington City and its suburbs, by the influx of Union volunteers, had
during this month become a vast armed camp; the Potomac river had been
crossed and the Virginia hills (including Arlington heights) which
overlooked the Federal Capital, had been occupied and fortified by Union
troops; the young and gallant Colonel Ellsworth had been killed by a
Virginia Rebel while pulling down a Rebel flag in Alexandria; and
General Benjamin F. Butler, in command at Fortress Monroe, had by an
inspiration, solved one of the knottiest points confronting our armies,
by declaring of three <DW64>s who had fled from their master so as to
escape working on Rebel fortifications, that they should not be returned
to that master--under the Fugitive Slave Law, as demanded by a Rebel
officer with a flag of truce--but were confiscated "property," and would
be retained, as "contraband of war."

It was about this time, too, that the New Orleans Picayune fell into
line with other unscrupulous Rebel sheets, by gravely declaring that:
"All the Massachusetts troops now in Washington are <DW64>s, with the
exception of two or three drummer boys.  General Butler, in command, is
a native of Liberia.  Our readers may recollect old Ben, the barber, who
kept a shop in Poydras street, and emigrated to Liberia with a small
competence.  General Butler is his son."  Little did the writer of that
paragraph dream how soon New Orleans would crouch at the very feet of
that same General!

And now, while the armed hosts on either side are assembling in hostile
array, or resting on their arms, preliminary to the approaching fray of
battle, let us glance at the alleged causes underlying this great
Rebellion against the Union.





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Great Conspiracy, Part 2.
by John Alexander Logan

*** 