History of the United States, v.3, by James Ford Rhodes, 1910 [c1892].

Chapter 14, Part 1: Jeremiah S. Black through Jefferson Davis

CHAPTER XIV

The administration had turned over a new leaf, and the personality of the man to whom this change was due becomes for us a matter of interest. Jeremiah Black, now nearly fifty-one, and in the maturity of his powers, was well fitted mentally and morally to bear the brunt of affairs. A good student from boyhood, fond of books, he submitted himself readily to the conditions of his life, and, recognizing that he had his own living to earn, he began in an attorney's office, at the age most boys go to college, the study of law. When a youth he chose as a gift from his father Shakespeare's plays, and this love clung to him through life, causing him to draw from that master lessons in expression and philosophy that influenced his literary style and affected profoundly his view of human concerns. Laying out his own course of study, Horace became the chief companion of his leisure and his relaxation after serious effort. Sincerely religious, he applied himself with diligence to the reading of the English Bible as the chart of his faith, acquiring a familiarity with the words and the turns of thought of our language in King James's time, that imparted terseness to the expression of his vigorous understanding. Admitted to the bar before he was of age, he received when thirty-two the appointment of judge of one of the district courts of his State. This position he held for ten years, until his election to the Supreme bench, from which, in the complete sense of the term, he was dispensing justice when called by Buchanan to the cabinet. Higher honors can come to no lawyer in America than to be revered as was Black by the bar of his own State, and by the bar of the Supreme Court of his country as a learned man and an upright judge. Pennsylvania, though rich in legal talent, awarded to Black the palm in constitutional law and in the whole field of jurisprudence. His ability and correct training were fortified in mature years by laborious studies and conscientious work; his lucid opinions cleared up complicated points, and made simple abstruse ideas. He was an intense partisan, and loyally supported Buchanan in the policy of his administration, until the two came to differ on the proper executive action to be taken in the reinforcement of the Charleston forts, and in meeting the threatened and accomplished secession of South Carolina. They agreed, however, as to the powers of the States and the limitations of the federal government. Black reverenced the Constitution, and had a respect for law worthy of a Roman statesman of noblest type. Socially, he was a genial companion, and a man who hated shams and meanness of all sorts. The crowning feature of his character, which gave lustre to all his qualities, was his absolute and unquestioned purity. Of him it may truly be written, as he himself said of Gibson, who sat on the Pennsylvania Supreme bench thirty-seven years, and who held the highest place in the esteem of her bar until Black came to dispute that eminence: "He was inflexibly honest. ... I do not mean to award him merely that commonplace integrity which it is no honor to have, but simply a disgrace to want. He was not only incorruptible, but scrupulously, delicately, conscientiously free from all wilful wrong, either in thought, word, or deed."1

Edwin M. Stanton, a personal friend of Black, had been appointed Attorney-General for the reason that, having been retained by the government in some cases, he, better 1
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1 I have drawn this characterization of Black from the biographical sketch by C. F. Black; from the speeches of J. S. Black; from the Proceedings of the Bench and Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States in memoriam J. S. Black, pamphlet, Washington, 1884.

than any one else, could proceed with them in the Supreme Court. Stanton was a sound lawyer, an energetic man, and, in the words of Black, a "quiet, unpretending, high-principled, Democratic gentleman." He had favored Buchanan's Lecompton policy, had supported Breckinridge for President, and had endorsed Black's opinion of November 20, and the annual message of December 3. He was devoted to the President, even to the point of flattery, if we may accept without qualification a statement in one of Buchanan's private letters.1 After becoming a member of the cabinet, he agreed implicitly with Black.2 Joseph Holt was a distinguished lawyer of Kentucky, who had held office under Buchanan from the commencement of his administration; 3 he now used his influence and position in upholding the national policy which, owing to the stand Black had taken, became in the main the course of the government.

In harmony with his departure in the conduct of affairs, the President, January 2, nominated for collector of the port of Charleston, Peter Mclntire of Pennsylvania, a man fitted for the position by personal courage and decision of character. The Senate never acted on this nomination.4 As the Republicans and Northern Democrats together had a majority of this body, and as it does not appear that any sustained effort was made to confirm the appointment of Mclntire, a certain measure of censure is their due for failing to co-operate with the President in his more energetic policy.5 Seven months later, Buchanan, in a private letter,
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1 Curtis, vol. ii. p. 523.
2 See biographical sketch of J. S. Black; open letters of Black to Judge Hoar and Henry Wilson; private letters of Stanton, printed by Curtis; McClure's Lincoln and Men of War Times.
3 Crawford's Genesis of the Civil War, p. 25.
4 Letter of Buchanan in National Intelligencer, November 1, 1862; Buchanan's Defence, p. 159.
5 Jefferson Davis labored “to secure the defeat of the nomination of a foreign collector for the port of Charleston."—Letter to Governor Pickens, January 13, Crawford, p. 263.

expressed the opinion that if the Senate had confirmed Mclntire, the war would have begun in January.1

As we have seen, the President and General Scott had determined to send the powerful man-of-war Brooklyn with reinforcements to Sumter, but the general, averse to weakening the garrison at Fortress Monroe, and apprehensive that the Brooklyn would have trouble in crossing the bar at Charleston, changed the plan, and proposed to send a fast merchant steamer from New York, taking the troops from Governor's Island: this, he thought, would combine secrecy and quick despatch, and avoid the appearance of a coercive movement. To this alteration the President reluctantly consented.2 The side-wheel steamship Star of the West was chartered. Taking on board two hundred men, with arms and ammunition, and four officers, she crossed the bar at Sandy Hook at nine o'clock on the night of January 5, and arrived about midnight, three days later, off Charleston harbor. All the coast lights being out, the steamer proceeded with caution, running slow and sounding until her captain discovered a light which he took to be on Fort Sumter, when she hove to and awaited daybreak. The Charlestonians, having received the day before from Secretary Thompson and Senator Wigfall advices of the expedition, were prepared for her.3 A South Carolina guard-boat was on the watch. At daybreak, seeing the Star of the West, she burned colored signal-lights, and steamed rapidly up the channel, firing rockets as she went. The Star of the West, the soldiers all below, and the American flag flying at her flag-staff, now proceeded towards Fort Sumter. When within two miles of it, fire opened on her from a
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1 Letter of September 18, 1861, to Horatio King, Lippincott’s Magazine, April, 1872, p. 408. King was Buchanan's Postmaster-General after Holt's transfer to the War Department.
2 Buchanan in the National Intelligencer, November 1, 1862 ; Buchanan's Defence, p. 190; Nicolay and Hay, vol. iii. p. 95.
3 Crawford, p. 178; Horatio King in Lippincott’s Magazine, April, 1872, p. 409; Official Records, vol. i. p. 258.

masked battery on Morris Island, where was flying a red palmetto flag. At the first shot the Star of the West hoisted a large American ensign at the fore. Still proceeding towards Sumter, she remained ten minutes under the fire of this battery, which was five-eighths of a mile distant; she was struck once, but received no material damage. Observing the approach of a steamer towing a schooner supposed to be armed, and noting that, to reach Fort Sumter, they must pass under the guns of Moultrie, the captain of the Star of the West, and the lieutenant in command of the troops, after looking anxiously and in vain for some signal or for some evidence of support from Anderson, came to the conclusion that, their steamer being entirely unarmed, it would be useless and dangerous to proceed; therefore they turned about and steamed down the channel out to sea, returning directly to New York.1

Anderson had received no official advice of this movement, and had no orders to guide him. Early on the morning of January 9, Captain Doubleday of the Sumter garrison, gazing seaward, saw a large steamship, flying the United States flag, cross the bar, and the Morris Island battery fire a shot to bring her to. He hastened to wake Anderson, who gave orders to beat the long roll for the men to fall in and man the guns in the parapet: this was immediately done. A gunner was stationed at the eight-inch sea-coast howitzer with the lanyard in his hand ready to fire. Major Anderson, standing in the angle of the parapet, watched anxiously the movements of the steamship and the work of the battery. When the Star of the West hoisted the ensign to the fore, he took it as a signal, and endeavored to reply, but his flag, owing to the halyards being twisted about the staff, could not be used. Meanwhile Fort Moultrie opened fire on the steamer. Lieutenant
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1 See Capt. McGowan's report, New York Times, January 14, cited in Moore's Rebellion Record, vol. i., Docs., p. 21; report of C. R. Woods, First Lieutenant, Official Records, vol. i. p. 9; account of a reporter of the New York Evening Post on board, cited in New York Tribune, January 14.

Davis called Anderson's attention to the fact that their guns could reach Moultrie but not the Morris Island battery. Anderson, who had been held back by worthy hesitation, now instructed Davis to "take command of a battery of two 42 pounders which bore on Moultrie," and be in readiness for action. Lieutenant Meade, a Virginian, earnestly entreated that the order to fire, which would commence civil war, should not be given. Just then the Star of the West turned about, and Anderson said: "Hold on; do not fire. I will wait. Let the men go to their quarters, leaving two at each gun—I wish to see the officers at my quarters."1

The result of the council was that Anderson sent a note to Governor Pickens, in which he asked if the firing on the Star of the West had the official sanction, declaring that if it were not disclaimed he " must regard it as an act of war," and he should not permit any vessels to pass "within range of the guns" of his fort.2 The governor replied that the act of war was the sending of the reinforcement, that the steamship had been fired upon in self-defence, and that he perfectly justified the act.3 Lapse of time and reflection cooled the just anger of Anderson, who decided that, until he had referred the matter to his government, he would not carry out a threat which would assuredly light the torch of civil war. To this effect he replied to Pickens, asking for a safe-conduct for the bearer of his despatches. This was
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1 See Crawford, p. 185 et seq. His account is from his journal at the time; Doubleday's Fort Sumter and Moultrie, p. 101 etseq. Lieut. Woods says specifically Moultrie did not fire. Neither Captain McGowan, nor the reporter of the New York Evening Post, nor the Charleston correspondent of the New York Tribune mention the circumstance. The Charleston Courier of January 10 says Moultrie fired a few shots, Moore's Rebellion Record, vol. i., Docs., p. 19. The Charleston Mercury of January 10 says three shots were fired. Very satisfactory orders to Anderson from Scott were written out January 5, Official Records, vol. i. p. 132: these, according to Nicolay and Hay, vol. iii. p. 96, were on board of the Star of the West.
2 Anderson to Pickens, January 9, Official Records, vol. i. p. 184
3 Pickens to Anderson, January 9, ibid., p. 135.

courteously given, and Lieutenant Talbot of the garrison was soon on his way to Washington.1 Two days later the governor sent to Anderson, under a flag of truce, Judge Magrath, the Secretary of State of South Carolina, and General Jamison, the Secretary of War, "to induce the delivery of Fort Sumter to the constituted authorities of the State, with a pledge on its part to account for such public property as is under your charge.'2 With this demand Anderson refused to comply, but he proposed to send one of his officers, in company with any messenger the governor might name, to Washington in order to submit it to his government.3 This was agreed to, and Hayne, the attorney-general of the State, and Lieutenant Hall of Fort Sumter left for Washington, arriving there on the evening of January 13.4

From a military point of view, this abortive expedition of the Star of the West is of little importance. Sending a merchant steamer instead of a man-of-war was a mistake; and there is yet another circumstance which might add to the force of criticism upon the arrangements. The day that the Star of the West sailed from New York, the War Department received a letter from Major Anderson advising that a battery or batteries were being constructed on Morris Island, and he added the assurance, "Thank God, we are now where the government may send us additional troops at its leisure. . . . We can command this harbor as long as our government wishes to keep it." 5 On this account, an order, concurred in by the President, General Scott, and Secretary Holt, was telegraphed to New York to countermand the departure of the steamship; but before the order reached the proper officer, she had gone to sea.6 January 7,
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1 Anderson to Pickens, January 9, Crawford, p. 190.
2 Pickens to Anderson, January 11, ibid., p. 192.
3 Anderson to Pickens, January 11, ibid., p. 194.
4 Buchanan's Defence, p. 198.
5 Anderson to Cooper, December 31,1860. Received A. G. O., January 5.
6 Holt, March 5, 1861, in National Intelligencer, cited by Buchanan, National Intelligencer, November 1, 1862, and Horatio King, Lippincott's Magazine, April, 1872, p. 409.

an order was sent to Farragut, commander of the Brooklyn, to go in aid and succor of the Star of the West, but not to cross the bar at Charleston.1 He did not find her, but, as we have seen, she had received no damage and needed no assistance in returning to New York.

Politically, this attempt to send reinforcements to Sumter was of the highest importance. In connection with the President's special message of January 8 to Congress,2 it was an emphatic confirmation of the new policy which began with the reply to the South Carolina commissioners. The contemporary political literature and books treating of that time, written since by men of national views, attest in a striking manner the immense change of feeling at the North towards the President from that which had prevailed in November and December. The senators of the seceding States were no longer on a friendly personal and political footing at the White House.3 Jefferson Davis, who had not visited the President for some time, immediately on hearing that the Star of the West had been fired upon, went to see him, and ineffectually entreated him to alter his course.4 General Scott had become a trusted
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1 Buchanan's Defence, p. 191; Holt to Anderson, January 10, Official Records, vol. i. p. 136.
2 See Curtis, vol. ii. p. 438.
3 Buchanan in National Intelligencer, November 1, 1862.
4 This was January 9. Davis went to see the President before going to the Senate. Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, vol. i. p. 218. That day the President's special message of January 8, the first letter of the South Carolina commissioners, and Buchanan's reply were read. Davis criticised the President severely, and had a heated discussion with King of New York. The next day, in a set speech, he thus spoke: "The President's message of December had all the characteristics of a diplomatic paper, for diplomacy is said to abhor certainty as nature abhors a vacuum; and it was not within the power of man to reach any fixed conclusion from that message. When the country was agitated, when opinions were being formed, when we are drifting beyond the power ever to return, this was not what we had a right to expect from the Chief Magistrate. One policy or the other he ought to have taken. If a federalist, if believing this to be a government of force, if believing it to be a consolidated mass and not a confederation of States, he should have said: no State has a right to secede; every State is subordinate to the federal government, and the federal government must empower me with physical means to reduce to subjugation the State asserting such a right. If not, if a State-rights man and a Democrat—as for many years it has been my pride to acknowledge our venerable Chief Magistrate to be—then another line of policy should have been taken. The Constitution gave no power to the federal government to coerce a State; the Constitution gave an army for the purposes of common defence, and to preserve domestic tranquillity; but the Constitution never contemplated using that army against a State. A State exercising the sovereign function of secession is beyond the reach of the federal government, unless we woo her with the voice of fraternity, and bring her back to the enticements of affection. One policy or the other should have been taken ; and it is not for me to say which, though my opinion is well known; but one policy or the other should have been pursued. He should have brought his opinion to one conclusion or another, and to-day our country would have been safer than it is."—Congressional Globe, vol. i. p. 307.
"Benjamin thinks not otherwise nor any better of President Buchanan than Mr. Douglas, though his opinion of Mr. Douglas is anything but flattering."—Diary of a Public Man, entry January 13.

adviser of the administration; this the North knew and rejoiced thereat, for it had implicit confidence in the general's capacity and patriotism.

The insult to the flag by South Carolina did not give rise to as much indignation at the North as might have been expected.1 Had Anderson, however, resented it by returning the fire, that loyal uprising which took place three months later would have occurred in January, and the civil war would then have begun. Holt wrote Anderson that he had rightly designated "the firing into the Star of theWest as 'an act of war.1 Had it been perpetrated," he continued, "by a foreign nation, it would have been your imperative duty
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1 "I am surprised at the indifference, not to say apathy, with which this overt defiance to the federal authority and this positive insult to the federal flag have been received by the people of the North and West. Certainly, since we are not at this moment in the blaze of civil war, there would seem to be little reason to fear that we shall be overtaken by it at all."—Diary of a Public Man, entry January 13; see also the file of the New York Tribune.

to have resented it with the whole force of your batteries;" but under the circumstances, "your forbearance to return the fire is fully approved by the President."1

A gratifying result of the Star of the West expedition was the bringing about the resignation of Secretary Thompson.2 The change of policy of the administration caused another satisfactory resignation, that of Thomas,3 Secretary of the Treasury, a Maryland States-rights man, whose political principles, joined to his lack of financial ability and standing, made him unable to win the confidence of the moneyed magnates of the country, which the administration now especially needed. In September, 1860, United States five per-cent. stock had sold at 103;4 in December the government was obliged to pay twelve per cent, for a loan of five millions,5 at the same time that New York State sevens were taken at an average of about 101 ¼ .6 A pressure by the bankers and financiers of New York city was now brought to bear upon the President; this resulted in the offer of the Treasury portfolio to John A. Dix, which he promptly accepted.7 A fitter appointment could not have been made. Dix had been a soldier for sixteen years, then he engaged in the practice of law, went into politics and held office, became a newspaper editor and a member of the Assembly of the State of New York, and afterwards served one term in the national Senate. Entering politics a Jackson
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1 Holt to Anderson, January 16, Official Records, vol. i. p. 140.
2 For the correspondence of January 8 and 9, see Curtis, vol. ii. p. 401. The impropriety of Thompson's remaining in the cabinet after the 1st of December was appreciated by the Washington correspondent of the Charleston Mercury, who wrote December 6, "Thompson still holds on to his post to the disappointment and chagrin of his friends." 3 This was January 11. See the correspondence in Curtis, vol. ii. p. 404.
4 Report of Cobb, Secretary of the Treasury, December 4,1860.
5 President's special message of January 8; Knox's United States Notes, p. 76. This was from the issue of Treasury notes having one year to run. The money was obtained between December 28 and January 1, 1861.
6 New York Evening Post, December 26. The amount desired and allotted was $1,200,000 ; about $4,000,000 was bid for.
7 January 11, Curtis, vol. ii. p. 401; Memoirs of J. A. Dix, vol. i. p. 863.

Democrat, he became a member of the Albany regency, was a Free-Soiler in 1848, and supported Breckinridge in 1860. When called to the Treasury Department he held the office of Postmaster of New York city. Now almost sixty-three years old, a gentleman born and bred, a scholar, a good speaker, he was honest and systematic in his private money affairs, and had a public character without reproach.1 Dix applied himself energetically to his task, and although by this time Mississippi, Florida, and Alabama had seceded, he soon obtained five millions of money at an average rate of l0 5/8 per cent.2

It is a mark of the feeling existing in the commercial circles of New York city, that Belmont, early in December, 1860, began urging Governor Sprague, of Rhode Island, to recommend to the legislature of his State a repeal of her Personal Liberty law.3 Later, Belmont tells Sprague that the leading men of Boston and other parts of Massachusetts, and of New York, were working earnestly in the same direction.4 In an address to the people of Massachusetts, the arguments for such a course were enforced over the signature of citizens who were of the highest character and position.5 December 30, 1860, Belmont wrote Herschel V. Johnson, of Georgia, who united with Stephens in opposing secession, that a caucus of governors of seven Republican States had been held in New York city, and that they would recommend to their legislatures " the unconditional and early repeal of the Personal Liberty bills passed
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1 I have drawn this characterization from the Memoirs of J. A. Dix, by Morgan Dix.
2 Knox's United States Notes, p. 76. This was January 19, and the money was obtained on Treasury notes having one year to run.
3 Belmont to Sprague, December 6, 1860.
4 Ibid, December 19, 1860.
5 Among the signers were: Lemuel Shaw, B. R. Curtis, H. J. Gardner, and George Ticknor, of Boston; Jared Sparks, Charles Theo. Russell, and Theophilus Parsons, of Cambridge; George Peabody, of Salem; J. G. Abbott, of Lowell; Levi Lincoln, of Worcester; and George Ashmun, of Springfield, New York World, December 17, 1860; Life of Garrison, vol. iv. p. 3.

by their respective States."1 This information was substantially correct. Washburn of Maine, Banks of Massachusetts, Morgan of New York, and Yates of Illinois (Republicans), did make such recommendations; as did also Sprague of Rhode Island, and Packer of Pennsylvania (Democrats). Dennison, of Ohio (Republican), said that a modification of the Fugitive Slave law would secure the repeal of the obnoxious portions of the Personal Liberty acts. Before the end of January, Rhode Island repealed her Personal Liberty law; Massachusetts, in March, and Vermont, in April, modified theirs. Ohio had no such act, but her legislature recommended to her sister States to repeal any of their statutes " conflicting with or rendering less efficient the Constitution or the laws," and thus restore confidence between the States;2 while the Wisconsin legislature took the preliminary steps towards revising her Personal Liberty act.3 No doubt can exist that if it had been believed possible to save the Union in this way, every Northern State would by the 1st of May have repealed these laws or satisfactorily altered them. Nothing is clearer than that the South, after the first days of January, was estopped from alleging as a grievance the making null of the Fugitive Slave law.

Although the Senate committee had failed to agree on any plan,4 neither Crittenden nor Douglas despaired of securing an acceptable compromise. To an inquiry of some
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1 Belmont's Letters, privately printed, p. 27.
2 January 14.
3 Harrisburg Union, cited by National Intelligencer, January 15; New York Tribune, January 3, 8; Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, pp. 436, 452, 556, 576 et seq., 634; Congressional Globe, 2d Session 36th Congress, p. 44; McPherson's Political History of the Rebellion, p. 44; Life of Samuel Bowles Merriam, vol. i. p. 275; Memoirs of J. A. Dix, vol. i. p. 355; Life of Colfax, Hollister, p. 169. The National Intelligencer of December 11, in an analysis of the Personal Liberty laws, stated that only those of Vermont, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Wisconsin were "clearly unconstitutional." Banks was the retiring governor of Massachusetts. Andrew, his successor, sustained the Personal Liberty act of his State.
4 December 28,1860. Ante, p. 178.

Georgia Union men concerning the prospect, they sent a joint telegraphic despatch saying, "We have hopes that the rights of the South and of every State and section may be protected within the Union. Don't give up the ship. Don't despair of the Republic."1 January 3, Crittenden made to the Senate the novel proposition that the sense of the people should be taken by submitting his compromise to the popular vote.2 Four days later he gave his reason for suggesting this extraordinary method; it was because he doubted his ability to command in the Senate the two-thirds majority necessary to recommend his constitutional amendments to the States.3 "The sacrifice to be made for the preservation of this government," he urged, "is comparatively worthless. Peace and harmony and union in a great nation were never purchased at so cheap a rate as we now have it in our power to do." 4 Douglas made a powerful argument in favor of Crittenden's proposal.5
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1 The telegram was dated December 29, 1860. McPherson, p. 38. "I see some signs of hope, but it is probably a deceptive light."—John Sherman to General Sherman, January 6, Century Magazine, November, 1892, p. 94.
2 Congressional Globe, p. 237. For his compromise, see p. 150.
3 Globe, p. 264.
4 January 3, ibid., p. 237.
5 His speech was on January 3. He said: "I hold that the election of any man, no matter who, by the American people, according to the Constitution, furnishes no cause, no justification, for the dissolution of the Union. But we cannot close our eyes to the fact that the Southern people have received the result of that election as furnishing conclusive evidence that the dominant party of the North, which is soon to take possession of the federal government under that election, are determined to invade and destroy their constitutional rights. Believing that their domestic institutions, their hearth-stones, and their family altars, are all to be assailed, at least by indirect means, and that the federal government is to be used for the inauguration of a line of policy which shall have for its object the ultimate extinction of slavery in all the States, old as well as new, South as well as North, the Southern people are prepared to rush wildly, madly, as I think, into revolution, disunion, war, and defy the consequences, whatever they may be, rather than to wait for the development of events, or submit tamely to what they think is a fatal blow impending over them and over all they hold dear on earth." Considering that Lincoln's "house-divided-against-itself" speech has been circulated as a campaign document, "is it surprising that the people of the South should suppose that he was in earnest and intended to carry out the policy which he had announced 1. . . I do not, however, believe the rights of the South will materially suffer under the administration of Mr. Lincoln. . . . But this apprehension has become wide-spread and deep-seated in the Southern people. It has taken possession of the Southern mind, sunk deep in the Southern heart, and filled them with the conviction that their firesides, their family altars, and their domestic institutions are to be ruthlessly assailed through the machinery of the federal government. The Senator from Ohio (Wade) says he does not blame you, Southern Senators, nor the Southern people, for believing those things. . . .
"But we are told that secession is wrong, and that South Carolina had no right to secede. I agree that it is wrong, unlawful, unconstitutional, criminal. In my opinion, South Carolina had no right to secede; but she has done it. . . . Are we prepared for war? I do not mean that kind of preparation which consists of armies and navies and supplies and munitions of war; but are we prepared in our hearts for war with our own brethren and kindred? I confess I am not. ... I prefer compromise to war. I prefer concession to a dissolution of the Union. . . . Why not allow the people to pass on these questions? If the people reject them, theirs will be the responsibility, and no harm will have been done by the reference. If they accept them, the country will be safe, and at peace. The political party which shall refuse to allow the people to determine for themselves at the ballot-box the issue between revolution and war on the one side, and obstinate adherence to a party platform on the other, will assume a fearful responsibility. A war upon a political issue, waged by the people of eighteen States against the people and domestic institutions of fifteen sister States, is a fearful and revolting thought. The South will be a unit, and desperate, under the belief that your object in waging war is their destruction, and not the preservation of the Union; that you meditate servile insurrection, and the abolition of slavery in the Southern States by fire and sword, in the name and under pretext of enforcing the laws and vindicating the authority of the government. You know that such is the prevailing, and, I may say, unanimous opinion at the South; and that ten million people are preparing for the terrible conflict under that conviction."—Congressional Globe, Appendix, p. 38 et seq.

January 10, Jefferson Davis in a set speech gave expression to the views of the South. He argued the right of secession. "All that is not granted in the Constitution belongs to the States;" he said, "and nothing but what is granted in the Constitution belongs to the federal government; and keeping this distinction in view, it requires but little argument to see the conclusion at which we necessarily arrive. Did the States surrender their sovereignty to the federal government? Did the States agree that they never could withdraw from the federal Union? . . . The Constitution was a compact between independent States; it was not a national government. ... It was not adopted by the mass of the people, as we all know historically; it was adopted by each State."

Touching the present crisis, it devolves on the majority section to consider now what it will do, "for with every motion of that clock is passing away your opportunity. It was greater when we met on the first Monday in December than it is now; it is greater now than it will be on the first day of next week. ... I would that it still remained to consider what we might calmly have considered on the first Monday in December —how this could be avoided; but events have rolled past that point. You would not make propositions when they would have been effective. I presume you will not make them now; and I know not what effect they would have if you did. Your propositions would have been most welcome if they had been made before any question of coercion, and before any vain boasting of powers."

It pained Davis to think of quitting the Union. "It may be pardoned to me, sir," he said, " who, in my boyhood was given to the military service, and who have followed under tropical suns and over northern snows the flag of the Union, suffering from it as it does not become me to speak it, if I here express the deep sorrow which always overwhelms me when I think of taking a last leave of that object of early affection and proud association, feeling that henceforth it is not to be the banner which, by day and by night, I am ready to follow, to hail with the rising and bless with the setting sun. . . .

"Your platform," he said to the Republicans, "on which you elected your candidate denies us equality. Your votes refuse to recognize our domestic institutions which pre-existed the formation of the Union, our property which was guarded by the Constitution. You refuse us that equality without which we should be degraded if we remained in the Union. You elect a candidate upon the basis of sectional hostility; one who, in his speeches, now thrown broadcast over the country, made a distinct declaration of war upon our institutions. ... What boots it to tell me that no direct act of aggression will be made? I prefer direct to indirect hostile measures which will produce the same result. I prefer it, as I prefer an open to a secret foe. Is there a Senator upon the other side who to-day will agree that we shall have equal enjoyment of the territories of the United States? Is there one who will deny that we have equally paid in their purchases, and equally bled in their acquisition in war? Then, is this the observance of your compact? Whose is the fault if the Union be dissolved?. ..

"Senators, I have spoken longer than I desired. .. . The time is near at hand when the places which have known us as colleagues laboring together, can know us in that relation no more forever. I have striven to avert the catastrophe which now impends over the country, unsuccessfully; and I regret it. For the few days which I may remain, I am willing to labor in order that that catastrophe shall be as little as possible destructive to public peace and prosperity. If you desire at this last moment to avert civil war, so be it; it is better so. If you will but allow us to separate from you peaceably, since we cannot live peaceably together, to leave with the rights we had before we were united, since we cannot enjoy them in the Union, then there are many relations which may still subsist between us, drawn from the associations of our struggles from the Revolutionary era to the present day, which may be beneficial to you as well as to us."1

It seemed as if the drama of 1850 would again be
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1 Congressional Globe, p. 808 et seq., and the speech may also be found in Davis's Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, vol. i. p. 608.

enacted. It might be said that the mantle of Clay had fallen upon Crittenden, another son of Kentucky. Douglas spoke for the compromise on behalf of the Northern Democrats, even as he and Cass had spoken eleven years previously. Davis had succeeded to the leadership at that time held by Calhoun. Would the part then played by Daniel Webster be taken? Seward now filled the public eye as the greater statesman had done in 1850, and was the exponent of the Republicans as Webster had been of the Northern Whigs. Rumor's tongue busied itself with the New York senator's opinions and proposed action. It was constantly asserted and as uniformly denied that he would support the Crittenden compromise; and the denials came from better authority than the assertions.1 Seward's potent influence and commanding position at this time is undoubted, but he had an overweening sense of his own importance; he thought that he held in his hands the destinies of his country. "I will try to save freedom and my country;" "I have assumed a sort of dictatorship for defence, and am laboring night and day with the cities and States;" "It seems to me that if I am absent only three days, this administration, the Congress, and the district would fall into consternation and despair; I am the only hopeful, calm, conciliatory person here;" "The present administration and the incoming one unite in devolving on me the responsibility of averting" civil war: these are his expressions when writing to the sympathetic home circle at Auburn.2 December 28,1860, he accepted Lincoln's offer of the secretaryship of State;3 the Albany Evening Journal of January 9 gave this news to the world. Two days before he rose in the Senate to appease the anxiety of the people as to his position came the intelligence that
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1 See the files of the New York Herald and New York Tribune for January
2 The dates of these letters are respectively December 28,1860, January 3,18, 23— two written before his great speech, two after, Life of Seward, vol. ii, pp. 487,491,497.
3 Ibid., p. 487.

the convention of Mississippi had passed an ordinance of secession; the morning newspapers of the day on which he spoke related that the conventions of Florida and Alabama had done likewise.1

January 12 Seward spoke to a packed Senate chamber, to lobbies and corridors filled with people straining their ears to catch any word that might give to them and to a waiting and distracted country an inkling of the plan of deliverance from disunion.2 At first nearly every one was in some degree disappointed. Confidence in the power of one man to find a solution for the troubles that for so many years had been gathering to a head had risen too high. He proposed no concession to the South, beyond that which the Republicans had submitted in the Senate committee of thirteen.3 He suggested, however, that when the secession movements had ended and the public mind had resumed its wonted calm—say in "one, two, or three years hence "—that a national convention should be called to consider the matter of amending the Constitution.4 Of course Seward's speech met with no favor in the cotton States. The secessionists of Virginia maintained that it destroyed the last hope of compromise.5 The feeling of the Union
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1 Mississippi passed her ordinance January 9, Florida January 10, Alabama January 11. The New York Tribune did not have the news from Florida until its issue of January 12.
2 Washington correspondence New York Tribune, January 12; Ben: Perley Poore's Reminiscences, vol. ii. p. 54.
3 Ante, p. 175.
4 I have not given an abstract or extracts from Seward's speech for the reason that it was important for its tone rather than for any plan proposed, and needs to be read as a whole to be comprehended. It may be found in Seward's Works, vol. iv. p. 651, as well as in the Congressional Globe, p. 341. A full and careful report of it was printed in the New York Tribune of January 14. It was an able speech. The New York Tribune considered it "rhetorically and as a literary performance . . . unsurpassed by any of its author's earlier productions."—Editorial of January 14. "I deplored Seward's speeches. [Those of January 12 and 31.] The first he read to me and I supplicated him not to make it."—Sumner to Whittier, February 5, Pierce's Memoir of Sumner, vol. iv. p. 17. Chase begged Seward "to give countenance to no scheme of compromise."—Schuckers, p. 202. 5 Richmond Enquirer, January 15.

men of the border States was one of bitter disappointment and even profound grief.1 The conservative Republicans, the Douglas Democrats, and the Bell and Everett men of the North were, on reflection, well pleased, while the more radical Republicans and the abolitionists did not like it.2 The tone of Seward's speech is admirable, and it undoubtedly had an effectual influence in making fidelity to the Union, irrespective of previous party affiliations, a rallying-point for Northern men.3

While Seward had not mentioned by name the Crittenden compromise, it was a decided inference from his statements that he could not be brought to support it; and it is a striking indication of the little confidence public men and newspaper correspondents at Washington had in his sincerity and constancy that the rumor that he would come out for the compromise continually reappears. But he had a great hold on the Northern people; their faith in him was unbounded. The Richmond Whig was not far out of the way when it asserted that his vote in favor of submitting the Crittenden propositions to the people "would give peace at once to the country," meaning that he would carry with him a majority of the Republican senators.4 The proposal to consult the people directly attracted much attention; as we shall see later, it was the last chance for averting civil war, and, to be effective, it should
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1 Richmond Whig, January 17; Baltimore Daily Exchange, January 14; New York Herald, which was a good representative of this opinion, January 13.
2 See references of Douglas to Seward, Diary of a Public Man, North American Review, October and November, 1879; letter of August Belmont to Seward, January 17; NationalIntelligencer, January 15; New York Tribune January 14; New York Evening Post, January 14; Life of Garrison, vol. iv. p. 10; Seward's letter to his daughter, January 23, Life, vol. ii. p. 497.
3 Few men have received a nobler tribute for a speech than Seward had on this occasion from Whittier.
4 Issue of January 18. The bill spoken of was Bigler's, which submitted constitutional amendments, substantially the same as Crittenden's, provided the machinery for taking the vote, and fixed February 12 as the date for it. This was introduced January 14.

have been adopted before the conventions of Georgia and Louisiana, soon to meet, had assembled and taken the virtually irrevocable step of secession. Seward afterwards1 spoke of the scheme as "an unconstitutional and ineffectual way" of taking the "sentiments of the people." But it was never shown to be unconstitutional. The idea was that the vote should be informal; that it could be regarded only as an instruction to Congress, morally, not legally, binding; that afterwards Congress would still preserve full liberty of action. Yet it was clearly enough understood that a vote of the country in favor of the Crittenden compromise would impel a majority of the Republican senators and representatives to give it their support. No doubt can now exist, and but little could have existed in January 1861, that if it had been submitted to the people it would have carried the Northern States by a great majority; that it would have obtained the vote of almost every man in the border States; and that it would have received the preponderating voice of all the cotton States but South Carolina.2
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1 January 30. Works, vol. iv. p. 678.
2 "It was an indisputable fact at this time that the vote cast for Douglas, numbering 1,365,976, and that cast for Bell, numbering 590,631, and the vote for Breckinridge in the free States, numbering 284,422, making a total of 2,241,029, was unanimously in favor of a peaceful and reasonable settlement of all difficulties with any of the Southern States. The vote for Lincoln was 1,857,610, of which at least one fourth would have approved of such a peaceable settlement of the difficulties as might have been satisfactory to all the Southern States, whose complaints were founded upon questions connected with slavery. Of the vote given to Breckinridge in the slave-holding States, numbering 563,531, more than one fourth of it desired a peaceable settlement upon such terms as would have been satisfactory to the friends of conciliation and compromise in the Northern States. Thus the voice of the people of the country at this time was overwhelmingly in favor of conciliation, forbearance, and compromise."—Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, p. 700. It must be noted that South Carolina, having cast no popular vote, is not included in this estimate. It is, of course, hazardous to reduce one's opinions to figures, but I really believe that this writer has guessed pretty nearly the way the popular vote would have gone on the Crittenden compromise.
"Let the question be submitted to the people . . . and I will venture the prediction that your own people (i.e., the Republicans) will ratify the proposed amendments to the Constitution."—Douglas, Senate, January 3. "The resolutions offered by you will be endorsed by the people of Pennsylvania by 200,000 majority if we can get a vote."—Conrad, of Philadelphia, to Crittenden, January 5, Life of Crittenden, Coleman, vol. ii. p. 251. "I feel perfect confidence that New York would give 150,000 majority for this measure."—Horatio Seymour to Crittenden, January 18, ibid., p. 254. The advocates of the Crittenden compromise, " 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."—Greeley's American Conflict, vol. i. p. 380, written in 1864. "If a popular vote could have been had on the Crittenden compromise, it would have prevailed by an overwhelming majority. Very few Republicans would have voted for it; but very many would have refrained from voting at all; while their adversaries would have brought their every man to the polls in its support, and carried it by hundreds of thousands."—Greeley's Recollections of a Busy Life, p. 397.
See the list of petitions from all parts of the North and from the border States in favor of the Crittenden compromise, printed in Coleman's Life of Crittenden, p. 240 et seg. It fills nine pages; see also Congressional Globe, pp. 634, 646, 670, 692, 710,719, 729, 777, 792, 798, 822, 839, 862, 896. 985,1094,1126,1148,1186, 1225,1243. Some of these petitions are worthy of notice: one was from 182 cities and towns of Massachusetts, signed by 22,315 citizens; another from the Boston City Council; four fifths of the people of Indiana were said to be in favor of the Crittenden compromise; one petition was from 14,000 women; 2000 citizens of Philadelphia who had voted for Lincoln signed another. Seward presented two petitions signed by 63,000 inhabitants of New York city, praying for some plan of adjustment.—Seward's Works, vol. iv. p. 670. "Many Northern men, even some Republicans, were willing to vote " for the Crittenden compromise. —Wilson's Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, vol. iii. p. 72. "There is a great pressure here from the business and high social circles of all our great cities for a compromise."—J. S. Pike, from Washington to New York Tribune, February 3. A Faneuil Hall meeting, composed largely of the friends of Webster, endorsed the Crittenden plan.—New York Tribune, February 8. The New Jersey legislature urged her senators and representatives in Congress to support the Crittenden compromise.—Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, p. 515. The Virginia legislature gave by resolution substantially its approval.—Ibid., p. 178. "We have never entertained the slightest doubt that if the voice of the people could be fairly heard in this time of our trouble, there would be a satisfactory and permanent settlement of existing differences between the two sections within less than thirty days."—Richmond Whig, January 17. "There can be no doubt that the people of the United States are anxious to preserve the Union, and are perfectly willing to make reasonable concessions to secure its preservation. It is certainly true in regard to the South, and we believe it is equally true in regard to the North. ... In every State except South Carolina (and we doubt very much if that State should be excepted) which has seceded, a very large majority of the people would gladly preserve the Union, if they had not been led to believe that the people of the North are their enemies. .. . There can be no doubt that Crittenden's plan of adjustment, if submitted to a direct vote of the people, would be adopted by such a vote as never was polled in this country. Almost everybody in the South, including some of the bitterest disunionists among us, would willingly accept that compromise as a final settlement of the questions which divide the country. The Northern papers with singular unanimity assert that the people of that section would gladly do the same."—Ibid, January 28. "I believe that the South would accept the propositions submitted by Mr. Crittenden."—Senator Pearce, of Maryland, to B. T. Johnson, January 9, Charleston Mercury, January 19. The Ohio Democratic State convention, held January 23, asserted they "would accept with joy" the Crittenden compromise.—Congressional Globe, p. 646. The New York Democratic State convention, held January 31, approved it.—Greeley's American Conflict, vol. i. p. 395; see Shaler's Kentucky, p. 241 ; Carr's Missouri, p. 283. Only a very few petitions were presented against the Crittenden compromise.—See Congressional Globe, pp. 1126, 1243,1300, 1301.

This proposal to take the sense of the country never came to a vote in the Senate; had a majority of the Republican senators favored it, the bill which provided for it would have been reached and adopted. The question arises: are the Republicans to be justified for their position? On those who affirm that they are, it is incumbent to show that an agreement on the basis of the Crittenden compromise would have adjourned but for a short while the Civil War; that this compliance with the South would have made the slave-holders more arrogant in their future demands; that the real issue to be decided was absolute surrender or resistance; and that a better time than this to try conclusions could never be looked for. On Northern men who aver that the Republicans ought to have accepted the Crittenden compromise, it is incumbent to show that it would have postponed the civil conflict for at least a decade, with a fair chance of ultimately avoiding it; that for such time the two sections, with the power of slavery in the South unimpaired, could have lived on tolerable terms; that the South would not have demanded Cuba, Mexico, or Central America as a condition for remaining in the Union; that Lincoln was wrong when he asserted, "There is in my judgment but one compromise which would really settle the slavery question, and that would be a prohibition against acquiring any more territory;"1 in short, that for ten years the South would have quietly and submissively gazed upon the larger growth of the North by immigration and by development of manufactures and the arts, thus fitting itself for the conflict that must come; or that, on the other hand, repeated submissions would not have brought the North to the point where, its spirit being gone, it would have refused to fight. Between these alternatives, one of which was civil war with its waste of blood and treasure, with its train of men's sacrifices and women's anguish, and with its failure to settle the race question in the South; and the other, which would have been an aggravated repetition of what took place between 1854 and 1860, with the possibility of a war to follow between more powerful contestants: between these an historian may well shrink from pronouncing a decided choice. The argument that this very question was determined at the presidential election does not seem to me decisive.2 It is true, the proposed action, so far as American practice
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1 Letter to J. T. Hale, January 11, Nicolay and Hay, vol. iii. p. 288.
2 The Crittenden compromise (i.e., the article relating to the territories) "is precisely the question submitted to the people at the late presidential election, and which the people in all parts of the nation have condemned by an overwhelming vote. After having been debated by the newspapers and orators for the last ten years, and after having been practically deter, mined by the voice of the people, Mr. Crittenden desires to debate it anew in Congress, and to review the popular determination by another appeal to the ballot."—New York Evening Post, January 16. "How many voters in the last election, before they went to the polls, had seriously thought out for themselves the real issue of the contest ?" asked C. F. Adams, Jr., in the AtlanticMonthly for April, 1861, p. 452.

went, was unprecedented, and would have made a bad precedent; but the situation was extraordinary, and had Congress patterned after Athens, the parent State of democracy, freedom, and justice, it might have been justified in letting those men who had to do the fighting and furnish the money decide whether it should be compromise or civil war. Nor does it dispose of the matter to declare the South, as it plainly appears from my narrative, wrong and unreasonable. True, its whole claim was for additional safeguards to slavery. That this institution was condemned by Christianity and ethics I have more than once taken occasion to say, and I can now add the condemnation of science in the words of Darwin, its greatest master in this century, who says: "The greatest curse on earth [is] slavery."1 The assertion that the South should not be treated with because it was wrong, is answered by the poet in fitter words than an historian can use:

"Courage may be shown
Not in defiance of the wrong alone;
He may be bravest who, unweaponed, bears
The olive branch, and, strong in justice, spares
The rash wrong-doer, giving widest scope
To Christian charity and generous hope."2

On the other hand, it is true that the regret for the war which characterizes the present speculation as to whether it might not have been avoided, is to a large extent based on the teaching of a widely accepted theory of the evolution of society in opposition to a view inspired by poetry and a poetic political economy.3
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1 Letter of June 5, 1861, Life and Letters, vol. ii. p. 166.
2 Whittier's poem, "To W. H. Seward."—The succeeding lines, however, show that he did not intend his poem to be used as a justification of the Crittenden compromise.
3 Compare chaps, xviii. and xix., vol. ii. of Spencer's Sociology with Fletcher's tribute to war in The Two Noble Kinsmen:
"Oh, great corrector of enormous times,
Shaker of o'er-rank states, thou grand decider
Of dusty and old titles, that heal'st with blood
The earth when it is sick, and curest the world
O' th' pleurisy of people!" —Act v. sc. i.*
"Nations have always reached their highest virtue, and wrought their most accomplished works in times of straightening and battle; as on the other hand, no nation ever yet enjoyed a protracted and triumphant peace without receiving in its bosom ineradicable seeds of future decline."— Ruskin, Modern Painters, vol. iii. p. 334. Wordsworth told Emerson in 1833 "that they needed a civil war in America to teach the necessity of knitting the social ties stronger."—English Traits, chap. i.
* Lowell wrote Mr. Hughes, "St. Shakespeare Day, I860""I believe that Shakespeare has expressed the true philosophy of war in those magnificent verses in 'The Two Noble Kinsmen,' which are as unlike Beaumont and Fletcher as Michael Angelo's charcoal head on the wall of the Farnesina is unlike Raphael." —Article of C. E. Norton, in Harper's Magazine, September, 1893, p. 558.

Failing to get a favorable response from the Republicans to his proposal to submit the question to the people, Crittenden labored to get a vote of the Senate on his constitutional amendments and resolutions. He had to contend with the usual attempts of senators to obtain precedence for their favorite measures, and with the opposition of some men who thought that by hampering him, the policy of masterly inactivity, on which most of the Republican senators had resolved,1 was best furthered. At last, on January 16, he had hopes of getting a vote. Powell's amendment, providing that slavery should be recognized in territory hereafter to be acquired as well as in that now held south of the Missouri line, was adopted. The amendment of Clark, of New Hampshire, had next to be considered; this virtually declared that no compromise was necessary, and that the Constitution "needs to be obeyed rather than amended." Owing to the refusal of six Southern senators to vote, this amendment was carried,2 having received the
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1 Pike to the New York Tribune, Washington, January 5.
2 These were Benjamin and Slidell of Louisiana, Hemphill and Wigfall of Texas, Iverson of Georgia, and Johnson of Arkansas. All but Johnson had voted on the Powell amendment. The senators from Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida no longer took an active part. The vote was 25 to 23.

unanimous support of the Republicans.1 Crittenden, with the laudable desire of staying the course of secession in North Carolina and in the border States, telegraphed to Raleigh that the failure of his resolutions was due to the action of six Southern men.2 Though this statement was technically correct, the truth is that it was the Republicans who for a second time defeated, for weal or for woe, the Crittenden compromise. Crittenden furthermore said, "There is yet good hope of success."' Pike saw with a clearer and more prophetic vision when he apprised the New York Tribune that the scheme had received its death-blow.4

The pressure of the country upon Congress in favor of some compromise was strong. While the radical Republicans were powerful enough to stifle whatever leaning there was in their party towards the Crittenden plan, they could not bring all their associates to their own policy of no concessions whatever, nor prevent the House committee of thirty-three from reporting a plan of compromise, January 14, through its chairman, Thomas Corwin. This plan retained the constitutional amendment safeguarding slavery in the States, and the recommendation for the repeal of the Personal Liberty laws which Seward, acting for his Republican colleagues, had offered in the Senate committee of thirteen;5 it also proposed the admission of New Mexico "with or without slavery," but it was well understood this would add a slave State, so far as laws could make one, to the Union.6 This compromise was more liberal to the
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1 Seward and Cameron were present and voted for it.
2 Date of despatch January 17, published in Raleigh Register, January 19, National Intelligencer January 22.
3 Ibid.
4 Despatch of January 16.
5 Ante, p. 175.
6 See Corwin's report; Anthony's speech in the Senate, January 16. Charles Francis Adams, a prominent member of the committee of thirty-three, gives an interesting account of some of the proceedings in committee and his own action in a private letter of April 8,1861, to George H. Monroe. I am indebted to Mr. Monroe for the letter in MS. Adams writes: "In point of fact, the measures were not mine. They were carefully examined by the Republican members of the committee, at the time when some positive action had been demanded of them, or the committee would have come to an end with their opponents consolidated against them. Two thirds of the Republicans agreed upon the two propositions [the constitutional amendment and the admission of New Mexico]. I had expressed my acquiescence in them as the only practical solution of the existing difficulty without essential sacrifice. The only thing left was to put them in the hands of some one to present them to the full committee. It was then that the chairman, Mr. Corwin, proposed my name, as one which would have more effect in checking the panic at the South than any other. I was greatly surprised, and declined the responsibility at once. But I could not be deaf to the arguments, presented in a purely public sense, or insensible to the ignominy of shrinking from a useful object merely on the score of personal hazard to myself. I stated my feelings frankly, and at last devolved the whole responsibility on my friends. If they would say my action would do any particular good, I would incur the risk, be it what it might. They did so say, and I went forward accordingly
"At that time there was no objection made on our side to one of the measures, the proposed amendment to the Constitution. The scruple raised was against the New Mexico proposition. Yet the only thing the other side manifested any satisfaction with was the amendment—and the other they declined to regard as a boon in any sense. I rested upon the ground that we conceded nothing; that these measures were in no sense a compromise, because we asked for nothing and offered what we did solely as assurances of our good faith in the declarations constantly made by us when out of power. As to New Mexico, I declared very frankly that in making the offer I intended to destroy the claim of protection to slavery. It was that demand which made the entire basis of the Breckinridge platform. Of course the acceptance of the proposition would have disbanded the organization. They saw this clearly as I did. Hence the tenacity with which they clung to the clause about future territory. In comparison with this the presence of half a dozen slaves more or less in New Mexico seemed a trifle. Every proposition of a compromise line of latitude involved an implication of a future concession south of that line everywhere. On the contrary, my offer broke the charm of the magic line and restricted the question within the limits of a territory where slavery is not at home.
"The limit of my concession was then to give the slave-holders a chance to make New Mexico a slave State if they could. To that extent my offer was made in good faith. I did suppose they might make it such politically for a while. But the action of a new government in a different sense would ere long counteract that influence, and the result would in the end be to make one more free State. That I was right in this idea is proved clearly enough by the final vote in the House which showed the slaveholders turning the scale against the bill."—Vide infra, note 2, p. 314.

South than was the suggestion the Republicans had thrown out in the Senate committee, in that it did not propose as a counterbalance to New Mexico the erection of a free State out of the rest of the national territory. The other resolutions and recommendations, and the proposed revision of the Fugitive Slave act reported by Corwin would probably have been satisfactory to the South, could an agreement have been reached on the territorial question. Had the senators and the representatives from the six cotton States still remaining in Washington acceded to this plan as a settlement, which indeed they ought to have done, it would undoubtedly have commanded a majority of Republicans and received the assent of Congress. While Lincoln could not have been brought to approve of the Crittenden compromise, he would have been satisfied with such an adjustment as Corwin offered. "I say now, however," he wrote Seward, February 1, "as I have all the while said, that on the territorial question — that is, the question of extending slavery under the national auspices—I am inflexible. I am for no compromise which assists or permits the extension of the institution on soil owned by the nation. And any trick by which the nation is to acquire territory, and then allow some local authority to spread slavery over it, is as obnoxious as any other. I take it that to effect some such result as this, and to put us again on the high road to a slave empire, is the object of all these proposed compromises. I am against it. As to fugitive slaves, District of Columbia, slave-trade among the slave States, and whatever springs of necessity from the fact that the institution is amongst us, I care but little, so that what is done be comely and not altogether outrageous. Nor do I care much about New Mexico, if further extension were hedged against."1

At this time another plan was proposed which received little heed, and naturally has attracted almost no attention from historians, yet was it eminently wiser and more philosophic
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1 Nicolay and Hay, vol. iii. p. 260.

than either the Crittenden or Corwin compromises, for they were makeshifts, only putting off the evil day, while this may be adjudged a real solution of the irrepressible conflict and the race question. The proposition was for gradual, compensated emancipation of the slaves in the border States, and colonizing them in Liberia or Hayti; it did not include the cotton States, since four of them had already seceded, and the other three were getting ready to follow. The project first appeared as a matter of discussion in Washington.1 It then came up in the shape of a resolution offered in the State Assembly of New York, requesting the senators and representatives of that State to urge such a measure in Congress. The plan involved the consent of the States in question, and made the remuneration of the slave-holders and the expense of the colonization a charge upon the general government. The New York Tribune argued earnestly for a trial of it, reasoning with the free States that its money cost should be no objection, for, "One year of war would cost as much or more." To the slave States this journal addressed an argument that at this day' reads like prophetic inspiration. "Over the future of the South," it said, "impends, not far off, the black cloud of Africanization. Now is the time, if ever, to avert such a catastrophe. A little longer, and it may be too late."3 McKean, a Republican representative from New York, offered a resolution in the national House providing for a select committee of five to inquire into the feasibility of such a project, and that was the end of it. 4 Instructed as we are by the experience of the generation which has succeeded, we cannot fail to see how many evils gradual and compensated emancipation would have avoided, and, from the economical point of view, what a saving it would have
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1 Pike to the New York Tribune, January 15.
2 1895.
3 Tribune, January 24; see, also, January 19. The resolution was introduced into the New York Assembly, January 18, by Fullerton of Orange.
4 February 11, Congressional Globe, p. 854; see remarks on the subject in the House by representative Van Wyck, of New York, ibid., p. 681.

been!1 There is no doubt whatever that the North would have been glad to agree to such a measure, and apply it to the cotton as well as to the border States. Had the Southern people known what the next four years were destined to bring forth, they would have voted for it to a man, but to urge a project of that kind upon men in their temper of mind in the winter of 1861 would have been to increase their irritation.2

Jefferson Davis and the senators from Florida and Alabama did not withdraw from the Senate until they had been officially notified of the secession of their States. It was January 21 when they made their formal leave-taking, and all spoke briefly. Davis, after a sleepless night caused by physical and mental distress, addressed the crowded chamber and galleries in a mournful and touching strain. Explaining the sincerity of his belief in the right of secession—for "it is," he asserted, "to be justified upon the basis that the States are sovereign"— he gave expression to his regret that the situation demanded that Mississippi should surrender the benefits of the Union, and sever the close and enduring ties of affection that bound her to it. For himself, as this was the last time he should ever speak in the Senate of the United States, he wished to say he had no feeling of hostility to the senators from the North; he wished them and their people well; he hoped that peaceful relations might continue with them, but, if they should choose otherwise," we, putting our trust in God and in our own firm hearts and strong arms, will vindicate the right as best we may." Wishing to be forgiven for any pain he
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1 In round numbers there were in 1860 in all the slave States 4,000,000 slaves. A current and very high estimate of their value was $4,000,000,000. The New York Tribunes estimate of $400 each (instead of $1000 each),based on a sale at auction in Charleston of twenty-four cotton-plantation hands, at an average of $437 each, was too low (see New York Tribune, January 19). The cost of the war, according to Edward Atkinson (The Industrial Progress of the Nation, p. 183), was $8,000,000,000.
2 See New York Times, cited by the Tribune, January 24.

had inflicted in the heat of discussion upon any senator, he forgave whatever offence had been done himself. To that audience, affected to tears by the plaintive music of his voice, the sincerity of his manner, and the pathos of his words, the final farewell he bade his fellow-senators came as the knell of the glorious Union. That night Davis wrestled in prayer, offering up more than once the supplication: "May God have us in his holy keeping, and grant that, before it is too late, peaceful councils may prevail."1

Other parting addresses of senators and representatives of the seceded States followed from time to time, until the withdrawal of senators and members became a part of the order of business of the day in the Senate and in the House. By February 3, Seward could write: "Either the revolution grows more moderate, or we become more accustomed to it and society begins to resume its tone." 2 Secession moved apace. The conventions of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas in quick succession passed ordinances dissolving their bonds with the federal Union.3 We shall better understand the ensuing civil war if we study the movements in the four most important of these States, in relation to a theory which asserts that the secession was a conspiracy whose central cabal, composed of Southern senators and representatives in Washington, dictated through its ramifications in the States the inception and the course of the revolution. The most significant meeting of the junto was that of January 5, at which were present all of the senators, save one, of these six cotton States.4 They resolved that each of the Southern States should secede as soon as possible, and that a Southern confederacy should be organized forthwith; and
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1 Memoir of Davis by his wife, vol. i. p. 60 et ante; Davis's Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, vol. i. p. 220; CongressionalGlobe, p. 487.
2 Life, vol. ii. p. 502.
3 The dates were respectively January 9,10, 11, 19, 26, and February 1.
4 Fitzpatrick, of Alabama, was not present. Johnson, of Arkansas, was one of the number.

they asked instructions whether they and the representatives should remain in Congress until the 4th of March, for the purpose of defeating hostile legislation threatened against the seceding States. These resolutions were communicated to the conventions of Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama, then assembled or just about to assemble.1 The authoritative action of this caucus, taken in connection with the array of Northern contemporary and later writers that support the conspiracy theory, will necessarily prevent the student of history from abandoning it, without careful investigation and proper reflection, to adopt the view held by nearly all of the Southern writers, that secession was the people's movement.2 Before proceeding to consider the two different opinions, it is worthy of remark that if secrecy inheres in a conspiracy, that quality was not here preserved, for a substantially correct account of the caucus of senators on Saturday evening, January 5, was published in the Charleston Mercury of the following Monday.

In its public manifestations, secession had all the marks of a popular movement, proceeding in the regular manner which we should expect from a community accustomed to constitutional government and to delegate its powers to chosen representatives. Legislatures called conventions of the people.3 Then, after animated canvasses in Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana,4 and after a full understanding by the electors in all of the States that they were voting for immediate secession or in favor of delay, delegates were
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1 Official Records, vol. i. p. 443; Washington despatch to Charleston Mercury, January 6.
2 I am acquainted with only one Southern writer who maintains the conspiracy theory, Pollard. See chap. vi. of his Life of Davis, published in 1869. I presume his support of it has had something to do with its being so commonly received at the North.
3 Except in the case of Alabama, where by virtue of an authorization of the legislature the governor called the convention.
4 The vote in Georgia was, for secession, 50,243, for delay, 39,133. Life of Toombs, Pleasant Stovall, p. 209; in Louisiana, 20,448 for secession, 17,296 for delay, Moore's Rebellion Record, Diary, vol. i. p. 20.

chosen to the conventions at popular elections. Soon after each convention met it adopted by an imposing majority its ordinance of secession.1

If this were the whole story, the conspiracy theory would not have so large a number of adherents. But other circumstances connected with the enactment of secession must be taken into account. In Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana there was a large falling-off of the vote from that which had been cast at the presidential election. In Georgia a violent storm on election day cost the conservative party, in the opinion of Stephens, ten thousand votes.2 In the conventions of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana a proposal in each one of them to submit the ordinance of secession to a popular vote was voted down.3 In the Alabama convention the discussion of this project was attended with heat. Yancey denounced the people of northern Alabama, who were opposed to immediate secession, as "misguided, deluded, wicked men," who had entered on the path that led to treason and rebellion. He declared that they ought to be coerced into submission to the will of the majority.
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1 In Mississippi on the third day of the session by a vote of 84 to 15, Journal of the Convention, p. 14. In Florida on the sixth day by a vote of 62 to 7; in Alabama on the fifth day by a vote of 61 to 39, Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, pp. 314, 10. In Georgia on the fourth day by a vote of 208 to 89, Journal of the Convention, p. 35. In Louisiana on the fourth day by a vote of 113 to 17, Journal of the Convention, p. 18. In Texas on the ninth day by a vote of 166 to 7, Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, p. 688.
2 Johnston and Browne, p. 378. According to the Richmond Whig of February 5, the number of voters in New Orleans was 17,000; only 8000 went to the polls; majority in favor of secession, 300.
3 In Mississippi by a vote of 70 to 29, Journal of the Convention, p. 14; in Alabama by a vote of 54 to 45, History and Debates of the Alabama Convention. The vote is not given in the Georgia Convention Journal. It was probably viva voce; see p. 46. In Louisiana, by 84 to 43, Journal of the Convention, p. 17. The Texas convention, owing to an irregularity in the proceedings that led to its choice, submitted by an almost unanimous vote the ordinance to the people. It was ratified February 28, 84,794 for, 11,235 against, a falling-off from the vote at the presidential election.—Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, p. 689.

Davis, of Huntsville, replied that if such an attempt were made, the people of northern Alabama would meet the precipitators at the foot of their mountains and dispute the question at the point of the bayonet.1 In the conventions of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana, motions looking towards an attempt to get their grievances redressed in the Union, the adoption of which would have caused delay in secession, were made, but failed to carry a majority.2 In the Georgia convention Herschel V. Johnson, after consultation with Stephens, prepared a substitute for the ordinance of secession, which provided for a convention of the slave States and " the independent republics of South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi," to be held at Atlanta, February 16, to consider their relations with the federal government and adopt the course that their interest and safety might require. This substitute, moreover, specified as the paramount grievance of Georgia the Personal Liberty acts, and intimated that if they were repealed she would be content to remain in the Union. The remarks of Stephens were powerful. "My judgment," he declared, "is against secession for existing causes. I have not lost hope of securing our rights in the Union and under the Constitution. ... I have been and am still opposed to secession as a remedy against anticipated aggressions on the part of the federal executive or Congress. I have held and do now hold that the point of resistance should be the point of aggression." Johnson's substitute, however, was lost, receiving 133 votes in its favor to 164 against it.3 These facts, in the light of a full knowledge of the time and a correct comprehension of the attitude taken by the South, do not, however, prove that the course of the Southern
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1 Smith's Debates of Alabama Convention, pp. 68-74.
2 In Mississippi—ayes 21, nays 78, Journal of the Convention, p. 14. In Alabama—ayes 45, nays 54, Smith's Debates, p. 80. In Louisiana—ayes 24, nays 106, Journal of the Convention, p. 15.
3 Journal of the Convention, p. 82; Stephens's War between the States, vol. ii. p. 300 et seq. ; Johnston and Browne, p. 380.

people was dictated by a dozen or by a hundred conspirators from whose secret conclaves in Washington and in the State capitals went forth decrees, nor that the politicians led the people by the nose. Davis and Toombs are always classed among the conspirators, yet Davis was in favor of delay;1 and Toombs, in spite of his vehement talk at Washington,2 could not keep pace with the secession movement in his State.3 The South Carolina radicals murmured that the people were hampered by the politicians.4 The secessionists would certainly have made their case stronger had they submitted the ordinance of secession to a popular vote, but there is no reason whatever for thinking that they feared the result; that plan, however, involved delay, and they were anxious above all to get the proposed
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1 See letter to Rhett, November 10, 1860, Life of Davis, Alfriend, p. 222; Davis's Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, vol. i. pp. 58, 201, 207, 208; Life of Davis by his wife, vol. i. p. 697; "By telegrams and letters to every Southern State he [Davis] endeavored to postpone their action."—Ibid., vol. ii. p. 3; New York Times, January 23, cited in Moore's Rebellion Record, Rumors and Incidents, p. 20 ; Pike to New York Tribune, Washington, February 12.
2 See his Senate speech of January 7.
3 Ante, p. 213.
4 "My own opinion is," wrote William Gilmore Simms, May 21, 1860, "that the people of all the South are monstrously ahead of all their politicians."—Trent, p. 249. The Charleston Mercury said, January 17,1861: "If there is any one thing more than another disheartening and disgusting in the present juncture of affairs, it is the course of Southern politicians at Washington. . . . Southern senators upon the floor of Congress demean themselves by pitiable lamentations and lachrymose appeals to haughty, contemptuous, and openly threatening enemies —Republicans —Yankees. . . . Southern senators, representing directly sovereign States, must fall to begging, kneeling like very mendicants, for Yankee charity. . . . From first to last, in this great Southern movement for independence, the Southern politicians have been but stumbling blocks in the way of Southern advancement. Vain schemes of compromise upon compromise they have labored, concocted, and offered to their scoffing enemies."
It also said, February 7: "South Carolina warned the North, appealed to the South, still her prayers were in vain. Too many Southernpoliticians had been bought up. The people of the North judged the people of the South by the men they saw in the pestiferous atmosphere of Washington—a sad mistake."

Southern Confederacy speedily into operation. The course actually pursued had the best of precedents; the Constitution of 1787 had been ratified by conventions of the States without subsequent submission to the people, and it seemed fitting that the ties which its adoption had knit should be severed by similar sovereign bodies.1 Nor were the secret sessions of the conventions, when matters of the highest importance were considered, an indication of a desire to repress the so-called union sentiment. In Milledgeville, the capital of Georgia, men who flocked there to exert a pressure on the convention were enthusiastic for immediate secession, and had they been admitted to the galleries they would heartily have cheered the precipitators and cried down Johnson and Stephens.2 Revolutions always bring the radicals to the front, and we may safely presume that the element which was noted at Milledgeville preponderated in the other State capitals. The charge was freely made that intimidation bore a considerable part in the choice of a majority of delegates favoring secession, and that throughout the cotton States a veritable "reign of terror" held sway. While there may have been isolated cases of intimidation, the evidence does not show that this mode of carrying elections prevailed. The evolution of the secession movement proves that the employment of such a force would have been superfluous. A great leader had at the proper moment joined together the two ideas of the rightfulness of slavery and the sovereignty of the States, ideas which in that conjunction had been hitherto the property of agitators, of writers for the newspapers and the magazines. The ground being in a measure prepared, some at once received the doctrine gladly, while others accepted it because it was advocated by Calhoun. Then ensued in the cotton States the forming of a public opinion which, making
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1 South Carolina and Georgia, being of the original thirteen States, their secession ordinances were a repeal of the ordinances of the elder conventions which had ratified the Constitution of the United States.
2 Milledgeville correspondence New York Tribune, January 21.

allowance for certain differences between the two communities, was very like the development of the anti-slavery sentiment at the North, and when the provocation of Lincoln's election came, this opinion shaped the course of these seven States. It needed, as do all movements, leaders to give it expression, but planters and lawyers of local influence, village attorneys, cross-road stump-speakers, journalists, and the people acted on the men of national reputation instead of being led by them. It is very doubtful whether Davis, Toombs, Orr, and Benjamin, had they agreed with Stephens, could have prevented secession, for had they not headed the movement, the people would have found other leaders. So striking were the manifestations of public sentiment in the cotton States between November 6 and the date of the choice of delegates, that hardly a doubt existed as to what would be the result of the elections and the action of the conventions. In the conventions of four of the States a salutary minority existed, but when the momentous act was consummated, nearly every one who voted against secession signed the ordinances. Stephens and Herschel V. Johnson thus united with the majority, and the people by their demonstrations of joy showed that they approved the action of their representatives.

The extent to which the conspiracy theory has been held lies in a misconception of the nature of the so-called union minority in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana. Most of those who opposed immediate secession were against it because they still hoped to obtain in the Union some such guarantee as the Crittenden compromise; others, like Stephens, would have been satisfied with the repeal of the Personal Liberty acts. Of unconditional Union men, who by some writers are supposed to embrace all those voting for Bell or Douglas in I860,1 the number was insignificant. It
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1 Partly, perhaps, for the reason that they rate too highly the influence of Douglas and Bell on their former supporters in the cotton States. Bell had spoken for the Union. Bee letter of Belmont to John Forsyth, December 19, 1860.

was in the line, then, of a natural result that the people who constituted this minority, who believed that the South had grievances and that the States were sovereign, should bow themselves to the will of their States and devote their lives and fortunes to the carrying out of the policy now inaugurated.1
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1 On this subject see Life of Stephens, Johnston and Browne, p. 368 etseq.; Stephens's War between the States, vol. ii. pp. 127, 300 et seq.; Davis's Rise and Pall of the Confederate Government, vol. i. p. 200; letters of General Sherman to John Sherman from Alexandria, La., December 1, 1860, January 18, February 1, 1861, Century Magazine, November, 1892, p. 93 et seq.; letter of Harris, Journal of the Convention of Mississippi, p. 197; letters to the New York Tribune from its correspondent at Macon, January 1, Savannah, January 5, 7, 11, Milledgeville, January 19, 21; letter of Yancey, January 12, New York Tribune, January 19; Pike to the New York Tribune, Washington, January 5, 22, 30; article of Basil L. Gildersleeve, Atlantic Monthly, January, 1892, p. 81. "In the South, the leaders were behind the people in their purposes and their feelings. The vote for secession was carried throughout the South by the greatest popular majority that ever endorsed any national policy."—General D. H. Maury, Southern Historical Society Papers, vol. i. p. 426; Journal of the South Carolina Convention, p. 60. Per contra, see Greeley in the New York Tribune, January 14; letter to the Tribune from Huntsville, Ala., March 9; American Conflict, vol. i. p. 351; Recollections of a Busy Life, p. 398; National Intelligencer, December 22, 1860, January 13,18, 31, February 6; Richmond Whig, February 5; letter of Clemens, February 3, Official Records, vol. i. p. 447; President Lincoln's Message of July 4,1861; Pike's Prostrate State, p. 71 et seq.; Watson's Life in Confederate Army, p. 44 et seq.; The Iron Furnace, Aughey, p. 50; Roman's Beauregard, vol. i. p. 20. Bouligny, of Louisiana, elected by the American party, was the only representative from the cotton States who refused to withdraw from the House. His remarks showed a true devotion to the Union. Wigfall, of Texas, remained in the Senate, but he was a rank secessionist.
It is impossible for me to mention all the evidence I have considered before reaching the conclusion in the text. The different authorities pro and con are not always absolutely positive, and a satisfactory decision can only be arrived at after weighing them with circumspection. I feel an additional confidence in my statements for the reason that the careful historians Von Hoist and Schouler have come to the same conclusion. Von Hoist, vol. vii. p. 275; Schouler, vol. v. p. 509.
It is interesting to note that a hypothesis similar to the conspiracy theory prevailed in regard to the American Revolution. "Because statesmen like Dickinson and communities like Maryland were slow in believing that the right moment for a declaration of independence had come, the preposterous theory has been suggested that the American Revolution was the work of an unscrupulous and desperate minority, which, through intrigue mingled with violence, succeeded in forcing the reluctant majority to sanction its measures. Such a misconception has its root in an utter failure to comprehend the peculiar character of American political life."— John Fiske's American Revolution, vol. i. p. 195.
The features which I have found in the secession movement most inconsistent with this view are the suspicion of fraud concerning the Louisiana count (see Greeley's American Conflict, vol. i. p. 348; Watson's Confederate Army, p. 75; New York Tribune, April 4th), and the indefinite postponement in the Georgia convention by a vote of 168 to 127 of a resolution asking the governor "for information concerning the number of votes given by the people at the election for delegates to this convention." —Journal of the Convention, p. 27.

If, after the evidence I have already adduced, any one doubts that slavery was the sole cause of the war, and that, had it not existed, the doctrine of States-rights would never have been pushed to the extreme remedy of secession, let him consider the proceedings of these conventions, and give especial attention to the justifications of Mississippi and Georgia. The convention of Mississippi declared that " Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery. ... A blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. . . . There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union." Toombs's report, adopted by the Georgia convention, was of the same tenor.1

In some cases before the adoption of the ordinances of secession, and in other cases afterwards, the forts, arsenals, and other property of the United States within their limits, were taken possession of by the cotton States.2 To this there was one notable exception. Lieutenant Slemmer, with one company of artillery, had charge of Fort Barrancas near Pensacola, Florida, but, foreseeing the direction of events, he desired to throw his force into Fort Pickens, a large,
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1 Journal of the Mississippi Convention, p. 86; Journal of the Georgia Convention, p. 104. General J. D. Cox in his article, "Why the Men of 1861 fought for the Union," makes an effective use of the Mississippi declaration, Atlantic Monthly, March, 1892.
2 Official Records, vol. i. pp. 318, 826, 331, 489, 502.

strong work then unoccupied, which commanded the harbor. The day before Florida seceded he opportunely received an order from General Scott, which authorized such a movement, and on January 10, with the co-operation of the commander of the navy-yard, he spiked the guns of Barrancas and, with his company and thirty-one seamen, occupied Fort Pickens.1

In the meantime the cotton States, by their legislatures or by their conventions, and in some cases by enactments of both bodies, were putting themselves on a military footing.2

As previously mentioned, Hayne, Attorney General of South Carolina, and Lieutenant Hall, an officer of Anderson's, arrived at Washington January 13, on a joint mission concerning Fort Sumter.3 This concurrent act operated in the eyes of Anderson, of Governor Pickens, and of the President as a quasi-truce, during which South Carolina was in honor bound not to attack the fort, and the obligation rested on the United States government not to send reinforcements without notice. Hayne brought a demand from Pickens for the surrender of Sumter. The revolutionary senators now interfered, and a three-sided negotiation between themselves, Hayne, and the President followed. The senators aimed to restrain the impetuosity of South Carolina by urging her not to begin the war by striking the first blow, and to secure delay in order that the South might make adequate preparation for the conflict, if it were inevitable. They endeavored to bring about an agreement between the President and Pickens, by which he should promise not to send
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1 Official Records, vol. i. p. 333 et seq.
2 McPherson, p. 3 et seq.; Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia for 1861, pp. 314, 427; report of Adjutant-General of Mississippi, Journal of the Convention, p. 221; Journal of the Georgia Convention, pp. 376, 390, 396; Journal of the Louisiana Convention, p. 247; Davis's Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, vol. i. p. 228; Recollections of Mississippi and Mississippians, Reuben Davis, p. 404; Life of Jefferson Davis by his wife, vol. ii. p. 8.
3 See p. 248.

reinforcements, and the governor should agree not to attack Sumter, but should permit Anderson to obtain necessary supplies from Charleston, and have free communication with his government. Buchanan declined to enter into such an engagement, but assured the senators that as Anderson was now making no request for more troops and felt secure in his position, an additional force would not for the present be sent; yet at the same time he plainly told them that he should make every effort to reinforce the Sumter garrison if Anderson's safety required it. Still, the senators advised Hayne not to present the demand for the surrender of the fort until he had submitted the whole correspondence to Charleston: this counsel he followed. Receiving fresh instructions January 30, Hayne delivered the next day to the President South Carolina's demand dated January 12, for the possession of Fort Sumter. February 6 the President gave his answer through a communication of the Secretary of War to Hayne. Holt refused to deliver up the fort, and ended his letter with an emphatic and true statement. "If," he said, "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." 1 In answer to this communication
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1 See Letters of Jefferson Davis to Pickens, January 13, 20, Crawford, pp. 263, 265; letter of Wigfall, Hemphill, Yulee, Mallory, Davis, Clay, Fitzpatrick, Iverson, Slidell, and Benjamin to Hayne, January 15; Hayne's reply, January 17; Slidell, Fitzpatrick, and Mallory to the President, January 19; Holt's reply, January 22; Hayne to the senators, January 24; Slidell to the President, January 28; Hayne to the President, January 31, submitting with it Pickens's demand of January 12; Holt's reply, February 6. This correspondence may be found in Report No. 91, 2d Session 36th Congress, p. 58 et seg.; Judge Magrath to Hayne, January 26, Crawford, p. 222; conversation of Senator Clay with the President, January 16, Buchanan's memorandum, Curtis, vol. ii. p. 452; Buchanan's Defence, p. 194 etseq. Pickens in his demand says the pledge of the State will be given that the valuation of the public property of the United States within Fort Sumter "will be accounted for by this State upon the adjustment of its relations with the United States." Holt in his reply treated it as an offer "to buy Fort Sumter and contents." Hayne indignantly repudiated such a construction.

communication of Holt, Hayne sent an insulting reply addressed directly to the President, which he refused to receive.1

Buchanan was disposed to regard sacredly the quasi-truce agreed upon between Anderson and Pickens; yet had not the advices from Anderson and Foster at this time been against sending reinforcements,2 there is no question but that the pressure exerted upon him by Black, Stanton, Holt, and Dix would have caused him to terminate the truce by the proper notice, and to follow up the policy which he had begun with the new year. Anderson now received the warm approval of his government for having transferred his force from Moultrie to Sumter; he was enjoined to continue "to act strictly on the defensive," but was told in a despatch from Holt: "Whenever, in your judgment, additional supplies or reinforcements are necessary for your safety, or for a successful defence of the fort, you will at once communicate the fact to this department, and a prompt and vigorous effort will be made to forward them."3 Somewhat later the President ordered an expedition
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1 Buchanan made on the letter the following endorsement: "The character of this letter is such that it cannot be received. Colonel Hayne having left the city before it was sent to the President, it is returned to him by the first mail."—Buchanan's Defence, p. 205. The letter is printed by Crawford, p. 231.
2 "I shall not ask for any increase of my command, because I do not know what the ulterior views of the government are. We are now, or soon will be, cut off from all communication, unless by means of a powerful fleet, which shall have the ability to carry the batteries at the mouth of this harbor."—Anderson to Cooper, January 6. "I do not consider it good policy to send reinforcements here at this time. We can hold our own as long as it is necessary to do so."—Foster to Totten, January 14. "I do hope that no attempt will be made by our friends to throw supplies in; their doing so would do more harm than good."—Anderson to Cooper, January 30, Official Records, vol. i. pp. 133,139,159.
3 Holt to Anderson, January 10, 16, ibid., pp. 137, 140. "Had I demanded reinforcements while Mr. Holt was in the War Department, I know he would have despatched them at all hazards. I did not ask them, because I knew that the moment it should be known here that additional troops were coming, they would assault me and thus inaugurate civil war."--Anderson to a lady friend, Crawford, p. 290.

for the reinforcement of Sumter to be prepared at New York, to sail on telegraphic notice from the Secretary of War;1 but the order was not sent, as the effort of Virginia to heal the breach between the two sections, which resulted in the Peace Convention, made such an attempt undesirable. While from a military point of view it might have been better to send additional troops to Charleston in January, since the federal government could then have held Sumter throughout the war, yet, as the sequel shows, from a political point of view everything was gained by retaining possession of the fort until the 4th of March. The revolution had progressed with such rapidity that the clearly-defined policy of November and December had in many aspects now become questionable.

As soon as the news of Lieutenant Slemmer's exploit in occupying Fort Pickens and of the seizure, by Florida troops, of the other forts and navy-yard in Pensacola harbor reached Washington, the government sent from Fortress Monroe, as a reinforcement, the Brooklyn, with a company of artillery, military stores, and provisions.' Previously the Secretary of the Navy had ordered other ships of war to Pensacola, but before any of them reached there, through the instrumentality of Senator Mallory, of Florida, and other senators, a "quasi-truce was entered into with the President, by which he agreed not to disembark the troops on the Brooklyn, and the commander of the Florida forces promised not to attack the fort. It was a part of the agreement that the provisions should be landed; at the same time an order was given that the men-of-war should remain on
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1 The first suggestion of this that I find from the President was on January 30, Curtis, vol. ii. p. 474; see Buchanan's Defence, p. 209.
2 This was January 24.

the station, exercising the utmost vigilance, and in the event of an attack be prepared to reinforce the fort and co-operate with Slemmer in repelling it.1 This agreement, having the approval of a part of the cabinet, and of General Scott, was carried out.2

While Buchanan's administration of affairs after January 1 deserves commendation, the merit of it was largely, if not entirely, due to Black, Stanton, Holt, and Dix. A man of sixty-nine rarely makes so thorough-going a change unless overmastered by altered influences. His irresolute conduct of November and December, 1860, chiefly resulted from his anxious desire to avoid the commencement of the Civil "War so long as he remained President. Although this was mingled with the eminently statesmanlike opinion that the North ought to keep from firing the first shot, yet the contrast between the period before and after January 1 brings to mind
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1 Curtis, vol. ii. p. 461; Buchanan's Defence, p. 214; Toucey's testimony, cited by Nicolay and Hay, vol. iii. p. 164.
2 Buchanan says, of all the members of his cabinet, Defence, p. 216. This is probably a mistake. Buchanan's Defence, or, as he entitled it, "Buchanan's Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion," was written shortly after the beginning of the Civil War, and parts of it, if not the whole, submitted to Stanton, Black, and Dix. Stanton wrote him, July 16,1861, regarding this part of it, that their recollection was that this Fort Pickens quasi-truce was opposed by them, Curtis, vol. ii. p. 558; see, also, C. F. Black, p. 17. Stanton said that the exception was of "no material consequence," and added: "I do not know that there is now any reason to question the wisdom of the measure; it may have saved Pickens from immediate attack at that time; and I have understood that General Scott says that Pickens could not have been successfully defended if it had then been attacked, and that he speaks of this as a blunder of the confederates. In this view the wisdom of the measure is fully vindicated; and at the time it was supported by the Secretary of War and Secretary of the Navy, to whose departments the subject appertained." The fact that Fort Pickens was held by the United States during the whole of the war of secession adds force to Stanton's statement of July, 1861.
Reinforcements in January were sent to Fort Taylor, Key West, and Fort Jefferson, Tortugas Island; this made them secure against capture, Buchanan's Defence, p. 218. These two, with Sumter and Pickens, were all the military posts in the cotton States that remained in the possession of the federal government March 4.

the difference between lame and apologetic measures and the policy of a vigorous defence prompted by strong patriotic and national sentiments. We may easily imagine frequent conversations, in which Buchanan, showing a disposition to falter, was nerved to pursue the correct course by the decided opinions of his four efficient advisers. Especially potent must have been the influence of Black and of Dix, whose personal and social relations with the President bordered on intimacy. Dix was his guest at the White House, and rarely did the two before going to bed fail to have a confidential conversation on the questions of the day. He has left his impression of Buchanan gained from this familiar intercourse. "I was strongly impressed with his conscientiousness," he wrote; "but he was timid and credulous. His confidence was easily gained, and it was not difficult for an artful man to deceive him."1 Black's friendly letter of January 22 to the President is a whole chapter of pleading for a more resolute disposition and prompter action in coping with the secessionists.2 In many of Holt's despatches and letters one seems to detect words and sentences added, on Buchanan's suggestion, to qualify an otherwise energetic paper.3 Black, Stanton, Holt, and Dix were strong counsellors for a President in so trying a time, and any one of them would have guided the ship of state with a firmer hand than Buchanan. In executive matters, when prompt action is needed, there is a great difference between being in a position where one can act and where one can only advise. Black, in his letters to a friend, to General Scott, and to the President, showed the stuff of which he was made, and what he would have done had he been able to take the reins.4 Stanton's after-career
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1 Letter of March 31, 1865, Life of Dix, vol. i. p. 372. This letter, in obedience to Dix's request, was not published until after Buchanan's and his own death.
2 This is printed by Crawford, p. 241.
3 A good example of Buchanan's extreme care in the use of a warlike force is seen in Holt's letter to General Scott, January 26, Official Records, vol. i. p. 354.
4 Letter to Parsons, January 17, C. F. Black, p. 21; to General Scott, January 16, Official Records, vol. i. p. 140; to the President, January 22, Crawford, p. 241.

demonstrated the latent executive ability in a man then regarded as only an able lawyer. Dix came to the front by sending to a treasury official at New Orleans a despatch that thrilled the Northern heart: "If any one attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot."1 Partisanship seems to have been sunk by these four members of the cabinet. Upon them had devolved the care of their country's honor, and worthily did they acquit themselves.2 Black conferred publicly with Seward.3 Stanton, through an intermediary,4 also had confidential communication with him, and once at midnight had a secret consultation with Sumner.5 The country now had gained confidence in the administration. New York, Massachusetts, and Maine, the governors and legislatures of which were Republican, tendered to the President their entire resources of men and money to uphold the authority of the federal government.6

Although the Crittenden compromise received its deathblow on January 16, by the vote of the Senate, it did not so appear to Douglas, Crittenden, and other of its advocates.7 The basis of this hope was that a number of Republicans
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1 Dix sent this without submitting it to the President. On a point involved he did consult Stanton and General Scott. For a very interesting account of the sending of the despatch, see Life of Dix, vol. i. p. 370.
2 "It undoubtedly would be a great party move as between Democrats and Black Republicans to let the latter have a civil war of their own making. ... Is not the business altogether beyond party considerations? For South Carolina compels us to choose between the destruction of the government and some kind of defence. They have smitten us on one cheek; shall we turn the other ?"—Black to Parsons, January 17, C. F. Black, p. 21.
3 Black to Wilson, ibid., p. 279.
4 Peter H. Watson, afterwards Assistant Secretary of War.
5 Letters of Seward and Sumner, printed by Henry Wilson in article "Black and Stanton," Atlantic Monthly, October, 1870; Life of Seward, vol. ii. p. 492. "Sumner. . . conferred often with General Scott, . . . Stanton, Holt, and Dix."—Edward L. Pierce, vol. iv. p 23.
6 Appletons' Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, pp. 436, 452, 519; Congressional Globe, p. 597.
7 See letter of Douglas, Crittenden, Boteler, and Harris, January 25, and letter of Millson, both to Barbour, Richmond Whig, January 29, cited by National Intelligencer.

under the leadership of Seward, sufficient to carry it, would come to its support. "We have positive information from Washington," declared the Tribune, January 29, in a double-leaded editorial, "that a compromise on the basis of Mr. Crittenden's is sure to be carried through Congress either this week or the next, provided a very fewmore Republicans can be got to enlist in the enterprise. We say a very few more, for we have reason to believe that several gentlemen who have hitherto enjoyed the confidence of the Republican party are actively engaged in the endeavor to convert their colleagues to their new faith."1 Weed in his journal was advocating with renewed strength the Crittenden plan, and the rumor that Seward favored it could not be killed.2 Yet in no public utterance nor private letter which has been printed did he assert that he would sustain it. In fact, denials, apparently authoritative, appeared in the press.3 But the story could be scotched only; and this seems to suggest either a wavering mind on Seward's part, or else
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1 "My apprehension has been that the Crittenden measure would find favor among our friends. At one time there was a little danger of it. There is little or none now."—C. F. Adams to F. W. Bird, February 11, MS. I am indebted to Edward L. Pierce for a copy of the letter from which this extract is made.
2 "Senator Seward, in his speech of Thursday last, declares his readiness to renounce Republican principles for the sake of the Union."—Editorial, New York Tribune, February 4. The speech referred to is that of January 31, a strong argument, which ought to be read by all students of the period, Works, vol. iv. p. 670; Congressional Globe, p. 657. "The Republican party ... is threatened by betrayal. It is to be divided and sacrificed if the thing can be done. We are boldly told it must be suppressed, and a Union party rise upon its ruins."—New York Tribune, February 5. See, also, the article in the same issue on the backing down of Seward, where the writer asks, "Has he forgotten the 7th of March and the fate of Daniel Webster?" "Weed goes with the Breckinridge Democrats. . . . The same is true, though less decidedly, of Mr. Seward."—Ibid., February 6. "Oily Gammon Seward, aware that intimidation will not do, is going to resort to the gentle powers of seduction."—Washington correspondent of Charleston Mercury, February 19.
3 See anecdote first appearing in the Boston Daily Advertiser, February 2, in a Washington letter of January 31, and copied in the Albany EveningJournal, presumed to be correct by the New York Tribune of February 15.

that intimations, given out, perhaps, in the exuberance of after-dinner conversation, received a more positive interpretation than he meant to convey.1 His own defence of his conduct should receive attentive consideration. "Twelve years ago " (1850 was the year he had in mind), he wrote," freedom was in danger, and the Union was not. I spoke then so singly for freedom that short-sighted men inferred that I was disloyal to the Union. . .. To-day, practically, freedom is not in danger, and union is. . . . With the attempt to maintain union by civil war, wantonly brought on, there would be danger of reaction against the administration charged with the preservation of both freedom and union. Now, therefore, I speak singly for union, striving, if possible, to save it peaceably; if not possible, then to cast the responsibility upon the party of slavery. For this singleness of speech I am now suspected of infidelity to freedom." 2

The motive now for a compromise was to retain the border States. The border States' proposition, which varied but little from the Crittenden plan, preserving its essential feature of a division by the Missouri line of the territory between slavery and freedom, attracted considerable attention.3 With the prospect of keeping the border States went the hope that the cotton States might return. Laudable as may have been the aim of the compromisers, their hopes were illusory. Nothing less than the Crittenden compromise could have kept the cotton States from seceding, and something might be said in favor of it as an agreement between the North and the South; a good argument, too, could be made for its submission to a popular vote; but to
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1 The "Public Man," in his entry of February 8, speaks of the singular confidence of Seddon of Virginia (afterwards Secretary of War of the Southern Confederacy) "in Mr. Seward, and his mysterious allusions to the skilful plans which Mr. Seward is maturing for an adjustment of our difficulties."—North American Review, August, 1879, p. 135.
2 Letter of Seward to Dr. Thompson of the Independent. Life of Seward, vol. ii. p. 507.
3 See Harper's Magazine, March, 1861, p. 547; McPherson, p. 73; Pike to the New York Tribune, January 31; Letter of Belmont to Seward, January 17.

offer it to seven seceded States to chew upon would indeed have been base. While satisfactory to Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina, the composition to be effective involved consent to peaceable separation of the cotton States, since, otherwise, at the first stroke of war, Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina would certainly join the section to which they were united by ties of blood, and by the bond of a common interest. The majority of the Republicans, who were fitly represented by Chase and Sumner, were consistent, and after the middle of January, apparently, pursued in the main the only wise and possible course. Sumner, having withstood the pleading of Edward Everett for compromise,1 declared in the Senate: "There is but one thing now for the North to do. It is to stand firm in their position."' "The election of Lincoln," said Chase, in the Peace Convention, "must be regarded as the triumph of principles cherished in the hearts of the people of the free States. . . . Chief among the principles is the restriction of slavery within State limits; not war upon slavery within those limits, but fixed opposition to its extension beyond them.. . . By a fair and unquestionable majority we have secured that triumph. Do you think we, who represent this majority, will throw it away? Do you think the people would sustain us if we undertook to throw it away ?"3

Virginia, whose share in forming the Union had been greater than that of any other one State, was loath to see that great work shattered, and now made a supreme effort to save it. Her general assembly by joint resolutions invited the other States, whether slaveholding or non-slaveholding,
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1 Speech of George William Curtis, Boston Herald, August 26, 1889; Pierce's Memoir of Sumner, vol. iv. p. 18.
2 February 12. See, also, extracts from his letters printed in Pierce's Memoir, vol. iv. pp. 16, 17.
3 Chittenden's Report of the Proceedings, p. 428. A previous observation of Chase drew from ex-President Tyler, the president of the convention and a fit representative of Virginia, the remark, "You have, at all events, established your character as an honest and frank man."—Letters and Times of the Tylers, vol. ii. p. 605.

to send commissioners to meet hers in convention at Washington, February 4, to make an attempt "to adjust the present unhappy controversies;" and it gave formal notice that the Crittenden compromise "would be accepted by the people of this commonwealth."1 It named ex-President Tyler as the head of the Virginia delegates; and it also appointed him a commissioner to the President and Robertson a commissioner to South Carolina, with the intent to preclude a collision of arms pending the convention proposed. These gentlemen repaired to their posts of duty and used their influence and that of their State to maintain the status quo.2 Twenty-one States accepted the invitation of Virginia and sent commissioners, appointed either by their legislatures or by their governors, to the Peace Convention.3

On the same day, February 4, that the Peace Convention met at Washington, delegates from six cotton States 4 assembled at Montgomery to form a Southern confederacy, making it evident, could the country then have grasped the event as we can do, that an attempt at compromise was futile, and that the North must choose one of the alternatives: peaceable separation, or war. South Carolina, first in secession, also took the initiative in proposing this congress.5 Constant communication between the governors,
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1 These resolutions are printed in the Congressional Globe, p. 601. One important addition to the Crittenden compromise, suggested, had already been made by the Powell amendment; another, indicated, is for our purpose unimportant.
2 For an account of Tyler's mission see Letters and Times of the Tylers, vol. ii. p. 587; Buchanan's Defence, p. 206; Curtis, vol. ii. p. 472; see despatches of Tyler to Robertson and Pickens, Official Records, vol. i. pp. 253,254.
3 The States not represented were the seven cotton States, Arkansas, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, California, and Oregon. See Chittenden pp. 18,453.
4 South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana. Texas did not pass her ordinance until February 1, and was now waiting the submission of it to the people, the appointed day being February 23.
5 The resolutions of invitation were offered January 3. Journal of the Convention, p. 173; Charleston Mercury, January 8, and New Orleans Crescent cited by it, January 3

legislatures, and conventions of the seceding States had been maintained by commissioners with mandates passing to and fro, and the sympathy between the communities being complete, this obvious mode of procedure was at once adopted. The deputies received their appointment from the conventions;1 each State had the same number as it had electoral votes under the Federal Constitution. Alexander H. Stephens, himself a delegate, after the experience of a month, wrote: "Upon the whole, this congress, taken all in all, is the ablest, soberest, most intelligent, and conservative body I was ever in. .. . Nobody looking on would ever take this congress for a set of revolutionists."2 The absence of Yancey would seem to denote that the revolution had arrived at the point where agitators were thrust aside and statesmen rose to take direction of the movement. The congress selected Howell Cobb as its presiding officer, and one of its rules provided that questions should be decided by a vote of the States, each State being entitled to one vote.3 February 8, a constitution for the provisional government of the Confederate States 4 was adopted, and on the next day, by a unanimous vote of the six States present, Jefferson Davis was elected president and
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1 Journal of Mississippi Convention, pp. 39, 51; Journal of Georgia Convention, pp. 55, 63 ; Journal of Louisiana Convention, pp. 19, 21; Appletons' Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, pp. 11, 314.
2 To his brother, March 3, Johnston and Browne, p. 392. This is inconsistent with Stephens's statements of February 2 and March 1, see pp. 384, 391, but as he endorses the opinion cited in the text in his second volume of The War Between the States (p. 325), finished in 1870, we may regard these inconsistent expressions as the indulgence merely in a pessimistic strain to which he was given. Among the noted deputies were: Toombs, Martin J. Crawford, and Howell Cobb, of Georgia; R. B. Rhett, R. W. Barnwell, L. M. Keitt, J. Chestnut, C. G. Memminger, W. P. Miles, and W. W. Boyce, of South Carolina. For a list of all the deputies, ibid., p. 324.
3 For the rules, ibid., p. 710.
4 This is printed by Davis, vol. i. p. 640, and by Stephens, vol. ii. p. 714.

Alexander H. Stephens, vice-president. Toombs, Cobb, and Stephens had also been talked of for the chief place, but after a short consideration of the merits and failings of each man proposed, the selection of the ablest statesman of the South fitly issued to meet the conditions confronting the new government.1 Although Davis had always held the doctrine of states rights in its extreme form, yet at this time he was looked upon by his Southern associates, when from theory they must proceed to action, as eminently conservative.2 When he writes that he did not want the presidency we need not think that he affected the part of Cincinnatus, but may readily believe him sincere, and that he would have much preferred a high rank in the army.3 Receiving his summons while at work on his Brierfield plantation,4 he went promptly to Montgomery, and at the formal ceremony of his inauguration, February 18, delivered a carefully prepared address. It was, he averred," wanton aggression on the part of others," that justified the action of the Southern people. "We have vainly endeavored to secure tranquillity and obtain respect for the rights to which we were entitled. As a necessity, not a choice, we have resorted to the remedy of separation."5 With remarkable astuteness
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1 See Johnston and Browne, pp. 385, 389; Stephens, vol. ii. p. 328; Davis, vol. i. p. 236. For an objection to Toombs, see Life of Toombs, Pleasant Stovall, p. 218; to Cobb, see Stephens, vol. ii. p. 331. A private letter of Stephens, written February 8, shows clearly his position at this time, Cleveland, p. 161.
2 See Stephens's testimony, vol. ii. p. 333. Stephens, however, thought Toombs, of all proposed, the best fitted for the position; as to Davis's conservatism, see Campbell's and Kenner's testimony, Davis, vol. i. pp. 238, 239; Life by Mrs. Davis, vol. ii. p. 11.
3 See Davis, vol. i. p. 230; testimony of Clayton and Campbell, ibid., p. 237; Stephens, vol. ii. p. 328; Mrs. Davis, vol. ii. p. 18.
4 Ibid.
5 Moore's Rebellion Record, vol. i., Docs., p. 31; Davis, p. 232. "The inaugural address . . . has been hailed with satisfaction throughout the length and breadth of the South. Let the people accord to his administration a hearty, united, and generous support."—Charleston Mercury, February 21. "The United States of America are dissolved forever. 'Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him well.' But a sad rogue he was."—Montgomery Correspondent, ibid., February 18.

he made not the slightest allusion to slavery. By a section of the provisional constitution, the African slave-trade had been prohibited.1 Thus did the cotton States and their president show that they realized that the public opinion of Christendom 2 must be taken into account, and that they must not let slip the slightest chance to justify their attempt at revolution and to belie its real character.

The Confederate provisional congress, having constituted a government, proceeded in a systematic way to provide for its orderly administration. Executive departments were created, and, looking to the possibility of a war with the United States, acts providing military means were passed. "An act to raise money for the support of the government" authorized the president to borrow on bonds of the Confederate States $15,000,000 at eight per cent., and imposed an export duty of one eighth of one cent per pound on raw cotton, pledging this tax to the payment of the interest and principal of the loan.3 By a general statute the United States Tariff act of 1857 was continued in force.4 A
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1 The Charleston Mercury of February 12 did not like this provision being incorporated in the constitution, but was willing to prohibit the foreign slave-trade by legislative enactment.
2 "One of their chief motives for seceding is to be able to renew the slave-trade." — London Economist, cited by New York Tribune, February 6. Davis had clearer ideas of policy than his congress. February 25, in secret session, the congress passed a bill in relation to the slave-trade, and to punish persons offending therein, by the votes of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and South Carolina ; Mississippi voting nay. Davis vetoed this, as the provisions were not as stringent as the constitution required. Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina voted to pass the bill over the veto, while Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas sustained their president.—Journal of the Provisional Congress, MSS. War Department Archives. For Davis's veto message, see Appletons' Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, p. 160.
3 Approved February 28. Statutes at Large, Provisional Congress, C. S. A., p. 42.
4 Adopted February 9, ibid., p. 27. This was not liked by the Charleston Mercury. It said: "The tariff of '57 is odious and oppressive in its discriminations. . . . Free-trade is the true policy of the Confederate States" —February 12. Some other statutes passed were: An act to buy munitions of war, February 20, Statutes at Large, Provisional Congress, C. S. A., p. 28; an act to provide the rates of postage, Feb, 23, p. 34; an act looking to the control of the military operations in all of the States, to receive from tie States the arms and munitions of war acquired from the United States, and to receive into the service forces of the States for any time not less than twelve months, February 28, ibid., p. 42. Texas was admitted into the Confederacy, March 2, ibid., p. 44.

resolution to assume all questions between the States of the Confederacy and the federal government relating to forts, arsenals, and other property acquired from the United States was adopted,1 and at once communicated by telegraph to Governor Pickens.' The Congress also declared its opinion that "immediate steps should be taken to obtain possession of forts Sumter and Pickens . . . either by negotiations or force," and authorized Davis to carry the resolution into effect.3 February 22, in accordance therewith, Davis, on the part of the Confederate government, took charge of the military operations in Charleston harbor.4 Another resolution was passed which provided for the appointment by the president of three commissioners to be sent to Washington for the purpose of negotiating a treaty of amity with the federal government.5 Davis appointed A. B. Roman, of Louisiana, Martin J. Crawford, of Georgia, and John Forsyth, of Alabama, supporters in 1860, respectively, of Bell, Breckinridge, and Douglas.6

Davis selected for his cabinet Toombs, of Georgia, as Secretary of State; Memminger, of South Carolina, for the Treasury; L. P. Walker, of Alabama, for the War, and Mallory, of Florida, for the Navy departments; J. H. Reagan, of Texas, as Postmaster General; and Benjamin, of Louisiana, for Attorney-General.7
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1 February 12, ibid., p. 91.
2 See letter of Pickens to Cobb, February 13, Official Records, vol. i. p. 254.
3 Passed, February 15, ibid., p. 258. This is not printed in Statutes at Large.
4 See letter of Pickens to Davis, February 27, Davis to Whiting, February 23, ibid., p. 258.
5 Adopted February 15, Statutes at Large, Provisional Congress, C. S. A., p. 92.
6 Davis desired Stephens to head the commission, but he declined. Johnston and Browne, p. 389.
7 Davis would have preferred Barnwell for the State and Toombs for the Treasury departments. The South Carolina delegation having previously recommended Memminger for the Treasury, Barnwell declined the offer, see Davis, vol. i. p. 242. Toombs at first declined his appointment, but afterwards accepted, Johnston and Browne, p. 387.


Source: Rhodes, James Ford. History of the United States; from the compromise of 1850 to the final restoration of home rule at the south in 1877, v.3. New York: Macmillan, 1910 [c1892].