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Title: The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Author: Jefferson Davis
Release Date: November 16, 2006 [EBook #19831]
Last Updated: January 14, 2013
Language: English
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THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT
VOLUME ONE (OF TWO)
By
JEFFERSON DAVIS
PREFACE.
The object of this work has been from historical data to show that the
Southern States had rightfully the power to withdraw from a Union into
which they had, as sovereign communities, voluntarily entered; that the
denial of that right was a violation of the letter and spirit of the
compact between the States; and that the war waged by the Federal
Government against the seceding States was in disregard of the
limitations of the Constitution, and destructive of the principles of
the Declaration of Independence.
The author, from his official position, may claim to have known much of
the motives and acts of his countrymen immediately before and during the
war of 1861-'65, and he has sought to furnish material far the future
historian, who, when the passions and prejudices of the day shall have
given place to reason and sober thought, may, better than a
contemporary, investigate the causes, conduct, and results of the war.
The incentive to undertake the work now offered to the public was the
desire to correct misapprehensions created by industriously circulated
misrepresentations as to the acts and purposes of the people and the
General Government of the Confederate States. By the reiteration of such
unappropriate terms as "rebellion" and "treason," and the asseveration
that the South was levying war against the United States, those ignorant
of the nature of the Union, and of the reserved powers of the States,
have been led to believe that the Confederate States were in the
condition of revolted provinces, and that the United States were forced
to resort to arms for the preservation of their existence. To those who
knew that the Union was formed for specific enumerated purposes, and
that the States had never surrendered their sovereignty it was a
palpable absurdity to apply to them, or to their citizens when obeying
their mandates, the terms "rebellion" and "treason"; and, further, it is
shown in the following pages that the Confederate States, so far from
making war or seeking to destroy the United States, as soon as they had
an official organ, strove earnestly, by peaceful recognition, to
equitably adjust all questions growing out of the separation from their
late associates.
Another great perversion of truth has been the arraignment of the men
who participated in the formation of the Confederacy and who bore arms
in its defense, as the instigators of a controversy leading to disunion.
Sectional issues appear conspicuously in the debates of the Convention
which framed the Federal Constitution, and its many compromises were
designed to secure an equilibrium between the sections, and to preserve
the interests as well as the liberties of the several States. African
servitude at that time was not confined to a section, but was
numerically greater in the South than in the North, with a tendency to
its continuance in the former and cessation in the latter. It therefore
thus early presents itself as a disturbing element, and the provisions
of the Constitution, which were known to be necessary for its adoption,
bound all the States to recognize and protect that species of property.
When at a subsequent period there arose in the Northern States an
antislavery agitation, it was a harmless and scarcely noticed movement
until political demagogues seized upon it as a means to acquire power.
Had it been left to pseudo-philanthropists and fanatics, most zealous
where least informed, it never could have shaken the foundations of the
Union and have incited one section to carry fire and sword into the
other. That the agitation was political in its character, and was
clearly developed as early as 1803, it is believed has been established
in these pages. To preserve a sectional equilibrium and to maintain the
equality of the States was the effort on one side, to acquire empire was
the manifest purpose on the other. This struggle began before the men of
the Confederacy were born; how it arose and how it progressed it has
been attempted briefly to show. Its last stage was on the question of
territorial governments; and, if in this work it has not been
demonstrated that the position of the South was justified by the
Constitution and the equal rights of the people of all the States, it
must be because the author has failed to present the subject with a
sufficient degree of force and clearness.
In describing the events of the war, space has not permitted, and the
loss of both books and papers has prevented, the notice of very many
entitled to consideration, as well for the humanity as the gallantry of
our men in the unequal combats they fought. These numerous omissions, it
is satisfactory to know, the official reports made at the time and the
subsequent contributions which have been and are being published by the
actors, will supply more fully and graphically than could have been done
in this work.
Usurpations of the Federal Government have been presented, not in a
spirit of hostility, but as a warning to the people against the dangers
by which their liberties are beset. When the war ceased, the pretext on
which it had been waged could no longer be alleged. The emancipation
proclamation of Mr. Lincoln, which, when it was issued, he humorously
admitted to be a nullity, had acquired validity by the action of the
highest authority known to our institutions--the people assembled in
their several State Conventions. The soldiers of the Confederacy had
laid down their arms, had in good faith pledged themselves to abstain
from further hostile operations, and had peacefully dispersed to their
homes; there could not, then, have been further dread of them by the
Government of the United States. The plea of necessity could, therefore,
no longer exist for hostile demonstration against the people and States
of the deceased Confederacy. Did vengeance, which stops at the grave,
subside? Did real peace and the restoration of the States to their
former rights and positions follow, as was promised on the restoration
of the Union? Let the recital of the invasion of the reserved powers of
the States, or the people, and the perversion of the republican form of
government guaranteed to each State by the Constitution, answer the
question. For the deplorable fact of the war, for the cruel manner in
which it was waged, for the sad physical and yet sadder moral results it
produced, the reader of these pages, I hope, will admit that the South,
in the forum of conscience, stands fully acquitted.
Much of the past is irremediable; the best hope for a restoration in the
future to the pristine purity and fraternity of the Union, rests on the
opinions and character of the men who are to succeed this generation:
that they maybe suited to that blessed work, one, whose public course is
ended, invokes them to draw their creed from the fountains of our
political history, rather than from the lower stream, polluted as it has
been by self-seeking place-hunters and by sectional strife.
THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS.
Introduction
PART I.
CHAPTER I.
African Servitude.--A Retrospect.--Early Legislation with Regard to the
Slave-Trade.--The Southern States foremost in prohibiting it.--A Common
Error corrected.--The Ethical Question never at Issue in Sectional
Controversies.--The Acquisition of Louisiana.--The Missouri
Compromise.--The Balance of Power.--Note.--The Indiana Case.
CHAPTER II.
The Session of 1849-'50.--The Compromise Measures.--Virtual Abrogation
of the Missouri Compromise.--The Admission of California.--The Fugitive
Slave Law.--Death of Mr. Calhoun.--Anecdote of Mr. Clay.
CHAPTER III.
Reëlection to the Senate.--Political Controversies in
Mississippi.--Action of the Democratic State Convention.--Defeat of the
State-Rights Party.--Withdrawal of General Quitman and Nomination of the
Author as Candidate for the Office of Governor.--The Canvass and its
Result.--Retirement to Private Life.
CHAPTER IV.
The Author enters the Cabinet.--Administration of the War
Department.--Surveys for a Pacific Railway.--Extension of the
Capitol.--New Regiments organized.--Colonel Samuel Cooper,
Adjutant-General.--A Bit of Civil-Service Reform.--Reëlection to the
Senate.--Continuity of the Pierce Cabinet.--Character of Franklin
Pierce.
CHAPTER V.
The Territorial Question.--An Incident at the White House.--The Kansas
and Nebraska Bill.--The Missouri Compromise abrogated in 1850, not in
1854.--Origin of "Squatter Sovereignty."--Sectional Rivalry and its
Consequences.--The Emigrant Aid Societies.--"The Bible and Sharpe's
Rifles."--False Pretensions as to Principle.--The Strife in Kansas.--A
Retrospect.--The Original Equilibrium of Power and its Overthrow.--
Usurpations of the Federal Government.--The Protective Tariff.--
Origin and Progress of Abolitionism.--Who were the Friends of
the Union?--An Illustration of Political Morality.
CHAPTER VI.
Agitation continued.--Political Parties: their Origin, Changes, and
Modifications.--Some Account of the "Popular Sovereignty," or
"Non-Intervention," Theory.--Rupture of the Democratic Party.--The John
Brown Raid.--Resolutions introduced by the Author into the Senate on the
Relations of the States, the Federal Government, and the Territories;
their Discussion and Adoption.
CHAPTER VII.
A Retrospect.--Growth of Sectional Rivalry.--The Generosity of
Virginia.--Unequal Accessions of Territory.--The Tariff and its
Effects.--The Republican Convention of 1860, its Resolutions and its
Nominations.--The Democratic Convention at Charleston, its Divisions and
Disruption.--The Nominations at Baltimore.--The "Constitutional-Union"
Party and its Nominees.--An Effort in Behalf of Agreement declined by
Mr. Douglas.--The Election of Lincoln and Hamlin.--Proceedings in the
South.--Evidences of Calmness and Deliberation.--Mr. Buchanan's
Conservatism and the weakness of his Position.--Republican Taunts.--The
"New York Tribune," etc.
CHAPTER VIII.
Conference with the Governor of Mississippi.--The Author censured as
"too slow."--Summons to Washington.--Interview with the President.--His
Message.--Movements in Congress.--The Triumphant Majority.--The
Crittenden Proposition.--Speech of the Author on Mr. Green's
Resolution.--The Committee of Thirteen.--Failure to agree.--The
"Republicans" responsible for the Failure.--Proceedings in the House of
Representatives.--Futility of Efforts for an Adjustment.--The Old Year
closes in Clouds.
CHAPTER IX.
Preparations for Withdrawal from the Union.--Northern Precedents.--New
England Secessionists.--Cabot, Pickering, Quincy, etc.--On the
Acquisition of Louisiana.--The Hartford Convention.--The Massachusetts
Legislature on the Annexation of Texas, etc., etc. 70
CHAPTER X.
False Statements of the Grounds for Separation.--Slavery not the Cause,
but an Incident.--The Southern People not "Propagandists" of
Slavery.--Early Accord among the States with regard to African
Servitude.--Statement of the Supreme Court.--Guarantees of the
Constitution.--Disregard of Oaths.--Fugitives from Service and the
"Personal Liberty Laws."--Equality in the Territories the Paramount
Question.--The Dred Scott Case.--Disregard of the Decision of the
Supreme Court.--Culmination of Wrongs.--Despair of their
Redress.--Triumph of Sectionalism.
PART II.
_THE CONSTITUTION._
CHAPTER I.
The Original Confederation.--"Articles of Confederation and Perpetual
Union."--Their Inadequacy ascertained.--Commercial Difficulties.--The
Conference at Annapolis.--Recommendation of a General Convention.--
Resolution of Congress.--Action of the Several States.--Conclusions
drawn therefrom.
CHAPTER II.
The Convention of 1787.--Diversity of Opinion.--Luther Martin's Account
of the Three Parties.--The Question of Representation.--Compromise
effected.--Mr. Randolph's Resolutions.--The Word "National"
condemned.--Plan of Government framed.--Difficulty with Regard to
Ratification, and its Solution.--Provision for Secession from the
Union.--Views of Mr. Gerry and Mr. Madison.--False Interpretations.--
Close of the Convention.
CHAPTER III.
Ratification of the Constitution by the States.--Organization of the New
Government.--Accession of North Carolina and Rhode Island.--
Correspondence between General Washington and the Governor of Rhode
Island.
CHAPTER IV.
The Constitution not adopted by one People "in the Aggregate."--A Great
Fallacy exposed.--Mistake of Judge Story.--Colonial Relations.--The
United Colonies of New England.--Other Associations.--Independence of
Communities traced from Germany to Great Britain, and from Great Britain
to America.--Mr. Everett's "Provincial People."--Origin and Continuance
of the Title "United States."--No such Political Community as the
"People of the United States."
CHAPTER V.
The Preamble to the Constitution.--"We, the People."
CHAPTER VI.
The Preamble to the Constitution--subject continued.--Growth of the
Federal Government and Accretions of Power.--Revival of Old
Errors.--Mistakes and Misstatements.--Webster, Story, and Everett.--Who
"ordained and established" the Constitution?
CHAPTER VII.
Verbal Cavils and Criticisms.--"Compact," "Confederacy," "Accession,"
etc.--The "New Vocabulary."--The Federal Constitution a Compact, and the
States acceded to it.--Evidence of the Constitution itself and of
Contemporary Records.
CHAPTER VIII.
Sovereignty
CHAPTER IX.
The same Subject continued.--The Tenth Amendment.--Fallacies
exposed.--"Constitution," "Government," and "People" distinguished from
each other.--Theories refuted by Facts.--Characteristics of
Sovereignty.--Sovereignty identified.--Never thrown away.
CHAPTER X.
A Recapitulation.--Remarkable Propositions of Mr. Gouverneur Morris in
the Convention of 1787, and their Fate.--Further Testimony.--Hamilton,
Madison, Washington, Marshall, etc.--Later Theories.--Mr. Webster: his
Views at Various Periods.--Speech at Capon Springs.--State Rights not a
Sectional Theory.
CHAPTER XI.
The Right of Secession.--The Law of Unlimited Partnerships.--The
"Perpetual Union" of the Articles of Confederation and the "More Perfect
Union" of the Constitution.--The Important Powers conferred upon the
Federal Government and the Fundamental Principles of the Compact the
same in both Systems.--The Right to resume Grants, when failing to
fulfill their Purposes, expressly and distinctly asserted in the
Adoption of the Constitution.
CHAPTER XII.
Coercion the Alternative to Secession.--Repudiation of it by the
Constitution and the Fathers of the Constitutional Era.--Difference
between Mr. Webster and Mr. Hamilton.
CHAPTER XIII.
Some Objections considered.--The New States.--Acquired
Territory.--Allegiance, false and true.--Difference between
Nullification and Secession.--Secession a Peaceable Remedy.--No Appeal
to Arms.--Two Conditions noted.
CHAPTER XIV.
Early Foreshadowings.--Opinions of Mr. Madison and Mr. Rufus
King.--Safeguards provided.--Their Failure.--State Interposition.--The
Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions.--Their Endorsement by the People in
the Presidential Elections of 1800 and Ensuing Terms.--South Carolina
and Mr. Calhoun.--The Compromise of 1833.--Action of Massachusetts in
1843-'45.--Opinions of John Quincy Adams.--Necessity for Secession.
CHAPTER XV.
A Bond of Union necessary after the Declaration of
Independence.--Articles of Confederation.--The Constitution of the
United States.--The Same Principle for obtaining Grants of Power in
both.--The Constitution an Instrument enumerating the Powers
delegated.--The Power of Amendment merely a Power to amend the Delegated
Grants.--A Smaller Power was required for Amendment than for a
Grant.--The Power of Amendment is confined to Grants of the
Constitution.--Limitations on the Power of Amendment.
PART III.
_SECESSION AND CONFEDERATION._
CHAPTER I.
Opening of the New Year.--The People in Advance of their
Representatives.--Conciliatory Conduct of Southern Members of
Congress.--Sensational Fictions.--Misstatements of the Count of
Paris.--Obligations of a Senator.--The Southern Forts and
Arsenals.--Pensacola Bay and Fort Pickens.--The Alleged "Caucus" and its
Resolutions.--Personal Motives and Feelings.--The Presidency not a
Desirable Office.--Letter from the Hon. C. C. Clay.
CHAPTER II.
Tenure of Public Property ceded by the States.--Sovereignty and Eminent
Domain.--Principles asserted by Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, and
other States.--The Charleston Forts.--South Carolina sends Commissioners
to Washington.--Sudden Movement of Major Anderson.--Correspondence of
the Commissioners with the President.--Interviews of the Author with Mr.
Buchanan.--Major Anderson.--The Star of the West.--The President's
Special Message.--Speech of the Author in the Senate.--Further
Proceedings and Correspondence relative to Fort Sumter.--Mr. Buchanan's
Rectitude in Purpose and Vacillation in Action.
CHAPTER III.
Secession of Mississippi and Other States.--Withdrawal of
Senators.--Address of the Author on taking Leave of the Senate.--Answer
to Certain Objections.
CHAPTER IV.
Threats of Arrest.--Departure from Washington.--Indications of Public
Anxiety.--"Will there be war?"--Organization of the "Army of
Mississippi."--Lack of Preparations for Defense in the South.--Evidences
of the Good Faith and Peaceable Purposes of the Southern People.
CHAPTER V.
Meeting of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States.--Adoption
of a Provisional Constitution.--Election of President and
Vice-President.--Notification to the Author of his Election.--His Views
with Regard to it.--Journey to Montgomery.--Interview with Judge
Sharkey.--False Reports of Speeches on the Way.--Inaugural
Address.--Editor's Note.
CHAPTER VI.
The Confederate Cabinet.
CHAPTER VII.
Early Acts of the Confederate Congress.--Laws of the United States
continued in Force.--Officers of Customs and Revenue continued in
Office.--Commission to the United States.--Navigation of the
Mississippi.--Restrictions on the Coasting-Trade removed.--Appointment
of Commissioners to Washington.
CHAPTER VIII.
The Peace Conference.--Demand for "a Little Bloodletting."--Plan
proposed by the Conference.--Its Contemptuous Reception and Treatment in
the United States Congress.--Failure of Last Efforts at Reconciliation
and Reunion.--Note.--Speech of General Lane, of Oregon.
CHAPTER IX.
Northern Protests against Coercion.--The "New York Tribune," Albany
"Argus," and "New York Herald."--Great Public Meeting in New
York.--Speeches of Mr. Thayer, ex-Governor Seymour, ex-Chancellor
Walworth, and Others.--The Press in February, 1861.--Mr. Lincoln's
Inaugural.--The Marvelous Change or Suppression of Conservative
Sentiment.--Historic Precedents.
CHAPTER X.
Temper of the Southern People indicated by the Action of the Confederate
Congress.--The Permanent Constitution.--Modeled after the Federal
Constitution.--Variations and Special Provisions.--Provisions with
Regard to Slavery and the Slave-Trade.--A False Assertion
refuted.--Excellence of the Constitution.--Admissions of Hostile or
Impartial Criticism.
CHAPTER XI.
The Commission to Washington City.--Arrival of Mr. Crawford.--Mr.
Buchanan's Alarm.--Note of the Commissioners to the New
Administration.--Mediation of Justices Nelson and Campbell.--The
Difficulty about Forts Sumter and Pickens.--Mr. Secretary Seward's
Assurances.--Duplicity of the Government at Washington.--Mr. Fox's Visit
to Charleston.--Secret Preparations for Coercive Measures.--Visit of Mr.
Lamon.--Renewed Assurances of Good Faith.--Notification to Governor
Pickens.--Developments of Secret History.--Systematic and Complicated
Perfidy exposed.
CHAPTER XII.
Protests against the Conduct of the Government of the United
States.--Senator Douglas's Proposition to evacuate the Forts, and
Extracts from his Speech in Support of it.--General Scott's
Advice.--Manly Letter of Major Anderson, protesting against the Action
of the Federal Government.--Misstatements of the Count of
Paris.--Correspondence relative to Proposed Evacuation of the Fort.--A
Crisis.
CHAPTER XIII.
A Pause and a Review.--Attitude of the Two Parties.--Sophistry exposed
and Shams torn away.--Forbearance of the Confederate Government.--Who
was the Aggressor?--Major Anderson's View, and that of a Naval
Officer.--Mr. Horace Greeley on the Fort Sumter Case.--The Bombardment
and Surrender.--Gallant Action of ex-Senator Wigfall.--Mr. Lincoln's
Statement of the Case.
PART IV.
_THE WAR._
CHAPTER I.
Failure of the Peace Congress.--Treatment of the Commissioners.--Their
Withdrawal.--Notice of an Armed Expedition.--Action of the Confederate
Government.--Bombardment and Surrender of Fort Sumter.--Its Reduction
required by the Exigency of the Case.--Disguise thrown off.--President
Lincoln's Call for Seventy-five Thousand Men.--His Fiction of
"Combinations."--Palpable Violation of the Constitution.--Action of
Virginia.--Of Citizens of Baltimore.--The Charge of Precipitation
against South Carolina.--Action of the Confederate Government.--The
Universal Feeling.
CHAPTER II.
The Supply of Arms; of Men.--Love of the Union.--Secessionists
few.--Efforts to prevent the Final Step.--Views of the People.--Effect
on their Agriculture.--Aid from African Servitude.--Answer to the
Clamors on the Horrors of Slavery.--Appointment of a Commissary-
General.--His Character and Capacity.--Organization, Instruction,
and Equipment of the Army.--Action of Congress.--The Law.--Its
Signification.--The Hope of a Peaceful Solution early entertained;
rapidly diminished.--Further Action of Congress.--Policy of the
Government for Peace.--Position of Officers of United States
Army.--The Army of the States, not of the Government.--The Confederate
Law observed by the Government.--Officers retiring from United States
Army.--Organization of Bureaus.
CHAPTER III.
Commissioners to purchase Arms and Ammunition.--My Letter to Captain
Semmes.--Resignations of Officers of United States Navy.--Our
Destitution of Accessories for the Supply of Naval Vessels.--Secretary
Mallory.--Food-Supplies.--The Commissariat Department.--The
Quartermaster's Department.--The Disappearance of Delusions.--The Supply
of Powder.--Saltpeter.--Sulphur.--Artificial Niter-Beds.--Services of
General G. W. Rains.--Destruction at Harper's Ferry of Machinery.--The
Master Armorer.--Machinery secured.--Want of Skillful Employees.--
Difficulties encountered by Every Department of the Executive Branch
of the Government.
CHAPTER IV.
The Proclamation for Seventy-five Thousand Men by President Lincoln
further examined.--The Reasons presented by him to Mankind for the
Justification of his Conduct shown to be Mere Fictions, having no
Relation to the Question.--What is the Value of Constitutional Liberty,
of Bills of Rights, of Limitations of Powers, if they may be
transgressed at Pleasure?--Secession of South Carolina.--Proclamation of
Blockade.--Session of Congress at Montgomery.--Extracts from the
President's Message.--Acts of Congress.--Spirit of the People.--
Secession of Border States.--Destruction of United States Property by
Order of President Lincoln.
CHAPTER V.
Maryland first approached by Northern Invasion.--Denies to United States
Troops the Right of Way across her Domain.--Mission of Judge
Handy.--Views of Governor Hicks.--His Proclamation.--Arrival of
Massachusetts Troops at Baltimore.--Passage through the City
disputed.--Activity of the Police.--Burning of Bridges.--Letter of
President Lincoln to the Governor.--Visited by Citizens.--Action of the
State Legislature.--Occupation of the Relay House.--The City Arms
surrendered.--City in Possession of United States Troops.--Remonstrances
of the City to the Passage of Troops disregarded.--Citizens arrested;
also, Members of the Legislature.--Accumulation of Northern Forces at
Washington.--Invasion of West Virginia by a Force under
McClellan.--Attack at Philippi; at Laurel Hill.--Death of General
Garnett.
CHAPTER VI.
Removal of the Seat of Government to Richmond.--Message to Congress at
Richmond.--Confederate Forces in Virginia.--Forces of the Enemy.--Letter
to General Johnston.--Combat at Bethel Church.--Affair at
Romney.--Movements of McDowell.--Battle of Manassas.
CHAPTER VII.
Conference with the Generals after the Battle.--Order to pursue the
Enemy.--Evidences of a Thorough Rout.--"Sweet to die for such a
Cause."--Movements of the Next Day.--What more it was practicable to
do.--Charge against the President of preventing the Capture of
Washington.--The Failure to pursue.--Reflection on the President.--
General Beauregard's Report.--Endorsement upon it.--Strength
of the Opposing Forces.--Extracts relating to the Battle, from the
Narrative of General Early.--Resolutions of Congress.--Efforts to
increase the Efficiency of the Army.
CHAPTER VIII.
The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798-'99.--Their Influence on Political
Affairs.--Kentucky declares for Neutrality.--Correspondence of Governor
Magoffin with the President of the United States and the President of
the Confederate States.--Occupation of Columbus, Kentucky, by
Major-General Polk.--His Correspondence with the Kentucky
Commissioners.--President Lincoln's View of Neutrality.--Acts of the
United States Government.--Refugees.--Their Motives of Expatriation.--
Address of ex-Vice-President Breckinridge to the People of the
State.--The Occupation of Columbus secured.--The Purpose of the
United States Government.--Battle of Belmont.--Albert Sidney Johnston
commands the Department.--State of Affairs.--Line of Defense.-Efforts to
obtain Arms; also Troops.
CHAPTER IX.
The Coercion of Missouri.--Answers of the Governors of States to
President Lincoln's Requisition for Troops.--Restoration of Forts
Caswell and Johnson to the United States Government.--Condition of
Missouri similar to that of Kentucky.--Hostilities, how initiated in
Missouri.--Agreement between Generals Price and Harney.--Its Favorable
Effects.--General Harney relieved of Command by the United States
Government because of his Pacific Policy.--Removal of Public Arms from
Missouri.--Searches for and Seizure of Arms.--Missouri on the Side of
Peace.--Address of General Price to the People.--Proclamation of
Governor Jackson.--Humiliating Concessions of the Governor to the United
States Government, for the sake of Peace.--Demands of the Federal
Officers.--Revolutionary Principles attempted to be enforced by the
United States Government.--The Action at Booneville.--The Patriot Army
of Militia.--Further Rout of the Enemy.--Heroism and Self-sacrifice of
the People.--Complaints and Embarrassments--Zeal: its effects.--Action
of Congress.--Battle of Springfield.--General Price.--Battle at
Lexington.--Bales of Hemp.--Other Combats.
CHAPTER X.
Brigadier-General Henry A. Wise takes command in Western Virginia.--His
Movements.--Advance of General John B. Floyd.--Defeats the
Enemy.--Attacked by Rosecrans.--Controversy between Wise and
Floyd.--General R. E. Lee takes the Command in West Virginia.--Movement
on Cheat Mountain.--Its Failure.--Further Operations.--Winter
Quarters.--Lee sent to South Carolina.
CHAPTER XI.
The Issue.--The American Idea of Government.--Who was responsible for
the War?--Situation of Virginia.--Concentration of the Enemy against
Richmond.--Our Difficulty.--Unjust Criticisms.--The Facts set
forth.--Organization of the Army.--Conference at Fairfax
Court-House.--Inaction of the Army.--Capture of Romney.--Troops ordered
to retire to the Valley.--Discipline.--General Johnston regards his
Position as unsafe.--The First Policy.--Retreat of General
Johnston.--The Plans of the Enemy.--Our Strength magnified by the
Enemy.--Stores destroyed.--The Trent Affair.
CHAPTER XII.
Supply of Arms at the Beginning of the War; of Powder; of Batteries; of
other Articles.--Contents of Arsenals.--Other Stores, Mills, etc.--First
Efforts to obtain Powder, Niter, and Sulphur.--Construction of Mills
commenced.--Efforts to supply Arms, Machinery, Field-Artillery,
Ammunition, Equipment, and Saltpeter.--Results in 1862.--Government
Powder-Mills; how organized.--Success.--Efforts to obtain
Lead.--Smelting-Works.--Troops, how armed.--Winter of 1862.--Supplies.--
Niter and Mining Bureau.--Equipment of First Armies.--Receipts by
Blockade-Runners.--Arsenal at Richmond.--Armories at Richmond and
Fayetteville.--A Central Laboratory built at Macon.--Statement of
General Gorgas.--Northern Charge against General Floyd answered.--
Charge of Slowness against the President answered.--Quantities of
Arms purchased that could not be shipped in 1861.--Letter of Mr. Huse.
CHAPTER XIII.
Extracts from my Inaugural.--Our Financial System: Receipts and
Expenditures of the First Year.--Resources, Loans, and Taxes.--Loans
authorized.--Notes and Bonds.--Funding Notes.--Treasury Notes guaranteed
by the States.--Measure to reduce the Currency.--Operation of the
General System.--Currency fundable.--Taxation.--Popular
Aversion.--Compulsory Reduction of the Currency.--Tax Law.--Successful
Result.--Financial Condition of the Government at its Close.--Sources
whence Revenue was derived.--Total Public Debt.--System of Direct Taxes
and Revenue.--The Tariff.--War-Tax of Fifty Cents on a Hundred
Dollars.--Property subject to it.--Every Resource of the Country to be
reached.--Tax paid by the States mostly.--Obstacle to the taking of the
Census.--The Foreign Debt.--Terms of the Contract.--Premium.--False
charge against me of Repudiation.--Facts stated.
CHAPTER XIV.
Military Laws and Measures.--Agricultural Products
diminished.--Manufactures flourishing.--The Call for Volunteers.--The
Term of Three Years.--Improved Discipline.--The Law assailed.--Important
Constitutional Question raised.--Its Discussion at Length.--Power of the
Government over its own Armies and the Militia.--Object of
Confederations.--The War-Powers granted.--Two Modes of raising Armies in
the Confederate States.--Is the Law necessary and proper?--Congress is
the Judge under the Grant of Specific Power.--What is meant by
Militia.--Whole Military Strength divided into Two Classes.--Powers of
Congress.--Objections answered.--Good Effects of the Law.--The
Limitations enlarged.--Results of the Operations of these Laws.--Act for
the Employment of Slaves.--Message to Congress.--"Died of a
Theory."--Act to use Slaves as Soldiers passed.--Not Time to put it in
Operation.
APPENDIXES.
[Transcriber's Note: There is no Appendix A.]
APPENDIX B.
Speech of the Author on the Oregon Question
APPENDIX C.
Extracts from Speeches of the Author on the Resolutions of Compromise
proposed by Mr. Clay
On the Reception of a Memorial from Inhabitants of Pennsylvania and
Delaware, praying that Congress would adopt Measures for an Immediate
and Peaceful Dissolution of the Union
On the Resolutions of Mr. Clay relative to Slavery in the Territories
APPENDIX D.
Speech of the Author on the Message of the President of the United
States, transmitting to Congress the "Lecompton Constitution" of Kansas
APPENDIX E.
Address of the Author to Citizens of Portland, Maine
Address of the Author at a Public Meeting in Faneuil Hall, Boston; with
the Introductory Remarks by Caleb Cushing
APPENDIX F.
Speech of the Author in the Senate, on the Resolutions relative to the
Relations of the States, the Federal Government, and the Territories
APPENDIX G.
Correspondence between the Commissioners of South Carolina and the
President of the United States (Mr. Buchanan), relative to the Forts in
the Harbor of Charleston
APPENDIX H.
Speech of the Author on a Motion to print the Special Message of the
President of the United States of January 9, 1861
APPENDIX I.
Correspondence and Extracts from Correspondence relative to Fort Sumter,
from the Affair of the Star of the West, January 9, 1861, to the
Withdrawal of the Envoy of South Carolina from Washington, February 8,
1861
APPENDIX K.
The Provisional Constitution of the Confederate States, adopted February
8, 1861
The Constitution of the United States and the Permanent Constitution of
the Confederate States, in Parallel Columns
APPENDIX L.
Correspondence between the Confederate Commissioners, Mr. Secretary
Seward, and Judge Campbell
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Jefferson Davis, aged Thirty-two
J. C. Calhoun
Briarfield, Early Residence of Mr. Davis
The First Confederate Cabinet
Alexander H. Stephens
General P. G. T. Beauregard
Members of President's Staff
General A. S. Johnston
General Robert E. Lee
Battle of Manassas (Map)
INTRODUCTION.
A duty to my countrymen; to the memory of those who died in defense of a
cause consecrated by inheritance, as well as sustained by conviction;
and to those who, perhaps less fortunate, staked all, and lost all, save
life and honor, in its behalf, has impelled me to attempt the
vindication of their cause and conduct. For this purpose I have decided
to present an historical sketch of the events which preceded and
attended the struggle of the Southern States to maintain their existence
and their rights as sovereign communities--the creators, not the
creatures, of the General Government.
The social problem of maintaining the just relation between
constitution, government, and people, has been found so difficult, that
human history is a record of unsuccessful efforts to establish it. A
government, to afford the needful protection and exercise proper care
for the welfare of a people, must have homogeneity in its constituents.
It is this necessity which has divided the human race into separate
nations, and finally has defeated the grandest efforts which conquerors
have made to give unlimited extent to their domain. When our fathers
dissolved their connection with Great Britain, by declaring themselves
free and independent States, they constituted thirteen separate
communities, and were careful to assert and preserve, each for itself,
its sovereignty and jurisdiction.
At a time when the minds of men are straying far from the lessons our
fathers taught, it seems proper and well to recur to the original
principles on which the system of government they devised was founded.
The eternal truths which they announced, the rights which they declared
"_unalienable_," are the foundation-stones on which rests the
vindication of the Confederate cause.
He must have been a careless reader of our political history who has not
observed that, whether under the style of "United Colonies" or "United
States," which was adopted after the Declaration of Independence,
whether under the articles of Confederation or the compact of Union,
there everywhere appears the distinct assertion of State sovereignty,
and nowhere the slightest suggestion of any purpose on the part of the
States to consolidate themselves into one body. Will any candid,
well-informed man assert that, at any time between 1776 and 1790, a
proposition to surrender the sovereignty of the States and merge them in
a central government would have had the least possible chance of
adoption? Can any historical fact be more demonstrable than that the
States did, both in the Confederation and in the Union, retain their
sovereignty and independence as distinct communities, voluntarily
consenting to federation, but never becoming the fractional parts of a
nation? That such opinions should find adherents in our day, may be
attributable to the natural law of aggregation; surely not to a
conscientious regard for the terms of the compact for union by the
States.
In all free governments the constitution or organic law is supreme over
the government, and in our Federal Union this was most distinctly marked
by limitations and prohibitions against all which was beyond the
expressed grants of power to the General Government. In the foreground,
therefore, I take the position that those who resisted violations of the
compact were the true friends, and those who maintained the usurpation
of undelegated powers were the real enemies of the constitutional Union.
PART I.
CHAPTER I.
African Servitude.--A Retrospect.--Early Legislation with Regard
to the Slave-Trade.--The Southern States foremost in prohibiting
it.--A Common Error corrected.--The Ethical Question never at
Issue in Sectional Controversies.--The Acquisition of
Louisiana.--The Missouri Compromise.--The Balance of
Power.--Note.--The Indiana Case.
Inasmuch as questions growing out of the institution of negro servitude,
or connected with it, will occupy a conspicuous place in what is to
follow, it is important that the reader should have, in the very outset,
a right understanding of the true nature and character of those
questions. No subject has been more generally misunderstood or more
persistently misrepresented. The institution itself has ceased to exist
in the United States; the generation, comprising all who took part in
the controversies to which it gave rise, or for which it afforded a
pretext, is passing away; and the misconceptions which have prevailed in
our own country, and still more among foreigners remote from the field
of contention, are likely to be perpetuated in the mind of posterity,
unless corrected before they become crystallized by tacit acquiescence.
It is well known that, at the time of the adoption of the Federal
Constitution, African servitude existed in all the States that were
parties to that compact, unless with the single exception of
Massachusetts, in which it had, perhaps, very recently ceased to exist.
The slaves, however, were numerous in the Southern, and very few in the
Northern, States. This diversity was occasioned by differences of
climate, soil, and industrial interests--not in any degree by moral
considerations, which at that period were not recognized, as an element
in the question. It was simply because negro labor was more profitable
in the South than in the North that the importation of negro slaves had
been, and continued to be, chiefly directed to the Southern ports.[1]
For the same reason slavery was abolished by the States of the Northern
section (though it existed in several of them for more than fifty years
after the adoption of the Constitution), while the importation of slaves
into the South continued to be carried on by Northern merchants and
Northern ships, without interference in the traffic from any quarter,
until it was prohibited by the spontaneous action of the Southern States
themselves.
The Constitution expressly forbade any interference by Congress with the
slave-trade--or, to use its own language, with the "migration or
importation of such persons" as any of the States should think proper to
admit--"prior to the year 1808." During the intervening period of more
than twenty years, the matter was exclusively under the control of the
respective States. Nevertheless, every Southern State, without
exception, either had already enacted, or proceeded to enact, laws
forbidding the importation of slaves.[2] Virginia was the first of all
the States, North or South, to prohibit it, and Georgia was the first to
incorporate such a prohibition in her organic Constitution.
Two petitions for the abolition of slavery and the slave-trade were
presented February 11 and 12, 1790, to the very first Congress convened
under the Constitution.[3] After full discussion in the House of
Representatives, it was determined, with regard to the first-mentioned
subject, "that Congress have no authority to interfere in the
emancipation of slaves, or in the treatment of them within any of the
States"; and, with regard to the other, that no authority existed to
prohibit the migration or importation of such persons as the States
might think proper to admit--"prior to the year 1808." So distinct and
final was this statement of the limitations of the authority of Congress
considered to be that, when a similar petition was presented two or
three years afterward, the Clerk of the House was instructed to return
it to the petitioner.[4]
In 1807, Congress, availing itself of the very earliest moment at which
the constitutional restriction ceased to be operative, passed an act
prohibiting the importation of slaves into any part of the United States
from and after the first day of January, 1808. This act was passed with
great unanimity. In the House of Representatives there were one hundred
and thirteen (113) yeas to five (5) nays; and it is a significant fact,
as showing the absence of any sectional division of sentiment at that
period, that the five dissentients were divided as equally as possible
between the two sections: two of them were from Northern and three from
Southern States.[5]
The slave-trade had thus been finally abolished some months before the
birth of the author of these pages, and has never since had legal
existence in any of the United States. The question of the maintenance
or extinction of the system of negro servitude, already existing in any
State, was one exclusively belonging to such State. It is obvious,
therefore, that no subsequent question, legitimately arising in Federal
legislation, could properly have any reference to the merits or the
policy of the institution itself. A few zealots in the North afterward
created much agitation by demands for the abolition of slavery within
the States by Federal intervention, and by their activity and
perseverance finally became a recognized party, which, holding the
balance of power between the two contending organizations in that
section, gradually obtained the control of one, and to no small degree
corrupted the other. The dominant idea, however, at least of the
absorbed party, was sectional aggrandizement, looking to absolute
control, and theirs is the responsibility for the war that resulted.
No moral nor sentimental considerations were really involved in either
the earlier or later controversies which so long agitated and finally
ruptured the Union. They were simply struggles between different
sections, with diverse institutions and interests.
It is absolutely requisite, in order to a right understanding of the
history of the country, to bear these truths clearly in mind. The
phraseology of the period referred to will otherwise be essentially
deceptive. The antithetical employment of such terms as _freedom_ and
_slavery_, or "anti-slavery" and "pro-slavery," with reference to the
principles and purposes of contending parties or rival sections, has had
immense influence in misleading the opinions and sympathies of the
world. The idea of freedom is captivating, that of slavery repellent to
the moral sense of mankind in general. It is easy, therefore, to
understand the effect of applying the one set of terms to one party, the
other to another, in a contest which had no just application whatever to
the essential merits of freedom or slavery. Southern statesmen may
perhaps have been too indifferent to this consideration--in their ardent
pursuit of principles, overlooking the effects of phrases.
This is especially true with regard to that familiar but most fallacious
expression, "the extension of slavery." To the reader unfamiliar with
the subject, or viewing it only on the surface, it would perhaps never
occur that, as used in the great controversies respecting the
Territories of the United States, it does not, never did, and never
could, imply the addition of a single slave to the number already
existing. The question was merely whether the slaveholder should be
permitted to go, with his slaves, into territory (the common property of
all) into which the non-slaveholder could go with _his_ property of any
sort. There was no proposal nor desire on the part of the Southern
States to reopen the slave-trade, which they had been foremost in
suppressing, or to add to the number of slaves. It was a question of the
distribution, or dispersion, of the slaves, rather than of the
"extension of slavery." Removal is not extension. Indeed, if
emancipation was the end to be desired, the dispersion of the negroes
over a wider area among additional Territories, eventually to become
States, and in climates unfavorable to slave-labor, instead of
hindering, would have promoted this object by diminishing the
difficulties in the way of ultimate emancipation.
The distinction here defined between the distribution, or dispersion, of
slaves and the extension of slavery--two things altogether different,
although so generally confounded--was early and clearly drawn under
circumstances and in a connection which justify a fuller notice.
Virginia, it is well known, in the year 1784, ceded to the United
States--then united only by the original Articles of Confederation--her
vast possessions northwest of the Ohio, from which the great States of
Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota,
have since been formed. In 1787--before the adoption of the Federal
Constitution--the celebrated "Ordinance" for the government of this
Northwestern Territory was adopted by the Congress, with the full
consent, and indeed at the express instance, of Virginia. This Ordinance
included six definite "Articles of compact between the original States
and the people and States in the said Territory," which were to "for
ever remain unalterable unless by common consent." The sixth of these
articles ordains that "there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude in the said Territory, otherwise than in the punishment of
crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted."
In December, 1805, a petition of the Legislative Council and House of
Representatives of the Indiana Territory--then comprising all the area
now occupied by the States of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and
Wisconsin--was presented to Congress. It appears from the proceedings of
the House of Representatives that several petitions of the same purport
from inhabitants of the Territory, accompanied by a letter from William
Henry Harrison, the Governor (afterward President of the United States),
had been under consideration nearly two years earlier. The prayer of
these petitions was for a _suspension_ of the sixth article of the
Ordinance, so as to permit the introduction of slaves into the
Territory. The whole subject was referred to a select committee of seven
members, consisting of representatives from Virginia, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Kentucky, and New York, and the delegate
from the Indiana Territory.
On the 14th of the ensuing February (1806), this committee made a report
favorable to the prayer of the petitioners, and recommending a
suspension of the prohibitory article for ten years. In their report the
committee, after stating their opinion that a qualified suspension of
the article in question would be beneficial to the people of the Indiana
Territory, proceeded to say:
"The suspension of this article is an object almost universally
desired in that Territory. It appears to your committee to be a
question entirely different from that between slavery and
freedom, inasmuch as it would merely occasion the removal of
persons, already slaves, from one part of the country to
another. The good effects of this suspension, in the present
instance, would be to accelerate the population of that
Territory, hitherto retarded by the operation of that article of
compact; as slaveholders emigrating into the Western country
might then indulge any preference which they might feel for a
settlement in the Indiana Territory, instead of seeking, as they
are now compelled to do, settlements in other States or
countries permitting the introduction of slaves. The condition
of the slaves themselves would be much ameliorated by it, as it
is evident, from experience, that the more they are separated
and diffused the more care and attention are bestowed on them by
their masters, each proprietor having it in his power to
increase their comforts and conveniences in proportion to the
smallness of their numbers."
These were the dispassionate utterances of representatives of every part
of the Union--men contemporary with the origin of the Constitution,
speaking before any sectional division had arisen in connection with the
subject. It is remarkable that the very same opinions which they express
and arguments which they adduce had, fifty years afterward, come to be
denounced and repudiated by one half of the Union as partisan and
sectional when propounded by the other half.
No final action seems to have been taken on the subject before the
adjournment of Congress, but it was brought forward at the next session
in a more imposing form. On the 20th of January, 1807, the Speaker laid
before the House of Representatives a letter from Governor Harrison,
inclosing certain resolutions formally and _unanimously_ adopted by the
Legislative Council and House of Representatives of the Indiana
Territory, in favor of the suspension of the sixth article of the
Ordinance and the introduction of slaves into the Territory, which they
say would "meet the approbation of at least nine tenths of the good
citizens of the same." Among the resolutions were the following:
"_Resolved unanimously_, That the abstract question of liberty
and slavery is not considered as involved in a suspension of the
said article, inasmuch as the number of slaves in the United
States _would not be augmented_ by this measure.
"_Resolved unanimously_, That the suspension of the said article
would be equally advantageous to the Territory, to the States
from whence the negroes would be brought, and to the negroes
themselves....
"The States which are overburdened with negroes would be
benefited by their citizens having an opportunity of disposing
of the negroes which they can not comfortably support, or of
removing with them to a country abounding with all the
necessaries of life; and the negro himself would exchange a
scanty pittance of the coarsest food for a plentiful and
nourishing diet, and a situation which admits not the most
distant prospect of emancipation for one which presents no
considerable obstacle to his wishes."
These resolutions were submitted to a committee drawn, like the former,
from different sections of the country, which again reported favorably,
reiterating in substance the reasons given by the former committee.
Their report was sustained by the House, and a resolution to suspend the
prohibitory article was adopted. The proposition failed, however, in the
Senate, and there the matter seems to have been dropped. The proceedings
constitute a significant and instructive episode in the political
history of the country.
The allusion which has been made to the Ordinance of 1787, renders it
proper to notice, very briefly, the argument put forward during the
discussion of the Missouri question, and often repeated since, that the
Ordinance afforded a precedent in support of the claim of a power in
Congress to determine the question of the admission of slaves into the
Territories, and in justification of the prohibitory clause applied in
1820 to a portion of the Louisiana Territory.
The difference between the Congress of the Confederation and that of the
Federal Constitution is so broad that the action of the former can, in
no just sense, be taken as a precedent for the latter. The Congress of
the Confederation represented the States in their sovereignty, each
delegation having one vote, so that all the States were of equal weight
in the decision of any question. It had legislative, executive, and in
some degree judicial powers, thus combining all departments of
government in itself. During its recess a committee known as the
Committee of the States exercised the powers of the Congress, which was
in spirit, if not in fact, an assemblage of the States.
On the other hand, the Congress of the Constitution is only the
legislative department of the General Government, with powers strictly
defined and expressly limited to those delegated by the States. It is
further held in check by an executive and a judiciary, and consists of
two branches, each having peculiar and specified functions.
If, then, it be admitted--which is at least very questionable--that the
Congress of the Confederation had rightfully the power to exclude slave
property from the territory northwest of the Ohio River, that power must
have been derived from its character as an assemblage of the sovereign
States; not from the Articles of Confederation, in which no indication
of the grant of authority to exercise such a function can be found. The
Congress of the Constitution is expressly prohibited from the assumption
of any power not distinctly and specifically delegated to it as the
legislative branch of an organized government. What was questionable in
the former case, therefore, becomes clearly inadmissible in the latter.
But there is yet another material distinction to be observed. The
States, owners of what was called the Northwestern Territory, were
component members of the Congress which adopted the Ordinance for its
government, and gave thereto their full and free consent. The Ordinance
may, therefore, be regarded as virtually a treaty between the States
which ceded and those which received that extensive domain. In the other
case, Missouri and the whole region affected by the Missouri Compromise,
were parts of the territory acquired from France under the name of
Louisiana; and, as it requires two parties to make or amend a treaty,
France and the Government of the United States should have coöperated in
any amendment of the treaty by which Louisiana had been acquired, and
which guaranteed to the inhabitants of the ceded territory "all the
rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States,"
and "the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion
they profess."--("State Papers," vol. ii, "Foreign Relations," p. 507.)
For all the reasons thus stated, it seems to me conclusive that the
action of the Congress of the Confederation in 1787 could not constitute
a precedent to justify the action of the Congress of the United States
in 1820, and that the prohibitory clause of the Missouri Compromise was
without constitutional authority, in violation of the rights of a part
of the joint owners of the territory, and in disregard of the
obligations of the treaty with France.
The basis of sectional controversy was the question of the balance of
political power. In its earlier manifestations this was undisguised. The
purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803, and the
subsequent admission of a portion of that Territory into the Union as a
State, afforded one of the earliest occasions for the manifestation of
sectional jealousy, and gave rise to the first threats, or warnings
(which proceeded from New England), of a dissolution of the Union. Yet,
although negro slavery existed in Louisiana, no pretext was made of that
as an objection to the acquisition. The ground of opposition is frankly
stated in a letter of that period from one Massachusetts statesman to
another--"that the influence of _our_ part of the Union must be
diminished by the acquisition of more weight at the other extremity."[6]
Some years afterward (in 1819-'20) occurred the memorable contest with
regard to the admission into the Union of Missouri, the second State
carved out of the Louisiana Territory. The controversy arose out of a
proposition to attach to the admission of the new State a proviso
prohibiting slavery or involuntary servitude therein. The vehement
discussion that ensued was continued into the first session of a
different Congress from that in which it originated, and agitated the
whole country during the interval between the two. It was the first
question that ever seriously threatened the stability of the Union, and
the first in which the sentiment of opposition to slavery in the
abstract was introduced as an adjunct of sectional controversy. It was
clearly shown in debate that such considerations were altogether
irrelevant; that the number of existing slaves would not be affected by
their removal from the older States to Missouri; and, moreover, that the
proposed restriction would be contrary to the spirit, if not to the
letter, of the Constitution.[7] Notwithstanding all this, the
restriction was adopted, by a vote almost strictly sectional, in the
House of Representatives. It failed in the Senate through the firm
resistance of the Southern, aided by a few patriotic and conservative
Northern, members of that body. The admission of the new State, without
any restriction, was finally accomplished by the addition to the bill of
a section for ever prohibiting slavery in all that portion of the
Louisiana Territory lying north of thirty-six degrees and thirty
minutes, north latitude, except Missouri--by implication leaving the
portion south of that line open to settlement either with or without
slaves.
This provision, as an offset to the admission of the new State without
restriction, constituted the celebrated Missouri Compromise. It was
reluctantly accepted by a small majority of the Southern members. Nearly
half of them voted against it, under the conviction that it was
unauthorized by the Constitution, and that Missouri was entitled to
determine the question for herself, as a matter of right, not of bargain
or concession. Among those who thus thought and voted were some of the
wisest statesmen and purest patriots of that period.[8]
This brief retrospect may have sufficed to show that the question of the
right or wrong of the institution of slavery was in no wise involved in
the earlier sectional controversies. Nor was it otherwise in those of a
later period, in which it was the lot of the author of these memoirs to
bear a part. They were essentially struggles for sectional equality or
ascendancy--for the maintenance or the destruction of that balance of
power or equipoise between North and South, which was early recognized
as a cardinal principle in our Federal system. It does not follow that
both parties to this contest were wholly right or wholly wrong in their
claims. The determination of the question of right or wrong must be left
to the candid inquirer after examination of the evidence. The object of
these preliminary investigations has been to clear the subject of the
obscurity produced by irrelevant issues and the glamour of ethical
illusions.
[Footnote 1: It will be remembered that, during her colonial condition,
Virginia made strenuous efforts to prevent the importation of Africans,
and was overruled by the Crown; also, that Georgia, under Oglethorpe,
did prohibit the introduction of African slaves until 1752, when the
proprietors surrendered the charter, and the colony became a part of the
royal government, and enjoyed the same privileges as the other
colonies.]
[Footnote 2: South Carolina subsequently (in 1803) repealed her law
forbidding the importation of slaves. The reason assigned for this
action was the impossibility of enforcing the law without the aid of the
Federal Government, to which entire control of the revenues, revenue
police, and naval forces of the country had been surrendered by the
States. "The geographical situation of our country," said Mr. Lowndes,
of South Carolina, in the House of Representatives on February 14, 1804,
"is not unknown. With navigable rivers running into the heart of it, it
was impossible, with our means, to prevent our Eastern brethren ...
engaged in this trade, from introducing them [the negroes] into the
country. The law was completely evaded.... Under these circumstances,
sir, it appears to me to have been the duty of the Legislature to repeal
the law, and remove from the eyes of the people the spectacle of its
authority being daily violated."
The effect of the repeal was to permit the importation of negroes into
South Carolina during the interval from 1803 to 1808. It in probable
that an extensive _contraband_ trade was carried on by the New England
slavers with other ports, on account of the lack of means to enforce the
laws of the Southern States forbidding it.]
[Footnote 3: One from the Society of Friends assembled at Philadelphia
and New York, the other from the Pennsylvania society of various
religious denominations combined for the abolition of slavery.
For report of the debate, see Benton's "Abridgment," vol. i, pp.
201-207, _et seq._]
[Footnote 4: See Benton's "Abridgment," vol. i, p. 397.]
[Footnote 5: One was from New Hampshire, one from Vermont, two from
Virginia, and one from South Carolina.--(Benton's "Abridgment," vol.
iii, p. 519.)
No division on the final vote in the Senate.]
[Footnote 6: Cabot to Pickering, who was then Senator from
Massachusetts.--(See "Life and Letters of George Cabot," by H. C. Lodge,
p. 334.)]
[Footnote 7: The true issue was well stated by the Hon. Samuel A. Foot,
a representative from Connecticut, in an incidental reference to it in
debate on another subject, a few weeks after the final settlement of the
Missouri case. He said: "The Missouri question did not involve the
question of freedom or slavery, but merely _whether slaves now in the
country might be permitted to reside in the proposed new State; and
whether Congress or Missouri possessed the power to decide_."]
[Footnote 8: The votes on the proposed _restriction_, which eventually
failed of adoption, and on the _compromise_, which was finally adopted,
are often confounded. The advocacy of the former measure was exclusively
sectional, no Southern member voting for it in either House. On the
adoption of the compromise line of thirty-six degrees and thirty
minutes, the vote in the Senate was 34 yeas to 10 nays. The Senate
consisted of forty-four members from twenty-two States, equally divided
between the two sections--Delaware being classed as a Southern State.
Among the yeas were all the Northern votes, except two from
Indiana--being 20--and 14 Southern. The nays consisted of 2 from the
North, and 8 from the South.
In the House of Representatives, the vote was 134 yeas to 42 nays. Of
the yeas, 95 were Northern, 39 Southern; of the nays, 5 Northern, and 37
Southern.
Among the nays in the Senate were Messrs. James Barbour and James
Pleasants, of Virginia; Nathaniel Macon, of North Carolina; John
Gaillard and William Smith, of South Carolina. In the House, Philip P.
Barbour, John Randolph, John Tyler, and William S. Archer, of Virginia;
Charles Pinckney, of South Carolina (one of the authors of the
Constitution); Thomas W. Cobb, of Georgia; and others of more or less
note.
(See speech of the Hon. D. L. Yulee, of Florida, in the United States
Senate, on the admission of California, August 6, 1850, for a careful
and correct account of the compromise. That given in the second chapter
of Benton's "Thirty Years' View" is singularly inaccurate; that of
Horace Greeley, in his "American Conflict," still more so.)]
CHAPTER II.
The Session of 1849-'50.--The Compromise Measures.--Virtual
Abrogation of the Missouri Compromise.--The Admission of
California.--The Fugitive Slave Law.--Death of Mr.
Calhoun.--Anecdote of Mr. Clay.
The first session of the Thirty-first Congress (1849-'50) was a
memorable one. The recent acquisition from Mexico of New Mexico and
California required legislation by Congress. In the Senate the bills
reported by the Committee on Territories were referred to a select
committee, of which Mr. Clay, the distinguished Senator from Kentucky,
was chairman. From this committee emanated the bills which, taken
together, are known as the compromise measures of 1850.
With some others, I advocated the division of the newly acquired
territory by an extension to the Pacific Ocean of the Missouri
Compromise line of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude.
This was not because of any inherent merit or fitness in that line, but
because it had been accepted by the country as a settlement of the
sectional question which, thirty years before, had threatened a rupture
of the Union, and it had acquired in the public mind a prescriptive
respect which it seemed unwise to disregard. A majority, however,
decided otherwise, and the line of political conciliation was then
obliterated, as far as it lay in the power of Congress to do so. An
analysis of the vote will show that this result was effected almost
exclusively by the representatives of the North, and that the South was
not responsible for an action which proved to be the opening of
Pandora's box.[9]
However objectionable it may have been in 1820 to adopt that political
line as expressing a geographical definition of different sectional
interests, and however it may be condemned as the assumption by Congress
of a function not delegated to it, it is to be remembered that the act
had received such recognition and _quasi_-ratification by the people of
the States as to give it a value which it did not originally possess.
Pacification had been the fruit borne by the tree, and it should not
have been recklessly hewed down and cast into the fire. The frequent
assertion then made was that all discrimination was unjust, and that the
popular will should be left untrammeled in the formation of new States.
This theory was good enough in itself, and as an abstract proposition
could not be gainsaid; but its practical operation has but poorly
sustained the expectations of its advocates, as will be seen when we
come to consider the events that occurred a few years later in Kansas
and elsewhere. Retrospectively viewed under the mellowing light of time,
and with the calm consideration we can usually give to the irremediable
past, the compromise legislation of 1850 bears the impress of that
sectional spirit so widely at variance with the general purposes of the
Union, and so destructive of the harmony and mutual benefit which the
Constitution was intended to secure.
The refusal to divide the territory acquired from Mexico by an extension
of the line of the Missouri Compromise to the Pacific was a consequence
of the purpose to admit California as a State of the Union before it had
acquired the requisite population, and while it was mainly under the
control of a military organization sent from New York during the war
with Mexico and disbanded in California upon the restoration of peace.
The inconsistency of the argument against the extension of the line was
exhibited in the division of the Territory of Texas by that parallel,
and payment to the State of money to secure her consent to the partition
of her domain. In the case of Texas, the North had everything to gain
and nothing to lose by the application of the practice of geographical
compromise on an arbitrary line. In the case of California, the
conditions were reversed; the South might have been the gainer and the
North the loser by a recognition of the same rule.
The compensation which it was alleged that the South received was a more
effective law for the rendition of fugitives from service or labor. But
it is to be remarked that this law provided for the execution by the
General Government of obligations which had been imposed by the Federal
compact upon the several States of the Union. The benefit to be derived
from a fulfillment of that law would be small in comparison with the
evil to result from the plausible pretext that the States had thus been
relieved from a duty which they had assumed in the adoption of the
compact of union. Whatever tended to lead the people of any of the
States to feel that they could be relieved from their constitutional
obligations by transferring them to the General Government, or that they
might thus or otherwise evade or resist them, could not fail to be like
the tares which the enemy sowed amid the wheat. The union of States,
formed to secure the permanent welfare of posterity and to promote
harmony among the constituent States, could not, without changing its
character, survive such alienation as rendered its parts hostile to the
security, prosperity, and happiness of one another.
It was reasonably argued that, as the Legislatures of fourteen of the
States had enacted what were termed "personal liberty laws," which
forbade the coöperation of State officials in the rendition of fugitives
from service and labor, it became necessary that the General Government
should provide the requisite machinery for the execution of the law. The
result proved what might have been anticipated--that those communities
which had repudiated their constitutional obligations, which had
nullified a previous law of Congress for the execution of a provision of
the Constitution, and had murdered men who came peacefully to recover
their property, would evade or obstruct, so as to render practically
worthless, _any_ law that could be enacted for that purpose. In the
exceptional cases in which it might be executed, the event would be
attended with such conflict between the State and Federal authorities as
to produce consequent evils greater than those it was intended to
correct.
It was during the progress of these memorable controversies that the
South lost its most trusted leader, and the Senate its greatest and
purest statesman. He was taken from us--
"Like a summer-dried fountain,
When our need was the sorest;"--
when his intellectual power, his administrative talent, his love of
peace, and his devotion to the Constitution, might have averted
collision; or, failing in that, he might have been to the South the
Palinurus to steer the bark in safety over the perilous sea. Truly did
Mr. Webster--his personal friend, although his greatest political
rival--say of him in his obituary address, "There was nothing groveling,
or low, or meanly selfish, that came near the head or the heart of Mr.
Calhoun." His prophetic warnings speak from the grave with the wisdom of
inspiration. Would that they could have been appreciated by his
countrymen while he yet lived!
Note.--While the compromise measures of 1850 were pending, and
the excitement concerning them was at its highest, I one day
overtook Mr. Clay, of Kentucky, and Mr. Berrien, of Georgia, in
the Capitol grounds. They were in earnest conversation. It was
the 7th of March--the day on which Mr. Webster had delivered his
great speech. Mr. Clay, addressing me in the friendly manner
which he had always employed since I was a schoolboy in
Lexington, asked me what I thought of the speech. I liked it
better than he did. He then suggested that I should "join the
compromise men," saying that it was a measure which he thought
would probably give peace to the country for thirty years--the
period that had elapsed since the adoption of the compromise of
1820. Then, turning to Mr. Berrien, he said, "You and I will be
under ground before that time, but our young friend here may
have trouble to meet." I somewhat impatiently declared my
unwillingness to transfer to posterity a trial which they would
be relatively less able to meet than we were, and passed on my
way.
[Footnote 9: The vote in the Senate on the proposition to continue the
line of the Missouri Compromise through the newly acquired territory to
the Pacific was twenty-four yeas, to thirty-two nays. Reckoning Delaware
and Missouri as Southern States, the vote of the two sections was
exactly equal. The yeas were _all_ cast by Southern Senators; the nays
were all Northern, except two from Delaware, one from Missouri, and one
from Kentucky.]
CHAPTER III.
Reëlection to the Senate.--Political Controversies in
Mississippi.--Action of the Democratic State Convention.--Defeat
of the State-Rights Party.--Withdrawal of General Quitman and
Nomination of the Author as Candidate for the Office of
Governor.--The Canvass and its Result.--Retirement to Private
Life.
I had been reëlected by the Legislature of Mississippi as my own
successor, and entered upon a new term of service in the Senate on March
4, 1851.
On my return to Mississippi in 1851, the subject chiefly agitating the
public mind was that of the "compromise" measures of the previous year.
Consequent upon these was a proposition for a convention of delegates,
from the people of the Southern States respectively, to consider what
steps ought to be taken for their future peace and safety, and the
preservation of their constitutional rights. There was diversity of
opinion with regard to the merits of the measures referred to, but the
disagreement no longer followed the usual lines of party division. They
who saw in those measures the forerunner of disaster to the South had no
settled policy beyond a convention, the object of which should be to
devise new and more effectual guarantees against the perils of
usurpation. They were unjustly charged with a desire to destroy the
Union--a feeling entertained by few, very few, if by any, in
Mississippi, and avowed by none.
There were many, however, who held that the principles of the
Declaration of Independence, and the purposes for which the Union was
formed, were of higher value than the mere Union itself. Independence
existed before the compact of union between the States; and, if that
compact should be broken in part, and therefore destroyed in whole, it
was hoped that the liberties of the people in the States might still be
preserved. Those who were most devoted to the Union of the Constitution
might, consequently, be expected to resist most sternly any usurpation
of undelegated power, the effect of which would be to warp the Federal
Government from its proper character, and, by sapping the foundation, to
destroy the Union of the States.
My recent reëlection to the United States Senate had conferred upon me
for six years longer the office which I preferred to all others. I could
not, therefore, be suspected of desiring a nomination for any other
office from the Democratic Convention, the meeting of which was then
drawing near. Having, as a Senator of the State, freely participated in
debate on the measures which were now exciting so much interest in the
public mind, it was very proper that I should visit the people in
different parts of the State and render an account of my stewardship.
My devotion to the Union of our fathers had been so often and so
publicly declared; I had, on the floor of the Senate, so defiantly
challenged any question of my fidelity to it; my services, civil and
military, had now extended through so long a period, and were so
generally known--that I felt quite assured that no whisperings of envy
or ill will could lead the people of Mississippi to believe that I had
dishonored their trust by using the power they had conferred on me to
destroy the Government to which I was accredited. Then, as afterward, I
regarded the separation of the States as a great, though not the
greatest, evil.
I returned from my tour among the people at the time appointed for the
meeting of the nominating convention of the Democratic (or State-Rights)
party. During the previous year the Governor, General John A. Quitman,
had been compelled to resign his office to answer an indictment against
him for complicity with the "filibustering" expeditions against Cuba.
The charges were not sustained; many of the Democratic party of
Mississippi, myself included, recognized a consequent obligation to
renominate him for the office of which he had been deprived. When,
however, the delegates met in party convention, the committee appointed
to select candidates, on comparison of opinions, concluded that, in view
of the effort to fix upon the party the imputation of a purpose of
disunion, some of the antecedents of General Quitman might endanger
success. A proposition was therefore made, in the committee on
nominations, that I should be invited to become a candidate, and that,
if General Quitman would withdraw, my acceptance of the nomination and
the resignation of my place in the United States Senate, which it was
known would result, was to be followed by the appointment by the
Governor of General Quitman to the vacated place in the Senate. I
offered no objection to this arrangement, but left it to General Quitman
to decide. He claimed the nomination for the governorship, or nothing,
and was so nominated.
To promote the success of the Democratic nominees, I engaged actively in
the canvass, and continued in the field until stricken down by disease.
This occurred just before the election of delegates to a State
Convention, for which provision had been made by the Legislature, and
the canvass for which, conducted in the main upon party lines, was in
progress simultaneously with that for the ordinary State officers. The
Democratic majority in the State when the canvass began was estimated at
eight thousand. At this election, in September, for delegates to the
State Convention, we were beaten by about seven thousand five hundred
votes. Seeing in this result the foreshadowing of almost inevitable
defeat, General Quitman withdrew from the canvass as a candidate, and
the Executive Committee of the party (empowered to fill vacancies)
called on me to take his place. My health did not permit me to leave
home at that time, and only about six weeks remained before the election
was to take place; but, being assured that I was not expected to take
any active part, and that the party asked only the use of my name, I
consented to be announced, and immediately resigned from the United
States Senate. Nevertheless, I soon afterward took the field in person,
and worked earnestly until the day of election. I was defeated, but the
majority of more than seven thousand votes, that had been cast a short
time before against the party with which I was associated, was reduced
to less than one thousand.[10]
In this canvass, both before and after I became a candidate, no argument
or appeal of mine was directed against the perpetuation of the Union.
Believing, however, that the signs of the time portended danger to the
South from the usurpation by the General Government of undelegated
powers, I counseled that Mississippi should enter into the proposed
meeting of the people of the Southern States, to consider what could and
should be done to insure our future safety, frankly stating my
conviction that, unless such action were taken then, sectional rivalry
would engender greater evils in the future, and that, if the controversy
was postponed, "the last opportunity for a peaceful solution would be
lost, then the issue would have to be settled by blood."
[Footnote 10: The following letter, written in 1853 to the Hon. William
J. Brown, of Indiana, formerly a member of Congress from that State, and
subsequently published, relates to the events of this period, and
affords nearly contemporaneous evidence in confirmation of the
statements of the text:
"Washington D.C., _May 7, 1853_.
"My dear Sir: I received the 'Sentinel' containing your defense of me
against the fate accusation of disunionism, and, before I had returned
to you the thanks to which you are entitled, I received this day the St.
Joseph 'Valley Register,' marked by you, to call my attention to an
article in answer to your defense, which was just in all things, save
your too complimentary terms.
"I wish I had the letter quoted from, that you might publish the whole
of that which is garbled to answer a purpose. In a part of the letter
not published, I put such a damper on the attempt to fix on me the
desire to break up our Union, and presented other points in a form so
little acceptable to the unfriendly inquirers, that the publication of
the letter had to be drawn out of them.
"At the risk of being wearisome, but encouraged by your marked
friendship, I will give you a statement in the case. The meeting of
October, 1849, was a convention of delegates equally representing the
Whig and Democratic parties in Mississippi. The resolutions were
decisive as to equality of right in the South with the North to the
Territories acquired from Mexico, and proposed a convention of the
Southern States. I was not a member, but on invitation addressed the
Convention. The succeeding Legislature instructed me, as a Senator, to
assert this equality, and, under the existing circumstances, to resist
by all constitutional means the admission of California as a State. At a
called session of the Legislature in 1850, a self-constituted committee
called on me, by letter, for my views. They were men who had enacted or
approved the resolutions of the Convention of 1849, and instructed me,
as members of the Legislature, in regular session, in the early part of
the year 1850. To them I replied that I adhered to the policy they had
indicated and instructed me in their official character to pursue.
"I pointed out the mode in which their policy could, in my opinion, be
executed without bloodshed or disastrous convulsion, but in terms of
bitter scorn alluded to such as would insult me with a desire to destroy
the Union, for which my whole life proved me to be a devotee.
"Pardon the egotism, in consideration of the occasion, when I say to you
that my father and my uncles fought through the Revolution of 1776,
giving their youth, their blood, and their little patrimony to the
constitutional freedom which I claim as my inheritance. Three of my
brothers fought in the war of 1812. Two of them were comrades of the
Hero of the Hermitage, and received his commendation for gallantry at
New Orleans. At sixteen years of age I was given to the service of my
country; for twelve years of my life I have borne its arms and served
it, zealously, if not well. As I feel the infirmities, which suffering
more than age has brought upon me, it would be a bitter reflection,
indeed, if I was forced to conclude that my countrymen would hold all
this light when weighed against the empty panegyric which a time-serving
politician can bestow upon the Union, for which he never made a
sacrifice.
"In the Senate I announced that, if any respectable man would call me a
disunionist, I would answer him in monosyllables.... But I have often
asserted the right, for which the battles of the Revolution were
fought--the right of a people to change their government whenever it was
found to be oppressive, and subversive of the objects for which
governments are instituted--and have contended for the independence and
sovereignty of the States, a part of the creed of which Jefferson was
the apostle, Madison the expounder, and Jackson the consistent defender.
"I have written freely, and more than I designed. Accept my thanks for
your friendly advocacy. Present me in terms of kind remembrance to your
family, and believe me, very sincerely yours,
"Jefferson Davis.
"Note.--No party in Mississippi ever advocated disunion. They differed
as to the mode of securing their rights in the Union, and on the power
of a State to secede--neither advocating the exercise of the power.
"J.D."
]
CHAPTER IV.
The Author enters the Cabinet.--Administration of the War
Department.--Surveys for a Pacific Railway.--Extension of the
Capitol.--New Regiments organized.--Colonel Samuel Cooper,
Adjutant-General.--A Bit of Civil-Service Reform.--Reëlection to
the Senate.--Continuity of the Pierce Cabinet.--Character of
Franklin Pierce.
Happy in the peaceful pursuits of a planter; busily engaged in cares for
servants, in the improvement of my land, in building, in rearing
live-stock, and the like occupations, the time passed pleasantly away
until my retirement was interrupted by an invitation to take a place in
the Cabinet of Mr. Pierce, who had been elected to the Presidency of the
United States in November, 1852. Although warmly attached to Mr. Pierce
personally, and entertaining the highest estimate of his character and
political principles, private and personal reasons led me to decline the
offer. This was followed by an invitation to attend the ceremony of his
inauguration, which took place on the 4th of March, 1853. While in
Washington, on this visit, I was induced by public considerations to
reconsider my determination and accept the office of Secretary of War.
The public records of that period will best show how the duties of that
office were performed.
While in the Senate, I had advocated the construction of a railway to
connect the valley of the Mississippi with the Pacific coast; and, when
an appropriation was made to determine the most eligible route for that
purpose, the Secretary of War was charged with its application. We had
then but little of that minute and accurate knowledge of the interior of
the continent which was requisite for a determination of the problem.
Several different parties were therefore organized to examine the
various routes supposed to be practicable within the northern and
southern limits of the United States. The arguments which I had used as
a Senator were "the military necessity for such means of transportation,
and the need of safe and rapid communication with the Pacific slope, to
secure its continuance as a part of the Union."
In the organization and equipment of these parties, and in the selection
of their officers, care was taken to provide for securing full and
accurate information upon every point involved in the determination of
the route. The only discrimination made was in the more prompt and
thorough equipment of the parties for the extreme northern line, and
this was only because that was supposed to be the most difficult of
execution of all the surveys.
In like manner, my advocacy while in the Senate of an extension of the
Capitol, by the construction of a new Senate-Chamber and Hall of
Representatives, may have caused the appropriation for that object to be
put under my charge as Secretary of War.
During my administration of the War Department, material changes were
made in the models of arms. Iron gun-carriages were introduced, and
experiments were made which led to the casting of heavy guns hollow,
instead of boring them after casting. Inquiries were made with regard to
gunpowder, which subsequently led to the use of a coarser grain for
artillery.
During the same period the army was increased by the addition of two
regiments of infantry and two of cavalry. The officers of these
regiments were chosen partly by selection from those already in service
in the regular army and partly by appointment from civil life. In making
the selections from the army, I was continually indebted to the
assistance of that pure-minded and accurately informed officer, Colonel
Samuel Cooper, the Adjutant-General, of whom it may be proper here to
say that, although his life had been spent in the army, and he, of
course, had the likes and dislikes inseparable from men who are brought
into close contact and occasional rivalry, I never found in his official
recommendations any indication of partiality or prejudice toward any
one.
When the first list was made out, to be submitted to the President, a
difficulty was found to exist, which had not occurred either to Colonel
Cooper or myself. This was, that the officers selected purely on their
military record did not constitute a roster conforming to that
distribution among the different States, which, for political
considerations, it was thought desirable to observe--that is to say, the
number of such officers of Southern birth was found to be
disproportionately great. Under instructions from the President, the
list was therefore revised and modified in accordance with this new
element of geographical distribution. This, as I am happy to remember,
was the only occasion in which the current of my official action, while
Secretary of War, was disturbed in any way by sectional or political
considerations.
Under former administrations of the War Office it had not been customary
to make removals or appointments upon political grounds, except in the
case of clerkships. To this usage I not only adhered, but extended it to
include the clerkships also. The Chief Clerk, who had been removed by my
predecessor, had peculiar qualifications for the place; and, although
known to me only officially, he was restored to the position. It will
probably be conceded by all who are well informed on the subject that
his restoration was a benefit to the public service.[11]
[The reader desirous for further information relative to the
administration of the War Department during this period may find it in
the various official reports and estimates of works of defense
prosecuted or recommended, arsenals of construction and depots of arms
maintained or suggested, and foundries employed, during the Presidency
of Mr. Pierce, 1853-'57.]
Having been again elected by the Legislature of Mississippi as Senator
to the United States, I passed from the Cabinet of Mr. Pierce, on the
last day of his term (March 4, 1857), to take my seat in the Senate.
The Administration of Franklin Pierce presents the only instance in our
history of the continuance of a Cabinet for four years without a single
change in its _personnel_. When it is remembered that there was much
dissimilarity if not incongruity of character among the members of that
Cabinet, some idea may be formed of the power over men possessed and
exercised by Mr. Pierce. Chivalrous, generous, amiable, true to his
friends and to his faith, frank and bold in the declaration of his
opinions, he never deceived any one. And, if treachery had ever come
near him, it would have stood abashed in the presence of his truth, his
manliness, and his confiding simplicity.
[Footnote 11: Soon after my entrance upon duty as secretary of War,
General Jesup, the Quartermaster-General, presented to me a list of
names from which to make selection of a clerk for his department.
Observing that he had attached certain figures to these names, I asked
whether the figures were intended to indicate the relative
qualifications, or preference in his estimation, of the several
applicants; and, upon his answer in the affirmative, without further
question, authorized him to appoint "No. 1" of his list. A day or two
afterward, certain Democratic members of Congress called on me and
politely inquired whether it was true that I had appointed a Whig to a
position in the War Office. "Certainly not," I answered. "We thought you
were not aware of it," said they, and proceeded to inform me that Mr.
----, the recent appointee to the clerkship just mentioned, was a Whig.
After listening patiently to this statement, I answered that it was they
who were deceived, not I. I had appointed a clerk. He had been appointed
neither as a Whig nor as a Democrat, but merely as the fittest candidate
for the place in the estimation of the chief of the bureau to which it
belonged. I further gave them to understand that the same principle of
selection would be followed in similar cases, so far as my authority
extended. After some further discussion of the question, the visitors
withdrew, dissatisfied with the result of the interview.
The Quartermaster-General, on hearing of this conversation, hastened to
inform me that it was all a mistake--that the appointee to the office
had been confounded with his father, who was a well-known Whig, but that
he (the son) was a Democrat. I assured the General that this was
altogether immaterial, adding that it was "a very pretty quarrel" as it
stood, and that I had no desire to effect a settlement of it on any
inferior issue. Thenceforward, however, I was but little troubled with
any pressure for political appointments in the department.]
CHAPTER V.
The Territorial Question.--An Incident at the White House.--The
Kansas and Nebraska Bill.--The Missouri Compromise abrogated in
1850, not in 1854.--Origin of "Squatter Sovereignty."--Sectional
Rivalry and its Consequences.--The Emigrant Aid Societies.--"The
Bible and Sharpe's Rifles."--False Pretensions as to
Principle.--The Strife in Kansas.--A Retrospect.--The Original
Equilibrium of Power and its Overthrow.--Usurpations of the
Federal Government.--The Protective Tariff.--Origin and Progress
of Abolitionism.--Who were the Friends of the Union?--An
Illustration of Political Morality.
The organization of the Territory of Kansas was the first question that
gave rise to exciting debate after my return to the Senate. The
celebrated Kansas-Nebraska Bill had become a law during the
Administration of Mr. Pierce. As this occupies a large space in the
political history of the period, it is proper to state some facts
connected with it, which were not public, but were known to me and to
others yet living.
The declaration, often repeated in 1850, that climate and the will of
the people concerned should determine their institutions when they
should form a Constitution, and as a State be admitted into the Union,
and that no legislation by Congress should be permitted to interfere
with the free exercise of that will when so expressed, was but the
announcement of the fact so firmly established in the Constitution, that
sovereignty resided alone in the States, and that Congress had only
delegated powers. It has been sometimes contended that, because the
Congress of the Confederation, by the Ordinance of 1787, prohibited
involuntary servitude in all the Northwestern Territory, the framers of
the Constitution must have recognized such power to exist in the
Congress of the United States. Hence the deduction that the prohibitory
clause of what is known as the Missouri Compromise was justified by the
precedent of the Ordinance of 1787. To make the action of the Congress
of the Confederation a precedent for the Congress of the United States
is to overlook the great distinction between the two.
The Congress of the Confederation represented the States in their
sovereignty, and, as such representatives, had legislative, executive,
and, in some degree, judicial power confided to it. Virtually, it was an
assemblage of the States. In certain cases a majority of nine States
were required to decide a question, but there is no express limitation,
or restriction, such as is to be found in the ninth and tenth amendments
to the Constitution of the United States. The General Government of the
Union is composed of three departments, of which the Congress is the
legislative branch, and which is checked by the revisory power of the
judiciary, and the veto power of the Executive, and, above all, is
expressly limited in legislation to powers expressly delegated by the
States. If, then, it be admitted, which is certainly questionable, that
the Congress of the Confederation had power to exclude slave property
northwest of the Ohio River, that power must have been derived from its
character as representing the States in their sovereignty, for no
indication of such a power is to be found in the Articles of
Confederation.
If it be assumed that the absence of a prohibition was equivalent to the
admission of the power in the Congress of the Confederation, the
assumption would avail nothing in the Congress under the Constitution,
where power is expressly limited to what had been delegated. More
briefly, it may be stated that the Congress of the Confederation could,
like the Legislature of a State, do what had not been prohibited; but
the Congress of the United States could only do what had been expressly
permitted. It is submitted whether this last position is not conclusive
against the possession of power by the United States Congress to
legislate slavery into or exclude it from Territories belonging to the
United States.
This subject, which had for more than a quarter of a century been one of
angry discussion and sectional strife, was revived, and found occasion
for renewed discussion in the organization of Territorial governments
for Kansas and Nebraska. The Committees on Territories of the two Houses
agreed to report a bill in accordance with that recognized principle,
provided they could first be assured that it would receive favorable
consideration from the President. This agreement was made on Saturday,
and the ensuing Monday was the day (and the only day for two weeks) on
which, according to the order of business established by the rules of
the House of Representatives, the bill could be introduced by the
Committee of that House.
On Sunday morning, the 22d of January, 1854, gentlemen of each Committee
called at my house, and Mr. Douglas, chairman of the Senate Committee,
fully explained the proposed bill, and stated their purpose to be,
through my aid, to obtain an interview on that day with the President,
to ascertain whether the bill would meet his approbation. The President
was known to be rigidly opposed to the reception of visits on Sunday for
the discussion of any political subject; but in this case it was urged
as necessary, in order to enable the Committee to make their report the
next day. I went with them to the Executive mansion, and, leaving them
in the reception-room, sought the President in his private apartments,
and explained to him the occasion of the visit. He thereupon met the
gentlemen, patiently listened to the reading of the bill and their
explanations of it, decided that it rested upon sound constitutional
principles, and recognized in it only a return to that rule which had
been infringed by the compromise of 1820, and the restoration of which
had been foreshadowed by the legislation of 1850. This bill was not,
therefore, as has been improperly asserted, a measure inspired by Mr.
Pierce or any of his Cabinet. Nor was it the first step taken toward the
repeal of the conditions or obligations expressed or implied by the
establishment, in 1820, of the politico-sectional line of thirty-six
degrees and thirty minutes. That compact had been virtually abrogated,
in 1850, by the refusal of the representatives of the North to apply it
to the territory then recently acquired from Mexico. In May, 1854, the
Kansas-Nebraska Bill was passed; its purpose was declared in the bill
itself to be to carry into practical operation the "propositions and
principles established by the compromise measures of 1850" The "Missouri
Compromise," therefore, was not repealed by that bill--its virtual
repeal by the legislation of 1850 was recognized as an existing fact,
and it was declared to be "inoperative and void."
It was added that the "true intent and meaning" of the act was "not to
legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it
therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and
regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to
the Constitution of the United States."
From the terms of this bill, as well as from the arguments that were
used in its behalf, it is evident that its purpose was to leave the
Territories equally open to the people of all the States, with every
species of property recognized by any of them; to permit climate and
soil to determine the current of immigration, and to secure to the
people themselves the right to form their own institutions according to
their own will, as soon as they should acquire the right of
self-government; that is to say, as soon as their numbers should entitle
them to organize themselves into a State, prepared to take its place as
an equal, sovereign member of the Federal Union. The claim, afterward
advanced by Mr. Douglas and others, that this declaration was intended
to assert the right of the first settlers of a Territory, in its
inchoate, rudimental, dependent, and transitional condition, to
determine the character of its institutions, constituted the doctrine
popularly known as "squatter sovereignty." Its assertion led to the
dissensions which ultimately resulted in a rupture of the Democratic
party.
Sectional rivalry, the deadly foe of the "domestic tranquillity" and the
"general welfare," which the compact of union was formed to insure, now
interfered, with gigantic efforts, to prevent that free migration which
had been promised, and to hinder the decision by climate and the
interests of the inhabitants of the institutions to be established by
these embryo States. Societies were formed in the North to supply money
and send emigrants into the new Territories; and a famous preacher,
addressing a body of those emigrants, charged them to carry with them to
Kansas "the Bible and Sharpe's rifles." The latter were of course to be
leveled against the bosoms of their Southern brethren who might migrate
to the same Territory, but the use to be made of the Bible in the same
fraternal enterprise was left unexplained by the reverend gentleman.
The war-cry employed to train the Northern mind for the deeds
contemplated by the agitators was "No extension of slavery!" Was this
sentiment real or feigned? The number of slaves (as has already been
clearly shown) would not have been increased by their transportation to
new territory. It could not be augmented by further importation, for the
law of the land made that piracy. Southern men were the leading authors
of that enactment, and the public opinion of their descendants, stronger
than the law, fully sustained it. The climate of Kansas and Nebraska was
altogether unsuited to the negro, and the soil was not adapted to those
productions for which negro labor could be profitably employed. If,
then, any negroes held to service or labor, as provided in the compact
of union, had been transported to those Territories, they would have
been such as were bound by personal attachment mutually existing between
master and servant, which would have rendered it impossible for the
former to consider the latter as property convertible into money. As
white laborers, adapted to the climate and its products, flowed into the
country, negro labor would have inevitably become a tax to those who
held it, and their emancipation would have followed that condition, as
it has in all the Northern States, old or new--Wisconsin furnishing the
last example.[12] It may, therefore, be reasonably concluded that the
"war-cry" was employed by the artful to inflame the minds of the less
informed and less discerning; that it was adopted in utter disregard of
the means by which negro emancipation might have been peaceably
accomplished in the Territories, and with the sole object of obtaining
sectional control and personal promotion by means of popular agitation.
The success attending this artifice was remarkable. To such an extent
was it made available, that Northern indignation was aroused on the
absurd accusation that the South had destroyed "that sacred instrument,
the compromise of 1820." The internecine war which raged in Kansas for
several years was substituted for the promised peace under the operation
of the natural laws regulating migration to new countries. For the
fratricide which dyed the virgin soil of Kansas with the blood of those
who should have stood shoulder to shoulder in subduing the wilderness;
for the frauds which corrupted the ballot-box and made the name of
election a misnomer--let the authors of "squatter sovereignty" and the
fomenters of sectional hatred answer to the posterity for whose peace
and happiness the fathers formed the Federal compact.
In these scenes of strife were trained the incendiaries who afterward
invaded Virginia under the leadership of John Brown; and at this time
germinated the sentiments which led men of high position to sustain,
with their influence and their money, this murderous incursion into the
South.[13]
Now was seen the lightning of that storm, the distant muttering of which
had been heard so long, and against which the wise and the patriotic had
given solemn warning, regarding it as the sign which portended a
dissolution of the Union.
Diversity of interests and of opinions among the States of the
Confederation had in the beginning presented great difficulties in the
way of the formation of a more perfect union. The compact was the result
of compromise between the States, at that time generally distinguished
as navigating and agricultural, afterward as Northern and Southern. When
the first census was taken, in 1790, there was but little numerical
difference in the population of these two sections, and (including
States about to be admitted) there was also an exact equality in the
number of States. Each section had, therefore, the power of
self-protection, and might feel secure against any danger of Federal
aggression. If the disturbance of that equilibrium had been the
consequence of natural causes, and the government of the whole had
continued to be administered strictly for the general welfare, there
would have been no ground for complaint of the result.
Under the old Confederation the Southern States had a large excess of
territory. The acquisition of Louisiana, of Florida, and of Texas,
afterward greatly increased this excess. The generosity and patriotism
of Virginia led her, before the adoption of the Constitution, to cede
the Northwest Territory to the United States. The "Missouri Compromise"
surrendered to the North all the newly acquired region not included in
the State of Missouri, and north of the parallel of thirty-six degrees
and a half. The northern part of Texas was in like manner given up by
the compromise of 1850; and the North, having obtained, by those
successive cessions, a majority in both Houses of Congress, took to
itself all the territory acquired from Mexico. Thus, by the action of
the General Government, the means were provided permanently to destroy
the original equilibrium between the sections.
Nor was this the only injury to which the South was subjected. Under the
power of Congress to levy duties on imports, tariff laws were enacted,
not merely "to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and
general welfare of the United States," as authorized by the
Constitution, but, positively and primarily, for the protection against
foreign competition of domestic manufactures. The effect of this was to
impose the main burden of taxation upon the Southern people, who were
consumers and not manufacturers, not only by the enhanced price of
imports, but indirectly by the consequent depreciation in the value of
exports, which were chiefly the products of Southern States. The
imposition of this grievance was unaccompanied by the consolation of
knowing that the tax thus borne was to be paid into the public Treasury,
for the increase of price accrued mainly to the benefit of the
manufacturer. Nor was this all: a reference to the annual appropriations
will show that the disbursements made were as unequal as the burdens
borne--the inequality in both operating in the same direction.
These causes all combined to direct immigration to the Northern section;
and with the increase of its preponderance appeared more and more
distinctly a tendency in the Federal Government to pervert functions
delegated to it, and to use them with sectional discrimination against
the minority.
The resistance to the admission of Missouri as a State, in 1820, was
evidently not owing to any moral or constitutional considerations, but
merely to political motives; and the compensation exacted for granting
what was simply a right, was the exclusion of the South from equality in
the enjoyment of territory which justly belonged equally to both, and
which was what the enemies of the South stigmatized as "slave
territory," when acquired.
The sectional policy then indicated brought to its support the passions
that spring from man's higher nature, but which, like all passions, if
misdirected and perverted, become hurtful and, it may be, destructive.
The year 1835 was marked by the public agitation for the abolition of
that African servitude which existed in the South, which antedated the
Union, and had existed in every one of the States that formed the
Confederation. By a great misconception of the powers belonging to the
General Government, and the responsibilities of citizens of the Northern
States, many of those citizens were, little by little, brought to the
conclusion that slavery was a sin for which _they_ were answerable, and
that it was the duty of the Federal Government to abate it. Though, at
the date above referred to, numerically so weak, when compared with
either of the political parties at the North, as to excite no
apprehension of their power for evil, the public demonstrations of the
Abolitionists were violently rebuked generally at the North. The party
was contemned on account of the character of its leaders, and the more
odious because chief among them was an Englishman, one Thompson, who was
supposed to be an emissary, whose mission was to prepare the way for a
dissolution of the Union. Let us hope that it was reverence for the
obligations of the Constitution as the soul of the Union that suggested
lurking danger, and rendered the supposed emissary for its destruction
so odious that he was driven from a Massachusetts hall where he
attempted to lecture. But bodies in motion will overcome bodies at rest,
and the unreflecting too often are led by captivating names far from the
principles they revere.
Thus, by the activity of the propagandists of abolitionism, and the
misuse of the sacred word Liberty, they recruited from the ardent
worshipers of that goddess such numbers as gave them in many Northern
States the balance of power between the two great political forces that
stood arrayed against each other; then and there they came to be courted
by both of the great parties, especially by the Whigs, who had become
the weaker party of the two. Fanaticism, to which is usually accorded
sincerity as an extenuation of its mischievous tenets, affords the best
excuse to be offered for the original abolitionists, but that can not be
conceded to the political associates who joined them for the purpose of
acquiring power; with them it was but hypocritical cant, intended to
deceive. Hence arose the declaration of the existence of an
"irrepressible conflict," because of the domestic institutions of
sovereign, self-governing States--institutions over which neither the
Federal Government nor the people outside of the limits of such States
had any control, and for which they could have no moral or legal
responsibility.
Those who are to come after us, and who will look without prejudice or
excitement at the record of events which have occurred in our day, will
not fail to wonder how men professing and proclaiming such a belief
should have so far imposed upon the credulity of the world as to be able
to arrogate to themselves the claim of being the special friends of a
Union contracted in order to insure "domestic tranquillity" among the
people of the States united; that _they_ were the advocates of peace, of
law, and of order, who, when taking an oath to support and maintain the
Constitution, did so with a mental reservation to violate one of the
provisions of that Constitution--one of the conditions of the
compact--without which the Union could never have been formed. The tone
of political morality which could make this possible was well indicated
by the toleration accorded in the Senate to the flippant,
inconsequential excuse for it given by one of its most eminent
exemplars--"Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this
thing?"--meaning thereby, not that it would be the part of a dog to
_violate_ his oath, but to _keep_ it in the matter referred to. (See
Appendix D.)
[Footnote 12: Extract from a speech of Mr. Davis, of Mississippi, in the
Senate of the United States, May 17, 1860: "There is a relation
belonging to this species of property, unlike that of the apprentice or
the hired man, which awakens whatever there is of kindness or of
nobility of soul in the heart of him who owns it; this can only be
alienated, obscured, or destroyed, by collecting this species of
property into such masses that the owner is not personally acquainted
with the individuals who compose it. In the relation, however, which can
exist in the Northwestern Territories, the mere domestic connection of
one, two, or at most half a dozen servants in a family, associating with
the children as they grow up, attending upon age as it declines, there
can be nothing against which either philanthropy or humanity can make an
appeal. Not even the emancipationist could raise his voice; for this is
the high-road and the open gate to the condition in which the masters
would, from interest, in a few years, desire the emancipation of every
one who may thus be taken to the northwestern frontier."]
[Footnote 13: See "Report of Senate Committee of Inquiry into the John
Brown Raid."]
CHAPTER VI.
Agitation continued.--Political Parties: their Origin, Changes,
and Modifications.--Some Account of the "Popular Sovereignty,"
or "Non-Intervention," Theory.--Rupture of the Democratic
Party.--The John Brown Raid.--Resolutions introduced by the
Author into the Senate on the Relations of the States, the
Federal Government, and the Territories; their Discussion and
Adoption.
The strife in Kansas and the agitation of the territorial question in
Congress and throughout the country continued during nearly the whole of
Mr. Buchanan's Administration, finally culminating in a disruption of
the Union. Meantime the changes, or modifications, which had occurred or
were occurring in the great political parties, were such as may require
a word of explanation to the reader not already familiar with their
history.
The _names_ adopted by political parties in the United States have not
always been strictly significant of their principles. The old Federal
party inclined to nationalism, or consolidation, rather than
federalization, of the States. On the other hand, the party originally
known as Republican, and afterward as Democratic, can scarcely claim to
have been distinctively or exclusively such in the primary sense of
these terms, inasmuch as no party has ever avowed opposition to the
general principles of government by the people. The fundamental idea of
the Democratic party was that of the sovereignty of the States and the
federal, or confederate, character of the Union. Other elements have
entered into its organization at different periods, but this has been
the vital, cardinal, and abiding principle on which its existence has
been perpetuated. The Whig, which succeeded the old Federal party,
though by no means identical with it, was, in the main, favorable to a
strong central government, therein antagonizing the transatlantic
traditions connected with its name. The "Know-Nothing," or "American,"
party, which sprang into existence on the decadence of the Whig
organization, based upon opposition to the alleged overgrowth of the
political influence of naturalized foreigners and of the Roman Catholic
Church, had but a brief duration, and after the Presidential election of
1856 declined as rapidly as it had arisen.
At the period to which this narrative has advanced, the "Free-Soil,"
which had now assumed the title of "Republican" party, had grown to a
magnitude which threatened speedily to obtain entire control of the
Government. Based, as has been shown, upon sectional rivalry and
opposition to the growth of the Southern equally with the Northern
States of the Union, it had absorbed within itself not only the
abolitionists, who were avowedly agitating for the destruction of the
system of negro servitude, but other diverse and heterogeneous elements
of opposition to the Democratic party. In the Presidential election of
1856, their candidates (Fremont and Dayton) had received 114 of a total
of 296 electoral votes, representing a popular vote of 1,341,264 in a
total of 4,053,967. The elections of the ensuing year (1857) exhibited a
diminution of the so-called "Republican" strength, and the Thirty-fifth
Congress, which convened in December of that year, was decidedly
Democratic in both branches. In the course of the next two years,
however, the Kansas agitation and another cause, to be presently
noticed, had so swollen the ranks of the so-called Republicans, that, in
the House of Representatives of the Thirty-sixth Congress, which met in
December, 1859, neither party had a decided majority, the balance of
power being held by a few members still adhering to the virtually
extinct Whig and "American," or Know-Nothing, organizations, and a still
smaller number whose position was doubtful or irregular. More than eight
weeks were spent in the election of a Speaker; and a so-called
"Republican" (Mr. Pennington, of New Jersey) was finally elected by a
majority of one vote. The Senate continued to be decidedly Democratic,
though with an increase of the so-called "Republican" minority.
The cause above alluded to, as contributing to the rapid growth of the
so-called Republican party after the elections of the year 1857, was the
dissension among the Democrats, occasioned by the introduction of the
doctrine called by its inventors and advocates "popular sovereignty," or
"non-intervention," but more generally and more accurately known as
"squatter sovereignty." Its character has already been concisely stated
in the preceding chapter. Its origin is generally attributed to General
Cass, who is supposed to have suggested it in some general expressions
of his celebrated "Nicholson letter," written in December, 1847. On the
16th and 17th of May, 1860, it became necessary for me in a debate, in
the Senate, to review that letter of Mr. Cass. From my remarks then
made, the following extract is taken:
"The Senator [Mr. Douglas] might have remembered, if he had
chosen to recollect so unimportant a thing, that I once had to
explain to him, ten years ago, the fact that I repudiated the
doctrine of that letter at the time it was published, and that
the Democracy of Mississippi had well-nigh crucified me for the
construction which I placed upon it. There were men mean enough
to suspect that the construction I gave to the Nicholson letter
was prompted by the confidence and affection I felt for General
Taylor. At a subsequent period, however, Mr. Cass thoroughly
reviewed it. He uttered (for him) very harsh language against
all who had doubted the true construction of his letter, and he
construed it just as I had done during the canvass of 1848. It
remains only to add that I supported Mr. Cass, not because of
the doctrine of the Nicholson letter, but in despite of it;
because I believed a Democratic President, with a Democratic
Cabinet and Democratic counselors in the two Houses of Congress,
and he as honest a man as I believed Mr. Cass to be, would be a
safer reliance than his opponent, who personally possessed my
confidence as much as any man living, but who was of, and must
draw his advisers from, a party the tenets of which I believed
to be opposed to the interests of the country, as they were to
all my political convictions.
"I little thought at that time that my advocacy of Mr. Cass upon
such grounds as these, or his support by the State of which I am
a citizen, would at any future day be quoted as an endorsement
of the opinions contained in the Nicholson letter, as those
opinions were afterward defined. But it is not only upon this
letter, but equally upon the resolutions of the Convention as
constructive of that letter, that the Senator rested his
argument. [I will here say to the Senator that, if at any time I
do him the least injustice, speaking as I do from such notes as
I could take while he progressed, I will thank him to correct
me.]
"But this letter entered into the canvass; there was a doubt
about its construction: there were men who asserted that they
had positive authority for saying that it meant that the people
of a Territory could only exclude slavery when the Territory
should form a Constitution and be admitted as a State. This
doubt continued to hang over the construction, and it was that
doubt alone which secured Mr. Cass the vote of Mississippi. If
the true construction had been certainly known, he would have
had no chance to get it."
Whatever meaning the generally discreet and conservative statesman, Mr.
Cass, may have intended to convey, it is not at all probable that he
foresaw the extent to which the suggestions would be carried and the
consequences that would result from it.
In the organization of a government for California in 1850, the theory
was more distinctly advanced, but it was not until after the passage of
the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, in 1854, that it was fully developed under the
plastic and constructive genius of the Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, of
Illinois. The leading part which that distinguished Senator had borne in
the authorship and advocacy of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, which affirmed
the right of the people of the Territories "to form and regulate their
domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution
of the United States," had aroused against him a violent storm of
denunciation in the State which he represented and other Northern
States. He met it very manfully in some respects, defended his action
resolutely, but in so doing was led to make such concessions of
principle and to attach such an interpretation to the bill as would have
rendered it practically nugatory--a thing to keep the promise of peace
to the ear and break it to the hope.
The Constitution expressly confers upon Congress the power to admit new
States into the Union, and also to "dispose of and make all needful
rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property
belonging to the United States." Under these grants of power, the
uniform practice of the Government had been for Congress to lay off and
divide the common territory by convenient boundaries for the formation
of future States; to provide executive, legislative, and judicial
departments of government for such Territories during their temporary
and provisional period of pupilage; to delegate to these governments
such authority as might be expedient--subject always to the supervision
and controlling government of the Congress. Finally, at the proper time,
and on the attainment by the Territory of sufficient strength and
population for self-government, to receive it into the Union on a
footing of entire equality with the original States--sovereign and
self-governing. All this is no more inconsistent with the true
principles of "popular sovereignty," properly understood, than the
temporary subjection of a minor to parental control is inconsistent with
the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence, or the exceptional
discipline of a man-of-war or a military post with the principles of
republican freedom.
The usual process of transition from a territorial condition to that of
a State was, in the first place, by an act of Congress authorizing the
inhabitants to elect representatives for a convention to form a State
Constitution, which was then submitted to Congress for approval and
ratification. On such ratification the supervisory control of Congress
was withdrawn, and the new State authorized to assume its sovereignty,
and the inhabitants of the Territory became citizens of a State. In the
cases of Tennessee in 1796, and Arkansas and Michigan in 1836, the
failure of the inhabitants to obtain an "enabling act" of Congress,
before organizing themselves, very nearly caused the rejection of their
applications for admission as States, though they were eventually
granted on the ground that the subsequent approval and consent of
Congress could heal the prior irregularity. The entire control of
Congress over the whole subject of territorial government had never been
questioned in earlier times. Necessarily conjoined with the _power_ of
this protectorate, was of course the _duty_ of exercising it for the
safety of the persons and property of all citizens of the United States,
permanently or temporarily resident in any part of the domain belonging
to the States in common.
Logically carried out, the new theory of "popular sovereignty" would
apply to the first adventurous pioneers settling in the wilderness
before the organization of any Territorial government by Congress, as
well as afterward. If "sovereignty" is inherent in a thousand or five
thousand persons, there can be no valid ground for denying its existence
in a dozen, as soon as they pass beyond the limits of the State
governments. The advocates of this novel doctrine, however, if rightly
understood, generally disavowed any claim to its application prior to
the organization of a territorial government.
The Territorial Legislatures, to which Congress delegated a portion of
its power and duty to "make all needful rules and regulations respecting
the Territory," were the mere agents of Congress, exercising an
authority subject to Congressional supervision and control--an authority
conferred only for the sake of convenience, and liable at any time to be
revoked and annulled. Yet it is proposed to recognize in these
provisional, subordinate, and temporary legislative bodies, a power not
possessed by Congress itself. This is to claim that the creature is
endowed with an authority not possessed by the creator, or that the
stream has risen to an elevation above that of its source.
Furthermore, in contending for a power in the Territorial Legislatures
permanently to determine the fundamental, social, and political
institutions of the Territory, and thereby virtually to prescribe those
of the future State, the advocates of "popular sovereignty" were
investing those dependent and subsidiary bodies with powers far above
any exercised by the Legislatures of the fully organized and sovereign
States. The authority of the State Legislatures is limited, both by the
Federal Constitution and by the respective State Constitutions from
which it is derived. This latter limitation did not and could not exist
in the Territories.
Strange as it may seem, a theory founded on fallacies so flimsy and
leading to conclusions so paradoxical was advanced by eminent and
experienced politicians, and accepted by many persons, both in the North
and in the South--not so much, perhaps, from intelligent conviction as
under the delusive hope that it would afford a satisfactory settlement
of the "irrepressible conflict" which had been declared. The terms
"popular sovereignty" and "non-intervention" were plausible, specious,
and captivating to the public ear. Too many lost sight of the elementary
truth that political sovereignty does not reside in unorganized or
partially organized masses of individuals, but in the people of
regularly and permanently constituted States. As to the
"non-intervention" proposed, it meant merely the abnegation by Congress
of its duty to protect the inhabitants of the Territories subject to its
control.
The raid into Virginia under John Brown--already notorious as a
fanatical partisan leader in the Kansas troubles--occurred in October,
1859, a few weeks before the meeting of the Thirty-sixth Congress.
Insignificant in itself and in its immediate results, it afforded a
startling revelation of the extent to which sectional hatred and
political fanaticism had blinded the conscience of a class of persons in
certain States of the Union; forming a party steadily growing stronger
in numbers, as well as in activity. Sympathy with its purposes or
methods was earnestly disclaimed by the representatives of all parties
in Congress; but it was charged, on the other hand, that it was only the
natural outgrowth of doctrines and sentiments which for some years had
been freely avowed on the floors of both Houses. A committee of the
Senate made a long and laborious investigation of the facts, with no
very important or satisfactory results. In their final report, June 15,
1860, accompanying the evidence obtained and submitted, this Committee
said:
"It [the incursion] was simply the act of lawless ruffians,
under the sanction of no public or political authority,
distinguishable only from ordinary felonies by the ulterior ends
in contemplation by them, and by the fact that the money to
maintain the expedition, and the large armament they brought
with them, had been contributed and furnished by the citizens of
other States of the Union under circumstances that must continue
to jeopard the safety and peace of the Southern States, and
against which Congress has no power to legislate.
"If the several States [adds the Committee], whether from
motives of policy or a desire to preserve the peace of the
Union, if not from fraternal feeling, do not hold it incumbent
on them, after the experience of the country, to guard in future
by appropriate legislation against occurrences similar to the
one here inquired into, the Committee can find no guarantee
elsewhere for the security of peace between the States of the
Union."
On February 2, 1860, the author submitted, in the Senate of the United
States, a series of resolutions, afterward slightly modified to read as
follows
"1. _Resolved_, That, in the adoption of the Federal
Constitution, the States, adopting the same, acted severally as
free and independent sovereignties, delegating a portion of
their powers to be exercised by the Federal Government for the
increased security of each against dangers, _domestic_ as well
as foreign; and that any intermeddling by any one or more
States, or by a combination of their citizens, with the domestic
institutions of the others, on any pretext whatever, political,
moral, or religious, with the view to their disturbance or
subversion, is in violation of the Constitution, insulting to
the States so interfered with, endangers their domestic peace
and tranquillity--objects for which the Constitution was
formed--and, by necessary consequence, tends to weaken and
destroy the Union itself.
"2. _Resolved_, That negro slavery, as it exists in fifteen
States of this Union, composes an important portion of their
domestic institutions, inherited from our ancestors, and
existing at the adoption of the Constitution, by which it is
recognized as constituting an important element in the
apportionment of powers among the States, and that no change of
opinion or feeling on the part of the non-slaveholding States of
the Union in relation to this institution can justify them or
their citizens in open or covert attacks thereon, with a view to
its overthrow; and that all such attacks are in manifest
violation of the mutual and solemn pledge to protect and defend
each other, given by the States respectively, on entering into
the constitutional compact which formed the Union, and are a
manifest breach of faith and a violation of the most solemn
obligations.
"3. _Resolved_, That the Union of these States rests on the
equality of rights and privileges among its members, and that it
is especially the duty of the Senate, which represents the
States in their sovereign capacity, to resist all attempts to
discriminate either in relation to persons or property in the
Territories, which are the common possessions of the United
States, so as to give advantages to the citizens of one State
which are not equally assured to those of every other State.
"4. _Resolved_, That neither Congress nor a Territorial
Legislature, whether by direct legislation or legislation of an
indirect and unfriendly character, possesses power to annul or
impair the constitutional right of any citizen of the United
States to take his slave property into the common Territories,
and there hold and enjoy the same while the territorial
condition remains.
"5. _Resolved_, That if experience should at any time prove that
the judiciary and executive authority do not possess means to
insure adequate protection to constitutional rights in a
Territory, and if the Territorial government shall fail or
refuse to provide the necessary remedies for that purpose, it
will be the duty of Congress to supply such deficiency.[14]
"6. _Resolved_, That the inhabitants of a Territory of the
United States, when they rightfully form a Constitution to be
admitted as a State into the Union, may then, for the first
time, like the people of a State when forming a new
Constitution, decide for themselves whether slavery, as a
domestic institution, shall be maintained or prohibited within
their jurisdiction; and they shall be received into the Union
with or without slavery, as their Constitution may prescribe at
the time of their admission.
"7. _Resolved_, That the provision of the Constitution for the
rendition of fugitives from service or labor, 'without the
adoption of which the Union could not have been formed,' and
that the laws of 1793 and 1850, which were enacted to secure its
execution, and the main features of which, being similar, bear
the impress of nearly seventy years of sanction by the highest
judicial authority, should be honestly and faithfully observed
and maintained by all who enjoy the benefits of our compact of
union; and that all acts of individuals or of State Legislatures
to defeat the purpose or nullify the requirements of that
provision, and the laws made in pursuance of it, are hostile in
character, subversive of the Constitution, and revolutionary in
their effect."[15]
After a protracted and earnest debate, these resolutions were adopted
_seriatim_, on the 24th and 25th of May, by a decided majority of the
Senate (varying from thirty-three to thirty-six yeas against from two to
twenty-one nays), the Democrats, both Northern and Southern, sustaining
them unitedly, with the exception of one adverse vote (that of Mr. Pugh,
of Ohio) on the fourth and sixth resolutions. The Republicans all voted
against them or refrained from voting at all, except that Mr. Teneyck,
of New Jersey, voted for the fifth and seventh of the series. Mr.
Douglas, the leader if not the author of "popular sovereignty," was
absent on account of illness, and there were a few other absentees.
The conclusion of a speech, in reply to Mr. Douglas, a few days before
the vote was taken on these resolutions, is introduced here as the best
evidence of the position of the author at that period of excitement and
agitation:
Conclusion of Reply to Mr. Douglas, _May 17, 1860_.
"Mr. President: I briefly and reluctantly referred, because the
subject had been introduced, to the attitude of Mississippi on a
former occasion. I will now as briefly say that in 1851, and in
1860, Mississippi was, and is, ready to make every concession
which it becomes her to make to the welfare and the safety of
the Union. If, on a former occasion, she hoped too much from
fraternity, the responsibility for her disappointment rests upon
those who failed to fulfill her expectations. She still clings
to the Government as our fathers formed it. She is ready to-day
and to-morrow, as in her past and though brief yet brilliant
history, to maintain that Government in all its power, and to
vindicate its honor with all the means she possesses. I say
brilliant history; for it was in the very morning of her
existence that her sons, on the plains of New Orleans, were
announced, in general orders, to have been the admiration of one
army and the wonder of the other. That we had a division in
relation to the measures enacted in 1850, is true; that the
Southern rights men became the minority in the election which
resulted, is true; but no figure of speech could warrant the
Senator in speaking of them as subdued--as coming to him or
anybody else for quarter. I deemed it offensive when it was
uttered, and the scorn with which I repelled it at the instant,
time has only softened to contempt. Our flag was never borne
from the field. We had carried it in the face of defeat, with a
knowledge that defeat awaited it; but scarcely had the smoke of
the battle passed away which proclaimed another victor, before
the general voice admitted that the field again was ours. I have
not seen a sagacious, reflecting man, who was cognizant of the
events as they transpired at the time, who does not say that,
within two weeks after the election, our party was in a
majority; and the next election which occurred showed that we
possessed the State beyond controversy. How we have wielded that
power it is not for me to say. I trust others may see
forbearance in our conduct--that, with a determination to insist
upon our constitutional rights, then and now, there is an
unwavering desire to maintain the Government, and to uphold the
Democratic party.
"We believe now, as we have asserted on former occasions, that
the best hope for the perpetuity of our institutions depends
upon the coöperation, the harmony, the zealous action, of the
Democratic party. We cling to that party from conviction that
its principles and its aims are those of truth and the country,
as we cling to the Union for the fulfillment of the purposes for
which it was formed. Whenever we shall be taught that the
Democratic party is recreant to its principles; whenever we
shall learn that it can not be relied upon to maintain the great
measures which constitute its vitality--I for one shall be ready
to leave it. And so, when we declare our tenacious adherence to
the Union, it is the Union of the Constitution. If the compact
between the States is to be trampled into the dust; if anarchy
is to be substituted for the usurpation and consolidation which
threatened the Government at an earlier period; if the Union is
to become powerless for the purposes for which it was
established, and we are vainly to appeal to it for
protection--then, sir, conscious of the rectitude of our course,
the justice of our cause, self-reliant, yet humbly, confidingly
trusting in the arm that guided and protected our fathers, we
look beyond the confines of the Union for the maintenance of our
rights. An habitual reverence and cherished affection for the
Government will bind us to it longer than our interests would
suggest or require; but he is a poor student of the world's
history who does not understand that communities at last must
yield to the dictates of their interests. That the affection,
the mutual desire for the mutual good, which existed among our
fathers, may be weakened in succeeding generations by the denial
of right, and hostile demonstration, until the equality
guaranteed but not secured within the Union may be sought for
without it, must be evident to even a careless observer of our
race. It is time to be up and doing. There is yet time to remove
the causes of dissension and alienation which are now
distracting, and have for years past divided, the country.
"If the Senator correctly described me as having at a former
period, against my own preferences and opinions, acquiesced in
the decision of my party; if, when I had youth, when physical
vigor gave promise of many days, and the future was painted in
the colors of hope, I could thus surrender my own convictions,
my own prejudices, and coöperate with my political friends
according to their views of the best method of promoting the
public good--now, when the years of my future can not be many,
and experience has sobered the hopeful tints of youth's gilding;
when, approaching the evening of life, the shadows are reversed,
and the mind turns retrospectively, it is not to be supposed
that I would abandon lightly, or idly put on trial, the party to
which I have steadily adhered. It is rather to be assumed that
conservatism, which belongs to the timidity or caution of
increasing years, would lead me to cling to, to be supported by,
rather than to cast off, the organization with which I have been
so long connected. If I am driven to consider the necessity of
separating myself from those old and dear relations, of
discarding the accustomed support, under circumstances such as I
have described, might not my friends who differ from me pause
and inquire whether there is not something involved in it which
calls for their careful revision?
"I desire no divided flag for the Democratic party.
"Our principles are national; they belong to every State of the
Union; and, though elections may be lost by their assertion,
they constitute the only foundation on which we can maintain
power, on which we can again rise to the dignity the Democracy
once possessed. Does not the Senator from Illinois see in the
sectional character of the vote be received,[16] that his
opinions are not acceptable to every portion of the country? Is
not the fact that the resolutions adopted by seventeen States,
on which the greatest reliance must be placed for Democratic
support, are in opposition to the dogma to which he still
clings, a warning that, if he persists and succeeds in forcing
his theory upon the Democratic party, its days are numbered? We
ask only for the Constitution. We ask of the Democracy only from
time to time to declare, as current exigencies may indicate,
what the Constitution was intended to secure and provide. Our
flag bears no new device. Upon its folds our principles are
written in living light; all proclaiming the constitutional
Union, justice, equality, and fraternity of our ocean-bound
domain, for a limitless future."
[Footnote 14: The words, "within the limits of its constitutional
powers," were subsequently added to this resolution, on the suggestion
of Mr. Toombs, of Georgia, with the approval of the mover.]
[Footnote 15: The speech of the author, delivered on the 7th of May
ensuing, in exposition of these resolutions, will be found in Appendix
F.]
[Footnote 16: In the Democratic Convention, which had been recently held
in Charleston. (See the ensuing chapter.)]
CHAPTER VII
A Retrospect.--Growth of Sectional Rivalry.--The Generosity of
Virginia.--Unequal Accessions of Territory.--The Tariff and its
Effects.--The Republican Convention of 1860, its Resolutions and
its Nominations.--The Democratic Convention at Charleston, its
Divisions and Disruption.--The Nominations at Baltimore.--The
"Constitutional-Union" Party and its Nominees.--An Effort in
Behalf of Agreement declined by Mr. Douglas.--The Election of
Lincoln and Hamlin.--Proceedings in the South.--Evidences of
Calmness and Deliberation.--Mr. Buchanan's Conservatism and the
weakness of his Position.--Republican Taunts.--The "New York
Tribune," etc.
When, at the close of the war of the Revolution, each of the thirteen
colonies that had been engaged in that contest was severally
acknowledged by the mother-country, Great Britain, to be a free and
independent State, the confederation of those States embraced an area so
extensive, with climate and products so various, that rivalries and
conflicts of interest soon began to be manifested. It required all the
power of wisdom and patriotism, animated by the affection engendered by
common sufferings and dangers, to keep these rivalries under restraint,
and to effect those compromises which it was fondly hoped would insure
the harmony and mutual good offices of each for the benefit of all. It
was in this spirit of patriotism and confidence in the continuance of
such abiding good will as would for all time preclude hostile
aggression, that Virginia ceded, for the use of the confederated States,
all that vast extent of territory lying north of the Ohio River, out of
which have since been formed five States and part of a sixth. The
addition of these States has accrued entirely to the preponderance of
the Northern section over that from which the donation proceeded, and to
the disturbance of that equilibrium which existed at the close of the
war of the Revolution.
It may not be out of place here to refer to the fact that the grievances
which led to that war were directly inflicted upon the Northern
colonies. Those of the South had no material cause of complaint; but,
actuated by sympathy for their Northern brethren, and a devotion to the
principles of civil liberty and community independence, which they had
inherited from their Anglo-Saxon ancestry, and which were set forth in
the Declaration of Independence, they made common cause with their
neighbors, and may, at least, claim to have done their full share in the
war that ensued.
By the exclusion of the South, in 1820, from all that part of the
Louisiana purchase lying north of the parallel of thirty-six degrees
thirty minutes, and not included in the State of Missouri, by the
extension of that line of exclusion to embrace the territory acquired
from Texas; and by the appropriation of _all_ the territory obtained
from Mexico under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, both north and south
of that line, it may be stated with approximate accuracy that the North
had monopolized to herself more than three fourths of all that had been
added to the domain of the United States since the Declaration of
Independence. This inequality, which began, as has been shown, in the
more generous than wise confidence of the South, was employed to obtain
for the North the lion's share of what was afterward added at the cost
of the public treasure and the blood of patriots. I do not care to
estimate the relative proportion contributed by each of the two
sections.
Nor was this the only cause that operated to disappoint the reasonable
hopes and to blight the fair prospects under which the original compact
was formed. The effects of discriminating duties upon imports have been
referred to in a former chapter--favoring the manufacturing region,
which was the North; burdening the exporting region, which was the
South; and so imposing upon the latter a double tax: one, by the
increased price of articles of consumption, which, so far as they were
of home production, went into the pockets of the manufacturer; the
other, by the diminished value of articles of export, which was so much
withheld from the pockets of the agriculturist. In like manner the power
of the majority section was employed to appropriate to itself an unequal
share of the public disbursements. These combined causes--the possession
of more territory, more money, and a wider field for the employment of
special labor--all served to attract immigration; and, with increasing
population, the greed grew by what it fed on.
This became distinctly manifest when the so-called "Republican"
Convention assembled in Chicago, on May 16, 1860, to nominate a
candidate for the Presidency. It was a purely sectional body. There were
a few delegates present, representing an insignificant minority in the
"border States," Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri;
but not one from any State south of the celebrated political line of
thirty-six degrees thirty minutes. It had been the invariable usage with
nominating conventions of all parties to select candidates for the
Presidency and Vice-Presidency, one from the North and the other from
the South; but this assemblage nominated Mr. Lincoln, of Illinois, for
the first office, and for the second, Mr. Hamlin, of Maine--both
Northerners. Mr. Lincoln, its nominee for the Presidency, had publicly
announced that the Union "could not permanently endure, half slave and
half free." The resolutions adopted contained some carefully worded
declarations, well adapted to deceive the credulous who were opposed to
hostile aggressions upon the rights of the States. In order to
accomplish this purpose, they were compelled to create a fictitious
issue, in denouncing what they described as "the new dogma that the
Constitution, of its own force, carries slavery into any or all of the
Territories of the United States"--a "dogma" which had never been held
or declared by anybody, and which had no existence outside of their own
assertion. There was enough in connection with the nomination to assure
the most fanatical foes of the Constitution that their ideas would be
the rule and guide of the party.
Meantime, the Democratic party had held a convention, composed as usual
of delegates from all the States. They met in Charleston, South
Carolina, on April 23d, but an unfortunate disagreement with regard to
the declaration of principles to be set forth rendered a nomination
impracticable. Both divisions of the Convention adjourned, and met again
in Baltimore in June. Then, having finally failed to come to an
agreement, they separated and made their respective nominations apart.
Mr. Douglas, of Illinois, was nominated by the friends of the doctrine
of "popular sovereignty," with Mr. Fitzpatrick, of Alabama, for the
Vice-Presidency. Both these gentlemen at that time were Senators from
their respective States. Mr. Fitzpatrick promptly declined the
nomination, and his place was filled with the name of Mr. Herschel V.
Johnson, a distinguished citizen of Georgia.
The Convention representing the conservative, or State-Rights, wing of
the Democratic-party (the President of which was the Hon. Caleb Cushing,
of Massachusetts), on the first ballot, unanimously made choice of John
C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, then Vice-President of the United States,
for the first office, and with like unanimity selected General Joseph
Lane, then a Senator from Oregon, for the second. The resolutions of
each of these two conventions denounced the action and policy of the
Abolition party, as subversive of the Constitution, and revolutionary in
their tendency.
Another convention was held in Baltimore about the same period[17] by
those who still adhered to the old Whig party, reënforced by the remains
of the "American" organization, and perhaps some others. This Convention
also consisted of delegates from all the States, and, repudiating all
geographical and sectional issues, and declaring it to be "both the part
of patriotism and of duty to recognize no political principle other than
the Constitution of the country, the Union of the States, and the
enforcement of the laws," pledged itself and its supporters "to
maintain, protect, and defend, separately and unitedly, those great
principles of public liberty and national safety against all enemies at
home and abroad." Its nominees were Messrs. John Bell, of Tennessee, and
Edward Everett, of Massachusetts, both of whom had long been
distinguished members of the Whig party.
The people of the United States now had four rival tickets presented to
them by as many contending parties, whose respective position and
principles on the great and absorbing question at issue may be briefly
recapitulated as follows:
1. The "Constitutional-Union" Party, as it was now termed, led by
Messrs. Bell and Everett, which ignored the territorial controversy
altogether, and contented itself, as above stated, with a simple
declaration of adherence to "the Constitution, the Union, and the
enforcement of the laws."
2. The party of "popular sovereignty," headed by Douglas and Johnson,
who affirmed the right of the people of the Territories, in their
territorial condition, to determine their own organic institutions,
independently of the control of Congress; denying the power or duty of
Congress to protect the persons or property of individuals or minorities
in such Territories against the action of majorities.
3. The State-Rights party, supporting Breckinridge and Lane, who held
that the Territories were open to citizens of all the States, with their
property, without any inequality or discrimination, and that it was the
duty of the General Government to protect both persons and property from
aggression in the Territories subject to its control. At the same time
they admitted and asserted the right of the people of a Territory, on
emerging from their territorial condition to that of a State, to
determine what should then be their domestic institutions, as well as
all other questions of personal or proprietary right, without
interference by Congress, and subject only to the limitations and
restrictions prescribed by the Constitution of the United States.
4. The so-called "Republicans," presenting the names of Lincoln and
Hamlin, who held, in the language of one of their leaders,[18] that
"slavery can exist only by virtue of municipal law"; that there was "no
law for it in the Territories, and no power to enact one"; and that
Congress was "bound to prohibit it in or exclude it from any and every
Federal Territory." In other words, they asserted the right and duty of
Congress to exclude the citizens of half the States of the Union from
the territory belonging in common to all, unless on condition of the
sacrifice or abandonment of their property recognized by the
Constitution--indeed, of the _only_ species of their property distinctly
and specifically recognized as such by that instrument.
On the vital question underlying the whole controversy--that is, whether
the Federal Government should be a Government of the whole for the
benefit of all its equal members, or (if it should continue to exist at
all) a sectional Government for the benefit of a part--the first three
of the parties above described were in substantial accord as against the
fourth. If they could or would have acted unitedly, they, could
certainly have carried the election, and averted the catastrophe which
followed. Nor were efforts wanting to effect such a union.
Mr. Bell, the Whig candidate, was a highly respectable and experienced
statesman, who had filled many important offices, both State and
Federal. He was not ambitious to the extent of coveting the Presidency,
and he was profoundly impressed by the danger which threatened the
country. Mr. Breckinridge had not anticipated, and it may safely be said
did not eagerly desire, the nomination. He was young enough to wait, and
patriotic enough to be willing to do so, if the weal of the country
required it. Thus much I may confidently assert of both those gentlemen;
for each of them authorized me to say that he was willing to withdraw,
if an arrangement could be effected by which the divided forces of the
friends of the Constitution could be concentrated upon some one more
generally acceptable than either of the three who had been presented to
the country. When I made this announcement to Mr. Douglas--with whom my
relations had always been such as to authorize the assurance that he
could not consider it as made in an unfriendly spirit--he replied that
the scheme proposed was impracticable, because his friends, mainly
Northern Democrats, if he were withdrawn, would join in the support of
Mr. Lincoln, rather than of any one that should supplant _him_
(Douglas); that he was in the hands of his friends, and was sure they
would not accept the proposition.
It needed but little knowledge of the _status_ of parties in the several
States to foresee a probable defeat if the conservatives were to
continue divided into three parts, and the aggressives were to be held
in solid column. But angry passions, which are always bad counselors,
had been aroused, and hopes were still cherished, which proved to be
illusory. The result was the election, by a minority, of a President
whose avowed principles were necessarily fatal to the harmony of the
Union.
Of 303 _electoral_ votes, Mr. Lincoln received 180, but of the _popular_
suffrage of 4,676,853 votes, which the electors represented, he obtained
only 1,866,352--something over a third of the votes. This discrepancy
was owing to the system of voting by "general ticket"--that is, casting
the State votes as a unit, whether unanimous or nearly equally divided.
Thus, in New York, the total popular vote was 675,156, of which 362,646
were cast for the so-called Republican (or Lincoln) electors, and
312,510 against them. Now York was entitled to 35 electoral votes.
Divided on the basis of the popular vote, 19 of these would have been
cast for Mr. Lincoln, and 16 against him. But under the "general ticket"
system the entire 35 votes were cast for the Republican candidates, thus
giving them not only the full strength of the majority in their favor,
but that of the great minority against them superadded. So of other
Northern States, in which the small majorities on one side operated with
the weight of entire unanimity, while the virtual unanimity in the
Southern States, on the other side, counted nothing more than a mere
majority would have done.
The manifestations which followed this result, in the Southern States,
did not proceed, as has been unjustly charged, from chagrin at their
defeat in the election, or from any personal hostility to the
President-elect, but from the fact that they recognized in him the
representative of a party professing principles destructive to "their
peace, their prosperity, and their domestic tranquillity." The
long-suppressed fire burst into frequent flame, but it was still
controlled by that love of the Union which the South had illustrated in
every battle-field, from Boston to New Orleans. Still it was hoped,
against hope, that some adjustment might be made to avert the calamities
of a practical application of the theory of an "irrepressible conflict."
Few, if any, then doubted the right of a State to withdraw its grants
delegated to the Federal Government, or, in other words, to secede from
the Union; but in the South this was generally regarded as the remedy of
last resort, to be applied only when ruin or dishonor was the
alternative. No rash or revolutionary action was taken by the Southern
States, but the measures adopted were considerate, and executed
advisedly and deliberately. The Presidential election occurred (as far
as the popular vote, which determined the result, was concerned) in
November, 1860. Most of the State Legislatures convened soon afterward
in regular session. In some cases special sessions were convoked for the
purpose of calling State Conventions--the recognized representatives of
the sovereign will of the people--to be elected expressly for the
purpose of taking such action as should be considered needful and proper
under the existing circumstances.
These conventions, as it was always held and understood, possessed all
the power of the people assembled in mass; and therefore it was conceded
that they, and they only, could take action for the withdrawal of a
State from the Union. The consent of the respective States to the
formation of the Union had been given through such conventions, and it
was only by the same authority that it could properly be revoked. The
time required for this deliberate and formal process precludes the idea
of hasty or passionate action, and none who admit the primary power of
the people to govern themselves can consistently deny its validity and
binding obligation upon every citizen of the several States. Not only
was there ample time for calm consideration among the people of the
South, but for due reflection by the General Government and the people
of the Northern States.
President Buchanan was in the last year of his administration. His
freedom from sectional asperity, his long life in the public service,
and his peace-loving and conciliatory character, were all guarantees
against his precipitating a conflict between the Federal Government and
any of the States; but the feeble power that he possessed in the closing
months of his term to mold the policy of the future was painfully
evident. Like all who had intelligently and impartially studied the
history of the formation of the Constitution, he held that the Federal
Government had no rightful power to coerce a State. Like the sages and
patriots who had preceded him in the high office that he filled, he
believed that "our Union rests upon public opinion, and can never by
cemented by the blood of its citizens shed in civil war. If it can not
live in the affections of the people, it must one day perish. Congress
may possess many means of preserving it by conciliation, but the sword
was not placed in their hand to preserve it by force."--(Message of
December 3, 1860.)
Ten years before, Mr. Calhoun addressing the Senate with all the
earnestness of his nature and with that sincere desire to avert the
danger of disunion which those who knew him best never doubted, had
asked the emphatic question, "How can the Union be saved?" He answered
his question thus:
"There is but one way by which it can be [saved] with any
certainty; and that is by a full and final settlement, on the
principles of justice, of all the questions at issue between the
sections. The South asks for justice--simple justice--and less
she ought not to take. She has no compromise to offer but the
Constitution, and no concession or surrender to make....
"Can this be done? Yes, easily! Not by the weaker party; for it
can of itself do nothing--not even protect itself--but by the
stronger.... But will the North agree to do this? It is for her
to answer this question. But, I will say, she can not refuse if
she has half the love of the Union which she professes to have,
nor without exposing herself to the charge that her love of
power and aggrandizement is far greater than her love of the
Union."
During the ten years that intervened between the date of this speech and
the message of Mr. Buchanan cited above, the progress of sectional
discord and the tendency of the stronger section to unconstitutional
aggression had been fearfully rapid. With very rare exceptions, there
were none in 1850 who claimed the right of the Federal Government to
apply coercion to a State. In 1860 men had grown to be familiar with
threats of driving the South into submission to any act that the
Government, in the hands of a Northern majority, might see fit to
perform. During the canvass of that year, demonstrations had been made
by _quasi_-military organizations in various parts of the North, which
looked unmistakably to purposes widely different from those enunciated
in the preamble to the Constitution, and to the employment of means not
authorized by the powers which the States had delegated to the Federal
Government.
Well-informed men still remembered that, in the Convention which framed
the Constitution, a proposition was made to authorize the employment of
force against a delinquent State, on which Mr. Madison remarked that
"the use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of
war than an infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered
by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which
it might have been bound." The Convention expressly refused to confer
the power proposed, and the clause was lost. While, therefore, in 1860,
many violent men, appealing to passion and the lust of power, were
inciting the multitude, and preparing Northern opinion to support a war
waged against the Southern States in the event of their secession, there
were others who took a different view of the case. Notable among such
was the "New York Tribune," which had been the organ of the
abolitionists, and which now declared that, "if the cotton States wished
to withdraw from the Union, they should be allowed to do so"; that "any
attempt to compel them to remain, by force, would be contrary to the
principles of the Declaration of Independence and to the fundamental
ideas upon which human liberty is based"; and that, "if the Declaration
of Independence justified the secession from the British Empire of three
millions of subjects in 1776, it was not seen why it would not justify
the secession of five millions of Southerners from the Union in 1861."
Again, it was said by the same journal that, "sooner than compromise
with the South and abandon the Chicago platform," they would "let the
Union slide." Taunting expressions were freely used--as, for example,
"If the Southern people wish to leave the Union, we will do our best to
forward their views."
All this, it must be admitted, was quite consistent with the
oft-repeated declaration that the Constitution was a "covenant with
hell," which stood as the caption of a leading abolitionist paper of
Boston. That signs of coming danger so visible, evidences of hostility
so unmistakable, disregard of constitutional obligations so wanton,
taunts and jeers so bitter and insulting, should serve to increase
excitement in the South, was a consequence flowing as much from reason
and patriotism as from sentiment. He must have been ignorant of human
nature who did not expect such a tree to bear fruits of discord and
division.
[Footnote 17: May 19, 1860.]
[Footnote 18: Horace Greeley, "The American Conflict," vol. i, p. 322.]
CHAPTER VIII.
Conference with the Governor of Mississippi.--The Author
censured as "too slow."--Summons to Washington.--Interview with
the President.--His Message.--Movements in Congress.--The
Triumphant Majority.--The Crittenden Proposition.--Speech of the
Author on Mr. Green's Resolution.--The Committee of
Thirteen.--Failure to agree.--The "Republicans" responsible for
the Failure.--Proceedings in the House of
Representatives.--Futility of Efforts for an Adjustment.--The
Old Year closes in Clouds.
In November, 1860, after the result of the Presidential election was
known, the Governor of Mississippi, having issued his proclamation
convoking a special session of the Legislature to consider the propriety
of calling a convention, invited the Senators and Representatives of the
State in Congress, to meet him for consultation as to the character of
the message he should send to the Legislature when assembled.
While holding, in common with my political associates, that the right of
a State to secede was unquestionable, I differed from most of them as to
the probability of our being permitted peaceably to exercise the right.
The knowledge acquired by the administration of the War Department for
four years, and by the chairmanship of the Military Committee of the
Senate at two different periods, still longer in combined duration, had
shown me the entire lack of preparation for war in the South. The
foundries and armories were in the Northern States, and there were
stored all the new and improved weapons of war. In the arsenals of the
Southern States were to be found only arms of the old and rejected
models. The South had no manufactories of powder, and no navy to protect
our harbors, no merchant-ships for foreign commerce. It was evident to
me, therefore, that, if we should be involved in war, the odds against
us would be far greater than what was due merely to our inferiority in
population. Believing that secession would be the precursor of war
between the States, I was consequently slower and more reluctant than
others, who entertained a different opinion, to resort to that remedy.
While engaged in the consultation with the Governor just referred to, a
telegraphic message was handed to me from two members of Mr. Buchanan's
Cabinet, urging me to proceed "immediately" to Washington. This dispatch
was laid before the Governor and the members of Congress from the State
who were in conference with him, and it was decided that I should comply
with the summons. I was afterward informed that my associates considered
me "too slow," and they were probably correct in the belief that I was
behind the general opinion of the people of the State as to the
propriety of prompt secession.[19]
On arrival at Washington, I found, as had been anticipated, that my
presence there was desired on account of the influence which it was
supposed I might exercise with the President (Mr. Buchanan) in relation
to his forthcoming message to Congress. On paying my respects to the
President, he told me that he had finished the rough draft of his
message, but that it was still open to revision and amendment, and that
he would like to read it to me. He did so, and very kindly accepted all
the modifications which I suggested. The message was, however, afterward
somewhat changed, and, with great deference to the wisdom and
statesmanship of its author, I must say that, in my judgment, the last
alterations were unfortunate--so much so that, when it was read in the
Senate, I was reluctantly constrained to criticise it. Compared,
however, with documents of the same class which have since been
addressed to the Congress of the United States, the reader of
Presidential messages must regret that it was not accepted by Mr.
Buchanan's successors as a model, and that his views of the Constitution
had not been adopted as a guide in the subsequent action of the Federal
Government.
The popular movement in the South was tending steadily and rapidly
toward the secession of those known as "planting States"; yet, when
Congress assembled on December 3, 1860 the representatives of the people
of all those States took their seats in the House, and they were all
represented in the Senate, except South Carolina, whose Senators had
tendered their resignation to the Governor immediately on the
announcement of the result of the Presidential election. Hopes were
still cherished that the Northern leaders would appreciate the impending
peril, would cease to treat the warnings, so often given, as idle
threats, would refrain from the bravado, so often and so unwisely
indulged, of ability "to whip the South" in thirty, sixty, or ninety
days, and would address themselves to the more manly purpose of devising
means to allay the indignation, and quiet the apprehensions, whether
well, founded or not, of their Southern brethren. But the debates of
that session manifest, on the contrary, the arrogance of a triumphant
party, and the determination to reap to the uttermost the full harvest
of a party victory.
Mr. Crittenden, of Kentucky, the oldest and one of the most honored
members of the Senate,[20] introduced into that body a joint resolution
proposing certain amendments to the Constitution--among them the
restoration and incorporation into the Constitution of the geographical
line of the Missouri Compromise, with other provisions, which it was
hoped might be accepted as the basis for an adjustment of the
difficulties rapidly hurrying the Union to disruption. But the earnest
appeals of that venerable statesman were unheeded by Senators of the
so-called Republican party. Action upon his proposition was postponed
from time to time, on one pretext or another, until the last day of the
session--when seven States had already withdrawn from the Union and
established a confederation of their own--and it was then defeated by a
majority of one vote.[21]
Meantime, among other propositions made in the Senate were two
introduced early in the session, which it may be proper specially to
mention. One of these was a resolution offered by Mr. Powell, of
Kentucky, which, after some modification by amendment, when finally
acted upon, had taken the following form:
"_Resolved_, That so much of the President's message as relates
to the present agitated and distracted condition of the country,
and the grievances between the slaveholding and the non-slave
holding States, be referred to a special committee of thirteen
members, and that said committee be instructed to inquire into
the present condition of the country, and report by bill or
otherwise."
The other was a resolution offered by Mr. Green, of Missouri, to the
following effect:
"_Resolved_, That the Committee on the Judiciary be instructed
to inquire into the propriety of providing by law for
establishing an armed police force at all necessary points along
the line separating the slaveholding States from the
non-slaveholding States, for the purpose of maintaining the
general peace between those States, of preventing the invasion
of one State by citizens of another, and also for the efficient
execution of the fugitive-slave laws."
In the discussion of these two resolutions I find, in the proceedings of
the Senate on December 10th, as reported in the "Congressional Globe,"
some remarks of my own, the reproduction of which will serve to exhibit
my position at that period--a position which has since been often
misrepresented:
"Mr. President, if the political firmament seemed to me dark
before, there has been little in the discussion this morning to
cheer or illumine it. When the proposition of the Senator from
Kentucky was presented--not very hopeful of a good result--I was
yet willing to wait and see what developments it might produce.
This morning, for the first time, it has been considered; and
what of encouragement have we received? One Senator proposes, as
a cure for the public evil impending over us, to invest the
Federal Government with such physical power as properly belongs
to monarchy alone; another announces that his constituents cling
to the Federal Government, if its legislative favors and its
Treasury secure the works of improvement and the facilities
which they desire; while another rises to point out that the
evils of the land are of a party character. Sir, we have fallen
upon evil times indeed, if the great convulsion which now shakes
the body-politic to its center is to be dealt with by such
nostrums as these. Men must look more deeply, must rise to a
higher altitude; like patriots they must confront the danger
face to face, if they hope to relieve the evils which now
disturb the peace of the land, and threaten the destruction of
our political existence.
"First of all, we must inquire what is the cause of the evils
which beset us? The diagnosis of the disease must be stated
before we are prepared to prescribe. Is it the fault of our
legislation here? If so, then it devolves upon us to correct it,
and we have the power. Is it the defect of the Federal
organization, of the fundamental law of our Union? I hold that
it is not. Our fathers, learning wisdom from the experiments of
Rome and of Greece--the one a consolidated republic, and the
other strictly a confederacy--and taught by the lessons of our
own experiment under the Confederation, came together to form a
Constitution for 'a more perfect union,' and, in my judgment,
made the best government which has ever been instituted by man.
It only requires that it should be carried out in the spirit in
which it was made, that the circumstances under which it was
made should continue, and no evil can arise under this
Government for which it has not an appropriate remedy. Then it
is outside of the Government--elsewhere than to its Constitution
or to its administration--that we are to look. Men must not
creep in the dust of partisan strife and seek to make points
against opponents as the means of evading or meeting the issues
before us. The fault is not in the form of the Government, nor
does the evil spring from the manner in which it has been
administered. Where, then, is it? It is that our fathers formed
a Government for a Union of friendly States; and though under it
the people have been prosperous beyond comparison with any other
whose career is recorded in the history of man, still that Union
of friendly States has changed its character, and sectional
hostility has been substituted for the fraternity in which the
Government was founded.
"I do not intend here to enter into a statement of grievances; I
do not intend here to renew that war of crimination which for
years past has disturbed the country, and in which I have taken
a part perhaps more zealous than useful; but I call upon all men
who have in their hearts a love of the Union, and whose service
is not merely that of the lip, to look the question calmly but
fully in the face, that they may see the true cause of our
danger, which, from my examination, I believe to be that a
sectional hostility has been substituted for a general
fraternity, and thus the Government rendered powerless for the
ends for which it was instituted. The hearts of a portion of the
people have been perverted by that hostility, so that the powers
delegated by the compact of union are regarded not as means to
secure the welfare of all, but as instruments for the
destruction of a part--the minority section. How, then, have we
to provide a remedy? By strengthening this Government? By
instituting physical force to overawe the States, to coerce the
people living under them as members of sovereign communities to
pass under the yoke of the Federal Government? No, sir; I would
have this Union severed into thirty-three fragments sooner than
have that great evil befall constitutional liberty and
representative government. Our Government is an agency of
delegated and strictly limited powers. Its founders did not look
to its preservation by force; but the chain they wove to bind
these States together was one of love and mutual good offices.
They had broken the fetters of despotic power; they had
separated themselves from the mother-country upon the question
of community independence; and their sons will be degenerate
indeed if, clinging to the mere name and forms of free
government, they forge and rivet upon their posterity the
fetters which their ancestors broke....
"The remedy for these evils is to be found in the patriotism and
the affection of the people, if it exists; and, if it does not
exist, it is far better, instead of attempting to preserve a
forced and therefore fruitless Union, that we should peacefully
part and each pursue his separate course. It is not to this side
of the Chamber that we should look for propositions; it is not
here that we can ask for remedies. Complaints, with much
amplitude of specification, have gone forth from the members on
this side of the Chamber heretofore. It is not to be expected
that they will be renewed, for the people have taken the subject
into their own hands. States, in their sovereign capacity, have
now resolved to judge of the infractions of the Federal compact,
and of the mode and measure of redress. All we can usefully or
properly do is to send to the people, thus preparing to act for
themselves, evidence of error, if error there be; to transmit to
them the proofs of kind feeling, if it actuates the Northern
section, where they now believe there is only hostility. If we
are mistaken as to your feelings and purposes, give a
substantial proof, that here may begin that circle which hence
may spread out and cover the whole land with proofs of
fraternity, of a reaction in public sentiment, and the assurance
of a future career in conformity with the principles and
purposes of the Constitution. All else is idle. I would not give
the parchment on which the bill would be written that is to
secure our constitutional rights within the limits of a State,
where the people are all opposed to the execution of that law.
It is a truism in free governments that laws rest upon public
opinion, and fall powerless before its determined opposition.
"The time has passed, sir, when appeals might profitably be made
to sentiment. The time has come when men must of necessity
reason, assemble facts, and deal with current events. I may be
permitted in this to correct an error into which one of my
friends fell this morning, when he impressed on us the great
value of our Union as measured by the amount of time and money
and blood which were spent to form this Union. It cost very
little time, very little money, and no blood. It was one of the
most peaceful transactions that mark the pages of human history.
Our fathers fought the war of the Revolution to maintain the
rights asserted in their Declaration of Independence."
Mr. Powell: "The Senator from Mississippi will allow me to say
that I spoke of the Government, not of the Union. I said time
and money and blood had been required to form the Government."
Mr. Davis: "The Government is the machinery established by the
Constitution; it is the agency created by the States when they
formed the Union. Our fathers, I was proceeding to say, having
fought the war of the Revolution, and achieved their
independence--each State for itself, each State standing out an
integral part, each State separately recognized by the parent
Government of Great Britain--these States as independent
sovereignties entered into confederate alliance. After having
tried the Confederation and found it to be a failure, they, of
their own accord, came peacefully together, and in a brief
period made a Constitution, which was referred to each State and
voluntarily ratified by each State that entered the Union;
little time, little money, and no blood being expended to form
this Government, the machine for making the Union useful and
beneficial. Blood, much and precious, was expended to vindicate
and to establish community independence, and the great American
idea that all governments rest on the consent of the governed,
and that the people may at their will alter or abolish their
government, however or by whomsoever instituted.
"But our existing Government is not the less sacred to me
because it was not sealed with blood. I honor it the more
because it was the free-will offering of men who chose to live
together. It rooted in fraternity, and fraternity supported its
trunk and all its branches. Every bud and leaflet depends
entirely on the nurture it receives from fraternity as the root
of the tree. When that is destroyed, the trunk decays, and the
branches wither, and the leaves fall; and the shade it was
designed to give has passed away for ever. I cling not merely to
the name and form, but to the spirit and purpose of the Union
which our fathers made. It was for domestic tranquillity; not to
organize within one State lawless bands to commit raids upon
another. It was to provide for the common defense; not to
disband armies and navies, lest they should serve the protection
of one section of the country better than another. It was to
bring the forces of all the States together to achieve a common
object, upholding each the other in amity, and united to repel
exterior force. All the custom-house obstructions existing
between the States were destroyed; the power to regulate
commerce transferred to the General Government. Every barrier to
the freest intercourse was swept away. Under the Confederation
it had been secured as a right to each citizen to have free
transit over all the other States; and under the Union it was
designed to make this more perfect. Is it enjoyed? Is it not
denied? Do we not have mere speculative question of what is
property raised in defiance of the clear intent of the
Constitution, offending as well against its letter as against
its whole spirit? This must be reformed, or the Government our
fathers instituted is destroyed. I say, then, shall we cling to
the mere forms or idolize the name of Union, when its blessings
are lost, after its spirit has fled? Who would keep a flower,
which had lost its beauty and its fragrance, and in their stead
had formed a seed-vessel containing the deadliest poison? Or, to
drop the figure, who would consent to remain in alliance with
States which used the power thus acquired to invade his
tranquillity, to impair his defense, to destroy his peace and
security? Any community would be stronger standing in an
isolated position, and using its revenues to maintain its own
physical force, than if allied with those who would thus war
upon its prosperity and domestic peace; and reason, pride,
self-interest, and the apprehension of secret, constant danger
would impel to separation.
"I do not comprehend the policy of a Southern Senator who would
seek to change the whole form of our Government, and substitute
Federal force for State obligation and authority. Do we want a
new Government that is to overthrow the old? Do we wish to erect
a central Colossus, wielding at discretion the military arm, and
exercising military force over the people and the States? This
is not the Union to which we were invited; and so carefully was
this guarded that, when our fathers provided for using force to
put down insurrection, they required that the fact of the
insurrection should be communicated by the authorities of the
State before the President could interpose. When it was proposed
to give to Congress power to execute the laws against a
delinquent State, it was refused on the ground that that would
be making war on the States; and, though I know the good purpose
of my honorable friend from Missouri is only to give protection
to constitutional rights, I fear his proposition is to rear a
monster, which will break the feeble chain provided, and destroy
rights it was intended to guard. That military Government which
he is about to institute, by passing into hostile hands, becomes
a weapon for his destruction, not for his protection. All
dangers which we may be called upon to confront as independent
communities are light, in my estimation, compared with that
which would hang over us if this Federal Government had such
physical force; if its character was changed from a
representative agent of States to a central Government, with a
military power to be used at discretion against the States.
To-day it may be the idea that it will be used against some
State which nullifies the Constitution and the laws; some State
which passes laws to obstruct or repeal the laws of the United
States; some State which, in derogation of our rights of transit
under the Constitution, passes laws to punish a citizen found
there with property recognized by the Constitution of the United
States, but prohibited by the laws of that State.
"But how long might it be before that same military force would
be turned against the minority section which had sought its
protection; and that minority thus become mere subjugated
provinces under the great military government that it had thus
contributed to establish? The minority, incapable of aggression,
is, of necessity, always on the defensive, and often the victim
of the desertion of its followers and the faithlessness of its
allies. It therefore must maintain, not destroy, barriers.
"I do not know that I fully appreciate the purpose of my friend
from Missouri; whether, when he spoke of establishing military
posts along the borders of the States, and arming the Federal
Government with adequate physical power to enforce
constitutional rights (I suppose he meant obligations), he meant
to confer upon this Federal Government a power which it does not
now possess to coerce a State. If he did, then, in the language
of Mr. Madison, he is providing, not for a union of States, but
for the destruction of States; he is providing, under the name
of Union, to carry on a war against States; and I care not
whether it be against Massachusetts or Missouri, it is equally
objectionable to me; and I will resist it alike in the one case
and in the other, as subversive of the great principle on which
our Government rests; as a heresy to be confronted at its first
presentation, and put down there, lest it grow into proportions
which will render us powerless before it.
"The theory of our Constitution, Mr. President, is one of peace,
of equality of sovereign States. It was made by States and made
for States; and for greater assurance they passed an amendment,
doing that which was necessarily implied by the nature of the
instrument, as it was a mere instrument of grants. But, in the
abundance of caution, they declared that everything which had
not been delegated was reserved to the States, or to the
people--that is, to the State governments as instituted by the
people of each State, or to the people in their sovereign
capacity.
"I need not, then, go on to argue from the history and nature of
our Government that no power of coercion exists in it. It is
enough for me to demand the clause of the Constitution which
confers the power. If it is not there, the Government does not
possess it. That is the plain construction of the
Constitution--made plainer, if possible, by its amendment.
"This Union is dear to me as a Union of fraternal States. It
would lose its value if I had to regard it as a Union held
together by physical force. I would be happy to know that every
State now felt that fraternity which made this Union possible;
and, if that evidence could go out, if evidence satisfactory to
the people of the South could be given that that feeling existed
in the hearts of the Northern people, you might burn your
statute-books and we would cling to the Union still. But it is
because of their conviction that hostility, and not fraternity,
now exists in the hearts of the people, that they are looking to
their reserved rights and to their independent powers for their
own protection. If there be any good, then, which we can do, it
is by sending evidence to them of that which I fear does not
exist--the purpose of your constituents to fulfill in the spirit
of justice and fraternity all their constitutional obligations.
If you can submit to them that evidence, I feel confidence that,
with the assurance that aggression is henceforth to cease, will
terminate all the measures for defense. Upon you of the majority
section it depends to restore peace and perpetuate the Union of
equal States; upon us of the minority section rests the duty to
maintain our equality and community rights; and the means in one
case or the other must be such as each can control."
The resolution of Mr. Powell was eventually adopted on the 18th of
December, and on the 20th the Committee was appointed, consisting of
Messrs. Powell and Crittenden, of Kentucky; Hunter, of Virginia; Toombs,
of Georgia; Davis, of Mississippi; Douglas, of Illinois; Bigler, of
Pennsylvania; Rice, of Minnesota; Collamer, of Vermont; Seward, of New
York; Wade, of Ohio; Doolittle, of Wisconsin; and Grimes, of Iowa. The
first five of the list, as here enumerated, were Southern men; the next
three were Northern Democrats, or Conservatives; the last five, Northern
"Republicans," so called.
The supposition was that any measure agreed upon by the representatives
of the three principal divisions of public opinion would be approved by
the Senate and afterward ratified by the House of Representatives. The
Committee therefore determined that a majority of each of its three
divisions should be required in order to the adoption of any proposition
presented. The Southern members declared their readiness to accept any
terms that would secure the honor of the Southern States and guarantee
their future safety. The Northern Democrats and Mr. Crittenden generally
coöperated with the State-Rights Democrats of the South; but the
so-called "Republican" Senators of the North rejected every proposition
which it was hoped might satisfy the Southern people, and check the
progress of the secession movement. After fruitless efforts, continued
for some ten days, the Committee determined to report the journal of
their proceedings, and announce their inability to attain any
satisfactory conclusion. This report was made on the 31st of
December--the last day of that memorable and fateful year, 1860.
Subsequently, on the floor of the Senate, Mr. Douglas, who had been a
member of the Committee, called upon the opposite side to state what
they were willing to do. He referred to the fact that they had rejected
every proposition that promised pacification; stated that Toombs, of
Georgia, and Davis, of Mississippi, as members of the Committee, had
been willing to renew the Missouri Compromise, as a measure of
conciliation, but had met no responsive willingness on the part of their
associates of the opposition; and he pressed the point that, as they had
rejected every overture made by the friends of peace, it was now
incumbent upon _them_ to make a positive and affirmative declaration of
their purposes.
Mr. Seward, of New York, as we have seen, was a member of that
Committee--the man who, in 1858, had announced the "irrepressible
conflict," and who, in the same year, speaking of and for abolitionism,
had said: "It has driven you back in California and in Kansas; it will
invade your soil." He was to be the Secretary of State in the incoming
Administration, and was very generally regarded as the "power behind the
throne," greater than the throne itself. He was present in the Senate,
but made no response to Mr. Douglas's demand for a declaration of
policy.
Meantime the efforts for an adjustment made in the House of
Representatives had been equally fruitless. Conspicuous among these
efforts had been the appointment of a committee of thirty-three
members--one from each State of the Union--charged with a duty similar
to that imposed upon the Committee of Thirteen in the Senate, but they
had been alike unsuccessful in coming to any agreement. It is true that,
a few days afterward, they submitted a majority and two minority
reports, and that the report of the majority was ultimately adopted by
the House; but, even if this action had been unanimous, and had been
taken in due time, it would have been practically futile on account of
its absolute failure to provide or suggest any solution of the
territorial question, which was the vital point in controversy.
No wonder, then, that, under the shadow of the failure of every effort
in Congress to find any common ground on which the sections could be
restored to amity, the close of the year should have been darkened by a
cloud in the firmament, which had lost even the silver lining so long
seen, or thought to be seen, by the hopeful.
[Footnote 19: The following extract from a letter of the Hon. O. R.
Singleton, then a Representative of Mississippi in the United States
Congress, in regard to the subject treated, is herewith annexed:
"Canton, Mississippi, _July 14, 1877_.
"In 1860, about the time the ordinance of secession was passed
by the South Carolina Convention, and while Mississippi,
Alabama, and other Southern States were making active
preparations to follow her example, a conference of the
Mississippi delegation in Congress, Senators and
Representatives, was asked for by Governor J. J. Pettus, for
consultation as to the course Mississippi ought to take in the
premises.
"The meeting took place in the fall of 1860, at Jackson, the
capital; the whole delegation being present, with perhaps the
exception of one Representative.
"The main question for consideration was: 'Shall Mississippi, as
soon as her Convention can meet, pass an ordinance of secession,
thus placing herself by the side of South Carolina, regardless
of the action of other States; or shall she endeavor to hold
South Carolina in check, and delay action herself, until other
States can get ready, through their conventions, to unite with
them, and then, on a given day and at a given hour, by concert
of action, all the States willing to do so, secede in a body?'
"Upon the one side, it was argued that South Carolina could not
be induced to delay action a single moment beyond the meeting of
her Convention, and that our fate should be hers, and to delay
action would be to have her crushed by the Federal Government;
whereas, by the earliest action possible, we might be able to
avert this calamity. On the other side, it was contended that
delay might bring the Federal Government to consider the
emergency of the case, and perhaps a compromise could be
effected; but, if not, then the proposed concert of action would
at least give dignity to the movement, and present an undivided
Southern front.
"The debate lasted many hours, and Mr. Davis, with perhaps one
other gentleman in that conference, opposed immediate and
separate State action, declaring himself opposed to secession as
long as the hope of a peaceable remedy remained. He did not
believe we ought to precipitate the issue, as he felt certain
from his knowledge of the people, North and South, that, once
there was a clash of arms, the contest would be one of the most
sanguinary the world had ever witnessed.
"A majority of the meeting decided that no delay should be
interposed to separate State action, Mr. Davis being on the
other side; but, after the vote was taken and the question
decided, Mr. Davis declared he would stand by whatever action
the Convention representing the sovereignty of the State of
Mississippi might think proper to take.
"After the conference was ended, several of its members were
dissatisfied with the course of Mr. Davis, believing that he was
entirely opposed to secession, and was seeking to delay action
upon the part of Mississippi, with the hope that it might be
entirely averted.
"In some unimportant respects my memory may be at fault, and
possibly some of the inferences drawn may be incorrect; but
every material statement made, I am sure, is true, and if need,
can be, easily substantiated by other persons.
"Very respectfully, your obedient servant,"
(Signed) "O. R. Singleton."
]
[Footnote 20: Mr. Crittenden had been a life-long Whig. His first
entrance into the Senate was in 1817, and he was a member of that body
at various periods during the ensuing forty-four years. He was
Attorney-General in the Whig Cabinets of both General Harrison and Mr.
Fillmore, and supported the Bell and Everett ticket in 1860.]
[Footnote 21: The vote was nineteen yeas to twenty nays; total,
thirty-nine. As the consent of two thirds of each House is necessary to
propose an amendment for action by the States, twenty-six of the votes
cast in the Senate would have been necessary to sustain the proposition.
It actually failed, therefore, by _seven_ votes, instead of _one_.]
CHAPTER IX.
Preparations for withdrawal from the Union.--Northern
Precedents.--New England Secessionists.--Cabot, Pickering,
Quincy, etc.--On the Acquisition of Louisiana.--The Hartford
Convention.--The Massachusetts Legislature on the Annexation of
Texas, etc., etc.
The Convention of South Carolina had already (on the 20th of December,
1860) unanimously adopted an ordinance revoking her delegated powers and
withdrawing from the Union. Her representatives, on the following day,
retired from their seats in Congress. The people of the other planting
States had been only waiting in the lingering hope that some action
might be taken by Congress to avert the necessity for action similar to
that of South Carolina. In view of the failure of all overtures for
conciliation during the first month of the session, they were now making
their final preparations for secession. This was generally admitted to
be an unquestionable right appertaining to their sovereignty as States,
and the only _peaceable_ remedy that remained for the evils already felt
and the dangers apprehended.
In the prior history of the country, repeated instances are found of the
assertion of this right, and of a purpose entertained at various times
to put it in execution. Notably is this true of Massachusetts and other
New England States. The acquisition of Louisiana, in 1803, had created
much dissatisfaction in those States, for the reason, expressed by an
eminent citizen of Massachusetts,[22] that "the influence of our [the
Northeastern] part of the Union must be diminished by the acquisition of
more weight at the other extremity." The project of a separation was
freely discussed, with no intimation, in the records of the period, of
any idea among its advocates that it could be regarded as treasonable or
revolutionary.
Colonel Timothy Pickering, who had been an officer of the war of the
Revolution, afterward successively Postmaster-General, Secretary of War,
and Secretary of State, in the Cabinet of General Washington, and, still
later, long a representative of the State of Massachusetts in the Senate
of the United States, was one of the leading secessionists of his day.
Writing from Washington to a friend, on the 24th of December, 1803, he
says:
"I will not yet despair. I will rather anticipate a _new
confederacy_, exempt from the corrupt and corrupting influence
and oppression of the aristocratic democrats of the South. There
will be (and our children, at farthest, will see it) a
separation. The white and black population will mark the
boundary."[23]
In another letter, written a few weeks afterward (January 29, 1804),
speaking of what he regarded as wrongs and abuses perpetrated by the
then existing Administration, he thus expresses his views of the remedy
to be applied:
"The principles of our Revolution point to the remedy--_a
separation_. That this can be accomplished, and without spilling
one drop of blood, I have little doubt....
"I do not believe in the practicability of a long-continued
Union. A _Northern Confederacy_ would unite congenial characters
and present a fairer prospect of public happiness; while the
Southern States, having a similarity of habits, might be left to
'manage their own affairs in their own way.' If a separation
were to take place, our mutual wants would render a friendly and
commercial intercourse inevitable. The Southern States would
require the naval protection of the _Northern Union_, and the
products of the former would be important to the navigation and
commerce of the latter....
"It [the separation] must begin, in Massachusetts. The
proposition would be welcomed in Connecticut; and could we doubt
of New Hampshire? But New York must be associated; and how is
her concurrence to be obtained? She must be made the center of
the Confederacy. Vermont and New Jersey would follow of course,
and Rhode Island of necessity."[24]
Substituting South Carolina for Massachusetts; Virginia for New York;
Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama, for New Hampshire, Vermont, and Rhode
Island; Kentucky for New Jersey, etc., etc., we find the suggestions of
1860-'61 only a reproduction of those thus outlined nearly sixty years
earlier.
Mr. Pickering seems to have had a correct and intelligent perception of
the altogether pacific character of the secession which he proposed, and
of the mutual advantages likely to accrue to both sections from a
peaceable separation. Writing in February, 1804, he explicitly disavows
the idea of hostile feeling or action toward the South, expressing
himself as follows:
"While thus contemplating the only means of maintaining our
ancient institutions in morals and religion, and our equal rights,
we wish no ill to the Southern States and those naturally connected
with them. The public debts might be equitably apportioned
between the new confederacies, and a separation somewhere
about the line above suggested would divide the different characters
of the existing Union. The manners of the Eastern portion
of the States would be sufficiently congenial to form a Union, and
their interests are alike intimately connected with agriculture and
commerce. A friendly and commercial intercourse would be maintained
with the States in the Southern Confederacy as at present.
Thus all the advantages which have been for a few years depending
on the general Union would be continued to its respective portions,
without the jealousies and enmities which now afflict both,
and which peculiarly embitter the condition of that of the North.
It is not unusual for two friends, when disagreeing about the mode
of conducting a common concern, to separate and manage, each in
his own way, his separate interest, and thereby preserve a useful
friendship, which without such separation would infallibly be
destroyed."[25]
Such were the views of an undoubted patriot who had participated in the
formation of the Union, and who had long been confidentially associated
with Washington in the administration of its Government, looking at the
subject from a Northern standpoint, within fifteen years after the
organization of that Government under the Constitution. Whether his
reasons for advocating a dissolution of the Union were valid and
sufficient, or not, is another question which it is not necessary to
discuss. His authority is cited only as showing the opinion prevailing
in the North at that day with regard to the _right_ of secession from
the Union, if deemed advisable by the ultimate and irreversible judgment
of the people of a sovereign State.
In 1811, on the bill for the admission of Louisiana as a State of the
Union, the Hon. Josiah Quincy, a member of Congress from Massachusetts,
said
"If this bill passes, it is my deliberate opinion that it is
virtually a dissolution of this Union; that it will free the
States from their moral obligation; and as it will be the right
of all, so it will be the duty of some, definitely to prepare
for a separation--amicably if they can, violently if they must."
Mr. Poindexter, delegate from what was then the Mississippi Territory,
took exception to these expressions of Mr. Quincy, and called him to
order. The Speaker (Mr. Varnum, of Massachusetts) sustained Mr.
Poindexter, and decided that the suggestion of a dissolution of the
Union was out of order. An appeal was taken from this decision, _and it
was reversed_. Mr. Quincy proceeded to vindicate the propriety of his
position in a speech of some length, in the course of which he said:
"Is there a principle of public law better settled or more
conformable to the plainest suggestions of reason than that the
violation of a contract by one of the parties may be considered
as exempting the other from its obligations? Suppose, in private
life, thirteen form a partnership, and ten of them undertake to
admit a new partner without the concurrence of the other three;
would it not be at their option to abandon the partnership after
so palpable an infringement of their rights? How much more in
the political partnership, where the admission of new
associates, without previous authority, is so pregnant with
obvious dangers and evils!"
It is to be remembered that these men--Cabot, Pickering. Quincy, and
others--whose opinions and expressions have been cited, were not
Democrats, misled by extreme theories of State rights, but leaders and
expositors of the highest type of "Federalism, and of a strong central
Government." This fact gives their support of the right of secession the
greater significance.
The celebrated Hartford Convention assembled in December, 1814. It
consisted of delegates chosen by the Legislatures of Massachusetts,
Rhode Island, and Connecticut, with an irregular or imperfect
representation from the other two New England States, New Hampshire and
Vermont,[26] convened for the purpose of considering the grievances
complained of by those States in connection with the war with Great
Britain. They sat with closed doors, and the character of their
deliberations and discussions has not been authentically disclosed. It
was generally understood, however, that the chief subject of their
considerations was the question of the withdrawal of the States they
represented from the Union. The decision, as announced in their
published report, was adverse to the expediency of such a measure at
that time, and under the then existing conditions; but they proceeded to
indicate the circumstances in which a dissolution of the Union might
become expedient, and the mode in which it should be effected; and their
theoretical plan of separation corresponds very nearly with that
actually adopted by the Southern States nearly fifty years afterward.
They say:
"If the Union be destined to dissolution by reason of the
multiplied abuses of bad administration, it should, if possible,
be the work of peaceable times and deliberate consent. Some _new
form of confederacy_ should be substituted among those States
which shall intend to maintain a federal relation to each other.
Events may prove that the causes of our calamities are deep and
permanent. They may be found to proceed, not merely from the
blindness of prejudice, pride of opinion, violence of party
spirit, or the confusion of the times; but they may be traced to
implacable combinations of individuals or of States to
monopolize power and office, and to trample without remorse upon
the rights and interests of commercial sections of the Union.
Whenever it shall appear that the causes are radical and
permanent, a separation by equitable arrangement will be
preferable to an alliance by constraint among nominal friends,
but real enemies."
The omission of the single word "commercial," which does not affect the
principle involved, is the only modification necessary to adapt this
extract exactly to the condition of the Southern States in 1860-'61.
The obloquy which has attached to the members of the Hartford Convention
has resulted partly from a want of exact knowledge of their proceedings,
partly from the secrecy by which they were veiled, but mainly because it
was a recognized effort to paralyze the arm of the Federal Government
while engaged in a war arising from outrages committed upon American
seamen on the decks of American ships. The indignation felt was no doubt
aggravated by the fact that those ships belonged in a great extent to
the people who were now plotting against the war-measures of the
Government, and indirectly, if not directly, giving aid and comfort to
the public enemy. Time, which has mollified passion, and revealed many
things not then known, has largely modified the first judgment passed on
the proceedings and purposes of the Hartford Convention; and, but for
the circumstances of existing war which surrounded it, they might have
been viewed as political opinions merely, and have received
justification instead of censure.
Again, in 1844-'45 the measures taken for the annexation of Texas evoked
remonstrances, accompanied by threats of a dissolution of the Union from
the Northeastern States. The Legislature of Massachusetts, in 1844,
adopted a resolution, declaring, in behalf of that State, that "the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, faithful to the compact between the
people of the United States, according to the plain meaning and intent
in which it was understood by them, is sincerely anxious for its
preservation; but that it is determined, as it doubts not the other
States are, _to submit to undelegated powers in no body of men on
earth_"; and that "the project of the annexation of Texas, unless
arrested on the threshold, _may tend to drive these States into a
dissolution of the Union_."
Early in the next year (February 11, 1845), the same Legislature adopted
and communicated to Congress a series of resolutions on the same
subject, in one of which it was declared that, "as the powers of
legislation granted in the Constitution of the United States to Congress
do not embrace a case of the admission of a foreign state or foreign
territory, by legislation, into the Union, such an act of admission
would have _no binding force whatever on the people of Massachusetts_"--
language which must have meant that the admission of Texas would be a
justifiable ground for secession, unless it was intended to announce the
purpose of nullification.
It is evident, therefore, that the people of the South, in the crisis
which confronted them in 1860, had no lack either of precept or of
precedent for their instruction and guidance in the teaching and the
example of our brethren of the North and East. The only practical
difference was, that the North threatened and the South acted.
[Footnote 22: George Cabot, who had been United States Senator from
Massachusetts for several years during the Administration of
Washington.--(See "Life of Cabot," by Lodge, p. 334.)]
[Footnote 23: See "Life of Cabot," p. 491; letter of Pickering to
Higginson.]
[Footnote 24: Pickering to Cabot, "Life of Cabot," pp. 338-340.]
[Footnote 25: Letter to Theodore Lyman, "Life of Cabot," pp. 445, 446.]
[Footnote 26: Maine was not then a State.]
CHAPTER X.
False Statements of the Grounds for Separation.--Slavery not the
Cause, but an Incident.--The Southern People not "Propagandists"
of Slavery.--Early Accord among the States with regard to
African Servitude.--Statement of the Supreme Court.--Guarantees
of the Constitution.--Disregard of Oaths.--Fugitives from
Service and the "Personal Liberty Laws."--Equality in the
Territories the Paramount Question.--The Dred Scott
Case.--Disregard of the Decision of the Supreme
Court.--Culmination of Wrongs.--Despair of their
Redress.--Triumph of Sectionalism.
At the period to which this review of events has advanced, one State had
already withdrawn from the Union. Seven or eight others were preparing
to follow her example, and others yet were anxiously and doubtfully
contemplating the probably impending necessity of taking the same
action. The efforts of Southern men in Congress, aided by the
coöperation of the Northern friends of the Constitution, had failed, by
the stubborn refusal of a haughty majority, controlled by "radical"
purposes, to yield anything to the spirit of peace and conciliation.
This period, coinciding, as it happens, with the close of a calendar
year, affords a convenient point to pause for a brief recapitulation of
the causes which had led the Southern States into the attitude they then
held, and for a more full exposition of the constitutional questions
involved.
The reader of many of the treatises on these events, which have been put
forth as historical, if dependent upon such alone for information, might
naturally enough be led to the conclusion that the controversies which
arose between the States, and the war in which they culminated, were
caused by efforts on the one side to extend and perpetuate human
slavery, and on the other to resist it and establish human liberty. The
Southern States and Southern people have been sedulously represented as
"propagandists" of slavery, and the Northern as the defenders and
champions of universal freedom, and this view has been so arrogantly
assumed, so dogmatically asserted, and so persistently reiterated, that
its authors have, in many cases, perhaps, succeeded in bringing
themselves to believe it, as well as in impressing it widely upon the
world.
The attentive reader of the preceding chapters--especially if he has
compared their statements with contemporaneous records and other
original sources of information--will already have found evidence enough
to enable him to discern the falsehood of these representations, and to
perceive that, to whatever extent the question of slavery may have
served as an _occasion_, it was far from being the _cause_ of the
conflict.
I have not attempted, and shall not permit myself to be drawn into any
discussion of the merits or demerits of slavery as an ethical or even as
a political question. It would be foreign to my purpose, irrelevant to
my subject, and would only serve--as it has invariably served, in the
hands of its agitators--to "darken counsel" and divert attention from
the genuine issues involved.
As a mere historical fact, we have seen that African servitude among
us--confessedly the mildest and most humane of all institutions to which
the name "slavery" has ever been applied--existed in all the original
States, and that it was recognized and protected in the fourth article
of the Constitution. Subsequently, for climatic, industrial, and
economical--not moral or sentimental--reasons, it was abolished in the
Northern, while it continued to exist in the Southern States. Men
differed in their views as to the abstract question of its right or
wrong, but for two generations after the Revolution there was no
geographical line of demarkation for such differences. The African
slave-trade was carried on almost exclusively by New England merchants
and Northern ships. Mr. Jefferson--a Southern man, the founder of the
Democratic party, and the vindicator of State rights--was in theory a
consistent enemy to every form of slavery. The Southern States took the
lead in prohibiting the slave-trade, and, as we have seen, one of them
(Georgia) was the first State to incorporate such a prohibition in her
organic Constitution. Eleven years after the agitation on the Missouri
question, when the subject first took a sectional shape, the abolition
of slavery was proposed and earnestly debated in the Virginia
Legislature, and its advocates were so near the accomplishment of their
purpose, that a declaration in its favor was defeated only by a small
majority, and that on the ground of expediency. At a still later period,
abolitionist lecturers and teachers were mobbed, assaulted, and
threatened with tar and feathers in New York, Pennsylvania,
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and other States. One of them
(Lovejoy) was actually killed by a mob in Illinois as late as 1837.
These facts prove incontestably that the sectional hostility which
exhibited itself in 1820, on the application of Missouri for admission
into the Union, which again broke out on the proposition for the
annexation of Texas in 1844, and which reappeared after the Mexican war,
never again to be suppressed until its fell results had been fully
accomplished, was not the consequence of any difference on the abstract
question of slavery. It was the offspring of sectional rivalry and
political ambition. It would have manifested itself just as certainly if
slavery had existed in all the States, or if there had not been a negro
in America. No such pretension was made in 1803 or 1811, when the
Louisiana purchase, and afterward the admission into the Union of the
State of that name, elicited threats of disunion from the
representatives of New England. The complaint was not of slavery, but of
"the acquisition of more weight at the other extremity" of the Union. It
was not slavery that threatened a rupture in 1832, but the unjust and
unequal operation of a protective tariff.
It happened, however, on all these occasions, that the line of
demarkation of sectional interests coincided exactly or very nearly with
that dividing the States in which negro servitude existed from those in
which it had been abolished. It corresponded with the prediction of Mr.
Pickering, in 1803, that, in the separation certainly to come, "the
white and black population would mark the boundary"--a prediction made
without any reference to slavery as a source of dissension.
Of course, the diversity of institutions contributed, in some minor
degree, to the conflict of interests. There is an action and reaction of
cause and consequence, which limits and modifies any general statement
of a political truth. I am stating general principles--not defining
modifications and exceptions with the precision of a mathematical
proposition or a bill in chancery. The truth remains intact and
incontrovertible, that the existence of African servitude was in no wise
the cause of the conflict, but only an incident. In the later
controversies that arose, however, its effect in operating as a lever
upon the passions, prejudices, or sympathies of mankind, was so potent
that it has been spread, like a thick cloud, over the whole horizon of
historic truth.
As for the institution of negro servitude, it was a matter entirely
subject to the control of the States. No power was ever given to the
General Government to interfere with it, but an obligation was imposed
to protect it. Its existence and validity were distinctly recognized by
the Constitution in at least three places:
First, in that part of the second section of the first article which
prescribes that "representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned
among the several States which may be included within this Union,
according to their respective members, which shall be determined by
adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to
service for a term of years, and, excluding Indians not taxed, three
fifths of all other persons." "_Other_ persons" than "_free_ persons"
and those "bound to service for a term of years" must, of course, have
meant those permanently bound to service.
Secondly, it was recognized by the ninth section of the same article,
which provided that "the migration or importation of such persons as any
of the States now existing shall think proper to admit shall not be
prohibited by Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and
eight." This was a provision inserted for the protection of the
interests of the slave-trading New England States, forbidding any
prohibition of the trade by Congress for twenty years, and thus
virtually giving sanction to the legitimacy of the demand which that
trade was prosecuted to supply, and which was its only object.
Again, and in the third place, it was specially recognized, and an
obligation imposed upon every State, not only to refrain from
interfering with it in any other State, but in certain cases to aid in
its enforcement, by that clause, or paragraph, of the second section of
the fourth article which provides as follows:
"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws
thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law
or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor,
but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such
service or labor may be due."
The President and Vice-President of the United States, every Senator and
Representative in Congress, the members of every State Legislature, and
"all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of
the several States," were required to take an oath (or affirmation) to
support the Constitution containing these provisions. It is easy to
understand how those who considered them in conflict with the "higher
law" of religion or morality might refuse to take such an oath or hold
such an office--as the members of some religious sects refuse to take
any oath at all or to bear arms in the service of their country--but it
is impossible to reconcile with the obligations of honor or honesty the
conduct of those who, having taken such an oath, made use of the powers
and opportunities of the offices held under its sanctions to nullify its
obligations and neutralize its guarantees. The halls of Congress
afforded the vantage-ground from which assaults were made upon these
guarantees. The Legislatures of various Northern States enacted laws to
hinder the execution of the provisions made for the rendition of
fugitives from service; State officials lent their aid to the work of
thwarting them; and city mobs assailed the officers engaged in the duty
of enforcing them.
With regard to the provision of the Constitution above quoted, for the
restoration of fugitives from service or labor, my own view was, and is,
that it was not a proper subject for legislation by the Federal
Congress, but that its enforcement should have been left to the
respective States, which, as parties to the compact of union, should
have been held accountable for its fulfillment. Such was actually the
case in the earlier and better days of the republic. No fugitive
slave-law existed, or was required, for two years after the organization
of the Federal Government, and, when one was then passed, it was merely
as an incidental appendage to an act regulating the mode of rendition of
fugitives from _justice_--not from service or labor.[27]
In 1850 a more elaborate law was enacted as part of the celebrated
compromise of that year. But the very fact that the Federal Government
had taken the matter into its own hands, and provided for its execution
by its own officers, afforded a sort of pretext to those States which
had now become hostile to this provision of the Constitution, not only
to stand aloof, but in some cases to adopt measures (generally known as
"personal liberty laws") directly in conflict with the execution of the
provisions of the Constitution.
The preamble to the Constitution declared the object of its founders to
be, "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic
tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general
welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our
posterity." Now, however (in 1860), the people of a portion of the
States had assumed an attitude of avowed hostility, not only to the
provisions of the Constitution itself, but to the "domestic
tranquillity" of the people of other States. Long before the formation
of the Constitution, one of the charges preferred in the Declaration of
Independence against the Government of Great Britain, as justifying the
separation of the colonies from that country, was that of having
"excited domestic insurrections among us." Now, the mails were burdened
with incendiary publications, secret emissaries had been sent, and in
one case an armed invasion of one of the States had taken place for the
very purpose of exciting "domestic insurrection."
It was not the passage of the "personal liberty laws," it was not the
circulation of incendiary documents, it was not the raid of John Brown,
it was not the operation of unjust and unequal tariff laws, nor all
combined, that constituted the intolerable grievance, but it was the
systematic and persistent struggle to deprive the Southern States of
equality in the Union--generally to discriminate in legislation against
the interests of their people; culminating in their exclusion from the
Territories, the common property of the States, as well as by the
infraction of their compact to promote domestic tranquillity.
The question with regard to the Territories has been discussed in the
foregoing chapters, and the argument need not be repeated. There was,
however, one feature of it which has not been specially noticed,
although it occupied a large share of public attention at the time, and
constituted an important element in the case. This was the action of the
Federal judiciary thereon, and the manner in which it was received.
In 1854 a case (the well-known "Dred Scott case") came before the
Supreme Court of the United States, involving the whole question of the
_status_ of the African race and the rights of citizens of the Southern
States to migrate to the Territories, temporarily or permanently, with
their slave property, on a footing of equality with the citizens of
other States with _their_ property of any sort. This question, as we
have seen, had already been the subject of long and energetic
discussion, without any satisfactory conclusion. All parties, however,
had united in declaring, that a decision by the Supreme Court of the
United States--the highest judicial tribunal in the land--would be
accepted as final. After long and patient consideration of the case, in
1857, the decision of the Court was pronounced in an elaborate and
exhaustive opinion, delivered by Chief-Justice Taney--a man eminent as a
lawyer, great as a statesman, and stainless in his moral
reputation--seven of the nine judges who composed the Court, concurring
in it. The salient points established by this decision were:
1. That persons of the African race were not, and could not be,
acknowledged as "part of the people," or citizens, under the
Constitution of the United States;
2. That Congress had no right to exclude citizens of the South
from taking their negro servants, as any other property, into
any part of the common territory, and that they were entitled to
claim its protection therein;
3. And, finally, as a consequence of the principle just above
stated, that the Missouri Compromise of 1820, in so far as it
prohibited the existence of African servitude north of a
designated line, was unconstitutional and void.[28] (It will be
remembered that it had already been declared "inoperative and
void" by the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854.)
Instead of accepting the decision of this then august tribunal--the
ultimate authority in the interpretation of constitutional questions--as
conclusive of a controversy that had so long disturbed the peace and was
threatening the perpetuity of the Union, it was flouted, denounced, and
utterly disregarded by the Northern agitators, and served only to
stimulate the intensity of their sectional hostility.
What resource for justice--what assurance of tranquillity--what
guarantee of safety--now remained for the South? Still forbearing, still
hoping, still striving for peace and union, we waited until a sectional
President, nominated by a sectional convention, elected by a sectional
vote--and that the vote of a minority of the people--was about to be
inducted into office, under the warning of his own distinct announcement
that the Union could not permanently endure "half slave and half free";
meaning thereby that it could not continue to exist in the condition in
which it was formed and its Constitution adopted. The leader of his
party, who was to be the chief of his Cabinet, was the man who had first
proclaimed an "irrepressible conflict" between the North and the South,
and who had declared that abolitionism, having triumphed in the
Territories, would proceed to the invasion of the States. Even then the
Southern people did not finally despair until the temper of the
triumphant party had been tested in Congress and found adverse to any
terms of reconciliation consistent with the honor and safety of all
parties.
No alternative remained except to seek the security out of the Union
which they had vainly tried to obtain within it. The hope of our people
may be stated in a sentence. It was to escape from injury and strife in
the Union, to find prosperity and peace out of it. The mode and
principles of their action will next be presented.
[Footnote 27: "There was but little necessity in those times, nor long
after, for an act of Congress to authorize the recovery of fugitive
slaves. The laws of the free States and, still more, the force of public
opinion were the owners' best safeguards. Public opinion was against the
abduction of slaves; and, if any one was seduced from his owner, it was
done furtively and secretly, without show or force, and as any other
moral offense would be committed. State laws favored the owner, and to a
greater extent than the act of Congress did or could. In Pennsylvania
there was an act (it was passed in 1780, and only repealed in 1847)
discriminating between the traveler and sojourner and the permanent
resident, allowing the former to remain six months in the State before
his slaves would become subject to the emancipation laws; and, in the
case of a Federal officer, allowing as much more time as his duties
required him to remain. New York had the same act, only varying in time,
which was nine months. While these two acts were in force, and supported
by public opinion, the traveler and sojourner was safe with his slaves
in those States, and the same in the other free States. There was no
trouble about fugitive slaves in those times."--(Note to Benton's
"Abridgment of Debates," vol. i, p. 417.)]
[Footnote 28: The Supreme Court of the United States in stating (through
Chief-Justice Taney) their decision in the "Dred Scott case," in 1857,
say: "In that portion of the United States where the labor of the negro
race was found to be unsuited to the climate and unprofitable to the
master, but few slaves were held at the time of the Declaration of
Independence; and, when the Constitution was adopted, it had entirely
worn out in one of them, and measures had been taken for its gradual
abolition in several others. But this change had not been produced by
any change of opinion in relation to this race, but because it was
discovered from experience that slave-labor was unsuited to the climate
and productions of these States; for some of these States, when it had
ceased, or nearly ceased, to exist, were actively engaged in the
slave-trade; procuring cargoes on the coast of Africa, and transporting
them for sale to those parts of the Union where their labor was found to
be profitable and suited to the climate and productions. And this
traffic was openly carried on, and fortunes accumulated by it, without
reproach from the people of the States where they resided."
This statement, it must be remembered, does not proceed from any
partisan source, but is extracted from a judicial opinion pronounced by
the highest court in the country. In illustration of the truthfulness of
the latter part of it, may be mentioned the fact that a citizen of Rhode
Island (James D'Wolf), long and largely concerned in the slave-trade,
was sent from that State to the Senate of the United States as late as
the year 1821. In 1825 he resigned his seat in the Senate and removed to
Havana, where he lived for many years, actively engaged in the same
pursuit, as president of a slave-trading company. The story is told of
him that, on being informed that the "trade" was to be declared piracy,
he smiled and said, "So much the better for us--the Yankees will be the
only people not scared off by such a declaration."]
PART II.
THE CONSTITUTION.
CHAPTER I.
The Original Confederation.--"Articles of Confederation and
Perpetual Union."--Their Inadequacy ascertained.--Commercial
Difficulties.--The Conference at Annapolis.--Recommendation of a
General Convention.--Resolution of Congress.--Action of the
Several States.--Conclusions drawn therefrom.
When certain American colonies of Great Britain, each acting for itself,
although in concert with the others, determined to dissolve their
political connection with the mother-country, they sent their
representatives to a general Congress of those colonies, and through
them made a declaration that the Colonies were, and of right ought to
be, "free and independent States." As such they contracted an alliance
for their "common defense," successfully resisted the effort to reduce
them to submission, and secured the recognition by Great Britain of
their separate independence; each State being distinctly recognized
under its own name--not as one of a group or nation. That this was not
merely a foreign view is evident from the second of the "Articles of
Confederation" between the States, adopted subsequently to the
Declaration of Independence, which is in these words: "Each State
retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power,
jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly
delegated to the United States in Congress assembled."
These "Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union between the
States," as they were styled in their title, were adopted by eleven of
the original States in 1778, and by the other two in the course of the
three years next ensuing, and continued in force until 1789. During this
period the General Government was vested in the Congress alone, in which
each State, through its representatives, had an equal vote in the
determination of all questions whatever. The Congress exercised all the
executive as well as legislative powers delegated by the States. When
not in session the general management of affairs was intrusted to a
"Committee of the States," consisting of one delegate from each State.
Provision was made for the creation, by the Congress, of courts having a
certain specified jurisdiction in admiralty and maritime cases, and for
the settlement of controversies between two or more States in a mode
specifically prescribed.
The Government thus constituted was found inadequate for some necessary
purposes, and it became requisite to reorganize it. The first idea of
such reorganization arose from the necessity of regulating the
commercial intercourse of the States with one another and with foreign
countries, and also of making some provision for payment of the debt
contracted during the war for independence. These exigencies led to a
proposition for a meeting of commissioners from the various States to
consider the subject. Such a meeting was held at Annapolis in September,
1786; but, as only five States (New York, New Jersey, Delaware,
Pennsylvania, and Virginia) were represented, the Commissioners declined
to take any action further than to recommend another Convention, with a
wider scope for consideration. As they expressed it, it was their
"unanimous conviction that it may essentially tend to advance the
interests of the Union, if the States, by whom they have been
respectively delegated, would themselves concur, and use their endeavors
to procure the concurrence of the other States, in the appointment of
commissioners, to meet at Philadelphia on the second Monday in May next,
to take into consideration the situation of the United States, to devise
such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary to render the
Constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the
Union, and to report such an act for that purpose to the United States
in Congress assembled, as, when agreed to by them, and afterward
confirmed by the Legislatures of every State, will effectually provide
for the same."
It is scarcely necessary to remind the well-informed reader that the
terms, "Constitution of the Federal Government," employed above, and
"Federal Constitution," as used in other proceedings of that period, do
not mean the instrument to which we now apply them; and which was not
then in existence. They were applied to the system of government
formulated in the Articles of Confederation. This is in strict accord
with the definition of the word constitution, given by an eminent
lexicographer:[29] "The body of fundamental laws, as contained in
written documents or prescriptive usage, which constitute the form of
government for a nation, state, community, association, or society."[30]
Thus we speak of the British Constitution, which is an unwritten system
of "prescriptive usage"; of the Constitution of Massachusetts or of
Mississippi, which is the fundamental or organic law of a particular
State embodied in a written instrument; and of the Federal Constitution
of the United States, which is the fundamental law of an association of
States, at first as embraced in the Articles of Confederation, and
afterward as revised, amended, enlarged, and embodied in the instrument
framed in 1787, and subsequently adopted by the various States. The
manner in which this revision was effected was as follows. Acting on the
suggestion of the Annapolis Convention, the Congress, on the 21st of the
ensuing February (1787), adopted the following resolution:
"_Resolved_, That, in the opinion of Congress, it is expedient
that, on the second Monday in May next, a convention of
delegates, who shall have been appointed by the several States,
be held at Philadelphia, for the sole and express purpose of
revising the Articles of Confederation, and reporting to
Congress and the several Legislatures, such alterations and
provisions therein as shall, when agreed to in Congress and
confirmed by the States, render the Federal Constitution
adequate to the exigencies of Government and the preservation of
the Union."
The language of this resolution, substantially according with that of
the recommendation made by the commissioners at Annapolis a few months
before, very clearly defines the objects of the proposed Convention and
the powers which it was thought advisable that the States should confer
upon their delegates. These were, "solely and expressly," as follows:
1. "To revise the Articles of Confederation with reference to
the 'situation of the United States';
2. "To devise such alterations and provisions therein as should
seem to them requisite in order to render 'the Federal
Constitution,' or 'Constitution of the Federal Government,'
adequate to 'the exigencies of the Union,' or 'the exigencies of
the Government and the preservation of the Union';
3. "To report the result of their deliberations--that is, the
'alterations and provisions' which they should agree to
recommend--to Congress and the Legislatures of the several
States."
Of course, their action could be only advisory until ratified by the
States. The "Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union," under which
the States were already united, provided that no alteration should be
made in any of them, "unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress
of the United States, and afterward confirmed by the Legislatures of
every State."
The Legislatures of the various States, with the exception of Rhode
Island, adopted and proceeded to act upon these suggestions by the
appointment of delegates--some of them immediately upon the
recommendation of the Annapolis Commissioners in advance of that of the
Congress, and the others in the course of a few months after the
resolution adopted by Congress. The instructions given to these
delegates in all cases conformed to the recommendations which have been
quoted, and in one case imposed an additional restriction or limitation.
As this is a matter of much importance, in order to a right
understanding of what follows, it may be advisable to cite in detail the
action of the several States, italicizing such passages as are specially
significant of the duties and powers of the delegates to the Convention.
The General Assembly of Virginia, after reciting the recommendation made
at Annapolis, enacted: "That seven commissioners be appointed by joint
ballot of both Houses of Assembly, who, or any three of them, are hereby
authorized, as deputies from this Commonwealth, to meet such deputies as
may be appointed and authorized by other States, to assemble in
convention at Philadelphia, as above recommended, and to join with them
in devising and discussing _all such alterations and further provisions
as may be necessary to render the Federal Constitution adequate to the
exigencies of the Union, and in reporting such an act for that purpose
to the United States in Congress, as, when agreed to by them, and duly
confirmed by the several States_, will effectually provide for the
same."
The Council and Assembly of New Jersey issued commissions to their
delegates to meet such commissioners as have been, or may be, appointed
by _the other States of the Union_, at the city of Philadelphia, in the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, on the second Monday in May next, "_for the
purpose of taking into consideration the state of the Union as to trade
and other important objects, and of devising such other provisions as
shall appear to be necessary to render the Constitution of the Federal
Government adequate to the exigencies thereof_."
The act of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania constituted and
appointed certain deputies, designated by name, "with powers to meet
such deputies as may be _appointed and authorized by the other States_
... and to join with them in devising, deliberating on, and discussing
_all such alterations and further provisions_ as may be necessary _to
render the Federal Constitution fully adequate to the exigencies of the
Union_, and in reporting such act or acts for that purpose, to the
United States in Congress assembled, as, _when agreed to by them and
duly confirmed by the several States_, will effectually provide for the
same."
The General Assembly of North Carolina enacted that commissioners should
be appointed by joint ballot of both Houses, "to meet and confer with
such deputies as may be _appointed by the other States_ for similar
purposes, and with them to discuss and decide upon _the most effectual
means to remove the defects of our Federal Union, and to procure the
enlarged purposes which it was intended to effect; and that they report
such an act to the General Assembly of this State, as, when agreed to by
them_, will effectually provide for the same." (In the case of this
State alone nothing is said of a report to Congress. Neither North
Carolina nor any other State, however, fails to make mention of the
necessity of a submission of any action taken to the several States for
ratification.)
The commissions issued to the representatives of South Carolina, by the
Governor, refer to an act of the Legislature of that State authorizing
their appointment "to meet such deputies or commissioners as may be
_appointed and authorized by other of the United States_," at the time
and place designated, and to join with them "in devising and discussing
all _such alterations, clauses, articles, and provisions_, as may be
thought necessary _to render the Federal Constitution entirely adequate_
to the actual situation and future good government of the _Confederate
States_," and to "join in reporting such an act to the United States in
Congress assembled, as, _when approved and agreed to by them, and duly
ratified and confirmed by the several States_, will effectually provide
for the exigencies of the Union." In these commissions the expression,
"alterations, clauses, articles, and provisions," clearly indicates the
character of the duties which the deputies were expected to discharge.
The General Assembly of Georgia "ordained" the appointment of certain
commissioners, specified by name, who were "authorized, as deputies from
this State, to meet such deputies as may be _appointed and authorized by
other States_, to assemble in convention at Philadelphia, and to join
with them in devising and discussing _all such alterations and further
provisions_ as may be necessary _to render the Federal Constitution
adequate to the exigencies of the Union_, and in reporting such an act
for that purpose to the United States in Congress assembled, as, _when
agreed to by them, and duly confirmed by the several States_, will
effectually provide for the same."
The authority conferred upon their delegates by the Assembly of New York
and the General Court of Massachusetts was in each case expressed in the
exact words of the advisory resolution of Congress: they were instructed
to meet the delegates of the other States "for the sole and express
purpose of _revising the Articles of Confederation_, and reporting to
Congress and to the several Legislatures _such alterations and
provisions therein_ as shall, when agreed to in Congress, and confirmed
by the several States, _render the Federal Constitution adequate to the
exigencies of the Union_."
The General Assembly of Connecticut designated the delegates of that
State by name, and empowered them, in conference with the delegates of
other States, "to discuss upon such alterations and provisions,
agreeable to the general principles of republican government, as they
shall think proper to render the Federal Constitution adequate to the
exigencies of the Government and the preservation of the Union," and
"_to report such alterations and provisions as may be agreed to by a
majority of the United States in convention_, to the Congress of the
United States and to the General Assembly of this State."
The General Court of New Hampshire authorized and empowered the deputies
of that State, _in conference with those of other States_, "to discuss
and decide upon the most effectual means _to remedy the defects of our
Federal Union, and to procure and secure the enlarged purposes which it
was intended to effect_"--language almost identical with that of North
Carolina, but, like the other States in general, instructed them to
report the result of their deliberations to Congress for the action of
that body, and subsequent confirmation "by the several States."
The delegates from Maryland were appointed by the General Assembly of
that State, and instructed "to meet such deputies as may be appointed
and authorized _by any other of the United States_, to assemble in
convention at Philadelphia, _for the purpose of revising the Federal
system_, and to join with them in considering such alterations and
further provisions," etc.--the remainder of their instructions being in
the same words as those given to the Georgia delegates.
The instructions given to the deputies of Delaware were substantially in
accord with the others--being almost literally identical with those of
Pennsylvania--but the following proviso was added: "So, always, and
provided, that such alterations or further provisions, or any of them,
do not extend to that part of the fifth article of the Confederation of
the said States, finally ratified on the first day of March, in the year
1781, which declares that, '_in determining questions in the United
States in Congress assembled, each State shall have one vote_.'"
Rhode Island, as has already been mentioned, sent no delegates.
From an examination and comparison of the enactments and instructions
above quoted, we may derive certain conclusions, so obvious that they
need only to be stated:
1. In the first place, it is clear that the delegates to the Convention
of 1787 represented, not _the people of the United States_ in mass, as
has been most absurdly contended by some political writers, but _the
people_ of the several States, _as States_--just as in the Congress of
that period--Delaware, with her sixty thousand inhabitants, having
entire equality with Pennsylvania, which had more than four hundred
thousand, or Virginia, with her seven hundred and fifty thousand.
2. The object for which they were appointed was not to organize a _new_
Government, but "solely and expressly" to amend the "Federal
Constitution" already existing; in other words, "to revise the Articles
of Confederation," and to suggest such "alterations" or additional
"provisions" as should be deemed necessary to render them "adequate to
the exigencies of the Union."
3. It is evident that the term "Federal Constitution," or its
equivalent, "Constitution of the Federal Government," was as freely and
familiarly applied to the system of government established by the
Articles of Confederation--undeniably a league or compact between States
expressly retaining their sovereignty and independence--as to that
amended system which was substituted for it by the Constitution that
superseded those articles.
4. The functions of the delegates to the Convention were, of course,
only to devise, deliberate, and discuss. No validity could attach to any
action taken, unless and until it should be afterward ratified by the
several States. It is evident, also, that what was contemplated was the
process provided in the Articles of Confederation for their own
amendment--first, a recommendation by the Congress; and, afterward,
ratification "by the Legislatures of every State," before the amendment
should be obligatory upon any. The departure from this condition, which
actually occurred, will presently be noticed.
[Footnote 29: Dr. Worcester.]
[Footnote 30: This definition is very good as far as it goes, but "the
form of government" is a phrase which falls short of expressing all that
should be comprehended. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say, "which
constitute the form, _define the powers, and prescribe the functions_ of
government," etc. The words in italics would make the definition more
complete.]
CHAPTER II.
The Convention of 1787.--Diversity of Opinion.--Luther Martin's
Account of the Three Parties.--The Question of
Representation.--Compromise effected.--Mr. Randolph's
Resolutions.--The Word "National" condemned.--Plan of Government
framed.--Difficulty with Regard to Ratification, and its
Solution.--Provision for Secession from the Union.--Views of Mr.
Gerry and Mr. Madison.--False Interpretations.--Close of the
Convention.
When the Convention met in Philadelphia, in May, 1787, it soon became
evident that the work before it would take a wider range and involve
more radical changes in the "Federal Constitution" than had at first
been contemplated. Under the Articles of Confederation the General
Government was obliged to rely upon the governments of the several
States for the execution of its enactments. Except its own officers and
employees, and in time of war the Federal army and navy, it could
exercise no control upon individual citizens. With regard to the States,
no compulsory or coercive measures could be employed to enforce its
authority, in case of opposition or indifference to its exercise. This
last was a feature of the Confederation which it was not desirable nor
possible to change, and no objection was made to it; but it was
generally admitted that some machinery should be devised to enable the
General Government to exercise its legitimate functions by means of a
mandatory authority operating directly upon the individual citizens
within the limits of its constitutional powers. The necessity for such
provision was undisputed.
Beyond the common ground of a recognition of this necessity there was a
wide diversity of opinion among the members of the Convention. Luther
Martin, a delegate from Maryland, in an account of its proceedings,
afterward given to the Legislature of that State, classifies these
differences as constituting three parties in the Convention, which he
describes as follows:
"One party, whose object and wish it was to abolish and
annihilate all State governments, and to bring forward one
General Government over this extensive continent of a
monarchical nature, under certain restrictions and limitations.
Those who openly avowed this sentiment were, it is true, but
few; yet it is equally true that there was a considerable
number, who did not openly avow it, who were, by myself and many
others of the Convention, considered as being in reality
favorers of that sentiment....
"The second party was not for the abolition of the State
governments nor for the introduction of a monarchical government
under any form; but they wished to establish such a system as
could give their own States undue power and influence in the
government over the other States.
"A third party was what I considered truly federal and
republican. This party was nearly equal in number with the other
two, and was composed of the delegates from Connecticut, New
York, New Jersey, Delaware, and in part from Maryland; also of
some individuals from other representations. This party were for
proceeding upon terms of federal equality: they were for taking
our present federal system as the basis of their proceedings,
and, as far as experience had shown that other powers were
necessary to the Federal Government, to give those powers. They
considered this the object for which they were sent by their
States, and what their States expected from them."
In his account of the second party above described, Mr. Martin refers to
those representatives of the larger States who wished to establish a
numerical basis of representation in the Congress, instead of the equal
representation of the States (whether large or small) which existed
under the Articles of Confederation. There was naturally much
dissatisfaction on the part of the greater States--Virginia,
Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Massachusetts--whose population at
that period exceeded that of all the others combined, but which, in the
Congress, constituted less than one third of the voting strength. On the
other hand, the smaller States were tenacious of their equality in the
Union. Of the very smallest, one, as we have seen, had sent no
representatives to the Convention, and the other had instructed her
delegates, unconditionally, to insist upon the maintenance of absolute
equality in the Congress. This difference gave more trouble than any
other question that came before the Convention, and for some time
threatened to prove irreconcilable and to hinder any final agreement. It
was ultimately settled by a compromise. Provision was made for the
representation of the people of the States in one branch of the Federal
Legislature (the House of Representatives) in proportion to their
numbers; in the other branch (the Senate), for the equal representation
of the States as such. The perpetuity of this equality was furthermore
guaranteed by a stipulation that no State should ever be deprived of its
equal suffrage in the Senate without its own consent.[31] This
compromise required no sacrifice of principle on either side, and no
provision of the Constitution has in practice proved more entirely
satisfactory.
It is not necessary, and would be beyond the scope of this work, to
undertake to give a history of the proceedings of the Convention of
1787. That may be obtained from other sources. All that is requisite for
the present purpose is to notice a few particulars of special
significance or relevancy to the subject of inquiry.
Early in the session of the Convention a series of resolutions was
introduced by Mr. Edmund Randolph, of Virginia, embodying a proposed
plan of government, which were considered in committee of the whole
House, and formed the basis of a protracted discussion. The first of
these resolutions, as amended before a vote was taken, was in these
words:
"_Resolved_, That it is the opinion of this committee that a
national Government ought to be established, consisting of a
supreme legislative, executive, and judiciary."
This was followed by other resolutions--twenty-three in all, as adopted
and reported by the committee--in which the word "national" occurred
twenty-six times.
The day after the report of the committee was made, Mr. Ellsworth, of
Connecticut, moved to strike out the words "national Government" in the
resolution above quoted, and to insert the words "Government of the
United States," which he said was the proper title. "He wished also the
plan to go forth as an amendment of the Articles of Confederation."[32]
That is to say, he wished to avoid even the appearance of undertaking to
form a _new_ government, instead of reforming the old one, which was the
proper object of the Convention. This motion was agreed to without
opposition, and, as a consequence, the word "national" was stricken out
wherever it occurred, and nowhere makes its appearance in the
Constitution finally adopted. The prompt rejection, after introduction,
of this word "national," is obviously much more expressive of the intent
and purpose of the authors of the Constitution than its mere absence
from the Constitution would have been. It is a clear indication that
they did not mean to give any countenance to the idea which, "scotched,
not killed," has again reared its mischievous crest in these latter
days--that the government which they organized was a consolidated
_nationality_, instead of a confederacy of sovereign members.
Continuing their great work of revision and reorganization, the
Convention proceeded to construct the framework of a government for the
Confederacy, strictly confined to certain specified and limited powers,
but complete in all its parts, legislative, executive, and judicial, and
provided with the means for discharging all its functions without
interfering with the "sovereignty, freedom, and independence" of the
constituent States.
All this might have been done without going beyond the limits of their
commission "to revise the Articles of Confederation," and to consider
and report such "alterations and provisions" as might seem necessary to
"render the Federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of
government and the preservation of the Union." A serious difficulty,
however, was foreseen. The thirteenth and last of the aforesaid articles
had this provision, which has already been referred to: "The Articles of
this Confederation _shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the
union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration, at any time
hereafter, be made in any of them_, unless such alteration be agreed to
in a Congress of the United States, and be afterward confirmed by the
Legislatures of _every State_."
It is obvious, from an examination of the records, as has already been
shown, that the original idea in calling a Convention was, that their
recommendations should take the course prescribed by this
article--first, a report to the Congress, and then, if approved by that
body, a submission to the various Legislatures for final action. There
was no reason to apprehend the non-concurrence of Congress, in which a
mere majority would determine the question; but the consent of the
Legislatures of "_every State_" was requisite in order to final
ratification, and there was serious reason to fear that this consent
could not be obtained. Rhode Island, as we have seen, had declined to
send any representatives to the Convention; of the three delegates from
New York, two had withdrawn; and other indications of dissatisfaction
had appeared. In case of the failure of a single Legislature to ratify,
the labors of the Convention would go for naught, under a strict
adherence to the letter of the article above cited. The danger of a
total frustration of their efforts was imminent.
In this emergency the Convention took the responsibility of transcending
the limits of their instructions, and recommending a procedure which was
in direct contravention of the letter of the Articles of Confederation.
This was the introduction of a provision into the new Constitution, that
the ratification of _nine_ States should be sufficient for its
establishment among themselves. In order to validate this provision, it
was necessary to refer it to authority higher than that of Congress and
the State Legislatures--that is, to the People of the States, assembled,
by their representatives, in convention. Hence it was provided, by the
seventh and last article of the new Constitution, that "the ratification
of the _Conventions_ of nine States" should suffice for its
establishment "between the States so ratifying the same."
There was another reason, of a more general and perhaps more controlling
character, for this reference to conventions for ratification, even if
entire unanimity of the State Legislatures could have been expected.
Under the American theory of republican government, conventions of the
people, duly elected and accredited as such, are invested with the
plenary power inherent in the people of an organized and independent
community, assembled in mass. In other words, they represent and
exercise what is properly the _sovereignty_ of the people. State
Legislatures, with restricted powers, do not possess or represent
sovereignty. Still less does the Congress of a union or confederacy of
States, which is by two degrees removed from the seat of sovereignty. We
sometimes read or hear of "delegated sovereignty," "divided
sovereignty," with other loose expressions of the same sort; but no such
thing as a division or delegation of sovereignty is possible.
In order, therefore, to supersede the restraining article above cited
and to give the highest validity to the compact for the delegation of
important powers and functions of government to a common agent, an
authority above that of the State Legislatures was necessary. Mr.
Madison, in the "Federalist,"[33] says: "It has been heretofore noted
among the defects of the Confederation, that in many of the States it
had received no higher sanction than a mere legislative ratification."
This objection would of course have applied with greater force to the
proposed Constitution, which provided for additional grants of power
from the States, and the conferring of larger and more varied powers
upon a General Government, which was to act upon individuals instead of
States, if the question of its confirmation had been submitted merely to
the several State Legislatures. Hence the obvious propriety of referring
it to the respective _people_ of the States in their sovereign capacity,
as provided in the final article of the Constitution.
In this article provision was deliberately made for the _secession_ (if
necessary) of a part of the States from a union which, when formed, had
been declared "perpetual," and its terms and articles to be "inviolably
observed by every State."
Opposition was made to the provision on this very ground--that it was
virtually a dissolution of the Union, and that it would furnish a
precedent for future secessions. Mr. Gerry, a distinguished member from
Massachusetts--afterward Vice-President of the United States--said, "If
nine out of thirteen (States) can dissolve the compact, six out of nine
will be just as able to dissolve the future one hereafter."
Mr. Madison, who was one of the leading members of the Convention,
advocating afterward, in the "Federalist," the adoption of the new
Constitution, asks the question, "On what principle the Confederation,
which stands in the solemn form of a compact among the States, can be
superseded without the unanimous consent of the parties to it?" He
answers this question "by recurring to the absolute necessity of the
case; to the great principle of self-preservation; to the transcendent
law of nature and of nature's God, which declares that the safety and
happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions
aim, and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed." He
proceeds, however, to give other grounds of justification:
"It is an established doctrine on the subject of treaties, that
all the articles are mutually conditions of each other; that a
breach of any one article is a breach of the whole treaty; and
that a breach committed by either of the parties absolves the
others, and authorizes them, if they please, to pronounce the
compact violated and void. Should it unhappily be necessary to
appeal to these delicate truths for a justification for
dispensing with the consent of particular States to a
dissolution of the Federal pact, will not the complaining
parties find it a difficult task to answer the multiplied and
important infractions with which they may be confronted? _The
time has been when it was incumbent on us all to veil the ideas
which this paragraph exhibits._ The scene is now changed, and
with it the part which the same motives dictate."
Mr. Madison's idea of the propriety of _veiling_ any statement of the
right of secession until the occasion arises for its exercise, whether
right or wrong in itself, is eminently suggestive as explanatory of the
caution exhibited by other statesmen of that period, as well as himself,
with regard to that "delicate truth."
The only possible alternative to the view here taken of the seventh
article of the Constitution, as a provision for the secession of any
nine States, which might think proper to avail themselves of it, from
union with such as should refuse to do so, and the formation of an
amended or "more perfect union" with one another, is to regard it as a
provision for the continuance of the old Union, or Confederation, under
altered conditions, by the majority which should accede to them, with a
recognition of the right of the recusant minority to withdraw, secede,
or stand aloof. The idea of compelling any State or States to enter into
or to continue in union with the others by _coercion_, is as absolutely
excluded under the one supposition as under the other--with reference to
one State or a minority of States, as well as with regard to a majority.
The article declares that "the ratification of the Conventions of nine
States shall be sufficient for the establishment of this
Constitution"--not between all, but--"_between the States so ratifying
the same_." It is submitted whether a fuller justification of this right
of the nine States to form a new Government is not found in the fact of
the sovereignty in each of them, making them "a law unto themselves,"
and therefore the final judge of what the necessities of each community
demand.
Here--although, perhaps, in advance of its proper place in the
argument--the attention of the reader may be directed to the refutation,
afforded by this article of the Constitution, of that astonishing
fiction, which has been put forward by some distinguished writers of
later date, that the Constitution was established by the people of the
United States "in the aggregate." If such had been the case, the will of
a majority, duly ascertained and expressed, would have been binding upon
the minority. No such idea existed in its formation. It was not even
established by the _States in the aggregate_, nor was it proposed that
it should be. It was submitted for the acceptance of each separately,
the time and place at their own option, so that the dates of
ratification did extend from December 7, 1787, to May 29, 1790. The long
period required for these ratifications makes manifest the absurdity of
the assertion, that it was a decision by the votes of one people, or one
community, in which a majority of the votes cast determined the result.
We have seen that the delegates to the Convention of 1787 were chosen by
the several States, _as States_--it is hardly necessary to add that they
voted in the Convention, as in the Federal Congress, by States--each
State casting one vote. We have seen, also, that they were sent for the
"sole and express purpose" of revising the Articles of Confederation and
devising means for rendering the Federal Constitution, "adequate to the
exigencies of government and the preservation of the Union"; that the
terms "Union," "United States," "Federal Constitution;" and
"Constitution of the Federal Government," were applied to the old
Confederation in precisely the same sense in which they are used under
the new; that the proposition to constitute a "national" Government was
distinctly rejected by the Convention; that the right of any State, or
States, to withdraw from union with the others was practically
exemplified, and that the idea of coercion of a State, or compulsory
measures, was distinctly excluded under any construction that can be put
upon the action of the Convention.
To the original copy of the Constitution, as set forth by its framers
for the consideration and final action of the people of the States, was
attached the following words:
"Done in Convention, by the unanimous consent of the States
present, the seventeenth day of September, in the year of our
Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven, and of the
Independence of the United States of America, the twelfth. In
witness whereof, we have hereunto subscribed our names."
[Followed by the signatures of "George Washington, President, and deputy
from Virginia," and the other delegates who signed it.]
This attachment to the instrument--a mere attestation of its
authenticity, and of the fact that it had the unanimous consent _of all
the States_ then present by their deputies--not _of all the deputies_,
for some of them refused to sign it--has been strangely construed by
some commentators as if it were a part of the Constitution, and implied
that it was "done," in the sense of completion of the work.[34]
But the work was not _done_ when the Convention closed its labors and
adjourned. It was scarcely begun. There was no validity or binding force
whatever in what had been already "done." It was still to be submitted
to the States for approval or rejection. Even if a majority of eight out
of thirteen States had ratified it, the refusal of the ninth would have
rendered it null and void. Mr. Madison, who was one of the most
distinguished of its authors and signers, writing after it was completed
and signed, but before it was ratified, said: "It is time now to
recollect that the powers [of the Convention] were merely advisory and
recommendatory; that they were so meant by the States, and so understood
by the Convention; and that the latter have accordingly planned and
proposed a Constitution, which is to be of no more consequence than the
paper on which it is written, unless it be stamped with the approbation
of those to whom it is addressed."--("Federalist," No. XL.)
The mode and terms in which this approval was expressed will be
considered in the next chapter.
[Footnote 31: Constitution, Article V.]
[Footnote 32: See Elliott's "Debates," vol. v, p. 214. This reference is
taken from "The Republic of Republics," Part III, chapter vii, p. 217.
This learned, exhaustive, and admirable work, which contains a wealth of
historical and political learning, will be freely used, by kind consent
of the author, without the obligation of a repetition of special
acknowledgment in every case. A like liberty will be taken with the late
Dr. Bledsoe's masterly treatise on the right of secession, published in
1866, under the title, "Is Davis a Traitor? or, Was Secession a
Constitutional Right?"]
[Footnote 33: No. xliii.]
[Footnote 34: See "Republic of Republics," Part II, chapters xiii and
xiv.]
CHAPTER III.
Ratification of the Constitution by the States.--Organization of
the New Government.--Accession of North Carolina and Rhode
Island.--Correspondence between General Washington and the
Governor of Rhode Island.
The amended system of union, or confederation (the terms are employed
indiscriminately and interchangeably by the statesmen of that period),
devised by the Convention of 1787, and embodied, as we have seen, in the
Constitution which they framed and have set forth, was now to be
considered and acted on by the people of the several States. This they
did in the highest and most majestic form in which the sanction of
organized communities could be given or withheld--not through
ambassadors, or Legislatures, or deputies with limited powers, but
through conventions of delegates chosen expressly for the purpose and
clothed with the plenary authority of sovereign people. The action of
these conventions was deliberate, cautious, and careful. There was much
debate, and no little opposition to be conciliated. Eleven States,
however, ratified and adopted the new Constitution within the twelve
months immediately following its submission to them. Two of them
positively rejected it, and, although they afterward acceded to it,
remained outside of the Union in the exercise of their sovereign right,
which nobody then denied--North Carolina for nine months, Rhode Island
for nearly fifteen, after the new Government was organized and went into
operation. In several of the other States the ratification was effected
only by small majorities.
The terms in which this action was expressed by the several States and
the declarations with which it was accompanied by some of them are
worthy of attention.
Delaware was the first to act. Her Convention met on December 3, 1787,
and ratified the Constitution on the 7th. The readiness of this least in
population, and next to the least in territorial extent, of all the
States, to accept that instrument, is a very significant fact when we
remember the jealous care with which she had guarded against any
infringement of her sovereign Statehood. Delaware alone had given
special instructions to her deputies in the Convention not to consent to
any sacrifice of the principle of equal representation in Congress. The
promptness and unanimity of her people in adopting the new Constitution
prove very clearly, not only that they were satisfied with the
preservation of that principle in the Federal Senate, but that they did
not understand the Constitution, in any of its features, as compromising
the "sovereignty, freedom, and independence" which she had so especially
cherished. The ratification of their Convention is expressed in these
words:
"We, the deputies of _the people of the Delaware State_, in
convention met, having taken into our serious consideration the
Federal Constitution proposed and agreed upon by the deputies of
the United States at a General Convention held at the city of
Philadelphia on the 17th day of September, A. D. 1787, have
_approved of, assented to, and ratified and confirmed_, and by
these presents do, in virtue of the powers and authority to us
given for that purpose, for and in behalf of ourselves and our
constituents, fully, freely, and entirely, _approve of, assent
to, ratify, and confirm_ the said Constitution.
"Done in convention at Dover, December 7, 1787."
This, and twelve other like acts, gave to the Constitution "all the life
and validity it ever had, or could have, as to the thirteen united or
associated States."
Pennsylvania acted next (December 12, 1787), the ratification not being
finally accomplished without strong opposition, on grounds which will be
referred to hereafter. In announcing its decision, the Convention of
this State began as follows:
"In the name of _the people of Pennsylvania_. Be it known unto
all men that we, _the delegates of the people of the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania_, in General Convention assembled,"
etc., etc., concluding with these words: "By these presents, do,
_in the name and by the authority of the same people_, and for
ourselves, assent to and ratify the foregoing Constitution for
the United States of America."
In New Jersey the ratification, which took place on the 18th of
December, was unanimous. This is no less significant and instructive
than the unanimity of Delaware, from the fact that the New Jersey
delegation, in the Convention that framed the Constitution, had taken
the lead in behalf of the federal, or State-rights, idea, in opposition
to that of nationalism, or consolidation. William Patterson, a
distinguished citizen (afterward Governor) of New Jersey, had introduced
into that Convention what was known as "the Jersey plan," embodying
these State-rights principles, as distinguished from the various
"national" plans presented. In defending them, he had said, after
calling for the reading of the credentials of delegates:
"Can we, on this ground, form a national Government? I fancy
not. Our commissions give a complexion to the business; and can
we suppose that, when we exceed the bounds of our duty, the
people will approve our proceedings?
"We are met here as the deputies of _thirteen independent,
sovereign States, for federal purposes. Can we consolidate their
sovereignty and form one nation_, and annihilate the
sovereignties of our States, who have sent us here for other
purposes?"
Again, on a subsequent day, after stating that he was not there to
pursue his own sentiments of government, but of those who had sent him,
he had asked:
"Can we, _as representatives of independent States_, annihilate
the essential powers of independency? Are not the votes of this
Convention taken on every question under the idea of
independency?"
The fact that this State, which, through her representatives, had taken
so conspicuous a part in the maintenance of the principle of State
sovereignty, ratified the Constitution with such readiness and
unanimity, is conclusive proof that, in her opinion, that principle was
not compromised thereby. The conclusion of her ordinance of ratification
is in these words:
"Now be it known that we, the delegates of _the State of New
Jersey_, chosen by the people thereof for the purpose aforesaid,
having maturely deliberated on and considered the aforesaid
proposed Constitution, do hereby, for and on behalf of the
_people of the said State of New Jersey_, agree to, ratify, and
confirm the same, and every part thereof.
"Done in convention, by the unanimous consent of the members
present, this 18th day of December, A. D. 1787."
Georgia next, and also unanimously, on January 2, 1788, declared,
through "_the delegates of the State of Georgia_, in convention met,
pursuant to the provisions of the [act of the] Legislature aforesaid ...
in virtue of the powers and authority given us [them] by _the people of
the said State_, for that purpose," that they did "fully and entirely
assent to, ratify, and adopt the said Constitution."
Connecticut (on the 9th of January) declares her assent with equal
distinctness of assertion as to the source of the authority: "In the
name of _the people of the State of Connecticut_, we, the delegates of
_the people of the said State_, in General Convention assembled,
pursuant to an act of the Legislature in October last ... do assent to,
ratify, and adopt the Constitution reported by the Convention of
delegates in Philadelphia."
In Massachusetts there was a sharp contest. The people of that State
were then--as for a long time afterward--exceedingly tenacious of their
State independence and sovereignty. The proposed Constitution was
subjected to a close, critical, and rigorous examination with reference
to its bearing upon this very point. The Convention was a large one, and
some of its leading members were very distrustful of the instrument
under their consideration. It was ultimately adopted by a very close
vote (187 to 168), and then only as accompanied by certain proposed
amendments, the object of which was to guard more expressly against any
sacrifice or compromise of State sovereignty, and under an assurance,
given by the advocates of the Constitution, of the certainty that those
amendments would be adopted. The most strenuously urged of these was
that ultimately adopted (in substance) as the tenth amendment to the
Constitution, which was intended to take the place of the second Article
of Confederation, as an emphatic assertion of the continued freedom,
sovereignty, and independence of the States. This will be considered
more particularly hereafter.
In terms substantially identical with those employed by the other
States, Massachusetts thus announced her ratification:
"In convention of the delegates of _the people of the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts_, 1788. The Convention having
impartially discussed and fully considered the Constitution for
the United States of America, reported [etc.] ... do, in the
name and in behalf of _the people of the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts_, assent to and ratify the said Constitution for
the United States of America."
This was accomplished on February 7, 1788.
Maryland followed on the 28th of April, and South Carolina on the 23d of
May, in equivalent expressions, the ratification of the former being
made by "the delegates of _the people of Maryland_," speaking, as they
declared, for ourselves, and in the name and on the behalf of _the
people of this State_; that of the latter, "in convention of _the people
of the State of South Carolina_, by their representatives, ... in the
name and behalf of _the people of this State_."
But South Carolina, like Massachusetts, demanded certain amendments, and
for greater assurance accompanied her ordinance of ratification with the
following distinct assertion of the principle afterward embodied in the
tenth amendment:
"This Convention doth also declare that _no section or
paragraph_ of the said Constitution warrants a construction that
_the States do not retain every power not expressly relinquished
by them_ and vested in the General Government of the Union."
"The delegates of _the people of the State of New Hampshire_," in
convention, on the 21st of June, "in the name and behalf of _the people
of the State of New Hampshire_," declared their approval and adoption of
the Constitution. In this State, also, the opposition was formidable
(the final vote being 57 to 46), and, as in South Carolina, it was
"explicitly declared that all powers not expressly and particularly
delegated by the aforesaid Constitution are reserved to the several
States, to be by them exercised."
The debates in the Virginia Convention were long and animated. Some of
the most eminent and most gifted men of that period took part in them,
and they have ever since been referred to for the exposition which they
afford of the interpretation of the Constitution by its authors and
their contemporaries. Among the members were Madison, Mason, and
Randolph, who had also been members of the Convention at Philadelphia.
Mr. Madison was one of the most earnest advocates of the new
Constitution, while Mr. Mason was as warmly opposed to its adoption; so
also was Patrick Henry, the celebrated orator. It was assailed with
great vehemence at every vulnerable or doubtful point, and was finally
ratified June 26, 1788, by a vote of 89 to 79--a majority of only ten.
This ratification was expressed in the same terms employed by other
States, by "the delegates of _the people of Virginia_ ... in the name
and in behalf of _the people of Virginia_." In so doing, however, like
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, Virginia demanded
certain amendments as a more explicit guarantee against consolidation,
and accompanied the demand with the following declaration:
"That the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived
from the people of the United States, may be resumed by them,
whenever the same shall be perverted to their injury or
oppression, and that every power not granted thereby remains
with them and at their will," etc., etc.
Whether, in speaking of a possible _resumption_ of powers by "the people
of the United States," the Convention had in mind the action of such a
people _in the aggregate_--political community which did not exist, and
of which they, could hardly have entertained even an ideal
conception--or of the people of Virginia, for whom they were speaking,
and of the other United States then taking similar action--is a question
which scarcely admits of argument, but which will be more fully
considered in the proper place.
New York, the eleventh State to signify her assent, did so on July 26,
1788, after an arduous and protracted discussion, and then by a majority
of but three votes--30 to 27. Even this small majority was secured only
by the recommendation of certain material amendments, the adoption of
which by the other States it was at first proposed to make a condition
precedent to the validity of the ratification. This idea was abandoned
after a correspondence between Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Madison, and,
instead of conditional ratification, New York provided for the
resumption of her grants; but the amendments were put forth with a
circular letter to the other States, in which it was declared that
"nothing but the fullest confidence of obtaining a revision" of the
objectionable features of the Constitution, "and an invincible
reluctance to separating from our sister States, could have prevailed
upon a sufficient number to ratify it without stipulating for previous
amendments."
The ratification was expressed in the usual terms, as made "_by the
delegates of the people of the State of New York_ ... in the name and in
behalf of the people" of the said State. Accompanying it was a
declaration of the principles in which the assent of New York was
conceded, one paragraph of which runs as follows:
"That the powers of government may be _reassumed_ by the people,
whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness; that
every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not, by the said
Constitution, clearly delegated to the Congress of the United
States, or the departments of the Government thereof, remains to
the people of the several _States_, or to their respective State
governments, to whom they may have granted the same; and that
those clauses in the said Constitution which declare that
Congress shall not have or exercise certain powers, do not imply
that Congress is entitled to any powers not given by the said
Constitution, but such clauses are to be construed either as
exceptions to certain specified powers or as inserted for
greater caution."
The acceptance of these eleven States having been signified to the
Congress, provision was made for putting the new Constitution in
operation. This was effected on March 4, 1789, when the Government was
organized, with George Washington as President, and John Adams,
Vice-President; the Senators and Representatives elected by the States
which had acceded to the Constitution, organizing themselves as a
Congress.
Meantime, two States were standing, as we have seen, unquestioned and
unmolested, in an attitude of absolute independence. The Convention of
North Carolina, on August 2, 1788, had rejected the proposed
Constitution, or, more properly speaking, had withheld her ratification
until action could be taken upon the subject-matter of the following
resolution adopted by her Convention:
"_Resolved_, That a declaration of rights, asserting and
securing from encroachment the great principles of civil and
religious liberty, and the unalienable rights of the people,
together with amendments to the most ambiguous and exceptionable
parts of the said Constitution of government, ought to be laid
before Congress and the Convention of the States that shall or
may be called for the purpose of amending the said Constitution,
for their consideration, previous to the ratification of the
Constitution aforesaid on the part of the State of North
Carolina."
More than a year afterward, when the newly organized Government had been
in operation for nearly nine months, and when--although no convention of
the States had been called to revise the Constitution--North Carolina
had good reason to feel assured that the most important provisions of
her proposed amendments and "declaration of rights" would be adopted,
she acceded to the amended compact. On November 21, 1789, her Convention
agreed, "in behalf of the freemen, citizens, and inhabitants of _the
State of North Carolina_," to "adopt and ratify" the Constitution.
In Rhode Island the proposed Constitution was at first submitted to a
direct vote of the people, who rejected it by an overwhelming majority.
Subsequently--that is, on May 29, 1790, when the reorganized Government
had been in operation for nearly fifteen months, and when it had become
reasonably certain that the amendments thought necessary would be
adopted--a convention of the people of Rhode Island acceded to the new
Union, and ratified the Constitution, though even then by a majority of
only two votes in sixty-six--34 to 32. The ratification was expressed in
substantially the same language as that which has now been so repeatedly
cited:
"We, the delegates of the people of the State of Rhode Island
and Providence Plantations, duly elected and met in convention,
... in the name and behalf of _the people of Rhode Island and
Providence Plantations_, do, by these presents, assent to and
ratify the said Constitution."
It is particularly to be noted that, during the intervals between the
organization of the Federal Government under the new Constitution and
the ratification of that Constitution by, North Carolina and Rhode
Island, respectively, those States were absolutely independent and
unconnected with any other political community, unless they be
considered as still representing the "United States of America," which
by the Articles of Confederation had been declared a "perpetual union."
The other States had seceded from the former union--not in a body, but
separately, each for itself--and had formed a new association, leaving
these two States in the attitude of foreign though friendly powers.
There was no claim of any right to control their action, as if they had
been mere geographical or political divisions of one great consolidated
community or "nation." Their accession to the Union was desired, but
their freedom of choice in the matter was never questioned. And then it
is to be noted, on _their_ part, that, like the house of Judah, they
refrained from any attempt to force the seceding sisters to return.
As illustrative of the relations existing during this period between the
United States and Rhode Island, it may not be uninstructive to refer to
a letter sent by the government of the latter to the President and
Congress, and transmitted by the President to the Senate, with the
following note:
"United States, _September 26, 1789_.
"Gentlemen of the Senate: Having yesterday received a letter
written in this month by the Governor of Rhode Island, at the
request and in behalf of the General Assembly of that State,
addressed to the President, the Senate, and the House of
Representatives of the eleven United States of America in
Congress assembled, I take the earliest opportunity of laying a
copy of it before you."
(Signed) "GEORGE WASHINGTON."
Some extracts from the communication referred to are annexed:
"State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, _In General
Assembly, September Session, 1789_.
"_To the President, the Senate, and the House of Representatives
of the eleven United States of America in Congress assembled:_
"The critical situation in which the people of this State are
placed engages us to make these assurances, on their behalf, of
their attachment and friendship to their sister States, and of
their disposition to cultivate mutual harmony and friendly
intercourse. They know themselves to be a handful, comparatively
viewed, and, although they now stand as it were alone, they have
not separated themselves or departed from the principles of that
Confederation, which was formed by the sister States in their
struggle for freedom and in the hour of danger....
"Our not having acceded to or adopted the new system of
government formed and adopted by most of our sister States, we
doubt not, has given uneasiness to them. That we have not seen
our way clear to it, consistently with our idea of the
principles upon which we all embarked together, has also given
pain to us. We have not doubted that we might thereby avoid
present difficulties, but we have apprehended future
mischief....
"Can it be thought strange that, with these impressions, they
[the people of this State] should wait to see the proposed
system organized and in operation?--to see what further checks
and securities would be agreed to and established by way of
amendments, before they could adopt it as a Constitution of
government for themselves and their posterity?...
"We are induced to hope that we shall not be altogether
considered as foreigners having no particular affinity or
connection with the United States; but that trade and commerce,
upon which the prosperity of this State much depends, will be
preserved as free and open between this State and the United
States, as our different situations at present can possibly
admit....
"We feel ourselves attached by the strongest ties of friendship,
kindred, and interest, to our sister States; and we can not,
without the greatest reluctance, look to any other quarter for
those advantages of commercial intercourse which we conceive to
be more natural and reciprocal between them and us.
"I am, at the request and in behalf of the General Assembly,
your most obedient, humble servant."
(Signed) "John Collins, _Governor_.
"_His Excellency, the President of the United States._"
[American State Papers, _Vol. I_, Miscellaneous.]
CHAPTER IV.
The Constitution not adopted by one People "in the
Aggregate."--A Great Fallacy exposed.--Mistake of Judge
Story.--Colonial Relations.--The United Colonies of New
England.--Other Associations.--Independence of Communities
traced from Germany to Great Britain, and from Great Britain to
America.--Mr. Everett's "Provincial People."--Origin and
Continuance of the Title "United States."--No such Political
Community as the "People of the United States."
The historical retrospect of the last three chapters and the extracts
from the records of a generation now departed have been presented as
necessary to a right understanding of the nature and principles of the
compact of 1787, on which depended the questions at issue in the
secession of 1861 and the contest that ensued between the States.
We have seen that the united colonies, when they declared their
independence, formed a league or alliance with one another as "United
States." This title antedated the adoption of the Articles of
Confederation. It was assumed immediately after the Declaration of
Independence, and was continued under the Articles of Confederation; the
first of which declared that "the style of this confederacy shall be
'The United States of America'"; and this style was retained--without
question--in the formation of the present Constitution. The name was not
adopted as antithetical to, or distinctive from, "confederate," as some
seem to have imagined. If it has any significance now, it must have had
the same under the Articles of Confederation, or even before they were
adopted.
It has been fully shown that the States which thus became and continued
to be "united," whatever form their union assumed, acted and continued
to act as distinct and sovereign political communities. The monstrous
fiction that they acted as _one people "in their aggregate capacity"_
has not an atom of fact to serve as a basis.
To go back to the very beginning, the British colonies never constituted
one people. Judge Story, in his "Commentaries" on the Constitution,
seems to imply the contrary, though he shrinks from a direct assertion
of it, and clouds the subject by a confusion of terms. He says: "Now, it
is apparent that none of the colonies before the Revolution were, in the
most large and general sense, independent or sovereign communities. They
were all originally settled under and subjected to the British Crown."
And then he proceeds to show that they were, in their colonial
condition, not _sovereign_--a proposition which nobody disputed. As
colonies, they had no claim, and made no pretension, to sovereignty.
They were subject to the British Crown, unless, like the Plymouth
colony, "a law unto themselves," but they were _independent of each
other_--the only point which has any bearing upon their subsequent
relations. There was no other bond between them than that of their
common allegiance to the Government of the mother-country. As an
illustration of this may be cited the historical fact that, when John
Stark, of Bennington memory, was before the Revolution engaged in a
hunting expedition in the Indian country, he was captured by the savages
and brought to Albany, in the colony of New York, for a ransom; but,
inasmuch as he belonged to New Hampshire, the government of New York
took no action for his release. There was not even enough community of
feeling to induce individual citizens to provide money for the purpose.
There were, however, local and partial confederacies among the New
England colonies, long before the Declaration of Independence. As early
as the year 1643 a Congress had been organized of delegates from
Massachusetts, Plymouth, New Haven, and Connecticut, under the style of
"The United Colonies of New England." The objects of this confederacy,
according to Mr. Bancroft, were "protection against the encroachments of
the Dutch and French, security against the tribes of savages, the
liberties of the gospel in purity and in peace."[35] The general affairs
of the company were intrusted to commissions, two from each colony; but
the same historian tells us that "to each its respective local
jurisdiction was carefully reserved," and he refers to this as evidence
that the germ-principle of State-rights was even then in existence.
"Thus remarkable for unmixed simplicity" (he proceeds) "was the form of
the first confederated government in America.... There was no president,
except as a moderator of its meetings, and the larger State [_sic_],
Massachusetts, superior to all the rest in territory, wealth, and
population, had no greater number of votes than New Haven. But the
commissioners were in reality little more than a deliberative body; they
possessed no executive power, and, while they could decree a war and a
levy of troops, it remained for the States to carry their votes into
effect."[36]
This confederacy continued in existence for nearly fifty years. Between
that period and the year 1774, when the first Continental Congress met
in Philadelphia, several other temporary and provisional associations of
colonies had been formed, and the people had been taught the advantages
of union for a common purpose; but they had never abandoned or
compromised the great principle of community independence. That form of
self-government, generated in the German forests before the days of the
Cæsars, had given to that rude people a self-reliance and patriotism
which first checked the flight of the Roman eagles, which elsewhere had
been the emblem of their dominion over the known world. This
principle--the great preserver of all communal freedom and of mutual
harmony--was transplanted by the Saxons into England, and there
sustained those personal rights which, after the fall of the Heptarchy,
were almost obliterated by the encroachments of Norman despotism; but,
having the strength and perpetuity of truth and right, were reasserted
by the mailed hands of the barons at Runnymede for their own benefit and
that of their posterity. Englishmen, the early settlers, brought this
idea to the wilds of America, and it found expression in many forms
among the infant colonies.
Mr. Edward Everett, in his Fourth-of-July address, delivered in New York
in 1861, following the lead of Judge Story, and with even less caution,
boldly declares that, "before their independence of England was
asserted, they [the colonies] constituted _a provincial people_." To
sustain this position--utterly contrary to all history as it is--he is
unable to adduce any valid American authority, but relies almost
exclusively upon loose expressions employed in debate in the British
Parliament about the period of the American Revolution--such as "that
people," "that loyal and respectable people," "this enlightened and
spirited people," etc., etc. The speakers who made use of this
colloquial phraseology concerning the inhabitants of a distant
continent, in the freedom of extemporaneous debate, were not framing
their ideas with the exactitude of a didactic treatise, and could little
have foreseen the extraordinary use to be made of their expressions
nearly a century afterward, in sustaining a theory contradictory to
history as well as to common sense. It is as if the familiar expressions
often employed in our own time, such as "the people of Africa," or "the
people of South America," should be cited, by some ingenious theorist of
a future generation, as evidence that the subjects of the Khedive and
those of the King of Dahomey were but "one people," or that the
Peruvians and the Patagonians belonged to the same political community.
Mr. Everett, it is true, quotes two expressions of the Continental
Congress to sustain his remarkable proposition that the colonies were "a
people." One of these is found in a letter addressed by the Congress to
General Gage in October, 1774, remonstrating against the erection of
fortifications in Boston, in which they say, "We entreat your Excellency
to consider what a tendency this conduct must have to irritate and force
_a free people_, hitherto well disposed to peaceable measures, into
hostilities." From this expression Mr. Everett argues that the Congress
considered themselves the representatives of "a people." But, by
reference to the proceedings of the Congress, he might readily have
ascertained that the letter to General Gage was written in behalf of
"_the town of Boston and Province of Massachusetts Bay_," the people of
which were "considered by all America as suffering in the common cause
for their noble and spirited opposition to oppressive acts of
Parliament." The avowed object was "to entreat his Excellency, from the
assurance we have of the peaceable disposition of _the inhabitants of
the town of Boston and of the Province of Massachusetts Bay_, to
discontinue his fortifications."[37] These were the "people" referred to
by the Congress; and the children of the Pilgrims, who occupied at that
period the town of Boston and Province of Massachusetts Bay, would have
been not a little astonished to be reckoned as "one people," in any
other respect than that of the "common cause," with the Roman Catholics
of Maryland, the Episcopalians of Virginia, the Quakers of Pennsylvania,
or the Baptists of Rhode Island.
The other citation of Mr. Everett is from the first sentence of the
Declaration of Independence: "When in the course of human events it
becomes necessary for _one people_ to dissolve the political bands which
have connected them with another," etc., etc. This, he says,
characterizes "the good people" of the colonies as "one people."
Plainly, it does no such thing. The misconception is so palpable as
scarcely to admit of serious answer. The Declaration of Independence
opens with a general proposition. "One people" is equivalent to saying
"_any_ people." The use of the correlatives "one" and "another" was the
simple and natural way of stating this general proposition. "One people"
applies, and was obviously intended to apply, to all cases of the same
category--to that of New Hampshire, or Delaware, or South Carolina, or
of any other people existing or to exist, and whether acting separately
or in concert. It applies to any case, and all cases, of dissolution of
political bands, as well as to the case of the British colonies. It does
not, either directly or by implication, assert their unification, and
has no bearing whatever upon the question.
When the colonies united in sending representatives to a Congress in
Philadelphia, there was no purpose--no suggestion of a purpose--to merge
their separate individuality in one consolidated mass. No such idea
existed, or with their known opinions could have existed. They did not
assume to become a united colony or province, but styled themselves
"united colonies"--colonies united for purposes of mutual counsel and
defense, as the New England colonies had been united more than a hundred
years before. It was as "_United States_"--not as a state, or united
people--that these colonies--still distinct and politically independent
of each other--asserted and achieved their independence of the
mother-country. As "United States" they adopted the Articles of
Confederation, in which the separate sovereignty, freedom, and
independence of each was distinctly asserted. They were "united States"
when Great Britain acknowledged the absolute freedom and independence of
each, distinctly and separately recognized by name. France and Spain
were parties to the same treaty, and the French and Spanish idioms still
express and perpetuate, more exactly than the English, the true idea
intended to be embodied in the title--_les États Unis_, or _los Estados
Unidos_--the States united.
It was without any change of title--still as "United States"--without
any sacrifice of individuality--without any compromise of
sovereignty--that the same parties entered into a new and amended
compact with one another under the present Constitution. Larger and more
varied powers were conferred upon the common Government for the purpose
of insuring "a more perfect union"--not for that of destroying or
impairing the integrity of the contracting members.
The point which now specially concerns the argument is the historical
fact that, in all these changes of circumstances and of government,
there has never been one single instance of action by the "people of the
United States in the aggregate," or as one body. Before the era of
independence, whatever was done by the people of the colonies was done
by the people of each colony separately and independently of each other,
although in union by their delegates for certain specified purposes.
Since the assertion of their independence, the people of the United
States have never acted otherwise than as the people of each State,
severally and separately. The Articles of Confederation were established
and ratified by the several States, either through conventions of their
people or through the State Legislatures. The Constitution which
superseded those articles was framed, as we have seen, by delegates
chosen and empowered by the several States, and was ratified by
conventions of the people of the same States--all acting in entire
independence of one another. This ratification alone gave it force and
validity. Without the approval and ratification of the people of the
States, it would have been, as Mr. Madison expressed it, "of no more
consequence than the paper on which it was written." It was never
submitted to "the people of the United States in the aggregate," or _as
a people_. Indeed, no such political community as the people of the
United States in the aggregate exists at this day or ever did exist.
Senators in Congress confessedly represent the States as equal units.
The House of Representatives is not a body of representatives of "the
people of the United States," as often erroneously asserted; but the
Constitution, in the second section of its first article, expressly
declares that it "shall be composed of members chosen by _the people of
the several States_."
Nor is it true that the President and Vice-President are elected, as it
is sometimes vaguely stated, by vote of the "whole people" of the Union.
Their election is even more unlike what such a vote would be than that
of the representatives, who in numbers at least represent the strength
of their respective States. In the election of President and
Vice-President the Constitution (Article II) prescribes that "_each
State_ shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may
direct, a number of electors" for the purpose of choosing a President
and Vice-President. The number of these electors is based partly upon
the equal sovereignty, partly upon the unequal population of the
respective States.
It is, then, absolutely true that there has never been any such thing as
a vote of "the people of the United States in the aggregate"; no such
people is recognized by the Constitution; and no such political
community has ever existed. It is equally true that no officer or
department of the General Government formed by the Constitution derives
authority from a majority of the whole people of the United States, or
has ever been chosen by such majority. As little as any other is the
United States Government a government of a majority of the mass.
[Footnote 35: Bancroft's "History of the United States," vol. i, chap.
ix.]
[Footnote 36: Bancroft's "History of the United States," vol. i, chap.
ix.]
[Footnote 37: "American Archives," fourth series, vol. i, p. 908.]
CHAPTER V.
The Preamble to the Constitution.--"We, the People."
The preamble to the Constitution proposed by the Convention of 1787 is
in these words:
"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more
perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity,
provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and
secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,
do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States
of America."
The phraseology of this preamble has been generally regarded as the
stronghold of the advocates of consolidation. It has been interpreted as
meaning that "we, the people of the United States," as a collective
body, or as a "nation," in our aggregate capacity, had "ordained and
established" the Constitution _over_ the States.
This interpretation constituted, in the beginning, the most serious
difficulty in the way of the ratification of the Constitution. It was
probably this to which that sturdy patriot, Samuel Adams, of
Massachusetts, alluded, when he wrote to Richard Henry Lee, "I stumble
at the threshold." Patrick Henry, in the Virginia Convention, on the
third day of the session, and in the very opening of the debate,
attacked it vehemently. He said, speaking of the system of government
set forth in the proposed Constitution:
"That this is a consolidated government is demonstrably clear;
and the danger of such a government is, to my mind, very
striking. I have the highest veneration for those gentlemen [its
authors]; but, sir, give me leave to demand, What right had they
to say, _We, the people_? My political curiosity, exclusive of
my anxious solicitude for the public welfare, leads me to ask,
Who authorized them to speak the language of '_We, the people_,'
instead of _We, the States_? States are the characteristics and
the soul of a confederation. If the States be not the agents of
this compact, it must be one great consolidated national
government of the people of all the States."[38]
Again, on the next day, with reference to the same subject, he said:
"When I asked that question, I thought the meaning of my interrogation
was obvious. The fate of this question and of America may depend on
this. Have they said, We, the States? Have they made a proposal of a
compact between States? If they had, this would be a confederation: it
is otherwise most clearly a consolidated government. The question turns,
sir, on that poor little thing--the expression, 'We, the people,'
instead of the States of America."[39]
The same difficulty arose in other minds and in other conventions.
The scruples of Mr. Adams were removed by the explanations of others,
and by the assurance of the adoption of the amendments thought
necessary--especially of that declaratory safeguard afterward embodied
in the tenth amendment--to be referred to hereafter.
Mr. Henry's objection was thus answered by Mr. Madison:
"Who are parties to it [the Constitution]? The people--but _not
the people as composing one great body_; but the people as
composing _thirteen sovereignties_: were it, as the gentleman
[Mr. Henry] asserts, a consolidated government, the assent of a
majority of the people would be sufficient for its
establishment, and as a majority have adopted it already, the
remaining States would be bound by the act of the majority, even
if they unanimously reprobated it: were it such a government as
is suggested, it would be now binding on the people of this
State, without having had the privilege of deliberating upon it;
but, sir, no State is bound by it, as it is, without its own
consent. Should all the States adopt it, it will be then a
government established by the thirteen States of America, not
through the intervention of the Legislatures, but by the people
at large. In this particular respect the distinction between the
existing and proposed governments is very material. The existing
system has been derived from the dependent, derivative authority
of the Legislatures of the States, whereas this is derived from
the superior power of the people."[40]
It must be remembered that this was spoken by one of the leading members
of the Convention which formed the Constitution, within a few months
after that instrument was drawn up. Mr. Madison's hearers could readily
appreciate his clear answer to the objection made. The "people" intended
were those of the respective States--the only organized communities of
people exercising sovereign powers of government; and the idea intended
was the ratification and "establishment" of the Constitution by direct
act of the people in their conventions, instead of by act of their
Legislatures, as in the adoption of the Articles of Confederation. The
explanation seems to have been as satisfactory as it was simple and
intelligible. Mr. Henry, although he fought to the last against the
ratification of the Constitution, did not again bring forward this
objection, for the reason, no doubt, that it had been fully answered.
Indeed, we hear no more of the interpretation which suggested it, from
that period, for nearly half a century, when it was revived, and has
since been employed, to sustain that theory of a "great consolidated
national government" which Mr. Madison so distinctly repudiated.
But _we_ have access to sources of information, not then available,
which make the intent and meaning of the Constitution still plainer.
When Mr. Henry made his objection, and Mr. Madison answered it, the
journal of the Philadelphia Convention had not been published. That body
had sat with closed doors, and among its rules had been the following:
"That no copy be taken of any entry on the journal during the
sitting of the House, without the leave of the House.
"That members only be permitted to inspect the journal.
"That nothing spoken in the House be printed, or otherwise
published or communicated, without leave."[41]
We can understand, by reference to these rules, how Mr. Madison should
have felt precluded from making allusion to anything that had occurred
during the proceedings of the Convention. But the secrecy then covering
those proceedings has long since been removed. The manuscript journal,
which was intrusted to the keeping of General Washington, President of
the Convention, was deposited by him, nine years afterward, among the
archives of the State Department. It has since been published, and we
can trace for ourselves the origin, and ascertain the exact
significance, of that expression, "We, the people," on which Patrick
Henry thought the fate of America might depend, and which has been so
grossly perverted in later years from its true intent.
The original language of the preamble, reported to the Convention by a
committee of five appointed to prepare the Constitution, as we find it
in the proceedings of August 6, 1787, was as follows:
"We, the people of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts,
Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York,
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North
Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, do ordain, declare, and
establish, the following Constitution for the government of
ourselves and our posterity."
There can be no question here what was meant: it was "_the people of the
States_," designated by name, that were to "ordain, declare, and
establish" the compact of union for themselves and their posterity.
There is no ambiguity nor uncertainty in the language; nor was there any
difference in the Convention as to the use of it. The preamble, as
perfected, was submitted to vote on the next day, and, as the journal
informs us, "it passed _unanimously_ in the affirmative."
There was no subsequent change of opinion on the subject. The reason for
the modification afterward made in the language is obvious. It was found
that unanimous ratification of all the States could not be expected, and
it was determined, as we have already seen, that the consent of _nine_
States should suffice for the establishment of the new compact "between
the States so ratifying the same." _Any_ nine would be sufficient to put
the proposed government in operation as to them, thus leaving the
remainder of the thirteen to pursue such course as might be to each
preferable. When this conclusion was reached, it became manifestly
impracticable to designate beforehand the consenting States by name.
Hence, in the final revision, the specific enumeration of the thirteen
States was omitted, and the equivalent phrase "people of the United
States" inserted in its place--plainly meaning the people of such States
as should agree to unite on the terms proposed. The imposing fabric of
political delusion, which has been erected on the basis of this simple
transaction, disappears before the light of historical record.
Could the authors of the Constitution have foreseen the perversion to be
made of their obvious meaning, it might have been prevented by an easy
periphrasis--such as, "We, the people of the States hereby united," or
something to the same effect. The word "people" in 1787, as in 1880,
was, as it is, a collective noun, employed indiscriminately, either as a
unit in such expressions as "this people," "a free people," etc., or in
a distributive sense, as applied to the citizens or inhabitants of one
state or country or a number of states or countries. When the Convention
of the colony of Virginia, in 1774, instructed their delegates to the
Congress that was to meet in Philadelphia, "to obtain a redress of those
grievances, without which _the people of America_ can neither be safe,
free, nor happy," it was certainly not intended to convey the idea that
the people of the American Continent, or even of the British colonies in
America, constituted one political community. Nor did Edmund Burke have
any such meaning when he said, in his celebrated speech in Parliament,
in 1775, "The people of the colonies are descendants of Englishmen."
We need go no further than to the familiar language of King James's
translation of the Bible for multiplied illustrations of this
indiscriminate use of the term, both in its collective and distributive
senses. For example, King Solomon prays at the dedication of the temple:
"That thine eyes may be open unto the supplication ... of _thy
people_ Israel, to hearken unto them in all that they call for
unto thee. For thou didst separate them from among _all the
people_ of the earth, to be thine inheritance." (1 Kings viii,
52, 53.)
Here we have both the singular and plural senses of the same word--_one
people_, Israel, and _all the people of the earth_--in two consecutive
sentences. In "the people of the earth," the word _people_ is used
precisely as it is in the expression "the people of the United States"
in the preamble to the Constitution, and has exactly the same force and
effect. If in the latter case it implies that the people of
Massachusetts and those of Virginia were mere fractional parts of one
political community, it must in the former imply a like unity among the
Philistines, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians,
and all other "people of the earth," except the Israelites. Scores of
examples of the same sort might be cited if it were necessary.[42]
In the Declaration of Independence we find precisely analogous instances
of the employment of the singular form for both singular and plural
senses--"one people," "a free people," in the former, and "the good
people of these colonies" in the latter. Judge Story, in the excess of
his zeal in behalf of a theory of consolidation, bases upon this last
expression the conclusion that the assertion of independence was the act
of "_the whole people_ of the united colonies" as a unit; overlooking or
suppressing the fact that, in the very same sentence, the colonies
declare themselves "free and independent _States_"--not a free and
independent _state_--repeating the words "independent States" three
times.
If, however, the Declaration of Independence constituted one "_whole
people_" of the colonies, then that geographical section of it, formerly
known as the colony of Maryland, was in a state of revolt or "rebellion"
against the others, as well as against Great Britain, from 1778 to 1781,
during which period Maryland refused to ratify or be bound by the
Articles of Confederation, which, according to this theory, was binding
upon her, as a majority of the "whole people" had adopted it. _A
fortiori_, North Carolina and Rhode Island were in a state of rebellion
in 1789-'90, while they declined to ratify and recognize the
Constitution adopted by the other eleven fractions of this united
people. Yet no hint of any such pretension--of any claim of authority
over them by the majority--of any assertion of "the supremacy of the
Union"--is to be found in any of the records of that period.
It might have been unnecessary to bestow so much time and attention in
exposing the absurdity of the deductions from a theory so false, but for
the fact that it has been specious enough to secure the countenance of
men of such distinction as Webster, Story, and Everett; and that it has
been made the plea to justify a bloody war against that principle of
State sovereignty and independence, which was regarded by the fathers of
the Union as the corner-stone of the structure and the basis of the hope
for its perpetuity.
[Footnote 38: Elliott's "Debates" (Washington edition, 1836), vol. iii,
p. 54.]
[Footnote 39: Ibid., p. 72.]
[Footnote 40: Elliott's "Debates" (Washington edition, 1836), vol. iii,
pp. 114, 115.]
[Footnote 41: Journal of the Federal Convention, May 29, 1787, 1
Elliott's "Debates."]
[Footnote 42: For a very striking illustration, see Deuteronomy vii, 6,
7.]
CHAPTER VI.
The Preamble to the Constitution--subject continued.--Growth of
the Federal Government and Accretions of Power.--Revival of Old
Errors.--Mistakes and Misstatements.--Webster, Story, and
Everett.--Who "ordained and established" the Constitution?
In the progressive growth of the Government of the United States in
power, splendor, patronage, and consideration abroad, men have been led
to exalt the place of the _Government_ above that of the _States_ which
_created_ it. Those who would understand the true principles of the
Constitution can not afford to lose sight of the essential _plurality_
of idea invariably implied in the term "United States," wherever it is
used in that instrument. No such unit as the United States is ever
mentioned therein. We read that "no title of nobility shall be granted
by the United States, and no person holding any office of profit or
trust under _them_ shall, without the consent of Congress, accept,"
etc.[43] "The President ... shall not receive, within that period, any
other emolument from the United States, or any of _them_."[44] "The laws
of the United States, and treaties made or which shall be made under
_their_ authority," etc.[45] "Treason against the United States shall
consist only in levying war against _them_, or in adhering to _their_
enemies."[46] The Federal character of the Union is expressed by this
very phraseology, which recognizes the distinct integrity of its
members, not as fractional parts of one great unit, but as component
units of an association. So clear was this to contemporaries, that it
needed only to be pointed out to satisfy their scruples. We have seen
how effectual was the answer of Mr. Madison to the objections raised by
Patrick Henry. Mr. Tench Coxe, of Pennsylvania, one of the ablest
political writers of his generation, in answering a similar objection,
said: "If the Federal Convention had meant to exclude the idea of
'union'--that is, of several and separate sovereignties joining in a
confederacy--they would have said, 'We, the people of America'; for
union necessarily involves the idea of competent States, which complete
consolidation excludes."[47]
More than forty years afterward, when the gradual accretions to the
power, _prestige_, and influence of the central Government had grown to
such extent as to begin to hide from view the purposes for which it was
founded, those very objections, which in the beginning had been
answered, abandoned, and thrown aside, were brought to light again, and
presented to the country as expositions of the true meaning of the
Constitution. Mr. Webster, one of the first to revive some of those
early misconceptions so long ago refuted as to be almost forgotten, and
to breathe into them such renewed vitality as his commanding genius
could impart, in the course of his well-known debate in the Senate with
Mr. Hayne, in 1830, said:
"It can not be shown that the Constitution is a compact between
State governments. The Constitution itself, in its very front,
refutes that proposition: it declares that it is ordained and
established by the people of the United States. So far from
saying that it is established by the governments of the several
States, it does not even say that it is established by the
people of the several States; but it pronounces that it is
established by the people of the United States in the
aggregate."[48]
Judge Story about the same time began to advance the same theory, but
more guardedly and with less rashness of statement. It was not until
thirty years after that it attained its full development in the
annunciations of sectionists rather than statesmen. Two such may suffice
as specimens:
Mr. Edward Everett, in his address delivered on the 4th of July, 1861,
and already referred to, says of the Constitution: "That instrument does
not purport to be a 'compact,' but a constitution of government. It
appears, in its first sentence, not to have been entered into by the
States, but to have been ordained and established by the people of the
United States for themselves and their 'posterity.' The States are not
named in it; nearly all the characteristic powers of sovereignty are
expressly granted to the General Government and expressly prohibited to
the States."[49] Mr. Everett afterward repeats the assertion that "the
States are not named in it."[50]
But a yet more extraordinary statement of the "one people" theory is
found in a letter addressed to the London "Times," in the same year,
1861, on the "Causes of the Civil War," by Mr. John Lothrop Motley,
afterward Minister to the Court of St. James. In this letter Mr. Motley
says of the Constitution of the United States:
"It was not a compact. Who ever heard of a compact to which
there were no parties? or who ever heard of a compact made by a
single party with himself? Yet the name of no State is mentioned
in the whole document; the States themselves are only mentioned
to receive commands or prohibitions; and the 'people of the
United States' is the single party by whom alone the instrument
is executed.
"The Constitution was not drawn up by the States, it was not
promulgated in the name of the States, it was not ratified by
the States. The States never acceded to it, and possess no power
to secede from it. It was 'ordained and established' over the
States by a power superior to the States; by the people of the
whole land in their aggregate capacity," etc.
It would be very hard to condense a more amazing amount of audacious and
reckless falsehood in the same space. In all Mr. Motley's array of bold
assertions, there is not one single truth--unless it be, perhaps, that
"the Constitution was not drawn up by the States." Yet it was drawn up
by their delegates, and it is of such material as this, derived from
writers whose reputation gives a semblance of authenticity to their
statements, that history is constructed and transmitted.
One of the most remarkable--though, perhaps, the least important--of
these misstatements is that which is also twice repeated by Mr.
Everett--that the name of no State is mentioned in the whole document,
or, as he puts it, "the States are not named in it." Very little careful
examination would have sufficed to find, in the second section of the
very first article of the Constitution, the names of every one of the
thirteen then existent States distinctly mentioned, with the number of
representatives to which each would be entitled, in case of acceding to
the Constitution, until a census of their population could be taken. The
mention there made of the States by name is of no special significance;
it has no bearing upon any question of principle; and the denial of it
is a purely gratuitous illustration of the recklessness of those from
whom it proceeds, and the low estimate put on the intelligence of those
addressed. It serves, however, to show how much credence is to be given
to their authority as interpreters and expounders.
The reason why the names of the ratifying States were not mentioned has
already been given: it was simply because it was not known which States
would ratify. But, as regards mention of "the several States," "each
State," "any State," "particular States," and the like, the Constitution
is full of it. I am informed, by one who has taken the pains to examine
carefully that document with reference to this very point, that--without
including any mention of "the United States" or of "foreign states," and
excluding also the amendments--the Constitution, in its original draft,
makes mention of the States, _as_ States, no less than _seventy_ times;
and of these seventy times, only _three_ times in the way of prohibition
of the exercise of a power. In fact, it is full of statehood. Leave out
all mention of the States--I make no mere verbal point or quibble, but
mean the States in their separate, several, distinct capacity--and what
would remain would be of less account than the play of the Prince of
Denmark with the part of _Hamlet_ omitted.
But, leaving out of consideration for the moment all minor questions,
the vital and essential point of inquiry now is, by what authority the
Constitution was "ordained and established." Mr. Webster says it was
done "by the people of the United States in the aggregate;" Mr. Everett
repeats substantially the same thing; and Mr. Motley, taking a step
further, says that "it was 'ordained and established' by a _power
superior to the States_--by the people of the whole land in their
aggregate capacity."
The advocates of this mischievous dogma assume the existence of an
unauthorized, undefined power of a "whole people," or "people of the
whole land," operating through the agency of the Philadelphia
Convention, to impose its decrees upon the States. They forget, in the
first place, that this Convention was composed of delegates, not of any
one people, but of distinct States; and, in the second place, that their
action had no force or validity whatever--in the words of Mr. Madison,
that it was of no more consequence than the paper on which it was
written--until approved and ratified by a sufficient number of States.
The meaning of the preamble, "We, the people of the United States ... do
ordain and establish this Constitution," is ascertained, fixed, and
defined by the final article: "The ratification of the conventions of
_nine States_ shall be sufficient for the _establishment_ of this
Constitution between _the States so ratifying_ the same." If it was
already established, what need was there of further establishment? It
was not ordained or established at all, until ratified by the requisite
number of States. The announcement in the preamble of course had
reference to that expected ratification, without which the preamble
would have been as void as the body of the instrument. The assertion
that "it was not ratified by the States" is so plainly and positively
contrary, to well-known fact--so inconsistent with the language of the
Constitution itself--that it is hard to imagine what was intended by it,
unless it was to take advantage of the presumed ignorance of the subject
among the readers of an English journal, to impose upon them, a
preposterous fiction. It was State ratification alone--the ratification
of the _people_ of each State, independently of all other people--that
gave force, vitality, and validity to the Constitution.
Judge Story, referring to the fact that the voters assembled in the
several States, asks where else they could have assembled--a pertinent
question on our theory, but the idea he evidently intended to convey was
that the voting of "the people" by States was a mere matter of
geographical necessity, or local convenience; just as the people of a
State vote by counties; the people of a county by towns, "beats," or
"precincts"; and the people of a city by wards. It is hardly necessary
to say that, in all organized republican communities, majorities govern.
When we speak of the will of the people of a community, we mean the will
of a majority, which, when constitutionally expressed, is binding on any
minority of the same community.
If, then, we can conceive, and admit for a moment, the possibility that,
when the Constitution was under consideration, the people of the United
States were politically "one people"--a collective unit--two deductions
are clearly inevitable: In the first place, each geographical division
of this great community would have been entitled to vote according to
its relative population; and, in the second, the expressed will of the
legal majority would have been binding upon the whole. A denial of the
first proposition would be a denial of common justice and equal rights;
a denial of the second would be to destroy all government and establish
mere anarchy.
Now, _neither_ of these principles was practiced or proposed or even
imagined in the case of the action of the people of the United States
(if they were one political community) upon the proposed Constitution.
On the contrary, seventy thousand people in the State of Delaware had
precisely the same weight--one vote--in its ratification, as seven
hundred thousand (and more) in Virginia, or four hundred thousand in
Pennsylvania. Would not this have been an intolerable grievance and
wrong--would no protest have been uttered against it--if these had been
fractional parts of one community of people?
Again, while the will of the consenting majority _within_ any State was
binding on the opposing minority in the same, no majority, or
majorities, of States or people had any control whatever upon the people
of _another_ State. The Constitution was established, not "_over_ the
States," as asserted by Motley, but "_between_ the States," and only
"between _the States so ratifying_ the same." Little Rhode Island, with
her seventy thousand inhabitants, was not a mere fractional part of "the
people of the whole land," during the period for which she held aloof,
but was as free, independent, and unmolested, as any other sovereign
power, notwithstanding the majority of more than three millions of "the
whole people" on the other side of the question.
Before the ratification of the Constitution--when there was some excuse
for an imperfect understanding or misconception of the terms
proposed--Mr. Madison thus answered, in advance, the objections made on
the ground of this misconception, and demonstrated its fallacy. He
wrote:
"That it will be a federal and not a national act, as these
terms are understood by objectors--the act of the people, as
forming so many independent States, not as forming one aggregate
nation--is obvious from this single consideration, that it is to
result neither from the decision of a _majority_ of the people
of the Union nor from that of a _majority_ of _the States_. It
must result from the _unanimous_ assent of the several _States
that are parties to it_, differing no otherwise from their
ordinary assent than in its being expressed, not by the
legislative authority, but by that of the people themselves.
Were the people regarded in this transaction as forming one
nation, the will of the majority of the whole people of the
United States would bind the minority, in the same manner as the
majority in each State must bind the minority; and the will of
the majority must be determined either by a comparison of the
individual votes or by considering the will of the majority of
the States as evidence of the will of a majority of the people
of the United States. Neither of these has been adopted. Each
State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a
sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound
by its own voluntary act."[51]
It is a tedious task to have to expose the misstatements, both of fact
and of principle, which have occupied so much attention, but it is
rendered necessary by the extent to which they have been imposed upon
the acceptance of the public, through reckless assertion and confident
and incessant repetition.
"'I remember,' says Mr. Webster, 'to have heard Chief-Justice
Marshall ask counsel, who was insisting upon the authority of an
act of legislation, _if he thought an act of legislation could
create or destroy a fact, or change the truth of history_?
"Would it alter the fact," said he, "if a Legislature should
solemnly enact that Mr. Hume never wrote the History of
England?" A Legislature may alter the law,' continues Mr.
Webster, 'but no power can reverse a fact.' Hence, if the
Convention of 1787 had expressly declared that the Constitution
was [to be] ordained by 'the people of the United States _in the
aggregate_,' or by the people of America as one nation, this
would not have destroyed the fact that it was ratified by each
State for itself, and that each State was bound only by 'its own
voluntary act.'" (Bledsoe.)
But the Convention, as we have seen, said no such thing. No such
community as "the people of the United States in the aggregate" is known
to it, or ever acted on it. It was ordained, established, and ratified
by the people of the several States; and no theories or assertions of a
later generation can change or conceal this fixed fact, as it stands
revealed in the light of contemporaneous records.
[Footnote 43: Article I, section 9, clause 8.]
[Footnote 44: Article II, section 1, clause 6.]
[Footnote 45: Article III, section 2.]
[Footnote 46: Article III, section 3.]
[Footnote 47: "American Museum," February, 1788.]
[Footnote 48: Benton's "Abridgment," vol. x, p. 448.]
[Footnote 49: See address by Edward Everett at the Academy of Music, New
York, July 4, 1861.]
[Footnote 50: Ibid.]
[Footnote 51: "Federalist," No. xxxix.]
CHAPTER VII.
Verbal Cavils and Criticisms.--"Compact," "Confederacy,"
"Accession," etc.--The "New Vocabulary."--The Federal
Constitution a Compact, and the States acceded to it.--Evidence
of the Constitution itself and of Contemporary Records.
I have habitually spoken of the Federal Constitution as a compact, and
of the parties to it as sovereign States. These terms should not, and in
earlier times would not, have required explanation or vindication. But
they have been called in question by the modern school of consolidation.
These gentlemen admit that the Government under the Articles of
Confederation was a compact. Mr. Webster, in his rejoinder to Mr. Hayne,
on the 27th of January, 1830, said:
"When the gentleman says the Constitution is a compact between
the States, he uses language exactly applicable to the old
Confederation. He speaks as if he were in Congress before 1789.
He describes fully that old state of things then existing. The
Confederation was, in strictness, a compact; the States, as
States, were parties to it. We had no other General Government.
But that was found insufficient and inadequate to the public
exigencies. The people were not satisfied with it, and undertook
to establish a better. They undertook to form a General
Government, which should stand on a new basis--not a
confederacy, not a league, not a compact between States, but a
Constitution."[52]
Again, in his discussion with Mr. Calhoun, three years afterward, he
vehemently reiterates the same denial. Of the Constitution, he says:
"Does it call itself a compact? Certainly not. It uses the word
'compact' but once, and that when it declares that the States shall
enter into no compact.[53] Does it call itself a league, a confederacy,
a subsisting treaty between the States? Certainly not. There is not a
particle of such language in all its pages."[54]
The artist, who wrote under his picture the legend "This is a horse,"
made effectual provision against any such cavil as that preferred by Mr.
Webster and his followers, that the Constitution is not a compact,
because it is not "so nominated in the bond." As well as I can
recollect, there is no passage in the "Iliad" or the "Æneid" in which
either of those great works "calls itself," or is called by its author,
an epic poem, yet this would scarcely be accepted as evidence that they
are not epic poems. In an examination of Mr. Webster's remarks, I do not
find that he announces them to be either a speech or an argument; yet
their claim to both these titles will hardly be disputed--
notwithstanding the verbal criticism on the Constitution just quoted.
The distinction attempted to be drawn between the language proper to a
confederation and that belonging to a constitution, as indicating two
different ideas, will not bear the test of examination and application
to the case of the United States. It has been fully shown, in previous
chapters, that the terms "Union," "Federal Union," "Federal
Constitution," "Constitution of the Federal Government," and the like,
were used--not merely in colloquial, informal speech, but in public
proceedings and official documents--with reference to the Articles of
Confederation, as freely as they have since been employed under the
present Constitution. The former Union was--as Mr. Webster expressly
admits--as nobody denies--a compact between States, yet it nowhere
"calls itself" "a compact"; the word does not occur in it even the one
time that it occurs in the present Constitution, although the
contracting States are in both prohibited from entering into any
"treaty, confederation, or alliance" with one another, or with any
foreign power, without the consent of Congress; and the contracting or
constituent parties are termed "United States" in the one just as in the
other.
Mr. Webster is particularly unfortunate in his criticisms upon what he
terms the "new vocabulary," in which the Constitution is styled a
compact, and the States which ratified it are spoken of as having
"acceded" to it. In the same speech, last quoted, he says:
"This word 'accede,' not found either in the Constitution itself
or in the ratification of it by any one of the States, has been
chosen for use here, doubtless not without a well-considered
purpose. The natural converse of accession is secession; and
therefore, when it is stated that the people of the States
acceded to the Union, it may be more plausibly argued that they
may secede from it. If, in adopting the Constitution, nothing
was done but acceding to a compact, nothing would seem
necessary, in order to break it up, but to secede from the same
compact. But the term is wholly out of place. Accession, as a
word applied to political associations, implies coming into a
league, treaty, or confederacy, by one hitherto a stranger to
it; and secession implies departing from such league or
confederacy. The people of the United States have used no such
form of expression in establishing the present Government."[55]
Repeating and reiterating in many forms what is substantially the same
idea, and attributing the use of the terms which he attacks to an
ulterior purpose, Mr. Webster says:
"This is the reason, sir, which makes it necessary to abandon
the use of constitutional language for a new vocabulary, and to
substitute, in the place of plain, historical facts, a series of
assumptions. This is the reason why it is necessary to give new
names to things; to speak of the Constitution, not as a
constitution, but as a compact; and of the ratifications by the
people, not as ratifications, but as acts of accession."[56]
In these and similar passages, Mr. Webster virtually concedes that, if
the Constitution _were_ a compact; if the Union _were_ a confederacy; if
the States _had_, as States, severally acceded to it--all which
propositions he denies--then the sovereignty of the States and their
right to secede from the Union would be deducible.
Now, it happens that these very terms--"compact," "confederacy,"
"accede," and the like--were the terms in familiar use by the authors of
the Constitution and their associates with reference to that instrument
and its ratification. Other writers, who have examined the subject since
the late war gave it an interest which it had never commanded before,
have collected such an array of evidence in this behalf that it is
necessary only to cite a few examples.
The following language of Mr. Gerry, of Massachusetts, in the Convention
of 1787, has already been referred to: "If nine out of thirteen States
can dissolve _the compact_, six out of nine will be just as able to
dissolve _the new one_ hereafter."
Mr. Gouverneur Morris, one of the most pronounced advocates of a strong
central government, in the Convention, said: "He came here to form _a
compact_ for the good of Americans. He was ready to do so with all the
States. He hoped and believed they all would enter into such a
_compact_. If they would not, he would be ready to join with any States
that would. But, as the _compact_ was to be voluntary, it is in vain for
the Eastern States to insist on what the Southern States will never
agree to."[57]
Mr. Madison, while inclining to a strong government, said: "In the case
of a union of people under one Constitution, the nature of _the pact_
has always been understood," etc.[58]
Mr. Hamilton, in the "Federalist," repeatedly speaks of the new
government as a "_confederate republic_" and a "_confederacy_," and
calls the Constitution a "compact." (See especially Nos. IX. and LXXXV.)
General Washington--who was not only the first President under the new
Constitution, but who had presided over the Convention that drew it
up--in letters written soon after the adjournment of that body to
friends in various States, referred to the Constitution as a _compact_
or treaty, and repeatedly uses the terms "accede" and "accession," and
once the term "secession."
He asks what the opponents of the Constitution in Virginia would do, "if
nine other States should _accede_ to the Constitution."
Luther Martin, of Maryland, informs us that, in a committee of the
General Convention of 1787, protesting against the proposed violation of
the principles of the "perpetual union" already formed under the
Articles of Confederation, he made use of such language as this:
"Will you tell us we ought to trust you because you now enter
into a solemn _compact_ with us? This you have done before, and
now treat with the utmost contempt. Will you now make an appeal
to the Supreme Being, and call on Him to guarantee your
observance of this _compact_? The same you have formerly done
for your observance of the Articles of Confederation, which you
are now violating in the most wanton manner."[59]
It is needless to multiply the proofs that abound in the writings of the
"fathers" to show that Mr. Webster's "new vocabulary" was the very
language they familiarly used. Let two more examples suffice, from
authority higher than that of any individual speaker or writer, however
eminent--from authority second only, if at all inferior, to that of the
text of the Constitution itself--that is, from the acts or ordinances of
ratification by the States. They certainly ought to have been
conclusive, and should not have been unknown to Mr. Webster, for they
are the language of Massachusetts, the State which he represented in the
Senate, and of New Hampshire, the State of his nativity.
The ratification of Massachusetts is expressed in the following terms:
"COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS.
"The Convention, having impartially discussed and fully
considered a Constitution for the United States of America,
reported to Congress by the convention of delegates from the
United States of America, and submitted to us by a resolution of
the General Court of the said Commonwealth, passed the 25th day
of October last past, and acknowledging with grateful hearts the
goodness of the Supreme Ruler of the universe, in affording the
people of the United States, in the course of his Providence, an
opportunity, deliberately and peaceably, without fraud or
surprise, of entering into an explicit and solemn COMPACT with
each other, by assenting to and ratifying a new Constitution, in
order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure
domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote
the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to
themselves and their posterity--do, in the name and in behalf of
the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, assent to and
ratify the said Constitution for the United States of America."
The ratification of New Hampshire is expressed in precisely the same
words, save only the difference of date of the resolution of the
Legislature (or "General Court") referred to, and also the use of the
word "State" instead of "Commonwealth." Both distinctly accept it as a
_compact_ of the States "with each other"--which Mr. Webster, a son of
New Hampshire and a Senator from Massachusetts, declared it was not; and
not only so, but he repudiated the very "vocabulary" from which the
words expressing the doctrine were taken.
It would not need, however, this abounding wealth of contemporaneous
exposition--it does not require the employment of any particular words
in the Constitution--to prove that it was drawn up as a compact between
sovereign States entering into a confederacy with each other, and that
they ratified and acceded to it separately, severally, and
independently. The very structure of the whole instrument and the facts
attending its preparation and ratification would suffice. The language
of the final article would have been quite enough: "The ratification of
the conventions of nine States shall be sufficient for the establishment
of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the same." This is
not the "language" of a superior imposing a mandate upon subordinates.
The consent of the contracting parties is necessary to its validity, and
then it becomes not the acceptance and recognition of an authority
"_over_" them--as Mr. Motley represents--but of a compact _between_
them. The simple word "between" is incompatible with any other idea than
that of a compact by independent parties.
If it were possible that any doubt could still exist, there is one
provision in the Constitution which stamps its character as a compact
too plainly for cavil or question. The Constitution, which had already
provided for the representation of the States in both Houses of
Congress, thereby bringing the matter of representation within the power
of amendment, in its fifth article contains a stipulation that "no
State, without its [own] consent, shall be deprived of its equal
suffrage in the Senate." If this is not a compact between the States,
the smaller States have no guarantee for the preservation of their
equality of representation in the United States Senate. If the
obligation of a contract does not secure it, the guarantee itself is
liable to amendment, and may be swept away at the will of three fourths
of the States, without wrong to any party--for, according to this
theory, there is no party of the second part.
[Footnote 52: Gales and Seaton's "Register of Congressional Debates,"
vol. vi, Part I, p. 93.]
[Footnote 53: The words "with another State or with a foreign power"
should have been added to make this statement accurate.]
[Footnote 54: "Congressional Debates," vol. ix, Part I, p. 563.]
[Footnote 55: "Congressional Debates," vol. ix, Part I, p. 566.]
[Footnote 56: Ibid., pp. 557, 558.]
[Footnote 57: "Madison Papers," pp. 1081, 1082.]
[Footnote 58: Ibid., p. 1184.]
[Footnote 59: Luther Martin's "Genuine Information," in Wilbur Curtiss's
"Secret Proceedings and Debates of the Convention," p. 29.]
CHAPTER VIII.
Sovereignty.
"The term 'sovereign' or 'sovereignty,'" says Judge Story, "is used in
different senses, which often leads to a confusion of ideas, and
sometimes to very mischievous and unfounded conclusions." Without any
disrespect for Judge Story, or any disparagement of his great learning
and ability, it may safely be added that he and his disciples have
contributed not a little to the increase of this confusion of ideas and
the spread of these mischievous and unfounded conclusions. There is no
good reason whatever why it should be used in different senses, or why
there should be any confusion of ideas as to its meaning. Of all the
terms employed in political science, it is one of the most definite and
intelligible. The definition of it given by that accurate and lucid
publicist, Burlamaqui, is simple and satisfactory--that "sovereignty is
a right of commanding in the last resort in civil society."[60] The
original seat of this sovereignty he also declares to be in the people.
"But," he adds, "when once the people have transferred their right to a
sovereign [i.e., a monarch], they can not, without contradiction, be
supposed to continue still masters of it."[61] This is in strict accord
with the theory of American republicanism, the peculiarity of which is
that the people _never do_ transfer their right of sovereignty, either
in whole or in part. They only delegate to their governments the
exercise of such of its functions as may be necessary, subject always to
their own control, and to reassumption whenever such government fails to
fulfill the purposes for which it was instituted.
I think it has already been demonstrated that, in this country, the only
political community--the only independent corporate unit through which
the people can exercise their sovereignty, is the State. Minor
communities--as those of counties, cities, and towns--are merely
fractional subdivisions of the State; and these do not affect the
evidence that there was not such a political community as the "people of
the United States in the aggregate."
That the States were severally sovereign and independent when they were
united under the Articles of Confederation, is distinctly asserted in
those articles, and is admitted even by the extreme partisans of
consolidation. Of right, they are still sovereign, unless they have
surrendered or been divested of their sovereignty; and those who deny
the proposition have been vainly called upon to point out the process by
which they have divested themselves, or have been divested of it,
otherwise than by usurpation.
Since Webster spoke and Story wrote upon the subject, however, the
sovereignty of the States has been vehemently denied, or explained away
as only a partial, imperfect, mutilated sovereignty. Paradoxical
theories of "divided sovereignty" and "delegated sovereignty" have
arisen, to create that "confusion of ideas" and engender those
"mischievous and unfounded conclusions," of which Judge Story speaks.
Confounding the sovereign authority of the _people_ with the delegated
powers conferred by them upon their _governments_, we hear of a
Government of the United States "sovereign within its sphere," and of
State governments "sovereign in _their_ sphere"; of the surrender by the
States of _part_ of their sovereignty to the United States, and the
like. Now, if there be any one great principle pervading the Federal
Constitution, the State Constitutions, the writings of the fathers, the
whole American system, as clearly as the sunlight pervades the solar
system, it is that _no_ government is sovereign--that all governments
derive their powers from the people, and exercise them in subjection to
the will of the people--not a will expressed in any irregular, lawless,
tumultuary manner, but the will of the organized political community,
expressed through authorized and legitimate channels. The founders of
the American republics never conferred, nor intended to confer,
sovereignty upon either their State or Federal Governments.
If, then, the people of the States, in forming a Federal Union,
surrendered--or, to use Burlamaqui's term, transferred--or if they meant
to surrender or transfer--_part_ of their sovereignty, to whom was the
transfer made? Not to "the people of the United States in the
aggregate"; for there was no such people in existence, and they did not
create or constitute such a people by merger of themselves. Not to the
Federal Government; for they disclaimed, as a fundamental principle, the
sovereignty of any government. There was no such surrender, no such
transfer, in whole or in part, expressed or implied. They retained, and
intended to retain, their sovereignty in its integrity--undivided and
indivisible.
"But, indeed," says Mr. Motley, "the words 'sovereign' and 'sovereignty'
are purely inapplicable to the American system. In the Declaration of
Independence the provinces declare themselves 'free and independent
States,' but the men of those days knew that the word 'sovereign' was a
term of feudal origin. When their connection with a time-honored feudal
monarchy was abruptly severed, the word 'sovereign' had no meaning for
us."[62]
If this be true, "the men of those days" had a very extraordinary way of
expressing their conviction that the word "had no meaning for us." We
have seen that, in the very front of their Articles of Confederation,
they set forth the conspicuous declaration that each State retained "its
_sovereignty_, freedom, and independence."
Massachusetts--the State, I believe, of Mr. Motley's nativity and
citizenship--in her original Constitution, drawn up by "men of those
days," made this declaration:
"The people inhabiting the territory formerly called the
Province of Massachusetts Bay do hereby solemnly and mutually
agree with each other to form themselves into a free,
_sovereign_, and independent body politic, or State, by the name
of _The Commonwealth of Massachusetts_."
New Hampshire, in her Constitution, as revised in 1792, had identically
the same declaration, except as regards the name of the State and the
word "State" instead of "Commonwealth."
Mr. Madison, one of the most distinguished of the men of that day and of
the advocates of the Constitution, in a speech already once referred to,
in the Virginia Convention of 1788, explained that "We, the people," who
were to establish the Constitution, were the people of "thirteen
SOVEREIGNTIES."[63]
In the "Federalist," he repeatedly employs the term--as, for example,
when he says: "Do they [the fundamental principles of the Confederation]
require that, in the establishment of the Constitution, the States
should be regarded as distinct and independent SOVEREIGNS? They _are_ so
regarded by the Constitution proposed."[64]
Alexander Hamilton--another contemporary authority, no less
illustrious--says, in the "Federalist":
"It is inherent in the nature of _sovereignty_, not to be
amenable to the suit of an individual without its consent. This
is the general sense and the general practice of mankind; and
the exemption, as one of the attributes of _sovereignty_, is now
enjoyed by the government of _every State_ in the Union."[65]
In the same paragraph he uses these terms, "sovereign" and
"sovereignty," repeatedly--always with reference to the States,
respectively and severally.
Benjamin Franklin advocated equality of suffrage in the Senate as a
means of securing "the _sovereignties_ of the individual States."[66]
James Wilson, of Pennsylvania, said sovereignty "is in the people before
they make a Constitution, and remains in them," and described the people
as being "thirteen independent sovereignties."[67] Gouverneur Morris,
who was, as well as Wilson, one of the warmest advocates in the
Convention of a strong central government, spoke of the Constitution as
"a _compact_," and of the parties to it as "each enjoying _sovereign_
power."[68] Roger Sherman, of Connecticut, declared that the Government
"was instituted by a number of _sovereign States_."[69] Oliver
Ellsworth, of the same State, spoke of the States as "sovereign
bodies."[70] These were all eminent members of the Convention which
formed the Constitution.
There was scarcely a statesman of that period who did not leave on
record expressions of the same sort. But why multiply citations? It is
very evident that the "men of those days" entertained very different
views of sovereignty from those set forth by the "new lights" of our
day. Far from considering it a term of feudal origin, "purely
inapplicable to the American system," they seem to have regarded it as a
very vital principle in that system, and of necessity belonging to the
several States--and I do not find a single instance in which they
applied it to any political organization, except the States.
Their ideas were in entire accord with those of Vattel, who, in his
chapter "Of Nations or Sovereign States," writes, "Every _nation_ that
governs itself, under what form soever, without any dependence on
foreign power, is a _sovereign state_."[71]
In another part of the same chapter he gives a lucid statement of the
nature of a confederate republic, such as ours was designed to be. He
says:
"Several sovereign and independent states may unite themselves
together by a perpetual confederacy, without each in particular
ceasing to be _a perfect state_. They will form together a
federal republic: the deliberations in common will offer no
violence to _the sovereignty of each member_, though they may,
in certain respects, put some restraint on the exercise of it,
in virtue of voluntary engagements. A person does not cease to
be free and independent, when he is obliged to fulfill the
engagements into which he has very willingly entered."[72]
What this celebrated author means here by a person, is explained by a
subsequent passage: "The law of nations is the law of sovereigns; states
free and independent are moral persons."[73]
[Footnote 60: "Principes du Droit Politique," chap. v, section I; also,
chap. vii, section 1.]
[Footnote 61: Ibid., chap. vii, section 12.]
[Footnote 62: "Rebellion Record," vol. i, Documents, p. 211.]
[Footnote 63: Elliott's "Debates," vol. iii, p. 114, edition of 1836.]
[Footnote 64: "Federalist," No. xl.]
[Footnote 65: Ibid, No. lxxxi.]
[Footnote 66: See Elliott's "Debates," vol. v, p. 266.]
[Footnote 67: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 443.]
[Footnote 68: See "Life of Gouverneur Morris," vol. iii, p. 193.]
[Footnote 69: See "Writings of John Adams," vol. vii, letter of Roger
Sherman.]
[Footnote 70: See Eliott's "Debates," vol. ii, p. 197.]
[Footnote 71: "Law of Nations," Book I, chap. i, section 4.]
[Footnote 72: Ibid., section 10.]
[Footnote 73: Ibid., section 12.]
CHAPTER IX.
The same Subject continued.--The Tenth Amendment.--Fallacies
exposed.--"Constitution," "Government," and "People"
distinguished from each other.--Theories refuted by
Facts.--Characteristics of Sovereignty.--Sovereignty
identified.--Never thrown away.
If any lingering doubt could have existed as to the reservation of their
entire sovereignty by the people of the respective States, when they
organized the Federal Union, it would have been removed by the adoption
of the tenth amendment to the Constitution, which was not only one of
the amendments proposed by various States when ratifying that
instrument, but the particular one in which they substantially agreed,
and upon which they most urgently insisted. Indeed, it is quite certain
that the Constitution would never have received the assent and
ratification of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina,
and perhaps other States, but for a well-grounded assurance that the
substance of this amendment would be adopted as soon as the requisite
formalities could be complied with. That amendment is in these words:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the
Constitution nor prohibited by it to the States are reserved to
the States respectively, or to the people."
The full meaning of this article may not be as clear to us as it was to
the men of that period, on account of the confusion of ideas by which
the term "people"--plain enough to them--has since been obscured, and
also the ambiguity attendant upon the use of the little conjunction
_or_, which has been said to be the most equivocal word in our language,
and for that reason has been excluded from indictments in the English
courts. The true intent and meaning of the provision, however, may be
ascertained from an examination and comparison of the terms in which it
was expressed by the various States which proposed it, and whose ideas
it was intended to embody.
Massachusetts and New Hampshire, in their ordinances of ratification,
expressing the opinion "that certain amendments and alterations in the
said Constitution would remove the fears and quiet the apprehensions of
many of the good people of this Commonwealth [State (New Hampshire)],
and more effectually guard against an undue administration of the
Federal Government," each recommended several such amendments, putting
this at the head in the following form:
"That it be explicitly declared that all powers not expressly
delegated by the aforesaid Constitution are _reserved to the
several States_, to be by them exercised."
Of course, those stanch republican communities meant _the people of the
States_--not their _governments_, as something distinct from their
people.
New York expressed herself as follows:
"That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people
whenever it shall become necessary to their happiness; that
every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by the said
Constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United
States, or the departments of the Government thereof, remains to
_the people of the several States, or to their respective State
governments, to whom they may have granted the same_; and that
those clauses in the said Constitution, which declare that
Congress shall not have or exercise certain powers, do not imply
that Congress is entitled to any powers not given by the said
Constitution; but such clauses are to be construed either as
exceptions to certain specified powers or as inserted merely for
greater caution."
South Carolina expressed the idea thus:
"This Convention doth also declare that no section or paragraph
of the said Constitution warrants a construction that _the
States do not retain_ every power not expressly relinquished by
them and vested in the General Government of the Union."
North Carolina proposed it in these terms:
"Each State in the Union shall respectively retain every power,
jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Constitution
delegated to the Congress of the United States or to the
departments of the General Government."
Rhode Island gave in her long-withheld assent to the Constitution, "in
full confidence" that certain proposed amendments would be adopted, the
first of which was expressed in these words:
"That Congress shall guarantee _to each State_ its SOVEREIGNTY,
_freedom, and independence_, and every power, jurisdiction, and
right, which is not by this Constitution expressly delegated to
the United States."
This was in May, 1790, when nearly three years had been given to
discussion and explanation of the new Government by its founders and
others, when it had been in actual operation for more than a year, and
when there was every advantage for a clear understanding of its nature
and principles. Under such circumstances, and in the "full confidence"
that this language expressed its meaning and intent, the people of Rhode
Island signified their "accession" to the "Confederate Republic" of the
States already united.
No objection was made from any quarter to the principle asserted in
these various forms; or to the amendment in which it was finally
expressed, although many thought it unnecessary, as being merely
declaratory of what would have been sufficiently obvious without
it--that the functions of the Government of the United States were
strictly limited to the exercise of such powers as were expressly
delegated, and that the people of the several States retained all
others.
Is it compatible with reason to suppose that people so chary of the
delegation of specific powers or functions could have meant to surrender
or transfer the very basis and origin of all power--their inherent
sovereignty--and this, not by express grant, but by implication?
Mr. Everett, following, whether consciously or not, in the line of Mr.
Webster's ill-considered objection to the term "compact," takes
exception to the sovereignty of the States on the ground that "the
_word_ 'sovereignty' does not occur" in the Constitution. He admits that
the States were sovereign under the Articles of Confederation. How could
they relinquish or be deprived of their sovereignty without even a
mention of it--when the tenth amendment confronts us with the
declaration that _nothing_ was surrendered by implication--that
everything was reserved unless expressly delegated to the United States
or prohibited to the States? Here is an attribute which they certainly
possessed--which nobody denies, or can deny, that they _did_
possess--and of which Mr. Everett says no mention is made in the
Constitution. In what conceivable way, then, was it lost or alienated?
Much has been said of the "prohibition" of the exercise by the States of
certain functions of sovereignty; such as, making treaties, declaring
war, coining money, etc. This is only a part of the general compact, by
which the contracting parties covenant, one with another, to abstain
from the separate exercise of certain powers, which they agree to
intrust to the management and control of the union or general agency of
the parties associated. It is not a prohibition imposed upon them from
without, or from above, by any external or superior power, but is
self-imposed by their free consent. The case is strictly analogous to
that of individuals forming a mercantile or manufacturing copartnership,
who voluntarily agree to refrain, as individuals, from engaging in other
pursuits or speculations, from lending their individual credit, or from
the exercise of any other right of a citizen, which they may think
proper to subject to the consent, or intrust to the management of the
firm.
The prohibitory clauses of the Constitution referred to are not at all a
denial of the full sovereignty of the States, but are merely an
agreement among them to exercise certain powers of sovereignty in
concert, and not separately and apart.
There is one other provision of the Constitution, which is generally
adduced by the friends of centralism as antagonistic to State
sovereignty. This is found in the second clause of the sixth article, as
follows:
"This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which
shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or
which shall be made, under the authority of the United States,
shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every
State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or
laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."
This enunciation of a principle, which, even if it had not been
expressly declared, would have been a necessary deduction from the
acceptance of the Constitution itself, has been magnified and perverted
into a meaning and purpose entirely foreign to that which plain
interpretation is sufficient to discern. Mr. Motley thus dilates on the
subject:
"Could language be more imperial? Could the claim to State
'sovereignty' be more completely disposed of at a word? How can
that be sovereign, acknowledging no superior, supreme, which has
voluntarily accepted a supreme law from something which it
acknowledges as superior?"[74]
The mistake which Mr. Motley--like other writers of the same
school--makes is one which is disposed of by a very simple correction.
The States, which ordained and established the Constitution, _accepted_
nothing besides what they themselves _prescribed_. They acknowledged no
superior. The supremacy was both in degree and extent only that which
was delegated by the States to their common agent.
There are some other considerations which may conduce to a clearer
understanding of this supremacy of the Constitution and the laws made in
pursuance thereof:
1. In the first place, it must be remembered that, when the Federal
Constitution was formed, each then existing State already had its own
Constitution and code of statute laws. It was, no doubt, primarily with
reference to these that the provision was inserted, and not in the
expectation of future conflicts or discrepancies. It is in this light
alone that Mr. Madison considers it in explaining and vindicating it in
the "Federalist."[75]
2. Again, it is to be observed that the supremacy accorded to the
general laws of the United States is expressly limited to those enacted
in conformity with the Constitution, or, to use the exact language,
"made in pursuance thereof." Mr. Hamilton, in another chapter of the
"Federalist," calls particular attention to this, saying (and the
italics are all his own) "that the laws of the Confederacy, as to the
_enumerated_ and _legitimate_ objects of its jurisdiction, will become
the supreme law of the land," and that the State functionaries will
coöperate in their observance and enforcement with the General
Government, "_as far as its just and constitutional authority
extends_."[76]
3. In the third place, it is not the _Government_ of the United States
that is declared to be supreme, but the _Constitution_ and the laws and
treaties made in accordance with it. The proposition was made in the
Convention to organize a government consisting of "supreme legislative,
executive, and judicial powers," but it was not adopted. Its deliberate
rejection is much more significant and conclusive than if it had never
been proposed. Correction of so gross an error as that of confounding
the Government with the Constitution ought to be superfluous, but so
crude and confused are the ideas which have been propagated on the
subject, that no misconception seems to be too absurd to be possible.
Thus, it has not been uncommon, of late years, to hear, even in the
highest places, the oath to support the Constitution, which is taken by
both State and Federal officers, spoken of as an oath "to support _the
Government_"--an obligation never imposed upon any one in this country,
and which the men who made the Constitution, with their recent
reminiscences of the Revolution, the battles of which they had fought
with halters around their necks, would have been the last to prescribe.
Could any assertion be less credible than that they proceeded to
institute another supreme government which it would be treason to
resist?
This confusion of ideas pervades the treatment of the whole subject of
sovereignty. Mr. Webster has said, and very justly so far as these
United States are concerned: "The sovereignty of government is an idea
belonging to the other side of the Atlantic. No such thing is known in
North America. Our governments are all limited. In Europe sovereignty is
of feudal origin, and imports no more than the state of the sovereign.
It comprises his rights, duties, exemptions, prerogatives, and powers.
But with us all power is with the people. They alone are sovereign, and
they erect what governments they please, and confer on them such powers
as they please. None of these governments are sovereign, in the European
sense of the word, all being restrained by written constitutions."[77]
But the same intellect, which can so clearly discern and so lucidly
define the general proposition, seems to be covered by a cloud of thick
darkness when it comes to apply it to the particular case in issue.
Thus, a little afterward, we have the following:
"There is no language in the whole Constitution applicable to a
confederation of States. If the States be parties, as States,
what are their rights, and what their respective covenants and
stipulations? and where are their rights, covenants, and
stipulations expressed? In the Articles of Confederation they
did make promises, and did enter into engagements, and did
plight the faith of each State for their fulfillment; but in the
Constitution there is nothing of that kind. The reason is that,
in the Constitution, it is the people who speak and not the
States. The people ordain the Constitution, and therein address
themselves to the States and to the Legislatures of the States
in the language of injunction and prohibition."[78]
It is surprising that such inconsistent ideas should proceed from a
source so eminent. Its author falls into the very error which he had
just before so distinctly pointed out, in confounding the people of the
States with their governments. In the vehemence of his hostility to
State sovereignty, he seems--as all of his disciples seem--unable even
to comprehend that it means the sovereignty, not of State governments,
but of people who make them. With minds preoccupied by the unreal idea
of one great people of a consolidated nation, these gentlemen are
blinded to the plain and primary truth that the only way in which the
people ordained the Constitution was as the people of States. When Mr.
Webster says that "in the Constitution it is the people who speak, and
not the States," he says what is untenable. The States _are_ the people.
The people do not speak, never have spoken, and never can speak, in
their sovereign capacity (without a subversion of our whole system),
otherwise than as the people of States.
There are but two modes of expressing their sovereign will known to the
people of this country. One is by direct vote--the mode adopted by Rhode
Island in 1788, when she rejected the Constitution. The other is the
method, more generally pursued, of acting by means of conventions of
delegates elected expressly as representatives of the sovereignty of the
people. Now, it is not a matter of opinion or theory or speculation, but
a plain, undeniable, historical _fact_, that there never has been any
act or expression of sovereignty in either of these modes by that
imaginary community, "the people of the United States in the aggregate."
_Usurpations of power_ by the _Government_ of the United States, there
may have been, and may be again, but there has never been either a
sovereign convention or a direct vote of the "whole people" of the
United States to demonstrate its existence as a corporate unit. Every
exercise of sovereignty by any of the people of this country that has
actually taken place has been by the people of States _as_ States. In
the face of this fact, is it not the merest self-stultification to admit
the sovereignty of the people and deny it to the States, in which alone
they have community existence?
This subject is one of such vital importance to a right understanding of
the events which this work is designed to record and explain, that it
can not be dismissed without an effort in the way of recapitulation and
conclusion, to make it clear beyond the possibility of misconception.
According to the American theory, every individual is endowed with
certain unalienable rights, among which are "life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness." He is entitled to all the freedom, in these and
in other respects, that is consistent with the safety and the rights of
others and the weal of the community, but political sovereignty, which
is the source and origin of all the powers of _government_--legislative,
executive, and judicial--belongs to, and inheres in, the people of an
organized political community. It is an attribute of the _whole people_
of such a community. It includes the power and necessarily the duty of
protecting the rights and redressing the wrongs of individuals, of
punishing crimes, enforcing contracts, prescribing rules for the
transfer of property and the succession of estates, making treaties with
foreign powers, levying taxes, etc. The enumeration of particulars might
be extended, but these will suffice as illustrations.
These powers are of course exercised through the agency of governments,
but the governments are _only_ agents of the sovereign--responsible to
it, and subject to its control. This sovereign--the people, in the
aggregate, of each political community--delegates to the government the
exercise of such powers, or functions, as it thinks proper, but in an
American republic never transfers or surrenders sovereignty. _That_
remains, unalienated and unimpaired. It is by virtue of this sovereignty
alone that the Government, its authorized agent, commands the obedience
of the individual citizen, to the extent of its derivative, dependent,
and delegated authority. The ALLEGIANCE of the citizen is due to the
sovereign alone.
Thus far, I think, all will agree. No American statesman or publicist
would venture to dispute it. Notwithstanding the inconsiderate or
ill-considered expressions thrown out by some persons about the unity of
the American people from the beginning, no respectable authority has
ever had the hardihood to deny that, before the adoption of the Federal
Constitution, the only sovereign political community was the people of
the State--the people of _each State_. The ordinary exercise of what are
generally termed the powers of sovereignty was by and through their
respective governments; and, when they formed a confederation, a portion
of those powers was intrusted to the General Government, or agency.
Under the Confederation, the Congress of the United States represented
the collective power of the States; but the people of each State alone
possessed sovereignty, and consequently were entitled to the allegiance
of the citizen.
When the Articles of Confederation were amended, when the new
Constitution was substituted in their place and the General Government
reorganized, its structure was changed, additional powers were conferred
upon it, and thereby subtracted from the powers theretofore exercised by
the State governments; but the seat of sovereignty--the source of all
those delegated and dependent powers--was not disturbed. There was a new
Government or an amended Government--it is entirely immaterial in which
of these lights we consider it--but no new PEOPLE was created or
constituted. The people, in whom alone sovereignty inheres, remained
just as they had been before. The only change was in the form,
structure, and relations of their governmental agencies.
No doubt, the States--the people of the States--if they had been so
disposed, might have merged themselves into one great consolidated
State, retaining their geographical boundaries merely as matters of
convenience. But such a merger must have been distinctly and formally
stated, not left to deduction or implication.
Men do not alienate even an estate, without positive and express terms
and stipulations. But in this case not only was there no express
transfer--no formal surrender--of the preëxisting sovereignty, but it
was expressly provided that nothing should be _understood_ as even
_delegated_--that everything was reserved, unless granted in express
terms. The monstrous conception of the creation of a new people,
invested with the whole or a great part of the sovereignty which had
previously belonged to the people of each State, has not a syllable to
sustain it in the Constitution, but is built up entirely upon the
palpable misconstruction of a single expression in the preamble.
In denying that there is any such collective unit as the people of the
United States in the aggregate, of course I am not to be understood as
denying that there is such a political organization as the United
States, or that there exists, with large and distinct powers, a
_Government_ of the United States; but it is claimed that the Union, as
its name implies, is constituted of States. As a British author,[79]
referring to the old Teutonic system, has expressed the same idea, the
States are the integers, the United States the multiple which results
from them. The Government of the United States derives its existence
from the same source, and exercises its functions by the will of the
same sovereignty that creates and confers authority upon the State
governments. The people of each State are, in either case, the source.
The only difference is that, in the creation of the State governments,
each sovereign acted alone; in that of the Federal Government, they
acted in coöperation with the others. Neither the whole nor any part of
their sovereignty has been surrendered to either Government.
To whom, in fine, _could_ the States have surrendered their sovereignty?
Not to the mass of the people inhabiting the territory possessed by all
the States, for there was no such community in existence, and they took
no measures for the organization of such a community. If they had
intended to do so, the very style, "United States," would have been a
palpable misnomer, nor would treason have been defined as levying war
against _them_. Could it have been transferred to the Government of the
Union? Clearly not, in accordance with the ideas and principles of those
who made the Declaration of Independence, adopted the Articles of
Confederation, and established the Constitution of the United States;
for in each and all of these the corner-stone is the inherent and
inalienable sovereignty of the people. To have transferred sovereignty
from the people to a Government would have been to have fought the
battles of the Revolution in vain--not for the freedom and independence
of the States, but for a mere change of masters. Such a thought or
purpose could not have been in the heads or hearts of those who molded
the Union, and could have found lodgment only when the ebbing tide of
patriotism and fraternity had swept away the landmarks which they
erected who sought by the compact of union to secure and perpetuate the
liberties then possessed. The men who had won at great cost the
independence of their respective States were deeply impressed with the
value of union, but they could never have consented, like "the base
Judean," to fling away the priceless pearl of State sovereignty for any
possible alliance.
[Footnote 74: "Rebellion Record," vol. i, Documents, p. 213.]
[Footnote 75: "Federalist," No. xliv.]
[Footnote 76: "Federalist," No. xxvii.]
[Footnote 77: "Congressional Debates," vol. ix, Part I, p. 565.]
[Footnote 78: Ibid., p. 566.]
[Footnote 79: Sir Francis Palgrave, quoted by Mr. Calhoun,
"Congressional Debates," vol. ix, Part I, p. 541.]
CHAPTER X.
A Recapitulation.--Remarkable Propositions of Mr. Gouverneur
Morris in the Convention of 1787, and their Fate.--Further
Testimony.--Hamilton, Madison, Washington, Marshall, etc.--Later
Theories.--Mr. Webster: his Views at Various Periods.--Speech at
Capon Springs.--State Rights not a Sectional Theory.
Looking back for a moment at the ground over which we have gone, I think
it may be fairly asserted that the following propositions have been
clearly and fully established:
1. That the States of which the American Union was formed, from the
moment when they emerged from their colonial or provincial condition,
became severally sovereign, free, and independent States--not one State,
or nation.
2. That the union formed under the Articles of Confederation was a
compact between the States, in which these attributes of "sovereignty,
freedom, and independence," were expressly asserted and guaranteed.
3. That, in forming the "more perfect union" of the Constitution,
afterward adopted, the same contracting powers formed an _amended
compact_, without any surrender of these attributes of sovereignty,
freedom, and independence, either expressed or implied: on the contrary,
that, by the tenth amendment to the Constitution, limiting the power of
the Government to its express grants, they distinctly guarded against
the presumption of a surrender of anything by implication.
4. That political sovereignty resides, neither in individual citizens,
nor in unorganized masses, nor in fractional subdivisions of a
community, but in the people of an organized political body.
5. That no "republican form of government," in the sense in which that
expression is used in the Constitution, and was generally understood by
the founders of the Union--whether it be the government of a State or of
a confederation of States--is possessed of any sovereignty whatever, but
merely exercises certain powers delegated by the sovereign authority of
the people, and subject to recall and reassumption by the same authority
that conferred them.
6. That the "people" who organized the first confederation, the people
who dissolved it, the people who ordained and established the
Constitution which succeeded it, the only people, in fine, known or
referred to in the phraseology of that period--whether the term was used
collectively or distributively--were the people of the respective
States, each acting separately and with absolute independence of the
others.
7. That, in forming and adopting the Constitution, the States, or the
people of the States--terms which, when used with reference to acts
performed in a sovereign capacity, are precisely equivalent to each
other--formed a new _Government_, but no new _people_; and that,
consequently, no new sovereignty was created--for sovereignty in an
American republic can belong only to a people, never to a
government--and that the Federal Government is entitled to exercise only
the powers delegated to it by the people of the respective States.
8. That the term "people," in the preamble to the Constitution and in
the tenth amendment, is used distributively; that the only "people of
the United States" known to the Constitution are the people of each
State in the Union; that no such political community or corporate unit
as one people of the United States then existed, has ever been
organized, or yet exists; and that no political action by the people of
the United States in the aggregate has ever taken place, or ever can
take place, under the Constitution.
The fictitious idea of _one_ people of the United States, contradicted
in the last paragraph, has been so impressed upon the popular mind by
false teaching, by careless and vicious phraseology, and by the
ever-present spectacle of a great Government, with its army and navy,
its custom-houses and post-offices, its multitude of office-holders, and
the splendid prizes which it offers to political ambition, that the
tearing away of these illusions and presentation of the original fabric,
which they have overgrown and hidden from view, have no doubt been
unwelcome, distasteful, and even repellent to some of my readers. The
artificial splendor which makes the deception attractive is even
employed as an argument to prove its reality.
The glitter of the powers delegated to the agent serves to obscure the
perception of the sovereign power of the principal by whom they are
conferred, as, by the unpracticed eye, the showy costume and conspicuous
functions of the drum-major are mistaken for emblems of
chieftaincy--while the misuse or ambiguous use of the term "Union" and
its congeners contributes to increase the confusion.
So much the more need for insisting upon the elementary truths which
have been obscured by these specious sophistries. The reader really
desirous of ascertaining truth is, therefore, again cautioned against
confounding two ideas so essentially distinct as that of _government_,
which is derivative, dependent, and subordinate, with that of the
_people_, as an organized political community, which is sovereign,
without any other than self-imposed limitations, and such as proceed
from the general principles of the personal rights of man.
It has been said, in a foregoing chapter, that the authors of the
Constitution could scarcely have anticipated the idea of such a
community as the people of the United States in one mass. Perhaps this
expression needs some little qualification, for there is rarely a
fallacy, however stupendous, that is wholly original. A careful
examination of the records of the Convention of 1787 exhibits one or
perhaps two instances of such a suggestion--both by the same person--and
the result in each case is strikingly significant.
The original proposition made concerning the office of President of the
United States contemplated his election by the Congress, or, as it was
termed by the proposer, "the national Legislature." On the 17th of July,
this proposition being under consideration, Mr. Gouverneur Morris moved
that the words "national Legislature" be stricken out, and "citizens of
the United States" inserted. The proposition was supported by Mr. James
Wilson--both of these gentlemen being delegates from Pennsylvania, and
both among the most earnest advocates of centralism in the Convention.
Now, it is not at all certain that Mr. Morris had in view an election by
the citizens of the United States "in the aggregate," voting as _one
people_. The language of his proposition is entirely consistent with the
idea of as election by the citizens of each State, voting separately and
independently, though it is ambiguous, and may admit of the other
construction. But this is immaterial. The proposition was submitted to a
vote, and received the approval of only _one State_--Pennsylvania, of
which Mr. Morris and Mr. Wilson were both representatives. _Nine_ States
voted against it.[80]
Six days afterward (July 23d), in a discussion of the proposed
ratification of the Constitution by Conventions of the people of each
State, Mr. Gouverneur Morris--as we learn from Mr. Madison--"moved that
the reference of the plan [i.e., of the proposed Constitution] be made
to one General Convention, chosen and authorized by the people, to
consider, amend, and establish the same."[81]
Here the issue seems to have been more distinctly made between the two
ideas of people of the States and one people in the aggregate. The fate
of the latter is briefly recorded in the two words, "not seconded." Mr.
Morris was a man of distinguished ability, great personal influence, and
undoubted patriotism, but, out of all that assemblage--comprising, as it
did, such admitted friends of centralism as Hamilton, King, Wilson,
Randolph, Pinckney, and others--there was not one to sustain him in the
proposition to incorporate into the Constitution that theory which now
predominates, the theory on which was waged the late bloody war, which
was called a "war for the Union." It failed for want of a second, and
does not even appear in the official journal of the Convention. The very
fact that such a suggestion was made would be unknown to us but for the
record kept by Mr. Madison.
The extracts which have been given, in treating of special branches of
the subject, from the writings and speeches of the framers of the
Constitution and other statesmen of that period, afford ample proof of
their entire and almost unanimous accord with the principles which have
been established on the authority of the Constitution itself, the acts
of ratification by the several States, and other attestations of the
highest authority and validity. I am well aware that isolated
expressions may be found in the reports of debates on the General and
State Conventions and other public bodies, indicating the existence of
individual opinions seemingly inconsistent with these principles; that
loose and confused ideas were sometimes expressed with regard to
sovereignty, the relations between governments and people, and kindred
subjects; and that, while the plan of the Constitution was under
discussion, and before it was definitely reduced to its present shape,
there were earnest advocates in the Convention of a more consolidated
system, with a stronger central government. But these expressions of
individual opinion only prove the existence of a small minority of
dissentients from the principles generally entertained, and which
finally prevailed in the formation of the Constitution. None of these
ever avowed such extravagances of doctrine as are promulgated in this
generation. No statesman of that day would have ventured to risk his
reputation by construing an obligation to support the Constitution as an
obligation to adhere to the Federal Government--a construction which
would have insured the sweeping away of any plan of union embodying it,
by a tempest of popular indignation from every quarter of the country.
None of them suggested such an idea as that of the amalgamation of the
people of the States into one consolidated mass--unless it was suggested
by Mr. Gouverneur Morris in the proposition above referred to, in which
he stood alone among the delegates of twelve sovereign States assembled
in convention.
As to the features of centralism, or nationalism, which they did
advocate, all the ability of this little minority of really gifted men
failed to secure the incorporation of any one of them into the
Constitution, or to obtain their recognition by any of the ratifying
States. On the contrary, the very men who had been the leading advocates
of such theories, on failing to secure their adoption, loyally accepted
the result, and became the ablest and most efficient supporters of the
principles which had prevailed. Thus, Mr. Hamilton, who had favored the
plan of a President and Senate, both elected to hold office for life (or
during good behavior), with a veto power in Congress on the action of
the State Legislatures, became, through the "Federalist," in conjunction
with his associates, Mr. Madison and Mr. Jay, the most distinguished
expounder and advocate of the Constitution, as then proposed and
afterward ratified, with all its Federal and State-rights features. In
the ninth number of that remarkable series of political essays, he
quotes, adopts, and applies to the then proposed Constitution,
Montesquieu's description of a "CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC," a term which he
(Hamilton) repeatedly employs.
In the eighty-first number of the same series, replying to apprehensions
expressed by some that a State might be brought before the Federal
courts to answer as defendant in suits instituted against her, he repels
the idea in these plain and conclusive terms. The italics are my own:
"It is inherent in the nature of _sovereignty_ not to be
amenable to the suit of any individual without its consent. This
is the general sense and the general practice of mankind; and
the exemption, as one of the _attributes of sovereignty_, is now
enjoyed by the government of _every State in the Union_. Unless,
therefore, there is _a surrender of this immunity_ in the plan
of the Convention, _it will remain with the States_, and the
danger intimated must be merely ideal.... The contracts between
_a nation_ and individuals are only binding on the conscience of
_the sovereign_, and have no pretensions to a compulsive force.
They confer no right of action, independent of _the sovereign
will_. To what purpose would it be to authorize suits against
States for the debts they owe? How could recoveries be enforced?
It is evident that it could not be done without _waging war_
against the contracting State; and to ascribe to the Federal
courts, by mere implication, and in destruction of a preëxisting
right of the State governments, a power which would involve such
a consequence, would be altogether forced and unwarranted."[82]
This extract is very significant, clearly showing that Mr. Hamilton
assumed as undisputed propositions, in the first place, that the State
was _the_ "SOVEREIGN"; secondly, that this sovereignty could not be
alienated, unless by express surrender; thirdly, that no such surrender
had been made; and, fourthly, that the idea of applying coercion to a
State, even to enforce the fulfillment of a duty, would be equivalent to
waging war against a State--it was "altogether forced and
unwarrantable."
In a subsequent number, Mr. Hamilton, replying to the objection that the
Constitution contains no bill or declaration of rights, argues that it
was entirely unnecessary, because in reality the people--that is, of
course, the people, respectively, of the several States, who were the
only people known to the Constitution or to the country--had surrendered
nothing of their inherent sovereignty, but retained it unimpaired. He
says: "Here, in strictness, the people _surrender nothing_; and, as they
_retain everything_, they have no need of particular reservations." And
again: "I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and
to the extent they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the
proposed Constitution, but would be absolutely dangerous. They would
contain various exceptions to _powers not granted_, and on this very
account would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were
granted. For why declare that things shall not be done, which there is
no power to do?"[83] Could language be more clear or more complete in
vindication of the principles laid down in this work? Mr. Hamilton
declares, in effect, that the grants to the Federal Government in the
Constitution are not surrenders, but delegations of power by the people
of the States; that sovereignty remains intact where it was before; and
that the delegations of power were strictly limited to those expressly
granted--in this, merely anticipating the tenth amendment, afterward
adopted.
Finally, in the concluding article of the "Federalist," he bears
emphatic testimony to the same principles, in the remark that "every
Constitution for the United States must inevitably consist of a great
variety of particulars, in which _thirteen independent States_ are to be
accommodated in their interests or opinions of interest.... Hence the
necessity of molding and arranging all the particulars, which are to
compose the whole, in such a manner as to satisfy _all the parties_ to
the compact."[84] There is no intimation here, or anywhere else, of the
existence of any such idea as that of the aggregated people of one great
consolidated state. It is an incidental enunciation of the same truth
soon afterward asserted by Madison in the Virginia Convention--that the
people who ordained and established the Constitution were "not the
people as composing one great body, but the people as composing thirteen
sovereignties".
Mr. Madison, in the Philadelphia Convention, had at first held views of
the sort of government which it was desirable to organize, similar to
those of Mr. Hamilton, though more moderate in extent. He, too, however,
cordially conformed to the modifications in them made by his colleagues,
and was no less zealous and eminent in defending and expounding the
Constitution as finally adopted. His interpretation of its fundamental
principles is so fully shown in the extracts which have already been
given from his contributions to the "Federalist" and speeches in the
Virginia Convention, that it would be superfluous to make any additional
citation from them.
The evidence of Hamilton and Madison--two of the most eminent of the
authors of the Constitution, and the two preeminent contemporary
expounders of its meaning--is the most valuable that could be offered
for its interpretation. That of all the other statesmen of the period
only tends to confirm the same conclusions. The illustrious Washington,
who presided over the Philadelphia Convention, in his correspondence,
repeatedly refers to the proposed Union as a "Confederacy" of States, or
a "confederated Government," and to the several States as "acceding," or
signifying their "accession," to it, in ratifying the Constitution. He
refers to the Constitution itself as "a compact or treaty," and
classifies it among compacts or treaties between "men, bodies of men, or
countries." Writing to Count Rochambeau, on January 8, 1788, he says
that the proposed Constitution "is to be submitted to conventions chosen
by _the people in the several States_, and by them approved or
rejected"--showing what _he_ understood by "the people of the United
States," who were to ordain and establish it. These same people--that
is, "the people of the several States"--he says, in a letter to
Lafayette, April 28, 1788, "retain everything they do not, by express
terms, give up." In a letter written to Benjamin Lincoln, October 26,
1788, he refers to the expectation that North Carolina will accede to
the Union, and adds, "Whoever shall be found to enjoy the confidence of
_the States_ so far as to be elected Vice-President," etc.--showing that
in the "confederated Government," as he termed it, the States were still
to act independently, even in the selection of officers of the General
Government. He wrote to General Knox, June 17, 1788, "I can not but hope
that the States which may be disposed to make a secession will think
often and seriously on the consequences." June 28, 1788, he wrote to
General Pinckney that New Hampshire "had acceded to the new
Confederacy," and, in reference to North Carolina, "I should be
astonished if that State should withdraw from the Union."
I shall add but two other citations. They are from speeches of John
Marshall, afterward the most distinguished Chief Justice of the United
States--who has certainly never been regarded as holding high views of
State rights--in the Virginia Convention of 1788. In the first case, he
was speaking of the power of the States over the militia, and is thus
reported:
"The State governments did not derive their powers from the
General Government; but each government derived its powers from
the people, and each was to act according to the powers given
it. Would any gentleman deny this?... Could any man say that
this power was not retained by the States, as they had not given
it away? For (says he) does not a power remain till it is given
away? The State Legislatures had power to command and govern
their militia before, and have it still, undeniably, unless
there be something in this Constitution that takes it away....
"He concluded by observing that the power of governing the
militia was not vested in the States by implication, because,
being possessed of it antecedently to the adoption of the
Government, and not being divested of it by any grant or
restriction in the Constitution, they must necessarily be as
fully possessed of it as ever they had been, and it could not be
said that the States derived any powers from that system, but
retained them, though not acknowledged in any part of it."[85]
In the other case, the special subject was the power of the Federal
judiciary. Mr. Marshall said, with regard to this: "I hope that no
gentleman will think that a State can be called at the bar of the
Federal court. Is there no such case at present? Are there not many
cases, in which the Legislature of Virginia is a party, and yet the
State is not sued? Is it rational to suppose that the sovereign power
shall be dragged before a court?"[86]
Authorities to the same effect might be multiplied indefinitely by
quotation from nearly all the most eminent statesmen and patriots of
that brilliant period. My limits, however, permit me only to refer those
in quest of more exhaustive information to the original records, or to
the "Republic of Republics," in which will be found a most valuable
collection and condensation of the teaching of the fathers on the
subject. There was no dissent, at that period, from the interpretation
of the Constitution which I have set forth, as given by its authors,
except in the objections made by its adversaries. Those objections were
refuted and silenced, until revived, long afterward, and presented as
the true interpretation, by the school of which Judge Story was the most
effective founder.
At an earlier period--but when he had already served for several years
in Congress, and had attained the full maturity of his powers--Mr.
Webster held the views which were presented in a memorial to Congress of
citizens of Boston, December 15, 1819, relative to the admission of
Missouri, drawn up and signed by a committee of which he was chairman,
and which also included among its members Mr. Josiah Quincy. He speaks
of the States as enjoying "_the exclusive possession of sovereignty_"
over their own territory, calls the United States "the American
Confederacy," and says, "The only _parties to the Constitution_,
contemplated by it originally, were the _thirteen confederated States_."
And again: "As between the original States, the representation rests on
_compact and plighted faith_; and your memorialists have no wish that
that compact should be disturbed, or that plighted faith in the
slightest degree violated."
It is satisfactory to know that in the closing year of his life, when
looking retrospectively, with judgment undisturbed by any extraneous
influence, he uttered views of the Government which must stand the test
of severest scrutiny and defy the storms of agitation, for they are
founded on the rock of truth. In letters written and addresses delivered
during the Administration of Mr. Fillmore, he repeatedly applies to the
Constitution the term "compact," which, in 1833, he had so vehemently
repudiated. In his speech at Capon Springs, Virginia, in 1851, he says:
"If the South were to violate any part of the Constitution
intentionally and systematically, and persist in so doing year
after year, and no remedy could be had, would the North be any
longer bound by the rest of it? And if the North were,
deliberately, habitually, and of fixed purpose, to disregard one
part of it, would the South be bound any longer to observe its
other obligations?...
"How absurd it is to suppose that, when different parties enter
into a compact for certain purposes, either can disregard any
one provision, and expect, nevertheless, the other to observe
the rest!...
"I have not hesitated to say, and I repeat, that, if the
Northern States refuse, willfully and deliberately, to carry
into effect that part of the Constitution which respects the
restoration of fugitive slaves, and Congress provide no remedy,
the South would no longer be bound to observe the compact. A
bargain can not be broken on one side, and still bind the other
side."[87]
The principles which have been set forth in the foregoing chapters,
although they had come to be considered as peculiarly Southern, were not
sectional in their origin. In the beginning and earlier years of our
history they were cherished as faithfully and guarded as jealously in
Massachusetts and New Hampshire as in Virginia or South Carolina. It was
in these principles that I was nurtured. I have frankly proclaimed them
during my whole life, always contending in the Senate of the United
States against what I believed to be the mistaken construction of the
Constitution taught by Mr. Webster and his adherents. While I honored
the genius of that great man, and held friendly personal relations with
him, I considered his doctrines on these points--or rather the doctrines
advocated by him during the most conspicuous and influential portions of
his public career--to be mischievous, and the more dangerous to the
welfare of the country and the liberties of mankind on account of the
signal ability and magnificent eloquence with which they were argued.
[Footnote 80: Elliott's "Debates," vol. i, p. 239; "Madison Papers," pp.
1119-1124.]
[Footnote 81: "Madison Papers," p. 1184.]
[Footnote 82: "Federalist," No. lxxxi.]
[Footnote 83: "Federalist," No. lxxxiv.]
[Footnote 84: Ibid., No. lxxxv.]
[Footnote 85: Elliott's "Debates," vol. iii, pp. 389-391.]
[Footnote 86: Elliott's "Debates," vol. iii, p. 503.]
[Footnote 87: Curtis's "Life of Webster," chap. xxxvii, vol. ii, pp.
518, 519.]
CHAPTER XI.
The Right of Secession.--The Law of Unlimited Partnerships.--The
"Perpetual Union" of the Articles of Confederation and the "More
Perfect Union" of the Constitution.--The Important Powers
conferred upon the Federal Government and the Fundamental
Principles of the Compact the same in both Systems.--The Right
to resume Grants, when failing to fulfill their Purposes,
expressly and distinctly asserted in the Adoption of the
Constitution.
The Right of Secession--that subject which, beyond all others,
ignorance, prejudice, and political rancor have combined to cloud with
misstatements and misapprehensions--is a question easily to be
determined in the light of what has already been established with regard
to the history and principles of the Constitution. It is not something
standing apart by itself--a factious creation, outside of and
antagonistic to the Constitution--as might be imagined by one deriving
his ideas from the political literature most current of late years. So
far from being against the Constitution or incompatible with it, we
contend that, if the right to secede is not prohibited to the States,
and no power to prevent it expressly delegated to the United States, it
remains as reserved to the States or the people, from whom all the
powers of the General Government were derived.
The compact between the States which formed the Union was in the nature
of a partnership between individuals without limitation of time, and the
recognized law of such partnerships is thus stated by an eminent lawyer
of Massachusetts in a work intended for popular use:
"If the articles between the partners do not contain an
agreement that the partnership shall continue for a specified
time, it may be dissolved at the pleasure of either partner. But
no partner can exercise this power wantonly and injuriously to
the other partners, without making himself responsible for the
damage he thus causes. If there be a provision that the
partnership shall continue a certain time, this is binding."[88]
We have seen that a number of "sovereign, free, and independent" States,
during the war of the Revolution, entered into a partnership with one
another, which was not only unlimited in duration, but expressly
declared to be a "perpetual union." Yet, when that Union failed to
accomplish the purposes for which it was formed, the parties withdrew,
separately and independently, one after another, without any question
made of their right to do so, and formed a new association. One of the
declared objects of this new partnership was to form "a more perfect
union." This certainly did not mean more perfect in respect of duration;
for the former union had been declared perpetual, and perpetuity admits
of no addition. It did not mean that it was to be more indissoluble; for
the delegates of the States, in ratifying the former compact of union,
had expressed themselves in terms that could scarcely be made more
stringent. They then said:
"And we do further _solemnly plight and engage the faith of our
respective constituents_, that they shall abide by the
determinations of the United States in Congress assembled, on
all questions which, by the said confederation, are submitted to
them; and that the articles thereof shall be _inviolably
observed_ by the States we respectively represent; and that _the
Union shall be perpetual_."[89]
The formation of a "more perfect union" was accomplished by the
organization of a government more complete in its various branches,
legislative, executive, and judicial, and by the delegation to this
Government of certain additional powers or functions which had
previously been exercised by the Governments of the respective
States--especially in providing the means of operating directly upon
individuals for the enforcement of its legitimately delegated authority.
There was no abandonment nor modification of the essential principle of
a _compact_ between sovereigns, which applied to the one case as fully
as to the other. There was not the slightest intimation of so radical a
revolution as the surrender of the sovereignty of the contracting
parties would have been. The additional powers conferred upon the
Federal Government by the Constitution were merely transfers of some of
those possessed by the State governments--not subtractions from the
reserved and inalienable sovereignty of the political communities which
conferred them. It was merely the institution of a new agent who,
however enlarged his powers might be, would still remain subordinate and
responsible to the source from which they were derived--that of the
sovereign people of each State. It was an amended Union, not a
consolidation.
It is a remarkable fact that the very powers of the Federal Government
and prohibitions to the States, which are most relied upon by the
advocates of centralism as incompatible with State sovereignty, were in
force under the old Confederation when the sovereignty of the States was
expressly recognized. The General Government had then, as now, the
exclusive right and power of determining on peace and war, making
treaties and alliances, maintaining an army and navy, granting letters
of marque and reprisal, regulating coinage, establishing and controlling
the postal service--indeed, nearly all the so-called "characteristic
powers of sovereignty" exercised by the Federal Government under the
existing Constitution, except the regulation of commerce, and of levying
and collecting its revenues directly, instead of through the
interposition of the State authorities. The exercise of these
first-named powers was prohibited to the States under the old compact,
"without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled," but no
one has claimed that the Confederation had thereby acquired sovereignty.
Entirely in accord with these truths are the arguments of Mr. Madison in
the "Federalist," to show that the great principles of the Constitution
are substantially the same as those of the Articles of Confederation. He
says:
"I ask, What are these principles? Do they require that, in the
establishment of the Constitution, the States should be regarded
as distinct and independent sovereigns? They _are_ so regarded
by the Constitution proposed.... Do these principles, in fine,
require that the powers of the General Government should be
limited, and that, beyond this limit, the States should be left
in possession of their sovereignty and independence? We have
seen that, in the new Government as in the old, the general
powers are limited; and that the States, in all unenumerated
cases, are left in the enjoyment of their sovereign and
independent jurisdiction."
"The truth is," he adds, "that the great principles of the Constitution
proposed by the Convention may be considered _less as absolutely new,
than as the expansion of principles which are found in the Articles of
Confederation_."[90]
In the papers immediately following, he establishes this position in
detail by an analysis of the principal powers delegated to the Federal
Government, showing that the spirit of the original instructions to the
Convention had been followed in revising "the Federal Constitution" and
rendering it "adequate to the exigencies of government and the
preservation of the Union."[91]
The present Union owes its very existence to the dissolution, by
separate secession of its members, of the former Union, which, as we
have thus seen, as to its _organic principles_, rested upon precisely
the same foundation. The right to withdraw from the association results,
in either case, from the same principles--principles which, I think,
have been established on an impregnable basis of history, reason, law,
and precedent.
It is not contended that this right should be resorted to for
insufficient cause, or, as the writer already quoted on the law of
partnership says, "wantonly and injuriously to the other partners,"
without responsibility of the seceding party for any damage thus done.
No association can be dissolved without a likelihood of the occurrence
of incidental questions concerning common property and mutual
obligations--questions sometimes of a complex and intricate sort. If a
wrong be perpetrated, in such case, it is a matter for determination by
the means usually employed among independent and sovereign
powers--negotiation, arbitration, or, in the failure of these, by war,
with which, unfortunately, Christianity and civilization have not yet
been able entirely to dispense. But the suggestion of possible evils
does not at all affect the question of right. There is no great
principle in the affairs either of individuals or of nations that is not
liable to such difficulties in its practical application.
But, we are told, there is no mention made of secession in the
Constitution. Mr. Everett says: "The States are not named in it; the
word sovereignty does not occur in it; the right of secession is as much
ignored in it as the procession of the equinoxes." We have seen how very
untenable is the assertion that the States are not named in it, and how
much pertinency or significance in the omission of the _word_
"sovereignty." The pertinent question that occurs is, Why was so obvious
an attribute of sovereignty not expressly renounced if it was intended
to surrender it? It certainly existed; it was not surrendered; therefore
it still exists. This would be a more natural and rational conclusion
than that it has ceased to exist because it is not mentioned.
The simple truth is, that it would have been a very extraordinary thing
to incorporate into the Constitution any express provision for the
secession of the States and dissolution of the Union. Its founders
undoubtedly desired and hoped that it would be perpetual; against the
proposition for power to coerce a State, the argument was that it would
be a means, not of preserving, but of destroying, the Union. It was not
for them to make arrangements for its termination--a calamity which
there was no occasion to provide for in advance. Sufficient for their
day was the evil thereof. It is not usual, either in partnerships
between men or in treaties between governments, to make provision for a
dissolution of the partnership or a termination of the treaty, unless
there be some special reason for a limitation of time. Indeed, in
treaties, the usual formula includes a declaration of their
_perpetuity_; but in either case the power of the contracting parties,
or of any of them, to dissolve the compact, on terms not damaging to the
rights of the other parties, is not the less clearly understood. It was
not necessary in the Constitution to affirm the right of secession,
because it was an attribute of sovereignty, and the States had reserved
all which they had not delegated.
The right of the people of the several States to resume the powers
delegated by them to the common agency, was not left without positive
and ample assertion, even at a period when it had never been denied. The
ratification of the Constitution by Virginia has already been quoted, in
which the people of that State, through their Convention, did expressly
"declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution,
being derived from the people of the United States, _may be resumed by
them_, whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or
oppression, and that every power not granted thereby remains with them
and at their will."[92]
New York and Rhode Island were no less explicit, both declaring that
"the powers of government _may be reassumed by the people_ whenever it
shall become necessary to their happiness."[93]
These expressions are not mere _obiter dicta_, thrown out incidentally,
and entitled only to be regarded as an expression of opinion by their
authors. Even if only such, they would carry great weight as the
deliberately expressed judgment of enlightened contemporaries, but they
are more: they are parts of the very acts or ordinances by which these
States ratified the Constitution and acceded to the Union, and can not
be detached from them. If they are invalid, the ratification itself was
invalid, for they are inseparable. By inserting these declarations in
their ordinances, Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island, formally,
officially, and permanently, declared their interpretation of the
Constitution as recognizing the right of secession by the resumption of
their grants. By accepting the ratifications with this declaration
incorporated, the other States as formally accepted the principle which
it asserted.
I am well aware that it has been attempted to construe these
declarations concerning the right of _the people_ to reassume their
delegations of power--especially in the terms employed by Virginia,
"people of the United States"--as having reference to the idea of _one
people_, in mass, or "in the aggregate." But it can scarcely be possible
that any candid and intelligent reader, who has carefully considered the
evidence already brought to bear on the subject, can need further
argument to disabuse his mind of that political fiction. The "people of
the United States," from whom the powers of the Federal Government were
"derived," _could have been_ no other than the people who ordained and
ratified the Constitution; and this, it has been shown beyond the power
of denial, was done by the people of _each State_, severally and
independently. No other _people_ were known to the authors of the
declarations above quoted. Mr. Madison was a leading member of the
Virginia Convention, which made that declaration, as well as of the
general Convention that drew up the Constitution. We have seen what
_his_ idea of "the people of the United States" was--"not the people as
composing one great body, but the people as composing thirteen
sovereignties."[94] Mr. Lee, of Westmoreland ("Light-Horse Harry"), in
the same Convention, answering Mr. Henry's objection to the expression,
"We, the people," said: "It [the Constitution] is now submitted to _the
people of Virginia_. If we do not adopt it, it will be always null and
void as to us. Suppose it was found proper for our adoption, and
becoming the government of _the people of Virginia_, by what style
should it be done? Ought we not to make use of the name of the people?
No other style would be proper."[95] It would certainly be superfluous,
after all that has been presented heretofore, to add any further
evidence of the meaning that was attached to these expressions by their
authors. "The people of the United States" were in their minds the
people of Virginia, the people of Massachusetts, and the people of every
other State that should agree to unite. They _could_ have meant only
that the people of their respective States who had delegated certain
powers to the Federal Government, in ratifying the Constitution and
_acceding_ to the Union, reserved to themselves the right, in event of
the failure of their purposes, to "resume" (or "reassume") those powers
by _seceding_ from the same Union.
Finally, the absurdity of the construction attempted to be put upon
these expressions will be evident from a very brief analysis. If the
assertion of the right of reassumption of their powers was meant for the
protection of _the whole people_--the people in mass--the people "in the
aggregate"--of a consolidated republic--against whom or what was it to
protect them? By whom were the powers granted to be perverted to the
injury or oppression of the whole people? By themselves or by some of
the States, all of whom, according to this hypothesis, had been
consolidated into one? As no danger could have been apprehended from
either of these, it must have been against the _Government_ of the
United States that the provision was made; that is to say, the whole
people of a republic make this declaration against a Government
established by themselves and entirely subject to their own control,
under a Constitution which contains provision for its own amendment by
this very same "whole people," whenever they may think proper! Is it not
a libel upon the statesmen of that generation to attribute to their
grave and solemn declarations a meaning so vapid and absurd?
To those who argue that the grants of the Constitution are fatal to the
reservation of sovereignty by the States, the Constitution furnishes a
conclusive answer in the amendment which was coeval with the adoption of
the instrument, and which declares that all powers not delegated to the
Government of the Union were reserved to the States or to the people. As
sovereignty was not delegated by the States, it was necessarily
reserved. It would be superfluous to answer arguments against implied
powers of the States; none are claimed by implication, because all not
delegated by the States remained with them, and it was only in an
abundance of caution that they expressed the right to resume such parts
of their unlimited power as was delegated for the purposes enumerated.
As there be those who see danger to the perpetuity of the Union in the
possession of such power by the States, and insist that our fathers did
not intend to bind the States together by a compact no better than "a
rope of sand," it may be well to examine their position. From what have
dangers to the Union arisen? Have they sprang from too great restriction
on the exercise of the granted powers, or from the assumption by the
General Government of power claimed by implication? The whole record of
our Union answers, from the latter only.
Was this tendency to usurpation caused by the presumption of paramount
authority in the General Government, or by the assertion of the right of
a State to resume the powers it had delegated? Reasonably and honestly
it can not be assigned to the latter. Let it be supposed that the "whole
people" had recognized the right of a State of the Union, peaceably and
independently, to resume the powers which, peaceably and independently,
she had delegated to the Federal Government, would not this have been
potent to restrain the General Government from exercising its functions
to the injury and oppression of such State? To deny that effect would be
to suppose that a dominant majority would be willing to drive a State
from the Union. Would the admission of the right of a State to resume
the grants it had made, have led to the exercise of that right for light
and trivial causes? Surely the evidence furnished by the nations, both
ancient and modern, refutes the supposition. In the language of the
Declaration of Independence, "All experience hath shown that mankind are
more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right
themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." Would
not real grievances be rendered more tolerable by the consciousness of
power to remove them; and would not even imaginary wrongs be embittered
by the manifestation of a purpose to make them perpetual? To ask these
questions is to answer them.
The wise and brave men who had, at much peril and great sacrifice,
secured the independence of the States, were as little disposed to
surrender the sovereignty of the States as they were anxious to organize
a General Government with adequate powers to remedy the defects of the
Confederation. The Union they formed was not to destroy the States, but
to "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."
[Footnote 88: Parsons, "Rights of a Citizen," chap. xx, section 3.]
[Footnote 89: Ratification appended to Articles of Confederation. (See
Elliott's "Debates," vol. i, p. 113.)]
[Footnote 90: "Federalist," No. xl.]
[Footnote 91: Ibid., Nos. xli-xliv.]
[Footnote 92: See Elliott's "Debates," vol. i, p. 360.]
[Footnote 93: Ibid., pp. 361, 369.]
[Footnote 94: Elliott's "Debates," vol. iii, p. 114.]
[Footnote 95: Ibid., p. 71.]
CHAPTER XII.
Coercion the Alternative to Secession.--Repudiation of it by the
Constitution and the Fathers of the Constitutional
Era.--Difference between Mr. Webster and Mr. Hamilton.
The alternative to secession is coercion. That is to say, if no such
right as that of secession exists--if it is forbidden or precluded by
the Constitution--then it is a wrong; and, by a well settled principle
of public law, for every wrong there must be a remedy, which in this
case must be the application of force to the State attempting to
withdraw from the Union.
Early in the session of the Convention which formed the Constitution, it
was proposed to confer upon Congress the power "to call forth the force
of the Union against any member of the Union failing to fulfill its duty
under the articles thereof." When this proposition came to be
considered, Mr. Madison observed that "a union of the States containing
such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of
force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an
infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party
attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be
bound. He hoped that such a system would be framed as might render this
recourse unnecessary, and moved that the clause be postponed." This
motion was adopted _nem. con._, and the proposition was never again
revived.[96] Again, on a subsequent occasion, speaking of an appeal to
force, Mr. Madison said: "Was such a remedy eligible? Was it
practicable?... Any government for the United States, formed on the
supposed practicability of using force against the unconstitutional
proceedings of the States, would prove as visionary and fallacious as
the government of Congress."[97] Every proposition looking in any way to
the same or a similar object was promptly rejected by the convention.
George Mason, of Virginia, said of such a proposition: "Will not the
citizens of the invaded State assist one another, until they rise as one
man and shake off the Union altogether?"[98]
Oliver Ellsworth, in the ratifying Convention of Connecticut, said:
"This Constitution does not attempt to coerce _sovereign bodies,
States_, in their political capacity. No coercion is applicable to such
bodies but that of an armed force. If we should attempt to execute the
laws of the Union by sending an armed force against a delinquent State,
it would involve the good and bad, the innocent and guilty, in the same
calamity."[99]
Mr. Hamilton, in the Convention of New York, said: "To coerce the States
is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised.... What picture
does this idea present to our view? A complying State at war with a
non-complying State: Congress marching the troops of one State into the
bosom of another ... Here is a nation at war with itself. Can any
reasonable man be well disposed toward a government which makes war and
carnage the only means of supporting itself--a government that can exist
only by the sword?... But can we believe that one State will ever suffer
itself to be used as an instrument of coercion? The thing is a dream--it
is impossible."[100]
Unhappily, our generation has seen that, in the decay of the principles
and feelings which animated the hearts of all patriots in that day, this
thing, like many others then regarded as impossible dreams, has been
only too feasible, and that States have permitted themselves to be used
as instruments, not merely for the coercion, but for the destruction of
the freedom and independence of their sister States.
Edmund Randolph, Governor of Virginia, although the mover of the
original proposition to authorize the employment of the forces of the
Union against a delinquent member, which had been so signally defeated
in the Federal Convention, afterward, in the Virginia Convention, made
an eloquent protest against the idea of the employment of force against
a State. "What species of military coercion," said he, "could the
General Government adopt for the enforcement of obedience to its
demands? Either an army sent into the heart of a delinquent State, or
blocking up its ports. Have we lived to this, then, that, in order to
suppress and exclude tyranny, it is necessary to render the most
affectionate friends the most bitter enemies, set the father against the
son, and make the brother slay the brother? Is this the happy expedient
that is to preserve liberty? Will it not destroy it? If an army be once
introduced to force us, if once marched into Virginia, figure to
yourselves what the dreadful consequence will be: the most lamentable
civil war must ensue."[101]
We have seen already how vehemently the idea of even _judicial_ coercion
was repudiated by Hamilton, Marshall, and others. The suggestion of
_military_ coercion was uniformly treated, as in the above extracts,
with still more abhorrence. No principle was more fully and firmly
settled on the highest authority than that, under our system, there
could be no coercion of a State.
Mr. Webster, in his elaborate speech of February 16, 1833, arguing
throughout against the sovereignty of the States, and in the course of
his argument sadly confounding the ideas of the Federal Constitution and
the Federal Government, as he confounds the sovereign people of the
States with the State governments, says: "The States _can not_ omit to
appoint Senators and electors. It is not a matter resting in State
discretion or State pleasure.... No member of a State Legislature can
refuse to proceed, at the proper time, to elect Senators to Congress, or
to provide for the choice of electors of President and Vice-President,
any more than the members can refuse, when the appointed day arrives, to
meet the members of the other House, to count the votes for those
officers and ascertain who are chosen."[102] This was before the
invention in 1877 of an electoral commission to relieve Congress of its
constitutional duty to count the vote. Mr. Hamilton, on the contrary,
fresh from the work of forming the Constitution, and familiar with its
principles and purposes, said: "It is certainly true that the State
Legislatures, by forbearing the appointment of Senators, may destroy the
national Government."[103]
It is unnecessary to discuss the particular question on which these two
great authorities are thus directly at issue. I do not contend that the
State Legislatures, of their own will, have a right to forego the
performance of any Federal duty imposed upon them by the Constitution.
But there is a power beyond and above that of either the Federal or
State governments--the power of the people of the State, who ordained
and established the Constitution, as far as it applies to themselves,
reserving, as I think has been demonstrated, the right to reassume the
grants of power therein made, when they deem it necessary for their
safety or welfare to do so. At the behest of this power, it certainly
becomes not only the right, but the duty, of their State Legislature to
refrain from any action implying adherence to the Union, or partnership,
from which the sovereign has withdrawn.
[Footnote 96: "Madison Papers," pp. 732, 761.]
[Footnote 97: Ibid., p. 822.]
[Footnote 98: Ibid., p. 914.]
[Footnote 99: Elliott's "Debates," vol. ii, p. 199.]
[Footnote 100: Ibid., pp. 232, 233.]
[Footnote 101: Elliott's "Debates," vol. iii, p. 117.]
[Footnote 102: "Congressional Debates," vol. ix, Part I, p. 566.]
[Footnote 103: "Federalist," No. lix.]
CHAPTER XIII.
Some Objections considered.--The New States.--Acquired
Territory.--Allegiance, false and true.--Difference between
Nullification and Secession.--Secession a Peaceable Remedy.--No
Appeal to Arms.--Two Conditions noted.
It would be only adding to a superabundance of testimony to quote
further from the authors of the Constitution in support of the
principle, unquestioned in that generation, that the people who
granted--that is to say, of course, the people of the several
States--might resume their grants. It will require but few words to
dispose of some superficial objections that have been made to the
application of this doctrine in a special case.
It is sometimes said that, whatever weight may attach to principles
founded on the sovereignty and independence of the original thirteen
States, they can not apply to the States of more recent
origin--constituting now a majority of the members of the Union--because
these are but the offspring or creatures of the Union, and must of
course be subordinate and dependent.
This objection would scarcely occur to any instructed mind, though it
may possess a certain degree of specious plausibility for the untaught.
It is enough to answer that the entire equality of the States, in every
particular, is a vital condition of their union. Every new member that
has been admitted into the partnership of States came in, as is
expressly declared in the acts for their admission, on a footing of
perfect equality in every respect with the original members. This
equality is as complete as the equality, before the laws, of the son
with the father, immediately on the attainment by the former of his
legal majority, without regard to the prior condition of dependence and
tutelage. The relations of the original States to one another and to the
Union can not be affected by any subsequent accessions of new members,
as the Constitution fixes those relations permanently, and furnishes the
normal standard which is applicable to all. The Boston memorial to
Congress, referred to in a foregoing chapter, as prepared by a committee
with Mr. Webster at its head, says that the new States "are universally
considered as admitted into the Union upon the same footing as the
original States, and as possessing, in respect to the Union, the same
rights of _sovereignty, freedom, and independence_, as the other
States."
But, with regard to States formed of territory acquired by purchase from
France, Spain, and Mexico, it is claimed that, as they were bought by
the United States, they belong to the same, and have no right to
withdraw at will from an association the property which had been
purchased by the other parties.
Happy would it have been if the equal rights of the people of _all_ the
States to the enjoyment of territory acquired by the common treasure
could have been recognized at the proper time! There would then have
been no secession and no war.
As for the sordid claim of ownership of States, on account of the money
spent for the land which they contain--I can understand the ground of a
claim to some interest in the soil, so long as it continues to be public
property, but have yet to learn in what way the United States ever
became purchaser of the _inhabitants_ or of their political rights.
Any question in regard to property has always been admitted to be matter
for fair and equitable settlement, in case of the withdrawal of a State.
The treaty by which the Louisiana territory was ceded to the United
States expressly provided that the inhabitants thereof should be
"admitted, as soon as possible, according to the principles of the
Federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages,
and immunities of citizens of the United States."[104] In all other
acquisitions of territory the same stipulation is either expressed or
implied. Indeed, the denial of the right would be inconsistent with the
character of American political institutions.
Another objection made to the right of secession is based upon obscure,
indefinite, and inconsistent ideas with regard to _allegiance_. It
assumes various shapes, and is therefore somewhat difficult to meet,
but, as most frequently presented, may be stated thus: that the citizen
owes a double allegiance, or a divided allegiance--partly to his State,
partly to the United States: that it is not possible for either of these
powers to release him from the allegiance due to the other: that the
State can no more release him from his obligations to the Union than the
United States can absolve him from his duties to his State. This is the
most moderate way in which the objection is put. The extreme
centralizers go further, and claim that allegiance to the Union, or, as
they generally express it, to _the Government_--meaning thereby the
Federal Government--is paramount, and the obligation to the State only
subsidiary--if, indeed, it exists at all.
This latter view, if the more monstrous, is at least the more consistent
of the two, for it does not involve the difficulty of a divided
allegiance, nor the paradoxical position in which the other places the
citizen, in case of a conflict between his State and the other members
of the Union, of being necessarily a rebel against the General
Government or a traitor to the State of which he is a citizen.
As to _true_ allegiance, in the light of the principles which have been
established, there can be no doubt with regard to it. The primary,
paramount allegiance of the citizen is due to the sovereign only. That
sovereign, under our system, is the people--the people of the State to
which he belongs--the people who constituted the State government which
he obeys, and which protects him in the enjoyment of his personal
rights--the people who alone (as far as he is concerned) ordained and
established the Federal Constitution and Federal Government--the people
who have reserved to themselves sovereignty, which involves the power to
revoke all agencies created by them. The obligation to support the State
or Federal Constitution and the obedience due to either State or Federal
Government are alike derived from and dependent on the allegiance due to
this sovereign. If the sovereign abolishes the State government and
ordains and establishes a new one, the obligation of allegiance requires
him to transfer his obedience accordingly. If the sovereign withdraws
from association with its confederates in the Union, the allegiance of
the citizen requires him to follow the sovereign. Any other course is
rebellion or treason--words which, in the cant of the day, have been so
grossly misapplied and perverted as to be made worse than unmeaning. His
relation to the Union arose from the membership of the State of which he
was a citizen, and ceased whenever his State withdrew from it. He can
not owe obedience--much less allegiance--to an association from which
his sovereign has separated, and thereby withdrawn him.
Every officer of both Federal and State governments is required to take
an oath to support the Constitution, a compact the binding force of
which is based upon the sovereignty of the States--a sovereignty
necessarily carrying with it the principles just stated with regard to
allegiance. Every such officer is, therefore, virtually sworn to
maintain and support the sovereignty of all the States.
Military and naval officers take, in addition, an oath to obey the
lawful orders of their superiors. Such an oath has never been understood
to be eternal in its obligations. It is dissolved by the death,
dismissal, or resignation of the officer who takes it; and such
resignation is not a mere optional right, but becomes an imperative duty
when continuance in the service comes to be in conflict with the
ultimate allegiance due to the sovereignty of the State to which he
belongs.
A little consideration of these plain and irrefutable truths would show
how utterly unworthy and false are the vulgar taunts which attribute
"treason" to those who, in the late secession of the Southern States,
were loyal to the only sovereign entitled to their allegiance, and which
still more absurdly prate of the violation of oaths to support "_the
Government_," an oath which nobody ever could have been legally required
to take, and which must have been ignorantly confounded with the
prescribed oath to support the Constitution.
Nullification and secession are often erroneously treated as if they
were one and the same thing. It is true that both ideas spring from the
sovereign right of a State to interpose for the protection of its own
people, but they are altogether unlike as to both their extent and the
character of the means to be employed. The first was a temporary
expedient, intended to restrain action until the question at issue could
be submitted to a convention of the States. It was a remedy which its
supporters sought to apply within the Union; a means to avoid the last
resort--separation. If the application for a convention should fail, or
if the State making it should suffer an adverse decision, the advocates
of that remedy have not revealed what they proposed as the next
step--supposing the infraction of the compact to have been of that
character which, according to Mr. Webster, dissolved it.
Secession, on the other hand, was the assertion of the inalienable right
of a people to change their government, whenever it ceased to fulfill
the purposes for which it was ordained and established. Under our form
of government, and the cardinal principles upon which it was founded, it
should have been a peaceful remedy. The withdrawal of a State from a
league has no revolutionary or insurrectionary characteristic. The
government of the State remains unchanged as to all internal affairs. It
is only its external or confederate relations that are altered. To term
this action of a sovereign a "rebellion," is a gross abuse of language.
So is the flippant phrase which speaks of it as an appeal to the
"arbitrament of the sword." In the late contest, in particular, there
was no appeal by the seceding States to the arbitrament of arms. There
was on their part no invitation nor provocation to war. They stood in an
attitude of self-defense, and were attacked for merely exercising a
right guaranteed by the original terms of the compact. They neither
tendered nor accepted any challenge to the wager of battle. The man who
defends his house against attack can not with any propriety be said to
have submitted the question of his right to it to the arbitrament of
arms.
Two moral obligations or restrictions upon a seceding State certainly
exist: in the first place, not to break up the partnership without good
and sufficient cause; and, in the second, to make an equitable
settlement with former associates, and, as far as may be, to avoid the
infliction of loss or damage upon any of them. Neither of these
obligations was violated or neglected by the Southern States in their
secession.
[Footnote 104: Ray's "Louisiana Digest," vol. i, p. 24.]
CHAPTER XIV.
Early Foreshadowings.--Opinions of Mr. Madison and Mr. Rufus
King.--Safeguards provided.--Their Failure.--State
Interposition.--The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions.--Their
Endorsement by the People in the Presidential Elections of 1800
and Ensuing Terms.--South Carolina and Mr. Calhoun.--The
Compromise of 1833.--Action of Massachusetts in
1843-'45.--Opinions of John Quincy Adams.--Necessity for
Secession.
From the earliest period, it was foreseen by the wisest of our statesmen
that a danger to the perpetuity of the Union would arise from the
conflicting interests of different sections, and every effort was made
to secure each of these classes of interests against aggression by the
other. As a proof of this, may be cited the following extract from Mr.
Madison's report of a speech made by himself in the Philadelphia
Convention on the 30th of June, 1787:
"He admitted that every peculiar interest, whether in any class
of citizens or any description of States, ought to be secured as
far as possible. Wherever there is danger of attack, there ought
to be given a constitutional power of defense. But he contended
that the States were divided into different interests, not by
their difference of size, but by other circumstances; the most
material of which resulted from climate, but principally from
the effects of their having or not having slaves. These two
causes concurred in forming the great division of interests in
the United States. It did not lie between the large and small
States; it lay between the Northern and Southern; and, if any
defensive power were necessary, it ought to be mutually given to
these two interests."[105]
Mr. Rufus King, a distinguished member of the Convention from
Massachusetts, a few days afterward, said, to the same effect: "He was
fully convinced that the question concerning a difference of interests
did not lie where it had hitherto been discussed, between the great and
small States, but between the Southern and Eastern. For this reason he
had been ready to yield something, in the proportion of representatives,
for the security of the Southern.... He was not averse to giving them a
still greater security, but did not see how it could be done."[106]
The wise men who formed the Constitution were not seeking to bind the
States together by the material power of a majority; nor were they so
blind to the influences of passion and interest as to believe that paper
barriers would suffice to restrain a majority actuated by either or both
of these motives. They endeavored, therefore, to prevent the conflicts
inevitable from the ascendancy of a sectional or party majority, by so
distributing the powers of government that each interest might hold a
check upon the other. It was believed that the compromises made with
regard to representation--securing to each State an equal vote in the
Senate, and in the House of Representatives giving the States a weight
in proportion to their respective population, estimating the negroes as
equivalent to three fifths of the same number of free whites--would have
the effect of giving at an early period a majority in the House of
Representatives to the South, while the North would retain the
ascendancy in the Senate. Thus it was supposed that the two great
sectional interests would be enabled to restrain each other within the
limits of purposes and action beneficial to both.
The failure of these expectations need not affect our reverence for the
intentions of the fathers, or our respect for the means which they
devised to carry them into effect. That they were mistaken, both as to
the maintenance of the balance of sectional power and as to the fidelity
and integrity with which the Congress was expected to conform to the
letter and spirit of its delegated authority, is perhaps to be ascribed
less to lack of prophetic foresight, than to that over-sanguine
confidence which is the weakness of honest minds, and which was
naturally strengthened by the patriotic and fraternal feelings resulting
from the great struggle through which they had then but recently passed.
They saw, in the sufficiency of the authority delegated to the Federal
Government and in the fullness of the sovereignty retained by the
States, a system the strict construction of which was so eminently
adapted to indefinite expansion of the confederacy as to embrace every
variety of production and consequent diversity of pursuit. Carried out
in the spirit in which it was devised, there was in this system no
element of disintegration, but every facility for an enlargement of the
circle of the family of States (or nations), so that it scarcely seemed
unreasonable to look forward to a fulfillment of the aspiration of Mr.
Hamilton, that it might extend over North America, perhaps over the
whole continent.
Not at all incompatible with these views and purposes was the
recognition of the right of the States to reassume, if occasion should
require it, the powers which they had delegated. On the contrary, the
maintenance of this right was the surest guarantee of the perpetuity of
the Union, and the denial of it sounded the first serious note of its
dissolution. The conservative efficiency of "_State interposition_," for
maintenance of the essential principles of the Union against aggression
or decadence, is one of the most conspicuous features in the debates of
the various State Conventions by which the Constitution was ratified.
Perhaps their ideas of the particular form in which this interposition
was to be made may have been somewhat indefinite; and left to be reduced
to shape by the circumstances when they should arise, but the principle
itself was assumed and asserted as fundamental. But for a firm reliance
upon it, as a sure resort in case of need, it may safely be said that
the Union would never have been formed. It would be unjust to the wisdom
and sagacity of the framers of the Constitution to suppose that they
entirely relied on paper barriers for the protection of the rights of
minorities. Fresh from the defense of violated charters and faithless
aggression on inalienable rights, it might, _a priori_, be assumed that
they would require something more potential than mere promises to
protect them from human depravity and human ambition. That they did so
is to be found in the debates both of the General and the State
Conventions, where State interposition was often declared to be the
bulwark against usurpation.
At an early period in the history of the Federal Government, the States
of Kentucky and Virginia found reason to reassert this right of State
interposition. In the first of the famous resolutions drawn by Mr.
Jefferson in 1798, and with some modification adopted by the Legislature
of Kentucky in November of that year, it is declared that, "whensoever
the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are
_unauthoritative, void, and of no force_; that to this compact each
State acceded as a State, and is an integral party; that this
Government, created by this compact, was not made the exclusive or final
judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would
have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its
powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among parties having
no common judge, _each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as
well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress_."
In the Virginia resolutions, drawn by Mr. Madison, adopted on the 24th
of December, 1798, and reaffirmed in 1799, the General Assembly of that
State declares that "it views the powers of the Federal Government as
resulting from the compact, to which the States are parties, as limited
by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting that
compact, as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants
enumerated in that compact; and that, in case of a deliberate, palpable,
and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact,
the States, who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty
bound, to interpose, for arresting the progress of the evil, and for
maintaining within their respective limits the authorities, rights, and
liberties, appertaining to them." Another of the same series of
resolutions denounces the indications of a design "to consolidate the
States by degrees into one sovereignty."
These, it is true, were only the resolves of two States, and they were
dissented from by several other State Legislatures--not so much on the
ground of opposition to the general principles asserted as on that of
their being unnecessary in their application to the alien and sedition
laws, which were the immediate occasion of their utterance.
Nevertheless, they were the basis of the contest for the Presidency in
1800, which resulted in their approval by the people in the triumphant
election of Mr. Jefferson. They became part of the accepted creed of the
Republican, Democratic, State-Rights, or Conservative party, as it has
been variously termed at different periods, and as such they were
ratified by the people in every Presidential election that took place
for sixty years, with two exceptions. The last victory obtained under
them, and when they were emphasized by adding the construction of them
contained in the report of Mr. Madison to the Virginia Legislature in
1799, was at the election of Mr. Buchanan--the last President chosen by
vote of a party that could with any propriety be styled "national," in
contradistinction to sectional.
At a critical and memorable period, that pure spirit, luminous
intellect, and devoted adherent of the Constitution, the great statesman
of South Carolina, invoked this remedy of State interposition against
the Tariff Act of 1828, which was deemed injurious and oppressive to his
State. No purpose was then declared to coerce the State, as such, but
measures were taken to break the protective shield of her authority and
enforce the laws of Congress upon her citizens, by compelling them to
pay outside of her ports the duties on imports, which the State had
declared unconstitutional, and had forbidden to be collected in her
ports.
There remained at that day enough of the spirit in which the Union had
been founded--enough of respect for the sovereignty of States and of
regard for the limitations of the Constitution--to prevent a conflict of
arms. The compromise of 1833 was adopted, which South Carolina agreed to
accept, the principle for which she contended being virtually conceded.
Meantime there had been no lack, as we have already seen, of assertions
of the sovereign rights of the States from other quarters. The
declaration of these rights by the New England States and their
representatives, on the acquisition of Louisiana in 1803, on the
admission of the State of that name in 1811-'12, and on the question of
the annexation of Texas in 1843-'45, have been referred to in another
place. Among the resolutions of the Massachusetts Legislature, in
relation to the proposed annexation of Texas, adopted in February, 1845,
were the following:
"2. _Resolved_, That there has hitherto been no precedent of the
admission of a foreign state or foreign territory into the Union
by legislation. And as the powers of legislation, granted in the
Constitution of the United States to Congress, do not embrace a
case of the admission of a foreign state or foreign territory,
by legislation, into the Union, such an act of admission _would
have no binding force whatever on the people of Massachusetts_.
"3. _Resolved_, That the power, _never having been granted by
the people of Massachusetts_, to admit into the Union States and
Territories not within the same when the Constitution was
adopted, _remains with the people, and can only be exercised in
such way and manner as the people shall hereafter designate and
appoint_."[107]
To these stanch declarations of principles--with regard to which
(leaving out of consideration the particular occasion that called them
forth) my only doubt would be whether they do not express too decided a
doctrine of nullification--may be added the avowal of one of the most
distinguished sons of Massachusetts, John Quincy Adams, in his discourse
before the New York Historical Society, in 1839:
"Nations" (says Mr. Adams) "acknowledge no judge between them
upon earth; and their governments, from necessity, must, in
their intercourse with each other, decide when the failure of
one party to a contract to perform its obligations absolves the
other from the reciprocal fulfillment of its own. But this last
of earthly powers is not necessary to the freedom or
independence of States connected together by the immediate
action of the people of whom they consist. To the people alone
is there reserved as well the dissolving as the constituent
power, and that power can be exercised by them only under the
tie of conscience, binding them to the retributive justice of
Heaven.
"With these qualifications, we may admit the same right as
vested in the _people of every State_ in the Union, with
reference to the General Government, which was exercised by the
people of the united colonies with reference to the supreme head
of the British Empire, of which they formed a part; and under
these limitations have the people of each State in the Union a
right to secede from the confederated Union itself.
"Thus stands the RIGHT. But the indissoluble link of union
between the people of the several States of this confederated
nation is, after all, not in the RIGHT, but in the HEART. If the
day should ever come (may Heaven avert it!) when the affections
of the people of these States shall be alienated from each
other, when the fraternal spirit shall give way to cold
indifference, or collision of interests shall fester into
hatred, the bonds of political association will not long hold
together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of
conciliated interests and kindly sympathies; and _far better
will it be for the people of the disunited States to part in
friendship with each other than to be held together by
constraint_. Then will be the time for reverting to the
precedents which occurred at the formation and adoption of the
Constitution, to form again a _more perfect Union, by dissolving
that which could no longer bind_, and to leave the separated
parts to be reunited by the law of political gravitation to the
center."
Perhaps it is unfortunate that, in earlier and better times, when the
prospect of serious difficulties first arose, a convention of the States
was not assembled to consider the relations of the various States and
the Government of the Union. As time rolled on, the General Government,
gathering with both hands a mass of undelegated powers, reached that
position which Mr. Jefferson had pointed out as an intolerable evil--the
claim of a right to judge of the extent of its own authority. Of those
then participating in public affairs, it was apparently useless to ask
that the question should be submitted for decision to the parties to the
compact, under the same conditions as those which controlled the
formation and adoption of the Constitution; otherwise, a convention
would have been utterly fruitless, for at that period, when aggression
for sectional aggrandizement had made such rapid advances, it can
scarcely be doubted that more than a fourth, if not a majority of
States, would have adhered to that policy which had been manifested for
years in the legislation of many States, as well as in that of the
Federal Government. What course would then have remained to the Southern
States? Nothing, except either to submit to a continuation of what they
believed and felt to be violations of the compact of union, breaches of
faith, injurious and oppressive usurpation, or else to assert the
sovereign right to reassume the grants they had made, since those grants
had been perverted from their original and proper purposes.
Surely the right to resume the powers delegated and to judge of the
propriety and sufficiency of the causes for doing so are alike
inseparable from the possession of sovereignty. Over sovereigns there is
no common judge, and between them can be no umpire, except by their own
agreement and consent. The necessity or propriety of exercising the
right to withdraw from a confederacy or union must be determined by each
member for itself. Once determined in favor of withdrawal, all that
remains for consideration is the obligation to see that no wanton damage
is done to former associates, and to make such fair settlement of common
interests as the equity of the case may require.
[Footnote 105: "Madison Papers," p. 1006.]
[Footnote 106: Ibid., pp. 1057, 1058.]
[Footnote 107: "Congressional Globe," vol. xiv, p. 299.]
CHAPTER XV.
A Bond of Union necessary after the Declaration of
Independence.--Articles of Confederation.--The Constitution of
the United States.--The Same Principle for obtaining Grants of
Power in both.--The Constitution an Instrument enumerating the
Powers delegated.--The Power of Amendment merely a Power to
amend the Delegated Grants.--A Smaller Power was required for
Amendment than for a Grant.--The Power of Amendment is confined
to Grants of the Constitution.--Limitations on the Power of
Amendment.
In July, 1776, the Congress of the thirteen united colonies declared
that "these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and
independent States." The denial of this asserted right and the attempted
coercion made it manifest that a bond of union was necessary, for the
common defense.
In November of the next year, viz., 1777, articles of confederation and
perpetual union were entered into by the thirteen States under the style
of "The United States of America." The government instituted was to be
administered by a congress of delegates from the several States, and
each State to have an equal voice in legislation. The Government so
formed was to act through and by the States, and, having no power to
enforce its requisitions upon the States, embarrassment was early
realized in its efforts to provide for the exigencies of war. After the
treaty of peace and recognition of the independence of the States, the
difficulty of raising revenue and regulating commerce was so great as to
lead to repeated efforts to obtain from the States additional grants of
power. Under the Articles of Confederation no amendment of them could be
made except by the unanimous consent of the States, and this it had not
been found possible to obtain for the powers requisite to the efficient
discharge of the functions intrusted to the Congress. Hence arose the
proceedings for a convention to amend the articles of confederation. The
result was the formation of a new plan of government, entitled "The
Constitution of the United States of America."
This was submitted to the Congress, in order that, if approved by them,
it might be referred to the States for adoption or rejection by the
several conventions thereof, and, if adopted by nine of the States, it
was to be the compact of union between the States so ratifying the same.
The new form of government differed in many essential particulars from
the old one. The delegates, intent on the purpose to give greater
efficiency to the government of the Union, proposed greatly to enlarge
its powers, so much so that it was not deemed safe to confide them to a
single body, and they were consequently distributed between three
independent departments of government, which might be a check upon one
another. The Constitution did not, like the Articles of Confederation,
declare that the States had agreed to a perpetual union, but distinctly
indicated the hope of its perpetuity by the expression in the preamble
of the purpose to "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our
posterity." The circumstances under which the Union of the Constitution
was formed justified the hope of its perpetuity, but the brief existence
of the Confederation may have been a warning against the renewal of the
assertion that the compact should be perpetual.
A remedy for the embarrassment which had been realized, under the
Articles of Confederation, in obtaining amendments to correct any
defects in grants of power, so as to render them effective for the
purpose for which they were given, was provided by its fifth article. It
is here to be specially noted that new grants of power, as asked for by
the Convention, were under the Articles of Confederation only to be
obtained from the unanimous assent of the States. Therefore it followed
that two of the States which did not ratify the Constitution were, so
long as they retained that attitude, free from its obligations. Thus it
is seen that the same principle in regard to obtaining grants of
additional power for the Federal Government formed the rule for the
Union as it had done for the Confederation; that is, that the consent of
each and every State was a prerequisite. The apprehension which justly
existed that several of the States might reject the Constitution, and
under the rule of unanimity defeat it, led to the seventh article of the
Constitution, which, provided that the ratification by the conventions
of nine States should be sufficient for the establishment of the
Constitution between the States ratifying it, which of course
contemplated leaving the others, more or less in number, separate and
distinct from the nine States forming a new government. Thus was the
Union to be a voluntary compact, and all the powers of its government to
be derived from the assent of each of its members.
These powers as proposed by the Constitution were so extensive as to
create alarm and opposition by some of the most influential men in many
of the States. It is known that the objection of the patriot Samuel
Adams was only overcome by an assurance that such an amendment as the
tenth would be adopted. Like opposition was by like assurance elsewhere
overcome. That article is in these words: "The powers not delegated to
the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the
States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people."
Amendment, however, of the delegated powers was made more easy than it
had been under the Confederation. Ratification by three fourths of the
States was sufficient under the Constitution for the adoption of an
amendment to it. As this power of amendment threatens to be the Aaron's
rod which will swallow up the rest, I propose to give it special
examination. What is the Constitution of the United States? The whole
body of the instrument, the history of its formation and adoption, as
well as the tenth amendment, added in an abundance of caution, clearly
show it to be an instrument enumerating the powers delegated by the
States to the Federal Government, their common agent. It is specifically
declared that all which was not so delegated was reserved. On this mass
of reserved powers, those which the States declined to grant, the
Federal Government was expressly forbidden to intrude. Of what value
would this prohibition have been, if three fourths of the States could,
without the assent of a particular State, invade the domain which that
State had reserved for its own exclusive use and control?
It has heretofore, I hope, been satisfactorily demonstrated that the
States were sovereigns before they formed the Union, and that they have
never surrendered their sovereignty, but have only intrusted by their
common agent certain functions of sovereignty to be used for their
common welfare.
Among the powers delegated was one to amend the Constitution, which, it
is submitted, was merely the power to amend the delegated grants, and
these were obtained by the separate and independent action of each State
acceding to the Union. When we consider how carefully each clause was
discussed in the General Convention, and how closely each was
scrutinized in the conventions of the several States, the conclusion can
not be avoided that all was specified which it was intended to bestow,
and not a few of the wisest in that day held that too much power had
been conferred.
Aware of the imperfection of everything devised by man, it was foreseen
that, in the exercise of the functions intrusted to the General
Government, experience might reveal the necessity of modification--i.e.,
amendment--and power was therefore given to amend, in a certain manner,
the delegated trusts so as to make them efficient for the purposes
designed, or to prevent their misconstruction or abuse to the injury or
oppression of any of the people. In support of this view I refer to the
historical fact that the first ten amendments of the Constitution,
nearly coeval with it, all refer either to the powers delegated, or are
directed to the greater security of the rights which were guarded by
express limitations.
The distinction in the mind of the framers of the Constitution between
amendment and delegation of power seems to me clearly drawn by the fact
that the Constitution itself, which was a proposition to the States to
grant enumerated powers, was only to have effect between the ratifying
States; but the fifth article provided that amendments to the
Constitution might be adopted by three fourths of the States, and
thereby be valid as part of the Constitution. It thus appears that a
smaller power was required for an amendment than for a grant, and the
natural if not necessary conclusion is, that it was because an amendment
must belong to, and grow out of, a grant previously made. If a so-called
amendment could have been the means of obtaining a new power, is it to
be supposed that those watchful guardians of community independence, for
which the war of the Revolution had been fought, would have been
reconciled to the adoption of the Constitution, by the declaration that
the powers not delegated are reserved to the States? Unless the power of
amendment be confined to the grants of the Constitution, there can be no
security to the reserved rights of a minority less than a fourth of the
States. I submit that the word "amendment" necessarily implies an
improvement upon something which is possessed, and can have no proper
application to that which did not previously exist.
The apprehension that was felt of this power of amendment by the framers
of the Constitution is shown by the restrictions placed upon the
exercise of several of the delegated powers. For example: power was
given to admit new States, but no new State should be erected within the
jurisdiction of any other State, nor be formed by the junction of two or
more States, or parts of States, without the consent of the Legislatures
of those States; and the power to regulate commerce was limited by the
prohibition of an amendment affecting, for a certain time, the migration
or importation of persons whom any of the existing States should think
proper to admit; and by the very important provision for the protection
of the smaller States and the preservation of their equality in the
Union, that the compact in regard to the membership of the two Houses of
Congress should not be so amended that any "State, without its consent,
shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate." These
limitations and prohibitions on the power of amendment all refer to
clauses of the Constitution, to things which existed as part of the
General Government; they were not needed, and therefore not to be found
in relation to the reserved powers of the States, on which the General
Government was forbidden to intrude by the ninth article of the
amendments.
In view of the small territory of the New England States, comparatively
to that of the Middle and Southern States, and the probability of the
creation of new States in the large Territory of some of these latter,
it might well have been anticipated that in the course of time the New
England States would become less than one fourth of the members of the
Union. Nothing is less likely than that the watchful patriots of that
region would have consented to a form of government which should give to
a majority of three fourths of the States the power to deprive them of
their dearest rights and privileges. Yet to this extremity the new-born
theory of the power of amendment would go. Against this insidious
assault, this wooden horse which it is threatened to introduce into the
citadel of our liberties, I have sought to warn the inheritors of our
free institutions, and earnestly do invoke the resistance of all true
patriots.
PART III.
SECESSION AND CONFEDERATION.
CHAPTER I.
Opening of the New Year.--The People in Advance of their
Representatives.--Conciliatory Conduct of Southern Members of
Congress.--Sensational Fictions.--Misstatements of the Count of
Paris.--Obligations of a Senator.--The Southern Forts and
Arsenals.--Pensacola Bay and Fort Pickens.--The Alleged "Caucus"
and its Resolutions.--Personal Motives and Feelings.--The
Presidency not a Desirable Office.--Letter from the Hon. C. C.
Clay.
With the failure of the Senate Committee of Thirteen to come to any
agreement, the last reasonable hope of a pacific settlement of
difficulties within the Union was extinguished in the minds of those
most reluctant to abandon the effort. The year 1861 opened, as we have
seen, upon the spectacle of a general belief, among the people of the
planting States, in the necessity of an early secession, as the only
possible alternative left them.
It has already been shown that the calmness and deliberation, with which
the measures requisite for withdrawal were adopted and executed, afford
the best refutation of the charge that they were the result of haste,
passion, or precipitation. Still more contrary to truth is the
assertion, so often recklessly made and reiterated, that the people of
the South were led into secession, against their will and their better
judgment, by a few ambitious and discontented politicians.
The truth is, that the Southern people were in advance of their
representatives throughout, and that these latter were not agitators or
leaders in the popular movement. They were in harmony with its great
principles, but their influence, with very few exceptions, was exerted
to restrain rather than to accelerate their application, and to allay
rather than to stimulate excitement. As sentinels on the outer wall, the
people had a right to look to them for warning of approaching danger;
but, as we have seen, in that last session of the last Congress that
preceded the disruption, Southern Senators, of the class generally
considered extremists, served on a committee of pacification, and strove
earnestly to promote its objects. Failing in this, they still exerted
themselves to prevent the commission of any act that might result in
bloodshed.
Invention has busied itself, to the exhaustion of its resources, in the
creation of imaginary "cabals," "conspiracies," and "intrigues," among
the Senators and Representatives of the South on duty in Washington at
that time. The idle gossip of the public hotels, the sensational rumors
of the streets, the _canards_ of newspaper correspondents--whatever was
floating through the atmosphere of that anxious period--however lightly
regarded at the moment by the more intelligent, has since been drawn
upon for materials to be used in the construction of what has been
widely accepted as authentic history. Nothing would seem to be too
absurd for such uses. Thus, it has been gravely stated that a caucus of
Southern Senators, held in the early part of January, "resolved to
assume to themselves the political power of the South"; that they took
entire control of all political and military operations; that they
issued instructions for the passage of ordinances of secession, and for
the seizure of forts, arsenals, and custom-houses; with much more of the
like groundless fiction. A foreign prince, who served for a time in the
Federal Army, and has since undertaken to write a history of "The Civil
War in America"--a history the incomparable blunders of which are
redeemed from suspicion of willful misstatement only by the writer's
ignorance of the subject--speaks of the Southern representatives as
having "kept their seats in Congress in order to be able to paralyze its
action, forming, at the same time, a center whence they issued
directions to their friends in the South to complete the dismemberment
of the republic."[108] And again, with reference to the secession of
several States, he says that "the word of command issued by _the
committee at Washington was_ promptly obeyed."[109]
Statements such as these are a travesty upon history. That the
representatives of the South held conference with one another and took
counsel together, as men having common interests and threatened by
common dangers, is true, and is the full extent of the truth. That they
communicated to friends at home information of what was passing is to be
presumed, and would have been most obligatory if it had not been that
the published proceedings rendered such communication needless. But that
any such man, or committee of men, should have undertaken to direct the
mighty movement then progressing throughout the South, or to control,
through the telegraph and the mails, the will and the judgment of
conventions of the people, assembled under the full consciousness of the
dignity of that sovereignty which they represented, would have been an
extraordinary degree of folly and presumption.
The absurdity of the statement is further evident from a consideration
of the fact that the movements which culminated in the secession of the
several States began before the meeting of Congress. They were not
inaugurated, prosecuted, or controlled by the Senators and
Representatives in Congress, but by the Governors, Legislatures, and
finally by the delegates of the people in conventions of the respective
States. I believe I may fairly claim to have possessed a full share of
the confidence of the people of the State which I in part represented;
and proof has already been furnished to show how little effect my own
influence could have upon their action, even in the negative capacity of
a brake upon the wheels, by means of which it was hurried on to
consummation.
As for the imputation of holding our seats as a vantage-ground in
plotting for the dismemberment of the Union--in connection with which
the Count of Paris does me the honor to single out my name for special
mention--it is a charge so dishonorable, if true, to its object--so
disgraceful, if false, to its author--as to be outside of the proper
limit of discussion. It is a charge which no accuser ever made in my
presence, though I had in public debate more than once challenged its
assertion and denounced its falsehood. It is enough to say that I always
held, and repeatedly avowed, the principle that a Senator in Congress
occupied the position of an ambassador from the State which he
represented to the Government of the United States, as well as in some
sense a member of the Government; and that, in either capacity, it would
be dishonorable to use his powers and privileges for the destruction or
for the detriment of the Government to which he was accredited. Acting
on this principle, as long as I held a seat in the Senate, my best
efforts were directed to the maintenance of the Constitution, the Union
resulting from it, and to make the General Government an effective agent
of the States for its prescribed purpose. As soon as the paramount
allegiance due to Mississippi forbade a continuance of these efforts, I
withdrew from the position. To say that during this period I did nothing
secretly, in conflict with what was done or professed openly, would be
merely to assert my own integrity, which would be worthless to those who
may doubt it, and superfluous to those who believe in it. What has been
said on the subject for myself, I believe to be also true of my Southern
associates in Congress.
With regard to the forts, arsenals, etc., something more remains to be
said. The authorities of the Southern States immediately after, and in
some cases a few days before, their actual secession, took possession
(in every instance without resistance or bloodshed) of forts, arsenals,
custom-houses, and other public property within their respective limits.
I do not propose at this time to consider the question of their right to
do so; that may be more properly done hereafter. But it may not be out
of place briefly to refer to the statement, often made, that the absence
of troops from the military posts in the South, which enabled the States
so quietly to take such possession, was the result of collusion and
prearrangement between the Southern leaders and the Federal Secretary of
War, John B. Floyd, of Virginia. It is a sufficient answer to this
allegation to state the fact that the absence of troops from these
posts, instead of being exceptional, was, and still is, their ordinary
condition in time of peace. At the very moment when these sentences are
being written (in 1880), although the army of the United States is twice
as large as in 1860; although four years of internal war and a yet
longer period of subsequent military occupation of the South have
habituated the public to the presence of troops in their midst, to an
extent that would formerly have been startling if not offensive;
although allegations of continued disaffection on the part of the
Southern people have been persistently reiterated, for party
purposes--yet it is believed that the forts and arsenals in the States
of the Gulf are in as defenseless a condition, and as liable to quiet
seizure (if any such purpose existed), as in the beginning of the year
1861. Certainly, those within the range of my personal information are
occupied, as they were at that time, only by ordnance-sergeants or
fort-keepers.
There were, however, some exceptions to this general rule--especially in
the defensive works of the harbor of Charleston, the forts at Key West
and the Dry Tortugas, and those protecting the entrance of Pensacola
Bay. The events which occurred in Charleston Harbor will be more
conveniently noticed hereafter. The island forts near the extreme
southern point of Florida were too isolated and too remote from
population to be disturbed at that time; but the situation long
maintained at the mouth of Pensacola Bay affords a signal illustration
of the forbearance and conciliatory spirit that animated Southern
counsels. For a long time, Fort Pickens, on the island of Santa Rosa, at
the entrance to the harbor, was occupied only by a small body of Federal
soldiers and marines--less than one hundred, all told. Immediately
opposite, and in possession of the other two forts and the adjacent
navy-yard, was a strong force of volunteer troops of Florida and Alabama
(which might, on short notice, have been largely increased), ready and
anxious to attack and take possession of Fort Pickens. That they could
have done so is unquestionable, and, if mere considerations of military
advantage had been consulted, it would surely have been done. But the
love of peace and the purpose to preserve it, together with a revulsion
from the thought of engaging in fraternal strife, were more potent than
considerations of probable interest. During the anxious period of
uncertainty and apprehension which ensued, the efforts of the Southern
Senators in Washington were employed to dissuade (they could not
_command_) from any aggressive movement, however justifiable, that might
lead to collision. These efforts were exerted through written and
telegraphic communications to the Governors of Alabama and Florida, the
Commander of the Southern troops, and other influential persons near the
scene of operations. The records of the telegraph-office, if preserved,
will no doubt show this to be a very moderate statement of those
efforts. It is believed that by such influence alone a collision was
averted; and it is certain that its exercise gave great dissatisfaction
at the time to some of the ardent advocates of more active measures. It
may be that _they_ were right, and that we, who counseled delay and
forbearance, were wrong. Certainly, if we could have foreseen the
ultimate failure of all efforts for a peaceful settlement, and the
perfidy that was afterward to be practiced in connection with them, our
advice would have been different.
Certain resolutions, said to have been adopted in a meeting of Senators
held on the evening of the 5th of January,[110] have been magnified, by
the representations of artful commentators on the events of the period,
into something vastly momentous.
The significance of these resolutions was the admission that we could
not longer advise delay, and even that was unimportant under the
circumstances, for three of the States concerned had taken final action
on the subject before the resolutions could have been communicated to
them. As an expression of opinion, they merely stated that of which we
had all become convinced by the experience of the previous month--that
our long-cherished hopes had proved illusory--that further efforts in
Congress would be unavailing, and that nothing remained, except that the
States should take the matter into their own hands, as final judges of
their wrongs and of the measure of redress. They recommended the
formation of a confederacy among the seceding States as early as
possible after their secession--advice the expediency of which could
hardly be questioned, either by friend or foe. As to the "instructions"
asked for with regard to the propriety of continuing to hold their
seats, I suppose it must have been caused by some diversity of opinion
which then and long afterward continued to exist; and the practical
value of which must have been confined to Senators of States which did
not actually secede. For myself, I can only say that no advice could
have prevailed on me to hold a seat in the Senate after receiving notice
that Mississippi had withdrawn from the Union. The best evidence that my
associates thought likewise is the fact that, although no instructions
were given them, they promptly withdrew on the receipt of official
information of the withdrawal of the States which they represented.
It will not be amiss here briefly to state what were my position and
feelings at the period now under consideration, as they have been the
subject of gross and widespread misrepresentation. It is not only
untrue, but absurd, to attribute to me motives of personal ambition to
be gratified by a dismemberment of the Union. Much of my life had been
spent in the military and civil service of the United States. Whatever
reputation I had acquired was identified with their history; and, if
future preferment had been the object, it would have led me to cling to
the Union as long as a shred of it should remain. If any, judging after
the event, should assume that I was allured by the high office
subsequently conferred upon me by the people of the Confederate States,
the answer to any such conclusion has been made by others, to whom it
was well known, before the Confederacy was formed, that I had no desire
to be its President. When the suggestion was made to me, I expressed a
decided objection, and gave reasons of a public and permanent character
against being placed in that position.
Furthermore, I then held the office of United States Senator from
Mississippi--one which I preferred to all others. The kindness of the
people had three times conferred it upon me, and I had no reason to fear
that it would not be given again, as often as desired. So far from
wishing to change this position for any other, I had specially requested
my friends (some of whom had thought of putting me in nomination for the
Presidency of the United States in 1860) not to permit "my name to be
used before the Convention for any nomination whatever."
I had been so near the office for four years, while in the Cabinet of
Mr. Pierce, that I saw it from behind the scenes, and it was to me an
office in no wise desirable. The responsibilities were great; the labor,
the vexations, the disappointments, were greater. Those who have
intimately known the official and personal life of our Presidents can
not fail to remember how few have left the office as happy men as when
they entered it, how darkly the shadows gathered around the setting sun,
and how eagerly the multitude would turn to gaze upon another orb just
rising to take its place in the political firmament.
Worn by incessant fatigue, broken in fortune, debarred by public
opinion, prejudice, or tradition, from future employment, the wisest and
best who have filled that office have retired to private life, to
remember rather the failure of their hopes than the success of their
efforts. He must, indeed, be a self-confident man who could hope to fill
the chair of Washington with satisfaction to himself, with the assurance
of receiving on his retirement the meed awarded by the people to that
great man, that he had "lived enough for life and for glory," or even of
feeling that the sacrifice of self had been compensated by the service
rendered to his country.
The following facts were presented in a letter written several years ago
by the Hon. C. C. Clay, of Alabama, who was one of my most intimate
associates in the Senate, with reference to certain misstatements to
which his attention had been called by one of my friends:
"The import is, that Mr. Davis, disappointed and chagrined at
not receiving the nomination of the Democratic party for
President of the United States in 1860, took the lead on the
assembling of Congress in December, 1860, in a 'conspiracy' of
Southern Senators 'which planned the secession of the Southern
States from the Union,' and 'on the night of January 5, 1861,...
framed the scheme of revolution which was implicitly and
promptly followed at the South.' In other words, that Southern
Senators (and, chief among them, Jefferson Davis), then and
there, instigated and induced the Southern States to secede.
"I am quite sure that Mr. Davis neither expected nor desired the
nomination for the Presidency of the United States in 1860. He
never evinced any such aspiration, by word or sign, to me--with
whom he was, I believe, as intimate and confidential as with any
person outside of his own family. On the contrary, he requested
the delegation from Mississippi not to permit the use of his
name before the Convention. And, after the nomination of both
Douglas and Breckinridge, he conferred with them, at the
instance of leading Democrats, to persuade them to withdraw,
that their friends might unite on some second choice--an office
he would never have undertaken, had he sought the nomination or
believed he was regarded as an aspirant.
"Mr. Davis did not take an active part in planning or hastening
secession. I think he only _regretfully_ consented to it, as a
political necessity for the preservation of popular and State
rights, which were seriously threatened by the triumph of a
sectional party who were pledged to make war on them. I know
that some leading men, and even Mississippians, thought him too
moderate and backward, and found fault with him for not taking a
leading part in secession.
"No 'plan of secession' or 'scheme of revolution' was, to my
knowledge, discussed--certainly none matured--at the caucus, 5th
of January, 1861, unless, forsooth, the resolutions appended
hereto be so held. They comprise the sum and substance of what
was said and done. I never heard that the caucus advised the
South 'to accumulate munitions of war,' or 'to organize and
equip an army of one hundred thousand men,' or determined 'to
hold on as long as possible to the Southern seats.' So far from
it, a majority of Southern Senators seemed to think there would
be no war; that the dominant party in the North desired
separation from the South, and would gladly let their 'erring
sisters go in peace.' I could multiply proofs of such a
disposition. As to holding on to their seats, no Southern
Legislature advised it, no Southern Senator who favored
secession did so but one, and none others wished to do so, I
believe.
"The 'plan of secession,' if any, and the purpose of secession,
unquestionably, originated, not in Washington City, or with the
Senators or Representatives of the South, but among the people
of the several States, many months before it was attempted. They
followed no leaders at Washington or elsewhere, but acted for
themselves, with an independence and unanimity unprecedented in
any movement of such magnitude. Before the meeting of the caucus
of January 5, 1861, South Carolina had seceded, and Alabama,
Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas had taken the initial
step of secession, by calling conventions for its
accomplishment. Before the election of Lincoln, all the Southern
States, excepting one or two, had pledged themselves to separate
from the Union upon the triumph of a sectional party in the
Presidential election, by acts or resolutions of their
Legislatures, resolves of both Democratic and Whig State
Conventions, and of primary assemblies of the people--in every
way in which they could commit themselves to any future act.
Their purpose was proclaimed to the world through the press and
telegraph, and criticised in Congress, in the Northern
Legislatures, in press and pulpit, and on the hustings, during
many months before Congress met in December, 1860.
"Over and above all these facts, the reports of the United
States Senate show that, prior to the 5th of January, 1861,
Southern Senators united with Northern Democratic Senators in an
effort to effect pacification and prevent secession, and that
Jefferson Davis was one of a committee appointed by the Senate
to consider and report such a measure; that it failed because
the Northern Republicans opposed everything that looked to
peace; that Senator Douglas arraigned them as trying to
precipitate secession, referred to Jefferson Davis as one who
sought conciliation, and called upon the Republican Senators to
tell what they would do, if anything, to restore harmony and
prevent disunion. They did not even deign a response. Thus, by
their sullen silence, they made confession (without avoidance)
of their stubborn purpose to hold up no hand raised to maintain
the Union...."
[Footnote 108: "History of the Civil war," by the Count of Paris;
American translation, vol. i, p. 122.]
[Footnote 109: Ibid, p. 125.]
[Footnote 110: Subjoined are the resolutions referred to, adopted by the
Senators from Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas,
and Arkansas. Messrs. Toombs, of Georgia, and Sebastian, of Arkansas,
are said to have been absent from the meeting:
"_Resolved_, That, in our opinion, each of the States should, as
soon as may be, secede from the Union.
"_Resolved_, That provision should be made for a convention to
organize a confederacy of the seceding States: the Convention to
meet not later than the 15th of February, at the city of
Montgomery, in the State of Alabama.
"_Resolved_, That, in view of the hostile legislation that is
threatened against the seceding States, and which may be
consummated before the 4th of March, we ask instructions whether
the delegations are to remain in Congress until that date, for
the purpose of defeating such legislation.
"_Resolved_, That a committee be and are hereby appointed,
consisting of Messrs. Davis, Slidell, and Mallory, to carry out
the objects of this meeting."
]
CHAPTER II.
Tenure of Public Property ceded by the States.--Sovereignty and
Eminent Domain.--Principles asserted by Massachusetts, New York,
Virginia, and other States.--The Charleston Forts.--South
Carolina sends Commissioners to Washington.--Sudden Movement of
Major Anderson.--Correspondence of the Commissioners with the
President.--Interviews of the Author with Mr. Buchanan.--Major
Anderson.--The Star of the West.--The President's Special
Message.--Speech of the Author in the Senate.--Further
Proceedings and Correspondence relative to Fort Sumter.--Mr.
Buchanan's Rectitude in Purpose and Vacillation in Action.
The sites of forts, arsenals, navy-yards, and other public property of
the Federal Government were ceded by the States, within whose limits
they were, subject to the condition, either expressed or implied, that
they should be used solely and exclusively for the purposes for which
they were granted. The ultimate ownership of the soil, or eminent
domain, remains with the people of the State in which it lies, by virtue
of their sovereignty. Thus, the State of Massachusetts has declared
that--
"The sovereignty and jurisdiction of the Commonwealth extend to
all places within the boundaries thereof, subject only to such
rights of _concurrent jurisdiction_ as have been or may be
granted over any places ceded by the Commonwealth to the United
States."[111]
In the acts of cession of the respective States, the terms and
conditions on which the grant is made are expressed in various forms and
with differing degrees of precision. The act of New York, granting the
use of a site for the Brooklyn Navy-Yard, may serve as a specimen. It
contains this express condition:
"The United States are to retain such use and jurisdiction, _so
long as said tract shall be applied to the defense and safety of
the city and port of New York, and no longer_.... But the
jurisdiction hereby ceded, and the exemption from taxation
herein granted, shall continue in respect to said property, and
to each portion thereof, _so long as the same shall remain the
property of the United States_, and be used for the purposes
aforesaid, _and no longer_." The cession of the site of the
Watervliet Arsenal is made in the same or equivalent terms,
except that, instead of "defense and safety of the city and port
of New York," etc., the language is, "defense and safety _of the
said State_, and no longer."
South Carolina in 1805, by legislative enactment, ceded to the United
States, in Charleston Harbor and on Beaufort River, various forts and
fortifications, and sites for the erection of forts, on the following
conditions, viz.:
"That, if the United States shall not, within three years from
the passing of this act, and notification thereof by the
Governor of this State to the Executive of the United States,
repair the fortifications now existing thereon or build such
other forts or fortifications as may be deemed most expedient by
the Executive of the United States on the same, and keep a
garrison or garrisons therein; in such case this grant or
cession shall be void and of no effect."--("Statutes at Large of
South Carolina," vol. v, p. 501.)
It will hardly be contended that the conditions of this grant were
fulfilled, and, if it be answered that the State did not demand the
restoration of the forts or sites, the answer certainly fails after
1860, when the controversy arose, and the unfounded assertion was made
that those forts and sites had been purchased with the money, and were
therefore the property, of the United States. The terms of the cession
sufficiently manifest that they were free-will offerings of such forts
and sites as belonged to the State; and public functionaries were bound
to know that, by the United States law of March 20, 1794, it was
provided "that no purchase shall be made where such lands are the
property of a State."--(Act to provide for the defense of certain ports
and harbors of the United States.)
The stipulations made by Virginia, in ceding the ground for Fortress
Monroe and the Rip Raps, on the 1st of March, 1821, are as follows:
"_An Act ceding to the United States the lands on Old Point
Comfort, and the shoal called the Rip Raps._
"_Whereas_, It is shown to the present General Assembly that the
Government of the United States is solicitous that certain lands
at Old Point Comfort, and at the shoal called the Rip Raps,
should be, with the right of property and entire jurisdiction
thereon, vested in the said United States for the purpose of
fortification and other objects of national defense:
"1. _Be it enacted by the General Assembly_, That it shall be
lawful and proper for the Governor of this Commonwealth, by
conveyance or deeds in writing under his hand and the seal of
the State, to transfer, assign, and make over unto the said
United States the right of property and title, as well as all
the jurisdiction which this Commonwealth possesses over the
lands and shoal at Old Point Comfort and the Rip Raps:...
"2. _And be it further enacted_, That, _should the said United
States at any time abandon the said lands and shoal, or
appropriate them to any other purposes than those indicated in
the preamble to this act, that then, and in that case, the same
shall revert to and revest in this Commonwealth_."[112]
By accepting such grants, under such conditions, the Government of the
United States assented to their propriety, and the principle that holds
good in any one case is of course applicable to all others of the same
sort, whether expressly asserted in the act of cession or not. Indeed,
no express declaration would be necessary to establish a conclusion
resulting so directly from the nature of the case, and the settled
principles of sovereignty and eminent domain.
A State withdrawing from the Union would necessarily assume the control
theretofore exercised by the General Government over all public defenses
and other public property within her limits. It would, however, be but
fair and proper that adequate compensation should be made to the other
members of the partnership, or their common agent, for the value of the
works and for any other advantage obtained by the one party, or loss
incurred by the other. Such equitable settlement, the seceding States of
the South, without exception, as I believe, were desirous to make, and
prompt to propose to the Federal authorities.
On the secession of South Carolina, the condition of the defenses of
Charleston Harbor became a subject of anxiety with all parties. Of the
three forts in or at the entrance of the harbor, two were unoccupied,
but the third (Fort Moultrie) was held by a garrison of but little more
than one hundred men--of whom only sixty-three were said to be
effectives--under command of Major Robert Anderson, of the First
Artillery.
About twelve days before the secession of South Carolina, the
representatives in Congress from that State had called on the President
to assure him, in anticipation of the secession of the State, that no
purpose was entertained by South Carolina to attack, or in any way
molest, the forts held by the United States in the harbor of
Charleston--at least until opportunity could be had for an amicable
settlement of all questions that might arise with regard to these forts
and other public property--provided that no reënforcements should be
sent, and the military _status_ should be permitted to remain unchanged.
The South Carolinians understood Mr. Buchanan as approving of this
suggestion, although declining to make any formal pledge.
It appears, nevertheless, from subsequent developments, that both before
and after the secession of South Carolina preparations were secretly
made for reënforcing Major Anderson, in case it should be deemed
necessary by the Government at Washington.[113] On the 11th of December
instructions were communicated to him, from the War Department, of which
the following is the essential part:
"You are carefully to avoid every act which would needlessly
tend to provoke aggression; and for that reason you are not,
without evident and imminent necessity, to take up any position
which could be construed into the assumption of a hostile
attitude, but you are to hold possession of the forts in this
harbor, and, if attacked, you are to defend yourself to the last
extremity. The smallness of your force will not permit you,
perhaps, to occupy more than one of the three forts, but an
attack on, or attempt to take possession of either of them, will
be regarded as an act of hostility, and you may then put your
command into either of them which you may deem most proper to
increase its power of resistance. You are also authorized to
take similar defensive steps, whenever you have tangible
evidence of a design to proceed to a hostile act."[114]
These instructions were afterward modified--as we are informed by Mr.
Buchanan--so as, instead of requiring him to defend himself "to the last
extremity," to direct him to do so as long as any reasonable hope
remained of saving the fort.[115]
Immediately after the secession of the State, the Convention of South
Carolina deputed three distinguished citizens of that State--Messrs.
Robert W. Barnwell, James H. Adams, and James L. Orr--to proceed to
Washington, "to treat with the Government of the United States for the
delivery of the forts, magazines, lighthouses, and other real estate,
with their appurtenances, within the limits of South Carolina, and also
for an apportionment of the public debt, and for a division of all other
property held by the Government of the United States, as agent of the
confederated States, of which South Carolina was recently a member; and
generally to negotiate as to all other measures and arrangements proper
to be made and adopted in the existing relation of the parties, and for
the continuance of peace and amity between this Commonwealth and the
Government at Washington."
The Commissioners, in the discharge of the duty intrusted to them,
arrived in Washington on the 26th of December. Before they could
communicate with the President, however--indeed, on the morning after
their arrival--they were startled, and the whole country electrified, by
the news that, during the previous night, Major Anderson had "secretly
dismantled Fort Moultrie,"[116] spiked his guns, burned his
gun-carriages, and removed his command to Fort Sumter, which occupied a
more commanding position in the harbor. This movement changed the whole
aspect of affairs. It was considered by the Government and people of
South Carolina as a violation of the implied pledge of a maintenance of
the _status quo_; the remaining forts and other public property were at
once taken possession of by the State; and the condition of public
feeling became greatly exacerbated. An interview between the President
and the Commissioners was followed by a sharp correspondence, which was
terminated on the 1st of January, 1861, by the return to the
Commissioners of their final communication, with an endorsement stating
that it was of such a character that the President declined to receive
it. The negotiations were thus abruptly broken off. This correspondence
may be found in the Appendix.[117]
In the mean time, Mr. Cass, Secretary of State, had resigned his
position early in December, on the ground of the refusal of the
President to send reënforcements to Charleston. On the occupation of
Fort Sumter by Major Anderson, Mr. Floyd, Secretary of War, taking the
ground that it was virtually a violation of a pledge given or implied by
the Government, had asked that the garrison should be entirely withdrawn
from the harbor of Charleston, and, on the refusal of the President to
consent to this, had tendered his resignation, which was promptly
accepted.[118]
This is believed to be a correct outline of the earlier facts with
regard to the Charleston forts, and in giving it I have done so, as far
as possible, without prejudice, or any expression of opinion upon the
motives of the actors.
The kind relations, both personal and political, which had long existed
between Mr. Buchanan and myself, had led him, occasionally, during his
presidency, to send for me to confer with him on subjects that caused
him anxiety, and warranted me in sometimes calling upon him to offer my
opinion on matters of special interest or importance. Thus it was that I
had communicated with him freely in regard to the threatening aspect of
events in the earlier part of the winter of 1860-'61. When he told me of
the work that had been done, or was doing, at Fort Moultrie--that is,
the elevation of its parapet by crowning it with barrels of sand--I
pointed out to him the impolicy as well as inefficiency of the measure.
It seemed to me impolitic to make ostensible preparations for defense,
when no attack was threatened; and the means adopted were inefficient,
because any ordinary field-piece would knock the barrels off the
parapet, and thus to render them only hurtful to the defenders. He
inquired whether the expedient had not been successful at Fort Brown, on
the Rio Grande, in the beginning of the Mexican war, and was answered
that the attack on Fort Brown had been made with small-arms, or at great
distance.
After the removal of the garrison to the stronger and safer position of
Fort Sumter, I called upon him again to represent, from my knowledge of
the people and the circumstances of the case, how productive the
movement would be of discontent, and how likely to lead to collision.
One of the vexed questions of the day was, by what authority the
collector of the port should be appointed, and the rumor was, that
instructions had been given to the commanding officer at Fort Sumter not
to allow vessels to pass, unless under clearance from the United States
collector. It was easy to understand that, if a vessel were fired upon
under such circumstances, it would be accepted as the beginning of
hostilities--a result which both he and I desired to avert, as the
greatest calamity that could be foreseen or imagined. My opinion was,
that the wisest and best course would be to withdraw the garrison
altogether from the harbor of Charleston.
The President's objection to this was, that it was his bounden duty to
preserve and protect the property of the United States. To this I
replied, with all the earnestness the occasion demanded, that I would
pledge my life that, if an inventory were taken of all the stores and
munitions in the fort, and an ordnance-sergeant with a few men left in
charge of them, they would not be disturbed. As a further guarantee, I
offered to obtain from the Governor of South Carolina full assurance
that, in case any marauders or lawless combination of persons should
attempt to seize or disturb the property, he would send from the citadel
of Charleston an adequate guard to protect it and to secure its keepers
against molestation.
The President promised me to reflect upon this proposition, and to
confer with his Cabinet upon the propriety of adopting it. All Cabinet
consultations are secret; which is equivalent to saying that I never
knew what occurred in that meeting to which my proposition was
submitted. The result was not communicated to me, but the events which
followed proved that the suggestion was not accepted.
Major Anderson, who commanded the garrison, had many ties and
associations that bound him to the South. He performed his part like the
true soldier and man of the finest sense of honor that he was; but that
it was most painful to him to be charged with the duty of holding the
fort as a threat to the people of Charleston is a fact known to many
others as well as to myself. We had been cadets together. He was my
first acquaintance in that corps, and the friendship then formed was
never interrupted. We had served together in the summer and autumn of
1860, in a commission of inquiry into the discipline, course of studies,
and general condition of the United States Military Academy. At the
close of our labors the commission had adjourned, to meet again in
Washington about the end of the ensuing November, to examine the report
and revise it for transmission to Congress. Major Anderson's duties in
Charleston Harbor hindered him from attending this adjourned meeting of
the commission, and he wrote to me, its chairman, to explain the cause
of his absence. That letter was lost when my library and private papers
were "captured" from my home in Mississippi. If any one has preserved it
as a trophy of war, its publication would show how bright was the honor,
how broad the patriotism of Major Anderson, and how fully he sympathized
with me as to the evils which then lowered over the country.
In comparing the past and the present among the mighty changes which
passion and sectional hostility have wrought, one is profoundly and
painfully impressed by the extent to which public opinion has drifted
from the landmarks set up by the sages and patriots who formed the
constitutional Union, and observed by those who administered its
government down to the time when war between the States was inaugurated.
Mr. Buchanan, the last President of the old school, would as soon have
thought of aiding in the establishment of a monarchy among us as of
accepting the doctrine of coercing the States into submission to the
will of a majority, in mass, of the people of the United States. When
discussing the question of withdrawing the troops from the port of
Charleston, he yielded a ready assent to the proposition that the
cession of a site for a fort, for purposes of public defense, lapses,
whenever that fort should be employed by the grantee against the State
by which the cession was made, on the familiar principle that any grant
for a specific purpose expires when it ceases to be used for that
purpose. Whether on this or any other ground, if the garrison of Fort
Sumter had been withdrawn in accordance with the spirit of the
Constitution of the United States, from which the power to apply
coercion to a State was deliberately and designedly excluded, and if
this had been distinctly assigned as a reason for its withdrawal, the
honor of the United States Government would have been maintained intact,
and nothing could have operated more powerfully to quiet the
apprehensions and allay the resentment of the people of South Carolina.
The influence which such a measure would have exerted upon the States
which had not yet seceded, but were then contemplating the adoption of
that extreme remedy, would probably have induced further delay; and the
mellowing effect of time, with a realization of the dangers to be
incurred, might have wrought mutual forbearance--if, indeed, anything
could have checked the madness then prevailing among the people of the
Northern States in their thirst for power and forgetfulness of the
duties of federation.
It would have been easy to concede this point. The little garrison of
Fort Sumter served only as a menace; for it was utterly incapable of
holding the fort if attacked, and the poor attempt soon afterward made
to reënforce and provision it, by such a vessel as the Star of the West,
might by the uncharitable be readily construed as a scheme to provoke
hostilities. Yet, from my knowledge of Mr. Buchanan, I do not hesitate
to say that he had no such wish or purpose. His abiding hope was to
avert a collision, or at least to postpone it to a period beyond the
close of his official term. The management of the whole affair was what
Talleyrand describes as something worse than a crime--a blunder.
Whatever treatment the case demanded, should have been prompt; to wait
was fatuity.
The ill-advised attempt secretly to throw reënforcements and provisions
into Fort Sumter, by means of the steamer Star of the West, resulted in
the repulsion of that vessel at the mouth of the harbor, by the
authorities of South Carolina, on the morning of the 9th of January. On
her refusal to heave-to, she was fired upon, and put back to sea, with
her recruits and supplies. A telegraphic account of this event was
handed me, a few hours afterward, when stepping into my carriage to go
to the Senate-chamber. Although I had then, for some time, ceased to
visit the President, yet, under the impulse of this renewed note of
danger to the country, I drove immediately to the Executive mansion, and
for the last time appealed to him to take such prompt measures as were
evidently necessary to avert the impending calamity. The result was even
more unsatisfactory than that of former efforts had been.
On the same day the special message of the President on the state of the
Union, dated the day previous (8th of January), was submitted to
Congress. This message was accompanied by the _first_ letter of the
South Carolina Commissioners to the President, with his answer, but of
course _not_ by their rejoinder, which he had declined to receive. Mr.
Buchanan, in his memoirs, complains that, immediately after the reading
of his message, this rejoinder (which he terms an "insulting letter")
was presented by me to the Senate, and by that body received and entered
upon its journal.[119] The simple truth is, that, regarding it as
essential to a complete understanding of the transaction, and its
publication as a mere act of justice to the Commissioners, I presented
and had it read in the Senate. But its appearance upon the journal as
part of the proceedings, instead of being merely a document introduced
as part of my remarks, was the result of a discourteous objection, made
by a so-called "Republican" Senator, to the reading of the document by
the Clerk of the Senate at my request. This will be made manifest by an
examination of the debate and proceedings which ensued.[120] The
discourtesy recoiled upon its author and supporters, and gave the letter
a vantage-ground in respect of prominence which I could not have
foreseen or expected.
The next day (January 10th) the speech was delivered, the greater part
of which may be found in the Appendix[121]--the last that I ever made in
the Senate of the United States, except in taking leave, and by the
sentiments of which I am content that my career, both before and since,
should be judged.
The history of Fort Sumter during the remaining period, until the
organization of the Confederate Government, may be found in the
correspondence given in the Appendix.[122] From this it will be seen
that the authorities of South Carolina still continued to refrain from
any act of aggression or retaliation, under the provocation of the
secret attempt to reënforce the garrison, as they had previously under
that of its nocturnal transfer from one fort to another.
Another Commissioner (the Hon. I. W. Hayne) was sent to Washington by
the Governor of South Carolina, to effect, if possible, an amicable and
peaceful transfer of the fort, and settlement of all questions relating
to property. This Commissioner remained for nearly a month, endeavoring
to accomplish the objects of his mission, but was met only by evasive
and unsatisfactory answers, and eventually returned without having
effected anything.
There is one passage in the last letter of Colonel Hayne to the
President which presents the case of the occupancy of Fort Sumter by the
United States troops so clearly and forcibly that it may be proper to
quote it. He writes as follows:
"You say that the fort was garrisoned for our protection, and is
held for the same purposes for which it has been ever held since
its construction. Are you not aware, that to hold, in the
territory of a foreign power, a fortress against her will,
avowedly for the purpose of protecting her citizens, is perhaps
the highest insult which one government can offer to another?
But Fort Sumter was never garrisoned at all until South Carolina
had dissolved her connection with your Government. This garrison
entered it in the night, with every circumstance of secrecy,
after spiking the guns and burning the gun-carriages and cutting
down the flag-staff of an adjacent fort, which was then
abandoned. South Carolina had not taken Fort Sumter into her own
possession, only because of her misplaced confidence in a
Government which deceived her."
Thus, during the remainder of Mr. Buchanan's Administration, matters
went rapidly from bad to worse. The old statesman, who, with all his
defects, had long possessed, and was entitled still to retain, the
confidence due to extensive political knowledge and love of his country
in all its parts--who had, in his earlier career, looked steadily to the
Constitution, as the mariner looks to the compass, for guidance--retired
to private life at the expiration of his term of office, having effected
nothing to allay the storm which had been steadily gathering during his
administration.
Timid vacillation was then succeeded by unscrupulous cunning; and, for
futile efforts, without hostile collision, to impose a claim of
authority upon people who repudiated it, were substituted measures which
could be sustained only by force.
[Footnote 111: "Revised Statutes of Massachusetts," 1836, p. 56.]
[Footnote 112: See "Revised Statutes of Virginia."]
[Footnote 113: "Buchanan's Administration," chap. ix, p. 165, and chap.
xi, pp. 212-214.]
[Footnote 114: "Buchanan's Administration," chap. ix, p. 166.]
[Footnote 115: Ibid.]
[Footnote 116: Ibid., chap. x, p. 180.]
[Footnote 117: See Appendix G.]
[Footnote 118: "Buchanan's Administration," chap. x, pp. 187, 188.]
[Footnote 119: "Buchanan's Administration," chap. x, p. 184.]
[Footnote 120: See "Congressional Globe," second session, Thirty-fifth
Congress, Part I, p. 284, _et seq._]
[Footnote 121: See Appendix I.]
[Footnote 122: Ibid.]
CHAPTER III.
Secession of Mississippi and Other States.--Withdrawal of
Senators.--Address of the Author on taking Leave of the
Senate.--Answer to Certain Objections.
Mississippi was the second State to withdraw from the Union, her
ordinance of secession being adopted on the 9th of January, 1861. She
was quickly followed by Florida on the 10th, Alabama on the 11th, and,
in the course of the same month, by Georgia on the 18th, and Louisiana
on the 26th. The Conventions of these States (together with that of
South Carolina) agreed in designating Montgomery, Alabama, as the place,
and the 4th of February as the day, for the assembling of a congress of
the seceding States, to which each State Convention, acting as the
direct representative of the sovereignty of the people thereof,
appointed delegates.
Telegraphic intelligence of the secession of Mississippi had reached
Washington some considerable time before the fact was officially
communicated to me. This official knowledge I considered it proper to
await before taking formal leave of the Senate. My associates from
Alabama and Florida concurred in this view. Accordingly, having received
notification of the secession of these three States about the same time,
on the 21st of January Messrs. Yulee and Mallory, of Florida,
Fitzpatrick and Clay, of Alabama, and myself, announced the withdrawal
of the States from which we were respectively accredited, and took leave
of the Senate at the same time.
In the action which she then took, Mississippi certainly had no purpose
to levy war against the United States, or any of them. As her Senator, I
endeavored plainly to state her position in the annexed remarks
addressed to the Senate in taking leave of the body:
"I rise, Mr. President, for the purpose of announcing to the
Senate that I have satisfactory evidence that the State of
Mississippi, by a solemn ordinance of her people, in convention
assembled, has declared her separation from the United States.
Under these circumstances, of course, my functions are
terminated here. It has seemed to me proper, however, that I
should appear in the Senate to announce that fact to my
associates, and I will say but very little more. The occasion
does not invite me to go into argument; and my physical
condition would not permit me to do so, if it were otherwise;
and yet it seems to become me to say something on the part of
the State I here represent on an occasion so solemn as this.
"It is known to Senators who have served with me here that I
have for many years advocated, as an essential attribute of
State sovereignty, the right of a State to secede from the
Union. Therefore, if I had not believed there was justifiable
cause, if I had thought that Mississippi was acting without
sufficient provocation, or without an existing necessity, I
should still, under my theory of the Government, because of my
allegiance to the State of which I am a citizen, have been bound
by her action. I, however, may be permitted to say that I do
think she has justifiable cause, and I approve of her act. I
conferred with her people before that act was taken, counseled
them then that, if the state of things which they apprehended
should exist when their Convention met, they should take the
action which they have now adopted.
"I hope none who hear me will confound this expression of mine
with the advocacy of the right of a State to remain in the
Union, and to disregard its constitutional obligations by the
nullification of the law. Such is not my theory. Nullification
and secession, so often confounded, are, indeed, antagonistic
principles. Nullification is a remedy which it is sought to
apply within the Union, and against the agent of the States. It
is only to be justified when the agent has violated his
constitutional obligations, and a State, assuming to judge for
itself, denies the right of the agent thus to act, and appeals
to the other States of the Union for a decision; but, when the
States themselves and when the people of the States have so
acted as to convince us that they will not regard our
constitutional rights, then, and then for the first time, arises
the doctrine of secession in its practical application.
"A great man who now reposes with his fathers, and who has often
been arraigned for a want of fealty to the Union, advocated the
doctrine of nullification because it preserved the Union. It was
because of his deep-seated attachment to the Union--his
determination to find some remedy for existing ills short of a
severance of the ties which bound South Carolina to the other
States--that Mr. Calhoun advocated the doctrine of
nullification, which he proclaimed to be peaceful, to be within
the limits of State power, not to disturb the Union, but only to
be a means of bringing the agent before the tribunal of the
States for their judgment.
"Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. It is to be
justified upon the basis that the States are sovereign. There
was a time when none denied it. I hope the time may come again
when a better comprehension of the theory of our Government, and
the inalienable rights of the people of the States, will prevent
any one from denying that each State is a sovereign, and thus
may reclaim the grants which it has made to any agent
whomsoever.
"I, therefore, say I concur in the action of the people of
Mississippi, believing it to be necessary and proper, and should
have been bound by their action if my belief had been otherwise;
and this brings me to the important point which I wish, on this
last occasion, to present to the Senate. It is by this
confounding of nullification and secession that the name of a
great man whose ashes now mingle with his mother earth has been
evoked to justify coercion against a seceded State. The phrase,
'to execute the laws,' was an expression which General Jackson
applied to the case of a State refusing to obey the laws while
yet a member of the Union. That is not the case which is now
presented. The laws are to be executed over the United States,
and upon the people of the United States. They have no relation
to any foreign country. It is a perversion of terms--at least,
it is a great misapprehension of the case--which cites that
expression for application to a State which has withdrawn from
the Union. You may make war on a foreign state. If it be the
purpose of gentlemen, they may make war against a State which
has withdrawn from the Union; but there are no laws of the
United States to be executed within the limits of a seceded
State. A State, finding herself in the condition in which
Mississippi has judged she is--in which her safety requires that
she should provide for the maintenance of her rights out of the
Union--surrenders all the benefits (and they are known to be
many), deprives herself of the advantages (and they are known to
be great), severs all the ties of affection (and they are close
and enduring), which have bound her to the Union; and thus
divesting herself of every benefit--taking upon herself every
burden--she claims to be exempt from any power to execute the
laws of the United States within her limits.
"I well remember an occasion when Massachusetts was arraigned
before the bar of the Senate, and when the doctrine of coercion
was rife, and to be applied against her, because of the rescue
of a fugitive slave in Boston. My opinion then was the same that
it is now. Not in a spirit of egotism, but to show that I am not
influenced in my opinions because the case is my own, I refer to
that time and that occasion as containing the opinion which I
then entertained, and on which my present conduct is based. I
then said that if Massachusetts--following her purpose through a
stated line of conduct--chose to take the last step, which
separates her from the Union, it is her right to go, and I will
neither vote one dollar nor one man to coerce her back; but I
will say to her, Godspeed, in memory of the kind associations
which once existed between her and the other States.
"It has been a conviction of pressing necessity--it has been a
belief that we are to be deprived in the Union of the rights
which our fathers bequeathed to us--which has brought
Mississippi to her present decision. She has heard proclaimed
the theory that all men are created free and equal, and this
made the basis of an attack upon her social institutions; and
the sacred Declaration of Independence has been invoked to
maintain the position of the equality of the races. That
Declaration of Independence is to be construed by the
circumstances and purposes for which it was made. The
communities were declaring their independence; the people of
those communities were asserting that no man was born--to use
the language of Mr. Jefferson--booted and spurred, to ride over
the rest of mankind; that men were created equal--meaning the
men of the political community; that there was no divine right
to rule; that no man inherited the right to govern; that there
were no classes by which power and place descended to families;
but that all stations were equally within the grasp of each
member of the body politic. These were the great principles they
announced; these were the purposes for which they made their
declaration; these were the ends to which their enunciation was
directed. They have no reference to the slave; else, how
happened it that among the items of arraignment against George
III was that he endeavored to do just what the North has been
endeavoring of late to do, to stir up insurrection among our
slaves? Had the Declaration announced that the negroes were free
and equal, how was the prince to be arraigned for raising up
insurrection among them? And how was this to be enumerated among
the high crimes which caused the colonies to sever their
connection with the mother-country? When our Constitution was
formed, the same idea was rendered more palpable; for there we
find provision made for that very class of persons as property;
they were not put upon the footing of equality with white
men--not even upon that of paupers and convicts; but, so far as
representation was concerned, were discriminated against as a
lower caste, only to be represented in the numerical proportion
of three fifths. So stands the compact which binds us together.
"Then, Senators, we recur to the principles upon which our
Government was founded; and when you deny them, and when you
deny to us the right to withdraw from a Government which, thus
perverted, threatens to be destructive of our rights, we but
tread in the path of our fathers when we proclaim our
independence and take the hazard. This is done, not in hostility
to others, not to injure any section of the country, not even
for our own pecuniary benefit, but from the high and solemn
motive of defending and protecting the rights we inherited, and
which it is our duty to transmit unshorn to our children.
"I find in myself perhaps a type of the general feeling of my
constituents toward yours. I am sure I feel no hostility toward
you, Senators from the North. I am sure there is not one of you,
whatever sharp discussion there may have been between us, to
whom I can not now say, in the presence of my God, I wish you
well; and such, I am sure, is the feeling of the people whom I
represent toward those whom you represent. I, therefore, feel
that I but express their desire when I say I hope, and they
hope, for peaceable relations with you, though we must part.
They may be mutually beneficial to us in the future, as they
have been in the past, if you so will it. The reverse may bring
disaster on every portion of the country, and, if you will have
it thus, we will invoke the God of our fathers, who delivered
them from the power of the lion, to protect us from the ravages
of the bear; and thus, putting our trust in God and in our firm
hearts and strong arms, we will vindicate the right as best we
may.
"In the course of my service here, associated at different times
with a great variety of Senators, I see now around me some with
whom I have served long; there have been points of collision,
but, whatever of offense there has been to me, I leave here. I
carry with me no hostile remembrance. Whatever offense I have
given which has not been redressed, or for which satisfaction
has not been demanded, I have, Senators, in this hour of our
parting, to offer you my apology for any pain which, in the heat
of discussion, I have inflicted. I go hence unencumbered by the
remembrance of any injury received, and having discharged the
duty of making the only reparation in my power for any injury
offered.
"Mr. President and Senators, having made the announcement which
the occasion seemed to me to require, it only remains for me to
bid you a final adieu."
There are some who contend that we should have retained
our seats and "fought for our rights in the Union." Could
anything be less rational or less consistent than that a Senator,
an ambassador from his State, should insist upon representing
it in a confederacy from which the State has withdrawn?
What was meant by "fighting in the Union" I have never
quite understood. If it be to retain a seat in Congress for the
purpose of crippling the Government and rendering it unable to
perform its functions, I can certainly not appreciate the idea of
honor that sanctions the suggestion. Among the advantages
claimed for this proposition by its supporters was that of thwarting
the President in the appointment of his Cabinet and other
officers necessary for the administration of public affairs.
Would this have been to maintain the Union formed by the
States? Would such have been the Government which Washington
recommended as a remedy for the defects of the original
Confederation, the greatest of which was the paralysis of the
action of the general agent by the opposition or indifference of
the States? Sad as have been the consequences of the war
which followed secession--disastrous in its moral, material, and
political relations--still we have good cause to feel proud that
the course of the Southern States has left no blot nor stain upon
the honor and chivalry of their people.
"And if our children must obey,
They must, but--thinking on our day--
'Twill less debase them to submit."
CHAPTER IV.
Threats of Arrest.--Departure from Washington.--Indications of
Public Anxiety.--"Will there be war?"--Organization of the "Army
of Mississippi."--Lack of Preparations for Defense in the
South.--Evidences of the Good Faith and Peaceable Purposes of
the Southern People.
During the interval between the announcement by telegraph of the
secession of Mississippi and the receipt of the official notification
which enabled me to withdraw from the Senate, rumors were in circulation
of a purpose, on the part of the United States Government, to arrest
members of Congress preparing to leave Washington on account of the
secession of the States which they represented. This threat received
little attention from those most concerned. Indeed, it was thought that
it might not be an undesirable mode of testing the question of the right
of a State to withdraw from the Union.
No attempt, however, was made to arrest any of the retiring members;
and, after a delay of a few days in necessary preparations, I left
Washington for Mississippi, passing through southwestern Virginia, East
Tennessee, a small part of Georgia, and north Alabama. A deep interest
in the events which had recently occurred was exhibited by the people of
these States, and much anxiety was indicated as to the future. Many
years of agitation had made them familiar with the idea of separation.
Nearly two generations had risen to manhood since it had begun to be
discussed as a possible alternative. Few, very few, of the Southern
people had ever regarded it as a desirable event, or otherwise than as a
last resort for escape from evils more intolerable. It was a calamity,
which, however threatened, they had still hoped might be averted, or
indefinitely postponed, and they had regarded with contempt, rather than
anger, the ravings of a party in the North, which denounced the
Constitution and the Union, and persistently defamed their brethren of
the South.
Now, however, as well in Virginia and Tennessee, neither of which had
yet seceded, as in the more Southern States, which had already taken
that step, the danger so often prophesied was perceived to be at the
door, and eager inquiries were made as to what would happen
next--especially as to the probability of war between the States.
The course which events were likely to take was shrouded in the greatest
uncertainty. In the minds of many there was the not unreasonable hope
(which had been expressed by the Commissioner sent from Mississippi to
Maryland) that the secession of six Southern States--certainly soon to
be followed by that of others--would so arouse the sober thought and
better feeling of the Northern people as to compel their representatives
to agree to a Convention of the States, and that such guarantees would
be given as would secure to the South the domestic tranquillity and
equality in the Union which were rights assured under the Federal
compact. There were others, and they the most numerous class, who
considered that the separation would be final, but peaceful. For my own
part, while believing that secession was a right, and properly a
peaceable remedy, I had never believed that it would be permitted to be
peaceably exercised. Very few in the South at that time agreed with me,
and my answers to queries on the subject were, therefore, as unexpected
as they were unwelcome.
On my arrival at Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, I found that the
Convention of the State had made provision for a State army, and had
appointed me to the command, with the rank of major-general. Four
brigadier-generals, appointed in like manner by the Convention, were
awaiting my arrival for assignment to duty. After the preparation of the
necessary rules and regulations, the division of the State into
districts, the apportionment among them of the troops to be raised, and
the appointment of officers of the general staff, as authorized by the
ordinance of the Convention, such measures as were practicable were
taken to obtain the necessary arms. The State had few serviceable
weapons, and no establishment for their manufacture or repair. This fact
(which is true of other Southern States as of Mississippi) is a clear
proof of the absence of any desire or expectation of war. If the purpose
of the Northern States to make war upon us because of secession had been
foreseen, preparation to meet the consequences would have been
contemporaneous with the adoption of a resort to that remedy--a remedy
the possibility of which had for many years been contemplated. Had the
Southern States possessed arsenals, and collected in them the requisite
supplies of arms and munitions, such preparation would not only have
placed them more nearly on an equality with the North in the beginning
of the war, but might, perhaps, have been the best conservator of peace.
Let us, the survivors, however, not fail to do credit to the generous
credulity which could not understand how, in violation of the compact of
Union, a war could be waged against the States, or why they should be
invaded because their people had deemed it necessary to withdraw from an
association which had failed to fulfill the ends for which they had
entered into it, and which, having been broken to their injury by the
other parties, had ceased to be binding upon them. It is a satisfaction
to know that the calamities which have befallen the Southern States were
the result of their credulous reliance on the power of the Constitution,
that, if it failed to protect their rights, it would at least suffice to
prevent an attempt at coercion, if, in the last resort, they peacefully
withdrew from the Union.
When, in after times, the passions of the day shall have subsided, and
all the evidence shall have been collected and compared, the
philosophical inquirer, who asks why the majority of the stronger
section invaded the peaceful homes of their late associates, will be
answered by History: "The lust of empire impelled them to wage against
their weaker neighbors a war of subjugation."
CHAPTER V.
Meeting of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate
States.--Adoption of a Provisional Constitution.--Election of
President and Vice-President.--Notification to the Author of his
Election.--His Views with Regard to it.--Journey to
Montgomery.--Interview with Judge Sharkey.--False Reports of
Speeches on the Way.--Inaugural Address.--Editor's Note.
The congress of delegates from the seceding States convened at
Montgomery, Alabama, according to appointment, on the 4th of February,
1861. Their first work was to prepare a provisional Constitution for the
new Confederacy, to be formed of the States which had withdrawn from the
Union, for which the style "Confederate States of America" was adopted.
The powers conferred upon them were adequate for the performance of this
duty, the immediate necessity for which was obvious and urgent. This
Constitution was adopted on the 8th of February, to continue in force
for one year, unless superseded at an earlier date by a permanent
organization. It is printed in an appendix, and for convenience of
reference the permanent Constitution, adopted several weeks afterward,
is exhibited in connection with it, and side by side with the
Constitution of the United States, after which it was modeled.[123] The
attention of the reader is invited to these documents and to a
comparison of them, although a more particular notice of the permanent
Constitution will be more appropriate hereafter.
On the next day (9th of February) an election was held for the chief
executive offices, resulting, as I afterward learned, in my election to
the Presidency, with the Hon. Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, as
Vice-President. Mr. Stephens was a delegate from Georgia to the
congress.
While these events were occurring, having completed the most urgent of
my duties at the capital of Mississippi, I had gone to my home,
Brierfield, in Warren County, and had begun, in the homely but
expressive language of Mr. Clay, "to repair my fences." While thus
engaged, notice was received of my election to the Presidency of the
Confederate States, with an urgent request to proceed immediately to
Montgomery for inauguration.
As this had been suggested as a probable event, and what appeared to me
adequate precautions had been taken to prevent it, I was surprised, and,
still more, disappointed. For reasons which it is not now necessary to
state, I had not believed my self as well suited to the office as some
others. I thought myself better adapted to command in the field; and
Mississippi had given me the position which I preferred to any
other--the highest rank in her army. It was, therefore, that I afterward
said, in an address delivered in the Capitol, before the Legislature of
the State, with reference to my election to the Presidency of the
Confederacy, that the duty to which I was thus called was temporary, and
that I expected soon to be with the Army of Mississippi again.
While on my way to Montgomery, and waiting in Jackson, Mississippi, for
the railroad train, I met the Hon. William L. Sharkey, who had filled
with great distinction the office of Chief-Justice of the State. He said
he was looking for me to make an inquiry. He desired to know if it was
true, as he had just learned, that I believed there _would_ be war. My
opinion was freely given, that there would be war, long and bloody, and
that it behooved every one to put his house in order. He expressed much
surprise, and said that he had not believed the report attributing this
opinion to me. He asked how I supposed war could result from the
peaceable withdrawal of a sovereign State. The answer was, that it was
not my opinion that war _should_ be occasioned by the exercise of that
right, but that it _would_ be.
Judge Sharkey and I had not belonged to the same political party, he
being a Whig, but we fully agreed with regard to the question of the
sovereignty of the States. He had been an advocate of nullification--a
doctrine to which I had never assented, and which had at one time been
the main issue in Mississippi politics. He had presided over the
well-remembered Nashville Convention in 1849, and had possessed much
influence in the State, not only as an eminent jurist, but as a citizen
who had grown up with it, and held many offices of honor and trust.
On my way to Montgomery, brief addresses were made at various places, at
which there were temporary stoppages of the trains, in response to calls
from the crowds assembled at such points. Some of these addresses were
grossly misrepresented in sensational reports made by irresponsible
persons, which were published in Northern newspapers, and were not
considered worthy of correction under the pressure of the momentous
duties then devolving upon me. These false reports, which represented me
as invoking war and threatening devastation of the North, have since
been adopted by partisan writers as authentic history. It is a
sufficient answer to these accusations to refer to my farewell address
to the Senate, already given, as reported for the press at the time,
and, in connection therewith, to my inaugural address at Montgomery, on
assuming the office of President of the Confederate States, on the 18th
of February. These two addresses, delivered at an interval of a month,
during which no material change of circumstances had occurred, being one
before and the other after the date of the sensational reports referred
to, are sufficient to stamp them as utterly untrue. The inaugural was
deliberately prepared, and uttered as written, and, in connection with
the farewell speech to the Senate, presents a clear and authentic
statement of the principles and purposes which actuated me on assuming
the duties of the high office to which I had been called.
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
"_Gentlemen of the Congress of the Confederate States of
America, Friends, and Fellow-Citizens:_
"Called to the difficult and responsible station of Chief
Magistrate of the Provisional Government which you have
instituted, I approach the discharge of the duties assigned to
me with humble distrust of my abilities, but with a sustaining
confidence in the wisdom of those who are to guide and aid me in
the administration of public affairs, and an abiding faith in
the virtue and patriotism of the people. Looking forward to the
speedy establishment of a permanent government to take the place
of this, which by its greater moral and physical power will be
better able to combat with many difficulties that arise from the
conflicting interests of separate nations, I enter upon the
duties of the office to which I have been chosen with the hope
that the beginning of our career, as a Confederacy, may not be
obstructed by hostile opposition to our enjoyment of the
separate existence and independence we have asserted, and which,
with the blessing of Providence, we intend to maintain.
"Our present political position has been achieved in a manner
unprecedented in the history of nations. It illustrates the
American idea that governments rest on the consent of the
governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter or
abolish them at will whenever they become destructive of the
ends for which they were established. The declared purpose of
the compact of the Union from which we have withdrawn was to
'establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for
the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the
blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity'; and when,
in the judgment of the sovereign States composing this
Confederacy, it has been perverted from the purposes for which
it was ordained, and ceased to answer the ends for which it was
established, a peaceful appeal to the ballot-box declared that,
so far as they are concerned, the Government created by that
compact should cease to exist. In this they merely asserted the
right which the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776,
defined to be 'inalienable.' Of the time and occasion of its
exercise they as sovereigns were the final judges, each for
itself. The impartial and enlightened verdict of mankind will
vindicate the rectitude of our conduct; and He who knows the
hearts of men will judge of the sincerity with which we have
labored to preserve the Government of our fathers in its spirit.
"The right solemnly proclaimed at the birth of the United
States, and which has been solemnly affirmed and reaffirmed in
the Bills of Rights of the States subsequently admitted into the
Union of 1789, undeniably recognizes in the people the power to
resume the authority delegated for the purposes of government.
Thus the sovereign States here represented have proceeded to
form this Confederacy; and it is by abuse of language that their
act has been denominated a revolution. They formed a new
alliance, but within each State its government has remained; so
that the rights of person and property have not been disturbed.
The agent through which they communicated with foreign nations
is changed, but this does not necessarily interrupt their
international relations. Sustained by the consciousness that the
transition from the former Union to the present Confederacy has
not proceeded from a disregard on our part of just obligations,
or any failure to perform every constitutional duty, moved by no
interest or passion to invade the rights of others, anxious to
cultivate peace and commerce with all nations, if we may not
hope to avoid war, we may at least expect that posterity will
acquit us of having needlessly engaged in it. Doubly justified
by the absence of wrong on our part, and by wanton aggression on
the part of others, there can be no cause to doubt that the
courage and patriotism of the people of the Confederate States
will be found equal to any measure of defense which their honor
and security may require.
"An agricultural people, whose chief interest is the export of
commodities required in every manufacturing country, our true
policy is peace, and the freest trade which our necessities will
permit. It is alike our interest and that of all those to whom
we would sell, and from whom we would buy, that there should be
the fewest practicable restrictions upon the interchange of
these commodities. There can, however, be but little rivalry
between ours and any manufacturing or navigating community, such
as the Northeastern States of the American Union. It must
follow, therefore, that mutual interest will invite to good-will
and kind offices on both parts. If, however, passion or lust of
dominion should cloud the judgment or inflame the ambition of
those States, we must prepare to meet the emergency and
maintain, by the final arbitrament of the sword, the position
which we have assumed among the nations of the earth.
"We have entered upon the career of independence, and it must be
inflexibly pursued. Through many years of controversy with our
late associates of the Northern States, 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, and henceforth our
energies must be directed to the conduct of our own affairs, and
the perpetuity of the Confederacy which we have formed. If a
just perception of mutual interest shall permit us peaceably to
pursue our separate political career, my most earnest desire
will have been fulfilled. But if this be denied to us, and the
integrity of our territory and jurisdiction be assailed, it will
but remain for us with firm resolve to appeal to arms and invoke
the blessing of Providence on a just cause.
"As a consequence of our new condition and relations, and with a
view to meet anticipated wants, it will be necessary to provide
for the speedy and efficient organization of branches of the
Executive department having special charge of foreign
intercourse, finance, military affairs, and the postal service.
For purposes of defense, the Confederate States may, under
ordinary circumstances, rely mainly upon the militia; but it is
deemed advisable, in the present condition of affairs, that
there should be a well-instructed and disciplined army, more
numerous than would usually be required on a peace
establishment. I also suggest that, for the protection of our
harbors and commerce on the high seas, a navy adapted to those
objects will be required. But this, as well as other subjects
appropriate to our necessities, have doubtless engaged the
attention of Congress.
"With a Constitution differing only from that of our fathers in
so far as it is explanatory of their well-known intent, freed
from sectional conflicts, which have interfered with the pursuit
of the general welfare, it is not unreasonable to expect that
States from which we have recently parted may seek to unite
their fortunes to ours under the Government which we have
instituted. For this your Constitution makes adequate provision;
but beyond this, if I mistake not the judgment and will of the
people, a reunion with the States from which we have separated
is neither practicable nor desirable. To increase the power,
develop the resources, and promote the happiness of the
Confederacy, it is requisite that there should be so much of
homogeneity that the welfare of every portion shall be the aim
of the whole. When this does not exist, antagonisms are
engendered which must and should result in separation.
"Actuated solely by the desire to preserve our own rights, and
promote our own welfare, the separation by the Confederate
States has been marked by no aggression upon others, and
followed by no domestic convulsion. Our industrial pursuits have
received no check, the cultivation of our fields has progressed
as heretofore, and, even should we be involved in war, there
would be no considerable diminution in the production of the
staples which have constituted our exports, and in which the
commercial world has an interest scarcely less than our own.
This common interest of the producer and consumer can only be
interrupted by exterior force which would obstruct the
transmission of our staples to foreign markets--a course of
conduct which would be as unjust, as it would be detrimental, to
manufacturing and commercial interests abroad.
"Should reason guide the action of the Government from which we
have separated, a policy so detrimental to the civilized world,
the Northern States included, could not be dictated by even the
strongest desire to inflict injury upon us; but, if the contrary
should prove true, a terrible responsibility will rest upon it,
and the suffering of millions will bear testimony to the folly
and wickedness of our aggressors. In the mean time there will
remain to us, besides the ordinary means before suggested, the
well known resources for retaliation upon the commerce of an
enemy.
"Experience in public stations, of subordinate grade to this
which your kindness has conferred, has taught me that toil and
care and disappointment are the price of official elevation. You
will see many errors to forgive, many deficiencies to tolerate;
but you shall not find in me either want of zeal or fidelity to
the cause that is to me the highest in hope, and of most
enduring affection. Your generosity has bestowed upon me an
undeserved distinction, one which I neither sought nor desired.
Upon the continuance of that sentiment, and upon your wisdom and
patriotism, I rely to direct and support me in the performance
of the duties required at my hands.
"We have changed the constituent parts, but not the system of
government. The Constitution framed by our fathers is that of
these Confederate States. In their exposition of it, and in the
judicial construction it has received, we have a light which
reveals its true meaning.
"Thus instructed as to the true meaning and just interpretation
of that instrument, and ever remembering that all offices are
but trusts held for the people, and that powers delegated are to
be strictly construed, I will hope by due diligence in the
performance of my duties, though I may disappoint your
expectations, yet to retain, when retiring, something of the
good-will and confidence which welcome my entrance into office.
"It is joyous in the midst of perilous times to look around upon
a people united in heart, where one purpose of high resolve
animates and actuates the whole; where the sacrifices to be made
are not weighed in the balance against honor and right and
liberty and equality. Obstacles may retard, but they can not
long prevent, the progress of a movement sanctified by its
justice and sustained by a virtuous people. Reverently let us
invoke the God of our Fathers to guide and protect us in our
efforts to perpetuate the principles which by his blessing they
were able to vindicate, establish, and transmit to their
posterity. With the continuance of his favor ever gratefully
acknowledged, we may hopefully look forward to success, to
peace, and to prosperity."
Note, _relative to the Election of President of the Confederate States
under the Provisional Constitution, and some Other Subjects referred to
in the Foregoing Chapters._
Statements having been made, seeming to imply that I was a candidate
"for the Presidency of the Confederate States; that my election was the
result of a misunderstanding, or of accidental complications"; and also
that I held "extreme views," and entertained at that period an
inadequate conception of the magnitude of the war probably to be waged,
information on the subject has been contributed by several distinguished
members of the Provisional Congress, who still survive. From a number of
their letters which have been published, the annexed extracts are given,
parts being omitted which refer to matters not of historical interest.
From a communication of the Hon. Alexander M. Clayton, of Mississippi,
to the Memphis "Appeal" of June 21, 1870:
"... I was at the time a member of the Provisional Congress from
Mississippi. Believing that Mr. Davis was the choice of the
South for the position of President, before repairing to
Montgomery I addressed him a letter to ascertain if he would
accept it. He replied that it was not the place he desired;
that, if he could have his choice, he would greatly prefer to be
in active service as commander-in-chief of the army, but that he
would give himself to the cause in any capacity whatever. That
was the only letter of which I have any knowledge that he wrote
on the subject, and that was shown to only a very few persons,
and only when I was asked if Mr. Davis would accept the
presidency....
"There was no electioneering, no management, on the part of any
one. Each voter was left to determine for himself in whose hands
the destinies of the infant Confederacy should be placed. By a
law as fixed as gravitation itself, and as little disturbed by
outside influences, the minds of members centered upon Mr.
Davis.
"After a few days of anxious, intense labor, the Provisional
Constitution was framed, and it became necessary to give it
vitality by putting some one at the head of the new
Government....
"Without any effort on the part of the friends of either
[Messrs. Davis or Stephens], the election was made without the
slightest dissent. Of the accidental complications referred to,
I have not the least knowledge, and always thought that the
election of Mr. Davis arose from the spontaneous conviction of
his peculiar fitness. I have consulted no one on the subject,
and have appended my name only to avoid resting an important
fact upon anonymous authority. Very respectfully yours,"
(Signed) "Alexander M. Clayton."
From the Hon. J. A. P. Campbell, of Mississippi, now a Justice of the
Supreme Court of that State:
"... If there was a delegate from Mississippi, or any other
State, who was opposed to the election of Jefferson Davis as
President of the Confederate States, I never heard of the fact.
I had the idea that Mr. Davis did not desire to be President,
and preferred to be in the military service, but no other man
was spoken of for President within my hearing....
"It is within my personal knowledge that the statement of the
interview, that Mr. Davis did not have a just appreciation of
the serious character of the contest between the seceding States
and the Union, is wholly untrue. Mr. Davis, more than any man I
ever heard talk on the subject, had a correct apprehension of
the consequences of secession and of the magnitude of the war to
be waged to coerce the seceding States. While at Montgomery, he
expressed the belief that heavy fighting must occur, and that
Virginia was to be the chief battle-ground. Years prior to
secession, in his address before the Legislature and people of
Mississippi, Mr. Davis had earnestly advised extensive
preparation for the possible contingency of secession.
"After the formation of the Confederate States, he was far in
advance of the Constitutional Convention and the Provisional
Congress, and, as I believe, of any man in it, in his views of
the gravity of the situation and the probable extent and
duration of the war, and of the provision which should be made
for the defense of the seceding States. Before secession, Mr.
Davis thought war would result from it; and, after secession, he
expressed the view that the war commenced would be an extensive
one. What he may have thought at a later day than the early part
of 1862, I do not know; but it is inconceivable that the
'interview' can be correct as to that.
"The idea that Mr. Davis was so 'extreme' in his views is a new
one. He was extremely conservative on the subject of secession.
"The suggestion that Mississippi would have preferred General
Toombs or Mr. Cobb for President has no foundation in fact. My
opinion is, that no man could have obtained a single vote in the
Mississippi delegation against Mr. Davis, who was then, as he is
now, the most eminent and popular of all the citizens of
Mississippi.... Very respectfully,"
(Signed) "J. A. P. Campbell."
From the Hon. Duncan F. Kenner, of Louisiana:
"....My recollections of what transpired at the time are very
vivid and positive....
"Who should be President, was the absorbing question of the day.
It engaged the attention of all present, and elicited many
letters from our respective constituencies. The general
inclination was strongly in favor of Mr. Davis. In fact, no
other name was so prominently or so generally mentioned. The
name of Mr. Rhett, of South Carolina, was probably more
frequently mentioned than that of any other person, next to Mr.
Davis.
"The rule adopted at our election was that each State should
have one vote, to be delivered in open session, _viva voce_, by
one of the delegates as spokesman for his colleagues. The
delegates of the different States met in secret session to
select their candidate and spokesman.
"Of what occurred in these various meetings I can not speak
authoritatively as to other States, as their proceedings were
considered secret. I can speak positively, however, of what took
place at a meeting of the delegates from Louisiana. We, the
Louisiana delegates, without hesitation, and unanimously, after
a very short session, decided in favor of Mr. Davis. No other
name was mentioned; the claims of no one else were considered,
or even alluded to. There was not the slightest opposition to
Mr. Davis on the part of any of our delegation; certainly none
was expressed; all appeared enthusiastic in his favor, and, I
have no reason to doubt, felt so. Nor was the feeling induced by
any solicitation on the part of Mr. Davis or his friends. Mr.
Davis was not in or near Montgomery at the time. He was never
heard from on this subject, so far as I knew. He was never
announced as a candidate. We were seeking the best man to fill
the position, and the conviction at the time, in the minds of a
large majority of the delegates, that Mr. Davis was the best
qualified, from both his civil and military knowledge and
experience, induced many to look upon Mr. Davis as the best
selection that could be made.
"This conviction, coupled with his well-recognized conservative
views--for in no sense did we consider Mr. Davis extreme, either
in his views or purposes--was the deciding consideration which
controlled the votes of the Louisiana delegation. Of this I have
not the least doubt. I remain, respectfully, very truly yours,
etc."
(Signed) "Duncan F. Kenner."
From the Hon. James Chesnut, of South Carolina:
".... Before leaving home I had made up my mind as to who was
the fittest man to be President, and who to be Vice-President;
Mr. Davis for the first, and Mr. Stephens for the second. And
this was known to all my friends as well as to my colleagues.
"Mr. Davis, then conspicuous for ability, had long experience in
civil service, was reputed a most successful organizer and
administrator of the military department of the United States
when he was Secretary of War, and came out of the Mexican war
with much _éclat_ as a soldier. Possessing a combination of
these high and needful qualities, he was regarded by nearly the
whole South as the fittest man for the position. I certainly so
regarded him, and did not change my mind on the way to
Montgomery....
"Georgia was a great State--great in numbers, comparatively
great in wealth, and great in the intellectual gifts and
experiences of many of her sons. Conspicuous among them were
Stephens, Toombs, and Cobb. In view of these facts, it was
thought by all of us expedient--nay, more, positively right and
just--that Georgia should have a corresponding weight in the
counsels and conduct of the new Government.
"Mr. Stephens was also a man of conceded ability, of high
character, conservative, devoted to the rights of the States,
and known to be a power in his own State; hence all eyes turned
to him to fill the second place.
"Howell Cobb became President of the Convention, and General
Toombs Secretary of State. These two gifted Georgians were
called to these respective positions because of their
experience, ability, and ardent patriotism....
"Mr. Rhett was a very bold and frank man. So was Colonel Keitt;
and they, as always, avowed their opinions and acted upon them
with energy. Nevertheless, the vote of the delegation was cast
for Mr. Davis...."
(Signed) "James Chesnut."
From the Hon. W. Porcher Miles, of Virginia, formerly of South Carolina,
and a member of the Provisional Congress of 1861:
"Oak Ridge, _January 27, 1880_.
"....To the best of my recollection there was entire unanimity
in the South Carolina delegation at Montgomery on the subject of
the choice of a President. I think it very likely that Keitt,
from his warm personal friendship for Mr. Toombs, may at first
have preferred him. I have no recollections of Chesnut's
predilections. I think there was no question that Mr. Davis was
the choice of our delegation and of the whole people of South
Carolina.... I do not think Mr. Rhett ever attempted to
influence the course of his colleagues, either in this or in
matters generally before the Congress. Nor do I think his
personal influence in the delegation was as great as that of
some other members of it. If I were to select any one as having
a special influence with us, I would consider Mr. Robert
Barnwell as the one. His singularly pure and elevated character,
entire freedom from all personal ambition or desire for place or
position (he declined Mr. Davis's offer of a seat in the
Cabinet), as well as his long experience in public life and
admirably calm and well-balanced mind, all combined to make his
influence with his colleagues very great. But neither could he
be said 'to lead' the delegation. He had no desire, and never
made any attempt to do so. I think there was no delegation in
the Congress, the individual members of which were more
independent in coming to their own conclusions of what was right
and expedient to be done. There was always the frankest and
freest interchange of opinions among them, but every one
determined his own course for himself."
[Footnote 123: See Appendix K.]
CHAPTER VI.
The Confederate Cabinet.
After being inaugurated, I proceeded to the formation of my Cabinet,
that is, the heads of the executive departments authorized by the laws
of the Provisional Congress. The unanimity existing among our people
made this a much easier and more agreeable task than where the rivalries
in the party of an executive have to be consulted and accommodated,
often at the expense of the highest capacity and fitness. Unencumbered
by any other consideration than the public welfare, having no friends to
reward or enemies to punish, it resulted that not one of those who
formed my first Cabinet had borne to me the relation of close personal
friendship, or had political claims upon me; indeed, with two of them I
had no previous acquaintance.
It was my wish that the Hon. Robert W. Barnwell, of South Carolina,
should be Secretary of State. I had known him intimately during a trying
period of our joint service in the United States Senate, and he had won
alike my esteem and regard. Before making known to him my wish in this
connection, the delegation of South Carolina, of which he was a member,
had resolved to recommend one of their number to be Secretary of the
Treasury, and Mr. Barnwell, with characteristic delicacy, declined to
accept my offer to him.
I had intended to offer the Treasury Department to Mr. Toombs, of
Georgia, whose knowledge on subjects of finance had particularly
attracted my notice when we served together in the United States Senate.
Mr. Barnwell having declined the State Department, and a colleague of
his, said to be peculiarly qualified for the Treasury Department, having
been recommended for it, Mr. Toombs was offered the State Department,
for which others believed him to be well qualified.
Mr. Mallory, of Florida, had been chairman of the Committee on Naval
Affairs in the United States Senate, was extensively acquainted with the
officers of the navy, and for a landsman had much knowledge of nautical
affairs; therefore he was selected for Secretary of the Navy.
Mr. Benjamin, of Louisiana, had a very high reputation as a lawyer, and
my acquaintance with him in the Senate had impressed me with the
lucidity of his intellect, his systematic habits and capacity for labor.
He was therefore invited to the post of Attorney-General.
Mr. Reagan, of Texas, I had known for a sturdy, honest Representative in
the United States Congress, and his acquaintance with the territory
included in the Confederate States was both extensive and accurate.
These, together with his industry and ability to labor, indicated him as
peculiarly fit for the office of Postmaster-General.
Mr. Memminger, of South Carolina, had a high reputation for knowledge of
finance. He bore an unimpeachable character for integrity and close
attention to duties, and, on the recommendation of the delegation from
South Carolina, he was appointed Secretary of the Treasury, and proved
himself entirely worthy of the trust.
Mr. Walker, of Alabama, was a distinguished member of the bar of north
Alabama, and was eminent among the politicians of that section. He was
earnestly recommended by gentlemen intimately and favorably known to me,
and was therefore selected for the War Department. His was the only name
presented from Alabama.
The executive departments having been organized, my attention was first
directed to preparation for military defense, for, though I, in common
with others, desired to have a peaceful separation, and sent
commissioners to the United States Government to effect, if possible,
negotiations to that end, I did not hold the common opinion that we
would be allowed to depart in peace, and therefore regarded it as an
imperative duty to make all possible preparation for the contingency of
war.
CHAPTER VII.
Early Acts of the Confederate Congress.--Laws of the United
States continued in Force.--Officers of Customs and Revenue
continued in Office.--Commission to the United
States.--Navigation of the Mississippi.--Restrictions on the
Coasting-Trade removed.--Appointment of Commissioners to
Washington.
The legislation of the Confederate Congress furnishes the best evidence
of the temper and spirit which prevailed in the organization of the
Confederate Government. The very first enactment, made on the 9th of
February, 1861--the day after the adoption of the Provisional
Constitution--was this:
"That all the laws of the United States of America in force and
in use in the Confederate States of America on the first day of
November last, and not inconsistent with the Constitution of the
Confederate States, be and the same are hereby continued in
force until altered or repealed by the Congress."[124]
The next act, adopted on the 14th of February, was one continuing in
office until the 1st of April next ensuing all officers connected with
the collection of customs and the assistant treasurers intrusted with
the keeping of the moneys arising therefrom, who were engaged in the
performance of such duties within any of the Confederate States, with
the same powers and functions which they had been exercising under the
Government of the United States.[125]
The Provisional Constitution itself, in the second section of its sixth
article, had ordained as follows:
"The Government hereby instituted shall take immediate steps for
the settlement of all matters between the States forming it and
their other late confederates of the United States, in relation
to the public property and public debt at the time of their
withdrawal from them; these States hereby declaring it to be
their wish and earnest desire to adjust everything pertaining to
the common property, common liabilities, and common obligations
of that Union, upon the principles of right, justice, equity,
and good faith."[126]
In accordance with this requirement of the Constitution, the Congress,
on the 15th of February--before my arrival at Montgomery--passed a
resolution declaring "that it is the sense of this Congress that a
commission of three persons be appointed by the President-elect, as
early as may be convenient after his inauguration, and sent to the
Government of the United States of America, for the purpose of
negotiating friendly relations between that Government and the
Confederate States of America, and for the settlement of all questions
of disagreement between the two Governments, upon principles of right,
justice, equity, and good faith."[127]
Persistent and to a great extent successful efforts were made to inflame
the minds of the people of the Northwestern States by representing to
them that, in consequence of the separation of the States, they would
lose the free navigation of the Mississippi River. At that early period
in the life of the Confederacy, the intercourse between the North and
South had been so little interrupted, that the agitators, whose vocation
it was to deceive the masses of the people, could not, or should not,
have been ignorant that, as early as the 25th of February, 1861, an act
was passed by the Confederate Congress, and approved by the President,
"to declare and establish the free navigation of the Mississippi River."
That act began with the announcement that "the peaceful navigation of
the Mississippi River is hereby declared free to the citizens of any of
the States upon its borders, or upon the borders of its navigable
tributaries," and its provisions secure that freedom for "all ships,
boats, or vessels," with their cargoes, "without any duty or hindrance,
except light-money, pilotage, and other like charges."[128]
By an act approved on the 26th of February, all laws which forbade the
employment in the coasting-trade of vessels not enrolled or licensed,
and all laws imposing discriminating duties on foreign vessels or goods
imported in them, were repealed.[129] These acts and all other
indications manifest the well-known wish of the people of the
Confederacy to preserve the peace and encourage the most unrestricted
commerce with all nations, surely not least with their late associates,
the Northern States. Thus far, the hope that peace might be maintained
was predominant; perhaps, the wish was father to the thought that there
would be no war between the States lately united. Indeed, all the laws
enacted during the first session of the Provisional Congress show how
consistent were the purposes and actions of its members with their
original avowal of a desire peacefully to separate from those with whom
they could not live in tranquillity, albeit the Government had been
established to promote the common welfare. Under this state of feeling
the Government of the Confederacy was instituted.
My own views and inclinations, as has already been fully shown, were in
entire accord with the disposition manifested by the requirement of the
Provisional Constitution and the resolution of the Congress above
recited, for the appointment of a commission to negotiate friendly
relations with the United States and an equitable and peaceable
settlement of all questions which would necessarily arise under the new
relations of the States toward one another. Next to the organization of
a Cabinet, that of such a commission was accordingly one of the very
first objects of attention. Three discreet, well-informed, and
distinguished citizens were selected as said Commissioners, and
accredited to the President of the Northern States, Mr. Lincoln, to the
end that by negotiation all questions between the two Governments might
be so adjusted as to avoid war, and perpetuate the kind relations which
had been cemented by the common trials, sacrifices, and glories of the
people of all the States. If sectional hostility had been engendered by
dissimilarity of institutions, and by a mistaken idea of moral
responsibilities, and by irreconcilable creeds--if the family could no
longer live and grow harmoniously together--by patriarchal teaching
older than Christianity, it might have been learned that it was better
to part, to part peaceably, and to continue, from one to another, the
good offices of neighbors who by sacred memories were forbidden ever to
be foes. The nomination of the members of the commission was made on the
25th of February--within a week after my inauguration--and confirmed by
Congress on the same day. The Commissioners appointed were Messrs. A. B.
Roman, of Louisiana; Martin J. Crawford, of Georgia; and John Forsyth,
of Alabama. Mr. Roman was an honored citizen, and had been Governor of
his native State. Mr. Crawford had served with distinction in Congress
for several years. Mr. Forsyth was an influential journalist, and had
been Minister to Mexico under appointment of Mr. Pierce near the close
of his term, and continued so under that of Mr. Buchanan. These
gentlemen, moreover, represented the three great parties which had
ineffectually opposed the sectionalism of the so-called "Republicans."
Ex-Governor Roman had been a Whig in former years, and one of the
"Constitutional Union," or Bell-and-Everett, party in the canvass of
1860. Mr. Crawford, as a State-rights Democrat, had supported Mr.
Breckinridge; and Mr. Forsyth had been a zealous advocate of the claims
of Mr. Douglas. The composition of the commission was therefore such as
should have conciliated the sympathy and coöperation of every element of
conservatism with which they might have occasion to deal. Their
commissions authorized and empowered them, "in the name of the
Confederate States, to meet and confer with any person or persons duly
authorized by the Government of the United States, being furnished with
like power and authority, and with him or them to agree, treat, consult,
and negotiate" concerning all matters in which the parties were both
interested. No secret instructions were given them, for there was
nothing to conceal. The objects of their mission were open and avowed,
and its inception and conduct throughout were characterized by frankness
and good faith. How this effort was received, how the Commissioners were
kept waiting, and, while fair promises were held to the ear, how
military preparations were pushed forward for the unconstitutional,
criminal purpose of coercing States, let the shameful record of that
transaction attest.
[Footnote 124: Statutes at Large, Provisional Government, Confederate
States of America, p. 27.]
[Footnote 125: Statutes at Large, Provisional Government, Confederate
States of America, pp. 27, 28.]
[Footnote 126: See Provisional Constitution, Appendix K, _in loco_.]
[Footnote 127: Statutes at Large, Provisional Government, Confederate
States of America, p. 92.]
[Footnote 128: Statutes at Large, Provisional Government, Confederate
States of America, pp. 36-38.]
[Footnote 129: Ibid., p. 38.]
CHAPTER VIII.
The Peace Conference.--Demand for "a Little Bloodletting."--Plan
proposed by the Conference.--Its Contemptuous Reception and
Treatment in the United States Congress.--Failure of Last
Efforts at Reconciliation and Reunion.--Note.--Speech of General
Lane, of Oregon.
While the events which have just been occupying our attention were
occurring, the last conspicuous effort was made within the Union to stay
the tide of usurpation which was driving the Southern States into
secession. This effort was set on foot by Virginia, the General Assembly
of which State, on the 19th of January, 1861, adopted a preamble and
resolutions, deprecating disunion, and inviting all such States as were
willing to unite in an earnest endeavor to avert it by an adjustment of
the then existing controversies to appoint commissioners to meet in
Washington, on the 4th of February, "to consider, and, if practicable,
agree upon some suitable adjustment." Ex-President John Tyler, and
Messrs. William C. Rives, John W. Brockenbrugh, George W. Summers, and
James A. Seddon--five of the most distinguished citizens of the
State--were appointed to represent Virginia in the proposed conference.
If they could agree with the Commissioners of other States upon any plan
of settlement requiring amendments to the Federal Constitution, they
were instructed to communicate them to Congress, with a view to their
submission to the several States for ratification.
The "border States" in general promptly acceded to this proposition of
Virginia, and others followed, so that in the "Peace Congress," or
conference, which assembled, according to appointment, on the 4th, and
adjourned on the 27th of February, twenty-one States were eventually
represented, of which fourteen were Northern, or "non-slaveholding," and
seven slaveholding States. The six States which had already seceded were
of course not of the number represented; nor were Texas and Arkansas,
the secession of which, although not consummated, was obviously
inevitable. Three of the Northwestern States--Michigan, Wisconsin, and
Minnesota--and the two Pacific States--Oregon and California--also held
aloof from the conference. In the case of these last two, distance and
lack of time perhaps hindered action. With regard to the other three,
their reasons for declining to participate in the movement were not
officially assigned, and are therefore only subjects for conjecture.
Some remarkable revelations were afterward made, however, with regard to
the action of one of them. It appears, from correspondence read in the
Senate on the 27th of February, that the two Senators from Michigan had
at first opposed the participation of that State in the conference, on
the ground that it was, as one of them expressed it, "a step toward
obtaining that concession which the imperious slave power so insolently
demands."[130]--that is to say, in plain terms, they objected to it
because it might lead to a compromise and pacification. Finding,
however, that most of the other Northern States were represented--some
of them by men of moderate and conciliatory temper--that writer had
subsequently changed his mind, and at a late period of the session of
the conference recommended the sending of delegations of "true,
unflinching men," who would be "in favor of the Constitution as it
is"--that is, who would oppose any amendment proposed in the interests
of harmony and pacification.
The other Senator exhibits a similar alarm at the prospect of compromise
and a concurrent change of opinion. He urges the sending of
"stiff-backed" men, to thwart the threatened success of the friends of
peace, and concludes with an expression of the humane and patriotic
sentiment that "without a little bloodletting" the Union would not be
"worth a rush."[131] With such unworthy levity did these leaders of
sectional strife express their exultation in the prospect of the
conflict, which was to drench the land with blood and enshroud thousands
of homes in mourning!
It is needless to follow the course of the deliberations of the Peace
Conference. It included among its members many men of distinction and
eminent ability, and some of unquestionable patriotism, from every part
of the Union. The venerable John Tyler presided, and took an active and
ardent interest in the efforts made to effect a settlement and avert the
impending disasters. A plan was finally agreed upon by a majority of the
States represented, for certain amendments to the Federal Constitution,
which it was hoped might be acceptable to all parties and put an end to
further contention. In its leading features this plan resembled that of
Mr. Crittenden, heretofore spoken of, which was still pending in the
Senate, though with some variations, which were regarded as less
favorable to the South. It was reported immediately to both Houses of
the United States Congress. In the Senate, Mr. Crittenden promptly
expressed his willingness to accept it as a substitute for his own
proposition, and eloquently urged its adoption. But the arrogance of a
sectional majority inflated by recent triumph was too powerful to be
allayed by the appeals of patriotism or the counsels of wisdom. The plan
of the Peace Conference was treated by the majority with the
contemptuous indifference shown to every other movement for
conciliation. Its mere consideration was objected to by the extreme
radicals, and, although they failed in this, it was defeated on a vote,
as were the Crittenden propositions.
With the failure of these efforts, which occurred on the eve of the
inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, and the accession to power of a party
founded on a basis of sectional aggression, and now thoroughly committed
to its prosecution and perpetuation, expired the last hopes of
reconciliation and union.
Note.--In the course of the debate in the Senate on these grave
propositions, a manly and eloquent speech was made on the 2d of March,
1861, by the Hon. Joseph Lane, a Senator from Oregon, who had been the
candidate of the Democratic State-rights party for the Vice-Presidency
of the United States, in the canvass of 1860. Some passages of this
speech seem peculiarly appropriate for insertion here. General Lane was
replying to a speech of Mr. Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, afterward
President of the United States:
"Mr. President, the Senator from Tennessee complains of my
remarks on his speech. He complains of the tone and temper of
what I said. He complains that I replied at all, as I was a
Northern Senator. Mr. President, I am a citizen of this Union
and a Senator of the United States. My residence is in the
North, but I have never seen the day, and I never shall, when I
will refuse justice as readily to the South as to the North. I
know nothing but my country, the whole country, the
Constitution, and the equality of the States--the equal right of
every man in the common territory of the whole country; and by
that I shall stand.
"The Senator complains that I replied at all, as I was a
Northern Senator, and a Democrat whom he had supported at the
last election for a high office. Now, I was, as I stated at the
time, surprised at the Senator's speech, because I understood it
to be for coercion, as I think it was understood by almost
everybody else, except, as we are now told, by the Senator
himself; and I still think it amounted to a coercion speech,
notwithstanding the soft and plausible phrases by which he
describes it--a speech for the execution of the laws and the
protection of the Federal property. Sir, if there is, as I
contend, the right of secession, then, whenever a State
exercises that right, this Government has no laws in that State
to execute, nor has it any property in any such State that can
be protected by the power of this Government. In attempting,
however, to substitute the smooth phrases 'executing the laws'
and 'protecting public property' for coercion, for civil war, we
have an important concession: that is, that this Government dare
not go before the people with a plain avowal of its real
purposes and of their consequences. No, sir; the policy is to
inveigle the people of the North into civil war, by masking the
design in smooth and ambiguous terms."--("Congressional Globe,"
second session, Thirty-sixth Congress, p. 1347.)
[Footnote 130: See letter of Hon. S. K. Bingham to Governor Blair, of
Michigan, in "Congressional Globe," second session, Thirty-sixth
Congress, Part II, p. 1247.]
[Footnote 131: See "Congressional Globe," _ut supra_. As this letter,
last referred to, is brief and characteristic of the temper of the
typical so-called Republicans of the period, it may be inserted entire:
"Washington, _February_ 11, 1861.
"My dear Governor: Governor Bingham and myself telegraphed you
on Saturday, at the request of Massachusetts and New York, to
send delegates to the Peace or Compromise Congress. They admit
that we were right, and that they were wrong; that no Republican
State should have sent delegates; but they are here, and can not
get away; Ohio, Indiana, and Rhode Island are caving in, and
there is danger of Illinois; and now they beg us, for God's
sake, to come to their rescue, and save the Republican party
from rupture. I hope you will send _stiff-backed_ men, or none.
The whole thing was gotten up against my judgment and advice,
and will end in thin smoke. Still, I hope, as a matter of
courtesy to some of our erring brethren, that you will send the
delegates.
"Truly your friend,
"(Signed) Z. Chandler.
"His Excellency Austin Blair."
"P.S.--Some of the manufacturing States think that a fight would
be awful. Without a _little bloodletting_, this Union will not,
in my estimation, be worth a rush."
The reader should not fall into the mistake of imagining that the
"erring brethren," toward whom a concession of courtesy is recommended
by the writer of this letter, were the people of the seceding, or even
of the border, States. It is evident from the context that he means the
people of those so-called "Republican" States which had fallen into the
error of taking part in a plan for peace, which might have averted the
bloodletting recommended.]
CHAPTER IX.
Northern Protests against Coercion.--The "New York Tribune,"
Albany "Argus," and "New York Herald."--Great Public Meeting in
New York.--Speeches of Mr. Thayer, ex-Governor Seymour,
ex-Chancellor Walworth, and Others.--The Press in February,
1861.--Mr. Lincoln's Inaugural.--The Marvelous Change or
Suppression of Conservative Sentiment.--Historic Precedents.
It is a great mistake, or misstatement of fact, to assume that, at the
period under consideration, the Southern States stood alone in the
assertion of the principles which have been laid down in this work, with
regard to the right of secession and the wrong of coercion. Down to the
formation of the Confederate Government, the one was distinctly
admitted, the other still more distinctly disavowed and repudiated, by
many of the leaders of public opinion in the North of both
parties--indeed, any purpose of direct coercion was disclaimed by nearly
all. If presented at all, it was in the delusive and ambiguous guise of
"the execution of the laws" and "protection of the public property."
The "New York Tribune"--the leading organ of the party which triumphed
in the election of 1860--had said, soon after the result of that
election was ascertained, with reference to secession: "We hold, with
Jefferson, to the inalienable right of communities to alter or abolish
forms of government that have become oppressive or injurious; and, if
the cotton States shall decide that they can do better out of the Union
than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace. The right to secede
may be a revolutionary right, _but it exists nevertheless_; and we do
not see how one party can have _a right to do what another party has a
right to prevent_. We must ever resist the asserted right of any State
to remain in the Union and nullify or defy the laws thereof: _to
withdraw from the Union is quite another matter_. And, whenever a
considerable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out,
_we shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep her in. We hope
never to live in a republic whereof one section is pinned to the residue
by bayonets_."[132]
The only liberty taken with this extract has been that of presenting
certain parts of it in italics. Nothing that has ever been said by the
author of this work, in the foregoing chapters, on the floor of the
Senate, or elsewhere, more distinctly asserted the right of secession.
Nothing that has been quoted from Hamilton, or Madison, or Marshall, or
John Quincy Adams, more emphatically repudiates the claim of right to
restrain or coerce a State in the exercise of its free choice. Nothing
that has been said since the war which followed could furnish a more
striking condemnation of its origin, prosecution, purposes, and results.
A comparison of the sentiments above quoted, with the subsequent career
of the party, of which that journal was and long had been the recognized
organ, would exhibit a striking incongruity and inconsistency.
The "Tribune" was far from being singular among its Northern
contemporaries in the entertainment of such views, as Mr. Greeley, its
chief editor, has shown by many citations in his book, "The American
Conflict." The Albany "Argus," about the same time, said, in language
which Mr. Greeley characterizes as "clear and temperate": "We sympathize
with and justify the South as far as this: their rights have been
invaded to the extreme limit possible within the forms of the
Constitution; and, beyond this limit, their feelings have been insulted
and their interests and honor assailed by almost every possible form of
denunciation and invective; and, if we deemed it certain that the real
_animus_ of the Republican party could be carried into the
administration of the Federal Government, and become the permanent
policy of the nation, we should think that all the instincts of
self-preservation and of manhood rightfully impelled them to a resort to
revolution and a separation from the Union, and we would applaud them
and wish them godspeed in the adoption of such a remedy."
Again, the same paper said, a day or two afterward: "If South Carolina
or any other State, through a convention of her people, shall formally
separate herself from the Union, probably both the present and the next
Executive will simply let her alone and _quietly allow all the functions
of the Federal Government within her limits to be suspended. Any other
course would be madness_; as it would at once enlist all the Southern
States in the controversy and plunge the whole country into a civil
war.... As a matter of policy and wisdom, therefore, independent of the
question of right, we should deem resort to force most disastrous."
The "New York Herald"--a journal which claimed to be independent of all
party influences--about the same period said: "Each State is organized
as a complete government, holding the purse and wielding the sword,
possessing the right to break the tie of the confederation as a nation
might break a treaty, and to repel coercion as a nation might repel
invasion.... Coercion, if it were possible, is out of the question."
On the 31st of January, 1861--after six States had already seceded--a
great meeting was held in the city of New York, to consider the perilous
condition of the country. At this meeting Mr. James S. Thayer, "an
old-line Whig," made a speech, which was received with great applause.
The following extracts from the published report of Mr. Thayer's speech
will show the character of the views which then commanded the cordial
approval of that metropolitan audience:
"We can at least, in an authoritative way and a practical
manner, arrive at the basis of a _peaceable separation_.
[Cheers.] We can at least by discussion enlighten, settle, and
concentrate the public sentiment in the State of New York upon
this question, and save it from that fearful current, which
circuitously but certainly sweeps madly on, through the narrow
gorge of 'the enforcement of the laws,' to the shoreless ocean
of civil war! [Cheers.] Against this, under all circumstances,
in every place and form, we must now and at all times oppose a
resolute and unfaltering resistance. The public mind will bear
the avowal, and let us make it--that, if a revolution of force
is to begin, _it shall be inaugurated at home_. And if the
incoming Administration shall attempt to carry out the line of
policy that has been foreshadowed, we announce that, when the
hand of Black Republicanism turns to blood-red, and seeks _from
the fragment of the Constitution to construct a scaffolding for
coercion--another name for execution_--we will reverse the order
of the French Revolution, and save the blood of the people by
making those who would inaugurate a reign of terror the first
victims of a national guillotine!" [Enthusiastic applause.]
And again:
"It is announced that the Republican Administration will enforce
the laws against and in all the seceding States. A nice
discrimination must be exercised in the performance of this
duty. You remember the story of William Tell.... Let an arrow
winged by the Federal bow strike the heart of an American
citizen, and who can number the avenging darts that will cloud
the heavens in the conflict that will ensue? [Prolonged
applause.] What, then, is the duty of the State of New York?
What shall we say to our people when we come to meet this state
of facts? That the Union must be preserved? But, if that can not
be, what then? _Peaceable separation._ [Applause.] Painful and
humiliating as it is, let us temper it with all we can of love
and kindness, so that we may yet be left in a comparatively
prosperous condition, in friendly relations with another
Confederacy." [Cheers.]
At the same meeting ex-Governor Horatio Seymour asked the question--on
which subsequent events have cast their own commentary--whether
"successful coercion by the North is less revolutionary than successful
secession by the South? Shall we prevent revolution [he added] by being
foremost in over-throwing the principles of our Government, and all that
makes it valuable to our people and distinguishes it among the nations
of the earth?"
The venerable ex-Chancellor Walworth thus expressed himself:
"It would be as brutal, in my opinion, to send men to butcher
our own brothers of the Southern States as it would be to
massacre them in the Northern States. We are told, however, that
it is our duty to, and we must, enforce the laws. But why--and
what laws are to be enforced? There were laws that were to be
enforced in the time of the American Revolution.... Did Lord
Chatham go for enforcing those laws? No, he gloried in defense
of the liberties of America. He made that memorable declaration
in the British Parliament, 'If I were an American citizen,
instead of being, as I am, an Englishman, I never would submit
to such laws--never, never, never!'" [Prolonged applause.]
Other distinguished speakers expressed themselves in similar
terms--varying somewhat in their estimate of the propriety of the
secession of the Southern States, but all agreeing in emphatic and
unqualified reprobation of the idea of coercion. A series of
conciliatory resolutions was adopted, one of which declares that "civil
war will not restore the Union, but will defeat for ever its
reconstruction."
At a still later period--some time in the month of February--the "Free
Press," a leading paper in Detroit, had the following:
"If there shall not be a change in the present seeming purpose
to yield to no accommodation of the national difficulties, and
if troops shall be raised in the North to march against the
people of the South, _a fire in the rear will be opened upon
such troops_, which will either stop their march altogether or
wonderfully accelerate it."
The "Union," of Bangor, Maine, spoke no less decidedly to the same
effect:
"The difficulties between the North and the South must be
compromised, or the separation of the States _shall be
peaceable_. If the Republican party refuse to go the full length
of the Crittenden amendment--_which is the very least the South
can or ought to take_--then, here in Maine, not a Democrat will
be found who will raise his arm against his brethren of the
South. From one end of the State to the other let the cry of the
Democracy be, Compromise or Peaceable Separation!"
That these were not expressions of isolated or exceptional sentiment is
evident from the fact that they were copied with approval by other
Northern journals.
Mr. Lincoln, when delivering his inaugural address, on the 4th of March,
1861, had not so far lost all respect for the consecrated traditions of
the founders of the Constitution and for the majesty of the principle of
State sovereignty as openly to enunciate the claim of coercion. While
arguing against the right to secede, and asserting his intention "to
hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the
Government, and collect the duties and imposts," he says that, "beyond
what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no
using of force against or among the people anywhere," and appends to
this declaration the following pledge:
"Where hostility to the United States shall be so great as to
prevent competent resident citizens from holding the Federal
offices, there will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers
among the people for that object. While the strict legal right
may exist of the Government to enforce the exercise of these
offices, the attempt to do so would be so irritating, and so
nearly impracticable withal, that I deem it better to forego for
the time the uses of such offices."
These extracts will serve to show that the people of the South were not
without grounds for cherishing the hope, to which they so fondly clung,
that the separation would, indeed, be as peaceable in fact as it was, on
their part, in purpose; that the conservative and patriotic feeling
still existing in the North would control the elements of sectional
hatred and bloodthirsty fanaticism; and that there would be really "no
war."
And here the ingenuous reader may very naturally ask, What became of all
this feeling? How was it that, in the course of a few weeks, it had
disappeared like a morning mist? Where was the host of men who had
declared that an army marching to invade the Southern States should
first pass over their dead bodies? No _new_ question had arisen--no
change in the attitude occupied by the seceding States--no cause for
controversy not already existing when these utterances were made. And
yet the sentiments which they expressed were so entirely swept away by
the tide of reckless fury which soon afterward impelled an armed
invasion of the South, that (with a few praiseworthy but powerless
exceptions) scarcely a vestige of them was left. Not only were they
obliterated, but seemingly forgotten.
I leave to others to offer, if they can, an explanation of this strange
phenomenon. To the student of human nature, however, it may not seem
altogether without precedent, when he remembers certain other instances
on record of mutations in public sentiment equally sudden and
extraordinary. Ten thousand swords that would have leaped from their
scabbards--as the English statesman thought--to avenge even a look of
insult to a lovely queen, hung idly in their places when she was led to
the scaffold in the midst of the vilest taunts and execrations. The case
that we have been considering was, perhaps, only an illustration of the
general truth that, in times of revolutionary excitement, the higher and
better elements are crushed and silenced by the lower and baser--not so
much on account of their greater extent, as of their greater violence.
[Footnote 132: "New York Tribune" of November 9, 1860, quoted in "The
American Conflict," vol. i, chap. xxiii, p. 359.]
CHAPTER X.
Temper of the Southern People indicated by the Action of the
Confederate Congress.--The Permanent Constitution.--Modeled
after the Federal Constitution.--Variations and Special
Provisions.--Provisions with Regard to Slavery and the
Slave-Trade.--A False Assertion refuted.--Excellence of the
Constitution.--Admissions of Hostile or Impartial Criticism.
The conservative temper of the people of the Confederate States was
conspicuously exhibited in the most important product of the early
labors of their representatives in Congress assembled. The Provisional
Constitution, although prepared only for temporary use, and necessarily
in some haste, was so well adapted for the purposes which it was
intended to serve, that many thought it would have been wise to continue
it in force indefinitely, or at least until the independency of the
Confederacy should be assured. The Congress, however, deeming it best
that the system of Government should emanate from the people,
accordingly, on the 11th of March, prepared the permanent Constitution,
which was submitted to and ratified by the people of the respective
States.
Of this Constitution--which may be found in an appendix,[133] side by
side with the Constitution of the United States--the Hon. Alexander H.
Stephens, who was one of its authors, very properly says:
"The whole document utterly negatives the idea, which so many
have been active in endeavoring to put in the enduring form of
history, that the Convention at Montgomery was nothing but a set
of 'conspirators,' whose object was the overthrow of the
principles of the Constitution of the United States, and the
erection of a great 'slavery oligarchy,' instead of the free
institutions thereby secured and guaranteed. This work of the
Montgomery Convention, with that of the Constitution for a
Provisional Government, will ever remain, not only as a monument
of the wisdom, forecast, and statesmanship of the men who
constituted it, but an everlasting refutation of the charges
which have been brought against them. These works together show
clearly that their only leading object was to sustain, uphold,
and perpetuate the fundamental principles of the Constitution of
the United States."[134]
The Constitution of the United States was the model followed throughout,
with only such changes as experience suggested for better practical
working or for greater perspicuity. The preamble to both instruments is
the same in substance, and very nearly identical in language. The words
"We, the people of the United States," in one, are replaced by "We, the
people of the Confederate States," in the other; and the gross
perversion which has been made of the former expression is precluded in
the latter merely by the addition of the explanatory clause, "each State
acting in its sovereign and independent character"--an explanation
which, at the time of the formation of the Constitution of the United
States, would have been deemed entirely superfluous.
The official term of the President was fixed at six instead of four
years, and it was provided that he should not be eligible for
reëlection. This was in accordance with the original draft of the
Constitution of 1787.[135]
The President was empowered to remove officers of his Cabinet, or those
engaged in the diplomatic service, at his discretion, but in all other
cases removal from office could be made only for cause, and the cause
was to be reported to the Senate.[136]
Congress was authorized to provide by law for the admission of "the
principal officer in each of the executive departments" (or Cabinet
officers) to a seat upon the floor of either House, with the privilege
of taking part in the discussion of subjects pertaining to his
department.[137] This wise and judicious provision, which would have
tended to obviate much delay and misunderstanding, was, however, never
put into execution by the necessary legislation.
Protective duties for the benefit of special branches of industry, which
had been so fruitful a source of trouble under the Government of the
United States, were altogether prohibited.[138] So, also, were bounties
from the Treasury,[139] and extra compensation for services rendered by
officers, contractors, or employees, of any description.[140]
A vote of two thirds of each House was requisite for the appropriation
of money from the Treasury, unless asked for by the chief of a
department and submitted to Congress by the President, or for payment of
the expenses of Congress, or of claims against the Confederacy
judicially established and declared.[141] The President was also
authorized to approve any one appropriation and disapprove any other in
the same bill.[142]
With regard to the impeachment of Federal officers, it was intrusted, as
formerly, to the discretion of the House of Representatives, with the
additional provision, however, that, in the case of any judicial or
other officer exercising his functions solely within the limits of a
particular State, impeachment might be made by the Legislature of such
State--the trial in all cases to be by the Senate of the Confederate
States.[143]
Any two or more States were authorized to enter into compacts with each
other for the improvement of the navigation of rivers flowing between or
through them.[144] A vote of two thirds of each House--the Senate voting
by States--was required for the admission of a new State.[145]
With regard to amendments of the Constitution, it was made obligatory
upon Congress, on the demand of any three States, concurring in the
proposed amendment or amendments, to summon a convention of all the
States to consider and act upon them, voting by States, but restricted
in its action to the particular propositions thus submitted. If approved
by such convention, the amendments were to be subject to final
ratification by two thirds of the States.[146]
Other changes or modifications, worthy of special notice, related to
internal improvements, bankruptcy laws, duties on exports, suits in the
Federal courts, and the government of the Territories.[147]
With regard to slavery and the slave-trade, the provisions of this
Constitution furnish an effectual answer to the assertion, so often
made, that the Confederacy was founded on slavery, that slavery was its
"corner-stone," etc. Property in slaves, _already existing_, was
recognized and guaranteed, just as it was by the Constitution of the
United States; and the rights of such property in the common Territories
were protected against any such hostile discrimination as had been
attempted in the Union. But the "extension of slavery," in the only
practical sense of that phrase, was more distinctly and effectually
precluded by the Confederate than by the Federal Constitution. This will
be manifest on a comparison of the provisions of the two relative to the
slave-trade. These are found at the beginning of the ninth section of
the first article of each instrument. The Constitution of the United
States has the following:
"The migration or importation of such persons as any of the
States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be
prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight
hundred and eight; but a tax or duty may be imposed on such
importations, not exceeding ten dollars for each person."
The Confederate Constitution, on the other hand, ordained as follows:
"1. The importation of negroes of the African race from any
foreign country, other than the slaveholding States or
Territories of the United States of America, is hereby
forbidden; and Congress is required to pass such laws as shall
effectually prevent the same.
"2. Congress shall also have the power to prohibit the
introduction of slaves from any state not a member of, or
Territory not belonging to, this Confederacy."
In the case of the United States, the only prohibition is against any
interference by Congress with the slave-trade for a term of years, and
it was further legitimized by the authority given to impose a duty upon
it. The term of years, it is true, had long since expired, but there was
still no prohibition of the trade by the Constitution; it was after 1808
entirely within the discretion of Congress either to encourage,
tolerate, or prohibit it.
Under the Confederate Constitution, on the contrary, the African
slave-trade was "_hereby forbidden_," positively and unconditionally,
from the beginning. Neither the Confederate Government nor that of any
of the States could permit it, and the Congress was expressly "required"
to enforce the prohibition. The only discretion in the matter intrusted
to the Congress was, whether or not to permit the introduction of slaves
from any of the United States or their Territories.
Mr. Lincoln, in his inaugural address, had said: "I have no purpose,
directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in
the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so,
and I have no inclination to do so." Now, if there was no purpose on the
part of the Government of the United States to interfere with the
institution of slavery within its already existing limits--a proposition
which permitted its propagation within those limits by natural
increase--and inasmuch as the Confederate Constitution precluded any
other than the same natural increase, we may plainly perceive the
disingenuousness and absurdity of the pretension by which a factitious
sympathy has been obtained in certain quarters for the war upon the
South, on the ground that it was a war in behalf of freedom against
slavery.[148] I had no direct part in the preparation of the Confederate
Constitution. No consideration of delicacy forbids me, therefore, to
say, in closing this brief review of that instrument, that it was a
model of wise, temperate, and liberal statesmanship. Intelligent
criticism, from hostile as well as friendly sources, has been compelled
to admit its excellences, and has sustained the judgment of a popular
Northern journal which said, a few days after it was adopted and
published:
"The new Constitution is the Constitution of the United States
with various modifications and some very important and most
desirable improvements. We are free to say that the invaluable
reforms enumerated should be adopted by the United States, with
or without a reunion of the seceded States, and as soon as
possible. But why not accept them with the propositions of the
Confederate States on slavery as a basis of reunion?"[149]
[Footnote 133: See Appendix K.]
[Footnote 134: "War between the States," vol. ii, col. xix, p. 389.]
[Footnote 135: See Article II, section 1.]
[Footnote 136: Ibid., section 2, ¶ 3.]
[Footnote 137: Article I, section 6, ¶ 2.]
[Footnote 138: Article I, section 8, ¶ 1.]
[Footnote 139: Ibid.]
[Footnote 140: Ibid., section 9, ¶ 10.]
[Footnote 141: Ibid., ¶ 9.]
[Footnote 142: Ibid., section 7, ¶ 2.]
[Footnote 143: Ibid., section 2, ¶ 5.]
[Footnote 144: Ibid., section 10, ¶ 3.]
[Footnote 145: Article IV, section 3, ¶ 1.]
[Footnote 146: Article V.]
[Footnote 147: Article I, section 8, ¶¶ 1 and 4, section 9, ¶ 6; Article
III, section 2, ¶ 1; Article IV, section 3, ¶ 3.]
[Footnote 148: As late as the 22d of April, 1861, Mr. Seward, United
States Secretary of State, in a dispatch to Mr. Dayton, Minister to
France, since made public, expressed the views and purposes of the
United States Government in the premises as follows. It may be proper to
explain that, by what he is pleased to term "the revolution," Mr. Seward
means the withdrawal of the Southern States; and that the words
italicized are, perhaps, not so distinguished in the original. He says:
"The Territories will remain in all respects the same, whether the
revolution shall succeed or shall fail. _The condition of slavery in the
several States will remain just the same, whether it succeed or fail._
There is not even a pretext for the complaint that the disaffected
States are to be conquered by the United States if the revolution fails;
for the rights of the States and _the condition of every being in them_
will remain subject to exactly the same laws and forms of
administration, whether the revolution shall succeed or whether it shall
fail. In the one case, the States would be federally connected with the
new Confederacy; in the other, they would, as now, be members of the
United States; _but their Constitutions and laws, customs, habits, and
institutions, in either ease, will remain the same_."]
[Footnote 149: "New York Herald," March 19, 1861.]
CHAPTER XI.
The Commission to Washington City.--Arrival of Mr.
Crawford.--Mr. Buchanan's Alarm.--Note of the Commissioners to
the New Administration.--Mediation of Justices Nelson and
Campbell.--The Difficulty about Forts Sumter and Pickens.--Mr.
Secretary Seward's Assurances.--Duplicity of the Government at
Washington.--Mr. Fox's Visit to Charleston.--Secret Preparations
for Coercive Measures.--Visit of Mr. Lamon.--Renewed Assurances
of Good Faith.--Notification to Governor Pickens.--Developments
of Secret History.--Systematic and Complicated Perfidy exposed.
The appointment of Commissioners to proceed to Washington, for the
purpose of establishing friendly relations with the United States and
effecting an equitable settlement of all questions relating to the
common property of the States and the public debt, has already been
mentioned. No time was lost in carrying this purpose into execution. Mr.
Crawford--first of the Commissioners--left Montgomery on or about the
27th of February, and arrived in Washington two or three days before the
expiration of Mr. Buchanan's term of office as President of the United
States. Besides his official credentials, he bore the following letter
to the President, of a personal or semi-official character, intended to
facilitate, if possible, the speedy accomplishment of the objects of his
mission:
"_To the President of the United States._
"Sir: Being animated by an earnest desire to unite and bind
together our respective countries by friendly ties, I have
appointed Martin J. Crawford, one of our most esteemed and
trustworthy citizens, as special Commissioner of the Confederate
States to the Government of the United States; and I have now
the honor to introduce him to you, and to ask for him a
reception and treatment corresponding to his station, and to the
purposes for which he is sent.
"Those purposes he will more particularly explain to you. Hoping
that through his agency these may be accomplished, I avail
myself of this occasion to offer to you the assurance of my
distinguished consideration."
(Signed) "Jefferson Davis."
"Montgomery, _February 27, 1861_."
It may here be mentioned, in explanation of my desire that the
commission, or at least a part of it, should reach Washington before the
close of Mr. Buchanan's term, that I had received an intimation from
him, through a distinguished Senator of one of the border States,[150]
that he would be happy to receive a Commissioner or Commissioners from
the Confederate States, and would refer to the Senate any communication
that might be made through such a commission.
Mr. Crawford--now a Judge of the Supreme Court of Georgia, and the only
surviving member of the commission--in a manuscript account, which he
has kindly furnished, of his recollections of events connected with it,
says that, on arriving in Washington at the early hour of half-past four
o'clock in the morning, he was "surprised to see Pennsylvania Avenue,
from the old National to Willard's Hotel, crowded with men hurrying,
some toward the former, but most of the faces in the direction of the
latter, where the new President [Mr. Lincoln, President-elect], the
great political almoner, for the time being, had taken up his lodgings.
At this point," continues Judge Crawford, "the crowd swelled to
astonishing numbers of expectant and hopeful men, awaiting an
opportunity, either to see Mr. Lincoln himself, or to communicate with
him through some one who might be so fortunate as to have access to his
presence."
Describing his reception in the Federal capital, Judge Crawford says:
"The feverish and emotional condition of affairs soon made the
presence of the special Commissioner at Washington known
throughout the city. Congress was still, of course, in session;
Senators and members of the House of Representatives, excepting
those of the Confederate States, who had withdrawn, were in
their seats, and the manifestations of anxious care and gloomy
forebodings were plainly to be seen on all sides. This was not
confined to sections, but existed among the men of the North and
West as well as those of the South....
"Mr. Buchanan, the President, was in a state of most thorough
alarm, not only for his home at Wheatland, but for his personal
safety.[151] In the very few days which had elapsed between the
time of his promise to receive a Commissioner from the
Confederate States and the actual arrival of the Commissioner,
he had become so fearfully panic-stricken, that he declined
either to receive him or to send any message to the Senate
touching the subject-matter of his mission.
"The Commissioner had been for several years in Congress before
the Administration of Mr. Buchanan, as well as during his
official term, and had always been in close political and social
relations with him; yet he was afraid of a public visit from
him. He said that he had only three days of official life left,
and could incur no further dangers or reproaches than those he
had already borne from the press and public speakers of the
North.
"The intensity of the prevalent feeling increased as the vast
crowds, arriving by every train, added fresh material; and
hatred and hostility toward our new Government were manifested
in almost every conceivable manner."
Another of the Commissioners (Mr. Forsyth) having arrived in Washington
on the 12th of March--eight days after the inauguration of Mr.
Lincoln--the two Commissioners then present, Messrs. Forsyth and
Crawford, addressed to Mr. Seward, Secretary of State, a note informing
him of their presence, stating the friendly and peaceful purposes of
their mission, and requesting the appointment of a day, as early as
possible, for the presentation to the President of the United States of
their credentials and the objects which they had in view. This letter
will be found in the Appendix,[152] with other correspondence which
ensued, published soon after the events to which it relates. The
attention of the reader is specially invited to these documents, but, as
additional revelations have been made since they were first published,
it will be proper, in order to a full understanding of the transactions
to which they refer, to give here a brief statement of the facts.
No _written_ answer to the note of the Commissioners was delivered to
them for twenty-seven days after it was written. The paper of Mr.
Seward, in reply, without signature or address, dated March 15th,[153]
was "filed," as he states, on that day, in the Department of State, but
a copy of it was not handed to the Commissioners until the 8th of April.
But an oral answer had been made to the note of the Commissioners at a
much earlier date, for the significance of which it will be necessary to
bear in mind the condition of affairs at Charleston and Pensacola.
Fort Sumter was still occupied by the garrison under command of Major
Anderson, with no material change in the circumstances since the failure
of the attempt made in January to reënforce it by means of the Star of
the West. This standing menace at the gates of the chief harbor of South
Carolina had been tolerated by the government and people of that State,
and afterward by the Confederate authorities, in the abiding hope that
it would be removed without compelling a collision of forces. Fort
Pickens, on one side of the entrance to the harbor of Pensacola, was
also occupied by a garrison of United States troops, while the two forts
(Barrancas and McRee) on the other side were in possession of the
Confederates. Communication by sea was not entirely precluded, however,
in the case of Fort Pickens; the garrison had been strengthened, and a
fleet of Federal men-of-war was lying outside of the harbor. The
condition of affairs at these forts--especially at Fort Sumter--was a
subject of anxiety with the friends of peace, and the hope of settling
by negotiation the questions involved in their occupation had been one
of the most urgent motives for the prompt dispatch of the Commissioners
to Washington.
The letter of the Commissioners to Mr. Seward was written, as we have
seen, on the 12th of March. The oral message, above mentioned, was
obtained and communicated to the Commissioners through the agency of two
Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States--Justices Nelson, of
New York, and Campbell, of Alabama. On the 15th of March, according to
the statement of Judge Campbell,[154] Mr. Justice Nelson visited the
Secretaries of State and of the Treasury and the Attorney-General
(Messrs. Seward, Chase, and Bates), to dissuade them from undertaking to
put in execution any policy of coercion. "During the term of the Supreme
Court he had very carefully examined the laws of the United States to
enable him to attain his conclusions, and from time to time he had
consulted the Chief Justice [Taney] upon the questions which his
examination had suggested. His conclusion was that, without very serious
violations of Constitution and statutes, coercion could not be
successfully effected by the executive department. I had made [continues
Judge Campbell] a similar examination, and I concurred in his
conclusions and opinions. As he was returning from his visit to the
State Department, we casually met, and he informed me of what he had
done. He said he had spoken to these officers at large; that he was
received with respect and listened to with attention by all, with
approbation by the Attorney-General, and with great cordiality by the
Secretary of State; that the Secretary had expressed gratification to
find so many impediments to the disturbance of peace, and only wished
there had been more. He stated that the Secretary told him there was a
present cause of embarrassment: that the Southern Commissioners had
demanded recognition, and a refusal would lead to irritation and
excitement in the Southern States, and would cause a counter-irritation
and excitement in the Northern States, prejudicial to a peaceful
adjustment. Justice Nelson suggested that I might be of service."
The result of the interview between these two distinguished gentlemen,
we are informed, was another visit, by both of them, to the State
Department, for the purpose of urging Mr. Seward to reply to the
Commissioners, and assure them of the desire of the United States
Government for a friendly adjustment. Mr. Seward seems to have objected
to an immediate recognition of the Commissioners, on the ground that the
state of public sentiment in the North would not sustain it, in
connection with the withdrawal of the troops from Fort Sumter, which had
been determined on. "The evacuation of Sumter," he said, "is as much as
the Administration can bear."
Judge Campbell adds: "I concurred in the conclusion that the evacuation
of Sumter involved responsibility, and stated that there could not be
too much caution in the adoption of measures so as not to shock or to
irritate the public sentiment, and that the evacuation of Sumter was
sufficient for the present in that direction. I stated that I would see
the Commissioners, and I would write to Mr. Davis to that effect. I
asked him what I should say as to Sumter and as to Pickens. _He
authorized me to say that, before that letter could reach him_ [Mr.
Davis], _he would learn by telegraph that the order for the evacuation
of Sumter had been made_. He said the condition of Pickens was
satisfactory, and there would be no change made there." The italics in
this extract are my own.
The letter in which this promise was communicated to me has been lost,
but it was given in substantially the terms above stated as authorized
by Mr. Seward--that the order for the evacuation of the fort would be
issued before the letter could reach me. The same assurance was given,
on the same day, to the Commissioners. Judge Campbell tells us that Mr.
Crawford was slow to consent to refrain from pressing the demand for
recognition. "It was only after some discussion and the expression of
some objections that he consented" to do so. This consent was clearly
one part of a stipulation, of which the other part was the pledge that
the fort would be evacuated in the course of a few days. Mr. Crawford
required the pledge of Mr. Seward to be reduced to writing, with Judge
Campbell's personal assurance of its genuineness and accuracy.[155] This
written statement was exhibited to Judge Nelson, before its delivery,
and approved by him. The fact that the pledge had been given in his name
and behalf was communicated to Mr. Seward the same evening by letter. He
was cognizant of, consenting to, and in great part the author of, the
whole transaction.
It will be observed that not only the Commissioners in Washington, but
the Confederate Government at Montgomery also, were thus assured on the
highest authority--that of the Secretary of State of the United States,
the official organ of communication of the views and purposes of his
Government--of the intention of that Government to order the evacuation
of Fort Sumter within a few days from the 15th of March, and not to
disturb the existing _status_ at Fort Pickens. Moreover, this was not
the mere statement of a fact, but a _pledge_, given as the consideration
of an appeal to the Confederate Government and its Commissioners to
refrain from embarrassing the Federal Administration by prosecuting any
further claims at the same time. As such a pledge, it was accepted, and,
while its fulfillment was quietly awaited, the Commissioners forbore to
make any further demand for reply to their note of the 12th of March.
Five days having elapsed in this condition of affairs, the Commissioners
in Washington telegraphed Brigadier-General Beauregard, commander of the
Confederate forces at Charleston, inquiring whether the fort had been
evacuated, or any action taken by Major Anderson indicating the
probability of an evacuation. Answer was made to this dispatch, that the
fort had not been evacuated, that there were no indications of such a
purpose, but that Major Anderson was still working on its defenses. This
dispatch was taken to Mr. Seward by Judge Campbell. Two interviews
occurred in relation to it, at both of which Judge Nelson was also
present. Of the result of these interviews, Judge Campbell states: "The
last was full and satisfactory. The Secretary was buoyant and sanguine;
he spoke of his ability to carry through his policy with confidence. He
accounted for the delay as accidental, and _not involving the integrity
of his assurance that the evacuation would take place_, and that I
should know whenever any change was made in the resolution in reference
to Sumter or to Pickens. I repeated this assurance in writing to Judge
Crawford, _and informed Governor Seward in writing what I had
said_."[156]
It would be incredible, but for the ample proofs which have since been
brought to light, that, during all this period of reiterated assurances
of a purpose to withdraw the garrison from Fort Sumter, and of excuses
for delay on account of the difficulties which embarrassed it, the
Government of the United States was assiduously engaged in devising
means for furnishing supplies and reënforcements to the garrison, with
the view of retaining possession of the fort!
Mr. G. V. Fox, afterward Assistant Secretary of the United States Navy,
had proposed a plan for reënforcing and furnishing supplies to the
garrison of Fort Sumter in February, during the Administration of Mr.
Buchanan. In a letter published in the newspapers since the war, he
gives an account of the manner in which the proposition was renewed to
the new Administration and its reception by them, as follows:
"On the 12th of March I received a telegram from
Postmaster-General Blair to come to Washington. I arrived there
on the 13th. Mr. Blair having been acquainted with the
proposition I presented to General Scott, under Mr. Buchanan's
Administration, sent for me to tender the same to Mr. Lincoln,
informing me that Lieutenant-General Scott had advised the
President that the fort could not be relieved, and must be given
up. Mr. Blair took me at once to the White House, and I
explained the plan to the President. Thence we adjourned to
Lieutenant-General Scott's office, where a renewed discussion of
the subject took place. The General informed the President that
my plan was practicable in February, but that the increased
number of batteries erected at the mouth of the harbor since
that time rendered it impossible in March.
"Finding that there was great opposition to any attempt at
relieving Fort Sumter, and that Mr. Blair alone sustained the
President in his policy of refusing to yield, I judged that my
arguments in favor of the practicability of sending in supplies
would be strengthened by a visit to Charleston and the fort. The
President readily agreed to my visit, if the Secretary of War
and General Scott raised no objection.
"Both these gentlemen consenting, I left Washington on the 19th
of March, and, passing through Richmond and Wilmington, reached
Charleston on the 21st."
Thus we see that, at the very moment when Mr. Secretary Seward was
renewing to the Confederate Government, through Judge Campbell, his
positive assurance that "the evacuation _would_ take place," this
emissary was on his way to Charleston to obtain information and devise
measures by means of which this promise might be broken.
On his arrival in Charleston, Mr. Fox tells us that he sought an
interview with Captain Hartstein, of the Confederate Navy, and through
this officer obtained from Governor Pickens permission to visit Fort
Sumter. He fails, in his narrative, to state what we learn from Governor
Pickens himself,[157] that this permission was obtained "expressly upon
the pledge of 'pacific purposes.'" Notwithstanding this pledge, he
employed the opportunity afforded by his visit to mature the details of
his plan for furnishing supplies and reënforcements to the garrison. He
did not, he says, communicate his plan or purposes to Major Anderson,
the commanding officer of the garrison, having discernment enough,
perhaps, to divine that the instincts of that brave and honest soldier
would have revolted at and rebuked the duplicity and perfidy of the
whole transaction. The result of his visit was, however, reported at
Washington, his plan was approved by President Lincoln, and he was sent
to New York to make arrangements for putting it in execution.
"In a very few days after" (says Governor Pickens, in the
message already quoted above), "another confidential agent,
Colonel Lamon, was sent by the President [Mr. Lincoln], who
informed me that he had come to try and arrange for the removal
of the garrison, and, when he returned from the fort, asked if a
war-vessel could not be allowed to remove them. I replied that
no war-vessel could be allowed to enter the harbor on any terms.
He said he believed Major Anderson preferred an ordinary
steamer, and I agreed that the garrison might be thus removed.
He said he hoped to return in a very few days for that purpose."
This, it will be remembered, occurred while Mr. Fox was making active,
though secret, preparations for his relief expedition.
Colonel, or Major, Lamon, as he is variously styled in the
correspondence, did not return to Charleston, as promised. About the
30th of March (which was Saturday) a telegram from Governor Pickens was
received by the Commissioners in Washington, making inquiry with regard
to Colonel Lamon, and the meaning of the protracted delay to fulfill the
promise of evacuation. This was fifteen days after the original
assurance of Mr. Seward that the garrison would be withdrawn
immediately, and ten days after his explanation that the delay was
"accidental." The dispatch of Governor Pickens was taken by Judge
Campbell to Mr. Seward, who appointed the ensuing Monday (1st of April)
for an interview and answer. At that interview Mr. Seward informed Judge
Campbell that "the President was concerned about the contents of the
telegram--_there was a point of honor involved_; that Lamon had no
agency from him, nor title to speak."[158] (This late suggestion of the
point of _honor_ would seem, under the circumstances, to have been made
in a spirit of sarcastic pleasantry, like Sir John Falstaff's celebrated
discourse on the same subject.) The only substantial result of the
conversation, however, was the written assurance of Mr. Seward, to be
communicated to the Commissioners, that "the Government will not
undertake to supply Fort Sumter without giving notice to Governor
Pickens."
This, it will be observed, was a very material variation from the
positive pledge previously given, and reiterated, to the Commissioners,
to Governor Pickens, and to myself directly, that the fort was to be
forthwith evacuated. Judge Campbell, in his account of the interview,
says: "I asked him [Mr. Seward] whether I was to understand that there
had been a change in his former communications. His answer was,
'None.'"[159]
About the close of the same week (the first in April), the patience of
the Commissioners having now been wellnigh exhausted, and the hostile
preparations of the Government of the United States, notwithstanding the
secrecy with which they were conducted, having become matter of general
rumor, a letter was addressed to Mr. Seward, upon the subject, by Judge
Campbell, in behalf of the Commissioners, again asking whether the
assurances so often given were well or ill founded. To this the
Secretary returned answer in writing: "_Faith as to Sumter fully kept.
Wait and see._"
This was on the 7th of April.[160] The very next day (the 8th) the
following official notification (without date or signature) was read to
Governor Pickens, of South Carolina, and General Beauregard, in
Charleston, by Mr. Chew, an official of the _State Department_ (Mr.
Seward's) in Washington, who said--as did a Captain or Lieutenant
Talbot, who accompanied him--that it was from the President of the
United States, and delivered by him to Mr. Chew on the 6th--the day
_before_ Mr. Seward's assurance of "_faith fully kept_."
"I am directed by the President of the United States to notify
you to expect an attempt will be made to supply Fort Sumter with
provisions only; and that, if such an attempt be not resisted,
no effort to throw in men, arms, or ammunition, will be made,
without further notice, or in case of an attack upon the
fort."[161]
Thus disappeared the last vestige of the plighted faith and pacific
pledges of the Federal Government.
In order fully to appreciate the significance of this communication, and
of the time and circumstances of its delivery, it must be borne in mind
that the naval expedition which had been secretly in preparation for
some time at New York, under direction of Captain Fox, was now ready to
sail, and might reasonably be expected to be at Charleston almost
immediately after the notification was delivered to Governor Pickens,
and before preparation could be made to receive it. Owing to
cross-purposes or misunderstandings in the Washington Cabinet, however,
and then to the delay caused by a severe storm at sea, this expectation
was disappointed, and the Confederate commander at Charleston had
opportunity to communicate with Montgomery and receive instructions for
his guidance, before the arrival of the fleet, which had been intended
to be a surprise.
In publications made since the war by members of Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet,
it has been represented that, during the period of the disgraceful
transactions above detailed, there were dissensions and divisions in the
Cabinet--certain members of it urging measures of prompt and decided
coercion; the Secretary of State favoring a pacific or at least a
dilatory policy; and the President vacillating for a time between the
two, but eventually adopting the views of the coercionists. In these
statements it is represented that the assurances and pledges, given by
Mr. Seward to the Confederate Government and its Commissioners, were
given on his own authority, and without the consent or approval of the
President of the United States. The absurdity of any such attempt to
disassociate the action of the President from that of his Secretary, and
to relieve the former of responsibility for the conduct of the latter,
is too evident to require argument or comment. It is impossible to
believe that, during this whole period of nearly a month, Mr. Lincoln
was ignorant of the communications that were passing between the
Confederate Commissioners and Mr. Seward, through the distinguished
member of the Supreme Court--still holding his seat as such--who was
acting as intermediary. On one occasion, Judge Campbell informs us that
the Secretary, in the midst of an important interview, excused himself
for the purpose of conferring with the President before giving a final
answer, and left his visitor for some time, awaiting his return from
that conference, when the answer was given, avowedly and directly
proceeding from the President.
If, however, it were possible to suppose that Mr. Seward was acting on
his own responsibility, and practicing a deception upon his own chief,
as well as upon the Confederate authorities, in the pledges which he
made to the latter, it is nevertheless certain that the principal facts
were brought to light within a few days after the close of the efforts
at negotiation. Yet the Secretary of State was not impeached and brought
to trial for the grave offense of undertaking to conduct the most
momentous and vital transactions that had been or could be brought
before the Government of the United States, without the knowledge and in
opposition to the will of the President, and for having involved the
Government in dishonor, if not in disaster. He was not even dismissed
from office, but continued to be the chief officer of the Cabinet and
confidential adviser of the President, as he was afterward of the
ensuing Administration, occupying that station during two consecutive
terms. No disavowal of his action, no apology nor explanation, was ever
made. Politically and legally, the President is unquestionably
responsible in all cases for the action of any member of his Cabinet,
and in this case it is as preposterous to attempt to dissever from him
the moral, as it would be impossible to relieve him of the legal,
responsibility that rests upon the Government of the United States for
the systematic series of frauds perpetrated by its authority.
On the other hand, Mr. Seward, throughout the whole negotiation, was
fully informed of the views of his colleagues in the Cabinet and of the
President. Whatever his real hopes or purposes may have been in the
beginning, it is positively certain that long before the end, and while
still reiterating his assurances that the garrison would be withdrawn,
he knew that it had been _determined_, and that active preparations were
in progress, to strengthen it.
Mr. Gideon Welles, who was Secretary of the Navy in Mr. Lincoln's
Cabinet, gives the following account of one of the transactions of the
period:
"One evening in the latter part of the month of March, there was
a small gathering at the Executive Mansion, while the Sumter
question was still pending. The members of the Cabinet were soon
individually and quietly invited to the council-chamber, where,
as soon as assembled, the President informed them he had just
been advised by General Scott that it was expedient to evacuate
Fort Pickens, as well as Fort Sumter, which last was assumed at
military headquarters to be a determined fact, in conformity
with the views of Secretary Seward and the General-in-Chief....
"A brief silence followed the announcement of the amazing
recommendation of General Scott, when Mr. Blair, who had been
much annoyed by the vacillating course of the General-in-Chief
in regard to Sumter, remarked, looking earnestly at Mr. Seward,
that it was evident the old General was playing politician in
regard to both Sumter and Pickens; for it was not possible, if
there was a defense, for the rebels to take Pickens; and the
Administration would not be justified if it listened to his
advice and evacuated either. Very soon thereafter, I think at
the next Cabinet meeting, the President announced his decision
that _supplies should be sent to Sumter_, and issued
confidential orders to that effect. All were gratified with this
decision, except Mr. Seward, who still remonstrated, _but
preparations were immediately commenced to fit out an expedition
to forward supplies_."[162]
This account is confirmed by a letter of Mr. Montgomery Blair.[163] The
date of the announcement of the President's final purpose is fixed by
Mr. Welles, in the neat paragraph to that above quoted, as the 28th of
March. This was four days before Mr. Seward's assurance given Judge
Campbell--after conference with the President--that there would be no
departure from the pledges previously given (which were that the fort
_would be evacuated_), and ten days before his written renewal of the
assurance--"_Faith as to Sumter fully kept. Wait and see!_" This
assurance, too, was given at the very moment when a messenger from his
own department was on the way to Charleston to notify the Governor of
South Carolina that faith would _not_ be kept in the matter.
It is scarcely necessary to say that the Commissioners had, with good
reason, ceased to place any confidence in the promises of the United
States Government, before they ceased to be made. On the 8th of April
they sent the following dispatch to General Beauregard:
"Washington, _April 8, 1861_.
"General G. T. Beauregard: Accounts uncertain, because of the
constant vacillation of this Government. We were reassured
yesterday that the status of Sumter would not be changed without
previous notice to Governor Pickens, but we have no faith in
them. The war policy prevails in the Cabinet at this time.
"M. J. Crawford."
On the same day the announcement made to Governor Pickens through Mr.
Chew was made known. The Commissioners immediately applied for a
definitive answer to their note of March 12th, which had been permitted
to remain in abeyance. The paper of the Secretary of State, dated March
15th, was thereupon delivered to them. This paper, with the final
rejoinder of the Commissioners and Judge Campbell's letters to the
Secretary of April 13th and April 20th, respectively, will be found in
the Appendix.
Negotiation was now at an end, and the Commissioners withdrew from
Washington and returned to their homes. Their last dispatch, before
leaving, shows that they were still dependent upon public rumor and the
newspapers for information as to the real purposes and preparations of
the Federal Administration. It was in these words:
"Washington, _April 10, 1861_.
"General G. T. Beauregard: The 'Tribune' of to-day declares the
main object of the expedition to be the relief of Sumter, and
that a force will be landed which will overcome all opposition.
"Roman, Crawford, and Forsyth."
The annexed extracts from my message to the Confederate Congress at the
opening of its special session, on the 29th of April, will serve as a
recapitulation of the events above narrated, with all of comment that it
was then, or is now, considered necessary to add:
[_Extracts from President's Message to the Confederate Congress,
of April 29, 1861._]
"... Scarce had you assembled in February last, when, prior even
to the inauguration of the Chief Magistrate you had elected, you
expressed your desire for the appointment of Commissioners, and
for the settlement of all questions of disagreement between the
two Governments upon principles of right, justice, equity, and
good faith.
"It was my pleasure, as well as my duty, to coöperate with you
in this work of peace. Indeed, in my address to you, on taking
the oath of office, and before receiving from you the
communication of this resolution, I had said that, as a
necessity, not as a choice, we have resorted to the remedy of
separating, and henceforth our energies must be directed to the
conduct of our own affairs, and the perpetuity of the
Confederacy which we have formed. If a just perception of mutual
interest shall permit us to peaceably pursue our separate
political career, my most earnest desire will then have been
fulfilled.
"It was in furtherance of these accordant views of the Congress
and the Executive, that I made choice of three discreet, able,
and distinguished citizens, who repaired to Washington. Aided by
their cordial coöperation and that of the Secretary of State,
every effort compatible with self-respect and the dignity of the
Confederacy was exhausted, before I allowed myself to yield to
the conviction that the Government of the United States was
determined to attempt the conquest of this people, and that our
cherished hopes of peace were unobtainable.
"On the arrival of our Commissioners in Washington on the 5th of
March,[164] they postponed, at the suggestion of a friendly
intermediator, doing more than giving informal notice of their
arrival. This was done with a view to afford time to the
President of the United States, who had just been inaugurated,
for the discharge of other pressing official duties in the
organization of his Administration, before engaging his
attention to the object of their mission.
"It was not until the 12th of the month that they officially
addressed the Secretary of State, informing him of the purpose
of their arrival, and stating in the language of their
instructions their wish to make to the Government of the United
States overtures for the opening of negotiations, assuring the
Government of the United States that the President, Congress,
and people of the Confederate States desired a peaceful solution
of these great questions; that it was neither their interest nor
their wish to make any demand which was not founded on the
strictest principles of justice, nor to do any act to injure
their late confederates.
"To this communication, no formal reply was received until the
8th of April. During the interval, the Commissioners had
consented to waive all questions of form, with the firm resolve
to avoid war, if possible. They went so far even as to hold,
during that long period, unofficial intercourse through an
intermediary, whose high position and character inspired the
hope of success, and through whom constant assurances were
received from the Government of the United States of its
peaceful intentions--of its determination to evacuate Fort
Sumter; and, further, that no measure would be introduced
changing the existing status prejudicial to the Confederate
States; that, in the event of any change in regard to Fort
Pickens, notice would be given to the Commissioners.
"The crooked path of diplomacy can scarcely furnish an example
so wanting in courtesy, in candor, and directness, as was the
course of the United States Government toward our Commissioners
in Washington. For proof of this, I refer to the annexed
documents marked, (?) taken in connection with further facts,
which I now proceed to relate.
"Early in April the attention of the whole country was attracted
to extraordinary preparations, in New York and other Northern
ports, for an extensive military and naval expedition. These
preparations were commenced in secrecy for an expedition whose
destination was concealed, and only became known when nearly
completed; and on the 5th, 6th, and 7th of April, transports and
vessels of war, with troops, munitions, and military supplies,
sailed from Northern ports, bound southward.
"Alarmed by so extraordinary a demonstration, the Commissioners
requested the delivery of an answer to their official
communication of the 12th of March, and the reply, dated on the
15th of the previous month, was obtained, from which it appears
that, during the whole interval, while the Commissioners were
receiving assurances calculated to inspire hope of the success
of their mission, the Secretary of State and the President of
the United States had already determined to hold no intercourse
with them whatever, to refuse even to listen to any proposals
they had to make; and had profited by the delay created by their
own assurances, in order to prepare secretly the means for
effective hostile operations.
"That these assurances were given, has been virtually confessed
by the Government of the United States, by its act of sending a
messenger to Charleston to give notice of its purpose to use
force, if opposed in its intention of supplying Fort Sumter.
"No more striking proof of the absence of good faith in the
conduct of the Government of the United States toward the
Confederacy can be required, than is contained in the
circumstances which accompanied this notice.
"According to the usual course of navigation, the vessels
composing the expedition, and designed for the relief of Fort
Sumter, might be looked for in Charleston Harbor on the 9th of
April. Yet our Commissioners in Washington were detained under
assurances that notice should be given of any military movement.
The notice was not addressed to them, but a messenger was sent
to Charleston to give notice to the Governor of South Carolina,
and the notice was so given at a late hour on the 8th of April,
the eve of the very day on which the fleet might be expected to
arrive.
"That this manoeuvre failed in its purpose was not the fault of
those who controlled it. A heavy tempest delayed the arrival of
the expedition, and gave time to the commander of our forces at
Charleston to ask and receive instructions of the Government."
...
[Footnote 150: Mr. Hunter, of Virginia.]
[Footnote 151: This statement is in accord with a remark which Mr.
Buchanan made to the author at an earlier period of the same session,
with regard to the violence of Northern sentiment then lately indicated,
that he thought it not impossible that his homeward route would be
lighted by burning effigies of himself, and that on reaching his home he
would find it a heap of ashes.]
[Footnote 152: See Appendix L.]
[Footnote 153: Ibid.]
[Footnote 154: See letter of Judge Campbell to Colonel George W. Munford
in "Papers of the Southern Historical Society," appended to "Southern
Magazine" for February, 1874.]
[Footnote 155: "In the course of this conversation I told Judge Crawford
that it was fair to tell him that the opinion at Washington was, the
secession movements were short-lived; that his Government would wither
under sunshine, and that the effect of these measures might be as
supposed; that they might have a contrary effect, but that I did not
consider the effect. I wanted, above all other things, peace. I was
willing to accept whatever peace might bring, whether union or disunion.
I did not look beyond peace. He said he was willing to take all the
risks of sunshine."--(Letter of Judge Campbell to Colonel Munford, as
above.)]
[Footnote 156: Letter to Colonel Munford, above quoted. The italics are
not in the original.]
[Footnote 157: Message to the Legislature of South Carolina, November,
1861.]
[Footnote 158: Letter to Colonel Munford, above cited.]
[Footnote 159: Letter to Munford.]
[Footnote 160: Judge Campbell, in his letter to Mr. Seward of April 13,
1861 (see Appendix L), written a few days after the transaction, gives
this date. In his letter to Colonel Munford, written more than twelve
years afterward, he says "Sunday, April 8th."]
[Footnote 161: For this and other documents quoted relative to the
transactions of the period, see "The Record of Fort Sumter," compiled by
W. A. Harris, Columbia, South Carolina, 1862.]
[Footnote 162: "Lincoln and Seward," New York, 1874, pp. 57, 58. The
italics are not in the original.]
[Footnote 163: Ibid., pp. 64-69.]
[Footnote 164: Mr. Crawford, as we have seen, had arrived some days
earlier. The statement in the message refers to the arrival of the full
commission, or a majority of it.]
CHAPTER XII.
Protests against the Conduct of the Government of the United
States.--Senator Douglas's Proposition to evacuate the Forts,
and Extracts from his Speech in Support of it.--General Scott's
Advice.--Manly Letter of Major Anderson, protesting against the
Action of the Federal Government.--Misstatements of the Count of
Paris.--Correspondence relative to Proposed Evacuation of the
Fort.--A Crisis.
The course pursued by the Government of the United States with regard to
the forts had not passed without earnest remonstrance from the most
intelligent and patriotic of its own friends during the period of the
events which constitute the subject of the preceding chapter. In the
Senate of the United States, which continued in executive session for
several weeks after the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, it was the subject
of discussion. Mr. Douglas, of Illinois--who was certainly not suspected
of sympathy with secession, or lack of devotion to the Union--on the
15th of March offered a resolution recommending the withdrawal of the
garrisons from all forts within the limits of the States which had
seceded, except those at Key West and the Dry Tortugas. In support of
this resolution he said:
"We certainly can not justify the holding of forts there, much
less the recapturing of those which have been taken, unless we
intend to reduce those States themselves into subjection. I take
it for granted, no man will deny the proposition, that whoever
permanently holds Charleston and South Carolina is entitled to
the possession of Fort Sumter. Whoever permanently holds
Pensacola and Florida is entitled to the possession of Fort
Pickens. Whoever holds the States in whose limits those forts
are placed is entitled to the forts themselves, unless there is
something peculiar in the location of some particular fort that
makes it important for us to hold it for the general defense of
the whole country, its commerce and interests, instead of being
useful only for the defense of a particular city or locality. It
is true that Forts Taylor and Jefferson, at Key West and
Tortugas, are so situated as to be essentially national, and
therefore important to us without reference to our relations
with the seceded States. Not so with Moultrie, Johnson, Castle
Pinckney, and Sumter, in Charleston Harbor; not so with Pulaski,
on the Savannah River; not so with Morgan and other forts in
Alabama; not so with those other forts that were intended to
guard the entrance of a particular harbor for local defense....
"We can not deny that there is a Southern Confederacy, _de
facto_, in existence, with its capital at Montgomery. We may
regret it. _I_ regret it most profoundly; but I can not deny the
truth of the fact, painful and mortifying as it is.... I
proclaim boldly the policy of those with whom I act. We are for
peace."
Mr. Douglas, in urging the maintenance of _peace_ as a motive for the
evacuation of the forts, was no doubt aware of the full force of his
words. He knew that their continued occupation was virtually a
declaration of war.
The General-in-Chief of the United States Army, also, it is well known,
urgently advised the evacuation of the forts. But the most striking
protest against the coercive measures finally adopted was that of Major
Anderson himself. The letter in which his views were expressed has been
carefully suppressed in the partisan narratives of that period and
wellnigh lost sight of, although it does the highest honor to his
patriotism and integrity. It was written on the same day on which the
announcement was made to Governor Pickens of the purpose of the United
States Government to send supplies to the fort, and is worthy of
reproduction here:[165]
[_Letter of Major Anderson, United States Army, protesting
against Fox's Plan for relieving Fort Sumter_.]
"Fort Sumter, S. C., _April 8, 1861_.
"_To Colonel L. Thomas, Adjutant-General United States Army_.
"Colonel: I have the honor to report that the resumption of work
yesterday (Sunday) at various points on Morris Island, and the
vigorous prosecution of it this morning, apparently
strengthening all the batteries which are under the fire of our
guns, shows that they either have just received some news from
Washington which has put them on the _qui vive_, or that they
have received orders from Montgomery to commence operations
here. I am preparing, by the side of my barbette guns,
protection for our men from the shells which will be almost
continually bursting over or in our work.
"I had the honor to receive, by yesterday's mail, the letter of
the Honorable Secretary of War, dated April 4th, and confess
that what he there states surprises me very greatly--following,
as it does, and contradicting so positively, the assurance Mr.
Crawford telegraphed he was 'authorized' to make. I trust that
this matter will be at once put in a correct light, as a
movement made now, when the South has been erroneously informed
that none such would be attempted, would produce most disastrous
results throughout our country. It is, of course, now too late
for me to give any advice in reference to the proposed scheme of
Captain Fox. I fear that its result can not fail to be
disastrous to all concerned. Even with his boat at our walls,
the loss of life (as I think I mentioned to Mr. Fox) in
unloading her will more than pay for the good to be accomplished
by the expedition, which keeps us, if I can maintain possession
of this work, out of position, surrounded by strong works which
must be carried to make this fort of the least value to the
United States Government.
"We have not oil enough to keep a light in the lantern for one
night. The boats will have to, therefore, rely at night entirely
upon other marks. I ought to have been informed that this
expedition was to come. Colonel Lamon's remark convinced me that
the idea, merely hinted at to me by Captain Fox, would not be
carried out.[166]
"We shall strive to do our duty, though I frankly say that my
heart is not in this war, which I see is to be thus commenced.
That God will still avert it, and cause us to resort to pacific
means to maintain our rights, is my ardent prayer!
"I am, Colonel, very respectfully,
"Your obedient servant,
"Robert Anderson,
"_Major 1st Artillery, commanding_."
This frank and manly letter, although written with the reserve
necessarily belonging to a communication from an officer to his military
superiors, expressing dissatisfaction with orders, fully vindicates
Major Anderson from all suspicion of complicity or sympathy with the bad
faith of the Government which he was serving. It accords entirely with
the sentiments expressed in his private letter to me, already mentioned
as lost or stolen, and exhibits him in the attitude of faithful
performance of a duty inconsistent with his domestic ties and repugnant
to his patriotism.
The "relief squadron," as with unconscious irony it was termed, was
already under way for Charleston, consisting, according to their own
statement, of eight vessels, carrying twenty-six guns and about fourteen
hundred men, including the troops sent for reënforcement of the
garrison.
These facts became known to the Confederate Government, and it was
obvious that no time was to be lost in preparing for, and if possible
anticipating the impending assault. The character of the instructions
given General Beauregard in this emergency may be inferred from the
ensuing correspondence, which is here reproduced from contemporary
publications:
"Charleston, _April 8th_.
"L. P. Walker, _Secretary of War_.
"An authorized messenger from President Lincoln just informed
Governor Pickens and myself that provisions will be sent to Fort
Sumter peaceably, or otherwise by force.
(Signed) "G. T. Beauregard."
"Montgomery, _10th_.
"General G. T. Beauregard, _Charleston_.
"If you have no doubt of the authorized character of the agent
who communicated to you the intention of the Washington
Government to supply Fort Sumter by force, you will at once
demand its evacuation, and, if this is refused, proceed, in such
a manner as you may determine, to reduce it. Answer.
(Signed) "L. P. Walker, _Secretary of War_."
"Charleston, _April 10th_.
"L. P. Walker, _Secretary of War_.
"The demand will be made to-morrow at twelve o'clock.
(Signed) "G. T. Beauregard."
"Montgomery, _April 10th_.
"General Beauregard, _Charleston_.
"Unless there are especial reasons connected with your own
condition, it is considered proper that you should make the
demand at an early hour.
(Signed) "L. P. Walker, _Secretary of War_."
"Charleston, _April 10th_.
"L. P. Walker, _Secretary of War, Montgomery_.
"The reasons are special for twelve o'clock.
(Signed) "G. T. Beauregard."
"Headquarters Provisional Army, C. S. A.,
"Charleston, S.C., _April 11, 1861, 2_ P. M.
"Sir: The Government of the Confederate States has hitherto
forborne from any hostile demonstration against Fort Sumter, in
the hope that the Government of the United States, with a view
to the amicable adjustment of all questions between the two
Governments, and to avert the calamities of war, would
voluntarily evacuate it. There was reason at one time to believe
that such would be the course pursued by the Government of the
United States; and, under that impression, my Government has
refrained from making any demand for the surrender of the fort.
"But the Confederate States can no longer delay assuming actual
possession of a fortification commanding the entrance of one of
their harbors, and necessary to its defense and security.
"I am ordered by the Government of the Confederate States to
demand the evacuation of Fort Sumter. My aides, Colonel Chesnut
and Captain Lee, are authorized to make such demand of you. All
proper facilities will be afforded for the removal of yourself
and command, together with company arms and property, and all
private property, to any post in the United States which you may
elect. The flag which you have upheld so long and with so much
fortitude, under the most trying circumstances, may be saluted
by you on taking it down.
"Colonel Chesnut and Captain Lee will, for a reasonable time,
await your answer.
"I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
(Signed) "G. T. Beauregard,
"_Brigadier-General commanding_.
"Major Robert Anderson,
"_Commanding at Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor, S. C._"
"Headquarters Fort Sumter, S. C., _April 11, 1861_.
"General: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your
communication demanding the evacuation of this fort; and to say
in reply thereto that it is a demand with which I regret that my
sense of honor and of my obligations to my Government prevents
my compliance.
"Thanking you for the fair, manly, and courteous terms proposed,
and for the high compliment paid me,
"I am, General, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
(Signed) "Robert Anderson,
"_Major U. S. Army, commanding_.
"To Brigadier-General G. T. Beauregard,
"_Commanding Provisional Army, C. S. A._"
"Montgomery, _April 11th_.
"General Beauregard, _Charleston_.
"We do not desire needlessly to bombard Fort Sumter, if Major
Anderson will state the time at which, as indicated by him, he
will evacuate, and agree that, in the mean time, he will not use
his guns against us, unless ours should be employed against Fort
Sumter. You are thus to avoid the effusion of blood. If this or
its equivalent be refused, reduce the fort as your judgment
decides to be most practicable.
(Signed) "L. P. Walker, _Secretary of War_."
"Headquarters Provisional Army, C. S. A.,
"Charleston, _April 11, 1861, 11_ P. M.
"Major: In consequence of the verbal observations made by you to
my aides, Messrs. Chesnut and Lee, in relation to the condition
of your supplies, and that you would in a few days be starved
out if our guns did not batter you to pieces--or words to that
effect--and desiring no useless effusion of blood, I
communicated both the verbal observation and your written answer
to my Government.
"If you will state the time at which you will evacuate Fort
Sumter, and agree that in the mean time you will not use your
guns against us, unless ours shall be employed against Fort
Sumter, we will abstain from opening fire upon you. Colonel
Chesnut and Captain Lee are authorized by me to enter into such
an agreement with you. You are therefore requested to
communicate to them an open answer.
"I remain, Major, very respectfully,
"Your obedient servant,
(Signed) "G. T. Beauregard,
"_Brigadier-General commanding_.
"Major Robert Anderson,
"_Commanding at Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor, S. C._"
"Headquarters Fort Sumter, S. C., _2.30_ A. M., _April 12,
1861_.
"General: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your
second communication of the 11th instant, by Colonel Chesnut,
and to state, in reply, that, cordially uniting with you in the
desire to avoid the useless effusion of blood, I will, if
provided with the proper and necessary means of transportation,
evacuate Fort Sumter by noon on the 15th instant, should I not
receive, prior to that time, controlling instructions from my
Government, or additional supplies; and that I will not, in the
mean time, open my fire upon your forces unless compelled to do
so by some hostile act against this fort, or the flag of my
Government, by the forces under your command, or by some portion
of them, or by the perpetration of some act showing a hostile
intention on your part against this fort or the flag it bears.
"I have the honor to be, General,
"Your obedient servant,
(Signed) "Robert Anderson,
"_Major U. S. Army, commanding_.
"To Brigadier-General G. T. Beauregard,
"_Commanding Provisional Army, C. S. A._"
"Fort Sumter, S. C., _April 12, 1861, _3.20_ A. M.
"Sir: By authority of Brigadier-General Beauregard, commanding
the provisional forces of the Confederate States, we have the
honor to notify you that he will open the fire of his batteries
on Fort Sumter in one hour from this time.
"We have the honor to be, very respectfully,
"Your obedient servants,
(Signed) "James Chesnut, Jr,
"_Aide-de-camp_.
(Signed) "Stephen D. Lee,
"_Captain S. C. Army, and Aide-de-camp_.
"Major Robert Anderson,
"_United States Army, commanding Fort Sumter_."
It is essential to a right understanding of the last two letters to give
more than a superficial attention to that of Major Anderson, bearing in
mind certain important facts not referred to in the correspondence.
Major Anderson had been requested to state the time at which he _would
evacuate_ the fort, if unmolested, agreeing in the mean time not to use
his guns against the city and the troops defending it unless _Fort
Sumter_ should be first attacked by them. On these conditions General
Beauregard offered to refrain from opening fire upon him. In his reply
Major Anderson promises to evacuate the fort on the 15th of April,
_provided_ he should not, before that time, receive "controlling
instructions" or "additional supplies" from his Government. He
furthermore offers to pledge himself not to open fire upon the
Confederates, unless in the mean time compelled to do so by some hostile
act against the fort _or the flag of his Government_.
Inasmuch as it was known to the Confederate commander that the
"controlling instructions" were already issued, and that the "additional
supplies" were momentarily expected; inasmuch, also, as any attempt to
introduce the supplies would compel the opening of fire upon the vessels
bearing them under the flag of the United States--thereby releasing
Major Anderson from his pledge--it is evident that his conditions could
not be accepted. It would have been merely, after the avowal of a
hostile determination by the Government of the United States, to await
an inevitable conflict with the guns of Fort Sumter and the naval forces
of the United States in combination; with no possible hope of averting
it, unless in the improbable event of a delay of the expected fleet for
nearly four days longer. (In point of fact, it arrived off the harbor on
the same day, but was hindered by a gale of wind from entering it.)
There was obviously no other course to be pursued than that announced in
the answer given by General Beauregard.
It should not be forgotten that, during the early occupation of Fort
Sumter by a garrison the attitude of which was at least offensive, no
restriction had been put upon their privilege of purchasing in
Charleston fresh provisions, or any delicacies or comforts not directly
tending to the supply of the means needful to hold the fort for an
indefinite time.
[Footnote 165: See "The Record of Fort Sumter," p. 37.]
[Footnote 166: The Count of Paris libels the memory of Major Anderson,
and perverts the truth of history in this, as he has done in other
particulars, by saying, with reference to the visit of Captain Fox to
the fort, that, "having visited Anderson at Fort Sumter, _a plan had
been agreed upon between them for revictualing the garrison_."--("Civil
War in America," authorized translation, vol. i, chap. iv, p. 137.) Fox
himself says, in his published letter, "I made no arrangements with
Major Anderson in for supplying the fort, nor did I inform him of my
plan"; and Major Anderson, in the letter above, says the idea had been
"merely hinted at" by Captain Fox, and that Colonel Lamon had led him to
believe that it had been abandoned.]
CHAPTER XIII.
A Pause and a Review.--Attitude of the Two Parties.--Sophistry
exposed and Shams torn away.--Forbearance of the Confederate
Government.--Who was the Aggressor?--Major Anderson's View, and
that of a Naval Officer.--Mr. Horace Greeley on the Fort Sumter
Case.--The Bombardment and Surrender.--Gallant Action of
ex-Senator Wigfall.--Mr. Lincoln's Statement of the Case.
Here, in the brief hour immediately before the outburst of the
long-gathering storm, although it can hardly be necessary for the reader
who has carefully considered what has already been written, we may pause
for a moment to contemplate the attitude of the parties to the contest
and the grounds on which they respectively stand. I do not now refer to
the original causes of controversy--to the comparative claims of
Statehood and Union, or to the question of the right or the wrong of
secession--but to the proximate and immediate causes of conflict.
The fact that South Carolina _was_ a State--whatever her relations may
have been to the other States--is not and can not be denied. It is
equally undeniable that the ground on which Fort Sumter was built was
ceded by South Carolina to the United States _in trust_ for the defense
of her own soil and her own chief harbor. This has been shown, by ample
evidence, to have been the principle governing all cessions by the
States of sites for military purposes, but it applies with special force
to the case of Charleston. The streams flowing into that harbor, from
source to mouth, lie entirely within the limits of the State of South
Carolina. No other State or combination of States could have any
distinct interest or concern in the maintenance of a fortress at that
point, unless as a means of aggression against South Carolina herself.
The practical view of the case was correctly stated by Mr. Douglas, when
he said: "I take it for granted that whoever permanently holds
Charleston and South Carolina is entitled to the possession of Fort
Sumter. Whoever permanently holds Pensacola and Florida is entitled to
the possession of Fort Pickens. Whoever holds the States in whose limits
those forts are placed is entitled to the forts themselves, unless there
is something peculiar in the location of some particular fort that makes
it important for us to hold it for the general defense of the whole
country, its commerce and interests, instead of being useful only for
the defense of a particular city or locality."
No such necessity could be alleged with regard to Fort Sumter. The claim
to hold it as "public property" of the United States was utterly
untenable and unmeaning, apart from a claim of coercive control over the
State. If South Carolina was a mere province, in a state of open
rebellion, the Government of the United States had a right to retain its
hold of any fortified place within her limits which happened to be in
its possession, and it would have had an equal right to acquire
possession of any other. It would have had the same right to send an
army to Columbia to batter down the walls of the State Capitol. The
subject may at once be stripped of the sophistry which would make a
distinction between the two cases. The one was as really an act of war
as the other would have been. The right or the wrong of either depended
entirely upon the question of the rightful power of the Federal
Government to coerce a State into submission--a power which, as we have
seen, was unanimously rejected in the formation of the Federal
Constitution, and which was still unrecognized by many, perhaps by a
majority, even of those who denied the right of a State to secede.
If there existed any hope or desire for a peaceful settlement of the
questions at issue between the States, either party had a right to
demand that, pending such settlement, there should be no hostile grasp
upon its throat. This grip had been held on the throat of South Carolina
for almost four months from the period of her secession, and no forcible
resistance to it had yet been made. Remonstrances and patient,
persistent, and reiterated attempts at negotiation for its removal had
been made with two successive Administrations of the Government of the
United States--at first by the State of South Carolina, and by the
Government of the Confederate States after its formation. These efforts
had been met, not by an open avowal of coercive purposes, but by
evasion, prevarication, and perfidy. The agreement of one Administration
to maintain the _status quo_ at the time when the question arose, was
violated in December by the removal of the garrison from its original
position to the occupancy of a stronger. Another attempt was made to
violate it, in January, by the introduction of troops concealed below
the deck of the steamer Star of the West,[167] but this was thwarted by
the vigilance of the State service. The protracted course of fraud and
prevarication practiced by Mr. Lincoln's Administration in the months of
March and April has been fully exhibited. It was evident that no
confidence whatever could be reposed in any pledge or promise of the
Federal Government as then administered. Yet, notwithstanding all this,
no resistance, other than that of pacific protest and appeals for an
equitable settlement, was made, until after the avowal of a purpose of
coercion, and when it was known that a hostile fleet was on the way to
support and enforce it. At the very moment when the Confederate
commander gave the final notice to Major Anderson of his purpose to open
fire upon the fort, that fleet was lying off the mouth of the harbor,
and hindered from entering only by a gale of wind.
The forbearance of the Confederate Government, under the circumstances,
is perhaps unexampled in history. It was carried to the extreme verge,
short of a disregard of the safety of the people who had intrusted to
that government the duty of their defense against their enemies. The
attempt to represent us as the _aggressors_ in the conflict which ensued
is as unfounded as the complaint made by the wolf against the lamb in
the familiar fable. He who makes the assault is not necessarily he that
strikes the first blow or fires the first gun. To have awaited further
strengthening of their position by land and naval forces, with hostile
purpose now declared, for the sake of having them "fire the first gun,"
would have been as unwise as it would be to hesitate to strike down the
arm of the assailant, who levels a deadly weapon at one's breast, until
he has actually fired. The disingenuous rant of demagogues about "firing
on the flag" might serve to rouse the passions of insensate mobs in
times of general excitement, but will be impotent in impartial history
to relieve the Federal Government from the responsibility of the assault
made by sending a hostile fleet against the harbor of Charleston, to
coöperate with the menacing garrison of Fort Sumter. After the assault
was made by the hostile descent of the fleet, the reduction of Fort
Sumter was a measure of defense rendered absolutely and immediately
necessary.
Such clearly was the idea of the commander of the Pawnee, when he
declined, as Captain Fox informs us, without orders from a superior, to
make any effort to enter the harbor, "there to inaugurate civil war."
The straightforward simplicity of the sailor had not been perverted by
the shams of political sophistry. Even Mr. Horace Greeley, with all his
extreme partisan feeling, is obliged to admit that, "whether the
bombardment and reduction of Fort Sumter shall or shall not be justified
by posterity, it is clear that the Confederacy had no alternative but
its own dissolution."[168]
According to the notice given by General Beauregard, fire was opened
upon Fort Sumter, from the various batteries which had been erected
around the harbor, at half-past four o'clock on the morning of Friday,
the 12th of April, 1861. The fort soon responded. It is not the purpose
of this work to give minute details of the military operation, as the
events of the bombardment have been often related, and are generally
well known, with no material discrepancy in matters of fact among the
statements of the various participants. It is enough, therefore, to add
that the bombardment continued for about thirty-three or thirty-four
hours. The fort was eventually set on fire by shells, after having been
partly destroyed by shot, and Major Anderson, after a resolute defense,
finally surrendered on the 13th--the same terms being accorded to him
which had been offered two days before. It is a remarkable
fact--probably without precedent in the annals of war--that,
notwithstanding the extent and magnitude of the engagement, the number
and caliber of the guns, and the amount of damage done to inanimate
material on both sides, especially to Fort Sumter, nobody was injured on
either side by the bombardment. The only casualty attendant upon the
affair was the death of one man and the wounding of several others by
the explosion of a gun in the firing of a salute to their flag by the
garrison on evacuating the fort the day after the surrender.
A striking incident marked the close of the bombardment. Ex-Senator
Louis T. Wigfall, of Texas--a man as generous as he was recklessly
brave--when he saw the fort on fire, supposing the garrison to be
hopelessly struggling for the honor of its flag, voluntarily and without
authority, went under fire in an open boat to the fort, and climbing
through one of its embrasures asked for Major Anderson, and insisted
that he should surrender a fort which it was palpably impossible that he
could hold. Major Anderson agreed to surrender on the same terms and
conditions that had been offered him before his works were battered in
breach, and the agreement between them to that effect was promptly
ratified by the Confederate commander. Thus unofficially was inaugurated
the surrender and evacuation of the fort.
The President of the United States, in his message of July 4, 1861, to
the Federal Congress convened in extra session, said:
"It is thus seen that the assault upon and reduction of Fort
Sumter was in no sense a matter of self-defense on the part of
the assailants. They well knew that the garrison in the fort
could by no possibility commit aggression upon them. They
knew--they were expressly notified--that the giving of bread to
the few brave and hungry men of the garrison was all which would
on that occasion be attempted, unless themselves, by resisting
so much, should provoke more."
Mr. Lincoln well knew that, if the brave men of the garrison were
hungry, they had only him and his trusted advisers to thank for it. They
had been kept for months in a place where they ought not to have been,
contrary to the judgment of the General-in-Chief of his army, contrary
to the counsels of the wisest statesmen in his confidence, and the
protests of the commander of the garrison. A word from him would have
relieved them at any moment in the manner most acceptable to them and
most promotive of peaceful results.
But, suppose the Confederate authorities had been disposed to yield, and
to consent to the introduction of supplies for the maintenance of the
garrison, what assurance would they have had that nothing further would
be attempted? What reliance could be placed in any assurances of the
Government of the United States after the experience of the attempted
_ruse_ of the Star of the West and the deceptions practiced upon the
Confederate Commissioners in Washington? He says we were "expressly
notified" that nothing more "would _on that occasion_ be attempted"--the
words in italics themselves constituting a very significant though
unobtrusive and innocent-looking limitation. But we had been just as
expressly notified, long before, that the garrison would be withdrawn.
It would be as easy to violate the one pledge as it had been to break
the other.
Moreover, the so-called notification was a mere memorandum, without
date, signature, or authentication of any kind, sent to Governor
Pickens, not by an accredited agent, but by a subordinate employee of
the State Department. Like the oral and written pledges of Mr. Seward,
given through Judge Campbell, it seemed to be carefully and purposely
divested of every attribute that could make it binding and valid, in
case its authors should see fit to repudiate it. It was as empty and
worthless as the complaint against the Confederate Government based upon
it, is disingenuous.
[Footnote 167: See the report of her commander, Captain McGowan, who
says he took on board, in the harbor of New York, four officers and two
hundred soldiers. Arriving off Charleston, he says, "_The soldiers were
now all put below_, and no one allowed on deck except our own crew."]
[Footnote 168: "American Conflict," vol. i, chap, xxix, p. 449.]
PART IV.
_THE WAR._
CHAPTER I.
Failure of the Peace Congress.--Treatment of the
Commissioners.--Their Withdrawal.--Notice of an Armed
Expedition.--Action of the Confederate Government.--Bombardment
and Surrender of Fort Sumter.--Its Reduction required by the
Exigency of the Case.--Disguise thrown off.--President Lincoln's
Call for Seventy-five Thousand Men.--His Fiction of
"Combinations."--Palpable Violation of the Constitution.--Action
of Virginia.--Of Citizens of Baltimore.--The Charge of
Precipitation against South Carolina.--Action of the Confederate
Government.--The Universal Feeling.
The Congress, initiated by Virginia for the laudable purpose of
endeavoring, by constitutional means, to adjust all the issues which
threatened the peace of the country, failed to achieve anything that
would cause or justify a reconsideration by the seceded States of their
action to reclaim the grants they had made to the General Government,
and to maintain for themselves a separate and independent existence.
The Commissioners sent by the Confederate Government, after having been
shamefully deceived, as has been heretofore fully set forth, left the
United States capital to report the result of their mission to the
Confederate Government.
The notice received, that an armed expedition had sailed for operations
against the State of South Carolina in the harbor of Charleston, induced
the Confederate Government to meet, as best it might, this assault, in
the discharge of its obligation to defend each State of the Confederacy.
To this end the bombardment of the formidable work, Fort Sumter, was
commenced, in anticipation of the reënforcement which was then moving to
unite with its garrison for hostilities against South Carolina.
The bloodless bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter occurred on April
13, 1861. The garrison was generously permitted to retire with the
honors of war. The evacuation of that fort, commanding the entrance to
the harbor of Charleston, which, if in hostile hands, was destructive of
its commerce, had been claimed as the right of South Carolina. The
voluntary withdrawal of the garrison by the United States Government had
been considered, and those best qualified to judge believed it had been
promised. Yet, when instead of the fulfillment of just expectations,
instead of the withdrawal of the garrison, a hostile expedition was
organized and sent forward, the urgency of the case required its
reduction before it should be reënforced. Had there been delay, the more
serious conflict between larger forces, land and naval, would scarcely
have been bloodless, as the bombardment fortunately was. The event,
however, was seized upon to inflame the mind of the Northern people, and
the disguise which had been worn in the communications with the
Confederate Commissioners was now thrown off, and it was cunningly
attempted to show that the South, which had been pleading for peace and
still stood on the defensive, had by this bombardment inaugurated a war
against the United States. But it should be stated that the threats
implied in the declarations that the Union could not exist part slave
and part free, and that the Union should be preserved, and the denial of
the right of a State peaceably to withdraw, were virtually a declaration
of war, and the sending of an army and navy to attack was the result to
have been anticipated as the consequence of such declaration of war.
On the 15th day of the same month, President Lincoln, introducing his
farce "of combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary
course of judicial proceedings," called forth the military of the
several States to the number of seventy-five thousand, and commanded
"the persons composing the combinations" to disperse, etc. It can but
surprise any one in the least degree conversant with the history of the
Union, to find States referred to as "persons composing combinations,"
and that the sovereign creators of the Federal Government, the States of
the Union, should be commanded by their agent to disperse. The levy of
so large an army could only mean war; but the power to declare war did
not reside in the President--it was delegated to the Congress only. If,
however, it had been a riotous combination or an insurrection, it must
have been, according to the Constitution, against the State; and the
power of the President to call forth the militia to suppress it, was
dependent upon an application from the State for that purpose; it could
not precede such application, and still less could it be rightfully
exercised against the will of a State. The authorities on this subject
have been heretofore cited, and need not be referred to again.
Suffice it to say that, by section 4, Article IV, of the Constitution,
the United States are bound to protect each State against invasion and
against domestic violence, whenever application shall have been made by
the Legislature, or by the Executive when the Legislature can not be
convened; and that to fail to give protection against any invasion
whatsoever would be a dereliction of duty. To add that there could be no
justification for the invasion of a State by an army of the United
States, is but to repeat what has been said, on the absence of any
authority in the General Government to coerce a State. In any possible
view of the case, therefore, the conclusion must be, that the calling on
some of the States for seventy-five thousand militia to invade other
States which were asserted to be still in the Union, was a palpable
violation of the Constitution, and the usurpation of undelegated power,
or, in other words, of power reserved to the States or to the people.
It might, therefore, have been anticipated that Virginia--one of whose
sons wrote the Declaration of Independence, another of whose sons led
the armies of the United States in the Revolution which achieved their
independence, and another of whose sons mainly contributed to the
adoption of the Constitution of the Union--would not have been slow, in
the face of such events, to reclaim the grants she had made to the
General Government, and to withdraw from the Union, to the establishment
of which she had so largely contributed.
Two days had elapsed between the surrender of Fort Sumter and the
proclamation of President Lincoln calling for seventy-five thousand
militia as before stated. Two other days elapsed, and Virginia passed
her ordinance of secession, and two days thereafter the citizens of
Baltimore resisted the passage of troops through that city on their way
to make war upon the Southern States. Thus rapidly did the current of
events bear us onward from peace to the desolating war which was soon to
ensue.
The manly effort of the unorganized, unarmed citizens of Baltimore to
resist the progress of armies for the invasion of her Southern sisters,
was worthy of the fair fame of Maryland; becoming the descendants of the
men who so gallantly fought for the freedom, independence, and
sovereignty of the States.
The bold stand, then and thereafter taken, extorted a promise from the
Executive authorities that no more troops should be sent through the
city of Baltimore, which promise, however, was only observed until, by
artifice, power had been gained to disregard it.
Virginia, as has been heretofore stated, passed her ordinance of
secession on the 17th of April. It was, however, subject to ratification
by the people at an election to be held on the fourth Thursday of May.
She was in the mean time, like her Southern sisters, the object of
Northern hostilities, and, having a common cause with them, properly
anticipated the election of May by forming an alliance with the
Confederate States, which was ratified by the Convention on the 25th of
April.
The Convention for that alliance set forth that Virginia, looking to a
speedy union with the Confederate States, and for the purpose of meeting
pressing exigencies, agreed that "the whole military force and military
operations, offensive and defensive, of said Commonwealth, in the
impending conflict with the United States, shall be under the chief
control and direction of the President of the said Confederate States."
The whole was made subject to the approval and ratification of the
proper authorities of both governments respectively.
To those who criticise South Carolina as having acted precipitately in
withdrawing from the Union, it may be answered that intervening
occurrences show that her delay could not have changed the result; and,
further, that her prompt action had enabled her better to prepare for
the contingency which it was found impossible to avert. Thus she was
prepared in the first necessities of Virginia to send to her troops
organized and equipped.
Before the convention for coöperation with the Confederate States had
been adopted by Virginia, that knightly soldier, General Bonham, of
South Carolina, went with his brigade to Richmond; and, throughout the
Southern States, there was a prevailing desire to rush to Virginia,
where it was foreseen that the first great battles of the war were to be
fought; so that, as early as the 22d of April, I telegraphed to Governor
Letcher that, in addition to the forces heretofore ordered, requisitions
had been made for thirteen regiments, eight to rendezvous at Lynchburg,
four at Richmond, and one at Harper's Ferry. Referring to an application
that had been made to him from Baltimore, I wrote: "Sustain Baltimore if
practicable. We will reënforce you." The universal feeling was that of a
common cause and common destiny. There was no selfish desire to linger
around home, no narrow purpose to separate local interests from the
common welfare. The object was to sustain a principle--the broad
principle of constitutional liberty, the right of self-government.
The early demonstrations of the enemy showed that Virginia was liable to
invasion from the north, from the east, and from the west. Though the
larger preparation indicated that the most serious danger to be
apprehended was from the line of the Potomac, the first conflicts
occurred in the east.
The narrow peninsula between the James and York Rivers had topographical
features well adapted to defense. It was held by General John B.
Magruder, who skillfully improved its natural strength by artificial
means, and there, on the ground memorable as the field of the last
battle of the Revolution, in which General Washington compelled Lord
Cornwallis to surrender, Magruder, with a small force, held for a long
time the superior forces of the enemy in check.
CHAPTER II.
The Supply of Arms; of Men.--Love of the Union.--Secessionists
few.--Efforts to prevent the Final Step.--Views of the
People.--Effect on their Agriculture.--Aid from African
Servitude.--Answer to the Clamors on the Horrors of
Slavery.--Appointment of a Commissary-General.--His Character
and Capacity.--Organization, Instruction, and Equipment of the
Army.--Action of Congress.--The Law.--Its Signification.--The
Hope of a Peaceful Solution early entertained; rapidly
diminished.--Further Action of Congress.--Policy of the
Government for Peace.--Position of Officers of United States
Army.--The Army of the States, not of the Government.--The
Confederate Law observed by the Government.--Officers retiring
from United States Army.--Organization of Bureaus.
The question of supplying arms and munitions of war was the first
considered, because it was the want for which it was the most difficult
to provide. Of men willing to engage in the defense of their country,
there were many more than we could arm.
Though the prevailing sentiment of the Southern people was a cordial
attachment to the Union as it was formed by their fathers, their love
was for the spirit of the compact, for the liberties it was designed to
secure, for the self-government and State sovereignty which had been won
by separation from the mother-country, and transmitted to them by their
Revolutionary sires as a legacy for their posterity for ever. The number
of those who desired to dissolve the Union, even though the Constitution
should be faithfully observed--those who, in the language of the day,
were called "secessionists _per se_"--was so small as not to be felt in
any popular decision; but the number of those who held that the States
had surrendered their sovereignty, and had no right to secede from the
Union, was so inappreciably small, if indeed any such existed, that I
can not recall the fact of a single Southern advocate of that opinion.
The assertion of the right is not to be confounded with a readiness to
exercise it. Many who had no doubt as to the right, looked upon its
exercise with reluctance amounting to sorrow, and claimed that it should
be the last resort, only to be adopted as the alternative to a surrender
of the equality in the Union of States, free, sovereign, and
independent. Of that class, forming a large majority of the people of
Mississippi, I may speak with the confidence of one who belonged to it.
Thus, after the Legislature of Mississippi had enacted a law for a
convention which, representing the sovereignty of the State, should
consider the propriety of passing an ordinance to reassume the grants
made to the General Government, and withdraw from the Union, I, as a
United States Senator of Mississippi, retained my position in the
Senate, and sought by every practicable mode to obtain such measures as
would allay the excitement and afford to the South such security as
would prevent the final step, the ordinance of secession from the Union.
When the last hope of preserving the Union of the Constitution was
extinguished, and the ordinance of secession was enacted by the
Convention of Mississippi, which was the highest authority known under
our form of government, the question of the expediency of adopting that
remedy was no longer open to inquiry by one who acknowledged his
allegiance as due to the State of which he was a citizen. To evade the
responsibilities resulting from the decree of his sovereign, the people,
would be craven; to resist it would be treason. The instincts and
affections of the citizens of Mississippi led them with great unanimity
to the duty of maintaining and defending their State, without pausing to
ask what would be the consequences of refusing obedience to its mandate.
A like feeling pervaded all of the seceding States, and it was not only
for the military service, but for every service which would strengthen
and sustain the Confederacy, that an enthusiasm pervading all classes,
sexes, and ages was manifested.
Though our agricultural products had been mainly for export, insomuch
that in the planting States the necessary food-supplies were to a
considerable extent imported from the West, and it would require that
the habits of the planters should be changed from the cultivation of
staples for export to the production of supplies adequate for home
consumption and the support of armies in the field, yet, even under the
embarrassments of war, this was expected, and for a long time the result
justified the expectation, extraordinary as it must appear when viewed
by comparison with other people who have been subjected to a like
ordeal. Much of our success was due to the much-abused institution of
African servitude, for it enabled the white men to go into the army, and
leave the cultivation of their fields and the care of their flocks, as
well as of their wives and children, to those who, in the language of
the Constitution, were "held to service or labor." A passing remark may
here be appropriate as to the answer thus afforded to the clamor about
the "horrors of slavery."
Had these Africans been a cruelly oppressed people, restlessly
struggling to be freed from their bonds, would their masters have dared
to leave them, as was done, and would they have remained as they did,
continuing their usual duties, or could the proclamation of emancipation
have been put on the plea of a military necessity, if the fact had been
that the negroes were forced to serve, and desired only an opportunity
to rise against their masters? It will be remembered that, when the
proclamation was issued, it was confessed by President Lincoln to be a
nullity beyond the limit within which it could be enforced by the
Federal troops.
To direct the production, preservation, collection, and distribution of
food for the army required a man of rare capacity and character at the
head of the subsistence department. It was our good fortune to have such
an one in Colonel L. B. Northrop, who was appointed commissary-general
at the organization of the bureaus of the executive department of the
Confederate Government. He had been an officer of the United States
Army, had served in various parts of the South, had been for some time
on duty in the commissariat, and, to the special and general knowledge
thus acquired, added strong practical sense and incorruptible integrity.
Of him and the operations of the subsistence department I shall have
more to say hereafter, when treating of the bureaus of the Confederacy.
Assured of an army as large as the population of the Confederate States
could furnish, and a sufficient supply of subsistence for such an army,
at least until the chances of war should interfere with production and
transportation, the immediate object of attention was the organization,
instruction, and equipment of the army.
As heretofore stated, there was a prevailing belief that there would be
no war, or, if any, that it would be of very short duration. Therefore
the first bill which passed the provisional Congress provided for
receiving troops for short periods--as my memory serves, for sixty days.
The chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs, the heroic Colonel
Bartow, who sealed his devotion to the cause with his life's blood on
the field of Manassas, in deference to my earnest remonstrance against
such a policy, returned with the bill to the House (the Congress then
consisted of but one House), and procured a modification by which the
term of service was extended to twelve months unless sooner discharged.
I had urged upon him, in our conference, the adoption of a much longer
period, but he assured me that one year was as much as the Congress
would agree to. On this, as on other occasions, that Congress showed a
generous desire to yield their preconceived opinions to my objections as
far as they consistently could, and, there being but one House, it was
easier to change the terms of a bill after conference with the Executive
than when, under the permanent organization, objections had to be
formally communicated in a message to that branch of Congress in which
the bill originated, and when the whole proceeding was of record.
This first act to provide for the public defense became a law on the
28th of February, 1861, and its fifth section so clearly indicates the
opinions and expectations prevailing when the Confederation was formed,
that it is inserted here:
"That the President be further authorized to receive into the
service of this Government such forces now in the service of
said States (Confederate States) as may be tendered, or who may
volunteer by consent of their State, in such numbers as he may
require for any time not less than twelve months unless sooner
discharged."
The supremacy of the States is the controlling idea. The President was
authorized to receive from the several States the arms and munitions
which they might desire to transfer to the Government of the Confederate
States, and he was also authorized to receive the forces which the
States might tender, or any which should volunteer by the _consent of
their State_, for any time not less than twelve months unless sooner
discharged; and such forces were to be received with their officers by
companies, battalions, or regiments, and the President, by and with the
advice and consent of Congress, was to appoint such general officer or
officers for said forces as might be necessary for the service.
It will be seen that the arms and munitions within the limits of the
several States were regarded as entirely belonging to them; that the
forces which were to constitute the provisional army could only be drawn
from the several States by their consent, and that these were to be
organized under State authority and to be received with their officers
so appointed; that the lowest organization was to be that of a company
and the highest that of a regiment, and that the appointment of general
officers to command these forces was confided to the Government of the
Confederate States, should the assembling of large bodies of troops
require organization above that of a regiment; and it will also be
observed that provision was made for the discharge of the forces so
provided for, before the term of service fixed by the law. No one will
fail to perceive how little was anticipated a war of the vast
proportions and great duration which ensued, and how tenaciously the
sovereignty and self-government of the States were adhered to. At a
later period (March 16, 1861) the Congress adopted resolutions
recommending to the respective States to "cede the forts, arsenals,
navy-yards, dock-yards, and other public establishments within their
respective limits to the Confederate States," etc.
The hope which was early entertained of a peaceful solution of the
issues pending between the Confederate States and the United States
rapidly diminished, so that we find on the 6th of March that the
Congress, in its preamble to an act to provide for the public defense,
begins with the declaration that, "in order to provide speedily forces
to repel invasion," etc., authorized the President to employ the
militia, and to ask for and accept the services of any number of
volunteers, not exceeding one hundred thousand, and to organize
companies into battalions, battalions into regiments, and regiments into
brigades and divisions. As in the first law, the President was
authorized to appoint the commanding officer of such brigades and
divisions, the commissions only to endure while the brigades were in
service.
On the same day (March 6, 1861) was enacted the law for the
establishment and organization of the Army of the Confederate States of
America, this being in contradistinction to the provisional army, which
was to be composed of troops tendered by the States, as in the first
act, and volunteers received, as in the second act, to constitute a
provisional army. That the wish and policy of the Government was peace
is again manifested in this act, which, in providing for the military
establishment of the Confederacy, fixed the number of enlisted men of
all arms at nine thousand four hundred and twenty. Due care was taken to
prevent the appointment of incompetent or unworthy persons to be
officers of the army, and the right to promotion up to and including the
grade of colonel was carefully guarded, and beyond this the professional
character of the army was recognized as follows: "Appointments to the
rank of brigadier-general, after the army is organized, shall be made by
selection from the army." There being no right of promotion above the
grade of colonel in the Army of the United States, selection for
appointment to the rank of general had no other restriction than the
necessity for confirmation by the Senate. The provision just quoted
imposed the further restriction of requiring the person nominated by
selection to have previously been an officer of the Army of the
Confederate States.
Regarding the Army of the United States as belonging neither to a
section of the Union nor to the General Government, but to the States
conjointly while they remained united, it follows as a corollary of the
proposition that, when disintegration occurred, the undivided
_personnel_ composing the army would be left free to choose their future
place of service. Therefore, provision was made for securing to
officers, who should leave the Army of the United States and join that
of the Confederate States, the same relative rank in the latter which
they held in the former.
"Be it further enacted that all officers who have resigned, or
who may within six months tender their resignations, from the
Army of the United States, and who have been or may be appointed
to original vacancies in the Army of the Confederate States, the
commissions issued shall bear one and the same date, so that the
relative rank of officers of each grade shall be determined by
their former commissions in the United States Army, held
anterior to the secession of these Confederate States from the
United States."
The provisions hereof are in the view entertained that the army was of
the States, not of the Government, and was to secure to officers
adhering to the Confederate States the same relative rank which they had
before those States had withdrawn from the Union. It was clearly the
intent of the law to embrace in this provision only those officers who
had resigned or who should resign from the United States Army to enter
the service of the Confederacy, or who, in other words, should thus be
transferred from one service to the other. It is also to be noted that,
in the eleventh section of the act to which this was amendatory, the
right of promotion up to the grade of colonel, in established regiments
and corps, was absolutely secured, but that appointments to the higher
grade should be by selection, at first without restriction, but after
the army had been organized the selection was confined to the army, thus
recognizing the profession of arms, and relieving officers from the
hazard, beyond the limit of their legal right to promotion, of being
superseded by civilians through favoritism or political influence.
How well the Government of the Confederacy observed both the letter and
the spirit of the law will be seen by reference to its action in the
matter of appointments. It is a noteworthy fact that the three highest
officers in rank, and whose fame stands unchallenged either for
efficiency or zeal, were all so indifferent to any question of personal
interest, that they had received their appointment before they were
aware it was to be conferred. Each brought from the Army of the United
States an enviable reputation, such as would have secured to him, had he
chosen to remain in it, after the war commenced, any position his
ambition could have coveted. Therefore, against considerations of
self-interest, and impelled by devotion to principle, they severed the
ties, professional and personal, which had bound them from their youth
up to the time when the Southern States, asserting the consecrated truth
that all governments rest on the consent of the governed, decided to
withdraw from the Union they had voluntarily entered, and the Northern
States resolved to coerce them to remain in it against their will. These
officers were--first, Samuel Cooper, a native of New York, a graduate of
the United States Military Academy in 1815, and who served continuously
in the army until March 7, 1861, with such distinction as secured to him
the appointment of Adjutant-General of the United States Army. Second,
Albert Sidney Johnston, a native of Kentucky, a graduate of the United
States Military Academy in 1826, served conspicuously in the army until
1834, then served in the army of the Republic of Texas, and then in the
United States Volunteers in the war with Mexico. Subsequently he
reëntered the United States Army, and for meritorious conduct attained
the rank of brevet brigadier-general. After the secession of Texas, his
adopted State, he resigned his commission in the United States Army, May
3, 1861, and traveled by land from California to Richmond to offer his
services to the Confederacy. Third, Robert E. Lee, a native of Virginia,
a graduate of the United States Military Academy in 1829, when he was
appointed in the Engineer Corps of the United States Army, and served
continuously and with such distinction as to secure for him in 1847
brevets of three grades above his corps commission. He resigned from the
Army of the United States, April 25, 1861, upon the secession of
Virginia, in whose army he served until it was transferred to the
Confederate States.
Samuel Cooper was the first of these to offer his services to the
Confederacy at Montgomery. Having known him most favorably and
intimately as Adjutant-General of the United States Army when I was
Secretary of War, the value of his services in the organization of a new
army was considered so great that I invited him to take the position of
Adjutant-General of the Confederate Army, which he accepted without a
question either as to relative rank or anything else. The highest grade
then authorized by law was that of brigadier-general, and that
commission was bestowed upon him.
When General Albert Sidney Johnston reached Richmond he called upon me,
and for several days at various intervals we conversed with the freedom
and confidence belonging to the close friendship which had existed
between us for many years. Consequent upon a remark made by me, he asked
to what duty I would assign him, and, when answered, to serve in the
West, he expressed his pleasure at service in that section, but inquired
how he was to raise his command, and for the first time learned that he
had been nominated and confirmed as a general in the Army of the
Confederacy.
The third, General Robert E. Lee, had been commissioned by the State of
Virginia as major-general and commander of her army. When that army was
transferred, after the accession of Virginia to the Confederate States,
he was nominated to be brigadier-general in the Confederate Army, but
was left for obvious reasons in command of the forces in Virginia. After
the seat of government was removed from Montgomery to Richmond, the
course of events on the Southern Atlantic coast induced me to direct
General Lee to repair thither. Before leaving, he said that, while he
was serving in Virginia, he had never thought it needful to inquire
about his rank; but now, when about to go into other States and to meet
officers with whom he had not been previously connected, he would like
to be informed upon that point. Under recent laws, authorizing
appointments to higher grades than that of his first commission, he had
been appointed a full general; but so wholly had his heart and his mind
been consecrated to the public service, that he had not remembered, if
he ever knew, of his advancement.
In organizing the bureaus, it was deemed advisable to select, for the
chief of each, officers possessing special knowledge of the duties to be
performed. The best assurance of that qualification was believed to be
service creditably rendered in the several departments of the United
States Army before resigning from it. Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel A. C.
Myers, who had held many important trusts in the United States
Quartermaster's Department, was appointed Quartermaster-General of the
Confederacy, with the rank of colonel.
Captain L. B. Northrop, a gallant officer of the United States Dragoons,
and who, by reason of a wound disabling him to perform regimental duty,
had been employed in the subsistence department, was, after resigning
from the United States Army, appointed Commissary-General of the
Confederate States Army, with the rank of colonel. I have heretofore
alluded to the difficult task thus imposed on him, and the success with
which he performed it, and would be pleased here to enter into a fuller
recital, but have not the needful information in regard to his
administration of that department.
Surgeon L. P. Moore, an officer of recognized merit in the United States
Medical Department, from which he had resigned to join the Confederacy,
was appointed the Surgeon-General of the Confederate States Army. As in
the case of other departments, there was in this a want of the stores
requisite, as well for the field as the hospital.
To supply medicines which were declared by the enemy to be contraband of
war, our medical department had to seek in the forest for substitutes,
and to add surgical instruments and appliances to the small stock on
hand as best they could.
It would be quite beyond my power to do justice to the skill and
knowledge with which the medical corps performed their arduous task, and
regret that I have no report from the Surgeon-General, Moore, which
would enable me to do justice to the officers of his corps, as well in
regard to their humanity as to their professional skill.
In no branch of our service were our needs so great and our means to
meet them relatively so small as in the matter of ordnance and ordnance
stores. The Chief of Ordnance, General Gorgas, had been an ordnance
officer of the United States Army, and resigned to join the Confederacy.
He has favored me with a succinct though comprehensive statement, which
has enabled me to write somewhat fully of that department; but, for the
better understanding of its operations, the reader is referred to the
ordnance report elsewhere.
CHAPTER III.
Commissioners to purchase Arms and Ammunition.--My Letter to
Captain Semmes.--Resignations of Officers of United States
Navy.--Our Destitution of Accessories for the Supply of Naval
Vessels.--Secretary Mallory.--Food-Supplies.--The Commissariat
Department.--The Quartermaster's Department.--The Disappearance
of Delusions.--The Supply of Powder.--Saltpeter.--Sulphur.--
Artificial Niter-Beds.--Services of General G. W. Rains.--
Destruction at Harper's Ferry of Machinery.--The Master
Armorer.--Machinery secured.--Want of Skillful Employees.--
Difficulties encountered by Every Department of the Executive
Branch of the Government.
On the third day after my inauguration at Montgomery, an officer of
extensive information and high capacity was sent to the North, to make
purchases of arms, ammunition, and machinery; and soon afterward another
officer was sent to Europe, to buy in the market as far as possible,
and, furthermore, to make contracts for arms and munitions to be
manufactured. Captain (afterward Admiral) Semmes, the officer who was
sent to the North, would have been quite successful but for the
intervention of the civil authorities, preventing the delivery of the
various articles contracted for. The officer who was sent to Europe,
Major Huse, found few serviceable arms upon the market; he, however,
succeeded in making contracts for the manufacture of large quantities,
being in advance of the agents sent from the Northern Government for the
same purpose. For further and more detailed information, reference is
made to the monograph of the Chief of Ordnance.
My letter of instructions to Captain Semmes was as follows:
"Montgomery, Alabama, _February 21, 1861_.
"Dear Sir: As agent of the Confederate States, you are
authorized to proceed, as hereinafter set forth, to make
purchases, and contracts for machinery and munitions, or for the
manufacture of arms and munitions of war.
"Of the proprietor of the ---- Powder Company, in ----, you will
probably be able to obtain cannon- and musket-powder--the former
to be of the coarsest grain; and also to engage with him for the
establishment of a powder-mill at some point in the limits of
our territory.
"The quantity of powder to be supplied immediately will exceed
his stock on hand, and the arrangement for further supply
should, if possible, be by manufacture in our own territory; if
this is not practicable, means must be sought for further
shipments from any and all sources which are reliable.
"At the arsenal at Washington you will find an artisan named
----, who has brought the cap-making machine to its present
state of efficiency, and who might furnish a cap-machine, and
accompany it to direct its operations. If not in this, I hope
you may in some other way be able to obtain a cap-machine with
little delay, and have it sent to the Mount Vernon Arsenal,
Alabama.
"We shall require a manufactory for friction-primers, and you
will, if possible, induce some capable person to establish one
in our country. The demand of the Confederate States will be the
inducement in this as in the case of the powder-mill proposed.
"A short time since, the most improved machinery for the
manufacture of rifles, intended for the Harper's Ferry Armory,
was, it was said, for sale by the manufacturer. If it be so at
this time, you will procure it for this Government, and use the
needful precaution in relation to its transportation. Mr. ----
----, of the Harper's Ferry Armory, can give you all the
information in that connection which you may require. Mr. Ball,
the master armorer at Harper's Ferry, is willing to accept
service under our Government, and could probably bring with him
skilled workmen. If we get the machinery, this will be
important.
"Machinery for grooving muskets and heavy guns is, I hope, to be
purchased ready made. If not, you will contract for its
manufacture and delivery. You will endeavor to obtain the most
improved shot for rifled cannon, and persons skilled in the
preparation of that and other fixed ammunition. Captain G. W.
Smith and Captain Lovell, late of the United States Army, and
now of New York City, may aid you in your task; and you will
please say to them that we will be happy to have their services
in our army.
"You will make such inquiries as your varied knowledge will
suggest in relation to the supply of guns of different calibers,
especially the largest. I suggest the advantage, if to be
obtained, of having a few of the fifteen-inch guns, like the one
cast at Pittsburg.
"I have not sought to prescribe so as to limit your inquiries,
either as to object or place, but only to suggest for your
reflection and consideration the points which have chanced to
come under my observation. You will use your discretion in
visiting places where information of persons or things is to be
obtained for the furtherance of the object in view. Any
contracts made will be sent to the Hon. L. P. Walker, Secretary
of War, for his approval; and the contractor need not fear that
delay will be encountered in the action of this Government.
"Very respectfully yours, etc.,
(Signed) "Jefferson Davis."
Captain Semmes had also been directed to seek for vessels which would
serve for naval purposes, and, after his return, reported that he could
not find any vessels which in his judgment were, or could be made,
available for our uses. The Southern officers of the navy who were in
command of United States vessels abroad, under an idea more creditable
to their sentiment than to their knowledge of the nature of our
constitutional Union, brought the vessels they commanded into the ports
of the North, and, having delivered them to the authorities of the
United States Government, generally tendered their resignations, and
repaired to the States from which they had been commissioned in the
navy, to serve where they held their allegiance to be due. The theory
that they owed allegiance to their respective States was founded on the
fact that the Federal Government was of the States; the sequence was,
that the navy belonged to the States, not to their agent the Federal
Government; and, when the States ceased to be united, the naval vessels
and armament should have been divided among the owners. While we honor
the sentiment which caused them to surrender their heart-bound
associations, and the profession to which they were bred, on which they
relied for subsistence, to go, with nothing save their swords and
faithful hearts, to fight, to bleed, and to die if need be, in defense
of their homes and a righteous cause, we can but remember how much was
lost by their view of what their honor and duty demanded. Far, however,
be it from their countrymen, for that or any other consideration, to
wish that their fidelity to the dictates of a conscientious belief
should have yielded to any temptation of interest. The course they
pursued shows how impossible it was that they should have done so, for
what did they not sacrifice to their sense of right! We were doubly
bereft by losing our share of the navy we had contributed to build, and
by having it all employed to assail us. The application of the
appropriations for the Navy of the United States had been such that the
construction of vessels had been at the North, though much of the timber
used and other material employed was transported from the South to
Northern ship-yards. Therefore, we were without the accessories needful
for the rapid supply of naval vessels.
While attempting whatever was practicable at home, we sent a competent,
well-deserving officer of the navy to England to obtain there and
elsewhere, by purchase or by building, vessels which could be
transformed into ships of war. These efforts and their results will be
noticed more fully hereafter.
It may not be amiss to remark here that, if the anticipations of our
people were not realized, it was not from any lack of the zeal and
ability of the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Mallory. As was heretofore
stated, his fondness for and aptitude in nautical affairs had led him to
know much of vessels, their construction and management, and, as
chairman of the Committee on United States Naval Affairs, he had
superadded to this a very large acquaintance with officers of the United
States Navy, which gave him the requisite information for the most
useful employment of the instructed officers who joined our service.
At the North many had been deceived by the fictions of preparations at
the South for the war of the sections, and among ourselves were few who
realized how totally deficient the Southern States were in all which was
necessary to the active operations of an army, however gallant the men
might be, and however able were the generals who directed and led them.
From these causes, operating jointly, resulted undue caution at the
North and overweening confidence at the South. The habits of our people
in hunting, and protecting their stock in fields from the ravages of
ferocious beasts, caused them to be generally supplied with the arms
used for such purposes. The facility with which individuals traveled
over the country led to very erroneous ideas as to the difficulties of
transporting an army. The small amount of ammunition required in time of
peace gave no measure of the amount requisite for warlike operations,
and the products of a country, which insufficiently supplied food for
its inhabitants when peaceful pursuits were uninterrupted, would serve
but a short time to furnish the commissariat of a large army. It was, of
course, easy to foresee that, if war was waged against the seceding
States by all of those which remained in the Union, the large supply of
provisions which had been annually sent from the Northwest to the South
could not, under the altered circumstances, be relied on. That our
people did not more immediately turn their attention to the production
of food-supplies, may be attributed to the prevailing delusion that
secession would not be followed by war. To the able officer then at the
head of the commissariat department, Colonel L. B. Northrop, much credit
is due for his well-directed efforts to provide both for immediate and
prospective wants. It gives me the greater pleasure to say this, because
those less informed of all he did, and skillfully tried to do, have been
profuse of criticism, and sparing indeed of the meed justly his due.
Adequate facilities for transportation might have relieved the local
want of supplies, especially in Virginia, where the largest bodies of
troops were assembled; but, unfortunately, the quartermaster's
department was scarcely less provided than that of the commissary. Not
only were the railroads insufficient in number, but they were poorly
furnished with rolling stock, and had been mainly dependent upon
Northern foundries and factories for their rails and equipment. Even the
skilled operatives of the railroads were generally Northern men, and
their desertion followed fast upon every disaster which attended the
Confederate arms. In addition to other causes which have been mentioned,
the idea that Cotton was king, and would produce foreign intervention,
as well as a desire of the Northern people for the return of peace and
the restoration of trade, exercised a potent influence in preventing our
agriculturists from directing at an early period their capital and labor
to the production of food-supplies rather than that of our staple for
export. As one after another the illusions vanished, and the material
necessities of a great war were recognized by our people, never did
patriotic devotion exhibit brighter examples of the sacrifice of
self-interest and the abandonment of fixed habits and opinions, or more
effective and untiring effort to meet the herculean task which was set
before them. Being one of the few who regarded secession and war as
inevitably connected, my early attention was given to the organization
of military forces and the procurement and preparation of the munitions
of war. If our people had not gone to war without counting the cost,
they were, nevertheless, involved in it without means of providing for
its necessities. It has been heretofore stated that we had no
powder-mills. It would be needless to say that the new-born Government
had no depots of powder, but it may be well to add that, beyond the
small supply required for sporting purposes, our local traders had no
stock on hand. Having no manufacturing industries which required
saltpeter, very little of that was purchasable in our markets. The same
would have been the case in regard to sulphur, but for the fact that it
had been recently employed in the clarification of sugar-cane juice, and
thus a considerable amount of it was found in New Orleans. Prompt
measures were taken to secure a supply of sulphur, and parties were
employed to obtain saltpeter from the caves, as well as from the earth
of old tobacco-houses and cellars; and artificial niter-beds were made
to provide for prospective wants. Of soft wood for charcoal there was
abundance, and thus materials were procured for the manufacture of
gunpowder to meet the demand which would arise when the limited quantity
purchased by the Confederate Government at the North should be
exhausted.
It was our good fortune to secure the services of an able and scientific
soldier, General G. W. Rains, who, to a military education, added
experience in a large manufacturing establishment, and to him was
confided the construction of a powder-mill, and the manufacture of
powder, both for artillery and small-arms. The appalling contemplation
of the inauguration of a great war, without powder or a navy to secure
its importation from abroad, was soon relieved by the extraordinary
efforts of the ordnance department and the well-directed skill of
General Rains, to whom it is but a just tribute to say that, beginning
without even instructed workmen, he had, before the close of the war,
made what, in the opinion of competent judges, has been pronounced to be
the best powder-mill in the world, and in which powder of every variety
of grain was manufactured of materials which had been purified from
those qualities which cause its deterioration under long exposure to a
moist atmosphere.
The avowed purpose and declared obligation of the Federal Government was
to occupy and possess the property belonging to the United States, yet
one of the first acts was to set fire to the armory at Harper's Ferry,
Virginia, the only establishment of the kind in the Southern States, and
the only Southern depository of the rifles which the General Government
had then on hand.
What conclusion is to be drawn from such action? To avoid attributing a
breach of solemn pledges, it must be supposed that Virginia was
considered as out of the Union, and a public enemy, in whose borders it
was proper to destroy whatever might be useful to her of the common
property of the States lately united.
As soon as the United States troops had evacuated the place, the
citizens and armorers went to work to save the armory as far as possible
from destruction, and to secure valuable material stored in it. The
master armorer, Armistead Ball, so bravely and skillfully directed these
efforts, that a large part of the machinery and materials was saved from
the flames. The subduing of the fire was a dangerous and difficult task,
and great credit is due to those who, under the orders of Master Armorer
Ball, attempted and achieved it. When the fire was extinguished, the
work was continued and persevered in until all the valuable machinery
and material had been collected, boxed, and shipped to Richmond, about
the end of the summer of 1861. The machinery thus secured was divided
between the arsenals at Richmond, Virginia, and Fayetteville, North
Carolina, and, when repaired and put in working condition, supplied to
some extent the want which existed in the South of means for the
alteration and repair of old or injured arms, and finally contributed to
increase the very scanty supply of arms with which our country was
furnished when the war began. The practice of the Federal Government,
which had kept the construction and manufacture of the material of war
at the North, had consequently left the South without the requisite
number of skilled workmen by whose labor machinery could at once be made
fully effective if it were obtained; indeed, the want of such employees
prevented the small amount of machinery on hand from being worked to its
full capacity. The gallant Master Armorer Ball, whose capacity, zeal,
and fidelity deserve more than a passing notice, was sent with that part
of the machinery assigned to the Fayetteville Arsenal. The toil, the
anxiety, and responsibility of his perilous position at Harper's Ferry,
where he remained long after the protecting force of the Confederate
army retired, had probably undermined a constitution so vigorous that,
in the face of a great exigency, no labor seemed too great or too long
for him to grapple with and endure. So, like a ship which, after having
weathered the storm, goes down in the calm, the master armorer, soon
after he took his quiet post at Fayetteville, was "found dead in his
bed."
The difficulties which on every side met the several departments of the
executive branch of the Government one must suppose were but little
appreciated by many, whose opportunities for exact observation were the
best, as one often meets with self-complacent expressions as to modes of
achieving readily what prompt, patient, zealous effort proved to be
insurmountable. In the progress of this work, it is hoped, will be
presented not only the magnitude of the obstacles, but the spirit and
capacity with which they were encountered by the unseen and much
undervalued labors of the officers of the several departments, on whom
devolved provision for the civil service, as well as for the armies in
the field. Already has the report of General St. John, Commissary-
General of Subsistence, of the operations of that department, just
before the close of the war, exposed the hollowness of many sensational
pictures intended to fix gross neglect or utter incapacity on the
Executive.
The hoped-for and expected monograms of other chiefs of bureaus will
silence like criticisms on each, so far as they are made by those who
are not willfully blind, or maliciously intent on the circulation of
falsehood.
CHAPTER IV.
The Proclamation for Seventy-five Thousand Men by President
Lincoln further examined.--The Reasons presented by him to
Mankind for the Justification of his Conduct shown to be Mere
Fictions, having no Relation to the Question.--What is the Value
of Constitutional Liberty, of Bills of Rights, of Limitations of
Powers, if they may be transgressed at Pleasure?--Secession of
South Carolina.--Proclamation of Blockade.--Session of Congress
at Montgomery.--Extracts from the President's Message.--Acts of
Congress.--Spirit of the People.--Secession of Border
States.--Destruction of United States Property by Order of
President Lincoln.
If any further evidence had been required to show that it was the
determination of the Northern people not only to make no concessions to
the grievances of the Southern States, but to increase them to the last
extremity, it was furnished by the proclamation of President Lincoln,
issued on April 15, 1861. This proclamation, which has already been
mentioned, requires a further examination, as it was the official
declaration, on the part of the Government of the United States, of the
war which ensued. In it the President called for seventy-five thousand
men to suppress "combinations" opposed to the laws, and obstructing
their execution in seven sovereign States which had retired from the
Union. Seventy-five thousand men organized and equipped are a powerful
army, and, when raised to operate against these States, nothing else
than war could be intended. The words in which he summoned this force
were these: "Whereas the laws of the United States have been for some
time past, and now are, opposed, and the execution thereof obstructed,
in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi,
Louisiana, and Texas, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by
the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in
the marshals by law: Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, by virtue of
the power in me vested by the Constitution and laws," etc.
The power granted in the Constitution is thus expressed: "The Congress
shall have power to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the
laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions."[169] It
was to the Congress, not the Executive, to whom the power was delegated,
and thus early was commenced a long series of usurpations of powers
inconsistent with the purposes for which the Union was formed, and
destructive of the fraternity it was designed to perpetuate.
On November 6, 1860, the Legislature of South Carolina assembled and
gave the vote of the State for electors of a President of the United
States. On the next day an act was passed calling a State Convention to
assemble on December 17th, to determine the question of the withdrawal
of the State from the United States. Candidates for membership were
immediately nominated. All were in favor of secession. The Convention
assembled on December 17th, and on the 20th passed "an ordinance to
dissolve the union between the State of South Carolina and other States
united with her under the compact entitled 'The Constitution of the
United States of America.'" The ordinance began with these words: "We,
the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do
declare and ordain," etc. The State authorities immediately conformed to
this action of the Convention, and the laws and authority of the United
States ceased to be obeyed within the limits of the State. About four
months afterward, when the State, in union with others which had joined
her, had possessed herself of the forts within her limits, which the
United States Government had refused to evacuate, President Lincoln
issued the above-mentioned proclamation.
The State of South Carolina is designated in the proclamation as a
combination too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of
judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the marshals by law.
This designation does not recognize the State, or manifest any
consciousness of its existence, whereas South Carolina was one of the
colonies that had declared her independence, and, after a long and
bloody war, she had been recognized as a sovereign State by Great
Britain, the only power to which she had ever owed allegiance. The fact
that she had been one of the colonies in the original Congress, had been
a member of the Confederation, and subsequently of the Union,
strengthens, but surely can not impair, her claim to be a State. Though
President Lincoln designated her as a "combination," it did not make her
a combination. Though he refused to recognize her as a State, it did not
make her any less a State. By assertion, he attempted to annihilate
seven States; and the war which followed was to enforce the
revolutionary edict, and to establish the supremacy of the General
Government on the ruins of the blood-bought independence of the States.
By designating the State as a "combination," and considering that under
such a name it might be in a condition of insurrection, he assumed to
have authority to raise a great military force and attack the State.
Yet, even if the fact had been as assumed, if an insurrection had
existed, the President could not lawfully have derived the power he
exercised from such condition of affairs. The provision of the
Constitution is as follows: "The United States shall guarantee to every
State in this Union a republican form of government, and shall protect
each of them against invasion; and, on application of the Legislature,
or of the Executive (when the Legislature can not be convened), against
domestic violence."[170] So the guarantee availed not at all to justify
the act which it was presented to excuse--the fact being that a State,
and not an "unlawful combination," as asserted, was the object of
assault, and the case one of making war. For a State or union of States
to attack with military force another State, is to make war. By the
Constitution, the power to make war is given solely to Congress.
"Congress shall have power to declare war," says the Constitution.[171]
And, again, "to raise and support armies."[172] Thus, under a perverted
use of language, the Executive at Washington did that which he
undeniably had no power to do, under a faithful observance of the
Constitution.
To justify himself to Congress and the people, or, rather, before the
face of mankind, for this evasion of the Constitution of his country,
President Lincoln, in his message to Congress, of July 4, 1861, resorted
to the artifice of saying, "It [meaning the proceedings of the
Confederate States] presents to the whole family of man the question
whether a constitutional republic or democracy--a government of the
people by the same people--can, or can not, maintain its territorial
integrity against its own domestic foes?"
The answer to this question is very plain. In the nature of things, no
union can be formed except by separate, independent, and distinct
parties. Any other combination is not a union; and, upon the destruction
of any of these elements in the parties, the union _ipso facto_ ceases.
If the Government is the result of a union of States, then these States
must be separate, sovereign, and distinct, to be able to form a union,
which is entirely an act of their own volition. Such a government as
ours had no power to maintain its existence any longer than the
contracting parties pleased to cohere, because it was founded on the
great principle of voluntary federation, and organized "to establish
justice and insure domestic tranquillity."[173] Any departure from this
principle by the General Government not only perverts and destroys its
nature, but furnishes a just cause to the injured State to withdraw from
the union. A new union might subsequently be formed, but the original
one could never by coercion be restored. Any effort on the part of the
others to force the seceding State to consent to come back is an attempt
at subjugation. It is a wrong which no lapse of time or combination of
circumstances can ever make right. A forced union is a political
absurdity. No less absurd is President Lincoln's effort to dissever the
sovereignty of the people from that of the State; as if there could be a
State without a people, or a sovereign people without a State.
But the question which Mr. Lincoln presents "to the whole family of man"
deserves a further notice. The answer which he seems to infer would be
given "by the whole family of man" is that such a government as he
supposes "can maintain its territorial integrity against its own
domestic foes." And, therefore, he concluded that he was right in the
judgment of "the whole family of man" in commencing hostilities against
us. He says, "So viewing the issue, no choice was left but to call out
the war power of the Government." That is the power to make war against
foreign nations, for the Government has no other war power. Planting
himself on this position, he commenced the devastation and bloodshed
which followed to effect our subjugation.
Nothing could be more erroneous than such views. The supposed case which
he presents is entirely unlike the real case. The Government of the
United States is like no other government. It is neither a
"constitutional republic or democracy," nor has it ever been thus
called. Neither is it a "government of the people by the same people";
but it is known and designated as "the Government of the United States."
It is an anomaly among governments. Its authority consists solely of
certain powers delegated to it, as a common agent, by an association of
sovereign and independent States. These powers are to be exercised only
for certain specified objects; and the purposes, declared in the
beginning of the deed or instrument of delegation, were "to form a more
perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide
for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the
blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."
The beginning and the end of all the powers of the Government of the
United States are to be found in that instrument of delegation. All its
powers are there expressed, defined, and limited. It was only to that
instrument Mr. Lincoln as President should have gone to learn his
duties. That was the chart which he had just solemnly pledged himself to
the country faithfully to follow. He soon deviated widely from it--and
fatally erroneous was his course. The administration of the affairs of a
great people, at a most perilous period, is decided by the answer which
it is assumed "the whole family of man" would give to a supposed
condition of human affairs which did not exist and which could not
exist. This is the ground upon which the rectitude of his cause was
placed. He says, "No choice was left but to call out the war power of
the Government, and so to resist force employed for its destruction by
force for its preservation."
"Here," he says, "no choice was left but to call out the war power of
the Government." For what purpose must he call out this war power? He
answers, by saying, "and so to resist force employed for its destruction
by force for its preservation." But this which he asserts is not a fact.
There was no "force employed for its destruction." Let the reader turn
to the record of the facts in Part III of this work, and peruse the
fruitless efforts for peace which were made by us, and which Mr. Lincoln
did not deign to notice. The assertion is not only incorrect, in stating
that force was employed by us, but also in declaring that it was for the
destruction of the Government of the United States. On the contrary, we
wished to leave it alone. Our separation did not involve its
destruction. To such fiction was Mr. Lincoln compelled to resort to give
even apparent justice to his cause. He now goes to the Constitution for
the exercise of his war power, and here we have another fiction.
On April 19th, four days later, President Lincoln issued another
proclamation, announcing a blockade of the ports of seven confederated
States, which was afterward extended to North Carolina and Virginia. It
further declared that all persons who should under their authority
molest any vessel of the United States, or the persons or cargo on
board, should be treated as pirates. In their efforts to subjugate us,
the destruction of our commerce was regarded by the authorities at
Washington as a most efficient measure. It was early seen that, although
acts of Congress established ports of entry where commerce existed, they
might be repealed, and the ports nominally closed or declared to be
closed; yet such a declaration would be of no avail unless sustained by
a naval force, as these ports were located in territory not subject to
the United States. An act was subsequently passed authorizing the
President of the United States, in his discretion, to close our ports,
but it was never executed.
The scheme of blockade was resorted to, and a falsehood was asserted on
which to base it. Mr. Seward writes to Mr. Dallas: "You will say (to
Lord John Russell) that, by our own laws and the laws of nature and the
laws of nations, this Government has a clear right to suppress
insurrection. An exclusion of commerce from national ports which have
been seized by insurgents, in the equitable form of blockade, is a
proper means to that end."[174] This is the same doctrine of
"combinations" fabricated by the authorities at Washington to serve as
the basis of a bloody revolution. Under the laws of nations, separate
governments when at war blockade each other's ports. This is decided to
be justifiable. But the Government of the United States could not
consent to justify its blockade of our ports on this ground, as it would
be an admission that the Confederate States were a separate and distinct
sovereignty, and that the war was prosecuted only for subjugation. It,
therefore, assumed that the withdrawal of the Southern States from the
Union was an insurrection.
Was it an insurrection? When certain sovereign and independent States
form a union with limited powers for some general purposes, and any one
or more of them, in the progress of time, suffer unjust and oppressive
grievances for which there is no redress but in a withdrawal from the
association, is such withdrawal an insurrection? If so, then of what
advantage is a compact of union to States? Within the Union are
oppressions and grievances; and the attempt to go out brings war and
subjugation. The ambitious and aggressive States obtain possession of
the central authority which, having grown strong in the lapse of time,
asserts its entire sovereignty over the States. Whichever of them denies
it and seeks to retire, is declared to be guilty of insurrection, its
citizens are stigmatized as "rebels," as if they had revolted against a
master, and a war of subjugation is begun. If this action is once
tolerated, where will it end? Where is the value of constitutional
liberty? What strength is there in bills of rights--in limitations of
power? What new hope for mankind is to be found in written
constitutions, what remedy which did not exist under kings or emperors?
If the doctrines thus announced by the Government of the United States
are conceded, then, look through either end of the political telescope,
and one sees only an empire, and the once famous Declaration of
Independence trodden in the dust as a "glittering generality," and the
compact of union denounced as a "flaunting lie." Those who submit to
such consequences without resistance are not worthy of the liberties and
the rights to which they were born, and deserve to be made slaves. Such
must be the verdict of mankind.
Men do not fight to make a fraternal union, neither do nations. These
military preparations of the Government of the United States signified
nothing less than the subjugation of the Southern States, so that, by
one devastating blow, the North might grasp for ever that supremacy it
had so long coveted.
To be prepared for self-defense, I called Congress together at
Montgomery on April 29th, and, in the message of that date, thus spoke
of the proclamation of the President of the United States: "Apparently
contradictory as are the terms of this singular document, one point is
unmistakably evident. The President of the United States calls for an
army of seventy-five thousand men, whose first service is to be the
capture of our forts. It is a plain declaration of war, which I am not
at liberty to disregard, because of my knowledge that, under the
Constitution of the United States, the President is usurping a power
granted exclusively to Congress."
I then proceeded to say that I did not feel at liberty to disregard the
fact that many of the States seemed quite content to submit to the
exercise of the powers assumed by the President of the United States,
and were actively engaged in levying troops for the purpose indicated in
the proclamation. Meantime, being deprived of the aid of Congress, I had
been under the necessity of confining my action to a call on the States
for volunteers for the common defense, in accordance with authority
previously conferred on me. I stated that there were then in the field,
at Charleston, Pensacola, Forts Morgan, Jackson, St. Philip, and
Pulaski, nineteen thousand men, and sixteen thousand more were on their
way to Virginia; that it was proposed to organize and hold in readiness
for instant action, in view of the existing exigencies of the country,
an army of one hundred thousand men; and that, if a further force should
be needed, Congress would be appealed to for authority to call it into
the field. Finally, that the intent of the President of the United
States, already developed, to invade our soil, capture our forts,
blockade our ports, and wage war against us, rendered it necessary to
raise means to a much larger amount than had been done, to defray the
expenses of maintaining independence and repelling invasion.
A brief summary of the internal affairs of the Government followed, and,
notwithstanding frequent declarations of the peaceful intentions of the
withdrawing States had been made in the most solemn manner, it was
deemed not to be out of place to repeat them once more; and, therefore,
the message closed with these words: "We protest solemnly, in the face
of mankind, that we desire peace at any sacrifice, save that of honor.
In independence we seek no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of
any kind from the States with which we have lately been confederated.
All we ask is to be let alone--that those who never held power over us
shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms. This we will, we must,
resist to the direst extremity. The moment that this pretension is
abandoned, the sword will drop from our grasp, and we shall be ready to
enter into treaties of amity and commerce that can not but be mutually
beneficial. So long as this pretension is maintained, with a firm
reliance on that Divine Power which covers with its protection the just
cause, we must continue to struggle for our inherent right to freedom,
independence, and self-government."
At this session Congress passed acts authorizing the President to use
the whole land and naval force to meet the necessities of the war thus
commenced; to issue to private armed vessels letters of marque; in
addition to the volunteer force authorized to be raised, to accept the
services of volunteers, to serve during the war; to receive into the
service various companies of the different arms; to make a loan of fifty
millions of dollars in bonds and notes; and to hold an election for
officers of the permanent Government under the new Constitution. An act
was also passed to provide revenue from imports; another, relative to
prisoners of war; and such others as were necessary to complete the
internal organization of the Government, and establish the
administration of public affairs.
In every portion of the country there was exhibited the most patriotic
devotion to the common cause. Transportation companies freely tendered
the use of their lines for troops and supplies. Requisitions for troops
were met with such alacrity that the number offering their services in
every instance greatly exceeded the demand and the ability to arm them.
Men of the highest official and social position served as volunteers in
the ranks. The gravity of age and the zeal of youth rivaled each other
in the desire to be foremost in the public defense.
The appearance of the proclamation of the President of the United
States, calling out seventy-five thousand men, was followed by the
immediate withdrawal of the States of Virginia, North Carolina,
Tennessee, and Arkansas, and their union with the Confederate States.
The former State, thus placed on the frontier and exposed to invasion,
began to prepare for a resolute defense. Volunteers were ordered to be
enrolled and held in readiness in every part of the State. Colonel
Robert E. Lee, having resigned his commission in the United States
cavalry, was on April 22d nominated and confirmed by the State
Convention of Virginia as "Commander-in-Chief of the military and naval
forces of the Commonwealth."
Already the Northern officer in charge had evacuated Harper's Ferry,
after having attempted to destroy the public buildings there. His report
says: "I gave the order to apply the torch. In three minutes or less,
both of the arsenal buildings, containing nearly fifteen thousand stand
of arms, together with the carpenter's shop, which was at the upper end
of a long and connected series of workshops of the armory proper, were
in a blaze. There is every reason for believing the destruction was
complete." Mr. Simon Cameron, the Secretary of War, on April 22d replied
to this report in these words: "I am directed by the President of the
United States to communicate to you, and through you to the officers and
men under your command at Harper's Ferry Armory, the approbation of the
Government of your and their judicious conduct there, and to tender you
and them the thanks of the Government for the same." At the same time
the ship-yard at Norfolk was abandoned after an attempt to destroy it.
About midnight of April 20th, a fire was started in the yard, which
continued to increase, and before daylight the work of destruction
extended to two immense ship-houses, one of which contained the entire
frame of a seventy-four-gun ship, and to the long ranges of stores and
offices on each side of the entrance. The great ship Pennsylvania was
burned, and the frigates Merrimac and Columbus, and the Delaware,
Raritan, Plymouth, and Germantown were sunk. A vast amount of machinery,
valuable engines, small-arms, and chronometers, was broken up and
rendered entirely useless. The value of the property destroyed was
estimated at several millions of dollars.
This property thus destroyed had been accumulated and constructed with
laborious care and skillful ingenuity during a course of years to
fulfill one of the objects of the Constitution, which was expressed in
these words, "To provide for the common defense" (see Preamble of the
Constitution). It had belonged to all the States in common, and to each
one equally with the others. If the Confederate States were still
members of the Union, as the President of the United States asserted,
where can he find a justification of these acts?
In explanation of his policy to the Commissioners sent to him by the
Virginia State Convention, he said, referring to his inaugural address,
"As I then and therein said, I now repeat, the power confided in me will
be used to hold, occupy, and possess property and places belonging to
the Government." Yet he tendered the thanks of the Government to those
who applied the torch to destroy this property belonging, as he regarded
it, to the Government.
How unreasonable, how blind with rage must have been that administration
of affairs which so quickly brought the Government to the necessity of
destroying its own means of defense in order, as it publicly declared,
"to maintain its life"! It would seem as if the passions that rule the
savage had taken possession of the authorities at the United States
capital! In the conflagrations of vast structures, the wanton
destruction of public property, and still more in the issue of _lettres
de cachet_ by the Secretary of State, who boasted of the power of his
little bell over the personal liberties of the citizen, the people saw,
or might have seen, the rapid strides toward despotism made under the
mask of preserving the Union. Yet these and similar measures were
tolerated because the sectional hate dominated in the Northern States
over the higher motives of constitutional and moral obligation.
[Footnote 169: Constitution of the United States, Article I, section 8.]
[Footnote 170: Constitution of the United States, Article IV, section
4.]
[Footnote 171: Article I, section 8.]
[Footnote 172: Ibid.]
[Footnote 173: Constitution of the United States, preamble.]
[Footnote 174: Diplomatic correspondence, May 21, 1861.]
CHAPTER V.
Maryland first approached by Northern Invasion.--Denies to
United States Troops the Right of Way across her
Domain.--Mission of Judge Handy.--Views of Governor Hicks.--His
Proclamation.--Arrival of Massachusetts Troops at
Baltimore.--Passage through the City disputed.--Activity of the
Police.--Burning of Bridges.--Letter of President Lincoln to the
Governor.--Visited by Citizens.--Action of the State
Legislature.--Occupation of the Relay House.--The City Arms
surrendered.--City in Possession of United States
Troops.--Remonstrances of the City to the Passage of Troops
disregarded.--Citizens arrested; also, Members of the
Legislature.--Accumulation of Northern Forces at
Washington.--Invasion of West Virginia by a Force under
McClellan.--Attack at Philippi; at Laurel Hill.--Death of
General Garnett.
The border State of Maryland was the outpost of the South on the
frontier first to be approached by Northern invasion. The first
demonstration against State sovereignty was to be made there, and in her
fate were the other slaveholding States of the border to have warning of
what they were to expect. She had chosen to be, for the time at least,
neutral in the impending war, and had denied to the United States troops
the right of way across her domain in their march to invade the Southern
States. The Governor (Hicks) avowed a desire, not only that the State
should avoid war, but that she should be a means for pacifying those
more disposed to engage in combat.
Judge Handy, a distinguished citizen of Mississippi, who was born in
Maryland, had, in December, 1860, been sent as a commissioner from the
State of his adoption to that of his birth, and presented his views and
the object of his mission to Governor Hicks, who, in his response
(December 19, 1860), declared his purpose to act in full concert with
the other border States, adding, "I do not doubt the people of Maryland
are ready to go with the people of those States for weal or woe."[175]
Subsequently, in answer to appeals for and against a proclamation
assembling the Legislature, in order to have a call for a State
convention, Governor Hicks issued an address, in which, arguing that
there was no necessity to define the position of Maryland, he wrote: "If
the action of the Legislature would be simply to declare that Maryland
was with the South in sympathy and feeling; that she demands from the
North the repeal of offensive, unconstitutional statutes, and appeals to
it for new guarantees; that she will wait a reasonable time for the
North to purge her statute-books, to do justice to her Southern
brethren; and, if her appeals are vain, will make common cause with her
sister border States in resistance to tyranny, if need be, it would only
be saying what the whole country well knows," etc.
On the 18th of April, 1861, Governor Hicks issued a proclamation
invoking them to preserve the peace, and said, "I assure the people that
no troops will be sent from Maryland, unless it may be for the defense
of the national capital." On the same day Mayor Brown, of the city of
Baltimore, issued a proclamation in which, referring to that of the
Governor above cited, he said, "I can not withhold my expression of
satisfaction at his resolution that no troops shall be sent from
Maryland to the soil of any other State." It will be remembered that the
capital was on a site which originally belonged to Maryland, and was
ceded by her for a special use, so that troops to defend the capital
might be considered as not having been sent out of Maryland. It will be
remembered that these proclamations were three days after the
requisition made by the Secretary of War on the States which had not
seceded for their quota of troops to serve in the war about to be
inaugurated against the South, and that rumors existed at the time in
Baltimore that troops from the Northeast were about to be sent through
that city toward the South. On the next day, viz., the 19th of April,
1861, a body of troops arrived at the railroad depot; the citizens
assembled in large numbers, and, though without arms, disputed the
passage through the city. They attacked the troops with the loose stones
found in the street, which was undergoing repair, and with such
determination and violence, that some of the soldiers were wounded, and
they fired upon the multitude, killing a few and wounding many.
The police of Baltimore were very active in their efforts to prevent
conflict and preserve the peace; they rescued the baggage and munitions
of the troops, which had been seized by the multitude; and the rear
portion of the troops was, by direction of Governor Hicks, sent back to
the borders of the State. The troops who had got through the city took
the railroad at the Southern Depot and passed on. The militia of the
city was called out, and by evening quiet was restored. During the
night, on a report that more Northern troops were approaching the city
by the railroads, the bridges nearest to the city were destroyed, as it
was understood, by orders from the authorities of Baltimore.
On the 20th of April President Lincoln wrote in reply to Governor Hicks
and Mayor Brown, saying, "For the future, troops must be brought here,
but I make no point of bringing them through Baltimore." On the next
day, the 21st, Mayor Brown and other influential citizens, by request of
the President, visited him. The interview took place in presence of the
Cabinet and General Scott, and was reported to the public by the Mayor
after his return to Baltimore. From that report I make the following
extracts. Referring to the President, the Mayor uses the following
language:
"The protection of Washington, he asseverated with great
earnestness, was the sole object of concentrating troops there,
and he protested that none of the troops brought through
Maryland were intended for any purposes hostile to the State, or
aggressive as against the Southern States.... He called on
General Scott for his opinion, which the General gave at great
length, to the effect that troops might be brought through
Maryland without going through Baltimore, etc.... The interview
terminated with the distinct assurance, on the part of the
President, that no more troops would be sent through Baltimore,
unless obstructed in their transit in other directions, and with
the understanding that the city authorities should do their best
to restrain their own people.
"The Mayor and his companions availed themselves of the
President's full discussion of the questions of the day to urge
upon him respectfully, but in the most earnest manner, a course
of policy which would give peace to the country, and especially
the withdrawal of all orders contemplating the passage of troops
through any part of Maryland."
The Legislature of the State of Maryland appointed commissioners to the
Confederate Government to suggest to it the cessation of impending
hostilities until the meeting of Congress at Washington in July.
Commissioners with like instructions were also sent to Washington. In my
reply to the Commissioners, dated 25th of May, 1861, I referred to the
uniform expression of desire for peace on the part of the Confederate
Government, and added:
"In deference to the State of Maryland, it again asserts in the
most emphatic terms that its sincere and earnest desire is for
peace; but that, while the Government would readily entertain
any proposition from the Government of the United States tending
to a peaceful solution of the present difficulties, the recent
attempts of this Government to enter into negotiations with that
of the United States were attended with results which forbid any
renewal of proposals from it to that Government.... Its policy
can not but be peace--peace with all nations and people."
On the 5th of May, the Relay House, at the junction of the Washington
and Baltimore and Ohio Railroads, was occupied by United States troops
under General Butler, and, on the 13th of the same month, he moved a
portion of the troops to Baltimore, and took position on Federal
Hill--thus was consummated the military occupation of Baltimore. On the
next day, reënforcements were received; and, on the same day, the
commanding General issued a proclamation to the citizens, in which he
announced to them his purpose and authority to discriminate between
citizens, those who agreed with him being denominated "well disposed,"
and the others described with many offensive epithets. The initiatory
step of the policy subsequently developed was found in one sentence:
"Therefore, all manufacturers of arms and munitions of war are hereby
requested to report to me forthwith, so that the lawfulness of their
occupations may be known and understood, and all misconstruction of
their doings avoided."
There soon followed a demand for the surrender of the arms stored by the
city authorities in a warehouse. The police refused to surrender them
without the orders of the police commissioners. The police
commissioners, upon representation that the demand of General Butler was
by order of the President, decided to surrender the arms under protest,
and they were accordingly removed to Fort McHenry.
Baltimore was now disarmed. The Army of the United States had control of
the city. There was no longer necessity to regard the remonstrance of
Baltimore against sending troops through the city, and that more
convenient route was henceforth to be employed. George P. Kane, Marshal
of the Police of Baltimore, who had rendered most efficient service for
the preservation of peace, as well in the city of Baltimore as at Locust
Point, where troops were disembarked to be dispatched to Washington, was
arrested at home by a military force, and sent to Fort McHenry, and a
provost-marshal was appointed by General Banks, who had succeeded to the
command. The excuse given for the arrest of Marshal Kane was that he was
believed to be cognizant of combinations of men waiting for an
opportunity to unite with those in rebellion against the United States
Government. Whether the suspicion were well or ill founded, it
constituted a poor excuse for depriving a citizen of his liberty without
legal warrant and without proof. But this was only the beginning of
unbridled despotism and a reign of terror. The Mayor and Police
Commissioners, Charles Howard, William H. Gatchell, and John W. Davis,
held a meeting, and, after preparing a protest against the suspension of
their functions in the appointment of a provost-marshall, resolved that,
while they would do nothing to "obstruct the execution of such measures
as Major-General Banks may deem proper to take, on his own
responsibility, for the preservation of the peace of the city and of
public order, they can not, consistently with their views of official
duty and of the obligations of their oaths of office, recognize the
right of any of the officers and men of the police force, as such, to
receive orders or directions from any other authority than from this
Board; and that, in the opinion of the Board, the forcible suspension of
their functions suspends at the same time the active operations of the
police law."[176] The Provost-Marshal, with the plenary powers conferred
upon him, commenced a system of search and seizure, in private houses,
of arms and munitions of every description.
On the 1st of July, General Banks announced that, "in pursuance of
orders issued from the headquarters at Washington for the preservation
of the public peace in this department, I have arrested, and do detain
in custody of the United States, the late members of the Board of
Police--Messrs. Charles Howard, William H. Gatchell, Charles D. Hinks,
and John W. Davis." If the object had been to preserve order by any
proper and legitimate method, the effective means would palpably have
been to rely upon men whose influence was known to be great, and whose
integrity was certainly unquestionable. The first-named of the
commissioners I knew well. He was of an old Maryland family, honored for
their public services, and himself adorned by every social virtue. Old,
unambitious, hospitable, gentle, loving, he was beloved by the people
among whom his long life had been passed. Could such a man be the just
object of suspicion, if, when laws had been silenced, suspicion could
justify arrest and imprisonment? Those who knew him will accept as a
just description:
"In action faithful, and in honor clear,
Who broke no promise, served no private end,
Who gained no title, and who lost no friend."
Thenceforward, arrests of the most illustrious became the rule. In a
land where freedom of speech was held to be an unquestioned right,
freedom of thought ceased to exist, and men were incarcerated for
opinion's sake.
In the Maryland Legislature, the Hon. S. Teacle Wallis, from a committee
to whom was referred the memorial of the police commissioners arrested
in Baltimore, made a report upon the unconstitutionality of the act, and
"appealed in the most earnest manner to the whole people of the country,
of all parties, sections, and opinions, to take warnings by the
usurpations mentioned, and come to the rescue of the free institutions
of the country."[177]
For no better reason, so far as the public was informed, than a vote in
favor of certain resolutions, General Banks sent his provost-marshal to
Frederick, where the Legislature was in session; a cordon of pickets was
placed around the town to prevent any one from leaving it without a
written permission from a member of General Banks's staff; police
detectives from Baltimore then went into the town and arrested some
twelve or thirteen members and several officers of the Legislature,
which, thereby left without a quorum, was prevented from organizing, and
it performed the only act which it was competent to do, i.e., adjourned.
S. Teacle Wallis, the author of the report in defense of the
constitutional rights of citizens, was among those arrested. Henry May,
a member of Congress, who had introduced a resolution which he hoped
would be promotive of peace, was another of those arrested and thrown
into prison. Senator Kennedy, of the same State, presented a report of
the Legislature to the United States Senate, reciting the outrage
inflicted upon Maryland in the persons of her municipal officers and
citizens, and, after some opposition, merely obtained an order to have
it printed. Governor Hicks, whose promises had been so cheering in the
beginning of the year, sent his final message to the Legislature on
December 3, 1861. In that, referring to the action of the Maryland
Legislature at its several sessions before that when the arrest of its
members prevented an organization, he wrote, "This continued until the
General Government had ample reason to believe it was about to go
through the farce of enacting an ordinance of secession, when the
treason was summarily stopped by the dispersion of the traitors...."
After referring to the elections of the 13th of June and the 6th of
November, he says, the people have "declared, in the most emphatic
tones, what I have never doubted, that Maryland has no sympathy with the
rebellion, and desires to do her full share in the duty of suppressing
it." It would be more easy than gracious to point out the inconsistency
between his first statements and this last. The conclusion is inevitable
that he kept himself in equipoise, and fell at last, as men without
convictions usually do, upon the stronger side.
Henceforth the story of Maryland is sad to the last degree, only
relieved by the gallant men who left their homes to fight the battle of
State rights when Maryland no longer furnished them a field on which
they could maintain the rights their fathers left them. This was a fate
doubly sad to the sons of the heroic men who, under the designation of
the "Maryland Line," did so much in our Revolutionary struggle to secure
the independence of the States; of the men who, at a later day, fought
the battle of North Point; of the people of a land which had furnished
so many heroes and statesmen, and gave the great Chief-Justice Taney to
the Supreme Court of the United States.
Though Maryland did not become one of the Confederate States, she was
endeared to the people thereof by many most enduring ties. Last in
order, but first in cordiality, were the tender ministrations of her
noble daughters to the sick and wounded prisoners who were carried
through the streets of Baltimore; and it is with shame we remember that
brutal guards on several occasions inflicted wounds upon gentlewomen who
approached these suffering prisoners to offer them the relief of which
they so evidently stood in need.
The accumulation of Northern forces at and near Washington City, made it
evident that the great effort of the invasion would be from that point,
while assaults of more or less vigor might be expected upon all
important places which the enemy, by his facilities for transportation,
could reach. The concentration of Confederate troops in Virginia was
begun, and they were sent forward as rapidly as practicable to the
points threatened with attack.
It was soon manifest that, besides the army at Washington, which
threatened Virginia, there was a second one at Chambersburg,
Pennsylvania, under Major-General Patterson, designed to move through
Williamsport and Martinsburg, and another forming in Ohio, under the
command of Major-General McClellan, destined to invade the western
counties of Virginia.
This latter force, having landed at Wheeling on May 26th, advanced as
far as Grafton on the 29th. At this time Colonel Porterfield, with the
small force of seven hundred men, sent forward by Governor Letcher, of
Virginia, was at Philippi. On the night of June 2d he was attacked by
General McClellan, with a strong force, and withdrew to Laurel Hill.
Reënforcements under General Garnett were sent forward and occupied the
hill, while Colonel Pegram, the second in command, held Rich Mountain.
On July 11th the latter was attacked by two columns of the enemy, and,
after a vigorous defense, fell back on the 12th, losing many of his men,
who were made prisoners. General Garnett, hearing of this reverse,
attempted to fall back, but was pursued by McClellan, and, while
striving to rally his rear guard, was killed. Five hundred of his men
were taken prisoners. This success left the Northern forces in
possession of that region.
The difficult character of the country in which the battle was fought,
as well from mountain acclivity as dense wood, rendered a minute
knowledge of the roads of vast importance. There is reason to believe
that competent guides led the enemy, by roads unknown to our army, to
the flank and rear of its position, and thus caused the sacrifice of
those who had patriotically come to repel the invasion of the very
people who furnished the guides to the enemy. It was treachery
confounding the counsels of the brave. Thus occurred the disaster of
Rich Mountain and Laurel Hill.
General Robert Garnett was a native of Virginia, and a graduate of the
United States Military Academy. He served in Mexico, on the staff of
General Z. Taylor, and was conspicuous for gallantry and good conduct,
especially in the battles of Monterey and Buena Vista. Recognizing his
allegiance as due to the State of Virginia, from which he was appointed
a cadet, and thence won his various promotions in the army, he resigned
his commission when the State withdrew from the Union, and earnestly and
usefully served as aide-de-camp to General R. E. Lee, the
commander-in-chief of the Army of Virginia, until she acceded to the
Confederacy.
When Western Virginia was invaded, he offered his services to go to her
defense, and, relying confidently on the sentiment, so strong in his own
heart, of devotion to the State by all Virginians, he believed it was
only needful for him to have a nucleus around which the people could
rally to resist the invasion of their country. How sadly he was
disappointed, and how bravely he struggled against adverse fortune, and
how gallantly he died in the discharge of his duty, are memories which,
though sad, bear with them to his friends the consolation that the
manner of his death was worthy of the way in which he lived, and that
even his life was an offering he was not unwilling to make for the
welfare and honor of Virginia.
He fell while commanding the rear guard, to save his retreating army,
thus exemplifying the highest quality of man, self-sacrifice for others,
and such devotion and fortitude as made Ney the grandest figure in
Bonaparte's retreat from Moscow.
[Footnote 175: "Annual Cyclopædia," vol. i, p. 443.]
[Footnote 176: "Baltimore American," June 28, 1861.]
[Footnote 177: New York "World", August 6, 1861.]
CHAPTER VI.
Removal of the Seat of Government to Richmond.--Message to
Congress at Richmond.--Confederate Forces in Virginia.--Forces
of the Enemy.--Letter to General Johnston.--Combat at Bethel
Church.--Affair at Romney.--Movements of McDowell.--Battle of
Manassas.
The Provisional Congress, in session at Montgomery, Alabama, on the 21st
of May, 1861, resolved "that this Congress will adjourn on Tuesday next,
to meet again on the 20th day of July at Richmond, Virginia." The
resolution further authorized the President to have the several
executive departments, with their archives, removed at such intermediate
time as he might determine, and added a proviso that, if any public
emergency should "render it impolitic to meet in Richmond," he should
call the Congress together at some other place to be selected by him.
The hostile demonstrations of the United States Government against
Virginia caused the President, at an early day after the adjournment of
Congress, to proceed to Richmond and to direct the executive
departments, with their archives, to be removed to that place as soon as
could be conveniently done.
In the message delivered to the Congress at its meeting in Richmond,
according to adjournment, I gave the following explanation of my conduct
under the resolution above cited: "Immediately after your adjournment,
the aggressive movement of the enemy required prompt, energetic action.
The accumulation of his forces on the Potomac sufficiently demonstrated
that his efforts were to be directed against Virginia, and from no point
could necessary measures for her defense and protection be so
effectively decided as from her own capital."
On my arrival in Richmond, General R. E. Lee, as commander of the Army
of Virginia, was found there, where he had established his headquarters.
He possessed my unqualified confidence, both as a soldier and a patriot,
and the command he had exercised over the Army of Virginia, before her
accession to the Confederacy, gave him that special knowledge which at
the time was most needful. As has been already briefly stated, troops
had previously been sent from other States of the Confederacy to the aid
of Virginia. The forces there assembled were divided into three armies,
at positions the most important and threatened: one, under General J. E.
Johnston, at Harper's Ferry, covering the valley of the Shenandoah;
another, under General P. G. T. Beauregard, at Manassas, covering the
direct approach from Washington to Richmond; and the third, under
Generals Huger and Magruder, at Norfolk and on the Peninsula between the
James and York Rivers, covering the approach to Richmond from the
seaboard.
The first and second of these armies, though separated by the Blue
Ridge, had such practicable communication with each other as to render
their junction possible when the necessity should be foreseen. They both
were confronted by forces greatly superior in numbers to their own, and
it was doubtful which would first be the object of attack. Harper's
Ferry was an important position, both for military and political
considerations, and, though unfavorably situated for defense against an
enemy which should seek to turn its position by crossing the Potomac
above, it was desirable to hold it as long as was consistent with
safety. The temporary occupation was especially needful for the removal
of the valuable machinery and material in the armory located there, and
which the enemy had failed to destroy, though he had for that purpose
fired the buildings before his evacuation of the post. The
demonstrations of General Patterson, commanding the Federal army in that
region, caused General Johnston earnestly to insist on being allowed to
retire to a position nearer to Winchester. Under these circumstances, an
official letter was addressed to him, from which the following extract
is made:
"Adjutant and Inspector-General's Office,
"Richmond, _June 13, 1861_.
"_To_ General J. E. Johnston, _commanding Harper's Ferry,
Virginia_.
"Sir: ... You had been heretofore instructed to exercise your
discretion as to retiring from your position at Harper's Ferry,
and taking the field to check the advance of the enemy.... The
ineffective portion of your command, together with the baggage
and whatever else would impede your operations in the field, it
would be well to send, without delay, to the Manassas road.
Should you not be sustained by the population of the Valley, so
as to enable you to turn upon the enemy before reaching
Winchester, you will continue slowly to retire to the Manassas
road, upon some of the passes of which it is hoped you will be
able to make an effective stand, even against a very superior
force. To this end, it might be well to send your engineer to
make a reconnaissance and construct such temporary works as may
be useful and proper.... For these reasons it has been with
reluctance that any attempt was made to give you specific
instructions, and you will accept assurances of the readiness
with which the freest exercise of discretion on your part will
be sustained.
"Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
(Signed) "S. Cooper,
"_Adjutant and Inspector-General_."
The earliest combat in this quarter, and which, in the inexperience of
the time, was regarded as a great battle, may claim a passing notice, as
exemplifying the extent to which the individuality, self-reliance, and
habitual use of small-arms by the people of the South was a substitute
for military training, and, on the other hand, how the want of such
training made the Northern new levies inferior to the like kind of
Southern troops.
A detached work on the right of General Magruder's line was occupied
June 11, 1861, by the First Regiment of North Carolina Volunteers and
three hundred and sixty Virginians under the command of an educated,
vigilant, and gallant soldier, then Colonel D. H. Hill, First Regiment
North Carolina Volunteers, subsequently a lieutenant-general in the
Confederate service. He reports that this small force was "engaged for
five and a half hours with four and a half regiments of the enemy at
Bethel Church, nine miles from Hampton. The enemy made three distinct
and well-sustained charges, but were repulsed with heavy loss. Our
cavalry pursued them for six miles, when their retreat became a total
rout."
On the other side, Frederick Townsend, colonel of Third Regiment of the
enemy's forces, after stating with much minuteness the orders and line
of march, describes how, "about five or six miles from Hampton, a heavy
and well-sustained fire of canister and small-arms was opened upon the
regiment," and how it was afterward discovered to be a portion of their
own column which had fired upon them. After due care for the wounded and
a recognition of their friends, the column proceeded, and the Colonel
describes his regiment as moving to the attack "in line of battle, as if
on parade, in the face of a severe fire of artillery and small-arms."
Subsequently, the description proceeds, "a company of my regiment had
been separated from the regiment by a thickly-hedged ditch," and marched
in the adjoining field in line with the main body. Not being aware of
the separation of that company, the Colonel states that, therefore,
"upon seeing among the breaks in the hedge the glistening of bayonets in
the adjoining field, I immediately concluded that the enemy were
outflanking, and conceived it to be my duty to immediately retire and
repel that advance."[178]
Without knowing anything of the subsequent career of the Colonel from
whose report these extracts have been made, or of the officers who
opened fire upon him while he was marching to the execution of the
orders under which they were all acting, it is fair to suppose that,
after a few months' experience, such scenes as are described could not
have occurred, and these citations have been made to show the value of
military training.
In further exemplification of the difference between the troops of the
Confederate States and those of the United States, before either had
been trained in war, I will cite an affair which occurred on the upper
Potomac. Colonel A. P. Hill, commanding a brigade at Romney, in Western
Virginia, having learned that the enemy had a command at the
twenty-first bridge on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, decided to
attack it and to destroy the bridge, so as to interrupt the use of that
important line of the enemy's communication. For this purpose he ordered
Colonel John C. Vaughn, of the Third Tennessee Volunteers, to proceed
with a detachment of two companies of his regiment and two companies of
the Thirteenth Virginia Volunteers to the position where the enemy were
reported to be posted.
Colonel Vaughn reports that on June 18, 1861, at 8 P. M., he moved with
his command as ordered, marched eighteen miles, and, at 5 A. M. the next
morning, found the enemy on the north bank of the Potomac in some
strength of infantry and with two pieces of artillery. He had no
picket-guards.
After reconnaissance, the order to charge was given. It was necessary,
in the execution of the order, to ford the river waist-deep, which
Colonel Vaughn reports "was gallantly executed in good order but with
great enthusiasm. As we appeared in sight at a distance of four hundred
yards, the enemy broke and fled in all directions, firing as they ran
only a few random shots.... The enemy did not wait to fire their
artillery, which we captured, both guns loaded; they were, however,
spiked by the enemy before he fled. From the best information, their
number was between two and three hundred."
Colonel Vaughn further states that, in pursuance of orders, he fired the
bridge and then retired, bringing away the two guns and the enemy's
flag, and other articles of little value which had been captured, and
arrived at brigade headquarters in the evening, with his command in high
spirits good condition.
Colonel A. P. Hill, the energetic brigade commander who directed this
expedition, left the United States Army when the State, which had given
him to the military service of the General Government, passed her
ordinance of secession. The vigilance and enterprise he manifested on
this early occasion in the war of the States gave promise of the
brilliant career which gained for him the high rank of a
lieutenant-general, and which there was nothing for his friends to
regret save the honorable death which he met upon the field of battle.
Colonel Vaughn, the commander of the detachment, was new to war. His
paths had been those of peace, and his home in the mountains of East
Tennessee might reasonably have secured him from any expectation that it
would ever be the theatre on which armies were to contend, and that he,
in the mutation of human affairs, would become a soldier. He lived until
the close of the war, and, on larger fields than that on which he first
appeared, proved that, though not educated for a soldier, he had
endowments which compensated for that disadvantage.
The activity and vigilance of Stuart, afterward so distinguished as
commander of cavalry in the Army of Virginia, and the skill and daring
of Jackson, soon by greater deeds to become immortal, checked, punished,
and embarrassed the enemy in his threatened advances, and his movements
became so devoid of a definite purpose that one was at a loss to divine
the object of his campaign, unless it was to detain General Johnston
with his forces in the Valley of the Shenandoah, while General McDowell,
profiting by the feint, should make the real attack upon General
Beauregard's army at Manassas. However that may be, the evidence finally
became conclusive that the enemy under General McDowell was moving to
attack the army under General Beauregard. The contingency had therefore
arisen for that junction which was necessary to enable us to resist the
vastly superior numbers of our assailant; for, though the most strenuous
and not wholly unsuccessful exertions had been made to reënforce both
the Armies of the Shenandoah and of the Potomac, they yet remained far
smaller than those of the enemy confronting them, and made a junction of
our forces indispensable whenever the real point of attack should be
ascertained. For this movement we had the advantage of an interior line,
so that, if the enemy should discover it after it commenced, he could
not counteract it by adopting the same tactics. The success of this
policy, it will readily be perceived, depended upon the time of
execution, for, though from different causes, failure would equally
result if done too soon or too late. The determination as to which army
should be reënforced from the other, and the exact time of the transfer,
must have been a difficult problem, as both the generals appear to have
been unable to solve it (each asking reënforcements from the other).
On the 9th of July General Johnston wrote an official letter, from which
I make the following extracts:
"Headquarters, Winchester, _July 9, 1861_.
"General: ... Similar information from other sources gives me
the impression that the reënforcements arriving at Martinsburg
amount to seven or eight thousand. I have estimated the enemy's
force hitherto, you may remember, at eighteen thousand.
Additional artillery has also been received. They were greatly
superior to us in that arm before.
"The object of reënforcing General Patterson must be an advance
upon this place. Fighting here against great odds seems to me
more prudent than retreat.
"I have not asked for reënforcements, because I supposed that
the War Department, informed of the state of affairs everywhere,
could best judge where the troops at its disposal are most
required....
"Most respectfully, your obedient servant,
(Signed) "Joseph E. Johnston,
"_Brigadier-General, etc._"
"If it is proposed to strengthen us against the attack I suggest
as soon to be made, it seems to me that General Beauregard might
with _great expedition_ furnish five or six thousand men for a
few days.
"J. E. J."
As soon as I became satisfied that Manassas was the objective point of
the enemy's movement, I wrote to General Johnston, urging him to make
preparations for a junction with General Beauregard, and to his
objections, and the difficulties he presented, replied at great length,
endeavoring to convince him that the troops he described as embarrassing
a hasty march might be withdrawn in advance of the more effective
portion of his command. Writing with entire confidence, I kept no copy
of my letters, and, when subsequent events caused the wish to refer to
them, I requested General Johnston to send me copies of them. He replied
that his tent had been blown down, and his papers had been scattered.
His letters to me, which would show the general purport of mine to him,
have shared the fate which during or soon after the close of the war
befell most of the correspondence I had preserved, and his retained
copies, if still in his possession, do not appear to have been deemed of
sufficient importance to be inserted in his published "Narrative."
On the 17th of July, 1861, the following telegram was sent by the
Adjutant-General:
"Richmond, _July 17, 1861_.
"_To_ General J. E. Johnston, _Winchester, Virginia_.
"General Beauregard is attacked. To strike the enemy a decisive
blow, a junction of all your effective force will be needed. If
practicable, make the movement, sending your sick and baggage to
Culpepper Court-House, either by railroad or by Warrenton. In
all the arrangements exercise your discretion.
(Signed) "S. Cooper,
"_Adjutant and Inspector-General_."
The confidence reposed in General Johnston, sufficiently evinced by the
important command intrusted to him, was more than equal to the
expectation that he would do all that was practicable to execute the
order for a junction, as well as to secure his sick and baggage. For the
execution of the one great purpose, that he would allow no minor
question to interfere with that which was of vital importance, and for
which he was informed all his "effective force" would "be needed."
The order referred to was the telegram inserted above, in which the
sending the sick to Culpepper Court-House might have been after or
before the effective force had moved to the execution of the main and
only positive part of the order. All the arrangements were left to the
discretion of the General. It seems strange that any one has construed
this expression as meaning that the movement for a junction was left to
the discretion of that officer, and that the forming of a junction--the
imperious necessity--should have been termed in the order "all the
arrangement," instead of referring that word to its proper connection,
the route and mode of transportation. The General had no margin on which
to institute a comparison as to the importance of his remaining in the
Valley, according to his previous assignment, or going where he was
ordered by competent authority.
It gives me pleasure to state that, from all the accounts received at
the time, the plans of General Johnston, for masking his withdrawal to
form a junction with General Beauregard, were conducted with marked
skill, and, though all of his troops did not arrive as soon as expected
and needed, he has satisfactorily shown that the failure was not due to
any defect in his arrangements for their transportation.
The great question of uniting the two armies had been decided at
Richmond. The time and place depended on the enemy, and, when it was
seen that the real attack was to be against the position at Manassas,
the order was sent to General Johnston to move to that point. His
letters of the 12th and 15th instant expressed his doubts about his
power to retire from before the superior force of General Patterson,
therefore the word "practicable" was in this connection the equivalent
of possible. That it was, at the time, so understood by General
Johnston, is shown by his reply to the telegram.
"Headquarters, Winchester, _July 18, 1861_.
"General: I have had the honor to receive your telegram of
yesterday.
"General Patterson, who had been at Bunker Hill since Monday,
seems to have moved yesterday to Charlestown, twenty-three miles
to the east of Winchester.
"Unless he prevents it, we shall move toward General Beauregard
to-day....
(Signed) "Joseph E. Johnston.
"General S. Cooper."
After General Johnston commenced his march to Manassas, he sent to me a
telegram, the substance of which, as my memory serves and the reply
indicates, was an inquiry as to the relative position he would occupy
toward General Beauregard. I returned the following answer:
"Richmond, _July 20, 1861_.
"General J. E. Johnston, _Manassas Junction, Virginia_.
"You are a general in the Confederate Army, possessed of the
power attaching to that rank. You will know how to make the
exact knowledge of Brigadier-General Beauregard, as well of the
ground as of the troops and preparation, avail for the success
of the object in which you coöperate. The zeal of both assures
me of harmonious action.
(Signed) "Jefferson Davis."
General Johnston, by his promotion to the grade of general, as well as
his superior rank as a brigadier over Brigadier-General Beauregard, gave
him precedence; so there was no need to ask which of the two would
command the whole, when their troops should join and do duty together.
Therefore his inquiry, as it was revolved in my mind, created an
anxiety, not felt before, lest there should be some unfortunate
complication, or misunderstanding, between these officers, when their
forces should be united. Regarding the combat of the 18th of July as the
precursor of a battle, I decided, at the earliest moment, to go in
person to the army.
As has been heretofore stated, Congress was to assemble on the 20th of
July, to hold its first session at the new capital, Richmond, Virginia.
My presence on that occasion and the delivery of a message were required
by usage and law. After the delivery of the message to Congress on
Saturday, the 20th of July, I intended to leave in the afternoon for
Manassas, but was detained until the next morning, when I left by rail,
accompanied by my aide-de-camp, Colonel J. R. Davis, to confer with the
generals on the field. As we approached Manassas Railroad junction, a
cloud of dust was visible a short distance to the west of the railroad.
It resembled one raised by a body of marching troops, and recalled to my
remembrance the design of General Beauregard to make the Rappahannock
his second line of defense. It was, however, subsequently learned that
the dust was raised by a number of wagons which had been sent to the
rear for greater security against the contingencies of the battle. The
sound of the firing had now become very distinct, so much so as to leave
no doubt that a general engagement had commenced. Though that event had
been anticipated as being near at hand after the action of the 18th, it
was both hoped and desired that it would not occur quite so soon, the
more so as it was not known whether the troops from the Valley had yet
arrived.
On reaching the railroad junction, I found a large number of men,
bearing the usual evidence of those who leave the field of battle under
a panic. They crowded around the train with fearful stories of a defeat
of our army. The railroad conductor announced his decision that the
railroad train should proceed no farther. Looking among those who were
about us for one whose demeanor gave reason to expect from him a
collected answer, I selected one whose gray beard and calm face gave
best assurance. He, however, could furnish no encouragement. Our line,
he said, was broken, all was confusion, the army routed, and the battle
lost. I asked for Generals Johnston and Beauregard; he said they were on
the field when he left it. I returned to the conductor and told him that
I must go on; that the railroad was the only means by which I could
proceed, and that, until I reached the headquarters, I could not get a
horse to ride to the field where the battle was ragging. He finally
consented to detach the locomotive from the train, and, for my
accommodation, to run it as far as the army headquarters. In this manner
Colonel Davis, aide-de-camp, and myself proceeded.
At the headquarters we found the Quartermaster General, W. L. Cabell,
and the Adjutant-General, Jordan, of General Beauregard's staff, who
courteously agreed to furnish us horses, and also to show us the route.
While the horses were being prepared, Colonel Jordan took occasion to
advise my aide-de-camp, Colonel Davis, of the hazard of going to the
field, and the impropriety of such exposure on my part. The horses were
after a time reported ready, and we started to the field. The stragglers
soon became numerous, and warnings as to the fate which awaited us if we
advanced were not only frequent but evidently sincere.
There were, however, many who turned back, and the wounded generally
cheered upon meeting us. I well remember one, a mere stripling, who,
supported on the shoulders of a man, who was bearing him to the rear,
took off his cap and waved it with a cheer, that showed within that
slender form beat the heart of a hero--breathed a spirit that would dare
the labors of Hercules.
As we advanced, the storm of the battle was rolling westward, and its
fury became more faint. When I met General Johnston, who was upon a hill
which commanded a general view of the field of the afternoon's
operations, and inquired of him as to the state of affairs, he replied
that we had won the battle. I left him there and rode still farther to
the west. Several of the volunteers on General Beauregard's staff joined
me, and a command of cavalry, the gallant leader of which, Captain John
F. Lay, insisted that I was too near the enemy to be without an escort.
We, however, only saw one column near to us that created a doubt as to
which side it belonged; and, as we were riding toward it, it was
suggested that we should halt until it could be examined with a
field-glass. Colonel Chesnut dismounted so as the better to use his
glass, and at that moment the column formed into line, by which the wind
struck the flag so as to extend it, and it was plainly revealed to be
that of the United States.
Our cavalry, though there was present but the squadron previously
mentioned, and from a statement of the commander of which I will make
some extracts, dashed boldly forward to charge. The demonstration was
followed by the immediate retreat of what was, I believe, the last,
thereabout, of the enemy's forces maintaining their organization, and
showing a disposition to dispute the possession of the field of battle.
In riding over the ground, it seemed quite possible to mark the line of
a fugitive's flight. Here was a musket, there a cartridge-box, there a
blanket or overcoat, a haversack, etc., as if the runner had stripped
himself, as he went, of all impediments to speed.
As we approached toward the left of our line, the signs of an utter rout
of the enemy were unmistakable, and justified the conclusion that the
watchword of "On to Richmond!" had been changed to "Off for Washington!"
On the extreme left of our field of operations, I found the troops whose
opportune arrival had averted impending disaster, and had so materially
contributed to our victory. Some of them had, after arriving at the
Manassas Railroad junction, hastened to our left; their
brigadier-general, E. K. Smith, was wounded soon after getting into
action, and the command of the brigade devolved upon Elzy, by whom it
was gallantly and skillfully led to the close of the battle; others,
under the command of General (then Colonel) Early, made a rapid march,
under the pressing necessity, from the extreme right of our line to and
beyond our left, so as to attack the enemy in flank, thus inflicting on
him the discomfiture his oblique movement was designed to inflict on us.
All these troops and the others near to them had hastened into action
without supplies or camp-equipage; weary, hungry, and without shelter,
night closed around them where they stood, the blood-stained victors on
a hard-fought field.
It was reported to me that some of the troops had been so long without
food as to be suffering severe hunger, and that no supplies could be got
where they were. I made several addresses to them, all to the effect
that their position was that best adapted to a pursuit of the enemy, and
that they should therefore remain there; adding that I would go to the
headquarters and direct that supplies should be sent to them promptly.
General (then Colonel) Early, commanding a brigade, informed me of some
wounded who required attention; one, Colonel Gardner, was, he said, at a
house not far from where we were. I rode to see him, found him in severe
pain, and from the twitching, visible and frequent, seemed to be
threatened with tetanus. A man sat beside him whose uniform was that of
the enemy; but he was gentle, and appeared to be solicitously attentive.
He said that he had no morphine, and did not know where to get any. I
found in a short time a surgeon who went with me to Colonel Gardner,
having the articles necessary in the case. Before leaving Colonel
Gardner, he told me that the man who was attending to him might, without
hindrance, have retreated with his comrades, but had kindly remained
with him, and he therefore asked my protection for the man. I took the
name and the State of the supposed good Samaritan, and at army
headquarters directed that he should not be treated as a prisoner. The
sequel will be told hereafter.
It was then late, and we rode back in the night, say seven miles, to the
army headquarters. I had not seen General Beauregard on the field, and
did not find him at his quarters when we returned; the promise made to
the troops was therefore communicated to a staff-officer, who said he
would have the supplies sent out. At a later hour when I met General
Beauregard and informed him of what had occurred, he stated that,
because of a false alarm which had reached him, he had ordered the
troops referred to from the left to the right of our line, so as to be
in position to repel the reported movement of the enemy against that
flank. That such an alarm should have been credited, and a night march
ordered on account of it, shows how little the completeness of the
victory was realized.
[Footnote 178: see "Rebellion Record," vol. ii, pp. 164, 165.]
CHAPTER VII.
Conference with the Generals after the Battle.--Order to pursue
the Enemy.--Evidences of a Thorough Rout.--"Sweet to die for
such a Cause."--Movements of the Next Day.--What more it was
practicable to do.--Charge against the President of preventing
the Capture of Washington.--The Failure to pursue.--Reflection
on the President.--General Beauregard's Report.--Endorsement
upon it.--Strength of the Opposing Forces.--Extracts relating to
the Battle, from the Narrative of General Early.--Resolutions of
Congress.--Efforts to increase the Efficiency of the Army.
At a late hour of the night, I had a conference with Generals Johnston
and Beauregard; the Adjutant-General of the latter, Colonel Jordan, was
present, and sat opposite to me at the table.
When, after some preliminary conversation, I asked whether any troops
had been sent in pursuit of the enemy, I was answered in the negative.
Upon further inquiry as to what troops were in the best position for
pursuit, and had been least fatigued during the day, General Bonham's
brigade was named. I then suggested that he should be ordered in
pursuit; a pause ensued, until Colonel Jordan asked me if I would
dictate the order. I at once dictated an order for immediate pursuit.
Some conversation followed, the result of which was a modification of
the order by myself, so that, instead of immediate pursuit, it should be
commenced at early dawn. Colonel Jordan spoke across the table to me,
saying, "If you will send the order as you first dictated it, the enemy
won't stop till he gets into the Potomac." I believe I remember the
words very nearly, and am quite sure that I do remember them
substantially. On the 25th of March, 1878, I wrote to General Beauregard
as follows:
"Dear Sir: Permit me to ask you to recall the conference held
between General Johnston, yourself, and myself, on the night
after the close of the battle of Manassas; and to give me, if
you can, a copy of the order which I dictated, and which your
adjutant-general, T. J. Jordan, wrote at my dictation, directing
Brigadier-General Bonham to follow the retreating enemy. If you
can not furnish a copy of the order, please give me your
recollection of its substance.
"Yours respectfully,
(Signed) "Jefferson Davis."
To this letter General Beauregard courteously replied that his
order-book was in New York, in the hands of a friend, to whom he would
write for a copy of the order desired if it should be in said book, and
that he would also write to his adjutant, General Jordan, for his
recollection of the order if it had not been inscribed in the
order-book.
On the 24th of April General Beauregard forwarded to me the answer to
his inquiries in my behalf, as follows:
"New York, 63 Broadway, _April 18, 1878_.
"My dear General: In answer to your note, I hasten to say that
properly Mr. Davis is not to be held accountable for our failure
to pursue McDowell from the field of Manassas the night of the
21st of July, 1861.
"As to the order, to which I presume Mr. Davis refers in his
note to you, I recollect the incident very distinctly.
"The night of the battle, as I was about to ascend to your
quarters over my office, Captain E. P. Alexander, of your staff,
informed me that Captain ----, attached to General Johnston's
Army of the Shenandoah, reported that he had been as far forward
as Centreville, where he had seen the Federal army completely
routed and in full flight toward Washington.
"This statement I at once repeated to Mr. Davis, General
Johnston, and yourself, whom I found seated around your
table--Mr. Davis at the moment writing a dispatch to General
Cooper.
"As soon as I had made my report, Mr. Davis with much animation
asserted the necessity for an urgent pursuit that night by
Bonham, who, with his own brigade and that of Longstreet, was in
close proximity to Centreville at the moment. So I took my seat
at the same table with you, and wrote the order for pursuit,
substantially at the dictation of Mr. Davis. But, while writing,
either I happened to remember, or Captain Alexander himself--as
I am inclined to believe--called me aside to remind me that his
informant was known among us of the old army as ---- ----,
because of eccentricities, and in contradistinction with others
of the same name. When I repeated this reminder, Mr. Davis
recalled the _sobriquet_, as he had a precise personal knowledge
of the officers of the old army. He laughed heartily, as did all
present.
"The question of throwing General Bonham forward that night,
upon the unverified report of Captain ----, was now briefly
discussed, with a unanimous decision against it; therefore, the
order was not dispatched.
"It is proper to add in this connection that, so far as I am
aware--and I had the opportunity of knowing what occurred--this
was the only instance during Mr. Davis's stay at Manassas in
which he exercised any voice as to the movement of the troops.
Profoundly pleased with the results achieved by the happy
juncture of the two Confederate armies upon the very field of
battle, his bearing toward the generals who commanded them was
eminently proper, as I have testified on a former occasion; and,
I repeat, he certainly expressed or manifested no opposition to
a forward movement, nor did he display the least disposition to
interfere by opinion or authority touching what the Confederate
forces should or should not do.
"You having at the close of the day surrendered the command,
which had been left in your hands, over both Confederate armies
during the engagement, General Johnston was that night in chief
command. He was decidedly averse to an immediate offensive, and
emphatically discountenanced it as impracticable.
"Very truly, your friend,
(Signed) "Thomas Jordan.
"General P. G. T. Beauregard, _New Orleans, Louisiana_."
General Beauregard, in his letter forwarding the above, wrote, "The
account given herewith by General Jordan of what occurred there
respecting further pursuit that night agrees with my own recollection."
It was a matter of importance, as I regarded it, to follow closely on
the retreating enemy, but it was of no consequence then or now as to who
issued the order for pursuit, and, unless requested, I should not have
dictated one, preferring that the generals to whom the operations were
confided should issue all orders to the troops. I supposed the order, as
modified by myself, had been sent. I have found, however, since the
close of the war, that it was not, but that an order to the same effect
was sent on the night of the 21st of July, for a copy of which I am
indebted to the kindness of that chivalrous gentleman, soldier, and
patriot, General Bonham. It is as follows:
"Headquarters Army of the Potomac,
"Manassas, _July 21, 1861_.
"(Special Orders, No. 140.)
"I. General Bonham will send, as early as practicable in the
morning, a command of two of his regiments of infantry, a strong
force of cavalry, and one field-battery, to scour the country
and roads to his front, toward Centreville. He will carry with
him abundant means of transportation for the collection of our
wounded, all the arms, ammunition, and abandoned hospital
stores, subsistence, and baggage, which will be sent immediately
to these headquarters.
"General Bonham will advance with caution, throwing out an
advanced guard and skirmishers on his right and left, and the
utmost caution must be taken to prevent firing into our own men.
"Should it appear, while this command is occupied as directed,
that it is insufficient for the purposes indicated, General
Bonham will call on the nearest brigade commander for support.
"II. Colonel P. St. George Cocke, commanding, will dispatch at
the same time, for similar purposes, a command of the same size
and proportions of infantry, artillery, and cavalry on the road
_via_ Stone Bridge; and another command of two companies of
infantry and one of cavalry on the road by which the enemy
retreated toward and _via_ Sudley's Mills.
"By command of Brigadier-General Beauregard:
(Signed) "Thomas Jordan, _A. A. Adjutant-General._
"To Brigadier-General Bonham."
Impressed with the belief that the enemy was very superior to us, both
in numbers and appointments, I had felt apprehensive that, unless
pressed, he would recover from the panic under which he fled from the
field, rally on his reserves, and renew the contest. Therefore it was
that I immediately felt the necessity for a pursuit of the fugitives,
and insisted that the troops on the extreme left should retain their
position during the night of the 21st, as has been heretofore stated. In
conference with the generals that night, this subject was considered,
and I dictated an order for a movement on the rear of the enemy at early
dawn, which, on account of the late hour at which it was given, differed
very little from one for an immediate movement. A rainfall,
extraordinary for its violence and duration, occurred on the morning of
the succeeding day, so that, over places where during the battle one
could scarcely get a drink of water, rolled torrents which, in the
afternoon of the 22d, it was difficult to cross.
From these and other causes, the troops were scattered to such an extent
that but few commands could have been assembled for immediate service.
It was well for us that the enemy, instead of retiring in order, so as
to be rallied and again brought to the attack, left hope behind, and
fled in dismay to seek for safety beyond the Potomac.
Each hour of the day following the battle added to the evidence of a
thorough rout of the enemy. Abandoned wagons, stores, guns, caissons,
small-arms, and ammunition, proved his complete demoralization. As far
as our cavalry went, no hostile force was met, and all the indications
favored the conclusion that the purpose of invasion had for the time
been abandoned.
The victory, though decisive and important, both in its moral and
physical effect, had been dearly bought by the sacrifice of the lives of
many of our bravest and best, who at the first call of their country had
rushed to its defense.
When riding to the front, I met an ambulance bearing General Barnard Bee
from the field, where he had been mortally wounded, after his patriotism
had been illustrated by conspicuous exhibitions of skill, daring, and
fortitude. Soon after, I learned that my friend Colonel Bartow had
heroically sealed with his life-blood his faith in the sanctity of our
cause. He had been the chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs in
the Provisional Congress, and, after the laws were enacted to provide
for the public defense, he went to the field to maintain them. It is to
such virtuous and devoted citizens that a country is indebted for its
prosperity and honor, as well in peace as in war.
Reference has been made to the dispersion of our troops after the
battle, and in this connection the following facts are mentioned: In the
afternoon of the 22d, with a guide, supposed to be cognizant of the
positions at which the different commands would be found, I went to
visit the wounded, and among them a youth of my family, who, it was
reported to me, was rapidly sinking. After driving many miles, and
witnessing very painful scenes, but seldom finding the troops in the
position where my guide supposed them to be, and always disappointed in
not discovering him I particularly sought, I was, at the approach of
night, about to abandon the search, when, accidentally meeting an
officer of the command to which the youth belonged, I was directed to
the temporary hospital to which the wounded of that command had been
removed. It was too late; the soul of the young soldier had just left
his body; the corpse lay before me. Around him were many gentle boys,
suffering in different degrees from the wounds they had received. One
bright, refined-looking youth from South Carolina, severely if not
fatally wounded, responded to my expression of sympathy by the heroic
declaration that it was "sweet to die for such a cause."
Many kindred spirits ascended to the Father from that field of their
glory. The roll need not be recorded here; it has a more enduring
depository than the pen can make--the traditions of a grateful people.
The victory at Manassas was certainly extraordinary, not only on account
of the disparity of numbers and the inferiority of our arms, but also
because of many other disadvantages under which we labored. We had no
disciplined troops, and, though our citizens were generally skilled in
the use of small-arms, which, with their high pride and courage, might
compensate for the want of training while in position, these
inadequately substituted military instruction when manoeuvres had to be
performed under fire, and could not make the old-fashioned musket equal
to the long-range, new-model muskets with which the enemy was supplied.
The disparity in artillery was still greater, both in the number and
kind of guns; but, thanks to the skill and cool courage of the Rev.
Captain W. N. Pendleton, his battery of light, smooth-bore guns, manned
principally by the youths whose rector he had been, proved more
effective in battle than the long-range rifle-guns of the enemy. The
character of the ground brought the forces into close contact, and the
ricochet of the round balls carried havoc into the columns of the enemy,
while the bolts of their rifle-guns, if they missed their object,
penetrated harmlessly into the ground.
The field was very extensive, broken, and wooded. The senior general had
so recently arrived that he had no opportunity minutely to learn the
ground, and the troops he brought were both unacquainted with the field
and with those with whom they had to coöperate. To all this must be
added the disturbing fact that the plan of battle, as originally
designed, was entirely changed by the movement of the enemy on our
extreme left, instead of right and center, as anticipated. The
operations, therefore, had to be conducted against the plan of the
enemy, instead of on that which our generals had prepared and explained
to their subordinate commanders. The promptitude with which the troops
moved, and the readiness with which our generals modified their
preconceived plans to meet the necessities as they were developed,
entitled them to the commendation so liberally bestowed at the time by
their countrymen at large.
General Johnston had been previously promoted to the highest grade in
our army, and I deemed it but a fitting reward for the services rendered
by General Beauregard that he should be promoted to the same grade;
therefore, I addressed to him the following letter:
"Manassas, Virginia, _July 21, 1861._
"Sir: Appreciating your services in the battle of Manassas, and
on several other occasions during the existing war, as affording
the highest evidence of your skill as a commander, your
gallantry as a soldier, and your zeal as a patriot, you are
promoted to be a general in the army of the Confederate States
of America, and, with the consent of the Congress, will be duly
commissioned accordingly.
"Yours, etc.,
(Signed) "Jefferson Davis.
"General P. G. T. Beauregard, etc."
The 22d, the day after the battle, was spent in following up the line of
the retreating foe, and collecting the large supplies of arms, of
ammunition, and other military stores. The supplies of the army were on
a scale of such luxurious extravagance as to excite the surprise of
those accustomed only to our rigid economy. The anticipation of an easy
victory had caused many to come to the battle as to a joyous feast, and
the signs left behind them of the extent to which they had been
disappointed in the entertainment, constituted the staple of many
laughable stories, which were not without their value because of the
lesson they contained as to the uncertainties of war, and the
mortification that usually follows vain boasting. Among the articles
abandoned by the enemy in his flight were some which excited a just
indignation, and which indicated the shameless disregard of all the
usages of honorable warfare. They were handcuffs, the fit appendage of a
policeman, but not of a soldier who came to meet his foeman hilt to
hilt. These were reported to have been found in large numbers; some of
them were sent to Richmond.
On the night of the 22d I held a second conference with Generals
Johnston and Beauregard. All the revelations of the day were of the most
satisfactory character as to the completeness of our victory. The large
amount gained of fine artillery, small-arms, and ammunition, all of
which were much needed by us, was not the least gratifying consequence
of our success. The generals, like myself, were well content with what
had been done.
I propounded to them the inquiry as to what more it was practicable to
do. They concurred as to their inability to cross the Potomac, and to
the further inquiry as to an advance to the south side of the Potomac,
General Beauregard promptly stated that there were strong fortifications
there, occupied by garrisons, which had not been in the battle, and were
therefore not affected by the panic which had seized the defeated army.
He described those fortifications as having wide, deep ditches, with
palisades, which would prevent the escalade of the works. Turning to
General Johnston, he said, "They have spared no expense." It was further
stated in explanation that we had no sappers and miners, nor even the
tools requisite to make regular approaches. If we had possessed both,
the time required for such operations would have more than sufficed for
General Patterson's army and other forces to have been brought to that
locality in such numbers as must have rendered the attempt, with our
present means, futile.
This view of the matter rests on the supposition that the fortifications
and garrisons described did actually exist, of which there seemed then
to be no doubt. If the reports which have since reached us be true, that
there were at that time neither fortifications nor troops stationed on
the south bank of the Potomac; that all the enemy's forces fled to the
north side of the river, and even beyond; that the panic of the routed
army infected the whole population of Washington City; and that no
preparation was made, or even contemplated, for the destruction of the
bridge across the Potomac--then it may have been, as many have asserted,
that our army, following close upon the flying enemy, could have entered
and taken possession of the United States capital. These reports,
however, present a condition of affairs altogether at variance with the
information on which we had to act. Thus it was, and, so far as I knew,
for the reasons above stated, that an advance to the south bank of the
Potomac was not contemplated as the immediate sequence of the victory at
Manassas. What discoveries would have been made and what results would
have ensued from the establishment of our guns upon the south bank of
the river, to open fire upon the capital, are speculative questions upon
which it would be useless to enter.
After the conference of the 22d, and because of it, I decided to return
to Richmond and employ all the power of my office to increase the
strength of the army, so as the better to enable it to meet the public
need, whether in offensive-defensive or purely defensive operations, as
opportunity should offer for the one, or the renewal of invasion require
the other.
A short time subsequent to my return, a message was brought to me from
the prison, to the effect that a non-commissioned officer, captured at
Manassas, claimed to have a promise of protection from me. The name was
given Hulburt, of Connecticut. I had forgotten the name he gave when I
saw him; but, believing that I would recognize the person who had
attended to Colonel Gardner, and to whom only such a promise had been
given, the officer in charge was directed to send him to me. When he
came, I had no doubt of his identity, and explained to him that I had
directed that he should not be treated as a prisoner, but that, in the
multitude of those wearing the same uniform as his, some neglect or
mistake had arisen, for which I was very sorry, and that he should be
immediately released and sent down the river to the neighborhood of
Fortress Monroe, where he would be among his own people. He then told me
that he had a sister residing a few miles in the country, whom he would
be very glad to visit. Permission was given him to do so, and a time
fixed at which he was to report for transportation; and so he left, with
manifestations of thankfulness for the kindness with which he had been
treated. In due time a newspaper was received, containing an account of
his escape, and how he had lingered about the suburbs of Richmond and
made drawings of the surrounding fortifications. The treachery was as
great as if his drawings had been valuable, which they could not have
been, as we had only then commenced the detached works which were
designed as a system of defenses for Richmond.
When the smoke of battle had lifted from the field of Manassas, and the
rejoicing over the victory had spread over the land and spent its
exuberance, some, who, like Job's war-horse, "snuffed the battle from
afar," but in whom the likeness there ceased, censoriously asked why the
fruits of the victory had not been gathered by the capture of Washington
City. Then some indiscreet friends of the generals commanding in that
battle, instead of the easier task of justification, chose the harder
one of exculpation for the imputed failure. Their ill-advised zeal,
combined perhaps with malice against me, induced the allegation that the
President had prevented the generals from making an immediate and
vigorous pursuit of the routed enemy.
This, as other stories had been, was left to the correction which time
it was hoped would bring, the sooner because it was expected to be
refuted by the reports of the commanding generals with whom I had
conferred on that subject immediately after the battle.
After considerable time had elapsed, it was reported to me that a member
of Congress, who had served on that occasion as a volunteer aide to
General Beauregard, had stated in the House of Representatives that I
had prevented the pursuit of the enemy after his defeat at Manassas.
This gave to the rumor such official character and dignity as seemed to
me to entitle it to notice not theretofore given, wherefore I addressed
to General Johnston the following inquiry, which, though restricted in
its terms to the allegation, was of such tenor as left it to his option
to state all the facts connected with the slander, if he should choose
to do me that justice, or should see the public interest involved in the
correction, which, as stated in my letter to him, was that which gave it
in my estimation its claim to consideration, and had caused me to
address him on the subject:
"Richmond, Virginia, _November 3, 1861._
"General J. E. Johnston, _commanding Department of the Potomac._
"Sir: Reports have been, and are being, widely circulated to the
effect that I prevented General Beauregard from pursuing the
enemy after the battle of Manassas, and had subsequently
restrained him from advancing upon Washington City. Though such
statements may have been made merely for my injury, and in that
view might be postponed to a more convenient season, they have
acquired importance from the fact that they have served to
create distrust, to excite disappointment, and must embarrass
the Administration in its further efforts to reënforce the
armies of the Potomac, and generally to provide for the public
defense. For these public considerations, I call upon you, as
the commanding general, and as a party to all the conferences
held by me on the 21st and 22d of July, to say whether I
obstructed the pursuit of the enemy after the victory at
Manassas, or have ever objected to an advance or other active
operation which it was feasible for the army to undertake.
"Very respectfully, yours, etc.,
(Signed) "Jefferson Davis."
"Headquarters, Centreville, _November 10, 1861_.
"To his Excellency the President.
"Sir: I have had the honor to receive your letter of the 3d
inst., in which you call upon me, 'as the commanding general,
and as a party to all the conferences held by you on the 21st
and 22d of July, to say whether you obstructed the pursuit after
the victory of Manassas, or have ever objected to an advance or
other active operation which it was feasible for the army to
undertake?'
"To the first question I reply, No. The pursuit was 'obstructed'
by the enemy's troops at Centreville, as I have stated in my
official report. In that report I have also said why no advance
was made upon the enemy's capital (for reasons) as follows:
"The apparent freshness of the United States troops at
Centreville, which checked our pursuit; the strong forces
occupying the works near Georgetown, Arlington, and Alexandria;
the certainty, too, that General Patterson, if needed, would
reach Washington with his army of more than thirty thousand
sooner than we could; and the condition and inadequate means of
the army in ammunition, provisions, and transportation,
prevented any serious thoughts of advancing against the capital.
"To the second question I reply that it has never been feasible
for the army to advance farther than it has done--to the line of
Fairfax Court-House, with its advanced posts at Upton's,
Munson's, and Mason's Hills. After a conference at Fairfax
Court-House with the three senior general officers, you
announced it to be impracticable to give this army the strength
which those officers considered necessary to enable it to assume
the offensive. Upon which I drew it back to its present
position.
"Most respectfully, your obedient servant,
(Signed) "J. E. Johnston."
This answer to my inquiry was conclusive as to the charge which had been
industriously circulated that I had prevented the immediate pursuit of
the enemy, and had obstructed active operations after the battle of
Manassas, and thus had caused the failure to reap the proper fruits of
the victory.
No specific inquiry was made by me as to the part I took in the
conferences of the 21st and 22d of July, but a general reference was
made to them. The entire silence of General Johnston in regard to those
conferences is noticeable from the fact that, while his answer was
strictly measured by the terms of my inquiry as to pursuit, he added a
statement about a conference at Fairfax Court-House, which occurred in
the autumn, say October, and could have had no relation to the question
of pursuit of the enemy after the victory of Manassas, or other active
operations therewith connected. The reasons stated in my letter for
making an inquiry, naturally pointed to the conferences of the 21st and
22d of July, but surely not to a conference held months subsequent to
the battle, and on a question quite different from that of hot pursuit.
In regard to the matter of this subsequent conference I shall have more
to say hereafter.
I left the field of Manassas, proud of the heroism of our troops in
battle, and of the conduct of the officers who led them. Anxious to
recognize the claim of the army on the gratitude of the country, it was
my pleasing duty to bear testimony to their merit in every available
form. Those who left the field and did not return to share its glory, it
was wished, should only be remembered as exceptions proving a rule.
With all the information possessed at the time by the commanding
generals, the propriety of maintaining our position, while seeking
objects more easily attained than the capture of the United States
capital, seemed to me so demonstrable as to require no other
justification than the statements to which I have referred in connection
with the conference of the 22d of July. It would have seemed to me then,
as it does now, to be less than was due to the energy and fortitude of
our troops, to plead a want of transportation and supplies for a march
of about twenty miles through a country which had not then been denuded
by the ravages of war.
Under these impressions, and with such feelings, I wrote to General
Beauregard as follows:
"Richmond, Virginia, _August 4, 1861._
"General Beauregard, _Manassas, Virginia._
"My Dear Sir: ... I think you are unjust to yourself in putting
your failure to pursue the enemy to Washington to the account of
short supplies of subsistence and transportation. Under the
circumstances of our army, and in the absence of the knowledge
since acquired, if indeed the statements be true, it would have
been extremely hazardous to have done more than was performed.
You will not fail to remember that, so far from knowing that the
enemy was routed, a large part of our forces was moved by you,
in the night of the 21st, to repel a supposed attack upon our
right, and that the next day's operations did not fully reveal
what has since been reported of the enemy's panic. Enough was
done for glory, and the measure of duty was full; let us rather
show the untaught that their desires are unreasonable, than, by
dwelling on possibilities recently developed, give form and
substance to the criticisms always easy to those who judge after
the event.
"With sincere esteem, I am your friend,
(Signed) "Jefferson Davis."
I had declared myself content and gratified with the conduct of the
troops and the officers, and supposed the generals, in recognition of my
efforts to aid them by increasing their force and munitions, as well as
by my abstinence from all interference with them upon the field, would
have neither cause nor motive to reflect upon me in their reports, and
it was with equal surprise and regret that in this I found myself
mistaken. General Johnston, in his report, represented the order to him
to make a junction with General Beauregard as a movement left to his
discretion, with the condition that, if made, he should first send his
sick and baggage to Culpepper Court-House. I felt constrained to put
upon his report when it was received the following endorsement:
"The telegram referred to by General Johnston in this report as
received by him about one o'clock on the morning of the 18th of
July is inaccurately reported. The following is a copy:
"'Richmond, _July 17, 1861_.
"'General J. E. Johnston, _Winchester, Virginia_.
"'General Beauregard is attacked. To strike the enemy a decisive
blow, a junction of all your effective force will be needed. If
practicable, make the movement, sending your sick and baggage to
Culpepper Court-House, either by railroad or by Warrenton. In
all the arrangements, exercise your discretion.
"'S. Cooper, _Adjutant and Inspector-General_.'
"The word 'after' is not found in the dispatch before the words
'sending your sick,' as is stated in the report; so that the
argument based on it requires no comment. The order to move 'if
practicable' had reference to General Johnston's letters of the
12th and 15th of July, representing the relative strength and
positions of the enemy under Patterson and of his own forces to
be such as to make it doubtful whether General Johnston had the
power to effect the movement."
Upon the receipt of General Beauregard's report of the battle of
Manassas, I found that it contained matter which seemed to me out of
place, and therefore addressed to him the following letter:
"Richmond, Virginia, _October 30, 1861_.
"General Beauregard, _Manassas, Virginia_.
"Sir: Yesterday my attention was called to various newspaper
publications purporting to have been sent from Manassas, and to
be a synopsis of your report of the battle of the 21st of July
last, and in which it is represented that you have been
overruled by me in your plan for a battle with the enemy south
of the Potomac, for the capture of Baltimore and Washington, and
the liberation of Maryland.
"I inquired for your long-expected report, and it has been
to-day submitted to my inspection. It appears, by official
endorsement, to have been received by the Adjutant-General on
the 18th of October, though it is dated August 26, 1861.
"With much surprise I found that the newspaper statements were
sustained by the text of your report. I was surprised, because,
if we did differ in opinion as to the measure and purposes of
contemplated campaigns, such fact could have no appropriate
place in the report of a battle; further, because it seemed to
be an attempt to exalt yourself at my expense; and, especially,
because no such plan as that described was submitted to me. It
is true that, some time before it was ordered, you expressed a
desire for the junction of General Johnston's army with your
own. The movement was postponed until the operations of the
enemy rendered it necessary, and until it became thereby
practicable to make it with safety to the Valley of Virginia.
Hence, I believe, was secured the success by which it was
attended.
"If you have retained a copy of the plan of campaign which you
say was submitted to me through Colonel Chesnut, allow me to
request that you will furnish me with a duplicate of it."
"Very respectfully yours, etc.,"
(Signed) "Jefferson Davis."
As General Beauregard did not think proper to omit that portion of his
report to which objection was made, it necessitated, when the entire
report was transmitted to Congress, the placing of an endorsement upon
it, reviewing that part of the report which I considered objectionable.
The Congress, in its discretion, ordered the publication of the report,
except that part to which the endorsement referred, thereby judiciously
suppressing both the endorsement and the portion of the report to which
it related. In this case, and _every other_ official report ever
submitted to me, I made neither alteration nor erasure.
That portion of the report which was suppressed by the Congress has,
since the war, found its way into the press, but the endorsement which
belonged to it has not been published. As part of the history of the
time, I will here present both in their proper connection:
"General S. Cooper, _Adjutant and Inspector-General, Richmond
Virginia._
"Before entering upon a narration of the general military
operations in the presence of the enemy on July 21st, I
propose--I hope not unreasonably--first to recite certain events
which belong to the strategy of the campaign, and consequently
form an essential part of the history of the battle.
"Having become satisfied that the advance of the enemy with a
decidedly superior force, both as to numbers and war equipage,
to attack or turn my position in this quarter was immediately
impending, I dispatched, on July 13th, one of my staff, Colonel
James Chesnut, of South Carolina, to submit for the
consideration of the President a plan of operations
substantially as follows:
"I proposed that General Johnston should unite, as soon as
possible, the bulk of the Army of the Shenandoah with that of
the Potomac, then under my command, leaving only sufficient
force to garrison his strong works at Winchester, and to guard
the five defensive passes of the Blue Ridge, and thus hold
Patterson in check. At the same time Brigadier-General Holmes
was to march hither with all of his command not essential for
the defense of the position of Acquia Creek. These junctions
having been effected at Manassas, an immediate, impetuous attack
of our combined armies upon General McDowell was to follow, as
soon as he approached my advanced position, at and around
Fairfax Court-House, with the inevitable result, as I submitted,
of his complete defeat, and the destruction or capture of his
army. This accomplished, the Army of the Shenandoah, under
General Johnston, increased with a part of my forces and
rejoined as he returned by the detachment left to hold the
mountain-passes, was to march back rapidly into the Valley, fall
upon and crush Patterson with a superior force, wheresoever he
might be found. This, I confidently estimated, could be achieved
within fifteen days after General Johnston should march from
Winchester for Manassas.
"Meanwhile, I was to occupy the enemy's works on this side of
the Potomac, if, as I anticipated, he had been so routed as to
enable me to enter them with him or, if not, to retire again for
a time within the lines of Bull Run with my main force.
Patterson having been virtually destroyed, then General Johnston
would reënforce General Garnett sufficiently to make him
superior to his opponent (General McClellan) and able to defeat
that officer. This done, General Garnett was to form an
immediate junction with General Johnston, who was forthwith to
cross the Potomac into Maryland with his whole force, arouse the
people as he advanced to the recovery of their political rights,
and the defense of their homes and families from an offensive
invader, and then march to the investment of Washington, in the
rear, while I resumed the offensive in front. This plan of
operations, you are aware, was not acceptable at the time, from
considerations which appeared so weighty as to more than
counterbalance its proposed advantages. Informed of these views,
and of the decision of the War Department, I then made my
preparations for the stoutest practicable defense of the line of
Bull Run, the enemy having developed his purpose, by the advance
on and occupation of Fairfax Court-House, from which my advance
brigade had been withdrawn.
"The War Department having been informed by me, by telegraph on
July 17th, of the movement of General McDowell, General Johnston
was immediately ordered to form a junction of his army corps
with mine, should the movement in his judgment be deemed
advisable. General Holmes was also directed to push forward with
two regiments, a battery, and one company of cavalry."[179]
"ENDORSEMENT.
"The order issued by the War Department to General Johnston was
not, as herein reported, to form a junction, 'should the
movement in his judgment be deemed advisable.' The following is
an accurate copy of the order:
"'General Beauregard is attacked. To strike the enemy a decisive
blow, a junction of all your effective force will be needed. If
practicable, make the movement, sending your sick and baggage to
Culpepper Court-House, either by railroad or by Warrenton. In
all the arrangements, exercise your discretion.'
"The words 'if practicable' had reference to letters of General
Johnston of the 12th and 15th of July, which made it extremely
doubtful if he had the power to make the movement, in view of
the relative strength and position of Patterson's forces as
compared with his own.
"The plan of campaign reported to have been submitted, but not
accepted, and to have led to a decision of the War Department,
can not be found among its files, nor any reference to any
decision made upon it; and it was not known that the army had
advanced beyond the line of Bull Run, the position previously
selected by General Lee, and which was supposed to have
continued to be the defensive line occupied by the main body of
our forces. Inquiry has developed the fact that a message, to be
verbally delivered, was sent by Hon. Mr. Chesnut. If the
conjectures recited in the report were entertained, they rested
on the accomplishment of one great condition, namely, that a
junction of the forces of Generals Johnston and Holmes should be
made with the army of General Beauregard and should gain a
victory. The junction was made, the victory was won; but the
consequences that were predicted did not result. The reasons why
no such consequences could result are given in the closing
passages of the reports of both the commanding generals, and the
responsibility can not be transferred to the Government at
Richmond, which certainly would have united in any feasible plan
to accomplish such desirable results.
"If the plan of campaign mentioned in the report had been
presented in a written communication, and in sufficient detail
to permit proper investigation, it must have been pronounced to
be impossible at that time, and its proposal could only have
been accounted for by the want of information of the forces and
positions of the armies in the field. The facts that rendered it
impossible are the following:
"1. It was based, as related from memory by Colonel Chesnut, on
the supposition of drawing a force of about twenty-five thousand
men from the command of General Johnston. The letters of General
Johnston show his effective force to have been only eleven
thousand, with an enemy thirty thousand strong in his front,
ready to take possession of the Valley of Virginia on his
withdrawal.
"2. It proposed to continue operations by effecting a junction
of a part of the victorious forces with the army of General
Garnett in Western Virginia. General Garnett's forces amounted
only to three or four thousand men, then known to be in rapid
retreat before vastly superior forces under McClellan, and the
news that he was himself killed and his army scattered arrived
within forty-eight hours of Colonel Chesnut's arrival in
Richmond.
"3. The plan was based on the improbable and inadmissible
supposition that the enemy was to await everywhere, isolated and
motionless, until our forces could effect junctions to attack
them in detail.
"4. It could not be expected that any success obtainable on the
battle-field would enable our forces to carry the fortifications
on the Potomac, garrisoned, and within supporting distance of
fresh troops; nor after the actual battle and victory did the
generals on the field propose an advance on the capital, nor
does it appear that they have since believed themselves in a
condition to attempt such a movement.
"It is proper also to observe that there is no communication on
file in the War Department, as recited at the close of the
report, showing what were the causes which prevented the advance
of our forces and prolonged, vigorous pursuit of the enemy to
and beyond the Potomac.
(Signed) "Jefferson Davis."
It has not been my purpose to describe the battles of the war. To the
reports of the officers serving on the field, in the armies of both
Governments, the student of history must turn for knowledge of the
details, and it will be the task of the future historian, from
comparison of the whole, to deduce the truth.
It is fortunate for the cause of justice that error and
misrepresentation have, in their inconsistencies and improbabilities,
the elements of self-destruction, while truth is in its nature
consistent and therefore self-sustaining. To such general remarks in
regard to campaigns, sieges, and battles as may seem to me appropriate
to the scope and object of my work, I shall append or insert, from time
to time, the evidence of reliable actors in those affairs, as well to
elucidate obscurity as to correct error.
From the official reports it appears that the strength of the two armies
was: Confederate, 30,167 men of all arms, with 29 guns;[180] Federal,
35,732 men,[181] with a body of cavalry, of which only one company is
reported, and a large artillery force not shown in the tabular
statement. Of these troops, some on both sides were not engaged in the
battle. This, it is believed, was the case to a much larger extent on
our side than on that of the enemy. He selected the point of attack, and
could concentrate his troops for that purpose, but we were guarding a
line of some seven miles front, and therefore widely dispersed.
For the purpose above stated, extracts are herein inserted from a
narrative in the "Operations on the Line of Bull Run in June and July,
1861, including the First Battle of Manassas." The name of the author,
J. A. Early, will, to all who know him, be a sufficient guarantee for
the accuracy of the statements, and for the justice of the conclusions
announced. To those who do not know him, it may be proper to state that
he was educated as a soldier; after leaving the army became a lawyer,
but, when his country was involved in war with Mexico, he volunteered
and served in a regiment of his native State, Virginia. After that war
terminated, he returned to the practice of his profession, which he was
actively pursuing when the controversy between the sections caused the
call of a convention to decide whether Virginia should secede from the
Union. He was sent, by the people of the county in which he resided, to
represent them in that convention. There he opposed to the last the
adoption of the ordinance for secession; but, when it was decided,
against his opinion, to resort to the remedy of withdrawal from the
Union, he, true to his allegiance to the State of which he was a
citizen, paused not to cavil or protest, but at once stepped forth to
defend her against a threatened invasion. The sword that had rusted in
peace gleamed brightly in war. He rose to the high grade of
lieutenant-general. None have a more stainless record as a soldier, none
have shown a higher patriotism or purer fidelity through all the bitter
trials to which we have been subjected since open war was ended and
nominal peace began.
Extracts from the narrative of General J. A. Early, of events occurring
when he was colonel of the Twenty-fourth Regiment of Virginia Infantry
and commanding a brigade:
"On June 19, 1861, I arrived at Manassas Junction and reported
to General P. G. T. Beauregard, the Twenty-fourth Virginia
Regiment having been previously sent to him, under the command
of Lieutenant-Colonel Hairsten, from Lynchburg, where I had been
stationed under the orders of General Robert E. Lee, for the
purpose of organizing the Virginia troops which were being
mustered into service at that place....
"On the morning of July 18th, my brigade was moved, by order of
General Beauregard, to the left of Camp Walker, on the railroad,
and remained there some time....
"On falling back, General Ewell, in pursuance of his
instructions, had burned the bridges on the railroad over Pope's
Run, from Fairfax Station to Union Mills, and while I was at
Camp Walker I saw the smoke ascending from the railroad-bridge
over Bull Run, which was burned that morning.
"The burning of this bridge had not been included in the
previous instructions to Ewell, and I have always been at a loss
to know why it was now fired. That bridge certainly was not
necessary to the enemy for crossing Bull Run, either with his
troops or wagons, as that stream was easily fordable at numerous
places, both above and below. The bridge was, moreover,
susceptible of easy defense, as there were deep cuts leading to
it on both sides. The only possible purpose to be subserved by
the burning of that bridge would have been the prevention for a
short time of the running of trains over it by the enemy, in the
event of our defeat, or evacuation of Manassas without a fight.
As it was, we were afterward greatly inconvenienced by its
destruction." ...
The attack made on the 18th is described as directed against our right
center, and as having been met and repulsed in a manner quite creditable
to our raw troops, of whom he writes:
"On the 19th they were occupied in the effort to strengthen
their position by throwing up the best defenses they could with
the implements at hand, which consisted of a very few picks and
spades, some rough bowie-knives, and the bayonets of the
muskets.... The position was a very weak one, as the banks on
the opposite side of Bull Run overlooked and commanded those on
the south side, which were but a few feet above the water's
edge, and there was an open field in rear of the strip of woods
on our side of the stream, for a considerable distance up and
down it, which exposed all of our movements on that side to
observation from the opposite one, as the strip of woods
afforded but a thin veil which could be seen through....
"About dusk on the 19th, brigade commanders were summoned to a
conference at McLean's house by General Beauregard, and he then
informed us of the fact that General Johnston had been ordered,
at his instance, from the Valley, and was marching to coöperate
with us. He stated that Johnston would march directly across the
Blue Ridge toward the enemy's right flank, and would probably
attack on that flank at dawn the next morning. Before he had
finished his statement of the plans he proposed pursuing in the
event of Johnston's attack on the enemy's right flank, a party
of horsemen rode up in front of the house, and, dismounting, one
of them walked in and reported himself as Brigadier-General T.
J. Jackson, who had arrived with the advanced brigade of
Johnston's troops by the way of Manassas Gap Railroad, and he
stated that his brigade was about twenty-five hundred strong.
This information took General Beauregard very much by surprise,
and, after ascertaining that General Jackson had taken the cars
at Piedmont Station, General Beauregard asked him if General
Johnston would not march the rest of his command on the direct
road, so as to get on the enemy's right flank. General Jackson
replied with some little hesitation, and, as I thought at the
time, in rather a stolid manner, that he thought not; that he
thought the purpose was to transport the whole force by railroad
from Piedmont Station. This was the first time I ever saw
General Jackson, and my first impressions of him were not very
favorable from the manner in which he gave his information. I
subsequently ascertained very well how it was that he seemed to
know so little, in the presence of the strangers among whom he
found himself, of General Johnston's intended movements, and I
presume nothing but the fact of General Beauregard being his
superior in rank, and his being ordered to report to him, could
have elicited as much information from him, under the
circumstances, as was obtained. After General Jackson had given
the information above stated, and received instructions where to
put his brigade, he retired, and General Beauregard proceeded to
develop fully his plans for the next day. The information
received from General Jackson was wholly unexpected, but General
Beauregard said he thought Jackson was not correctly informed,
and was mistaken; that he was satisfied General Johnston was
marching with the rest of his troops and would attack the
enemy's right flank early next day as he had before stated. Upon
this hypothesis, he directed that when General Johnston's attack
began and he had become fully engaged, of which we were to judge
from the character of the musketry-fire, we should cross Bull
Run from our several positions, and move upon the enemy so as to
attack him on his left flank and rear. He said that he had no
doubt General Johnston's attack would be a complete surprise to
the enemy; that the latter would not know what to think of it;
that when he turned to meet that attack, and soon found himself
assailed on the other side, he would be still more surprised and
would not know what to do; that the effect would become a
complete rout--a perfect Waterloo; and that, when the enemy took
to flight, we would pursue, cross the Potomac, and arouse
Maryland....
"During the 20th General Johnston arrived at Manassas Junction
by the railroad, and that day we received the order from him
assuming command of the combined armies of General Beauregard
and himself.
"Early on the morning of the 21st (Sunday), we heard the enemy's
guns open from the heights north of Bull Run, from which they
had opened on the 18th, and I soon received orders for the
movement of my brigade....
"Upon arriving there (McLean's Ford), I found General Jones had
returned to the intrenchments with his brigade, and I was
informed by him that General Beauregard had directed that I
should join him (General Beauregard) with my brigade.... He then
asked me if I had received an order from General Beauregard to
go to him, and, on my replying in the negative, he informed me
that he had such an order for me in a note to him. He sent to
one of his staff-officers for the note, and showed it to me. The
note was one directing him to fall back behind Bull Run, and was
in pencil. At the foot of it were these words: 'Send Early to
me.' This was all the order that I received to move to the left,
and it was shown to me a very little after twelve o'clock....
Chisholm, who carried the note to Jones, in which was contained
the order I received, passed me at McLean's Ford going on to
Jones about, or a little after, eleven o'clock. If I had not
received the order until 2 P. M., it would have been impossible
for me to get on the field at the time I reached it, about 3.30
P. M. Colonel Chisholm informed me that the order was for all
the troops to fall back across Bull Run.... I was met by Colonel
John S. Preston, one of the General's aides, who informed me
that General Beauregard had gone where the fighting was ... but
that General Johnston was just in front, and his directions were
that we should proceed to the left, where there was a heavy fire
of musketry.... When we reached General Johnston, he expressed
great gratification at our arrival, but it was very perceptible
that his anticipations were not sanguine. He gave me special
instructions as to my movements, directing me to clear our lines
completely before going to the front.... In some fields on the
left of our line we found Colonel Stuart with a body of cavalry
and some pieces of artillery, belonging, as I understood, to a
battery commanded by Lieutenant Beckham.... I found Stuart
already in position beyond our extreme left, and, as I
understood it, supporting and controlling Beckham's guns, which
were firing on the enemy's extreme right flank, thus rendering
very efficient service. I feel well assured that Stuart had but
_two_ companies of cavalry with him, as these were all I saw
when he afterward went in pursuit of the enemy. As I approached
the left, a young man named Saunders came galloping to me from
Stuart with the information that the enemy was about retreating,
and a request to hurry on. This was the first word of
encouragement we had received since we reached the vicinity of
the battle. I told the messenger to inform Stuart that I was
then moving as rapidly as my men could move; but he soon
returned with another message informing me that the other was a
mistake, that the enemy had merely retired behind the ridge in
front to form a new flanking column, and cautioning me to be on
my guard. This last information proved to be correct. It was the
last effort of the enemy to extend his right beyond our left,
and was met by the formation of my regiments in his front....
The hill on which the enemy's troops were was Chinn's Hill, so
often referred to in the accounts of this battle, and the one
next year, on the same field.... An officer came to me in a
gallop, and entreated me not to fire on the troops in front, and
I was so much impressed by his earnest manner and confident
tone, that I halted my brigade on the side of the hill, and rode
to the top of it, when I discovered, about a hundred and fifty
yards to my right, a regiment bearing a flag which was drooping
around the staff in such a manner as not to be distinguishable
from the Confederate flag of that day. I thought that, if the
one that had been in front of me was a Virginia regiment, this
must also be a Confederate one; but one or two shots from
Beckham's guns on the left caused the regiment to face about,
when its flag unfurled, and I discovered it to be the United
States flag. I forthwith ordered my brigade forward, but it did
not reach the top of the hill soon enough to do any damage to
the retiring regiment, which retreated precipitately down the
hill and across the Warrenton Pike. At that time there was very
little distinction between the dress of some of the Federal
regiments and some of ours. As soon as the misrepresentation in
regard to the character of the troops was corrected, my brigade
advanced to the top of the hill that had been occupied by the
enemy, and we ascertained that his troops had retired
precipitately, and a large body of them was discovered in the
fields in rear of Dogan's house, and north of the turnpike.
Colonel Cocke, with one of his regiments, now joined us, and our
pieces of artillery were advanced and fired upon the enemy's
columns with considerable effect, causing them to disperse, and
we soon discovered that they were in full retreat.... When my
column was seen by General Beauregard, he at first thought it
was a column of the enemy, having received erroneous information
that such a column was on the Manassas Gap Railroad. The enemy
took my troops, as they approached his right, for a large body
of our troops from the Valley; and as my men, moving by flank,
were stretched out at considerable length, from weariness, they
were greatly over-estimated. We scared the enemy worse than we
hurt him....
"We saw the evidences of the flight all along our march, and
unmistakable indications of the overwhelming character of the
enemy's defeat in abandoned muskets and equipments. It was
impossible for me to pursue the enemy farther, as well because I
was utterly unacquainted with the crossings of the Run and the
woods in front, as because most of the men belonging to my
brigade had been marching the greater part of the day and were
very much exhausted. But pursuit with infantry would have been
unavailing, as the enemy's troops retreated with such rapidity
that they could not have been overtaken by any other than
mounted troops. On the next day we found a great many articles
that the routed troops had abandoned in their flight, showing
that no expense or trouble had been spared by the enemy in
equipping his army.... In my movement after the retreat of the
enemy commenced, I passed the Carter house and beyond our line
of battle. The enemy had by this time entirely disappeared, and,
having no knowledge of the country whatever, being on the ground
for the first time, besides not observing any movement of troops
from our line, I halted, with the expectation of receiving
further orders. Observing some men near the Carter house, I rode
to it, and found some five or six Federal soldiers, who had
collected some wounded there of both sides, and among them
Colonel Gardner, of the Eighth Georgia Regiment, who was
suffering from a very painful wound in the leg, which was
fractured just above the ankle.... Just after my return from the
house where I saw Colonel Gardner, President Davis, in company
with several gentlemen, rode to where my command was, and
addressed a few stirring remarks to my regiments, in succession,
which received him with great enthusiasm.
"I briefly informed Mr. Davis of the orders I had received, and
the movements of my brigade, and asked him what I should do
under the circumstances. He told me that I had better get my men
into line, and wait for further orders. I then requested him to
inform Generals Johnston and Beauregard of my position, and my
desire to receive orders. I also informed him of the condition
in which I had found Colonel Gardner, and also of Colonel Jones
being in the neighborhood badly wounded, requesting him to have
a surgeon sent to their relief, as all of mine were in the rear
attending to the wounded of their regiments. While we were
talking, we saw a body of troops moving on the opposite side of
Bull Run, some distance below us.
"Mr. Davis then left me, going to the house where Colonel
Gardner was, and I moved my brigade some half a mile farther,
and formed it in line across the peninsula formed by a very
considerable bend in Bull Run above the stone bridge. I put out
a line of pickets in front, and my brigade bivouacked in this
position for the night. By the time all these dispositions were
made it was night, and I then rode back with Captain Gardner
over the route I had moved on, as I knew no other, in order to
find General Johnston or General Beauregard, so that I might
receive orders, supposing that there would be a forward movement
early in the morning. I first went to the Lewis house, which I
found to be a hospital filled with wounded men; but was unable
to get any information about either of the generals. I then rode
toward Manassas, and, after going some distance in that
direction, I met an officer who inquired for General Johnston,
stating that he was on his staff. I informed him that I was
looking for General Johnston also, as well as for General
Beauregard, and supposed they were at Manassas; but he said that
he was just from Manassas, and neither of the generals was
there.... At about twelve o'clock at night I lay down in the
field in rear of my command, on a couple of bundles of wheat in
the straw. My men had no rations with them. I had picked up a
haversack on the field, which was filled with hard biscuits, and
had been dropped by some Yankee in his flight, and out of its
contents I made my own supper, distributing the rest among a
number of officers who had nothing.
"Very early next morning, I sent Captain Gardner to look out for
the generals, and get orders for my command. He went to
Manassas, and found General Beauregard, who sent orders to me to
remain where I was until further orders, and to send for the
camp-equipage, rations, etc., of my command. A number of the men
spread over the country in the vicinity of the battlefield, and
picked up a great many knapsacks, India-rubber cloths, blankets,
overcoats, etc., as well as a good deal of sugar, coffee, and
other provisions that had been abandoned by the enemy....
"After I had received orders showing that there was no purpose
to make a forward movement, I rode over a good deal of the
field, north of the Warrenton pike, and to some hospitals in the
vicinity, in order to see what care was being taken of the
wounded. I found a hospital on the Sudley road, back of the
field of battle, at which Colonel Jones, of the Fourth Alabama,
had been, which was in charge of a surgeon of a Rhode Island
regiment, whose name was Harris, I think. I asked him if he had
what he wanted for the men under his care, and he told me he
would like to have some morphine, of which his supply was short.
I directed a young surgeon of our cavalry, who rode up at the
time, to furnish the morphine, which he did, from a pair of
medical saddle-pockets which he had. Dr. Harris told me that he
knew that their troops had had a great deal of coffee and sugar
mixed, ready for boiling, of which a good deal had been left at
different points near the field, and asked if there would be any
objection to his sending out and gathering some of it for the
use of the wounded under his charge, as it would be of much
service to them. I gave him the permission to get not only that,
but anything else that would tend to the comfort of his
patients. There did not come within my observation any instance
of harsh or unkind treatment of the enemy's wounded; nor did I
see any indication of a spirit to extend such treatment to them.
The stories which were afterward told before the Committee on
the Conduct of the War (appointed by the Federal Congress), in
regard to 'rebel atrocities,' were very grossly exaggerated, or
manufactured from the whole cloth....
"On the night following the battle, when I was looking for
Generals Beauregard and Johnston, in riding over and to the rear
of the battle-field, I discovered that the greater part of the
troops that had been engaged in the battle were in a great state
of confusion. I saw companies looking for their regiments, and
squads looking for their companies, and they were scattered as
far as I went toward Manassas. It was very apparent that no
considerable body of those troops that had been engaged on the
left could have been brought into a condition next day for an
advance toward Washington....
"The dispute as to who planned the battle, or commanded on the
field, General Johnston or General Beauregard, is a most
unprofitable one. The battle which General Beauregard planned
was never fought, because the enemy did not move as he expected
him to move. The battle which was fought was planned by
McDowell, at least so far as the ground on which it was fought
was concerned. He made a movement on our left which was wholly
unexpected and unprovided for, and we were compelled to fight a
defensive battle on that flank, by bringing up reënforcements
from other points as rapidly as possible. When Generals Johnston
and Beauregard arrived on the field where the battle was
actually fought, it had been progressing for some time, with the
odds greatly against us. What was required then was to rally the
troops already engaged, which had been considerably shattered,
and hold the position to which they had been compelled to retire
until reënforcements could be brought up. According to the
statements of both generals, the command of the troops then on
the field was given to General Beauregard, and he continued to
exercise it until the close, but in subordination, of course, to
General Johnston, as commander-in-chief, while the movements of
all the reënforcements as they arrived were unquestionably
directed by the latter. According to the statement of both, the
movement of Elzey's brigade to the left averted a great danger,
and both concur in attributing the turning of the tide of battle
to the movement of my brigade against the enemy's extreme right
flank (General Beauregard in a letter on the origin of the
battle-flag, and General Johnston in his 'Narrative' recently
published).
"General Beauregard unquestionably performed the duty assigned
him with great ability, and General Johnston gives him full
credit therefor. Where, then, is there any room for a
controversy in regard to the actual command, and what profit can
there be in it?
"General Johnston assumes the responsibility for the failure to
advance on Washington, and why, then, should an effort be made
to shift it on any one else? He certainly was
commander-in-chief, and had the privilege of advancing if he
thought proper. The attempt to show that the failure to advance
was due to the want of transportation and rations for the army
is idle. If the Bull Run bridge had not been burned on the 18th,
our supplies could have been run to Alexandria, if we could have
advanced, as easily as to Manassas, for the enemy had repaired
the railroad to Fairfax Station as he moved up, and failed to
destroy it when he went back. Moreover, we had abundant
transportation at that time for all the purposes of an advance
as far as Washington. In my brigade, the two Virginia regiments
had about fourteen six-horse wagons each, and that would have
furnished enough for the brigade, if the Seventh Louisiana had
none. In 1862 we carried into Maryland only enough wagons to
convey ammunition, medical supplies, and cooking-utensils, and
we started from the battle-field of second Manassas with no
rations on hand, being, before we crossed the Potomac, entirely
dependent on the country, which, in July, 1861, was teeming with
supplies, but in August and September, 1862, was nearly
depleted. The pretense, therefore, that the advance in July,
1861, was prevented by the want of transportation and of
supplies is wholly untenable."
I will now make the promised extracts from reminiscences of Colonel
(then Captain) Lay, which were sent to a friend, and handed to me for my
use. The paper bears date February 13, 1878. After some preliminary
matter, and stating that his force consisted of three cavalry companies,
the narrative proceeds:
"I was under orders to be in the saddle at 6.30 A. M., July 21,
1861, and to report immediately to General Beauregard at his
headquarters. About 7.30 A. M. I accompanied him and General
Johnston to a position near to Mitchell's Ford, where for some
hours we remained under an active fire of the long-range guns of
the enemy upon the opposite hills. When the unexpected flank
movement of the enemy was developed, with the generals named, we
rode at rapid speed to the left, when General Beauregard
immediately rode to the front, General Johnston taking position
near and to the left of the Lewis house.... About 3.15 P. M.,
Captain R. Lindsey Walker, with his battery, took position to
the left and in front of the Lewis house and commenced firing. I
was near him when the shot from his battery was fired, and
watched its effect as it swept through the columns of the enemy,
producing perfect confusion and demoralization.... I rode to
join my brother, Colonel Lay, whom I saw going toward my command
from General Johnston. He reported to me that General Johnston
said: 'Now is your time; push the pursuit.' I started at once on
a trot, was passing General Johnston, who gave some orders, and
I understood him to say, 'Salute the President in passing.' ...
I saluted, and passed on at a gallop.
"I halted at Bull Run to water my horses--then suffering--and to
confer a moment or two with my gallant old commander, General
Philip St. George Cocke.
"I passed on, ... when to my astonishment I saw the President
near me in the orchard. I immediately rode up to him, and said
that he was much farther forward than he should be; that the
forces of the enemy were not entirely broken, and very few of
our troops in front of the Run, and advised him to retire; that
I was then about to charge....
"We made the charge; a small body of the enemy broke before we
reached them, and scattered, and the larger body of troops
beyond proved to be of our own troops rapidly advancing upon our
left.... After parting from the President, I pushed on to Sudley
Church, and far beyond. Sent my surgeon, Dr. Randolph Barksdale,
to Captains Tillinghast, Ricketts, and other badly wounded
United States officers, and was going on until a superior force
should stop me, but was recalled by an order and returned over
the field to my quarters at Manassas a little before daylight--I
and my little gallant squadron--having been actively in the
saddle, I think, more than twenty hours....
(Signed) "John F. Lay,
_"Late Colonel of Cavalry, C. S. A._
"N.B.: It may be well to add that General R. Lindsey Walker
(then Captain Walker, of the battery referred to) is now in my
office, and confirms my recollection.... J. F. L."
The quartermaster-general of General Beauregard's command, W. L. Cabell,
states in a letter written at Dallas, Texas, on the 16th of August,
1880, in regard to the field transportation of General Beauregard's
forces before the battle of Manassas, that as nearly as he could
remember it was as follows, viz.:
One four-horse wagon to each company.
One " " " for field and staff (regimental).
One " " " " ammunition.
One " " " " hospital purposes.
Two " " wagons " each battery of artillery.
Twenty-five wagons in a train for depot purposes.
One ambulance for each regiment.
Transportation belonging to General Johnston's army did not arrive until
the day (or probably two days) after the battle.
If General Johnston, as stated, had nine thousand infantry, the field
transportation reported above could surely have been distributed so as
to supply this additional force, and have rendered, as General Early
states, the pretense wholly untenable that the advance in July, 1861,
was prevented by want of transportation.
The deep anxiety which had existed, and was justified by the
circumstances, had corresponding gratification among all classes and in
all sections of our country. On the day after the victory, the Congress,
then sitting in Richmond, upon receiving the dispatch of the President
from the field of Manassas, adopted resolutions expressive of their
thanks to the most high God, and inviting the people of the Confederate
States to offer up their united thanksgiving and praise for the mighty
deliverance. The resolutions also deplored the necessity which had
caused the soil of our country to be stained with the blood of its sons,
and to their families and friends offered the most cordial sympathy;
assuring them that in the hearts of our people would be enshrined "the
names of the gallant dead as the champions of free and constitutional
liberty."
If universal gratulation at our success inspired an overweening
confidence, it also begat increased desire to enter the military
service; and, but for our want of arms and munitions, we could have
enrolled an army little short of the number of able-bodied men in the
Confederate States.
I have given so much space to the battle of Manassas because it was the
first great action of the war, exciting intense feeling, and producing
important moral results among the people of the Confederacy; and
further, because it was made the basis of misrepresentation, and unjust
reflection upon the chief Executive, which certainly had no plausible
pretext in the facts, and can not be referred to a reasonable desire to
promote the successful defense of our country.
Impressed with the conviction that time would naturally work to our
disadvantage, as training was more necessary to make soldiers of the
Northern people than of our own; and further, because of their larger
population, as well as their greater facility in obtaining recruits from
foreign countries, the Administration continued assiduously to exert
every faculty to increase the efficiency of the army by addition to its
numbers, by improving its organization, and by supplying the needful
munitions and equipments. Inactivity is the prolific source of evil to
an army, especially if composed of new levies, who, like ours, had
hurried from their homes at their country's call. For these, and other
reasons more readily appreciated, it was thought desirable that all our
available forces should be employed as actively as might be practicable.
On the 1st of August, 1861, I wrote to General J. E. Johnston, at
Manassas, as follows:
"We are anxiously looking for the official reports of the battle
of Manassas, and have present need to know what supplies and
wagons were captured. I wish you would have prepared a statement
of your wants in transportation and supplies of all kinds, to
put your army on a proper footing for active operations....
"I am, as ever, your friend,
(Signed) "Jefferson Davis."
[Footnote 179: The foregoing was copied from "The Land we Love," for
February, 1867 (vol. ii, No. 4).]
[Footnote 180: General Beauregard's report.]
[Footnote 181: General McDowell's return, July 16, 17, 1861.]
CHAPTER VIII.
The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798-'99.--Their Influence on
Political Affairs.--Kentucky declares for
Neutrality.--Correspondence of Governor Magoffin with the
President of the United States and the President of the
Confederate States.--Occupation of Columbus, Kentucky, by
Major-General Polk.--His Correspondence with the Kentucky
Commissioners.--President Lincoln's View of Neutrality.--Acts of
the United States Government.--Refugees.--Their Motives of
Expatriation.--Address of ex-Vice-President Breckinridge to the
People of the State.--The Occupation of Columbus secured.--The
Purpose of the United States Government.--Battle of
Belmont.--Albert Sidney Johnston commands the Department.--State
of Affairs.--Line of Defense.-Efforts to obtain Arms; also
Troops.
Kentucky, the eldest daughter of Virginia, had moved contemporaneously
with her mother in the assertion of the cardinal principles announced in
the resolutions of 1798-'99. She then by the properly constituted
authority did with due solemnity declare that the Government of the
United States was the result of a compact between the States to which
each acceded as a State; that it possessed only delegated powers, of
which it was not the exclusive or final judge; and that, as in all cases
of compact among parties having no common judge, "each party has an
equal right to judge for itself as well of infractions as of the mode
and measure of redress." Thus spoke Kentucky in the first years of her
existence as a sovereign. The great truth announced in her series of
resolutions was the sign under which the Democracy conquered in 1800,
and which constituted the corner-stone of the political edifice of which
Jefferson was the architect, and which stood unshaken for sixty years
from the time its foundation was laid. During this period, the growth,
prosperity, and happiness of the country seemed unmistakably to confirm
the wisdom of the voluntary union of free sovereign States under a
written compact confining the action of the General Government to the
expressly enumerated powers which had been delegated therein. When
infractions of the compact had been deliberately and persistently made,
when the intent was clearly manifested to pervert the powers of the
General Government from the purposes for which they had been conferred,
and to use them for the injury of a portion of the States, which were
the integral parties to the compact, some of them resolved to judge for
themselves of the "mode and measure of redress," and to exercise the
right, enunciated in the Declaration of Independence to be the
unalienable endowment of every people, to alter or abolish any form of
government, and to institute a new one, "laying its foundation on such
principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall
seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." By no rational
mode of construction, in view of the history of the Declaration of
Independence, or of the resolutions of Kentucky, can it be claimed that
the word "people" had any other meaning than that of a distinct
community, such as the people of each colony who by their delegates in
the Congress declared themselves to be henceforth a State; and that none
other than the people of each State could, by the resolutions of
1798-'99, have been referred to as the final judge of infractions of
their compact, and of the remedy which should be applied.
Kentucky made no decision adverse to this right of a State, but she
declared, in the impending conflict between the States seceding from and
those adhering to the Federal Government, that she would hold the
position of neutrality. If the question was to be settled by a war of
words, that was feasible; but, if the conflict was to be one of arms, it
was utterly impracticable. To maintain neutrality under such
circumstances would have required a power greater than that of both the
contestants, or a moral influence commanding such respect for her wishes
as could hardly have been anticipated from that party which had, in
violation of right, inflicted the wrongs which produced the withdrawal
of some of the States, and had uttered multiplied threats of coercion if
any State attempted to exercise the rights defined in the resolutions of
1798-'99. If, however, any such hope may have been entertained, but few
moons had filled and waned before the defiant occupation of her
territory and the enrollment of her citizens as soldiers in the army of
invasion must have dispelled the illusion.
The following correspondence took place in August, between Governor
Magoffin, of Kentucky, and President Lincoln--also between the Governor
and myself, as President of the Confederate States--relative to the
neutrality of the State:
"Commonwealth of Kentucky, Executive Department,
"Frankfort, _August 19,1861_.
To his Excellency Abraham Lincoln, _President of the United
States_.
"Sir: From the commencement of the unhappy hostilities now
pending in this country, the people of Kentucky have indicated
an earnest desire and purpose, as far as lay in their power,
while maintaining their original political status, to do nothing
by which to involve themselves in the war. Up to this time they
have succeeded in securing to themselves and to the State peace
and tranquillity as the fruits of the policy they adopted. My
single object now is to promote the continuance of these
blessings to this State.
"Until within a brief period the people of Kentucky were quiet
and tranquil, free from domestic strife, and undisturbed by
internal commotion. They have resisted no law, rebelled against
no authority, engaged in no revolution, but constantly
proclaimed their firm determination to pursue their peaceful
avocations, earnestly hoping that their own soil would be spared
the presence of armed troops, and that the scene of conflict
would be kept removed beyond the border of their State. By thus
avoiding all occasions for the introduction of bodies of armed
soldiers, and offering no provocation for the presence of
military force, the people of Kentucky have sincerely striven to
preserve in their State domestic peace and avert the calamities
of sanguinary engagements.
"Recently a large body of soldiers have been enlisted in the
United States army and collected in military camps in the
central portion of Kentucky. This movement was preceded by the
active organization of companies, regiments, etc., consisting of
men sworn into the United States service, under officers holding
commissions from yourself. Ordnance, arms, munitions, and
supplies of war are being transported into the State, and placed
in large quantities in these camps. In a word, an army is now
being organized and quartered within the State, supplied with
all the appliances of war, without the consent or advice of the
authorities of the State, and without consultation with those
most prominently known and recognized as loyal citizens. This
movement now imperils that peace and tranquillity which from the
beginning of our pending difficulties have been the paramount
desire of this people, and which, up to this time, they have so
secured to the State.
"Within Kentucky there has been, and is likely to be, no
occasion for the presence of military force. The people are
quiet and tranquil, feeling no apprehension of any occasion
arising to invoke protection from the Federal arm. They have
asked that their territory be left free from military
occupation, and the present tranquillity of their communication
left uninvaded by soldiers. They do not desire that Kentucky
shall be required to supply the battle-field for the contending
armies, or become the theatre of the war.
"Now, therefore, as Governor of the State of Kentucky, and in
the name of the people I have the honor to represent, and with
the single and earnest desire to avert from their peaceful homes
the horrors of war, I urge the removal from the limits of
Kentucky of the military force now organized and in camp within
the State. If such action as is here urged be promptly taken, I
firmly believe the peace of the people of Kentucky will be
preserved, and the horrors of a bloody war will be averted from
a people now peaceful and tranquil.
"I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
"B. Magoffin."
"Washington, _August 24, 1861_.
"To his Excellency B. Magoffin, _Governor of the State of
Kentucky._
"Sir: Your letter of the 19th instant, in which you 'urge the
removal from the limits of Kentucky of the military force now
organized and in camp within that State,' is received.
"I may not possess full and precisely accurate knowledge upon
this subject; but I believe it is true that there is a military
force in camp within Kentucky, acting by authority of the United
States, which force is not very large, and is not now being
augmented.
"I also believe that some arms have been furnished to this force
by the United States.
"I also believe this force consists exclusively of Kentuckians,
having their camp in the immediate vicinity of their own homes,
and not assailing or menacing any of the good people of
Kentucky.
"In all I have done in the premises, I have acted upon the
urgent solicitation of many Kentuckians, and in accordance with
what I believed, and still believe, to be the wish of a majority
of all the Union-loving people of Kentucky.
"While I have conversed on this subject with many of the eminent
men of Kentucky, including a large majority of her members of
Congress, I do not remember that any one of them, or any other
person except your Excellency and the bearers of your
Excellency's letter, has urged me to remove the military force
from Kentucky, or to disband it. One very worthy citizen of
Kentucky did solicit me to have the augmenting of the force
suspended for a time.
"Taking all the means within my reach to form a judgment, I do
not believe it is the popular wish of Kentucky that this force
shall be removed beyond her limits; and, with this impression, I
must respectfully decline to so remove it.
"I most cordially sympathize with your Excellency in the wish to
preserve the peace of my own native State, Kentucky. It is with
regret I search for, and can not find, in your not very short
letter, any declaration or intimation that you entertain any
desire for the preservation of the Federal Union.
"Your obedient servant, A. Lincoln."
"Commonwealth of Kentucky, Executive Department,
"Frankfort, _August 24, 1861_.
"Hon. Jefferson Davis, _Richmond, Virginia._
"Sir: Since the commencement of the unhappy difficulties pending
in the country, the people of Kentucky have indicated a
steadfast desire and purpose to maintain a position of strict
neutrality between the belligerent parties. They have earnestly
striven by their policy to avert from themselves the calamity of
war, and protect their own soil from the presence of contending
armies. Up to this period they have enjoyed comparative
tranquillity and entire domestic peace.
"Recently a military force has been enlisted and quartered by
the United States authorities within this State. I have on this
day addressed a communication and dispatched commissioners to
the President of the United States, urging the removal of these
troops from the soil of Kentucky, and thus exerting myself to
carry out the will of the people in the maintenance of a neutral
position. The people of this State desire to be free from the
presence of the soldiers of either belligerent, and to that end
my efforts are now directed.
"Although I have no reason to presume that the Government of the
Confederate States contemplate or have ever proposed any
violation of the neutral attitude thus assumed by Kentucky,
there seems to be some uneasiness felt among the people of some
portion of the State, occasioned by the collection of bodies of
troops along their southern frontier. In order to quiet this
apprehension, and to secure to the people their cherished object
of peace, this communication is to present these facts and
elicit an authoritative assurance that the Government of the
Confederate States will continue to respect and observe the
position indicated as assumed by Kentucky.
"Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
"B. Magoffin."
"Richmond, _August 28, 1861._
"To Hon. B. Magoffin, _Governor of Kentucky, etc._
"Sir: I have received your letter informing me that 'since the
commencement of the unhappy difficulties pending in the country,
the people of Kentucky have indicated a steadfast desire to
maintain a position of strict neutrality between the belligerent
parties.' In the same communication you express your desire to
elicit 'an authoritative assurance that the Government of the
Confederate States will continue to respect and observe the
neutral position of Kentucky.'
"In reply to this request, I lose no time in assuring you that
the Government of the Confederate States neither desires nor
intends to disturb the neutrality of Kentucky. The assemblage of
troops in Tennessee, to which you refer, had no other object
than to repel the lawless invasion of that State by the forces
of the United States, should their Government seek to approach
it through Kentucky, without respect for its position of
neutrality. That such apprehensions were not groundless has been
proved by the course of that Government in the States of
Maryland and Missouri, and more recently in Kentucky itself, in
which, as you inform me, 'a military force has been enlisted and
quartered by the United States authorities.'
"The Government of the Confederate States has not only respected
most scrupulously the neutrality of Kentucky, but has continued
to maintain the friendly relations of trade and intercourse
which it has suspended with the United States generally.
"In view of the history of the past, it can scarcely be
necessary to assure your Excellency that the Government of the
Confederate States will continue to respect the neutrality of
Kentucky so long as her people will maintain it themselves.
"But neutrality, to be entitled to respect, must be strictly
maintained between both parties; or, if the door be opened on
the one side for the aggressions of one of the belligerent
parties upon the other, it ought not to be shut to the assailed
when they seek to enter it for purposes of self-defense.
"I do not, however, for a moment believe that your gallant State
will suffer its soil to be used for the purpose of giving an
advantage to those who violate its neutrality and disregard its
rights, over others who respect both.
"In conclusion, I tender to your Excellency the assurance of my
high consideration and regard, and am, sir, very respectfully,
"Yours, etc., Jefferson Davis."
Movements by the Federal forces in southwestern Kentucky revealed such
designs as made it absolutely necessary that General Polk, commanding
the Confederate forces in that section, should immediately occupy the
town of Columbus, Kentucky; a position of much strategic importance on
the shore of the Mississippi River.
That position was doubly important, because it commanded the opposite
shore in Missouri, and was the gateway on the border of Tennessee.
Two States of the Confederacy were therefore threatened by the
anticipated movement of the enemy to get possession of Columbus.
Major-General Polk, therefore, crossed the State line, took possession
of Hickman on September 3d, and on the 4th secured Columbus. General
Grant, who took command at Cairo on September 2d, being thus
anticipated, seized Paducah, at the mouth of the Tennessee River, and
occupied it in force on the 5th and 6th.
After the occupation, under date of September 4th, I received the
following dispatch from Major-General Polk: "The enemy having descended
the Mississippi River some three or four days since, and seated himself
with cannon and entrenched lines opposite the town of Columbus,
Kentucky, making such demonstrations as left no doubt upon the minds of
any of their intention to seize and forcibly possess said town, I
thought proper, under the plenary power delegated to me, to direct a
sufficient portion of my command both by the river way and land to
concentrate at Columbus, as well to offer to its citizens that
protection they unite to a man in accepting, as also to prevent, in
time, the occupation by the enemy of a point so necessary to the
security of western Tennessee. The demonstration on my part has had the
desired effect. The enemy has withdrawn his forces even before I had
fortified my position. It is my intention to continue to occupy and hold
this place." On the same day I sent the following reply to Major-General
Polk: "Your telegram received; the necessity must justify the action."
The Legislature of Kentucky passed resolutions and appointed a committee
to inquire into the action of General Polk, from which the annexed
correspondence resulted:
CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN MAJOR-GENERAL POLK AND THE AUTHORITIES OF
KENTUCKY.
_Resolutions of the Kentucky Senate relative to the Violation of
the Neutrality of Kentucky._
"_Resolved by the Senate_, That the special committee of the
Senate, raised for the purpose of considering the reported
occupation of Hickman and other points in Kentucky by
Confederate troops, take into consideration the occupation of
Paducah and other places in Kentucky by the Federal authorities,
and report thereon when the true state of the case shall have
been ascertained. That the Speaker appoint three members of the
Senate to visit southern Kentucky, who are directed to obtain
all the facts they can in reference to the recent occupation of
Kentucky soil by Confederate and Federal forces, and report in
writing at as early a day as practicable.
"In Senate of Kentucky, Saturday, September 7, A. D. 1861.
"Twice read and adopted.
"Attest: (Signed) J. H. Johnson, S. S.
"In accordance with the foregoing resolution, the Speaker
appointed as said committee Messrs. John M. Johnson, William B.
Read, and Thornton F. Marshall.
"Attest: (Signed) J. H. Johnson, S. S."
_Letter of Hon. J. M. Johnson, Chairman of the Committee of the
Kentucky Senate, to General Polk_.
"Columbus, Kentucky, _September 9, 1861._
"To Major-General Polk, _commanding forces, etc._
"Sir: I have the honor to inclose herewith a resolution of the
Senate of Kentucky, adopted by that body upon the reception of
the intelligence of the military occupation of Hickman, Chalk
Bank, and Columbus, by the Confederate troops under your
command. I need not say that the people of Kentucky are
profoundly astonished that such an act should have been
committed by the Confederates, and especially that they should
have been the first to do so with an equipped and regularly
organized army.
"The people of Kentucky, having with great unanimity determined
upon a position of neutrality in the unhappy war now being
waged, and which they had tried in vain to prevent, had hoped
that one place at least in this great nation might remain
uninvaded by passion, and through whose good office something
might be done to end the war, or at least to mitigate its
horrors, or, if this were not possible, that she might be left
to choose her destiny without disturbance from any quarter.
"In obedience to the thrice-repeated will of the people, as
expressed at the polls, and in their name, I ask you to withdraw
your forces from the soil of Kentucky.
"I will say, in conclusion, that all the people of the State
await, in deep suspense, your action in the premises.
"I have the honor to be, your obedient servant, etc.,
(Signed) "John M. Johnson,
"_Chairman of Committee_."
_Letter from General Polk to the Kentucky Commissioners._
Columbus, Kentucky, _September 9, 1861._
To J. M. Johnson, _Chairman of Committee, Senate of Kentucky._
"Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter
of this date, conveying to me a copy of a resolution of the
Senate of Kentucky, under which a committee (of which you are
chairman) was raised 'for the purpose of considering the
reported occupation of Hickman and other points in Kentucky by
the Confederate troops, and that they take into consideration
the reported occupation of Paducah and other points in Kentucky
by the Federal authorities, and report thereon'; also, that they
be 'directed to obtain all the facts they can in reference to
the recent occupation of Kentucky soil by the Confederate and
Federal forces, and report, in writing, at as early a day as
practicable.'
"From the terms of the resolution, it appears your office, as
committee-men, was restricted merely to collecting the facts in
reference to the recent occupation of Kentucky soil by the
Confederate and Federal forces, and to report thereon in
writing, at as early a day as possible. In answer to these
resolutions, I have respectfully to say that, so far as the
Confederate forces are concerned, the facts are plain, and
shortly stated. The Government which they represent, recognizing
as a fundamental principle the right of sovereign States to take
such a position as they choose in regard to their relations with
other States, was compelled by that principle to concede to
Kentucky the right to assume the position of neutrality, which
she has chosen in the passing struggle. This it has done on all
occasions, and without an exception. The cases alluded to by his
Excellency, Governor Magoffin, in his recent message, as
'raids,' I presume, are the cases of the steamers Cheney and
Orr. The former was the unauthorized and unrecognized act of
certain citizens of Alabama, and the latter the act of citizens
of Tennessee and others, and was an act of reprisal. They can
not, therefore, be charged, in any sense, as acts of the
Confederate Government.
"The first and only instance in which the neutrality of Kentucky
has been disregarded is that in which the troops under my
command, and by my direction, took possession of the place I now
hold, and so much of the territory between it and the Tennessee
line as was necessary for me to pass over in order to reach it.
This act finds abundant justification in the history of the
concessions granted to the Federal Government by Kentucky ever
since the war began, notwithstanding the position of neutrality
which she had assumed, and the firmness with which she
proclaimed her intention to maintain it. That history shows the
following among other facts: In January, the House of
Representatives of Kentucky passed anti-coercion
resolutions--only four dissenting. The Governor, in May, issued
his neutrality proclamation. The address of the Union Central
Committee, including Mr. James Speed, Mr. Prentice, and other
prominent Union men, in April, proclaimed neutrality as the
policy of Kentucky, and claimed that an attempt to coerce the
South should induce Kentucky to make common cause with her, and
take part in the contest on her side, 'without counting the
cost.' The Union speakers and papers, with few exceptions,
claimed, up to the last election, that the Union vote was strict
neutrality and peace. These facts and events gave assurance of
the integrity of the avowed purpose of your State, and we were
content with the position she assumed.
"Since the election, however, she has allowed the seizure in her
port (Paducah) of property of citizens of the Confederate
States; she has, by her members in the Congress of the United
States, voted supplies of men and money to carry on the war
against the Confederate States; she has allowed the Federal
Government to cut timber from her forests for the purpose of
building armed boats for the invasion of the Southern States;
she is permitting to be enlisted in her territory, troops, not
only of her own citizens, but of the citizens of other States,
for the purpose of being armed and used in offensive warfare
against the Confederate States. At Camp Robinson, in the county
of Garrard, there are now ten thousand troops, if the newspapers
can be relied upon, in which men from Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana,
and Illinois are mustered with Kentuckians into the service of
the United States, and armed by that Government for the avowed
purpose of giving aid to the disaffected in one of the
Confederate States, and of carrying out the designs of that
Government for their subjugation. Notwithstanding all these and
other acts of a similar character, the Confederate States have
continued to respect the attitude which Kentucky had assumed as
a neutral, and forborne from reprisals, in the hope that
Kentucky would yet enforce respect for her position on the part
of the Government of the United States.
"Our patient expectation has been disappointed, and it was only
when we perceived that this continued indifference to our rights
and our safety was about to culminate in the seizure of an
important part of her territory by the United States forces for
offensive operations against the Confederate States, that a
regard for self-preservation demanded of us to seize it in
advance. We are here, therefore, not by choice, but of
necessity, and as I have had the honor to say, in a
communication addressed to his Excellency Governor Magoffin, a
copy of which is herewith inclosed and submitted as a part of my
reply, so I now repeat in answer to your request, that I am
prepared to agree to withdraw the Confederate troops from
Kentucky, provided she will agree that the troops of the Federal
Government be withdrawn simultaneously, with a guarantee (which
I will give reciprocally for the Confederate Government) that
the Federal troops shall not be allowed to enter nor occupy any
part of Kentucky for the future.
"In view of the facts thus submitted, I can not but think the
world at large will find it difficult to appreciate the
'profound astonishment' with which you say the people of
Kentucky received the intelligence of the occupation of this
place.
"I have the honor to be, respectfully,
"Your obedient servant, etc.,
"Leonidas Polk,
"_Major-General commanding_."
_Letter from General Polk to Governor Magoffin._
"Columbus, Kentucky, _September 3, 1861_.
"Governor Magoffin, _Frankfort, Kentucky_.
"I should have dispatched to you immediately, as the troops
under my command took possession of this position, the very few
words I addressed to the people here; but my duties since that
time have so preoccupied me, that I have but now the first
leisure moment to communicate with you. It will be sufficient
for me to inform you (as my short address herewith will do) that
I had information, on which I could rely, that the Federal
forces intended, and were preparing to seize Columbus. I need
not describe to you the danger resulting to western Tennessee
from such occupation.
"My responsibility could not permit me quietly to lose to the
command intrusted to me so important a position. In evidence of
the accuracy of the information I possessed, I will state that,
as the Confederate force approached this place, the Federal
troops were found in formidable numbers in position upon the
opposite bank, with their cannon turned upon Columbus. The
citizens of the town had fled with terror, and not a word of
assurance of safety or protection had been addressed to them.
Since I have taken possession of this place, I have been
informed by highly respected citizens of your State that certain
representatives of the Federal Government are seeking to take
advantage of its own wrong, are setting up complaints against my
acts of occupation, and are making it a pretest for seizing
other points. Upon this proceeding I have no comments to make.
But I am prepared to say that I will agree to withdraw the
Confederate troops from Kentucky, provided that she will agree
that the troops of the Federal Government be withdrawn
simultaneously, with a guarantee (which I will give reciprocally
for the Confederate Government) that the Federal troops shall
not be allowed to enter or occupy any part of Kentucky in the
future.
"I have the honor to be, respectfully, your obedient servant,
(Signed)
"Leonidas Polk,
"_Major-General commanding_."
However willing the government of Kentucky might have been to accede to
the proposition of General Polk, and which from his knowledge of the
views of his own Government he was fully justified in offering, the
State of Kentucky had no power, moral or physical, to prevent the United
States Government from using her soil as best might suit its purposes in
the war it was waging for the subjugation of the seceded States.
President Lincoln, in his message of the previous July, had distinctly
and reproachfully spoken of the idea of neutrality as existing in some
of the border States. He said: "To prevent the Union forces passing one
way, or the disunion the other, over their soil, would be disunion
completed.... At a stroke it would take all the trouble off the hands of
secession, except only what proceeds from the external blockade."
The acts of the Federal Government corresponded with the views announced
by its President. Briefly, but conclusively, General Polk showed in his
answer that the United States Government paid no respect to the neutral
position which Kentucky wished to maintain; that it was armed, but not
neutral, for the arms and the troops assembled on her soil were for the
invasion of the South; and that he occupied Columbus to prevent the
enemy from taking possession of it. When our troops first entered
Columbus they found the inhabitants had been in alarm from
demonstrations of the United States forces, but that they felt no dread
of the Confederate troops. As far as the truth could be ascertained, a
decided majority of the people of Kentucky, especially its southwestern
portion, if left to a free choice, would have joined the Confederacy in
preference to remaining in the Union. Could they have foreseen what in a
short time was revealed, there can be little doubt that mule contracts,
and other forms of bribery, would have proved unavailing to make her the
passive observer of usurpations destructive of the personal and
political rights of which she had always been a most earnest advocate.
With the slow and sinuous approach of the serpent, the General
Government, little by little, gained power over Kentucky, and then,
throwing off the mask, proceeded to outrages so regardless of law and
the usages of English-speaking people, as could not have been
anticipated, and can only be remembered with shame by those who honor
the constitutional Government created by the States. While artfully
urging the maintenance of the Union as a duty of patriotism, the
Constitution which gave the Union birth was trampled under foot, and the
excesses of the Reign of Terror which followed the French Revolution
were reënacted in our land, once the vaunted home of law and liberty.
Men who had been most honored by the State, and who had reflected back
most honor upon it, were seized without warrant, condemned without
trial, because they had exercised the privilege of free speech, and for
adhering to the principles which were the bed-rock on which our fathers
builded our political temple. Members of the Legislature vacated their
seats and left the State to avoid arrest, the penalty hanging over them
for opinion's sake. The venerable Judge Monroe, who had presided over
the United States District Court for more than a generation, driven from
the land of his birth, the State he had served so long and so well, with
feeble step, but upright conscience and indomitable will, sought a
resting place among those who did not regard it a crime to adhere to the
principles of 1776 and of 1787, and the declaratory affirmation of them
in the resolutions of 1793-'99. About the same time others of great
worth and distinction, impelled by the feeling that "where liberty is
there is my country," left the land desecrated by despotic usurpation,
to join the Confederacy in its struggle to maintain the personal and
political liberties which the men of the Revolution had left as an
inheritance to their posterity. Space would not suffice for a complete
list of the refugees who became conspicuous in the military events of
the Confederacy; let a few answer for the many: J. C. Breckinridge, the
late Vice-President of the United States, and whose general and
well-deserved popularity might have reasonably led him to expect in the
Union the highest honors the States could bestow; William Preston,
George W. Johnston, S. B. Buckner, John H. Morgan, and a host of others,
alike meritorious and alike gratefully remembered. When the passions of
the hour shall have subsided, and the past shall be reviewed with
discrimination and justice, the question must arise in every reflecting
mind, Why did such men as these expatriate themselves, and surrender all
the advantages which they had won by a life of honorable effort in the
land of their nativity? To such inquiry the answer must be, the
usurpations of the General Government foretold to them the wreck of
constitutional liberty. The motives which governed them may best be
learned from the annexed extracts from the statement made in the address
of Mr. Breckinridge to the people of Kentucky, whom he had represented
in both Houses of the United States Congress, with such distinguished
ability and zeal for the general welfare as to place him in the front
rank of the statesmen of his day:
"Bowling Green, Kentucky, _October 8,1861_.
"In obedience, as I supposed, to your wishes, I proceeded to
Washington, and at the special session of Congress, in July,
spoke and voted against the whole war policy of the President
and Congress; demanding, in addition, for Kentucky, the right to
refuse, not men only, but money also, to the war, for I would
have blushed to meet you with the confession that I had
purchased for you exemption from the perils of the battle-field,
and the shame of waging war against your Southern brethren, by
hiring others to do the work you shrunk from performing. During
that memorable session a very small body of Senators and
Representatives, even beneath the shadow of a military
despotism, resisted the usurpations of the Executive, and, with
what degree of dignity and firmness, they willingly submit to
the judgment of the world.
"Their efforts were unavailing, yet they may prove valuable
hereafter, as another added to former examples of many protest
against the progress of tyranny.
"On my return to Kentucky, at the close of the late special
session of Congress, it was my purpose immediately to resign the
office of Senator. The verbal and written remonstrances of many
friends in different parts of the State induced me to postpone
the execution of my purpose; but the time has arrived to carry
it into effect, and accordingly I now hereby return the trust
into your hands.... In the House of Representatives it was
declared that the South should be reduced to 'abject
submission,' or their institutions be overthrown. In the Senate
it was said that, if necessary, the South should be depopulated
and repeopled from the North; and an eminent Senator expressed a
desire that the President should be made dictator. This was
superfluous, since they had already clothed him with dictatorial
powers. In the midst of these proceedings, no plea for the
Constitution is listened to in the North; here and there a few
heroic voices are feebly heard protesting against the progress
of despotism, but, for the most part, beyond the military lines,
mobs and anarchy rule the hour.
"The great mass of the Northern people seem anxious to sunder
every safeguard of freedom; they eagerly offer to the Government
what no European monarch would dare to demand. The President and
his generals are unable to pick up the liberties of the people
as rapidly as they are thrown at their feet.... In every form by
which you could give direct expression to your will, you
declared for neutrality. A large majority of the people at the
May and August elections voted for the neutrality and peace of
Kentucky. The press, the public speakers, the candidates--with
exceptions in favor of the Government at Washington so rare as
not to need mention--planted themselves on this position. You
voted for it, and you meant it. You were promised it, and you
expected it.... Look now at the condition of Kentucky, and see
how your expectations have been realized--how these promises
have been redeemed.... General Anderson, the military dictator
of Kentucky, announces in one of his proclamations that he will
arrest no one who does not act, write, or speak in opposition to
Mr. Lincoln's Government. It would have completed the idea if he
had added, or think in opposition to it. Look at the condition
of our State under the rule of our new protectors. They have
suppressed the freedom of speech and of the press. They seize
people by military force upon mere suspicion, and impose on them
oaths unknown to the laws. Other citizens they imprison without
warrant, and carry them out of the State, so that the writ of
_habeas corpus_ can not reach them.
"Every day foreign armed bands are making seizures among the
people. Hundreds of citizens, old and young, venerable
magistrates, whose lives have been distinguished by the love of
the people, have been compelled to fly from their homes and
families to escape imprisonment and exile at the hands of
Northern and German soldiers, under the orders of Mr. Lincoln
and his military subordinates. While yet holding an important
political trust, confided by Kentucky, I was compelled to leave
my home and family, or suffer imprisonment and exile. If it is
asked why I did not meet the arrest and seek a trial, my answer
is, that I would have welcomed an arrest to be followed by a
judge and jury; but you well know that I could not have secured
these constitutional rights. I would have been transported
beyond the State, to languish in some Federal fortress during
the pleasure of the oppressor. Witness the fate of Morehead and
his Kentucky associates in their distant and gloomy prison.
"The case of the gentleman just mentioned is an example of many
others, and it meets every element in a definition of despotism.
If it should occur in England it would be righted, or it would
overturn the British Empire. He is a citizen and native of
Kentucky. As a member of the Legislature, Speaker of the House,
Representative in Congress from the Ashland district, and
Governor of the State, you have known, trusted, and honored him
during a public service of a quarter of a century. He is eminent
for his ability, his amiable character, and his blameless life.
Yet this man, without indictment, without warrant, without
accusation, but by the order of President Lincoln, was seized at
midnight, in his own house, and in the midst of his own family,
and led through the streets of Louisville, as I am informed,
with his hands crossed and pinioned before him--was carried out
of the State and district, and now lies a prisoner in a fortress
in New York Harbor, a thousand miles away....
"The Constitution of the United States, which these invaders
unconstitutionally swear every citizen whom they
unconstitutionally seize to support, has been wholly abolished.
It is as much forgotten as if it lay away back in the twilight
of history. The facts I have enumerated show that the very
rights most carefully reserved by it to the States and to
individuals have been most conspicuously violated.... Your
fellow-citizen,
(Signed) "John C. Breckinridge."
Such was the "neutrality" suffered by the Confederacy from governments
both at home and abroad.
The chivalric people of Kentucky showed their sympathy with the just
cause of the people of the Southern States, by leaving the home where
they could not serve the cause of right against might, and nobly shared
the fortunes of their Southern brethren on many a blood-dyed field. In
like manner did the British people see with disapprobation their
Government, while proclaiming neutrality, make new rules, and give new
constructions to old ones, so as to favor our enemy and embarrass us.
The Englishman's sense of fair-play, and the manly instinct which
predisposes him to side with the weak, gave us hosts of friends, but all
their good intentions were paralyzed or foiled by their wily Minister
for Foreign Affairs, and his coadjutor on this side, the artful,
unscrupulous United States Secretary of State.
I have thus presented the case of Kentucky, not because it was the only
State where false promises lulled the people into delusive security,
until, by gradual approaches, usurpation had bound them hand and foot,
and where despotic power crushed all the muniments of civil liberty
which the Union was formed to secure, but because of the attempt, which
has been noticed, to arraign the Confederacy for invasion of the State
in disregard of her sovereignty.
The occupation of Columbus by the Confederate forces was only just soon
enough to anticipate the predetermined purpose of the Federal
Government, all of which was plainly set forth in the letter of General
Polk to the Governor of Kentucky, and his subsequent letter to the
Kentucky commissioners.
Missouri, like Kentucky, had wished to preserve peaceful relations in
the contest which it was foreseen would soon occur between the Northern
and the Southern States. When the Federal Government denied to her the
privilege of choosing her own position, which betokened no hostility to
the General Government, and she was driven to the necessity of deciding
whether or not her citizens should be used for the subjugation of the
Southern States, her people and their representative, the State
government, repelled the arbitrary assumption of authority by military
force to control her government and her people.
Among other acts of invasion, the Federal troops had occupied Belmont, a
village in Missouri opposite to Columbus, and with artillery threatened
that town, inspiring terror in its peaceful inhabitants. After the
occupation of Columbus, under these circumstances of full justification,
a small Confederate force, Colonel Tappan's Arkansas regiment, and
Beltzhoover's battery, were thrown across the Mississippi to occupy and
hold the village, in the State of Missouri, then an ally, and soon to
become a member, of the Confederacy. On the 6th of November General
Grant left his headquarters at Cairo with a land and naval force, and
encamped on the Kentucky shore. This act and a demonstration made by
detachments from his force at Paducah were probably intended to induce
the belief that he contemplated an attack on Columbus, thus concealing
his real purpose to surprise the small garrison at Belmont. General Polk
on the morning of the 7th discovered the landing of the Federal forces
on the Missouri shore, some seven miles above Columbus, and, divining
the real purpose of the enemy, detached General Pillow with four
regiments of his division, say two thousand men, to reënforce the
garrison at Belmont. Very soon after his arrival, the enemy commenced an
assault which was sternly resisted, and with varying fortune, for
several hours. The enemy's front so far exceeded the length of our line
as to enable him to attack on both flanks, and our troops were finally
driven back to the bank of the river with the loss of their battery,
which had been gallantly and efficiently served until nearly all its
horses had been killed, and its ammunition had been expended. The enemy
advanced to the bank of the river below the point to which our men had
retreated, and opened an artillery-fire upon the town of Columbus, to
which our guns from the commanding height responded with such effect as
to drive him from the river bank. In the mean time General Polk had at
intervals sent three regiments to reënforce General Pillow. Upon the
arrival of the first of these, General Pillow led it to a favorable
position, where it for some time steadily resisted and checked the
advance of the enemy. General Pillow, with great energy and gallantry,
rallied his repulsed troops and brought them again into action. General
Polk now proceeded in person with two other regiments. Whether from this
or some other cause, the enemy commenced a retreat. General Pillow,
whose activity and daring on the occasion were worthy of all praise, led
the first and second detachments, by which he had been reënforced, to
attack the enemy in the rear, and General Polk, landing further up the
river, moved to cut off the enemy's retreat; but some embarrassment and
consequent delay which occurred in landing his troops caused him to be
too late for the purpose for which he crossed, and to become only a part
of the pursuing force.
One would naturally suppose that the question about which there would be
the greatest certainty would be the number of troops engaged in a
battle, yet there is nothing in regard to which we have such conflicting
accounts. It is fairly concluded, from the concurrent reports, that the
enemy attacked us on both flanks, and that in the beginning of the
action we were outnumbered; but the obstinacy with which the conflict
was maintained and the successive advances and retreats which occurred
in the action indicate that the disparity could not have been very
great, and therefore that, after the arrival of our reënforcements, our
troops must have become numerically superior. The dead and wounded left
by the enemy upon the field, the arms, ammunition, and military stores
abandoned in his flight, so incontestably prove his defeat, that his
claim to have achieved a victory is too preposterous for discussion.
Though the forces engaged were comparatively small to those in
subsequent battles of the war, six hours of incessant combat, with
repeated bayonet-charges, must place this in the rank of the most
stubborn engagements, and the victors must accord to the vanquished the
meed of having fought like Americans. One of the results of the battle,
which is at least significant, is the fact that General Grant, who had
superciliously refused to recognize General Polk as one with whom he
could exchange prisoners, did, after the battle, send a flag of truce to
get such privileges as are recognized between armies acknowledging each
other to be "foemen worthy of their steel."
General Polk reported as follows: "We pursued them to their boats, seven
miles, and then drove their boats before us. The road was strewed with
their dead and wounded, guns, ammunition, and equipments. The number of
prisoners taken by the enemy, as shown by their list furnished, was one
hundred and six, all of whom have been returned by exchange. After
making a liberal allowance to the enemy, a hundred of their prisoners
still remain in my hands, one stand of colors, and a fraction over one
thousand stand of arms, with knapsacks, ammunition, and other military
stores. Our loss in killed, wounded, and missing, was six hundred and
forty one; that of the enemy was probably not less than twelve hundred."
Meanwhile, Albert Sidney Johnston, a soldier of great distinction in the
United States Army, where he had attained the rank of brigadier-general
by brevet, and was in command of the Department of California, resigned
his commission, and came overland from San Francisco to Richmond, to
tender his services to the Confederate States. Though he had been bred a
soldier, and most of his life had been spent in the army, he had not
neglected such study of political affairs as properly belongs to the
citizen of a republic, and appreciated the issue made between States
claiming the right to resume the powers they had delegated to a general
agent and the claims set up by that agent to coerce States, his
creators, and for whom he held a trust.
He was a native of Kentucky, but his first military appointment was from
Louisiana, and he was a volunteer in the war for independence by Texas,
and for a time resided in that State. Much of his military service had
been in the West, and he felt most identified with it. On the 10th of
September, 1861, he was assigned to command our Department of the West,
which included the States of Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, the Indian
country, and the western part of Mississippi.
General Johnston, on his arrival at Nashville, found that he lacked not
only men, but the munitions of war and the means of obtaining them. Men
were ready to be enlisted, but the arms and equipments had nearly all
been required to fit out the first levies. Immediately on his survey of
the situation, he determined to occupy Bowling Green in Kentucky, and
ordered Brigadier-General S. B. Buckner, with five thousand men, to take
possession of the position. This invasion of Kentucky was an act of
self-defense rendered necessary by the action of the government of
Kentucky, and by the evidences of intended movements of the forces of
the United States. It was not possible to withdraw the troops from
Columbus in the west, nor from Cumberland Ford in the east, to which
General Felix K. Zollicoffer had advanced with four thousand men. A
compliance with the demands of Kentucky would have opened the frontiers
of Tennessee and the Mississippi River to the enemy; besides, it was
essential to the defense of Tennessee.
East of Columbus, Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, and Hopkinsville were
garrisoned with small bodies of troops; and the territory between
Columbus and Bowling Green was occupied by moving detachments which
caused the supposition that a large military force was present and
contemplated an advance. A fortified camp was established at Cumberland
Gap as the right of General Johnston's line, and an important point for
the protection of East Tennessee against invasion. Thus General Johnston
located his line of defense, from Columbus on the west to the Cumberland
Mountains on the east, with his center at Bowling Green, which was
occupied and intrenched. It was a good base for military operations, was
a proper depot for supplies, and, if fortified, could be held against
largely superior numbers.
On October 28th General Johnston took command at Bowling Green. He
states his force to have been twelve thousand men, and that the enemy's
force at that time was estimated to be double his own, or twenty-four
thousand. He says: "The enemy's force increased more rapidly than our
own, so that by the last of November it numbered fifty thousand, and
continued to increase until it ran up to between seventy-five and one
hundred thousand. My force was kept down by disease, so that it numbered
about twenty-two thousand."
The chief anxiety of the commander of the department was to procure arms
and men. On the next day after his arrival at Nashville, he wrote to the
Governor of Alabama, "I shall beg to rely on your Excellency to furnish
us as rapidly as possible, at this point, with every arm it may be in
your power to provide--I mean small-arms for infantry and cavalry." The
Governor replied, "It is out of the power of Alabama to afford you any
assistance in the way of arms." The Governor of Georgia replied to the
same request on September 18th, "It is utterly impossible for me to
comply with your request." General Bragg, in command at Pensacola,
writes in reply on September 27th: "The mission of Colonel Buckner will
not be successful, I fear, as our extreme Southern country has been
stripped of both arms and men. We started early in this matter, and have
wellnigh exhausted our resources." On September 19th General Johnston
telegraphed to me: "Thirty thousand stand of arms are a necessity to my
command. I beg you to order them, or as many as can be got, to be
instantly procured and sent with dispatch." The Secretary of War
replied: "The whole number received by us, by that steamer, was eighteen
hundred, and we purchased of the owners seventeen hundred and eighty,
making in all thirty-five hundred Enfield rifles, of which we have been
compelled to allow the Governor of Georgia to have one thousand for
arming troops to repel an attack now hourly threatened at Brunswick. Of
the remaining twenty-five hundred, I have ordered one thousand sent to
you, leaving us but fifteen hundred for arming several regiments now
encamped here, and who have been awaiting their arms for several
months.... We have not an engineer to send you. The whole engineer corps
comprises only six captains together with three majors, of whom one is
on bureau duty. You will be compelled to employ the best material within
your reach, by detailing officers from other corps, and by employing
civil engineers."
These details are given to serve as an illustration of the deficiencies
existing in every department of the military service in the first years
of the war. In this respect much relief came from the well-directed
efforts of Governor Harris and the Legislature of Tennessee. A
cap-factory, ordnance-shops, and workshops were established. The
powder-mills at Nashville turned out about four-hundred pounds a day.
Twelve or fourteen batteries were fitted out at Memphis. Laws were
passed to impress and pay for the private arms scattered throughout the
State, and the utmost efforts were made to collect and adapt them to
military uses. The returns make it evident that, during most of the
autumn of 1861, fully one half of General Johnston's troops were
imperfectly armed, and whole brigades remained without weapons for
months.
No less energetic were the measures taken to concentrate and recruit his
forces. General Hardee's command was moved from northeastern Arkansas,
and sent to Bowling Green, which added four thousand men to the troops
there. The regiment of Texan rangers was brought from Louisiana, and
supplied with horses and sent to the front. Five hundred Kentuckians
joined General Buckner on his advance, and five regiments were gradually
formed and filled up. A cavalry company under John H. Morgan was also
added. At this time (September, 1861), General Johnston, under the
authority granted to him by the Government, made a requisition for
thirty thousand men from Tennessee, ten thousand from Mississippi, and
ten thousand from Arkansas. The Arkansas troops were directed to be sent
to General McCulloch for the defense of their own frontier. The Governor
of Mississippi sent four regiments, when this source of supply was
closed.
Up to the middle of November only three regiments were mustered in under
this call from Tennessee, but, by the close of December, the number of
men who joined was from twelve to fifteen thousand. Two regiments,
fifteen hundred strong, had joined General Polk.
In Arkansas, five companies and a battalion had been organized, and were
ready to join General McCulloch.
A speedy advance of the enemy was now indicated, and an increase of
force was so necessary that further delay was impossible. General
Johnston, therefore, determined upon a levy _en masse_ in his
department. He made a requisition on the Governors of Tennessee,
Alabama, and Mississippi, to call out every able-bodied member of the
militia into whose hands arms could be placed, or to provide a volunteer
force large enough to use all the arms that could be procured. In his
letters to these Governors, he plainly presents his view of the posture
of affairs on December 24th, points out impending dangers, and shows
that to his applications the response had not been such as the emergency
demanded. He says:
"It was apprehended by me that the enemy would attempt to assail
the South, not only by boats and troops moving down the river,
to be assembled during the fall and winter, but by columns
marching inland, threatening Tennessee, by endeavoring to turn
the defenses of Columbus. Further observation confirms me in
this opinion; but I think the means employed for the defense of
the river will probably render it comparatively secure. The
enemy will energetically push toward Nashville the heavy masses
of troops now assembled between Louisville and Bowling Green.
The general position of Bowling Green is good and commanding;
but the peculiar topography of the place and the length of the
line of the Barren River as a line of defense, though strong,
require a large force to defend it. There is no position equally
defensive as Bowling Green, nor line of defense as good as the
Barren River, between the Barren and the Cumberland at
Nashville; so that it can not be abandoned without exposing
Tennessee, and giving vastly the vantage-ground to the enemy. It
is manifest that the Northern generals appreciate this; and, by
withdrawing their forces from western Virginia and east
Kentucky, they have managed to add them to the new levies from
Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and to concentrate a force in front
of me variously estimated at from sixty to one hundred thousand
men, and which I believe will number seventy-five thousand. To
maintain my position, I have only about seventeen thousand men
in this neighborhood. It is impossible for me to obtain
additions to my strength from Columbus; the generals in command
in that quarter consider that it would imperil that point to
diminish their force, and open Tennessee to the enemy. General
Zollicoffer can not join me, as he guards the Cumberland, and
prevents the invasion and possible revolt of East Tennessee."
On June 5th General Johnston was reënforced by the brigades of Floyd and
Maney from western Virginia. He also sent a messenger to Richmond to ask
that a few regiments might be detached from the several armies in the
field, and sent to him to be replaced by new levies. He said: "I do not
ask that my force shall be made equal to that of the enemy; but, if
possible, it should be raised to fifty thousand men." Meantime such an
appearance of menace had been maintained as led the enemy to believe
that our force was large, and that he might be attacked at any time.
Frequent and rapid expeditions through the sparsely settled country gave
rise to rumors which kept alive this apprehension.
CHAPTER IX.
The Coercion of Missouri.--Answers of the Governors of States to
President Lincoln's Requisition for Troops.--Restoration of
Forts Caswell and Johnson to the United States Government.--
Condition of Missouri similar to that of Kentucky.--
Hostilities, how initiated in Missouri.--Agreement between
Generals Price and Harney.--Its Favorable Effects.--General
Harney relieved of Command by the United States Government
because of his Pacific Policy.--Removal of Public Arms from
Missouri.--Searches for and Seizure of Arms.--Missouri on the
Side of Peace.--Address of General Price to the People.--
Proclamation of Governor Jackson.--Humiliating Concessions of
the Governor to the United States Government, for the sake of
Peace.--Demands of the Federal Officers.--Revolutionary
Principles attempted to be enforced by the United States
Government.--The Action at Booneville.--The Patriot Army of
Militia.--Further Rout of the Enemy.--Heroism and Self-sacrifice
of the People.--Complaints and Embarrassments--Zeal: its
effects.--Action of Congress.--Battle of Springfield.--General
Price.--Battle at Lexington.--Bales of Hemp.--Other Combats.
To preserve the Union in the spirit and for the purposes for which it
was established, an equilibrium between the States, as grouped in
sections, was essential. When the Territory of Missouri constitutionally
applied for admission as a State into the Union, the struggle between
State rights and that sectional aggrandizement which was seeking to
destroy the existing equilibrium gave rise to the contest which shook
the Union to its foundation, and sowed the seeds of geographical
divisions, which have borne the most noxious weeds that have choked our
political vineyard. Again, in 1861, Missouri appealed to the
Constitution for the vindication of her rights, and again did usurpation
and the blind rage of a sectional party disregard the appeal, and assume
powers, not only undelegated, but in direct violation of the fourth
section of the fourth article of the Constitution, which every Federal
officer had sworn to maintain, and which secured to every State a
republican government, and protection against invasion.
If it be contended that the invasion referred to must have been by other
than the troops of the United States, and that their troops were
therefore not prohibited from entering a State against its wishes, and
for purposes hostile to its policy, the section of the Constitution
referred to fortifies the fact, heretofore noticed, of the refusal of
the Convention, when forming the Constitution, to delegate to the
Federal Government power to coerce a State. By its last clause it was
provided that not even to suppress domestic violence could the General
Government, on its own motion, send troops of the United States into the
territory of one of the States. That section reads thus:
"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union
a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them
against invasion, and on application of the Legislature, or of
the executive (when the Legislature can not be convened),
against domestic violence."
Surely, if Federal troops could not be sent into a State without its
application, even to protect it against domestic violence, still less
could it be done to overrule the will of its people. That, instead of an
obligation upon the citizens of other States to respond to a call by the
President for troops to invade a particular State, it was in April,
1861, deemed a high crime to so use them: reference is here made to the
published answers of the Governors of States, which had not seceded, to
the requisition made upon them for troops to be employed against the
States which had seceded.
Governor Letcher, of Virginia, replied to the requisition of the United
States Secretary of War as follows:
"I am requested to detach from the militia of the State of
Virginia the quota designated in a table which you append, to
serve as infantry or riflemen, for the period of three months,
unless sooner discharged.
"In reply to this communication, I have only to say that the
militia of Virginia will not be furnished to the powers at
Washington for any such use or purpose as they have in view.
Your object is to subjugate the Southern States, and a
requisition made upon me for such an object--an object, in my
judgment, not within the purview of the Constitution, or the Act
of 1795--will not be complied with."
Governor Magoffin, of Kentucky, replied:
"Your dispatch is received. In answer, I say emphatically,
Kentucky will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of
subduing her sister Southern States."
Governor Harris, of Tennessee, replied:
"Tennessee will not furnish a single man for coercion, but fifty
thousand, if necessary, for the defense of our rights, or those
of our Southern brothers."
Governor Jackson, of Missouri, answered:
"Requisition is illegal, unconstitutional, revolutionary,
inhuman, diabolical, and can not be complied with."
Governor Rector, of Arkansas, replied:
"In answer to your requisition for troops from Arkansas, to
subjugate the Southern States, I have to say that none will be
furnished. The demand is only adding insult to injury."
Governor Ellis, of North Carolina, responded to the requisition for
troops from that State as follows:
"Your dispatch is received, and, if genuine--which its
extraordinary character leads me to doubt--I have to say, in
reply, that I regard the levy of troops made by the
Administration, for the purpose of subjugating the States of the
South, as in violation of the Constitution, and a usurpation of
power. I can be no party to this wicked violation of the laws of
the country, and to this war upon the liberties of a free
people. You can get no troops from North Carolina."
Governor Ellis, who had lived long enough to leave behind him an
enviable reputation, was a fair representative of the conservatism,
gallantry, and tenacity in well-doing, of the State over which he
presided. He died too soon for his country's good, and the Confederacy
seriously felt the loss of his valuable services. The prompt and
spirited answer he gave to the call upon North Carolina to furnish
troops for the subjugation of the Southern States, was the fitting
complement of his earlier action in immediately restoring to the Federal
Government Forts Johnson and Caswell, which had been seized without
proper authority. In communicating his action to President Buchanan, he
wrote:
"My information satisfies me that this popular outbreak was
caused by a report, very generally credited, but which, for the
sake of humanity, I hope is not true, that it was the purpose of
the Administration to coerce the Southern States, and that
troops were on their way to garrison the Southern ports, and to
begin the work of subjugation.... Should I receive assurance
that no troops will be sent to this State prior to the 4th of
March next, then all will be peace and quiet here, and the
property of the United States will be fully protected, as
heretofore. If, however, I am unable to get such assurances, I
will not undertake to answer for the consequences.
"The forts in this State have long been unoccupied, and their
being garrisoned at this time will unquestionably be looked upon
as a hostile demonstration, and will in my opinion certainly be
resisted."
The plea so constantly made by the succeeding Administration, as an
excuse for its warlike acts, that the duty to protect the public
property required such action, is shown by this letter of Governor Ellis
to have been a plea created by their usurpations, but for which there
might have been peace, as well as safety to property, and, what was of
greater worth, the lives, the liberties, and the republican institutions
of the country.
There was great similarity in the condition of Missouri to that of
Kentucky. They were both border States, and, by their institutions and
the origin of a large portion of their citizens, were identified with
the South. Both sought to occupy a neutral position in the impending
war, and offered guarantees of peace and order throughout their
territory if left free to control their own affairs. Both refused to
furnish troops to the United States Government for the unconstitutional
purpose of coercing the Southern States. Both, because of their stronger
affinity to the South than to the North, were the objects of suspicion,
and consequent military occupation by the troops of the United States
Government. At the inception of this unwarrantable proceeding, an effort
was made by the Governor of Missouri to preserve the rights of the State
without disturbing its relations to the United States Government. If it
had been the policy of the Government to allow to Missouri the control
of her domestic affairs, and an exemption from being a party to the
violation of the Constitution in making war against certain of the
States, the above-described effort of the Governor might and probably
would have been successful. The form and purpose of that effort appear
in the compact entered into between Major-General Price, commanding the
militia or "Missouri State Guard," and General Harney, of the United
States Army, commanding the Department of the West, a geographical
division which included the State of Missouri.
During a temporary absence of General Harney, Captain Lyon, commanding
United States forces at St. Louis, initiated hostilities against the
State of Missouri under the following circumstances:
In obedience to the militia law of the State, an annual encampment was
directed by the Governor for instruction in tactics. Camp Jackson, near
St. Louis, was designated for the encampment of the militia of the
county in 1861. Here for some days companies of State militia, amounting
to about eight hundred men, under command of Brigadier-General D. M.
Frost, were being exercised, as is usual upon such occasions. They
presented no appearance of a hostile camp. There were no sentinels to
guard against surprise; visitors were freely admitted; it was the
picnic-ground for the ladies of the city, and everything wore the aspect
of merry-making rather than that of grim-visaged war.
Suddenly, Captain (afterward General) Nathaniel Lyon appeared with an
overwhelming force of Federal troops, surrounded this holiday
encampment, and demanded an unconditional surrender. Resistance was
impracticable, and none was attempted; the militia surrendered, and were
confined as prisoners; but prisoners of what? There was no war, and no
warrant for their arrest as offenders against the law. It is left for
the usurpers to frame a vocabulary suited to their act.
After the return of General Harney, Brigadier-General D. M. Frost, of
the Missouri militia, appealed to him from his prison, the St. Louis
Arsenal, on May 11, 1861, representing that, "in accordance with the
laws of the State of Missouri, which have been existing for some years,
and in obedience to the orders of the Governor, on Monday last I entered
into an encampment with the militia force of St. Louis County for the
purpose of instructing the same in accordance with the laws of the
United States and of this State." He further sets forth that every
officer and soldier of his command had taken an oath to sustain the
Constitution and laws of the United States and of the State of Missouri,
and that while in the peaceable performance of their duties the
encampment was surrounded by the command of Captain N. Lyon, United
States Army, and a surrender demanded, to which General Frost replied as
follows:
"Camp Jackson, _May 10, 1861_.
"Sir: I, never for a moment having conceived the idea that so
illegal and unconstitutional a demand as I have just received
from you would be made by an officer of the United States Army,
am wholly unprepared to defend my command from this unwarranted
attack, and shall therefore be forced to comply with your
demand.
"I am sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
"D. Frost,
"_Brigadier-General, commanding Camp Jackson, M. M._
"Captain N. Lyon, _commanding United States troops_."
General Frost's letter to General Harney continues: "My command was, in
accordance with the above, deprived of their arms, and surrendered into
the hands of Captain Lyon; after which, while thus disarmed and
surrounded, a fire was opened on a portion of it by his troops, and a
number of my men put to death, together with several innocent
lookers-on, men, women, and children." On the occasion of the attack
upon Camp Jackson, "a large crowd of citizens, men, women, and children,
were gathered around, gazing curiously at these strange proceedings,
when a volley was fired into them, killing ten and wounding twenty
non-combatants, mostly women and children. A reign of terror was at once
established, and the most severe measures were adopted by the Federals
to overawe the excitement and the rage of the people."[182]
The massacre at Camp Jackson produced intense excitement throughout the
State. The Legislature, upon receipt of the news, passed several bills
for the enrollment and organization of the militia, and to confer
special powers upon the Governor of the State. By virtue of these,
general officers were appointed, chief of whom was Sterling Price.
Because of the atrocities at St. Louis, and the violent demonstrations
consequent upon them, not only in St. Louis but elsewhere in the State,
General Price, well known to be what was termed "a Union man," and not
only by his commission as commander-in-chief of the militia of the
State, but also, and even more, because of his influence among the
people, was earnestly solicited by influential citizens of St. Louis to
unite with General Harney in a joint effort to restore order and
preserve peace. With the sanction of Governor Jackson he proceeded to
St. Louis, the headquarters of the Department of the West, and, after
some preliminary conference, entered into the following agreement,
which, being promulgated to the people, was received with general
satisfaction, and for a time allayed excitement. The agreement was as
follows:
"St. Louis, _May 21, 1861_.
"The undersigned, officers of the United States Government and of
the government of the State of Missouri, for the purpose of
removing misapprehension and of allaying public excitement, deem
it proper to declare publicly that they have this day had a
personal interview in this city, in which it has been mutually
understood, without the semblance of dissent on either part,
that each of them has no other than a common object, equally
interesting and important to every citizen of Missouri--that of
restoring peace and good order to the people of the State in
subordination to the laws of the General and State governments.
"It being thus understood, there seems no reason why every
citizen should not confide in the proper officers of the General
and State governments to restore quiet, and, as among the best
means of offering no counter-influences, we mutually commend to
all persons to respect each other's rights throughout the State,
making no attempt to exercise unauthorized powers, as it is the
determination of the proper authorities to suppress all unlawful
proceedings which can only disturb the public peace. General
Price, having by commission full authority over the militia of
the State of Missouri, undertakes with the sanction of the
Governor of the State, already declared, to direct the whole
power of the State officers to maintaining order within the
State among the people thereof. General Harney publicly declares
that, this object being assured, he can have no occasion, as he
has no wish, to make military movements that might otherwise
create excitement and jealousy, which he most earnestly desires
to avoid.
"We, the undersigned, do therefore mutually enjoin upon the
people of the State to attend to their civil business, of
whatever sort it may be, and it is hoped that the unquiet
elements which have threatened so seriously to disturb the
public peace may soon subside, and be remembered only to be
deplored.
"W. S. Harney,
"_Brigadier-General commanding._
"Sterling Price,
"_Major-General Missouri State Guard._"
The distinct position of General Harney, that the military force of the
United States should not be used in Missouri except in case of
necessity, together with the emphatic declaration of General Price that
he had the power and would use it to preserve peace and order in
Missouri, seemed to remove all danger of collision in that State between
the Federal and local forces. In conformity with this understanding,
General Price returned to the capital of the State, and sent to their
homes the militia who had been assembled there by the Governor for the
defense of the capital against an anticipated attack by the troops of
the United States.
Those who desired to preserve peace in Missouri had just cause to be
gratified at the favorable prospect now presented. Those who desired war
had equal ground for dissatisfaction. A few days after the promulgation
of the agreement between General Price and General Harney, the latter
was removed from command, as many believed, because of his successful
efforts to allay excitement and avoid war. Rumors had been in
circulation that the Missourians were driving the "Union men" from their
homes, and many letters purporting to be written in different parts of
the State represented the persecution of Union men. It was suspected
that many of them were written in St. Louis, or inspired by the cabal.
An incident related in confirmation of the justice of this suspicion is,
that General Harney received a letter from St. Joseph, stating that
ex-Governor Stewart and a number of the most respectable men in St.
Joseph had been driven from their homes, and that, unless soldiers were
soon sent, the Union men would all have to leave. He called upon the
Hon. F. P. Blair, an influential citizen of St. Louis, and asked him if
he knew the writer of the letter. The reply was: "Oh, yes, he is
perfectly reliable; you can believe anything he says."[183] General
Harney said he would write immediately to General Price. Dissatisfaction
was then manifested at such delay; but, two or three days later, a
letter from ex-Governor Stewart was published in the "St. Joseph News,"
in which was a marked paragraph of the copy sent to General Harney:
"Neither I nor any other Union man has been driven out of St. Joe."[184]
An attempt has been made to evade the conclusion that General Harney was
relieved from command because of his pacific policy. The argument is,
that the order was dated the 16th of May, and his agreement with General
Price was on the 21st of the same month, an argument more specious than
fair, as it appears from the letter of President Lincoln of May 18,
1861, to Hon. F. P. Blair, that the order sent from the War Department
to him was to be delivered or withheld at his discretion, and that it
was not delivered until the 30th of the month, and until after General
Harney had not only entered into his agreement with General Price, but
had declined to act upon sensational stories of persecution, on which
applications were made to send troops into the interior of Missouri.
During the days this order was held for his removal, with discretionary
power to deliver or withhold it, the above-recited events occurred, and
they may fairly be considered as having decided the question of his
removal from that command.
The principal United States arsenal at the West was that near to St.
Louis. To it had been transferred a large number of the altered muskets
sent from Springfield, Massachusetts, so that in 1861 the arms in that
arsenal were, perhaps, numerically second only to those at Springfield.
These arms, by a conjunction of deceptive and bold measures, were
removed from the arsenal in Missouri and transported to Illinois. To
whom did those arms belong? Certainly to those whose money had made or
purchased them. That is, to the States in common, not to their agent the
General Government, or to a portion of the States which might be in a
condition to appropriate them to their special use, and in disregard of
the rights of their partners.
Not satisfied with removing the public arms from the limits of Missouri,
the next step was that, in total disrespect of the constitutional right
of the citizens to bear arms for their own defense, and to be free from
searches and seizures except by warrants duly issued, the officers of
the General Government proceeded to search the houses of citizens in St.
Louis, and to seize arms wherever they were found.
Missouri had refused to engage in war against her sister States of the
South; therefore she was first to be disarmed, and then to be made the
victim of an invasion characterized by such barbarous atrocities as
shame the civilization of the age. The wrongs she suffered, the brave
efforts of her unarmed people to defend their hearthstones and their
liberties against the desecration and destruction of both, form a
melancholy chapter in the history of the United States, which all who
would cherish their fair fame must wish could be obliterated.
These acts of usurpation and outrage, as well upon the political as
personal rights of the people of Missouri, aroused an intense feeling in
that State. It will be remembered that Governor Jackson had responded to
the call of Mr. Lincoln upon him for troops with the just indignation of
one who understood the rights of the State, and the limited powers of
the General Government. His stern refusal to become a party to the war
upon the South made him the object of special persecution. By his side
in this critical juncture stood the gallant veteran, General Price. To
the latter was confided the conduct of the military affairs of the
State, and, after exhausting every effort to maintain order by peaceful
means, and seeing that the Government would recognize no other method
than that of force, he energetically applied himself to raise troops,
and procure arms so as to enable the State to meet force by force.
During this and all the subsequent period, the Governor and the General
were ably seconded by the accomplished, gallant, and indefatigable
Lieutenant-Governor, Reynolds.
The position of Missouri in 1860-'61 was unquestionably that of
opposition to the secession of the State. The people generously confided
in the disposition of the General Government to observe their rights,
and continued to hope for a peaceful settlement of the questions then
agitating the country. This was evinced by the fact that not a single
secessionist was elected to the State Convention, and that General
Price, an avowed "Union man," was chosen as President of the Convention.
Hence the general satisfaction with the agreement made between Generals
Harney and Price for the preservation of peace and non-intervention by
the army of the United States. General Harney, the day before the order
for his removal was communicated to him, wrote to the War Department,
expressing his confidence in the preservation of peace in Missouri, and
used this significant expression: "Interference by unauthorized parties
as to the course I shall pursue can alone prevent the realization of
these hopes."[185] The "unauthorized parties" here referred to could not
have been the people or the government of Missouri. Others than they
must have been the parties wishing to use force, provocative of
hostilities.
As has been heretofore stated, after his agreement with General Harney
at St. Louis, General Price returned to the capital and dismissed to
their homes the large body of militia that had been there assembled.
After the removal of General Harney, believed to be in consequence of
his determination to avoid the use of military force against the people
of Missouri, reports were rife of a purpose on the part of the
Administration at Washington to disarm the citizens of Missouri who did
not sympathize with the views of the Federal Government, and to put arms
into the hands of those who could be relied on to enforce them. On the
4th of June General Price issued an address to the people of Missouri,
and in reference to that report said: "The purpose of such a movement
could not be misunderstood; and it would not only be a palpable
violation of the agreement referred to, and an equally plain violation
of our constitutional rights, but a gross indignity to the citizens of
this State, which would be resisted to the last extremity."
The call of President Lincoln for seventy-five thousand volunteers
removed any preëxisting doubt as to the intent to coerce the States
which should claim to assert their right of sovereignty. Missouri, while
avowing her purpose to adhere to the Union, had asserted her right to
exercise supreme control over her domestic affairs, and this put her in
the category of a State threatened by the proceedings of the United
States Government. To provide for such contingency as might be
anticipated, Governor Jackson, on the 13th of June, issued a call for
fifty thousand volunteers, and Major-General Price took the field in
command. In this proclamation Governor Jackson said:
"A series of unprovoked and unparalleled outrages has been
inflicted on the peace and dignity of this Commonwealth, and
upon the rights and liberties of its people, by wicked and
unprincipled men professing to act under the authority of the
Government of the United States."
In his endeavor to maintain the peace of the State, and to avert, if
possible, from its borders a civil war, he caused the aforementioned
agreement to be made with the commander of the Northern forces in the
State, by which its peace might be preserved. That officer was promptly
removed by his Government. The Governor then, upon the increase of
hostile actions, proposed, at an interview with the new officer
commanding the forces of the United States Government, to disband the
State Guard, and break up its organization; to disarm all companies that
had been armed by the State; to pledge himself not to organize the
militia under the military bill; that no arms or munitions of war should
be brought into the State; that he would protect the citizens equally in
all their rights, regardless of their political opinions; that he would
repress all insurrectionary movements within the State; would repel all
attempts to invade it, from whatever quarter, and by whomsoever made;
and would maintain a strict neutrality and preserve the peace of the
State. And, further, if necessary, he would invoke the assistance of the
United States troops to carry out the pledges. The only conditions to
this proposition made by the Governor were that the United States
Government should undertake to disarm the "Home Guard" which it had
illegally organized and armed throughout the State, and pledge itself
not to occupy with its troops any localities in the State not occupied
by them at that time.
The words of a Governor of a State who offered such truly generous terms
deserve to be inserted: "Nothing but the most earnest desire to avert
the horrors of civil war from our beloved State could have tempted me to
propose these humiliating terms. They were rejected by the Federal
officers."
These demanded not only the disorganization and disarming of the State
militia and the nullification of the military bill, but they refused to
disarm their own "Home Guard," and insisted that the Government of the
United States should enjoy an unrestricted right to move and station its
troops throughout the State whenever and wherever it might, in the
opinion of its officers, be necessary either for the protection of its
"loyal subjects" or for the repelling of invasion; and they plainly
announced that it was the intention of the Administration to take
military occupation of the whole State, and to reduce it, as avowed by
General Lyon, to the "exact condition of Maryland."
We have already stated that the revolutionary measures which the United
States Government had undertaken to enforce involved the subjection of
every State, either by voluntary submission or subjugation. However much
a State might desire peace and neutrality, its own will could not elect.
The scheme demanded the absolute sovereignty of the Government of the
United States, or, in other words, the extinguishment of the
independence and sovereignty of the State. Human actions are not only
the fruit of the ruling motive, but they are also the evidence of the
existence of that motive. Thus, when we see the Governor of the State of
Missouri offering such generous terms to the government of the United
States in order to preserve peace and neutrality, and the latter,
rejecting them, avow its intention to do its will with the authorities,
the property, and the citizens of the State, and proceed with military
force to do it, its actions are both the evidence and the fruit of its
theory. These measures were revolutionary in the extreme. They involved
the entire subversion of those principles on which the American Union
was founded, and of the compact or Constitution of that Union. The
Government of the United States, in the hands of those who wielded its
authority, was made the bloody instrument to establish these usurpations
on the ruins of the crushed hopes of mankind for permanent freedom under
constitutional government. For the justness and truthfulness of these
allegations I appeal to the impartial and sober judgment of posterity.
The volunteers who were assembled under this proclamation of Governor
Jackson, of June 13th, had few arms except their squirrel-rifles and
shot-guns, and could scarcely be said to have any military equipments.
The brigadier-generals who were appointed were assigned to geographical
divisions, and, with such men as they could collect, reported in
obedience to their orders at Booneville and Lexington. On the 20th of
June, 1861, General Lyon and Colonel F. P. Blair, with an estimated
force of seven thousand well-armed troops, having eight pieces of
artillery, ascended the Missouri River, and debarked about five miles
below Booneville. To oppose them, the Missourians had there about eight
hundred men, poorly armed, without a piece of artillery, and but little
ammunition. With courage which must be commended at the expense of their
discretion, they resolved to engage the enemy, and, after a combat of an
hour and a half or more, retired, having inflicted heavy loss upon the
enemy, and suffering but little themselves. This first skirmish between
the Federal troops and the Missouri militia inspired confidence in their
fellow-citizens, and checked the contemptuous terms in which the militia
had been spoken of by the enemy. Governor Jackson, with some two hundred
and fifty to three hundred of the militia engaged in the action at
Booneville, started toward the southwestern portion of the State. He
marched in the direction of a place called Cole Camp, and, when within
twelve or fifteen miles of it, learned that a force of seven hundred to
one thousand of the enemy had been sent to that point by General Lyon
and Colonel Blair, with the view of intercepting his retreat. The
design, however, was frustrated by an expedition consisting of about
three hundred and fifty men, commanded by Colonel O'Kane, who had
assembled them in a very few hours in the neighborhood south of the
enemy's camp. There were no pickets out except in the neighborhood of
Jackson's forces, and Colonel O'Kane surprised the enemy where they were
asleep in two large barns. The attack was made at daybreak, the enemy
routed after suffering the heavy loss of two hundred and six killed and
more wounded, and more than a hundred prisoners. Three hundred and
sixty-two muskets with bayonets were captured. The Missourians lost four
killed and fifteen or twenty wounded.
General Price, with a view to draw his army from the baseline of the
enemy, the Missouri River, ordered his troops to the southwestern
portion of the State. The column from Lexington marched without
transportation, without tents or blankets, and relied for subsistence on
the country through which it passed, being in the mean time closely
pursued by the enemy. The movement was successfully made, and a junction
effected in Cedar County with the forces present with Governor Jackson.
The total when assembled was about thirty-six hundred men.
"This, then, was the patriot army of Missouri. It was a
heterogeneous mass representing every condition of Western life.
There were the old and young, the rich and poor, the grave and
gay, the planter and laborer, the farmer and clerk, the hunter
and boatman, the merchant and woodsman. At least five hundred of
these men were entirely unarmed. Many had only the common rifle
and shot-gun. None were provided with cartridges or canteens.
They had eight pieces of cannon, but no shells, and very few
solid shot, or rounds of grape and canister.
"Rude and almost incredible devices were made to supply these
wants: trace-chains, iron rods, hard pebbles, and smooth stones
were substituted for shot; and evidence of the effect of such
rough missiles was to be given in the next encounter with the
enemy."[186]
Governor Jackson continued his march toward southwestern Missouri. He
had received reliable intelligence that he was pursued by General Lyon
from the northeast, and by Lane and Sturgis from the northwest, their
supposed object being to form a junction in his rear, and he
subsequently learned that a column numbering three thousand had been
sent out from St. Louis to intercept his retreat, and had arrived at the
town of Carthage, immediately in his front. These undisciplined, poorly
armed Missourians were, therefore, in a position which would have
appalled less heroic men--a large hostile force in their rear, and
another, nearly equal in numbers to their own, disputing their passage
in front. They, however, cheerfully moved forward, attacked the enemy in
position, and, after a severe engagement, routed him, pursued him to a
second position, from which he was again driven, falling back to
Carthage, where he made his last stand, and, upon being driven from
which, as was subsequently ascertained, continued his retreat all night.
The killed and wounded of the enemy, left along the route of his retreat
over a space of ten miles, were estimated at from one hundred and fifty
to two hundred killed, and from three to four hundred wounded. Several
hundred muskets were captured, and the Missourians were better prepared
for future conflicts. Our loss was between forty and fifty killed, and
from one hundred and twenty-five to one hundred and fifty wounded.[187]
If any shall ask why I have entered into such details of engagements
where the forces were comparatively so small, and the results so little
affected the final issue of the war, the reply is, that such heroism and
self-sacrifice as these undisciplined, partially armed, unequipped men
displayed against superior numbers, possessed of all the appliances of
war, claim special notice as bearing evidence not only of the virtue of
the men, but the sanctity of the cause which could so inspire them.
Unsupported, save by the consciousness of a just cause, without other
sympathy than that which the Confederate States fully gave, despising
the plea of helplessness, and defying the threats of a powerful
Government to crush her, Missouri, without arms or other military
preparation, took up the gauntlet thrown at her feet, and dared to make
war in defense of the laws and liberties of her people.
My motive for promptly removing the seat of government, after authority
was given by the Provisional Congress, has been heretofore stated, but
proximity to the main army of the enemy, and the flanking attacks by
which the new capital was threatened, did not diminish the anxiety,
which had been felt before removal from Montgomery, in regard to affairs
in Missouri, the "far West" of the Confederacy.
The State, which forty years before had been admitted to the Union,
against sectional resistance to the right guaranteed by the
Constitution, and specifically denominated in the treaty for the
acquisition of Louisiana, now, because her Governor refused to furnish
troops for the unconstitutional purpose of coercing States, became the
subject of special hostility and the object of extraordinary efforts for
her subjugation.
The little which it would have been possible for the Confederacy to do
to promote her military efficiency was diminished by the anomalous
condition in which the State troops remained until some time in the
second year of the war. A strange misapprehension led to unreasonable
complaints, under the supposition that Missouri was generally neglected,
and her favorite officer, General Price, was not accorded a commission
corresponding to his merit and the wishes of the people. It is due to
that gallant soldier and true patriot, that it should here be stated
that he was not a party to any such complaints, knew they were
unfounded, and realized that his wishes for the defense of Missouri were
fully reciprocated by the Executive of the Confederacy; all of which was
manifested in the correspondence between us, before Missouri had
tendered any troops to the Confederate States. It was his statement of
the difficulties and embarrassments which surrounded him that caused me
to write to the Governor of Missouri on the 21st of December, 1861,
stating to him my anxiety to have the troops of Missouri tendered and
organized into brigades and divisions, so that they might be rendered
more effective, and we be better able to provide for them by the
appointment of general officers and otherwise.
For a full understanding of the nature and degree of the complaints and
embarrassments referred to, I here insert my reply to letters sent to me
by the Hon. John B. Clarke, M.C., of Missouri:
Richmond, Virginia, _January 8, 1862_.
"Hon. John B. Clarke, _Richmond_, _Virginia_.
"Sir: I have received the two letters from Governor Jackson sent
by you this day. The Governor speaks of delay by the authorities
of Richmond, and neglect of the interests of Missouri, and
expresses the hope that he has said enough to be well understood
by me.
"When I remember that he wrote in reply to my call upon him to
hasten the tender of Missouri troops, so that they should be put
upon the footing of those of other States, and with a knowledge
that as militia of the State I had no power to organize or
appoint commanders for them, and that it was his duty to attend
to their wants, but that I had sent an agent of the Confederate
Government as far as practicable to furnish the necessary
supplies to the militia of Missouri actually in service, I can
only say, I hope he is not understood by me. It is but a short
time since, in a conversation of hours, I fully explained to you
the ease so far as I am connected with it, and there is nothing
for me to add to what you then seemed to consider conclusive.
"Very respectfully yours,
"Jefferson Davis."
As is usually the case when citizens are called from their ordinary
pursuits for the purposes of war, the people of Missouri did not then
realize the value of preparation in camp, and were reluctant to enroll
themselves for long periods. The State, even less than the Confederate
Government, could not supply them with the arms, munitions, and equipage
necessary for campaigns and battles and sieges. Under all these
disadvantages, it is a matter of well-grounded surprise that they were
able to achieve so much. The Missourians who fought at Vicksburg, and
who, after that long, trying, and disastrous siege, asked, when in the
camp of parolled prisoners, not if they could get a furlough, not if
they might go home when released, but how soon they might hope to be
exchanged and resume their places in the line of battle, show of what
metal the Missouri troops were made, and of what they were capable when
tempered in the fiery furnace of war.
I can recall few scenes during the war which impressed me more deeply
than the spirit of those worn prisoners waiting for the exchange that
would again permit them to take the hazards of battle for the cause of
their country.
This memory leads me to recur with regret to my inability, in the
beginning of the war, to convince the Governor of Missouri of the
necessity for thorough organization and the enrollment of men for long
terms, instead of loose combinations of militia for periods always short
and sometimes uncertain.
General Price possessed an extraordinary power to secure the personal
attachment of his troops, and to inspire them with a confidence which
served in no small degree as a substitute for more thorough training.
His own enthusiasm and entire devotion to the cause he served were
infused throughout his followers, and made them all their country's own.
To Lord Wellington has been attributed the remark that he did not want
zeal in a soldier, and to Napoleon the apothegm that Providence is on
the side of the heavy battalions. Zeal was oftentimes our main
dependence, and on many a hard-fought field served to drive our small
battalions, like a wedge, through the serried ranks of the enemy.
The Confederate States, yet in their infancy, and themselves engaged in
an unequal struggle for existence, by act of their Congress declared
that, if Missouri was engaged in repelling a lawless invasion of her
territory by armed forces, it was their right and duty to aid the people
and government of said State in resisting such invasion, and in securing
the means and the opportunity of expressing their will upon all
questions affecting their rights and liberties. With small means,
compared to their wants, the Confederate Congress, on the 6th of August,
appropriated one million dollars "to aid the people of the State of
Missouri in the effort to maintain, within their own limits, the
constitutional liberty which it is the purpose of the Confederate States
in the existing war to vindicate," etc.
In the next battle after that of Carthage, which has been noticed,
Missourians were no longer to be alone. General McCullough, commanding a
brigade of Confederate troops, marched from Arkansas to make a junction
with General Price, then threatened with an attack by a large force of
the enemy under General Lyon, which was concentrated near Springfield,
Missouri. The battle was fiercely contested, but finally won by our
troops. In this action General Lyon was killed while gallantly
endeavoring to rally his discomfited troops, and lead them to the
charge. While we can not forget the cruel wrongs he had inflicted and
sought still further to impose upon an unoffending people, we must
accord to him the redeeming virtue of courage, and recognize his ability
as a soldier. On this occasion General Price exhibited in two instances
the magnanimity, self-denial, and humanity which ever characterized him.
General McCulloch claimed the right to command as an officer of the
Confederate States Army. General Price, though he ranked him by a grade,
replied that "he was not fighting for distinction, but for the defense
of the liberties of his countrymen, and that it mattered but little what
position he occupied. He said he was ready to surrender not only the
command, but his life, as a sacrifice to the cause."[188] He surrendered
the command and took a subordinate position, though "he felt assured of
victory."
The second instance was an act of humanity to his bitterest enemy.
General Lyon's "surgeon came in for his body, under a flag of truce,
after the close of the battle, and General Price sent it in his own
wagon. But the enemy, in his flight, left the body unshrouded in
Springfield. The next morning, August 11th, Lieutenant-Colonel Gustavus
Elgin and Colonel R. H. Musser, two members of Brigadier General
Clarke's staff, caused the body to be properly prepared for
burial."[189]
After the battle of Springfield, General McCulloch returned with his
brigade to his former position in Arkansas. John C. Fremont had been
appointed a general, and assigned to the command made vacant by the
death of General Lyon. He signalized his entrance upon the duty by a
proclamation, confiscating the estates and slave property of "rebels."
"On the 10th of September, when General Price was about to go into camp,
he learned that a detachment of Federal troops was marching from
Lexington to Warrensburg, to seize the funds of the bank in that place,
and to arrest and plunder the citizens of Johnson County, in accordance
with General Fremont's proclamation and instructions."[190] General
Price resumed his march, and, pressing rapidly forward with his mounted
men, arrived about daybreak at Warrensburg, where he learned that the
enemy had hastily fled about midnight. He then decided to move with his
whole force against Lexington. He found the enemy in strong
intrenchments, and well supplied with artillery.
The place was stubbornly defended. The siege proper commenced on the
18th of September, 1861, and with varying fortunes. Fierce combats
continued through that day and the next. On the morning of the 20th
General Price ordered a number of bales of hemp to be transported to the
point from which the advance of his troops had been repeatedly repulsed.
They were ranged in a line for a breastwork, and, when rolled before the
men as they advanced, formed a moving rampart which was proof against
shot, and only to be overcome by a sortie in force, which the enemy did
not dare to make. On came the hempen breastworks, while Price's
artillery continued an effective fire. In the afternoon of the 20th the
enemy hung out a white flag, upon which General Price ordered a
cessation of firing, and sent to ascertain the object of the signal. The
Federal forces surrendered as prisoners of war, to the number of
thirty-five hundred; also, seven pieces of artillery, over three
thousand stand of muskets, a considerable number of sabres, a valuable
supply of ammunition, a number of horses, a large amount of commissary's
stores, and other property. Here were also recovered the great seal of
the State and the public records, and about nine hundred thousand
dollars of which the Bank of Lexington had been robbed. General Price
caused the money to be at once returned to the bank.
After the first day of the siege of Lexington, General Price learned
that Lane and Montgomery, from Kansas, with about four thousand men, and
General Sturgis, with fifteen hundred cavalry, were on the north side of
the Missouri River, advancing to reënforce the garrison at Lexington. At
the same time, and from the same direction, Colonel Saunders, with about
twenty-five hundred Missourians, was coming to the aid of General Price.
General D. R. Atchison, who had long been a United States Senator from
Missouri, and at the time of his resignation was President _pro tem._ of
the Senate, was sent by General Price to meet the command of Colonel
Saunders and hasten them forward. He joined them on the north bank of
the river, and, after all but about five hundred had been ferried over,
General Atchison still remaining with these, they were unexpectedly
attacked by the force from Kansas. The ground was densely wooded, and
partially covered with water. The Missourians, led and cheered by one
they had so long and deservedly honored, met the assault with such
determination, and fighting with the skill of woodsmen and hunters, that
they put the enemy to rout, pursuing him for a distance of ten miles,
and inflicting heavy loss upon him, while that of the Missourians was
but five killed and twenty wounded.
The expedient of the bales of hemp was a brilliant conception, not
unlike that which made Tarik, the Saracen warrior, immortal, and gave
his name to the northern pillar of Hercules.
The victories in Missouri which have been noticed, and which so far
exceeded what might have been expected from the small forces by which
they were achieved, had caused an augmentation of the enemy's troops to
an estimated number of seventy thousand. Against these the army of
General Price could not hope successfully to contend; he therefore
retired toward the southwestern part of the State.
The want of supplies and transportation compelled him to disband a
portion of his troops; with the rest he continued his retreat to Neosho.
By proclamation of Governor Jackson, the Legislature had assembled at
this place, and had passed the ordinance of secession. If other evidence
were wanting, the fact that, without governmental aid, without a
military chest, without munitions of war, the campaign which has been
described had so far been carried on by the voluntary service of the
citizens, and the free-will offerings of the people, must be conclusive
that the ordinance of secession was the expression of the popular will
of Missouri.
The forces of Missouri again formed a junction with the Confederate
troops under General McCulloch, and together they moved to Pineville, in
McDonald County.
[Footnote 182: See "Confederate First and Second Missouri Brigades,"
Bevier, pp. 24-26.]
[Footnote 183: See "Life of General Wm. S. Harney," by L. U. Reavis, p.
373.]
[Footnote 184: See Ibid., p. 373.]
[Footnote 185: See "Life of General Wm. S. Harney," by L. U. Reavis, p.
72]
[Footnote 186: Bevier, pp. 35, 36.]
[Footnote 187: Bevier, pp. 86-88.]
[Footnote 188: Bevier, p. 41.]
[Footnote 189: Ibid., pp. 49, 50.]
[Footnote 190: Ibid., p. 54.]
CHAPTER X.
Brigadier-General Henry A. Wise takes command in Western
Virginia.--His Movements.--Advance of General John B.
Floyd.--Defeats the Enemy.--Attacked by Rosecrans.--Controversy
between Wise and Floyd.--General R. E. Lee takes the Command in
West Virginia.--Movement on Cheat Mountain.--Its
Failure.--Further Operations.--Winter Quarters.--Lee sent to
South Carolina.
In June, 1861, Brigadier-General Henry A. Wise, who was well and
favorably known to the people of the Kanawha Valley, in his enthusiasm
for their defence and confidence in his ability to rally them to resist
the threatened invasion of that region, offered his services for that
purpose. With a small command, which was to serve as a nucleus to the
force he hoped to raise, he was sent thither. His success was as great
as could have been reasonably expected, and, after the small but
brilliant affair on Scary Creek, he prepared to give battle to the enemy
then advancing up the Kanawha Valley under General Cox; but the defeat
of our forces at Laurel Hill, which has been already noticed, uncovered
his right flank and endangered his rear, which was open to approach by
several roads; he therefore fell back to Lewisburg.
Brigadier-General John B. Floyd had in the mean time raised a brigade in
southwestern Virginia, and advanced to the support of General Wise.
Unfortunately, there was a want of concert between these two officers,
which prevented their entire coöperation. General Floyd engaged the
enemy in several brilliant skirmishes, when he found that his right was
threatened by a force which was approaching on that flank, with the
apparent purpose of crossing the Gauley River at the Carnifex Ferry so
as to strike his line of communication with Lewisburg. He crossed the
river with his brigade and a part of Wise's cavalry, leaving that
general to check any advance which Cox might make. General Floyd's
movement was as successful as it was daring; he met the enemy's forces,
defeated and dispersed them, but the want of coöperation between
Generals Wise and Floyd prevented a movement against General Cox.
Floyd intrenched himself on the Gauley, in a position of great natural
strength, but the small force under his command and the fact that he was
separated from that of General Wise probably induced General Rosecrans,
commanding the enemy's forces in the Cheat Mountain, to advance and
assail the position. Though his numbers were vastly superior, the attack
was a failure; after a heavy loss on the part of the enemy, he fell back
after nightfall. During the night Floyd crossed the river and withdrew
to the camp of General Wise, to form a junction of the two forces, and
together they fell back toward Sewell's Mountain. The unfortunate
controversy between these officers, which had prevented coöperation in
the past, grew more bitter, and each complained of the other in terms
that left little hope of future harmony; and this want of coöperation
led to confusion, and threatened further reverses.
General Loring had succeeded General Garnett, and was in command of the
remnant of the force defeated at Laurel Hill. His headquarters were at
Valley Mountain. General R. E. Lee, on duty at Richmond, aiding the
President in the general direction of military affairs, was now ordered
to proceed to western Virginia. It was hoped that, by his military skill
and deserved influence over men, he would be able to retrieve the
disaster we had suffered at Laurel Hill, and, by combining all our
forces in western Virginia on one plan of operations, give protection to
that portion of our country. Such reënforcement as could be furnished
had been sent to Valley Mountain, the headquarters of General Loring.
Thither General Lee promptly proceeded. The duty to which he was
assigned was certainly not attractive by the glory to be gained or the
ease to be enjoyed, but Lee made no question as to personal preference,
and, whatever were his wishes, they were subordinate to what was
believed to be the public interest.
The season had been one of extraordinary rains, rendering the
mountain-roads, ordinarily difficult, almost impassable. With
unfaltering purpose and energy, he crossed the Alleghany Mountains, and,
learning that the main encampment of the enemy was in the valley of
Tygart River and Elk Run, Randolph County, he directed his march toward
that position. The troops under the immediate command of
Brigadier-General H. R. Jackson, together with those under
Brigadier-General Loring, were about thirty-five hundred men. The force
of the enemy, as far as it could be ascertained, was very much greater.
In the detached work at Cheat Mountain Pass, we learned by a
provision-return, found upon the person of a captured staff-officer,
that there were three thousand men, being but a fraction less than our
whole force. After a careful reconnaissance, and a full conference with
General Loring, Lee decided to attack the main encampment of the enemy
by a movement of his troops converging upon the valley from three
directions. The colonel of one of his regiments, who had reconnoitered
the position of the works at Cheat Mountain Pass, reported that it was
feasible to turn it and carry it by assault, and he was assigned to that
duty. General Lee ordered other portions of his force to take position
on the spurs overlooking the enemy's main encampment, while he led three
regiments to the height below and nearest to the position of the enemy.
The instructions were that the officer sent to turn the position at
Cheat Mountain Pass should approach it at early dawn, and immediately
open fire, which was to be the signal for the concerted attack by the
rest of the force. It rained heavily during the day, and, after a
toilsome night-march, the force led by General Lee, wet, weary, hungry,
and cold, gained their position close to and overlooking the enemy's
encampment. In their march they had surprised and captured the picket,
without a gun being fired, so that no notice had been given of their
approach.
The officer who had been sent to attack the work at Cheat Mountain Pass
found on closer examination that he had been mistaken as to the
practicability of taking it by assault, and that the heavy abatis which
covered it was advanced beyond the range of his rifles. Not having
understood that his firing was to be the signal for the general attack,
and should therefore be opened, whether it would be effective or not, he
withdrew without firing a musket.
The height occupied by General Lee was shrouded in fog, and, as morning
had dawned without the expected signal, he concluded that some mishap
had befallen the force which was to make it. By a tortuous path he went
down the side of the mountain low enough to have a distinct view of the
camp. He saw the men, unconscious of the near presence of an enemy,
engaged in cleaning their arms, cooking, and other morning occupations;
then returning to his command, he explained to his senior officers what
he had seen, and expressed his belief that, though the plan of attack
had failed, the troops there with him could surprise and capture the
camp. The officers withdrew, conferred with their men, and reported to
the General that the troops were not in condition for the enterprise. As
the fog was then lifting, and they would soon be revealed to the enemy
below, whose numbers were vastly superior to his own, he withdrew his
command by the route they had come, and without observation returned to
his camp. Beyond some skirmishes with outposts and reconnoitering
parties, our troops had not been engaged, and in these affairs our
reported loss was comparatively small.
Colonel John A. Washington, aide-de-camp of General Lee, was killed,
while making a reconnaissance, by a party in ambuscade. The loss of this
valuable and accomplished officer was much regretted by his general and
all others who knew him.
The report that Rosecrans and Cox had united their commands and were
advancing upon Wise and Floyd caused General Lee to move at once to
their support. He found General Floyd at Meadow Bluff and General Wise
at Sewell Mountain. The latter position being very favorable for
defense, the troops were concentrated there to await the threatened
attack by Rosecrans, who advanced and took position in sight of General
Lee's intrenched camp, and, having remained there for more than a week,
withdrew in the night without attempting the expected attack.
The weak condition of his artillery-horses and the bad state of the
roads, made worse by the retiring army, prevented General Lee from
attempting to pursue; and the approach of winter, always rigorous in
that mountain-region, closed the campaign with a small but brilliant
action in which General H. R. Jackson repelled an attack of a greatly
superior force, inflicting severe loss on the assailants, and losing but
six of his own command.
With the close of active operations, General Lee returned to Richmond,
and, though subjected to depreciatory criticism by the carpet-knights
who make campaigns on assumed hypotheses, he with characteristic
self-abnegation made no defense of himself, not even presenting an
official report of his night-march in the Cheat Mountain, but orally he
stated to me the facts which have formed the basis of this sketch. My
estimate of General Lee, my confidence in his ability, zeal, and
fidelity, rested on a foundation not to be shaken by such criticism as I
have noticed. I had no more doubt then, than after his fame had been
securely established, that, whenever he had the opportunity to prove his
worth, he would secure public appreciation. Therefore, as affairs on the
coast of South Carolina and Georgia were in an unsatisfactory condition,
he was directed to go there and take such measures for the defense,
particularly of Savannah and Charleston, as he should find needful. Lest
the newspaper attack should have created unjust and unfavorable
impressions in regard to him, I thought it desirable to write to
Governor Pickens and tell him what manner of man he was who had been
sent to South Carolina.
After the withdrawal of the Confederate army from Fairfax Court-House
and the positions which had been occupied in front of that place, a
movement was made by the enemy to cross the Potomac near Leesburg, where
we had, under the command of Brigadier General N. S. Evans, of South
Carolina, four regiments of infantry (i.e., the Thirteenth, Seventeenth,
and Eighteenth Mississippi, and the Eighth Virginia), commanded
respectively by Colonels Barksdale, Featherston, Burt, and Hunton, a
small detachment of cavalry, under Lieutenant-Colonel Jenifer, and some
pieces of artillery.
On the 21st of October the enemy commenced crossing the river at
Edwards's Ferry. A brigade was thrown over and met by the Thirteenth
Mississippi, which held them in check at the point of crossing. In the
mean time another brigade was thrown over at Ball's Bluff, and, as
troops continued to cross at that point, where the Eighth Virginia had
engaged them, General Evans ordered up the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Mississippi, and the three regiments made such an impetuous attack as to
drive back the enemy to the bluff, and their leader, Colonel Baker,
having fallen, a panic seemed to seize the command, so that they rushed
headlong down the bluff, and crowded into the flat-boats, which were
their means of transportation, in such numbers that they were sunk, and
many of the foe were drowned in their attempt to swim the river. The
loss of the enemy, prisoners included, exceeded the number of our troops
in the action. The Confederate loss was reported to be thirty-six
killed, one hundred and seventeen wounded, and two captured; total, one
hundred and fifty-five. Among the killed was the gallant Colonel Burt, a
much-respected citizen of Mississippi, where he had held high civil
station, and where his death was long deplored.
CHAPTER XI.
The Issue.--The American Idea of Government.--Who was
responsible for the War?--Situation of Virginia.--Concentration
of the Enemy against Richmond.--Our Difficulty.--Unjust
Criticisms.--The Facts set forth.--Organization of the
Army.--Conference at Fairfax Court-House.--Inaction of the
Army.--Capture of Romney.--Troops ordered to retire to the
Valley.--Discipline.--General Johnston regards his Position as
unsafe.--The First Policy.--Retreat of General Johnston.--The
Plans of the Enemy.--Our Strength magnified by the
Enemy.--Stores destroyed.--The Trent Affair.
It has been shown that the Southern States, by their representatives in
the two Houses of Congress, consistently endeavored even to the last
day, when they were by their constituents permitted to remain in the
halls of Federal legislation, to maintain the Constitution, and preserve
the Union which the States had by their independent action ordained and
established. On the other hand, proof has been adduced to show that the
Northern States, by a majority of their representatives in the Congress,
had persisted in agitation injurious to the welfare and tranquillity of
the Southern States, and at the last moment had refused to make any
concessions, or to offer any guarantees to check the current toward
secession of the complaining States, whose love for the Union rendered
them willing to accept less than justice should have readily accorded.
The issue was then presented between submission to empire of the North,
or the severance of those ties consecrated by many memories, and
strengthened by those habits which render every people reluctant to
sever long-existing associations.
The authorities heretofore cited have, I must believe, conclusively
shown that the question of changing their government was one that the
States had the power to decide by virtue of the unalienable right
announced in the Declaration of Independence, and which had been proudly
denominated the American idea of government. The hope and the wish of
the people of the South were that the disagreeable necessity of
separation would be peacefully met, and be followed by such commercial
regulations as would least disturb the prosperity and future intercourse
of the separated States. Every step taken by the Confederate Government
was directed toward that end. The separation of the States having been
decided on, it was sought to effect it in such manner as would be just
to the parties concerned, and preserve as far as possible, under
separate governments, the fraternal and mutually beneficial relations
which had existed between the States when united, and which it was the
object of their compact of union to secure. To all the proofs heretofore
offered I confidently refer for the establishment of the fact that
whatever of bloodshed, of devastation, or shock to republican government
has resulted from the war, is to be charged to the Northern States. The
invasions of the Southern States, for purposes of coercion, were in
violation of the written Constitution, and the attempt to subjugate
sovereign States, under the pretext of "preserving the Union," was alike
offensive to law, to good morals, and the proper use of language. The
Union was the voluntary junction of free and independent States; to
subjugate any of them was to destroy constituent parts, and necessarily,
therefore, must be the destruction of the Union itself.
That the Southern States were satisfied with a Federal Government such
as their fathers had formed, was shown by their adoption of a
Constitution so little differing from the instrument of 1787. It was
against the violations of that instrument, and usurpations offensive to
their pride and injurious to their interests, that they remonstrated,
argued, and finally appealed to the inherent, undelegated power of the
States to judge of their wrongs, and of the "mode and measure of
redress."
After many years of fruitless effort to secure from their Northern
associates a faithful observance of the compact of union; after its
conditions had been deliberately and persistently broken, and the signs
of the times indicated further and more ruthless violations of their
rights as equals in the Union, the Southern States, preferring a
peaceful separation to continuance in a hostile Union, decided to
exercise their sovereign right to withdraw from an association which had
failed to answer the ends for which it was formed. It has been shown how
they endeavored to effect the change with strict regard to the
principles controlling a dissolution of partnership, and how earnestly
they desired to remain in friendly relations to the Northern States, and
how all their overtures were rejected. When they pleaded for peace, the
United States Government deceptively delayed to answer, while making
ready for war. To the calm judgment of mankind is submitted the
question, Who was responsible for the war between the States?
Virginia, whose history, from the beginning of the Revolution of 1776,
had been a long course of sacrifices for the benefit of her sister
States, and for the preservation of the Union she had mainly contributed
to establish, clung to it with the devotion of a mother. It has been
shown how her efforts to check dissolution were persisted in when the
aggrieved were hopeless and the aggressors reckless, and how her
mediations were rejected in the "Peace Congress," which on her motion
had been assembled. Sorrowing over the failure of this, her blessed
though unsuccessful attempt to preserve the Union _of the Constitution_,
she was not permitted to mourn as a neutral, but was required by the
United States Government to choose between furnishing troops to
subjugate her Southern sisters or the reclamation of the grants she had
made to the Federal Government when she became a member of the Union.
The first was a violation of the letter and the spirit of the
Constitution; the second was a reserved right. The voice of Henry called
to her from the ground; the spirits of Washington and Jefferson moved
among her people.
There was but one course consistent with her stainless reputation and
often-declared tenets, as to the liberties of her people, which she
could have adopted. As in 1776, reluctantly she bowed to the necessity
of separation from the Crown, so in 1861 the ordinance of secession was
adopted. Having exhausted all other means, she took the last resort,
and, if for this she was selected as the first object of assault,
"methinks the punishment exceedeth the offense."
The large resources and full preparation of the United States Government
enabled it to girt Virginia as with a wall of fire. It has been shown
that she was threatened from the east, from the north, and from the
west. The capital of the State and of the Confederacy, Richmond, was the
objective point, and on this the march of three columns concentrated. On
the east, the advance of the enemy was on several occasions feasible,
when we consider the number of his forces at and about Fortress Monroe,
in comparison with the small means retained for the defense of the
capital. On the north, the most formidable army of the enemy was
assembled; to oppose it we had the comparatively small Army of the
Potomac. This being regarded as the line on which the greatest danger
was apprehended, our efforts were mostly directed toward giving it the
requisite strength. Troops, as rapidly as they could be raised and
armed, were sent forward for that purpose. From the beginning to the
close of the war, we mainly relied for the defense of the capital on its
aged citizens, boys too young for service, and the civil employees of
the executive departments. On several occasions these were called out to
resist an attack. They answered with alacrity, and always bore
themselves gallantly, more than once repelling the enemy in the open
field. Had it been practicable to do so, it would surely have been
proper to keep a large force in reserve for the defense of the capital,
so often and vauntingly proclaimed to be the object of the enemy's
campaign. Perhaps the propriety of such provision gave currency and
credence to rumors that we had a large force at Richmond. This even led
to the application for a detachment from it to reënforce our Army of the
Potomac, which caused me to write to General J. E. Johnston at Manassas,
Virginia, on September 5, 1861, as follows:
"You have again been deceived as to the forces here. We never
have had anything near to twenty thousand men, and have now but
little over one fourth of that number.... Since the date of your
glorious victory the enemy have grown weaker in numbers, and far
weaker in the character of their troops, so that I had felt it
remained with us to decide whether another battle should soon be
fought or not. Your remark indicates a different opinion.... I
wish I could send additional force to occupy Loudon, but my
means are short of the wants of each division I am laboring to
protect. One ship-load of small-arms would enable me to answer
all demands, but vainly have I hoped and waited."
Then, there, and everywhere, our difficulty was the want of arms and
munitions of war. Lamentable cries came to us from the West for the
supplies which would enable patriotic citizens to defend their homes.
The resource upon which the people had so confidently relied, the
private arms in the hands of citizens, proved a sad delusion, and
elsewhere it has been shown how deficient we were in ammunition, or the
means of providing it. The simple fact was, the country had gone to war
without counting the cost.
Undue elation over our victory at Manassas was followed by
dissatisfaction at what was termed the failure to reap the fruits of
victory; and rumors, for which there could be no better excuse than
partisan zeal, were circulated that the heroes of the hour were
prevented from reaping the fruits of the victory by the interference of
the President. Naturally there followed another rumor, that the inaction
of the victorious army, to which reënforcements continued to be sent,
was due to the policy of the President; and he also was held
responsible, and with more apparent justice, for the failure to organize
the troops of the several States, as the law contemplated, into brigades
and divisions composed of the soldiers of each.
Though these unjust criticisms weakened the power of the Government to
meet its present and provide for its future necessities, I bore them in
silence, lest to vindicate myself should injure the public service by
turning the public censure to the generals on whom the hopes of the
country rested. That motive no longer exists; and, to justify the faith
of those who, without a defense continued to uphold my hands, I propose
to set forth the facts by correspondence and otherwise. So far as, in
doing this, blame shall be transferred from me to others, it will be the
incident, not the design, as it would be most gratifying to me only to
notice for praise each and all who wore the gray.
The fiction of my having prevented the pursuit of the enemy after the
victory of Manassas was exploded after it had acquired an authoritative
and semi-official form in the manner and for the reasons heretofore set
forth. It only remains, therefore, to notice the other points indicated
above:
First, the organization of the army.
Disease and discontent are known to be the attendants of armies lying
unemployed in camps, especially, as in our case, when the troops were
composed of citizens called from their homes under the idea of a
pressing necessity, and with the hope of soon returning to them.
Our citizen soldiers were a powerful political element, and their
correspondence, finding its way to the people through the press and to
the halls of Congress by direct communication with the members, was
felt, by its influence both upon public opinion and general legislation.
Members of Congress, and notably the Vice-President, contended that men
should be allowed to go home and attend to their private affairs while
there were no active operations, and that there was no doubt but that
they would return whenever there was to be a battle. The experience of
war soon taught our people the absurdity of such ideas, and before its
close probably none would have uttered them.
There were very many men out of the army who were anxious to enter it,
but for whom we had not arms. This gave rise to the remark, more
humorous than profound, that we "stood around the camps with clubs to
keep one set in and an other set out." Had this been true, it was
certainly justifiable to refuse to exchange a trained man for a recruit.
All who have seen service know that one old soldier is, in campaign,
equal to several who have everything of military life to learn.
A marked characteristic of the Southern people was individuality, and
time was needful to teach them that the terrible machine, a disciplined
army, must be made of men who had surrendered their freedom of will. The
most distinguished of our citizens were not the slowest to learn the
lesson, and perhaps no army ever more thoroughly knew it than did that
which Lee led into Pennsylvania, and none ever had a leader who in his
own conduct better illustrated the lesson.
Our largest army in 1861 was that of the Potomac. It had been formed by
the junction of the forces under General J. E. Johnston with those under
General P. G. T. Beauregard, with such additions as could be hurriedly
sent forward to meet the enemy on the field of Manassas. They were
combined into brigades and divisions as pressing exigencies required.
By the act of February 28, 1861, the President was authorized to receive
companies, battalions, and regiments to form a part of the provisional
army of the Confederate States, and, with the advice and consent of
Congress, to appoint general officers for them; and by the act of March
6th the President was to apportion the staff and general officers among
the respective States from which the volunteers were received. It will
thus be seen that the States generously surrendered their right to
preserve for those volunteers the character of State troops and to
appoint general officers when furnishing a sufficient number of
regiments to require such grade for their command; but, in giving their
volunteers to form the provisional army of the Confederacy, it was
distinctly suggested that the general officers should be so appointed as
to make a just apportionment among the States furnishing the troops.
During the repose which followed the battle of Manassas, it was deemed
proper that the regiments of the different States should be assembled in
brigades together, and, as far as consistent with the public service,
that the spirit of the law should be complied with by the assignment of
brigadier-generals of the same State from which the troops were drawn.
Instructions to that end were therefore given, and again and again
repeated, but were for a long time only partially complied with, until
the delay formed the basis of the argument that those who had by
association become thoroughly acquainted would more advantageously be
left united. In the mean time, frequent complaints came to me from the
army, of unjust discrimination, the law being executed in regard to the
troops of some States but not of others, and of serious discontent
arising therefrom.
The duty to obey the law was imperative, and neither the Executive nor
the officers of the army had any right to question its propriety. I,
however, considered the policy of that law wise, and was not surprised
when it was stated to me that the persistent obstruction to its
execution was repressing the spirit to volunteer in places to which
complaints of such supposed favoritism had been transmitted.
About the 1st of October, at the request of General Johnston, I went to
his headquarters, at Fairfax Court-House, for the purpose of conference.
At the time of this visit to the army, the attention of the general
officers, who then met me in conference, was called to the obligation
created by law to organize the troops, when the numbers tendered by any
State permitted it, into brigades and divisions composed of the
regiments, battalions, or companies of such State, and to assign general
and staff officers in the ratio of the troops thus received. After my
return to the capital, the importance of the subject weighed so heavily
upon me as to lead to correspondence with the generals, which will be
best understood by the following extracts from my letters to them--which
are here appended:
"Major-General G. W. Smith, _Army of Potomac_.
"... How have you progressed in the solution of the problem I
left--the organization of the troops with reference to the
States, and term of service? If the volunteers continue their
complaints that they are commanded by strangers and do not get
justice, and that they are kept in camp to die when reported for
hospital by the surgeon, we shall soon feel a reaction in the
matter of volunteering. Already I have been much pressed on both
subjects, and have answered by promising that the generals would
give due attention, and, I hoped, make satisfactory changes. The
authority to organize regiments into brigades and the latter
into divisions is by law conferred only on the President; and I
must be able to assume responsibility of the action taken by
whomsoever acts for me in that regard. By reference to the law,
you will see that, in surrendering the sole power to appoint
general officers, it was nevertheless designed, as far as should
be found consistent, to keep up the State relation of troops and
generals. Kentucky has a brigadier, but not a brigade; she has,
however, a regiment--that regiment and brigadier might be
associated together. Louisiana had regiments enough to form a
brigade, but no brigadier in either corps; all of the regiments
were sent to that corps commanded by a Louisiana general.
Georgia has regiments now organized into two brigades; she has
on duty with that army two brigadiers, but one of them serves
with other troops. Mississippi troops were scattered as if the
State were unknown. Brigadier-General Clark was sent to remove a
growing dissatisfaction, but, though the State had nine
regiments there, he (Clark) was put in command of a post and
depot of supplies. These nine regiments should form two
brigades. Brigadiers Clark and (as a native of Mississippi)
Whiting should be placed in command of them, and the regiments
for the war put in the army man's brigade. Both brigades should
be put in the division commanded by General Van Dorn, of
Mississippi. Thus would the spirit and intent of the law be
complied with, disagreeable complaint be spared me, and more of
content be assured under the trials to which you look forward.
It is needless to specify further. I have been able in writing
to you to speak freely, and you have no past associations to
disturb the judgment to be passed upon the views presented. I
have made and am making inquiries as to the practicability of
getting a corps of negroes for laborers to aid in the
construction of an intrenched line in rear of your present
position.
"Your remarks on the want of efficient staff-officers are
realized in all their force, and I hope, among the elements
which constitute a staff-officer for volunteers, you have duly
estimated the qualities of forbearance and urbanity. Many of the
privates are men of high social position, of scholarship and
fortune. Their pride furnishes the motive for good conduct, and,
if wounded, is turned from an instrument of good to one of great
power for evil...."
"Richmond, Virginia, _October 16, 1861_.
"General Beauregard, _Manassas, Virginia_.
"... I have thought often upon the questions of reorganization
which were submitted to you, and it has seemed to me that,
whether in view of disease, or the disappointment and suffering
of a winter cantonment on a line of defense, or of a battle to
be fought in and near your position, it was desirable to combine
the troops, by a new distribution, with as little delay as
practicable. They will be stimulated to extraordinary effort
when so organized, in that the fame of their State will be in
their keeping, and that each will feel that his immediate
commander will desire to exalt rather than diminish his
services. You pointed me to the fact that you had observed that
rule in the case of the Louisiana and Carolina troops, and you
will not fail to perceive that others find in the fact a reason
for the like disposal of them. In the hour of sickness, and the
tedium of waiting for spring, men from the same region will best
console and relieve each other. The maintenance of our cause
rests on the sentiments of the people. Letters from the camp,
complaining of inequality and harshness in the treatment of the
men, have already dulled the enthusiasm which filled our ranks
with men who by birth, fortune, education, and social position
were the equals of any officer in the land. The spirit of our
military law is manifested in the fact that the State
organization was limited to the regiment. The volunteers come in
sufficient numbers to have brigadiers, but have only colonels.
It was not then intended (is the necessary conclusion) that
those troops should be under the immediate command of officers
above the grade of colonel. The spirit of the law, then,
indicates that brigades should be larger than customary, the
general being charged with the care, the direction, the
preservation of the men, rather than the internal police."
"Richmond, Virginia, _October_ 20, 1861.
"General Beauregard, _Manassas, Virginia_.
"My Dear General:... Two rules have been applied in the
projected reorganization of the Army of the Potomac:
"1. As far as practicable, to keep regiments from the same State
together; 2. To assign generals to command the troops of their
own State. I have not overlooked the objections to each, but the
advantages are believed to outweigh the disadvantages of that
arrangement. In distributing the regiments of the several States
it would, I think, be better to place the regiments for the war
in the same brigade of the State, and assign to those brigades
the brigadiers whose services could least easily be dispensed
with. For this, among other reasons, I will mention but one: the
commission of a brigadier expires upon the breaking up of his
brigade (see the law for their appointment). Of course, I would
not for slight cause change the relations of troops and
commanders, especially where it has been long continued and
endeared by the trials of battle; but it is to be noted that the
regiment was fixed as the unit of organization, and made the
connecting link between the soldier and his home. Above that,
all was subject to the discretion of the Confederate
authorities, save the pregnant intimation in relation to the
distribution of generals among the several States. It was
generous and confiding to surrender entirely to the Confederacy
the appointment of generals, and it is the more incumbent on me
to carry out as well as may be the spirit of the volunteer
system."
"Richmond, _May 10, 1862_.
"General J. E. Johnston.
"... Your attention has been heretofore called to the law in
relation to the organization of brigades and divisions--orders
were long since given to bring the practice and the law into
conformity. Recently reports have been asked for from the
commanders of separate armies as to the composition of their
respective brigades and divisions. I have been much harassed,
and the public interest has certainly suffered, by the delay to
place the regiments of some of the States in brigades together,
it being deemed that unjust discrimination was made against
them, and also by the popular error which has existed as to the
number of brigadiers to which appointments could be specially
urged on the grounds of residence. While some have expressed
surprise at my patience when orders to you were not observed, I
have at least hoped that you would recognize the desire to aid
and sustain you, and that it would produce the corresponding
action on your part. The reasons formerly offered have one after
another disappeared, and I hope you will, as you can, proceed to
organize your troops as heretofore instructed, and that the
returns will relieve us of the uncertainty now felt as to the
number and relations of the troops, and the commands of the
officers having brigades and divisions.... I will not dwell on
the lost opportunity afforded along the line of northern
Virginia, but must call your attention to the present condition
of affairs and probable action of the enemy, if not driven from
his purpose to advance on the Fredericksburg route....
"Very truly yours,
"Jefferson Davis."
On the 26th of May General Johnston's attention was again called to the
organization of the ten Mississippi regiments into two brigades, and was
reminded that the proposition had been made to him in the previous
autumn, with an expression of my confidence that the regiments would be
more effective in battle if thus associated.
I will now proceed to notice the allegation that I was responsible for
inaction by the Army of the Potomac, in the latter part of 1861 and in
the early part of 1862. After the explosion of the fallacy that I had
prevented the pursuit of the enemy from Manassas in July, 1861, my
assailants have sought to cover their exposure by a change of time and
place, locating their story at Fairfax Court-House, and dating it in the
autumn of 1861.
When at that time and place I met General Johnston for conference, he
called in the two generals next in rank to himself, Beauregard and G. W.
Smith. The question for consideration was, What course should be adopted
for the future action of the army? and the preliminary inquiry by me was
as to the number of the troops there assembled. To my surprise and
disappointment, the effective strength was stated to be but little
greater than when it fought the battle of the 21st of the preceding
July. The frequent reënforcements which had been sent to that army in
nowise prepared me for such an announcement. To my inquiry as to what
force would be required for the contemplated advance into Maryland, the
lowest estimate made by any of them was about twice the number there
present for duty. How little I was prepared for such a condition of
things will be realized from the fact that previous suggestions by the
generals in regard to a purpose to advance into Maryland had induced me,
when I went to that conference, to take with me some drawings made by
the veteran soldier and engineer, Colonel Crozêt, of the falls of the
Potomac, to show the feasibility of crossing the river at that point.
Very little knowledge of the condition and military resources of the
country must have sufficed to show that I had no power to make such an
addition to that army without a total disregard of the safety of other
threatened positions. It only remained for me to answer that I had not
power to furnish such a number of troops; and, unless the militia
bearing their private arms should be relied on, we could not possibly
fulfill such a requisition until after the receipt of the small-arms
which we had early and constantly striven to procure from abroad, and
had for some time expected.
After I had written the foregoing, and all the succeeding chapters on
kindred subjects, a friend, in October, 1880, furnished me with a copy
of a paper relating to the conference at Fairfax Court-House, which
seems to require notice at my hands.
Therefore I break the chain of events to insert here some remarks in
regard to it.
The paper appears to have been written by General G. W. Smith, and to
have received the approval of Generals Beauregard and J. E. Johnston,
and to bear date the 31st of January, 1862.
It does not agree in some respects with my memory of what occurred, and
is not consistent with itself. It was not necessary that I should learn
in that interview the evil of inactivity. My correspondence of anterior
date might have shown that I was fully aware of it, and my suggestions
in the interview certainly did not look as if it was necessary to
impress me with the advantage of action.
In one part of the paper it is stated that the reënforcements asked for
were to be "seasoned soldiers," such as were there present, and who were
said to be in the "finest fighting condition." This, if such a
proposition had been made, would have exposed its absurdity, as well as
the loophole it offered for escape, by subsequently asserting that the
troops furnished were not up to the proposed standard.
In another part of the paper it is stated that there were hope and
expectation that, before the end of the winter, arms would be introduced
into the country, and that then we could successfully invade that of the
enemy; but this supply of arms, however abundant, could not furnish
"seasoned soldiers," and the two propositions are therefore
inconsistent. In one place it is written that "it was felt it might be
better to run the risk of almost certain destruction fighting upon the
other side of the Potomac, rather than see the gradual dying out and
deterioration of this army during a winter," etc.; but, when it was
proposed to cross into eastern Maryland on a steamer in our possession
for a partial campaign, difficulties arose like the lion in the path of
the sluggard, so that the proposition was postponed and never executed.
In like manner the other expedition in the Valley of Virginia was
achieved by an officer not of this council, General T. J. Jackson.
In one place it is written that the President stated, "At that time no
reënforcements could be furnished to the army of the character asked
for." In another place he is made to say he could not take any troops
from the points named, and, "without arms from abroad, could not
reënforce that army." Here, again, it is clear from the answer that the
proposition had been for such reënforcement as additional arms would
enable him to give. Those arms he expected to receive, barring the
dangers of the sea, and of the enemy, which obstacles alone prevented
the "positive assurance that they would be received at all."
It was, as stated, with deep regret and bitter disappointment that I
found, notwithstanding our diligent efforts to reënforce this army
before and after the battle of Manassas, that its strength had but
little increased, and that the arms of absentees and discharged men were
represented by only twenty-five hundred on hand. I can not suppose that
General Johnston could have noticed the statement that his request for
conference had set forth the object of it to be to discuss the question
of reënforcement. He would have known that in Richmond, where all the
returns were to be found, any consideration of reënforcement, by the
withdrawal of troops from existing garrisons, could best be decided.
Very little experience or a fair amount of modesty without any
experience would serve to prevent one from announcing his conclusion
that troops could be withdrawn from a place or places without knowing
how many were there, and what was the necessity for their presence.
I was at the conference by request; the confidence felt in those
officers is shown by the fact that I met them alone, and did not require
any minutes to be made of the meeting. About four months afterward a
paper was prepared to make a record of the conversation; the fact was
concealed from me, whereas, both for accuracy and frankness, it should
have been submitted to me, even if there had been nothing due to our
official relations. Twenty years after the event, I learned of this
secret report, by one party, without notice having been given to the
other, of a conversation said to have lasted two hours.
I have noticed the improbabilities and inconsistencies of the paper,
and, without remark, I submit to honorable men the concealment from me
in which it was prepared, whereby they may judge of the chances for such
co-intelligence as needs must exist between the Executive and the
commanders of armies to insure attainable success.
The position at Fairfax Court-House, though it would answer very well as
a point from which to advance, was quite unfavorable for defense; and
when I so remarked, the opinion seemed to be that to which the generals
had previously arrived. It, therefore, only remained to consider what
change of position should be made in the event of the enemy threatening
soon to advance. But in the mean time I hoped that something could be
done by detachments from the army to effect objects less difficult than
an advance against his main force, and particularly indicated the lower
part of Maryland, where a small force was said to be ravaging the
country and oppressing our friends. This, I thought, might be feasible
by the establishment of a battery near to Acquia Creek, where the
channel of the Potomac was said to be so narrow that our guns could
prevent the use of the river by the enemy's boats, and, by employing a
steamboat lying there, troops enough could be sent over some night to
defeat that force, and return before any large body could be
concentrated against them. The effect of the battery and of the
expedition, it was hoped, would be important in relieving our friends
and securing recruits from those who wished to join us. Previously,
General Johnston's attention had been called to possibilities in the
Valley of the Shenandoah, and that these and other like things were not
done, was surely due to other causes than "the policy of the
Administration," as will appear by the letters hereto annexed:
"Richmond, Virginia, _August_ 1, 1861.
"General J. E. Johnston:
"... General Lee has gone to western Virginia, and I hope may be
able to strike a decisive blow in that quarter, or, failing in
that, will be able to organize and post our troops so as to
check the enemy, after which he will return to this place.
"The movement of Banks will require your attention. It may be a
_ruse_, but, if a real movement, when your army has the
requisite strength and mobility, you will probably find an
opportunity, by a rapid movement through the passes, to strike
him in rear or flank, and thus add another to your many claims
to your country's gratitude.... We must be prompt to avail
ourselves of the weakness resulting from the exchange of the new
and less reliable forces of the enemy, for those heretofore in
service, as well as of the moral effect produced by their late
defeat....
"I am, as ever, your friend,
"Jefferson Davis."
From the correspondence which occurred after the conference at Fairfax
Court-House, I select a reply made to General Smith, who had written to
me in advocacy of the views he had then expressed about large
reënforcements to the Army of the Potomac, for an advance into Maryland.
Nothing is more common than that a general, realizing the wants of the
army with which he is serving, and the ends that might be achieved if
those wants were supplied, should overlook the necessities of others,
and accept rumors of large forces which do not exist, and assume the
absence of danger elsewhere than in his own front.
"Richmond, Virginia, _October_ 10, 1861.
"Major-General G. W. Smith, _Army of the Potomac_.
"... Your remarks about the moral effect of repressing the hope
of the volunteers for an advance are in accordance with the
painful impression made on me when, in our council, it was
revealed to me that the Army of the Potomac had been reduced to
about one half the legalized strength, and that the arms to
restore the numbers were not in depot. As I there suggested,
though you may not be able to advance into Maryland and expel
the enemy, it may be possible to keep up the spirits of your
troops by expeditions such as that particularly spoken of
against Sickles's brigade on the lower Potomac, or Banks's
above. By destroying the canal and making other rapid movements
wherever opportunity presents, to beat detachments or to destroy
lines of communication....
"Very truly, your friend,
"Jefferson Davis".
"Richmond, Virginia, _November_ 18, 1861.
"General J. E. Johnston.
"... If a large force should be landed on the Potomac below
General Holmes, with the view to turn or to attack him, the
value of the position between Dumfries and Fredericksburg will
be so great that I wish you to give to that line your personal
inspection. With a sufficient force, the enemy may be prevented
from leaving his boats, should he be able to cross the river. To
make our force available at either of the points which he may
select, it will be necessary to improve the roads connecting the
advance posts with the armies of the Potomac and of the Acquia,
as well as with each other, and to have the requisite teams to
move heavy guns with celerity....
"Very respectfully yours,
"Jefferson Davis."
In November, 1861, reports became current that the enemy were
concentrating troops west of the Valley of the Shenandoah with a view to
a descent upon it. That vigilant, enterprising, and patriotic soldier,
General T. J. Jackson, whose steadiness under fire at the first battle
of Manassas had procured for him the _sobriquet_ of "Stonewall," was
then on duty as district commander of the Shenandoah Valley.
He was a West Virginian; and, though he had not acquired the fame which
subsequently shed such luster upon his name, he possessed a
well-deserved confidence among the people of that region. Ever watchful
and daring in the discharge of any duty, he was intensely anxious to
guard his beloved mountains of Virginia. This, stimulating his devotion
to the general welfare of the Confederacy, induced him to desire to
march against the enemy, who had captured Romney. On the 20th of
November, 1861, he wrote to the War Department, proposing an expedition
to Romney, in western Virginia. It was decided to adopt his proposition,
endorsed by the commander of the department, and, further to insure
success, though not recommended in the endorsement, his old brigade,
then in the Army of the Potomac, was selected as a part of the command
with which he was to make the campaign. General Johnston remonstrated
against this transfer, and the correspondence is subjoined for a fuller
understanding of the matter:
"Headquarters, Valley District, _November_ 20, 1861.
"Hon. J. P. Benjamin, _Secretary of War_.
"Sir: I hope you will pardon me for requesting that, at once,
all the troops under General Loring be ordered to this point.
Deeply impressed with the importance of absolute secrecy
respecting military operations, I have made it a point to say
but little respecting my proposed movements in the event of
sufficient reënforcements arriving, but, since conversing with
Lieutenant-Colonel J. L. T. Preston upon his return from General
Loring, and ascertaining the disposition of the General's
forces, I venture to respectfully urge that, after concentrating
all his troops here, an attempt should be made to capture the
Federal forces at Romney. The attack on Romney would probably
induce McClellan to believe that the Army of the Potomac had
been so weakened as to justify him in making an advance on
Centreville; but, should this not induce him to advance, I do
not believe anything will during the present winter. Should the
Army of the Potomac be attacked, I would be at once prepared to
reënforce it with my present volunteer force, increased by
General Loring's. After repulsing the enemy at Manassas, let the
troops that marched on Romney return to the Valley and move
rapidly westward to the waters of the Monongahela and Little
Kanawha. Should General Kelley be defeated, and especially
should he be captured, I believe that, by a judicious
disposition of the militia, a few cavalry, and a small number of
field-pieces, no additional forces would be required for some
time in this district. I deem it of very great importance that
northwestern Virginia be occupied by Confederate troops this
winter. At present, it is to be presumed that the enemy are not
expecting an attack there, and the resources of that region
necessary for the subsistence of our troops are in greater
abundance than in almost any other season of the year. Postpone
the occupation of that section until spring, and we may expect
to find the enemy prepared for us, and the resources to which I
have referred greatly exhausted. I know that what I have
proposed will be an arduous undertaking, and can not be
accomplished without the sacrifice of much personal comfort, but
I feel that the troops will be prepared to make this sacrifice
when animated by the prospects of important results to our cause
and distinction to themselves. It may be urged, against this
plan, that the enemy will advance on Staunton or Huntersville. I
am well satisfied that such a step would but make their
destruction more certain. Again, it may be said that General
Floyd will be cut off. To avoid this, if necessary, the General
has only to fall back toward the Virginia and Tennessee
Railroad. When northwestern Virginia is occupied in force, the
Kanawha Valley, unless it be the lower part of it, must be
evacuated by the Federal forces, or otherwise their safety will
be endangered by forcing a column across from the Little Kanawha
between them and the Ohio River. Admitting that the season is
too far advanced, or that from other causes all can not be
accomplished that has been named, yet, through the blessing of
God, who has thus far so wonderfully prospered our cause, much
more may be expected from General Loring's troops, according to
this programme, than can be expected from them where they are.
If you decide to order them here, I trust that, for the purpose
of saving time, all the infantry, cavalry, and artillery will be
directed to move immediately upon the reception of the order.
The enemy, about five thousand strong, have been for some time
slightly fortifying at Romney, and have completed their
telegraph from that place to Green Spring Depot. Their forces at
and near Williamsport are estimated as high as five thousand,
but as yet I have no reliable information of their strength
beyond the Potomac. Your most obedient servant,
"T. J. Jackson, _Major-General, P. A. C. S._"
"Headquarters, Centreville, _November_ 21, 1861.
"Respectfully forwarded. I submit that the troops under General
Loring might render valuable services by taking the field with
General Jackson, instead of going into winter-quarters, as now
proposed.
"J. E. Johnston, _General_."
"Headquarters, Centreville, _November_ 22, 1861.
"General Cooper, _Adjutant and Inspector-General_.
"Sir: I have received Major-General Jackson's plan of operations
in his district, for which he asks for reënforcements. It seems
to me that he proposes more than can well be accomplished in
that high, mountainous country at this season. If the means of
driving the enemy from Romney (preventing the reconstruction of
the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and incursions by marauders
into the counties of Jefferson, Berkeley, and Morgan) can be
supplied to General Jackson, and with them those objects,
accomplished, we shall have reason to be satisfied, so far as
the Valley district is concerned. The wants of other portions of
the frontier--Acquia district, for instance--make it
inexpedient, in my opinion, to transfer to the Valley district
so large a force as that asked for by Major-General Jackson. It
seems to me to be now of especial importance to strengthen
Major-General Holmes, near Acquia Creek. The force there is very
small, compared with the importance of the position. Your
obedient servant,
"J. E. Johnston, _General_.
"[Endorsement.]
"Respectfully submitted to the Secretary of War:
"S. Cooper, _Adjutant and Inspector-General_.
"_November 25, 1861_."
"Richmond, Virginia, _November_ 10, 1861.
"General J. E. Johnston, _Manassas, Virginia_.
"Sir: The Secretary of War has this morning laid before me yours
of the 8th instant. I fully sympathize with your anxiety for the
Army of the Potomac. If indeed mine be less than yours, it can
only be so because the south, the west, and the east, presenting
like cause for solicitude, have in the same manner demanded my
care. Our correspondence must have assured you that I fully
concur in your view of the necessity for unity in command, and I
hope by a statement of the case to convince you that there has
been no purpose to divide your authority by transferring the
troops specified in order No. 206 from the center to the left of
your department. The active campaign in the Greenbrier region
was considered as closed for the season. There is reason to
believe that the enemy is moving a portion of his forces from
that mountain-region toward the Valley of Virginia, and that he
has sent troops and munitions from the east by the way of the
Potomac Canal toward the same point. The failure to destroy his
communications by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and by the
Potomac Canal has left him in possession of great advantages for
that operation. General Jackson, for reasons known to you, was
selected to command the division of the Valley, but we had only
the militia and one mounted regiment within the district
assigned to him. The recent activity of the enemy, the capture
of Romney, etc., required that he should have for prompt service
a body of Confederate troops to coöperate with the militia of
that district. You suggest that such force should be drawn from
the army at the Greenbrier; this was originally considered, and
abandoned, because they could not reach him in time to
anticipate the enemy's concentration, and also because General
Jackson was a stranger to them, and time was wanting for the
growth of that confidence between the commander and his troops,
the value of which need not be urged upon you. We could have
sent to him from this place an equal number of regiments, being
about double the numerical strength of those specified in the
order referred to, but they were parts of a brigade now in the
Army of the Potomac, or were southern troops, and were ignorant
of the country in which they were to serve, and all of them
unknown to General Jackson. The troops sent were his old
brigade, had served in the Valley, and had acquired a reputation
which would give confidence to the people of that region upon
whom the General had to rely for his future success. Though the
troops sent to you are, as you say, 'raw,' they have many able
officers, and will, I doubt not, be found reliable in the hour
of danger. Their greater numbers will to you, I hope, more than
compensate for the experience of those transferred; while, in
the Valley, the latter, by the moral effect their presence will
produce, will more than compensate for the inferiority of their
numbers. I have labored to increase the Army of the Potomac,
and, so far from proposing a reduction of it, did not intend to
rest content with an exchange of equivalents. In addition to the
troops recently sent to you, I expected soon to send further
reënforcements by withdrawing a part of the army from the
Greenbrier Mountains. I have looked hopefully forward to the
time when our army could assume the offensive, and select the
time and place where battles were to be fought, so that ours
should be alternations of activity and repose, theirs the heavy
task of constant watching. When I last visited your
headquarters, my surprise was expressed at the little increase
of your effective force above that of the 21st of July last,
notwithstanding the heavy reënforcements which, in the mean
time, had been sent to you. Since that visit I have frequently
heard of the improved health of the troops, of the return of
many who had been absent sick; and some increase has been made
by reënforcements. You can, then, imagine my disappointment at
the information you give, that, on the day before the date of
your letter, the army at your position was yet no stronger than
on the 21st of July. I can only repeat what has been said to you
in our conference at Fairfax Court-House, that we are restricted
in our capacity to reënforce by the want of arms. Troops to bear
the few arms you have in store have been ordered forward. Your
view of the magnitude of the calamity of defeat of the Army of
the Potomac is entirely concurred in, and every advantage which
is attainable should be seized to increase the power of your
present force. I will do what I can to augment its numbers, but
you must remember that our wants greatly exceed our resources.
"Banks's brigade, we learn, has left the position occupied when
I last saw you. Sickles is said to be yet in the lower Potomac,
and, when your means will enable you to reach him, I still hope
he may be crushed.
"I will show this reply to the Secretary of War, and hope there
will be no misunderstanding between you in future. The success
of the army requires harmonious coöperation.
"Very respectfully, etc.,
"Jefferson Davis."
After General Jackson commenced his march, the cold became unexpectedly
severe, and, as he ascended into the mountainous region, the slopes were
covered with ice, which impeded his progress, the more because his
horses were smooth-shod; but his tenacity of purpose, fidelity, and
daring, too well known to need commendation, triumphed over every
obstacle, and he attained his object, drove the enemy from Romney and
its surroundings, took possession of the place, and prevented the
threatened concentration. Having accomplished this purpose, and being
assured that the enemy had abandoned that section of country, he
returned with his old brigade to the Valley of the Shenandoah, leaving
the balance of his command at Romney. General Loring, the senior officer
there present, and many others of the command so left, appealed to the
War Department to be withdrawn. Their arguments were, as well as I
remember, these: that the troops, being from the South, were
unaccustomed to, and unprepared for, the rigors of a mountain winter;
that they were strangers to the people of that section; that the
position had no military strength, and, at the approach of spring, would
be accessible to the enemy by roads leading from various quarters.
After some preliminary action, an order was issued from the War Office
directing the troops to retire to the Valley. As that order has been the
subject of no little complaint, both by civil and military
functionaries, my letter to the General commanding the department, in
explanation of the act of the Secretary of War, is hereto annexed:
"Richmond, Virginia, _February_ 14, 1862.
"General J. E. Johnston, _commanding Department of Northern
Virginia, Centreville, Virginia_.
"General: I have received your letter of the 5th instant. While
I admit the propriety in all cases of transmitting orders
through you to those under your command, it is not surprising
that the Secretary of War should, in a case requiring prompt
action, have departed from this, the usual method, in view of
the fact that he had failed more than once in having his
instructions carried out when forwarded to you in the proper
manner. You will remember that you were directed, on account of
the painful reports received at the War Department in relation
to the command at Romney, to repair to that place, and, after
the needful examination, to give the orders proper in the case.
You sent your adjutant- (inspector?) general, and I am informed
that he went no farther than Winchester, to which point the
commander of the expedition had withdrawn; leaving the troops,
for whom anxiety had been excited, at Romney. Had you given your
personal attention to the case, you must be assured that the
confidence reposed in you would have prevented the Secretary
from taking any action before your report had been received. In
the absence of such security, he was further moved by what was
deemed reliable information, that a large force of the enemy was
concentrating to capture the troops at Romney, and by official
report that place had no natural strength and little strategic
importance. To insure concert of action in the defense of our
Potomac frontier, it was thought best to place all the forces
for this object under one command. The reasons which originally
induced the adding of the Valley district to your department
exist in full force at present, and I can not, therefore, agree
to its separation from your command.
"I will visit the Army of the Potomac as soon as other
engagements will permit, although I can not realize your
complimentary assurance that great good to the army will result
from it; nor can I anticipate the precise time when it will be
practicable to leave my duties here.
"Very respectfully and truly yours,
"Jefferson Davis."
To complaints by General Johnston that the discipline of his army was
interfered with by irregular action of the Secretary of War, and its
numerical strength diminished by furloughs granted directly by the War
Department, I replied, after making inquiry at the War Office, by a
letter, a copy of which is hereto annexed:
"Richmond, Virginia, _March_ 4, 1862.
"General J. E. Johnston, _Centreville, Virginia_.
"Dear Sir: Yours of the 1st instant received prompt attention,
and I am led to the conclusion that some imposition has been
practiced upon you. The Secretary of War informs me that he has
not granted leaves of absence or furloughs to soldiers of your
command for a month past, and then only to divert the current
which threatened by legislation to destroy your army by a
wholesale system of furloughs. Those which you inform me are
daily received must be spurious. The authority to reënlist and
change from infantry to artillery, the Secretary informs me, has
been given but in four cases--three on the recommendation of
General Beauregard, and specially explained to you some time
since; the remaining case was that of a company from Wheeling,
which was regarded as an exceptional one. I wish, therefore,
that you would send to the Adjutant-General the cases of recent
date in which the discipline of your troops has been interfered
with in the two methods stated, so that an inquiry may be made
into the origin of the papers presented. The law in relation to
reënlistment provides for reorganization, and was under the
policy of electing the officers.
"The concession to army opinions was limited to the promotion by
seniority after the organization of the companies and regiments
had been completed. The reorganization was not to occur before
the expiration of the present term. A subsequent law provides
for filling up the twelve months' companies by recruits for the
war, but the organization ceases with the term of the twelve
months' men. Be assured of readiness to protect your proper
authority, and I do but justice to the Secretary of War in
saying that he can not desire to interfere with the discipline
and organization of your troops. He has complained that his
orders are not executed, and I regret that he was able to
present to me so many instances to justify that complaint, which
were in no wise the invasion of your prerogative as a commander
in the field.
"You can command my attention at all times to any matter
connected with your duties, and I hope that full co-intelligence
will secure full satisfaction. Very truly yours,
"Jefferson Davis."
A fortnight after this letter, I received from General Johnston notice
that his position was considered unsafe. Many of his letters to me have
been lost, and I have thus far not been able to find the one giving the
notice referred to, but the reply which is annexed clearly indicates the
substance of the letter which was answered.
"Richmond, Virginia, _February_ 28, 1862.
"General J. E. Johnston: ... Your opinion that your position may
be turned whenever the enemy chooses to advance, and that he
will be ready to take the field before yourself, clearly
indicates prompt effort to disencumber yourself of everything
which would interfere with your rapid movement when necessary,
and such thorough examination of the country in your rear as
would give you exact knowledge of its roads and general
topography, and enable you to select a line of greater natural
advantages than that now occupied by your forces.
"The heavy guns at Manassas and Evansport, needed elsewhere, and
reported to be useless in their present position, would
necessarily be abandoned in any hasty retreat. I regret that you
find it impossible to move them.
"The subsistence stores should, when removed, be placed in
positions to answer your future wants. Those can not be
determined until you have furnished definite information as to
your plans, especially the line to which you would remove in the
contingency of retiring. The Commissary-General had previously
stopped further shipments to your army, and given satisfactory
reasons for the establishment at Thoroughfare.[191] ...
"I need not urge on your consideration the value to our country
of arms and munitions of war: you know the difficulty with which
we have obtained our small supply; that, to furnish heavy
artillery to the advanced posts, we have exhausted the supplies
here which were designed for the armament of the city defenses.
Whatever can be, should be done to avoid the loss of these
guns....
"As has been my custom, I have only sought to present general
purposes and views. I rely upon your special knowledge and high
ability to effect whatever is practicable in this our hour of
need. Recent disasters have depressed the weak, and are
depriving us of the aid of the wavering. Traitors show the
tendencies heretofore concealed, and the selfish grow clamorous
for local and personal interests. At such an hour, the wisdom of
the trained and the steadiness of the brave possess a double
value. The military paradox that impossibilities must be
rendered possible, had never better occasion for its
application.
"The engineers for whom you asked have been ordered to report to
you, and further additions will be made to your list of
brigadier-generals. Let me hear from you often and fully.
"Very truly and respectfully yours,
"Jefferson Davis."
"Richmond, Virginia, _March_ 6, 1862.
"General J. E. Johnston:... Notwithstanding the threatening
position of the enemy, I infer from your account of the roads
and streams that his active operations must be for some time
delayed, and thus I am permitted to hope that you will be able
to mobilize your army by the removal of your heavy ordnance and
such stores as are not required for active operations, so that,
whenever you are required to move, it may be without public loss
and without impediment to celerity. I was fully impressed with
the difficulties which you presented when discussing the subject
of a change of position. To preserve the efficiency of your
army, you will, of course, avoid all needless exposure; and,
when your army has been relieved of all useless encumbrance, you
can have no occasion to move it while the roads and the weather
are such as would involve serious suffering, because the same
reasons must restrain the operations of the enemy....
"Very respectfully yours,
"Jefferson Davis."
At the conference at Fairfax Court-House, heretofore referred to, I was
sadly disappointed to find that the strength of that army had been
little increased, notwithstanding the reënforcements sent to it since
the 21st of July, and that to make an advance the generals required an
additional force, which it was utterly impracticable for me to supply.
Soon thereafter the army withdrew to Centreville, a better position for
defense but not for attack, and thereby suggestive of the abandonment of
an intention to advance. The subsequent correspondence with General
Johnston during the winter expressed an expectation that the enemy would
resume the offensive, and that the position then held was geographically
unfavorable. There was a general apprehension at Richmond that the
northern frontier of Virginia would be abandoned, and a corresponding
earnestness was exhibited to raise the requisite force to enable our
army to take the offensive. On the 10th of March I telegraphed to
General Johnston: "Further assurance given to me this day that you shall
be promptly and adequately reënforced, so as to enable you to maintain
your position, and resume first policy when the roads will permit." The
first policy was to carry the war beyond our own border.
Five days thereafter, I received notice that our army was in retreat,
and replied as follows:
"Richmond, Virginia, _March_ 15, 1862.
"General J. E. Johnston, _Headquarters Army of the Potomac_.
"General: I have received your letter of the 13th instant,
giving the first official account I have received of the
retrograde movement of your army.
"Your letter would lead me to infer that others had been sent to
apprise me of your plans and movements. If so, they have not
reached me; and, before the receipt of yours of the 13th, I was
as much in the dark as to your purposes, condition, and
necessities as at the time of our conversation on the subject
about a month since.
"It is true I have had many and alarming reports of great
destruction of ammunition, camp-equipage, and provisions,
indicating precipitate retreat; but, having heard of no cause
for such a sudden movement, I was at a loss to believe it.
"I have not the requisite topographical knowledge for the
selection of your new position. I had intended that you should
determine that question; and for this purpose a corps of
engineers was furnished to make a careful examination of the
country to aid you in your decision.
"The question of throwing troops into Richmond is contingent
upon reverses in the West and Southeast. The immediate necessity
for such a movement is not anticipated.
"Very respectfully yours,
"Jefferson Davis."
On the same day I sent the following telegram:
"Richmond, Virginia, _March_ 15, 1862.
"General J. E. Johnston, _Culpepper Court-House, Virginia_.
"Your letter of the 13th received this day, being the first
information of your retrograde movement. I have no report of
your reconnaissance, and can suggest nothing as to the position
you should take except it should be as far in advance as
consistent with your safety.
"Jefferson Davis."
To further inquiry from General Johnston as to where he should take
position, I replied that I would go to his headquarters in the field,
and found him on the south bank of the river, to which he had retired,
in a position possessing great natural advantages. An elevated bank
commanded the north side of the river, overlooking the bridge, and an
open field beyond it, across which the enemy must pass to reach the
bridge, which, if left standing, was an invitation to seek that
crossing. Upon inquiring whether the south bank of the river continued
to command the other side down to Fredericksburg, General Johnston
answered that he did not know; that he had not been at Fredericksburg
since he passed there in a stage on his way to West Point, when he was
first appointed a cadet. I then proposed that we should go to
Fredericksburg, to inform ourselves upon that point. On arriving at
Fredericksburg, a reconnaissance soon manifested that the hills on the
opposite side commanded the town and adjacent river-bank, and therefore
Fredericksburg could only be defended by an army occupying the opposite
hills, for which our force was inadequate. In returning to the house of
Mr. Barton, where I was a guest, I found a number of ladies had
assembled there to welcome me, and who, with anxiety, inquired as to the
result of our reconnaissance. Upon learning that the town was not
considered defensible against an enemy occupying the heights on the
other side, and that our force was not sufficient to hold those heights
against such an attack as might be anticipated, the general answer was,
with a self-sacrificing patriotism too much admired to be forgotten, "If
the good of our cause requires the defense of the town to be abandoned,
let it be done." The purposes of the enemy were then unknown to us. If
General Johnston's expectation of a hostile advance in great force
should be realized, our course must depend partly upon receiving the
reënforcement we had reason to expect from promises previously given and
renewed, as was announced to General Johnston in my telegram of 10th of
March, 1862, in these words:
"Further assurance given to me this day that you shall be
promptly and adequately reënforced, so as to enable you to
maintain your position, and resume first policy when the roads
will permit."
No immediate decision could therefore be made, and I returned to
Richmond, to wait the further development of the enemy's plans, and to
prepare as best we might to counteract them.
The feeling heretofore noticed as arousing in Virginia a determination
to resist the abandonment of her northern frontier, and which caused the
assurance of reënforcements, bore fruit in the addition of about thirty
thousand men, by a draft made by the Governor of the State. These, it is
true, were not the disciplined, seasoned troops which were asked for by
the generals in the conference at Fairfax Court-House, but they were of
such men as often during the war won battles for the Confederacy. The
development of the enemy's plans, for which we had to wait, proved that,
instead of advancing in force against our position at Centreville, he
had, before the retreat of our army commenced, decided to move down the
Potomac for a campaign against Richmond, from the Peninsula as a base.
The conflagration at Centreville gave notice of its evacuation, and an
advance was made as far as Manassas, but, as appears by General
McClellan's report, with no more important design than to attack our
rear guard, if it should be encountered. In the report on the conduct of
the war by a committee of the United States Congress, evidence is found
of much vacillation before the conclusion was finally reached of
abandoning the idea of a direct advance upon Richmond for that of
concentrating their army at the mouth of the Chesapeake. Whatever doubt
or apprehension continued to exist about uncovering the city of
Washington by removing their main army from before it, was of course
dispelled by the retreat of our army, and the burning of bridges behind
it. In this last-mentioned fact, General McClellan says he found the
strongest reason to believe that there was no immediate danger of our
army returning.
There was an apparent advantage to the enemy in the new base for his
operations which was sufficiently illustrated by the events of the last
year of the war. Had we possessed an army as large as the enemy
supposed, it would have been possible for us at the same time to check
his advance from the East and to march against his capital, with fair
prospect of capturing it, before the army he had sent against Yorktown
could have been brought back for the defense of Washington. On this as
on other occasions he greatly magnified the force we possessed, and on
this as on other occasions it required the concentration of our troops
successfully to resist a detachment of his. Accepting as a necessity
the withdrawal of the main portion of our army from northern Virginia to
meet the invasion from the seaboard, it was regretted that earlier and
more effective means were not employed for the mobilization of the army,
a desirable measure in either contingency of advance or retreat, or at
the least that the withdrawal was not so deliberate as to secure the
removal of our ordnance, subsistence, and quartermasters' stores, which
had been collected on the line occupied in 1861 and the early part of
1862.
A distinguished officer of our army, who has since the war made valuable
contributions to the history of its operations--especially valuable as
well for their accuracy as for their freedom from personal or partisan
bias--writes thus of the retreat from Centreville:
"A very large amount of stores and provisions had been abandoned
for want of transportation, and among the stores was a very
large quantity of clothing, blankets etc., which had been
provided by the States south of Virginia for their own troops.
The pile of trunks along the railroad was appalling to behold.
All these stores, clothing, trunks, etc., were consigned to the
flames by a portion of our cavalry left to carry out the work of
their destruction. The loss of stores at this point and at White
Plains on the Manassas Gap Railroad, where a large amount of
meat had been salted and stored, was a very serious one to us,
and embarrassed us for the remainder of the war, as it put us at
once on a running stock."
The same officer--and the value of his opinion will be recognized by all
who know him, wherefore I give his name, General J. A. Early--in a
communication subsequent to that from which I have just quoted, writes,
in regard to the loss of supplies:
"I believe that all might have been carried off from Manassas if
the railroads had been energetically operated. The rolling-stock
of the Orange and Alexandria, Manassas Gap, and Virginia Central
Railroads ought to have been sufficient for the purpose of
removing everything in the two weeks allowed, if properly used."
The enemy's plans, the development of which, as has been already stated,
was necessary for the determination of our own movements, were soon
thereafter found to be the invasion of Virginia from the seaboard, and
the principal portion of our army was consequently ordered to the
Peninsula, between the York River and the James. Thus the northern
frontier of Virginia, which, in the first year of the war, had been the
main field of skirmishes, combats, and battles, of advance and retreat,
and the occupation and evacuation of fortified positions, ceased for a
time to tremble beneath the tread of contending armies.
To the foregoing narration of events immediately connected with the
efforts of the Confederate Government to maintain its existence at home,
may here be properly added an incident bearing on its foreign relations
in the first year of the war.
Our efforts for the recognition of the Confederate States by the
European powers, in 1861, served to make us better known abroad, to
awaken a kindly feeling in our favor, and cause a respectful regard for
the effort we were making to maintain the independence of the States
which Great Britain had recognized, and her people knew to be our
birthright.
On the 8th of November, 1861, an outrage was perpetrated by an armed
vessel of the United States, in the forcible detention, on the
high-seas, of a British mail steamer, making one of her regular trips
from one British port to another, and the seizure, on that unarmed
vessel, of our Commissioners, Mason and Slidell, who with their
secretaries were bound for Europe on diplomatic service. The seizure was
made by an armed force against the protest of the Captain of the vessel,
and of Commander Williams, R.N., the latter speaking as the
representative of her Majesty's Government. The Commissioners only
yielded when force, which they could not resist, was used to remove them
from the mail-steamer, and convey them to the United States vessel of
war.
This outrage was the more marked because the United States had been
foremost in resisting the right of "visit and search," and had made it
the cause of the War of 1812 with Great Britain.
When intelligence of the event was received in England, it excited the
greatest indignation among the people; and her Majesty's Government, by
naval and other preparations, unmistakably exhibited the purpose to
redress the wrong.
The Commissioners and their secretaries had been transported to the
harbor of Boston, and imprisoned in its main fortress.
Diplomatic correspondence resulted from this event. The British
Government demanded the immediate and unconditional release of the
Commissioners, "in order that they may again be placed under British
protection, and a suitable apology for the aggression which has been
committed."
In the mean time, Captain Wilkes, commander of the vessel which had made
the visit and search of the Trent, returned to the United States and was
received with general plaudit, both by the people and the Government.
The House of Representatives passed a vote of thanks, an honor not
heretofore bestowed except for some deed deserving well of the country.
In the midst of all this exultation at the seizure of our Commissioners
on board of a British merchant-ship, came the indignant and stern demand
for the restoration of those Commissioners to the British protection
from which they had been taken, and an apology for the aggression. It
was little to be expected, after such explicit commendation of the act,
that the United States Government would accede to the demand; and
therefore the War and Navy Departments of the British Government made
active and extensive provision to enforce it. The haughty temper
displayed toward four gentlemen arrested on an unarmed ship subsided in
view of a demand to be enforced by the army and navy of Great Britain,
and the United States Secretary of State, after a wordy and ingenious
reply to the Minister of Great Britain at Washington City, wrote: "The
four persons in question are now held in military custody at Fort
Warren, in the State of Massachusetts. They will be cheerfully
liberated. Your lordship will please indicate a time and place for
receiving them."
There was a time when the Government and the people of the United States
would not have sanctioned such aggression on the right of friendly ships
to pass unquestioned on the high way of nations, and the right of a
neutral flag to protect everything not contraband of war; but that was a
time when arrogance and duplicity had not led them into false positions,
and when the roar of the British lion could not make Americans retract
what they had deliberately avowed.
[Footnote 191: Thoroughfare Gap was the point at which the
Commissary-General had placed a meat-packing establishment]
CHAPTER XII.
Supply of Arms at the Beginning of the War; of Powder; of
Batteries; of other Articles.--Contents of Arsenals.--Other
Stores, Mills, etc.--First Efforts to obtain Powder, Niter, and
Sulphur.--Construction of Mills commenced.--Efforts to supply
Arms, Machinery, Field-Artillery, Ammunition, Equipment, and
Saltpeter.--Results in 1862.--Government Powder-Mills; how
organized.--Success.--Efforts to obtain Lead.--
Smelting-Works.--Troops, how armed.--Winter of 1862.--
Supplies.--Niter and Mining Bureau.--Equipment of First
Armies.--Receipts by Blockade-Runners.--Arsenal at
Richmond.--Armories at Richmond and Fayetteville.--A Central
Laboratory built at Macon.--Statement of General Gorgas.--
Northern Charge against General Floyd answered.--Charge of
Slowness against the President answered.--Quantities of Arms
purchased that could not be shipped in 1861.--Letter of Mr.
Huse.
At the beginning of the war the arms within the limits of the
Confederacy were distributed as follows:
Rifles. Muskets.
At Richmond (State) about 4,000
Fayetteville, North Carolina " 2,000 25,000
Charleston, South Carolina " 2,000 20,000
Augusta, Georgia " 3,000 28,000
Mount Vernon, Alabama " 2,000 20,000
Baton Rouge, Louisiana " 2,000 27,000
--------- ----------
Total 15,000 120,000
There were at Richmond about sixty thousand old flint-muskets, and at
Baton Rouge about ten thousand old Hall's rifles and carbines. At Little
Rock, Arkansas, there were a few thousand stands, and a few at the Texas
Arsenal, increasing the aggregate of serviceable arms to about one
hundred and forty-three thousand. Add to these the arms owned by the
several States and by military organizations, and it would make a total
of one hundred and fifty thousand for the use of the armies of the
Confederacy. The rifles were of the caliber .54, known as Mississippi
rifles, except those at Richmond taken from Harper's Ferry, which were
of the new-model caliber .58; the muskets were the old flint lock,
caliber .69, altered to percussion. There were a few boxes of sabers at
each arsenal, and some short artillery-swords. A few hundred
holster-pistols were scattered about. There were no revolvers.
There was before the war little powder or ammunition of any kind stored
in the Southern States, and this was a relic of the war with Mexico. It
is doubtful if there were a million of rounds of small-arms cartridges.
The chief store of powder was that captured at Norfolk; there was,
besides, a small quantity at each of the Southern arsenals, in all sixty
thousand pounds, chiefly old cannon-powder. The percussion-caps did not
exceed one quarter of a million, and there was no lead on hand. There
were no batteries of serviceable field-artillery at the arsenals, but a
few old iron guns mounted on Gribeauval carriages fabricated about 1812.
The States and the volunteer companies did, however, possess some
serviceable batteries. But there were neither harness, saddles, bridles,
blankets, nor other artillery or cavalry equipments.
To furnish one hundred and fifty thousand men, on both sides of the
Mississippi, in May, 1861, there were no infantry accoutrements, no
cavalry arms or equipments, no artillery and, above all, no ammunition;
nothing save arms, and these almost wholly the old pattern smooth-bore
muskets, altered to percussion from flint locks.
Within the limits of the Confederate States the arsenals had been used
only as depots, and no one of them, except that at Fayetteville, North
Carolina, had a single machine above the grade of a foot-lathe. Except
at Harper's Ferry Armory, all the work of preparation of material had
been carried on at the North; not an arm, not a gun, not a gun-carriage,
and, except during the Mexican War, scarcely a round of ammunition, had
for fifty years been prepared in the Confederate States. There were
consequently no workmen, or very few, skilled in these arts. Powder,
save perhaps for blasting, had not been made at the South. No saltpeter
was in store at any Southern point; it was stored wholly at the North.
There were no worked mines of lead except in Virginia, and the situation
of those made them a precarious dependence. The only cannon-foundry
existing was at Richmond. Copper, so necessary for field-artillery and
for percussion-caps, was just being obtained in East Tennessee. There
was no rolling-mill for bar-iron south of Richmond, and but few
blast-furnaces and these, with trifling exceptions, were in the border
States of Virginia and Tennessee.
The first efforts made to obtain powder were by orders sent to the
North, which had been early done both by the Confederate Government and
by some of the States. These were being rapidly filled when the attack
was made on Fort Sumter. The shipments then ceased. Niter was
contemporaneously sought for in north Alabama and Tennessee. Between
four and five hundred tons of sulphur were obtained in New Orleans, at
which place it had been imported for use in the manufacture of sugar.
Preparations for the construction of a large powder-mill were promptly
commenced by the Government, and two small, private mills in East
Tennessee were supervised and improved. On June 1, 1861, there was
probably two hundred and fifty thousand pounds only, chiefly of
cannon-powder, and about as much niter, which had been imported by
Georgia. There were the two powder-mills above mentioned, but we had no
experience in making powder, or in extracting niter from natural
deposits, or in obtaining it by artificial beds.
For the supply of arms an agent was sent to Europe, who made contracts
to the extent of nearly half a million dollars. Some small-arms had been
obtained from the North, and also important machinery. The machinery at
Harper's Ferry Armory had been saved from the flames by the heroic
conduct of the operatives, headed by Mr. Armistead M. Ball, the master
armorer. Of the machinery so saved, that for making rifle-muskets was
transported to Richmond, and that for rifles with sword-bayonets to
Fayetteville, North Carolina. In addition to the injuries suffered by
the machinery, the lack of skilled workmen caused much embarrassment. In
the mean time the manufacture of small-arms was undertaken at New
Orleans and prosecuted with energy, though with limited success.
In field-artillery the manufacture was confined almost entirely to the
Tredegar Works in Richmond. Some castings were made in New Orleans, and
attention was turned to the manufacture of field and siege artillery at
Nashville. A small foundry at Rome, Georgia, was induced to undertake
the casting of the three-inch iron rifle, but the progress was very
slow. The State of Virginia possessed a number of old four-pounder iron
guns which were reamed out to get a good bore, and rifled with three
grooves, after the manner of Parrott. The army at Harper's Ferry and
that at Manassas were supplied with old batteries of six-pounder guns
and twelve-pounder howitzers. A few Parrott guns, purchased by the State
of Virginia, were with General Magruder at Big Bethel.
For the ammunition and equipment required for the infantry and
artillery, a good laboratory and workshop had been established at
Richmond. The arsenals were making preparations for furnishing
ammunition and knapsacks; but generally, what little was done in this
regard was for local purposes. Such was the general condition of
ordnance and ordnance stores in May, 1861.
The progress of development, however, was steady. A refinery of
saltpeter was established near Nashville during the summer, which
received the niter from its vicinity, and from the caves in East and
Middle Tennessee. Some inferior powder was made at two small mills in
South Carolina. North Carolina established a mill near Raleigh; and a
stamping-mill was put up near New Orleans, and powder made there before
the fall of the city. Small quantities were also received through the
blockade. It was estimated that on January 1, 1862, there were fifteen
hundred seacoast-guns of various caliber in position from Evansport, on
the Potomac, to Fort Brown, on the Rio Grande. If their caliber was
averaged at thirty-two pounder, and the charge at five pounds, it would,
at forty rounds per gun, require six hundred thousand pounds of powder
for them. The field-artillery--say three hundred guns, with two hundred
rounds to the piece--would require one hundred and twenty-five thousand
pounds; and the small-arm cartridges--say ten million--would consume one
hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds more, making in all eight
hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Deducting two hundred and fifty
thousand pounds, supposed to be on hand in various shapes, and the
increment is six hundred thousand pounds for the year 1861. Of this,
perhaps two hundred thousand pounds had been made at the Tennessee and
other mills, leaving four hundred thousand pounds to be supplied through
the blockade, or before the beginning of hostilities.
The liability of powder to deteriorate in damp atmospheres results from
the impurity of the niter used in its manufacture, and this it is not
possible to detect by any of the usual tests. Security, therefore, in
the purchase, depends on the reliability of the maker. To us, who had to
rely on foreign products and the open market, this was equivalent to no
security at all. It was, therefore, as well for this reason as because
of the precariousness of thus obtaining the requisite supply, necessary
that we should establish a Government powder-mill. It was our good
fortune to have a valuable man whose military education and scientific
knowledge had been supplemented by practical experience in a large
manufactory of machinery. He, General G. W. Rains, was at the time
resident in the State of New York; but, when his native State, North
Carolina, seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy, true to the
highest instincts of patriotism, he returned to the land of his birth,
and only asked where he could be most useful. The expectations which his
reputation justified, caused him to be assigned to the task of making a
great powder-mill, which should alike furnish an adequate supply, and
give assurance of its possessing all the requisite qualities. This
problem, which, under the existing circumstances, seemed barely
possible, was fully solved. Not only was powder made of every variety of
grain and exact uniformity in each, but the niter was so absolutely
purified that there was no danger of its deterioration in service. Had
Admiral Semmes been supplied with such powder, it is demonstrated, by
the facts which have since been established, that the engagement between
the Alabama and the Kearsarge would have resulted in a victory for the
former.
These Government powder-mills were located at Augusta, Georgia, and
satisfactory progress was made in the construction during the year. All
the machinery, including the very heavy rollers, was made in the
Confederate States. Contracts were made abroad for the delivery of niter
through the blockade; and, for obtaining it immediately, we resorted to
caves, tobacco-houses, cellars, etc. The amount delivered from Tennessee
was the largest item in the year's supply, but the whole was quite
inadequate to existing and prospective needs.
The consumption of lead was mainly met by the Virginia lead-mines at
Wytheville, the yield from which was from sixty to eighty thousand
pounds per month. Lead was also collected by agents in considerable
quantities throughout the country, and the battle-field of Manassas was
closely gleaned, from which much lead was collected. A laboratory for
the smelting of other ores was constructed at Petersburg, Virginia, and
was in operation before midsummer of 1862.
By the close of 1861, eight arsenals and four depots had been supplied
with materials and machinery, so as to be efficient in producing the
various munitions and equipments, the want of which had caused early
embarrassment. Thus a good deal had been done to produce the needed
material of war, and to refute the croakers who found in our poverty
application for the maxim, "_Ex nihilo nihil fit._"
The troops were, however, still very poorly armed and equipped. The old
smooth-bore musket was the principal weapon of the infantry; the
artillery had mostly the six-pounder gun and the twelve-pounder
howitzer; and the cavalry were armed with such various weapons as they
could get--sabers, horse-pistols, revolvers, Sharp's carbines,
musketoons, short Enfield rifles, Holt's carbines, muskets cut off, etc.
Equipments were in many cases made of stout cotton domestic, stitched in
triple folds and covered with paint or rubber varnish. But, poor as were
the arms, enough of them, such as they were, could not be obtained to
arm the troops pressing forward to defend their homes and their
political rights.
In December, 1861, arms purchased abroad began to come in, and a good
many Enfield rifles were in the hands of the troops at the battle of
Shiloh. The winter of 1862 was the period when our ordnance deficiencies
were most keenly felt. Powder was called for on every hand; and the
equipments most needed were those we were least able to supply. The
abandonment of the line of the Potomac and the upper Mississippi from
Columbus to Memphis did somewhat, however, the pressure for heavy
artillery; and, after the fall of 1862, when the powder-mills at Augusta
had got into full operation, there was no further inability to meet all
requisitions for ammunition. To provide the iron needed for cannon and
projectiles, it had been necessary to stimulate by contracts the mining
and smelting of its ores.
But it was obviously beyond the power of even the great administrative
capacity of the chief of ordnance, General J. Gorgas, to whose monograph
I am indebted for these details, to add, to his already burdensome
labors, the numerous and increasing cares of obtaining the material from
which ammunition, arms, and equipments were to be manufactured. On his
recommendation a niter and mining bureau was organized, and Colonel St.
John, who had been hitherto assigned to duty in connection with
procuring supplies of niter and iron, was appointed to be chief of this
bureau. A large, difficult, and most important field of operations was
thus assigned to him, and well did he fulfill its requirements. To his
recent experience was added scientific knowledge, and to both, untiring,
systematic industry, and his heart's thorough devotion to the cause he
served. The tree is known by its fruit, and he may confidently point to
results as the evidence on which he is willing to stand for judgment.
Briefly, they will be noticed.
Niter was to be obtained from caves and other like sources, and by the
formation of niter-beds, some of which had previously been begun at
Richmond. These beds were located at Columbia, South Carolina,
Charleston, Savannah, Augusta, Mobile, Selma, and various other points.
At the close of 1864 there were two million eight hundred thousand feet
of earth collected, and in various stages of nitrification, of which a
large proportion was presumed to yield one and a half pound of niter per
foot of earth. The whole country was laid off into districts, each of
which was under the charge of an officer, who obtained details of
workmen from the army, and made his monthly reports. Thus the niter
production, in the course of a year, was brought up to something like
half of the total consumption. The district from which the most constant
yield could be relied on had its chief office at Greensboro, North
Carolina, a region which had no niter-caves in it. The niter was
obtained from lixiviation of nitrous earth found under old houses,
barns, etc. The supervision of the production of iron, lead, copper, and
all the minerals which needed development, as well as the manufacture of
sulphuric and nitric acids (the latter required for the supply of the
fulminate of mercury for percussion-caps), without which the firearms of
our day would have been useless, was added to the niter bureau. Such was
the progress that, in a short time, the bureau was aiding or managing
some twenty to thirty furnaces with an annual yield of fifty thousand
tons or more of pig-iron. The lead- and copper-smelting works erected
were sufficient for all wants, and the smelting of zinc of good quality
had been achieved. The chemical works were placed at Charlotte, North
Carolina, to serve as a reserve when the supply from abroad might be cut
off.
In equipping the armies first sent into the field, the supply of
accessories was embarrassingly scant. There were arms, such as they
were, for over one hundred thousand men, but no accoutrements nor
equipments, and a meager supply of ammunition. In time the knapsacks
were supplanted by haversacks, which the women could make. But soldiers'
shoes and cartridge-boxes must be had; leather was also needed for
artillery-harness and for cavalry-saddles; and, as the amount of leather
which the country could furnish was quite insufficient for all these
purposes, it was perforce apportioned among them. Soldiers' shoes were
the prime necessity. Therefore, a scale was established, by which first
shoes and then cartridge-boxes had the preference; after these,
artillery-harness, and then saddles and bridles. To economize leather,
the waist and cartridge-box belts were made of prepared cotton cloth
stitched in stitched in three or four thicknesses. Bridle-reins were
likewise so made, and then cartridge-boxes were thus covered, except the
flap. Saddle-skirts, too, were made of heavy cotton cloth strongly
stitched. To get leather, each department procured its quota of hides,
made contracts with the tanners, obtained hands for them by exemptions
from the army, got transportation over the railroads for the hides and
for supplies. To the varied functions of this bureau was finally added
that of assisting the tanners to procure the necessary supplies for the
tanneries. A fishery, even, was established on Cape Fear River to get
oil for mechanical purposes, and at the same time food for the workmen.
In cavalry equipments the main thing was to get a good saddle which
would not hurt the back of the horse. For this purpose various patterns
were tried, and reasonable success was obtained. One of the most
difficult wants to supply in this branch of the service was the
horseshoe for cavalry and artillery. The want of iron and of skilled
labor was strongly felt. Every wayside blacksmith-shop accessible,
especially those in and near the theatre of operations, was employed.
These, again, had to be supplied with material, and the employees
exempted from service.
It early became manifest that great reliance must be placed on the
introduction of articles of prime necessity through the blockaded ports.
A vessel, capable of stowing six hundred and fifty bales of cotton, was
purchased by the agent in England, and kept running between Bermuda and
Wilmington. Some fifteen to eighteen successive trips were made before
she was captured. Another was added, which was equally successful. These
vessels were long, low, rather narrow, and built for speed. They were
mostly of pale sky-color, and, with their lights out and with fuel that
made little smoke, they ran to and from Wilmington with considerable
regularity. Several others were added, and devoted to bringing in
ordnance, and finally general supplies. Depots of stores were likewise
made at Nassau and Havana. Another organization was also necessary, that
the vessels coming in through the blockade might have their return
cargoes promptly on their arrival These resources were also supplemented
by contracts for supplies brought through Texas from Mexico.
The arsenal in Richmond soon grew into very large dimensions, and
produced all the ordnance stores that the army required, except cannon
and small-arms, in quantities sufficient to supply the forces in the
field. The arsenal at Augusta was very serviceable to the armies serving
in the south and west, and turned out a good deal of field-artillery
complete. The Government powder-mills were entirely successful. The
arsenal and workshops at Charleston were enlarged, steam introduced, and
good work done in various departments. The arsenal at Mount Vernon,
Alabama, was moved to Selma, in that State, where it grew into a large
and well-ordered establishment of the first class. Mount Vernon Arsenal
was dismantled, and served to furnish lumber and timber for use
elsewhere. At Montgomery, shops were kept up for the repair of
small-arms and the manufacture of articles of leather. There were many
other small establishments and depots.
The chief armories were at Richmond and Fayetteville, North Carolina.
The former turned out about fifteen hundred stands per month, and the
latter only four hundred per month, for want of operatives. To meet the
want of cavalry arms, a contract was made for the construction in
Richmond of a factory for Sharp's carbines; this being built, it was
then converted into a manufactory of rifle-carbines, caliber .58.
Smaller establishments grew up at Asheville, North Carolina, and at
Tallahassee, Alabama. A great part of the work of the armories consisted
in the repair of arms. In this manner the gleanings of the battle-fields
were utilized. Nearly ten thousand stands were saved from the field of
Manassas, and from those about Richmond in 1862 about twenty-five
thousand excellent arms. All the stock of inferior arms disappeared from
the armories during the first two years of the war, and were replaced by
a better class of arms, rifled and percussioned. Placing the good arms
lost previous to July, 1863, at one hundred thousand, there must have
been received from various sources four hundred thousand stands of
infantry arms in the first two years of the war.
Among the obvious requirements of a well-regulated service was one
central laboratory of sufficient capacity to prepare all ammunition, and
thus to secure the vital advantage of absolute uniformity. Authority was
therefore granted to concentrate this species of work at Macon, Georgia.
Plans of the buildings and of the machinery required were submitted and
approved, and the work was begun with energy. The pile of buildings had
a façade of six hundred feet, was designed with taste, and comprehended
every possible appliance for good and well-organized work. The buildings
were nearly ready for occupation at the close of the war, and some of
the machinery had arrived at Bermuda. This project preceded that of a
general armory for the Confederacy, and was much nearer completion.
These, with the admirable powder-mills at Augusta, would have been
completed, and with them the Government would have been in a condition
to supply arms and ammunition to three hundred thousand men. To these
would have been added a foundry for heavy guns at Selma or Brierfield,
Alabama, where the strongest cast iron in the country had been made.
Thus has been briefly sketched the development of the resources from
which our large armies were supplied with arms and ammunition, while our
country was invaded on land and water by armies much larger than our
own. It will be seen under what disadvantages our people successfully
prosecuted the (to them) new pursuits of mining and manufacturing. The
chief of ordnance was General J. Gorgas, a man remarkable for his
scientific attainment, for the highest administrative capacity and moral
purity, all crowned by zeal and fidelity to his trust, in which he
achieved results greatly disproportioned to the means at his command. He
closes his excellent monograph in the following words:
"We began in April, 1861, without an arsenal, laboratory, or
powder-mill of any capacity, and with no foundry or
rolling-mill, except in Richmond, and, before the close of 1863,
or within a little over two years, we supplied them. During the
harassments of war, while holding our own in the field defiantly
and successfully against a powerful enemy; crippled by a
depreciated currency; throttled with a blockade that deprived us
of nearly all the means of getting material or workmen; obliged
to send almost every able-bodied man to the field; unable to use
the slave-labor, with which we were abundantly supplied, except
in the most unskilled departments of production; hampered by
want of transportation even of the commonest supplies of food;
with no stock on hand even of articles such as steel, copper,
leather, iron, which we must have to build up our
establishments--against all these obstacles, in spite of all
these deficiencies, we persevered at home, as determinedly as
did our troops in the field, against a more tangible opposition;
and in that short period created, almost literally out of the
ground, foundries and rolling-mills at Selma, Richmond, Atlanta,
and Macon; smelting-works at Petersburg, chemical works at
Charlotte, North Carolina; a powder-mill far superior to any in
the United States and unsurpassed by any across the ocean; and a
chain of arsenals, armories, and laboratories equal in their
capacity and their improved appointments to the best of those in
the United States, stretching link by link from Virginia to
Alabama."
The same officer writes:
"It was a charge often repeated at the North against General
Floyd, that, as Secretary of War, he had with traitorous intent
abused his office by sending arms to the South just before the
secession of the States. The transactions which gave rise to
this accusation were in the ordinary course of an economical
administration of the War Department. After it had been
determined to change the old flint-lock muskets which the United
States possessed to percussion, it was deemed cheaper to bring
all the flint-lock arms in store at Southern arsenals to the
Northern arsenals and armories for alteration, rather than to
send the necessary machinery and workmen to the South.
Consequently, the Southern arsenals were stripped of their
deposits, which were sent to Springfield, Watervliet, Pittsburg,
St. Louis, and other points. After the conversion had been
effected, the denuded Southern arsenals were again supplied with
about the same number, perhaps slightly augmented, that had
formerly been stored there. The quota deposited at the
Charleston Arsenal, where I was stationed in 1860, arrived there
full a year before the opening of the war."
The charge was made early in the war that I was slow in procuring arms
and munitions of war from Europe. We were not only in advance of the
Government of the United States in the markets of Europe, but the facts
presented in the following extracts from a letter of our agent, Caleb
Huse, dated December 30, 1861, and addressed to Major C. C. Anderson,
will serve to place the matter in its proper light:
"London, _December_ 30, 1861.
"Dear Major: We are all waiting with almost breathless anxiety
for the arrival of the answer from the United States to the
unqualified demand of England for the captured commissioners.
Will Mr. Lincoln disregard the international writ of _habeas
corpus_ served by Great Britain? We shall soon know. If the
prisoners are given up, the affair will result in great
inconvenience to us in the way of shipping goods.
"I have now more than enough to load three 'Bermudas,' and can
not ship a package, though I have a steamer off the wharf, all
ready to receive her cargo. We are literally fighting two
governments here. Government watchmen guard the wharf where our
goods are stowed and others in the neighborhood, night and
day--and the wharfinger has orders not to ship or deliver, by
land or water, any goods marked W. D., without first acquainting
the honorable Board of Customs. I have applied myself to ship to
Bermuda, offering to give bonds to double the amount of value of
the goods, that they should be held in Bermuda, subject to the
direction of her Majesty's representative in Bermuda. I ... has
applied for permission to ship to Cardenas, agreeing to hold the
goods subject to the order of the Spanish authorities--but all
without avail, and our army must suffer for the want of
blankets, overcoats, shoes, socks, field forges, arms, and
ammunition, which have been collected to an amount more than
double that I have yet received.
"It is miserable to have to look at the immense pile of packages
in the warehouse at St. Andrews Wharf, and not be able to send
anything--only read the following: twenty-five thousand rifles;
two thousand barrels of powder; five hundred thousand caps; ten
thousand friction-tubes; five hundred thousand cartridges;
thirteen thousand accoutrements; thirteen thousand knapsacks;
thirteen thousand gun-slings; forty-four thousand three hundred
and twenty-eight pairs of socks; sixteen thousand four hundred
and eighty-four blankets; two hundred and twenty-six saddles;
saddlers' tools; artillery-harness; leather, etc. Very truly
yours,
"Caleb Huse."
CHAPTER XIII.
Extracts from my Inaugural.--Our Financial System: Receipts and
Expenditures of the First Year.--Resources, Loans, and
Taxes.--Loans authorized.--Notes and Bonds.--Funding
Notes.--Treasury Notes guaranteed by the States.--Measure to
reduce the Currency.--Operation of the General System.--Currency
fundable.--Taxation.--Popular Aversion.--Compulsory Reduction of
the Currency.--Tax Law.--Successful Result.--Financial Condition
of the Government at its Close.--Sources whence Revenue was
derived.--Total Public Debt.--System of Direct Taxes and
Revenue.--The Tariff.--War-Tax of Fifty Cents on a Hundred
Dollars.--Property subject to it.--Every Resource of the Country
to be reached.--Tax paid by the States mostly.--Obstacle to the
taking of the Census.--The Foreign Debt.--Terms of the
Contract.--Premium.--False charge against me of
Repudiation.--Facts stated.
In my inaugural address in 1862 I said:
"The first year of our history has been the most eventful in the
annals of this continent. A new Government has been established,
and its machinery put in operation over an area exceeding seven
hundred thousand square miles. The great principles upon which
we have been willing to hazard everything that is dear to man,
have made conquests for us which could never have been achieved
by the sword. Our Confederacy has grown from six to thirteen
States; and Maryland, already united to us by hallowed memories
and material interests, will, I believe, when enabled to speak
with unstifled voice, connect her destiny with the South. Our
people have rallied with unexampled unanimity to the support of
the great principles of constitutional government, with firm
resolve to perpetuate by arms the rights which they could not
peacefully secure. A million of men, it is estimated, are now
standing in hostile array and waging war along a frontier of
thousands of miles. Battles have been fought, sieges have been
conducted, and, although the contest is not ended, and the tide
for the moment is against us, the final result in our favor is
not doubtful.... Fellow-citizens, after the struggles of ages
had consecrated the right of the Englishman to constitutional
representative government, our colonial ancestors were forced to
vindicate that birthright by an appeal to arms. Success crowned
their efforts, and they provided for their posterity a peaceful
remedy against future aggression.
"The tyranny of an unbridled majority, the most odious and the
least responsible form of despotism, has denied us both the
right and the remedy. Therefore, we are in arms to renew such
sacrifices as our forefathers made to the holy cause of
constitutional liberty."
The financial system which had been adopted from necessity proved
adequate at this early period to supply all the wants of the Government
and of the people. An unexpected and very large increase of expenditures
had resulted from the great enlargement of the necessary means of
defense. Yet the Government entered on its second year without a
floating debt and with its credit unimpaired. The total expenditures of
the first year, ending February 1, 1862, amounted to one hundred and
seventy million dollars. A statement of the Secretary of the Treasury,
comprising the period from the organization of the Government to August
1, 1862, presents the following results:
Expenditures: War Department $298,376,549 41
Navy " 14,605,777 86
Civil and miscellaneous 15,766,503 43
---------------
Total $328,748,830 70
Outstanding requisitions 18,524,128 15
---------------
Total expenditures 347,272,958 85
Total receipts 302,482,096 60
---------------
Deficient Treasury notes authorized 16,755,165 00
" " " to be provided 28,035,697 25
---------------
$44,790,862 25
The receipts were derived as follows:
Customs $1,437,399 96
War-tax 10,539,910 70
Miscellaneous 1,974,769 33 $13,952,079 99
Loans, bonds, February, 1861 15,000,000 00
Bonds, August, 1861 22,613,346 61
Call certificates, December, 1861 37,515,200 00
Treasury notes, April, 1861 22,799,900 00
Demand notes, August, 1861 187,130,670 00
One and two dollar notes 846,900 00
Due banks 2,645,000 00 $288,551,016 61
---------------
Total receipts $302,503,096 60
Such was the result presented by the Treasury of a Government that had
been in existence only eighteen months. It commenced that existence
without a treasury, and, without the sinews and the munitions of war,
was in less than two months invaded on every side by an implacable foe.
Its ways and means consisted in loans and taxes, and to these it
resorted. On February 28th I was authorized by Congress to borrow, at
any time within twelve months, fifteen million dollars, or less, as
might be needed. It was to be applied to the payment of appropriations
for the support of the Government, and for the public defense.
Certificates of stock or bonds, payable in ten years at eight per cent.
interest, were issued. For the payment of the interest and principal of
this loan a tax or duty of one eighth of one per cent. per pound was
laid on all cotton exported. On March 9th an issue of one million
dollars in Treasury notes of fifty dollars and upward was authorized,
payable in one year from date, at 3.65 per cent. interest, and
receivable for all public debts except the export duty on cotton. A
reissue was authorized for a year. On May 16th a loan of fifty million
dollars in bonds, payable after twenty years at eight per cent.
interest, was authorized. The bonds were "to be sold for specie,
military stores, or for the proceeds of sales of raw produce or
manufactured articles, to be paid in the form of specie or with foreign
bills of exchange." The bonds could not be issued in fractional parts of
a hundred dollars, or be exchanged for Treasury notes or the notes of
any bank, corporation, or individual. In lieu of any amount of these
bonds, not exceeding twenty million dollars, an equal amount of Treasury
notes, without interest, in denominations of five dollars and upward,
was authorized to be issued. These notes were payable in two years in
specie, and were receivable for all debts or taxes except the export
duty on cotton. They were also convertible into bonds payable in ten
years at eight per cent. interest. On August 19th another issue of
Treasury notes, amounting with those then issued to one hundred million
dollars, was authorized. They were of the denominations of five dollars
and upward. They were receivable for the war-tax and all other public
dues except the export duty on cotton. These notes were convertible into
twenty-year bonds, bearing eight per cent. interest, of which the issue
was limited to one hundred million dollars. Thirty millions were to be a
substitute for the same amount, authorized by the act of May 16, 1861.
These bonds could be exchanged for specie, military and naval stores, or
for the proceeds of raw produce and manufactured articles. On December
19th ten million dollars in Treasury notes were issued to pay the
advance of the banks. On December 24th an additional issue of fifty
millions of Treasury notes like those of the act of August 19th was
authorized. An additional issue of thirty millions of bonds was also
authorized. On April 12, 1862, an issue of Treasury notes, certificates
of stock and bonds, as the public necessities might require, to the
amount of two hundred and fifteen millions, was authorized. Of these,
fifty millions in Treasury notes were issued without reserve, ten
millions in Treasury notes retained as a reserve fund to pay any sudden
or unexpected call for deposits, and one hundred and sixty-five millions
certificates of stock or bonds. Bonds to the amount of fifty million
dollars, payable in ten years at six per cent. interest, were authorized
and made exchangeable for any of the above Treasury notes. All these
notes and bonds were subject to the same conditions as those of the acts
of August 19 and December 24, 1861. On April 17th five millions of
Treasury notes were authorized to be issued in denominations of one and
two dollars, which were receivable for all public dues except the cotton
duty. An amount of Treasury notes bearing interest at two cents per day
on each hundred dollars, as a substitute for as much of the one hundred
and sixty-five millions of bonds authorized, was also authorized to be
issued. On September 19, 1862, three million five hundred thousand
dollars in bonds was authorized to be issued to meet a contract for six
iron-clad vessels of war. On September 23, 1862, the amount of Treasury
notes under the denomination of five dollars was increased from five
million to ten million dollars, and a further issue of bonds or
certificates of stock, to the amount of fifty million dollars, was
authorized.
On March 23, 1863, an effort was made to remove from circulation some of
the issues of Treasury notes by funding them. For this purpose it was
provided that all Treasury notes, not bearing interest, issued prior to
December, 1862, should be fundable in eight per cent. bonds or stock
during the ensuing thirty days, and during the succeeding three months
in seven per cent. bonds or stock, after which they ceased to be
fundable. All Treasury notes not bearing interest, and issued after
December 1, 1862, until ten days after the passage of the act, were made
fundable in seven per cent. bonds or stock during the ensuing four
months, and afterward only in four per cent. thirty years bonds. Call
certificates were made fundable in thirty years bonds at eight per
cent., and all outstanding on the ensuing July 1st were deemed bonds at
six per cent., payable in thirty years. A monthly issue of Treasury
notes, without interest, to the amount of fifty million dollars, was
also authorized. These were made fundable during the first year of their
issue in six per cent. thirty years bonds, and after the expiration of
the year in four per cent. thirty years bonds. The further issue of call
certificates was suspended; but Treasury notes fundable in the six per
cent. bonds might be converted, at the pleasure of the holder, into such
certificates at five per cent. interest, which were reconvertible into
like notes within six months, or afterward exchanged for thirty years
six per cent. bonds. Treasury notes fundable in four per cent. bonds
were convertible in like manner at four per cent. All disposable means
in the Treasury were to be applied to the purchase of Treasury notes,
bearing no interest, until the amount in circulation did not exceed one
hundred and seventy-five millions. The issue of five million dollars, in
notes of two dollars, one dollar, and fifty cents, was also authorized.
It was further provided in this act that six per cent. bonds, as above
mentioned, might be sold to any of the States for Treasury notes, and,
being guaranteed by any of the States, they might be used to purchase
Treasury notes. The whole amount of such bonds could not exceed two
hundred million dollars. Treasury notes so purchased were not to be
reissued. The issue of six per cent. coupon bonds to the amount of one
hundred million dollars, which were to be applied only to the absorption
of Treasury notes, was also authorized. The coupons were payable either
in the currency in which interest on other bonds was paid, or in cotton
certificates pledging the Government to pay the same in cotton of New
Orleans middling quality, delivered at the rate of eight pence sterling
per pound.
An important measure was adopted on February 17, 1864, the object of
which was to reduce the currency and to authorize a new issue of notes
and bonds. All Treasury notes above the denomination of five dollars,
and not bearing interest, were, if offered within a short period, made
fundable in registered twenty years bonds at four per cent. At the same
time a new issue of Treasury notes was authorized, and made receivable
for all public dues, except customs duties, at the rate of two dollars
for three of the old. The issue of other Treasury notes, after the 1st
of the ensuing April, was prohibited.
To pay the expenses of the Government an issue of five hundred million
dollars in six per cent. bonds was authorized. For the payment of
interest the receipts of the export and import duties, payable in
specie, were pledged.
A review of this statement of the legislation of Congress will clearly
present the financial system of the Government. The first action of the
Provisional Congress was confined to the adoption of a tariff law, and
an act for a loan of fifteen million dollars, with a pledge of a small
export duty on cotton, to provide for the redemption of the debt. At the
next session, after the commencement of the war, provision was made for
the issue of twenty million dollars in Treasury notes, and for borrowing
thirty million dollars in bonds. At the same time the tariff was
revised, and preparatory measures taken for the levy of internal taxes.
After the purpose of subjugation became manifest by the action of the
Congress of the United States, early in July, 1861, and the certainty of
a long war was demonstrated, there arose the necessity that a financial
system should be devised on a basis sufficiently large for the vast
proportions of the approaching contest. The plan then adopted was
founded on the theory of issuing Treasury notes, convertible at the
pleasure of the holder into eight per cent. bonds, with the interest
payable in coin. It was assumed that any tendency to depreciation, which
might arise from the over-issue of the currency, would be checked by the
constant exercise of the holder's right to fund the notes at a liberal
interest, payable in specie. The success of this system depended on the
ability of the Government constantly to pay the interest in specie. The
measures, therefore, adopted to secure that payment consisted in the
levy of an internal tax, termed a war tax, and the appropriation of the
revenue from imports.
The first operation of this plan was quite successful. The interest was
paid from the reserve of coin existing in the country, and experience
sustained the expectations of those who devised the system.
Wheat, in the beginning of the year 1862, was selling at one dollar and
thirty cents per bushel, thus but little exceeding its average price in
time of peace. The other agricultural products of the country were at
similarly moderate rates, thus indicating that there was no excess of
circulation. At the same time the premium on coin had reached about
twenty per cent. But it had become apparent that the commerce of our
country was threatened with permanent suspension by reason of the
conduct of neutral nations, who virtually gave aid to the United States
Government by sanctioning its declaration of a blockade. These neutral
nations treated our invasion by our former limited and special agent as
though it were the attempt of a sovereign to suppress a rebellion
against lawful authority. This exceptional cause heightened the premium
on specie, because it indicated the exhaustion of our reserve, without
the possibility of renewing the supply.
At the inauguration of the permanent Government, in February, 1862, a
popular aversion to internal taxation had been so strongly manifested as
to indicate its partial failure. This will be further explained
presently in our statement of the system of taxation.
Under all these circumstances the effort was made to avoid the increase
in the volume of notes in circulation, by offering inducements to
voluntary funding. The measures adopted for that purpose were but
partially successful. Meanwhile the intervening exigencies from the
fortunes of war permitted no delay. The issues of Treasury notes were
increased until, in December, 1863, the currency in circulation amounted
to more than six hundred million dollars, or more than threefold the
amount required by the business of the country. The evil effects of this
financial condition were but too apparent. In addition to the difficulty
presented to the necessary operations of the Government, and the
efficient conduct of the war, the most deplorable of all its results
was, undoubtedly, its corrupting influence on the morals of the people.
The possession of large amounts of Treasury notes led to a desire for
investment; and, with a constantly increasing volume of currency, there
was an equally constant increase of price in all objects of investment.
This effect stimulated purchase by the apparent certainty of profit, and
a spirit of speculation was thus fostered, which had so debasing an
influence and such ruinous consequences that it became our highest duty
to remove the cause by prompt and stringent measures.
I therefore recommended to Congress, in December, 1863, the compulsory
reduction of the currency to the amount required by the business of the
country, accompanied by a pledge that, under no stress of circumstances,
would the amount be increased. I stated that, if the currency was not
greatly and promptly reduced, the existing scale of inflated prices
would not only continue, but, by the very fact of the large amounts thus
made requisite in the conduct of the war, these prices would reach rates
still more extravagant, and the whole system would fall under its own
weight, rendering the redemption of the debt impossible, and destroying
its value in the hands of the holder. If, on the contrary, a funded
debt, with interest secured by adequate taxation, could be substituted
for the outstanding currency, its entire amount would be made available
to the holder, and the Government would be in a condition, beyond the
reach of any probable contingency, to prosecute the war to a successful
issue.
This recommendation was followed by the passage of the act of February
17, 1864, above mentioned. One of its features is the tax levied on the
circulation. Regarding the Government when contracting a debt as the
agent of the people, its debt is their debt. As the currency was held
exclusively by ourselves, it was obvious that, if each person, held
Treasury notes in exact proportion to the valuation of his whole estate,
each would in fact owe himself the amount of the notes held by him; and,
were it possible to distribute the currency among the people in this
exact proportion, a tax levied on the currency alone, to an amount
sufficient to reduce it to its proper limits, would afford the best of
all remedies. Under such circumstances, the notes remaining in the hands
of each holder after the payment of his tax would be worth quite as much
as the whole sum previously held, for it would have an equal purchasing
capacity.
After this law had been in operation for one year, it was manifest that
it had the desired effect of withdrawing from circulation the large
excess of Treasury notes which had been issued. On July 1, 1864, the
outstanding amount was estimated at two hundred and thirty million
dollars. The estimate of the amount funded under this act, about this
time, was three hundred million dollars, while new notes were authorized
to be issued to the extent of two thirds of the sum received under its
provisions. The chief difficulty apprehended in connection with our
finances, up to the close of the war, resulted from the depreciation of
our Treasury notes, which was to be attributed to the increasing
redundancy in amount and the diminishing confidence in their ultimate
redemption.
The financial condition of the Government, near its close, is very
correctly represented in the report of the Treasury Department. The
total receipts of the Treasury for the two quarters ending on September
30, 1864, amounted to $415,191,550, which sum, added to the balance,
$308,282,722, that remained in the Treasury on April 1, 1864, formed a
total of $723,474,272. Of this total, not far from half, that is to say,
$342,560,327, were applied to the extinction of the public debt; while
the total expenditures were $272,378,505, leaving a balance in the
Treasury on October 1, 1864, of $108,435,440. The sources from which
this revenue was derived were as follows:
Four per cent. registered bonds,
act of February 17, 1864 $13,363,500
Six per cent. bonds, $500,000,000 loan,
act of February 17, 1864 14,481,050
Four per cent. call certificates,
act of February 17, 1864 20,978,100
Tax on old issue of certificates redeemed $14,440,566
Repayments by disbursing officers 20,115,830
Treasury notes, act of February 17, 1864 277,576,950
War-tax 42,294,314
Sequestrations 1,338,732
Customs 50,004
Export duty 4,320
Coin seized by the Secretary of War 1,653,200
Premium on loans 4,822,249
Soldiers' tax 908,622
The total amount of the public debt on October 1, 1864, on the books of
the Register of the Treasury, was $1,147,970,208, of which $530,340,090
were funded debt, bearing interest, and $283,880,150 were Treasury notes
of the new issue, and the remainder consisted of the former issue of
Treasury notes which were converted into other forms of debt, and ceased
to exist on December 31st. In consequence, however, of the absence of
certain returns from distant officers, the true amount of the debt was
less by $21,500,000 than appeared on the books of the Register; so that
the total public debt, on October 1st, might have been fairly considered
to have been $1,126,381,095. Of this amount, $541,340,090 consisted of
funded debt, and the balance unfunded debt, or Treasury notes. The
foreign debt is omitted in these statements. It amounted to £2,200,000,
and was provided for by about two hundred and fifty thousand bales of
cotton collected by the Government.[192]
The aggregate appropriations called for by the different departments of
the Government for the six months ending on June 30, 1865, amounted to
$438,416,504. It was estimated that the remains of former appropriations
would, on January 1, 1865, amount to a balance of $467,416,504. No
additional appropriations were therefore required for the ensuing six
months.
A system of measures by which to obtain a revenue from direct taxes and
duties was commenced at the first session of Congress under the
provisional Government. The officers who, at the time of the adoption of
the provisional Constitution, held any office connected with the
collection of the customs, duties, and imposts in the several States of
the Confederacy, or as assistant treasurers intrusted with the keeping
of moneys arising therefrom, were continued in office with the same
powers and subject to the same duties. The tariff laws of the United
States were continued in force until they might be altered. The free
list was enlarged so as to embrace many articles of necessity;
additional ports and places of entry were established; restrictive laws
were repealed, and foreign vessels were admitted to the coasting-trade.
A lighthouse bureau was organized; a lower rate of duties was imposed on
a number of enumerated articles, and an export duty of one eighth of one
cent per pound was imposed on all cotton exported in the raw state. At
the second session, in May, a complete tariff law was enacted, with a
lower scale of duties than had previously existed. On August 19, 1861, a
war-tax of fifty cents on each hundred dollars of certain classes of
property was levied for the special purpose of paying the principal and
interest of the public debt, and of supporting the Government. The
different classes of property on which the tax was levied were as
follows: real estate of all kinds; slaves; merchandise; bank-stocks;
railroad and other corporation stocks; money at interest, or invested by
individuals in the purchase of bills, notes, and other securities for
money, except the bonds of the Confederate States, and cash on hand, or
on deposit; cattle, horses, and mules; gold watches, gold and silver
plate, pianos, and pleasure-carriages. There were some exemptions, such
as the property of educational, charitable, and religious institutions,
and of a head of a family having property worth less than five hundred
dollars. An act was passed for the sequestration of the property of
alien enemies, as a retaliatory measure, to offset the confiscation act
of the United States.
On April 24, 1863, a new act was passed relative to internal or direct
taxes. It was designed to reach, as far as practicable, every resource
of the country except the capital invested in real estate and slaves,
and, by means of an income-tax and a tax in kind on the produce of the
soil, as well as by licenses on business occupations and professions, to
command resources sufficient for the wants of the country. On February
17, 1864, an amendment to this last-mentioned act was passed. It levied
additional taxes on all business of individuals, of copartnerships and
corporations, also on trades, sales, liquor-dealers, hotel-keepers,
distillers, and a tax in kind on agriculturists. On June 10, 1864, an
act was passed which levied a tax equal to one fifth of the amount of
the existing tax upon all subjects of taxation for the year.
Within six months after the passage of the war-tax of August 19, 1861,
the popular aversion to internal taxation by the General Government had
so influenced the legislation of the several States that only in South
Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas were the taxes actually collected from
the people. The quotas of the remaining States had been raised by the
issue of bonds and State Treasury notes. The public debt of the country
was thus actually increased instead of being diminished by the taxation
imposed by Congress.
At the first and second sessions of Congress in 1862 no means were
provided by taxation for maintaining the Government. The legislation was
confined to authorizing further sales of bonds and issues of Treasury
notes. An obstacle had arisen against successful taxation. About two
thirds of the entire taxable property of the Confederate States
consisted in land and slaves. Under the provisional Constitution, which
ceased to be in force on February 22, 1862, the power of Congress to
levy taxes was not restricted by any other condition than that "all
duties, imposts, and excises should be uniform throughout the States of
the Confederacy." But in the permanent Constitution, which took effect
on the same day (February 22d), it was specially provided that
"representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several
States according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined
by adding to the whole number of free persons--including those bound to
service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed--three
fifths of all slaves." According to the received construction of the
Constitution of the United States, which had been acquiesced in for
sixty years, taxes on lands and slaves were direct taxes. In repeating,
without modification, in our Constitution this language of the United
States Constitution, our Convention necessarily seems to have intended
to attach to it the meaning which had been sanctioned by long and
uninterrupted acquiescence--thus deciding that taxes on lands and slaves
were direct taxes. Our Constitution further ordered that a census should
be made within three years after the first meeting of Congress, and that
"no capitation or other direct tax shall be laid, unless in proportion
to the census or enumeration hereinbefore directed to be taken."
So long as there seemed to be a probability of being able to carry out
these provisions of the Constitution fully, and in conformity with the
intentions of its authors, there was an obvious difficulty in framing
any system of taxation. A law which should exempt from the burden two
thirds of the property of the country would be as unfair to the owners
of the remaining third as it would be inadequate to meet the
requirements of the public service. The urgency of the need, however,
was such that, after great embarrassment, the law of April 24, 1863,
above mentioned, was framed. Still, a very large proportion of these
resources was unavailable for some time, and, the intervening exigencies
permitting of no delay, a resort to further issues of Treasury notes
became unavoidable.
The foreign debt of the Confederate States at the close of the war was
twenty-two hundred thousand pounds. The earliest proposals on which this
debt was contracted were issued in London and Paris in March, 1863. The
bonds bore interest at seven per cent. per annum, in sterling, payable
half-yearly. They were exchangeable for cotton on application, at the
option of the holder, or redeemable at par in sterling, in twenty years,
by half-yearly drawings, commencing March 1, 1864. The special security
of these bonds was the engagement of the Government to deliver cotton to
the holders. Each bond, _at the option of the holder_, was convertible
at its nominal amount into cotton at the rate of sixpence sterling for
each pound of cotton--say four thousand pounds of cotton for each bond
of a hundred pounds, or twenty-five hundred francs; and this could be
done at any time not later than six months after the ratification of a
treaty of peace between the belligerents. Sixty days after the notice,
the cotton was to be delivered, if in a state of peace, at the ports of
Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, or New Orleans; if at war, at points in
the interior of the country, within ten miles of a railroad, or a stream
navigable to the ocean. The delivery was to be made free of all charges,
except the export duty of one eighth of one cent per pound. The quality
of the cotton was to be the standard of New Orleans middling. An annual
sinking fund of five per cent. was provided for, whereby two and a half
per cent. of the bonds unredeemed by cotton should be drawn by lot
half-yearly, so as finally to extinguish the loan in twenty years from
the first drawing. The bonds were issued at ninety per cent., payable in
installments. The loan soon stood in the London market at five per cent.
premium. The amount asked for was three million pounds. The amount of
applications in London and Paris exceeded fifteen million pounds.
Great efforts had previously been made by agents of the United States
Government to reflect upon the credit of the Confederate States, by
resuscitating an almost forgotten accusation of repudiation against the
State of Mississippi, and especially by an emissary sent to Great
Britain, than whom no one knew better how false were the attempts to
implicate my name in that charge. The slanderous tongues of Northern
hatred even went so far as to style me "the father of repudiation." How
unjust all such assertions were, will be manifest by a simple statement
of the case.[193]
We should not omit to refer once more to the most prolific source of
sectional strife and alienation, which is believed to have been the
question of the tariff, or duties upon imports. Its influence extended
to and affected subjects with which it was not visibly connected, and
finally assumed a form surely not contemplated in the original formation
of the Union. In the Articles of Confederation, the first Constitution
of the United States, the theory was that of direct taxation, and the
manner was to impose upon the States an amount which each was to furnish
to the common Treasury to defray expenses for the common defense and
general welfare.
During the period of our colonial existence, the policy of the British
Government had been to suppress the growth of manufacturing industry. It
was forcibly expressed by Lord North in the declaration that "not a
hobnail should be made in the American colonies." The consequence was
that in the War of the Revolution our armies and people suffered so much
from the want of the most necessary supplies that General Washington,
after we had achieved our independence, expressed the opinion that the
Government should by bounties, encourage the manufacture of such
materials as were necessary in time of war.
In the Convention which framed the Constitution for a "more perfect
Union," one of the greatest difficulties in agreeing upon its terms was
found in the different interests of the States, but, among the
compromises which were made, there prominently appears the purpose of a
strict equality in the burdens to be borne, as well as the blessings to
be enjoyed, by the people of the several States. For a long time after
the formation of the "more perfect Union," but little capital was
invested in manufacturing establishments; and, though in the early part
of the present century the amount had considerably increased, the
products were yet quite insufficient for the necessary supplies of our
armies in the War of 1812. Government contracts, high prices, and to
some extent, no doubt, patriotic impulses, led to the investment of
capital in the articles required for the prosecution of the war. With
the restoration of peace and the renewal of commerce, prices naturally
declined, and it was represented that the investments made in
manufacturing establishments were so unprofitable as to involve the ruin
of those who had made them. The Congress of the United States, in 1816,
from motives at least to be commended for their generosity, enacted a
law to protect from the threatened ruin those of their countrymen who
had employed their capital for purposes demanded by the general welfare
and common defense. These good intentions, if it be conceded that the
danger was real which it was designed to avert, were most unfortunate as
the beginning of a policy the end of which was fraught with the greatest
evils that have ever befallen the Union. By the Constitution of 1789
power was conferred upon Congress--
"To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay
the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare
of the United States; but all duties, imposts, and excises shall
be uniform throughout the United States."
In the exercise of this delegated trust, tariff laws were enacted, and
had been in operation to the satisfaction of all parts of the Union,
from the organization of the Government down to 1816; but throughout
that period all of those laws were based upon the principle of duties
for revenue. It was true, and of course it was known, that such duties
would give incidental protection to any industry producing an article on
which the duty was levied; but, while the money was collected for the
purposes enumerated, and the rate kept down to the lowest revenue
standard, the consumer had no cause to complain of the indirect benefit
received by the manufacturer, and the history of the time shows that it
produced no discontent. Not so with the tariff law of 1816: though
sustained by men from all sections of the Union, and notably by so
strict a constructionist as Mr. Calhoun, there were not wanting those
who saw in it a departure from the limitation of the Constitution, and
sternly opposed it as the usurpation of a power to legislate for the
benefit of a class. The law derived much of its support from the
assurance that it was only a temporary measure, and intended to shield
those whose patriotism had exposed them to danger, thus presenting the
not uncommon occurrence of a good case making a bad precedent. For the
first time a tariff law had protection for its object, and for the first
time it produced discontent. In the law there was nothing which
necessarily gave to it or in its terms violated the obligation that
duties should be uniform throughout the United States. The fact that it
affected the sections differently was due to physical causes--that is,
geographical differences. The streams of the Southern Atlantic States
ran over wide plains into the sea; their last falls were remote from
ocean navigation; and their people, almost exclusively agricultural,
resided principally on this plain, and as near to the seaboard as
circumstances would permit. In the Northern Atlantic States the
highlands approached more nearly to the sea, and the rivers made their
last leap near to harbors of commerce. Water-power being relied on
before the steam-engine had been made, and ships the medium of commerce
before railroads and locomotives were introduced, it followed that the
staples of the Southern plains were economically sent to the water-power
of the North to be manufactured. This remark, of course, applies to such
articles as were not exported to foreign countries, and is intended to
explain how the North became the seat of manufactures, and the South
remained agricultural. From this it followed that legislation for the
benefit of manufacturers became a Northern policy. It was not, as has
been erroneously stated, because of the agricultural character of the
Southern people, that they were opposed to the policy inaugurated by the
tariff act of 1816. This is shown by the fact that anterior to that time
they had been the friends of manufacturing industry, without reference
to its location. As long as duties were imposed for revenue, so that the
object was to supply the common Treasury, it had been cheerfully borne,
and the agriculture of one section and the manufacturing of another were
properly regarded as handmaids, and not unfrequently referred to as the
means of strengthening and perpetuating the bonds by which the States
were united. When duties were imposed, not for revenue, but as a bounty
to a particular industry, it was regarded both as unjust and without
warrant, expressed or implied, in the Constitution.
Then arose the controversy, quadrennially renewed and with increasing
provocation, in 1820, in 1824, and in 1828--each stage intensifying the
discontent, arising more from the injustice than the weight of the
burden borne. It was not the twenty-shilling ship-money tax, but the
violation of Magna Charta, which Hampden and his associates resisted. It
was not the stamp duty nor the tea-tax, but the principle involved in
taxation without representation, against which our colonial fathers took
up arms. So the tariff act in 1828, known at the time as "the bill of
abominations," was resisted by Southern representatives, because it was
the invasion of private rights in violation of the compact by which the
States were united. In the last stage of the proceeding, after the
friends of the bill had advocated it as a measure for protecting capital
invested in manufactures, Mr. Drayton, of South Carolina, moved to amend
the title so that it should read, "An act to increase the duties upon
certain imports, for the purpose of increasing the profits of certain
manufacturers," and stated his purpose for desiring to amend the title
to be that, upon some case which would arise under the execution of the
law, an appeal might be made to the Supreme Court of the United States
to test its constitutionality. Those who had passed the bill refused to
allow the opportunity to test the validity of a tax imposed for the
protection of a particular industry. Though the debates showed clearly
enough the purpose to be to impose duties for protection, the
phraseology of the law presented it as enacted to raise revenue, and
therefore the victims of the discrimination were deprived of an appeal
to the tribunal instituted to hear and decide on the constitutionality
of a law.
South Carolina, oppressed by onerous duties and stung by the injustice
of a refusal to allow her the ordinary remedy against unconstitutional
legislation, asserted the right, as a sovereign State, to nullify the
law. This conflict between the authority of the United States and one of
the States threatened for a time such disastrous consequences as to
excite intense feeling in all who loved the Union as the fraternal
federation of equal States. Before an actual collision of arms occurred,
Congress wisely adopted the compromise act of 1833. By that the fact of
protection remained, but the principle of duties for revenue was
recognized by a sliding scale of reduction, and it was hoped the
question had been placed upon a basis that promised a permanent peace.
The party of protective duties, however, came into power about the close
of the period when the compromise measure had reached the result it
proposed, and the contest was renewed with little faith on the part of
the then dominant party and with more than all of its former bitterness.
The cause of the departure from a sound principle of a tariff for
revenue, which had prevailed during the first quarter of a century, and
the adoption in 1816 of the rule imposing duties for protection, was
stated by Mr. McDuffie to be that politicians and capitalists had seized
upon the subject and used it for their own purposes--the former for
political advancement, the latter for their own pecuniary profit--and
that the question had become one of partisan politics and sectional
enrichment. Contemporaneously with this theory of protective duties,
arose the policy of making appropriations from the common Treasury for
local improvements. As the Southern representatives were mainly those
who denied the constitutional power to make such expenditures, it
naturally resulted that the mass of those appropriations were made for
Northern works. Now that direct taxes had in practice been so wholly
abandoned as to be almost an obsolete idea, and now that the Treasury
was supplied by the collection of duties upon imports, two golden
streams flowed steadily to enrich the Northern and manufacturing region
by the impoverishment of the Southern and agricultural section. In the
train of wealth and demand for labor followed immigration and the more
rapid increase of population in the Northern than in the Southern
States. I do not deny the existence of other causes, such as the fertile
region of the Northwest, the better harbors, the greater amount of
shipping of the Northeastern States, and the prejudice of Europeans
against contact with the negro race; but the causes I have first stated
were, I think, the chief, and those only which are referable to the
action of the General Government. It was not found that the possession
of power mitigated the injustice of its use by the North, and discontent
therefore was steadily accumulating, and, as stated in the beginning of
this chapter, I think was due to class legislation in the form of
protective duties and its consequences more than to any or all other
causes combined. Turning from the consideration of this question in its
sectional aspect, I now invite attention to its general effect upon the
character of our institutions. If the common Treasury of the States had,
as under the Confederation, been supplied by direct taxation, who can
doubt that a rigid economy would have been the rule of the Government;
that representatives would have returned to their tax-paying
constituents to justify appropriations for which they had voted by
showing that they were required for the general welfare, and were
authorized by the Constitution under which they were acting? When the
money was obtained by indirect taxation, so that but few could see the
source from which it was derived, it readily followed that a
constituency would ask, not why the representative had voted for the
expenditure of money, but how much he had got for his own district, and
perhaps he might have to explain why he did not get more. Is it doubtful
that this would lead to extravagance, if not to corruption? Nothing
could be more fatal to the independence of the people and the liberties
of the States than dependence for support upon the public Treasury,
whether it be in the form of subsidies, of bounties, or restrictions on
trade for the benefit of special interests. In the decline of the Roman
Empire, the epoch in which the hopelessness of renovation was made
manifest was that in which the people accepted corn from the public
granaries: it preceded but a little the time when the post of emperor
became a matter of purchase. How far would it differ from this if
constituencies should choose their representatives, not for their
integrity, not for their capacity, not for their past services, but
because of their ability to get money from the public Treasury for the
benefit of their local interests; and how far would it differ from a
purchase of the office if a President were chosen because of the favor
he would show to certain moneyed interests?
Now that fanaticism can no longer inflame the prejudices of the
uninformed, it may be hoped that our statesmen will review the past, and
give to our country a future in accordance with its early history, and
promotive of true liberty.
[Footnote 192: These bales were the security for the foreign cotton
bonds, and were seized by the United States Government. Was it not
liable to the bondholders?]
[Footnote 193: The facts with regard to the Mississippi "Union Bank"
bonds may be briefly stated as follows:
The Constitution of Mississippi required that no law should ever be
passed "to raise a loan of money on the credit of the State, or to
pledge the faith of the State for the payment or redemption of any loan
or debt," unless such law should be proposed and adopted by the
Legislature, then published for three months previous to the next
regular election, and finally reënacted by the succeeding Legislature.
The object was to enable the people of the State to consider the
question intelligently, and to indicate and exercise their will upon it
by the election of representatives to the ensuing Legislature, whose
views upon the subject would be known, and with such instructions,
express or implied, as they might think proper to give.
In 1837 a law was passed by the Legislature for incorporating the "Union
Bank of Mississippi," with a capital of fifteen million five hundred
thousand dollars, "to be raised by means of a loan to be obtained by the
directors of the institution." In order to secure this loan, the
stockholders were required to give mortgages on productive and
unencumbered property, to be in all cases of value greater, by a fixed
ratio, than the amount of their stock. When the stock had been thus
secured, as a further guarantee for the redemption of the loan, the
Governor was directed to issue bonds, in the name and behalf of the
State, equal in amount to the stock secured by mortgage on private
property. No bonds as thus directed were ever issued.
This act was duly promulgated to the people, and duly reënacted by the
succeeding Legislature on the 5th of February, 1838, in strict
accordance with the Constitution.
Ten days afterward, however, viz., on the 15th of February, the
Legislature passed an act _supplemental_ to the act chartering the Union
Bank, which materially changed or abolished the essential conditions for
the pledge of the credit of the State. By this supplemental act the
Governor was instructed, as soon as the books of subscription should be
opened, to "_subscribe for_, in behalf of the State, fifty thousand
_shares of the stock of the original capital of said bank_, to be paid
for out of the proceeds of the State bonds to be executed to the said
bank, as already provided for in the said charter." This act was passed
in the ordinary mode of legislation, and was not referred, published,
nor reënacted, as prescribed by the Constitution. As soon as the
directory was organized and the books of subscription were opened, and
before the mortgages required by the charter were executed, the
Governor, in behalf of the State, subscribed for fifty thousand shares
of the stock, and issued the bonds of the State for five million
dollars, payable to the order of the bank.
These bonds were sold to Nicholas Biddle, President of the United States
Bank of Pennsylvania, and by him sent to Great Britain as collateral
security for a loan previously made. None of the money received for them
went into the Treasury of the State of Mississippi, nor was any of it
used for a public improvement. All the consideration ever received by
the State was its stock in the Union Bank. The bank soon failed, and the
stock became utterly worthless.
Before the bonds became due, the Governor of the State had declared them
to be null and void, among other causes, in consequence of the failure
to sell them at par, as required by the "supplemental act," under which
they were issued.
It is not necessary here to discuss the question of the validity or
nullity of the bonds. The object is merely to state the principal facts.
While these events were occurring, and until a period several years
subsequent to their consummation, I, who had just resigned my commission
in the army, was a private citizen, had never held any civil office, and
took no part in political affairs. Indeed, I have never at any time
before, during, or since those events, held any civil office under the
State government, and neither had nor could have had any part in shaping
the policy of the State. When brought out as a candidate for office, my
nomination was opposed by that section of my party which advocated
"repudiation," on account of my opinions in favor of the payment of the
bonds.
As a private citizen, it may be stated that I held that the question of
the validity of the bonds should be decided by the courts. The
Constitution of Mississippi authorized suit to be brought against the
State in such cases in her own courts, and this I regarded as the proper
course to be pursued by the bondholders, holding that the State would be
bound by the judicial decision, if it should sustain the validity of the
claim. This course, however, was not adopted until long afterward, when
the question had become complicated with political issues, which
rendered the effort to obtain a settlement entirely nugatory.
When I was a member of the Senate of the United States, my official
influence was exerted to promote the objects of a citizen of
Mississippi, who, with quasi-credentials from the United States
Secretary of State, Mr. Buchanan, went to London to propose to the
bondholders an arrangement by which the claim, or the greater portion of
it, might be paid by private subscription, on consideration of the
cancellation of the bonds. This effort failed, from a mistaken estimate
on the part of some of the principal bondholders, to whom the
proposition was made, of the extent to which State pride would induce
our citizens to contribute, and to the belief in a power to coerce
payment. The gentleman who bore the proposal, indignant at the offensive
manner of its rejection, and conscious of the disinterestedness of his
motives, abandoned the negotiation in disgust, and the opportunity was
lost.]
CHAPTER XIV.
Military Laws and Measures.--Agricultural Products
diminished.--Manufactures flourishing.--The Call for
Volunteers.--The Term of Three Years.--Improved Discipline.--The
Law assailed.--Important Constitutional Question raised.--Its
Discussion at Length.--Power of the Government over its own
Armies and the Militia.--Object of Confederations.--The
War-Powers granted.--Two Modes of raising Armies in the
Confederate States.--Is the Law necessary and proper?--Congress
is the Judge under the Grant of Specific Power.--What is meant
by Militia.--Whole Military Strength divided into Two
Classes.--Powers of Congress.--Objections answered.--Good
Effects of the Law.--The Limitations enlarged.--Results of the
Operations of these Laws.--Act for the Employment of
Slaves.--Message to Congress.--"Died of a Theory."--Act to use
Slaves as Soldiers passed.--Not Time to put it in Operation.
The agricultural products were diminished every year during the war. Its
demands diminished the number of cultivators, and their labors were more
extensively devoted to grain-crops. The amount of the cotton-crop was
greatly reduced, and numbers of bales were destroyed when in danger of
falling into the hands of the enemy.
The manufacturing industry became more extensive than ever before, and
in many branches more highly developed. The results in the ordnance
department of the Government, stated elsewhere in these pages, serve as
an illustration of the achievements in many branches of industry.
During the first year of the war the authority granted to the President
to call for volunteers in the army for a short period was sufficient to
secure all the military force which we could fit out and use
advantageously. As it became evident that the contest would be long and
severe, better measures of preparation were enacted. I was authorized to
call out and place in the military service for three years, unless the
war should sooner end, all white men residents of the Confederate States
between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five years, and to continue
those already in the field until three years from the date of their
enlistment. But those under eighteen years and over thirty-five were
required to remain ninety days. The existing organization of companies,
regiments, etc., was preserved, but the former were filled up to the
number of one hundred and twenty-five men. This was the first step
toward placing the army in a permanent and efficient condition. The term
of service being lengthened, the changes by discharges and by receiving
recruits were diminished, so that, while additions were made to the
forces already in the field, the discipline was greatly improved. At the
same time, on March 13, 1862, General Robert E. Lee was "charged with
the conduct of the military operations of the armies of the Confederacy"
under my direction. Nevertheless, the law upon which our success so
greatly depended was assailed with unexpected criticism in various
quarters. A constitutional question of high importance was raised, which
tended to involve the harmony of coöperation, so essential in this
crisis, between the General and the State governments. It was advanced
principally by the Governor of Georgia, Hon. Joseph E. Brown, and the
following extracts are taken from my reply to him, dated
Executive Department, Richmond, _May_ 29, 1862.
"I propose, from my high respect for yourself and for other
eminent citizens who entertain opinions similar to yours, to set
forth somewhat at length my own views on the power of the
Confederate Government over its own armies and the militia, and
will endeavor not to leave without answer any of the positions
maintained in your letters.
"The main, if not the only, purpose for which independent states
form unions, or confederations, is to combine the power of the
several members in such manner as to form one united force in
all relations with foreign powers, whether in peace or in war.
Each state, amply competent to administer and control its own
domestic government, yet too feeble successfully to resist
powerful nations, seeks safety by uniting with other states in
like condition, and by delegating to some common agent the use
of the combined strength of all, in order to secure advantageous
commercial relations in peace, and to carry on hostilities with
effect in war.
"Now, the powers delegated by the several States to the
Confederate Government, which is their common agent, are
enumerated in the eighth section of the Constitution; each power
being distinct, specific, and enumerated in paragraphs
separately numbered. The only exception is the eighteenth
paragraph, which by its own terms is made dependent on those
previously enumerated, as follows: '18. To make all laws which
shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the
foregoing powers,' etc.
"Now the _war-powers_ granted to the Congress are conferred in
the following paragraphs: No. 1 'gives authority to raise
revenue necessary to pay the debts, provide for _the common
defense_, and carry on the Government,' etc. No. 11, 'To declare
war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules
concerning captures on land and water.' No. 12, 'To raise and
support armies, but no appropriations of money to that use shall
be for a longer term than two years.' No. 13, 'To provide and
maintain a navy.' No. 14, 'To make rules for the government and
regulation of _the land and naval forces_.'
"It is impossible to imagine a more broad, ample, and
unqualified delegation of the whole war power of each State than
is here contained, with the solitary limitation of the
appropriations to two years. The States not only gave power to
raise money for the common defense, to declare war, to raise and
support armies (in the plural), to provide and maintain a navy,
to govern and regulate both land and naval forces, but they went
further, and covenanted, by the third paragraph of the tenth
section, not 'to engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in
such imminent danger as will not admit of delay.'
"I know of but two modes of raising armies within the
Confederate States, viz., voluntary enlistment and draft, or
conscription. I perceive, in the delegation of power to raise
armies, no restriction as to the mode of procuring troops. I see
nothing which confines Congress to one class of men, nor any
greater power to receive volunteers than conscripts into its
service. I see no limitation by which enlistments are to be
received of individuals only, but not of companies, or
battalions, or squadrons, or regiments. I find no limitation of
time of service, but only of duration of appropriation. I
discover nothing to confine Congress to waging war within the
limits of the Confederacy, nor to prohibit offensive war. In a
word, when Congress desires to raise an army, and passes a law
for that purpose, the solitary question is under the eighteenth
paragraph, viz., 'Is the law one that is necessary and proper to
execute the power to raise armies?'
"On this point you say: `But did the necessity exist in this
case? The conscription act can not aid the Government in
increasing its supply of _arms_ or _provisions_, but can only
enable it to call a larger number of men into the field. The
difficulty has never been to get _men_. The States have already
furnished the Government more than it can arm,' etc.
"I would have very little difficulty in establishing to your
entire satisfaction that the passage of the law was not only
necessary, but that it was absolutely indispensable; that
numerous regiments of twelve months' men were on the eve of
being disbanded, whose places could not be supplied by raw
levies in the face of superior numbers of the foe, without
entailing the most disastrous results; that the position of our
armies was so critical as to fill the bosom of every patriot
with the liveliest apprehension; and that the provisions of this
law were effective in warding off a pressing danger. But I
prefer to answer your objection on other and broader grounds.
"I hold that, when a specific power is granted by the
Constitution, like that now in question, 'to raise armies,'
Congress is the judge whether the law passed for the purpose of
executing that power is 'necessary and proper.' It is not enough
to say that armies might be raised in other ways, and that,
therefore, this particular way is not 'necessary.' The same
argument might be used against _every_ mode of raising armies.
To each successive mode suggested, the objection would be that
other modes were practicable, and that, therefore, the
particular mode used was not 'necessary.' The true and only test
is to inquire whether the law is intended and calculated to
carry out the object; whether it devises and creates an
instrumentality for executing the specific power granted; and,
if the answer be in the affirmative, the law is constitutional.
None can doubt that the conscription law is calculated and
intended to 'raise armies'; it is, therefore, 'necessary and
proper' for the execution of that power, and is constitutional,
unless it comes in conflict with some other provision of our
Confederate compact.
"You express the opinion that this conflict exists, and support
your argument by the citation of those clauses which refer to
the militia. There are certain provisions not cited by you,
which are not without influence on my judgment, and to which I
call your attention. They will aid in defining what is meant by
'militia,' and in determining the respective powers of the
States and the Confederacy over them.
"The several States agree 'not to keep troops or ships of war in
time of peace.'[194] They further stipulate that, 'a
well-regulated militia being necessary for the security of a
free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall
not be infringed.'[195]
"'That no person shall be held to answer for a capital or
otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment
of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the _land_ or _naval
forces_, or in _the militia_ when in actual service in times of
war or public danger.'[196]
"What, then, are militia? They can only be created by law. The
arms-bearing inhabitants of a State are liable to become its
militia, if the law so order; but, in the absence of a law to
that effect, the men of a State capable of bearing arms are no
more militia than they are seamen.
"The Constitution also tells us that militia are not _troops_,
nor are they any part of the _land_ or _naval forces_; for
militia exist in time of peace, and the Constitution forbids the
States to keep troops in time of peace, and they are expressly
distinguished and placed in a separate category from land or
naval forces in the sixteenth paragraph above quoted; and the
words _land_ and _naval forces_ are shown by paragraphs 12, 13,
and 14, to mean the Army and Navy of the Confederate States.
"Now, if militia are not the citizens taken singly, but a body
created by law; if they are not troops; if they are no part of
the Army and Navy of the Confederacy, we are led directly to the
definition, quoted by the Attorney-General, that militia are 'a
body of soldiers in a State enrolled for discipline.' In other
words, the term 'militia' is a collective term meaning a body of
men organized, and can not be applied to the separate
individuals who compose the organization.
"The Constitution divides the whole military strength of the
States into only two classes of organized bodies: one, the
armies of the Confederacy; the other, the militia of the States.
"In the delegation of power to the Confederacy, after exhausting
the subject of declaring war, raising and supporting armies, and
providing a navy, in relation to all which the grant of
authority to Congress is _exclusive_, the Constitution proceeds
to deal with the other organized body, the militia; and, instead
of delegating power to Congress alone, or reserving it to the
States alone, the power is divided as follows, viz.: Congress is
to have power 'to provide for calling forth the militia to
execute the laws of the _Confederate_ States, suppress
insurrections, and _repel invasions_.'[197]
"'To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the
militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed
in the service of the Confederate States; _reserving_ to _the
States respectively the appointment of the officers_, and the
_authority of training the militia_, according to the discipline
prescribed by Congress.'[198]
"Congress, then, has the power to provide for _organizing_ the
arms-bearing people of the State into militia. Each _State_ has
the power to officer and _train_ them when organized.
"_Congress_ may call forth the militia to execute Confederate
laws; the _State_ has not surrendered the power to call them
forth to execute State laws.
"Congress may call them forth to repel invasion; so may the
State, for the power is impliedly reserved of governing all the
militia, except the part in actual service of the Confederacy.
"I confess myself at a loss to perceive in what manner these
careful and well-defined provisions of the Constitution,
regulating the organization and government of the militia, can
be understood as applying in the remotest degree to the armies
of the Confederacy, nor can I conceive how the grant of
_exclusive_ power to declare and carry on war by armies raised
and supported by the Confederacy is to be restricted or
diminished by the clauses which grant a _divided_ power over the
militia. On the contrary, the delegation of authority over the
militia, so far as granted, appears to me to be plainly an
_additional_ enumerated power intended to strengthen the hands
of the Confederate Government in the discharge of its paramount
duty, the common defense of the States.
"You state, after quoting the twelfth, fifteenth, and sixteenth
grants of power to Congress, that 'these grants of power all
relate to the same subject-matter, and are all contained in the
same section of the Constitution, and, by a well-known rule of
construction, must be taken as a whole and construed together.'
"This argument appears to me unsound. _All_ the powers of
Congress are enumerated in one section, and the three paragraphs
quoted can no more control each other by reason of their
location in the same section than they can control any of the
other paragraphs preceding, intervening, or succeeding. So far
as the subject-matter is concerned, I have already endeavored to
show that the armies mentioned in the twelfth paragraph are a
subject-matter as distinct from the militia mentioned in the
fifteenth and sixteenth as they are from the navy mentioned in
the thirteenth. Nothing can so mislead as to construe together,
and as a whole, the carefully separated clauses which define the
different powers to be exercised over distinct subjects by the
Congress.
"But you add that, 'by the grant of power to Congress to raise
and support armies without qualification, the framers of the
Constitution intended the regular armies of the Confederacy, and
not armies composed of the whole militia of all the States.'
"I must confess myself somewhat at a loss to understand this
position. If I am right that the militia is a body of enrolled
State soldiers, it is not possible in the nature of things that
armies raised by the Confederacy can 'be composed of the whole
militia of all the States.' The militia may be called forth in
whole or in part into the Confederate service, but do not
thereby become part of the 'armies raised' by Congress. They
remain militia, and go home when the emergency which provoked
their call has ceased. Armies raised by Congress are of course
raised out of the _same population_ as the militia organized by
the States, and to deny to Congress the power to draft a citizen
into the army, or to receive his voluntary offer of services,
because he is a member of the State militia, is to deny the
power to raise an army at all; for, practically, all men fit for
service in the army may be embraced in the militia organization
of the several States. You seem, however, to suggest, rather
than directly to assert, that the conscript law may be
unconstitutional, because it comprehends all arms-bearing men
between eighteen and thirty-five years; at least, this is an
inference which I draw from your expression, 'armies composed of
the _whole_ militia of _all_ the States.' But it is obvious
that, if Congress have power to draft into the armies raised by
it any citizens at all (without regard to the fact whether they
are, or not, members of militia organizations), the power must
be coextensive with the exigencies of the occasion, or it
becomes illusory; and the extent of the exigency must be
determined by Congress; for the Constitution has left the power
without any other check or restriction than the Executive veto.
Under ordinary circumstances, the power thus delegated to
Congress is scarcely felt by the States. At the present moment,
when our very existence is threatened by armies vastly superior
in numbers to ours, the necessity for defense has induced a
call, not for 'the whole militia of all the States,' not for any
militia, but for men to compose _armies_ for the Confederate
States.
"Surely there is no mystery in this subject. During our whole
past history, as well as during our recent one year's experience
as a new Confederacy, the militia 'have been called forth to
repel invasion' in numerous instances, and they never came
otherwise than as bodies organized by the States with their
company, field, and _general officers_; and, when the emergency
had passed, they went home again. I can not perceive how any one
can interpret the conscription law as taking away from the
States the power to appoint officers to their militia. You
observe on this point in your letter that, unless your
construction is adopted, 'the very object of the States in
reserving the power of appointing the officers is defeated, and
that portion of the Constitution is not only a nullity, but the
whole military power of the States, and the entire control of
the militia, with the appointment of the officers, is vested in
the Confederate Government, whenever it chooses to call its own
action "raising an army," and not "calling forth the militia."'
"I can only say, in reply to this, that the power of Congress
depends on the real nature of the act it proposes to perform,
not on the name given to it; and I have endeavored to show that
its action is really that of 'raising an army,' and bears no
semblance to 'calling forth the militia.' I think I may safely
venture the assertion that there is not one man out of a
thousand of those who will do service under the conscription act
that will describe himself while in the Confederate service as
being a militiaman; and, if I am right in this assumption, the
popular understanding concurs entirely with my own deductions
from the Constitution as to the meaning of the word 'militia.'
"My answer has grown to such a length, that I must confine
myself to one more quotation from your letter. You proceed:
'Congress shall have power to _raise armies_. How shall it be
done? The answer is clear. In conformity to the provisions of
the Constitution, which expressly provides that, when the
militia of the States are called forth to _repel invasion_, and
employed in the service of the Confederate States, which is now
the case, the State shall appoint the officers.
"I beg you to observe that the answer which you say is clear is
not an answer to the question put. The question is, How are
armies to be raised? The answer given is, that, when militia are
called upon to repel invasion, the State shall appoint the
officers.
"There seems to me to be a conclusive test on this whole
subject. By our Constitution, Congress may declare war,
_offensive_ as well as _defensive_. It may acquire territory.
Now, suppose that, for good cause and to right unprovoked
injuries, Congress should declare war against Mexico and invade
Sonora. The militia could not be called forth in such a case,
the right to call it being limited 'to repel invasions.' Is it
not plain that the law now under discussion, if passed under
such circumstances, could by no possibility be aught else than a
law to 'raise an army'? Can one and the same law be construed
into a 'calling forth the militia,' if the war be defensive, and
a 'raising of armies,' if the war be offensive?
"At some future day, after our independence shall have been
established, it is no improbable supposition that our present
enemy may be tempted to abuse his naval power by depredations on
our commerce, and that we may be compelled to assert our rights
by offensive war. How is it to be carried on? Of what is the
army to be composed? If this Government can not call on its
arms-bearing population otherwise than as militia, and if the
militia can only be called forth to repel invasion, we should be
utterly helpless to vindicate our honor or protect our rights.
War has been well styled 'the terrible litigation of nations.'
Have we so formed our Government that in this litigation we must
never be plaintiffs? Surely this can not have been the intention
of the framers of our compact.
"In no respect in which I can view this law can I find just
reason to distrust the propriety of my action in approving and
signing it; and the question presented involves consequences,
both immediate and remote, too momentous to permit me to leave
your objections unanswered.
"Jefferson Davis."
The operation of this law was suspended in the States of Kentucky,
Missouri, and Maryland, because of their occupation by the armies of the
Federal Government. The opposition to it, where its execution was
continued, soon became limited, and before June 1st its good effects
were seen in the increased strength and efficiency of our armies. At the
same time I was authorized to commission officers to form bands of
"Partisan Rangers," either of infantry or cavalry, which were
subsequently confined to cavalry alone. On September 27, 1862, all white
men between the ages of thirty-five and forty-five were placed in the
military service for three years. All persons subject to enrollment
might be enrolled wherever found, and were made subject to the
provisions of the law. Authority was also given for the reception of
volunteers from the States in which the law was suspended. On February
11, 1864, it was enacted by Congress that all white men between the ages
of seventeen and fifty should be in the military service for the war;
also, that all then in the service between the ages of eighteen and
forty-five should be retained during the war. An enrollment was also
ordered of all persons between the ages of seventeen and eighteen and
between forty-five and fifty years, who should constitute a reserve for
State defense and detail duty. On February 17th all male free negroes
between the ages of eighteen and fifty years were made liable to perform
duties with the army, or in connection with the military defenses of the
country in the way of work upon the fortifications, or in Government
works for the production or preparation of materials of war, or in
military hospitals. The Secretary of War was also authorized to employ
for the same duties any number of negro slaves not exceeding twenty
thousand.
In the operation of the military laws we found the exemption from
military duty accorded by the law to all persons engaged in certain
specified pursuits or professions to be unwise. Indeed, it seems to be
indefensible in theory. The defense of home, family, and country is
universally recognized as the paramount political duty of every member
of society; and, in a form of government where each citizen enjoys an
equality of rights and privileges, nothing can be more invidious than an
unequal distribution of duties or obligations. No pursuit nor position
should relieve any one who is able to do active duty from enrollment in
the army, unless his functions or services are more useful to the
defense of his country in another sphere. But the exemption from service
of entire classes should be wholly abandoned.
The act of February 17, 1864 (above mentioned), which authorized the
employment of slaves, produced less results than had been anticipated.
It, however, brought forward the question of the employment of the
negroes as soldiers in the army, which was warmly advocated by some and
as ardently opposed by others. My own views upon it were expressed
freely and frequently in intercourse with members of Congress, and
emphatically in my message of November 7, 1864, when, urging upon
Congress the consideration of the propriety of a radical modification of
the theory of the law, I said:
"Viewed merely as property, and therefore as the subject of
impressment, the service or labor of the slave has been
frequently claimed for short periods in the construction of
defensive works. The slave, however, bears another relation to
the state--that of a person. The law of last February
contemplates only the relation of the slave to the master, and
limits the impressment to a certain term of service.
"But, for the purposes enumerated in the act, instruction in the
manner of camping, marching, and packing trains is needful, so
that even in this limited employment length of service adds
greatly to the value of the negro's labor. Hazard is also
encountered in all the positions to which negroes can be
assigned for service with the army, and the duties required of
them demand loyalty and zeal.
"In this aspect the relation of person predominates so far as to
render it doubtful whether the private right of property can
consistently and beneficially be continued, and it would seem
proper to acquire for the public service the entire property in
the labor of the slave, and to pay therefor due compensation,
rather than to impress his labor for short terms; and this the
more especially as the effect of the present law would vest this
entire property in all cases where the slave might be recaptured
after compensation for his loss had been paid to the private
owner. Whenever the entire property in the service of a slave is
thus acquired by the Government, the question is presented by
what tenure he should be held. Should he be retained in
servitude, or should his emancipation be held out to him as a
reward for faithful service, or should it be granted at once on
the promise of such service; and if emancipated what action
should be taken to secure for the freed man the permission of
the State from which he was drawn to reside within its limits
after the close of his public service? The permission would
doubtless be more readily accorded as a reward for past faithful
service, and a double motive for zealous discharge of duty would
thus be offered to those employed by the Government--their
freedom and the gratification of the local attachment which is
so marked a characteristic of the negro and forms so powerful an
incentive to his action. The policy of engaging to liberate the
negro on his discharge after service faithfully rendered seems
to me preferable to that of granting immediate manumission, or
that of retaining him in servitude. If this policy should
commend itself to the judgment of Congress, it is suggested
that, in addition to the duties heretofore performed by the
slave, he might be advantageously employed as a pioneer and
engineer laborer, and, in that event, that the number should be
augmented to forty thousand.
"Beyond this limit and these employments it does not seem to me
desirable under existing circumstances to go.
"A broad, moral distinction exists between the use of slaves as
soldiers in defense of their homes and the incitement of the
same persons to insurrection against their masters. The one is
justifiable, if necessary, the other is iniquitous and unworthy
of civilized people; and such is the judgment of all writers on
public law, as well as that expressed and insisted on by our
enemies in all wars prior to that now waged against us. By none
have the practices of which they are now guilty been denounced
with greater severity than by themselves in the two wars with
Great Britain, in the last and in the present century, and in
the Declaration of Independence in 1776, when an enumeration was
made of the wrongs which justified the revolt from Great
Britain. The climax of atrocity was deemed to be reached only
when the English monarch was denounced as having 'excited
domestic insurrection among us.'
"The subject is to be viewed by us, therefore, solely in the
light of policy and our social economy. When so regarded, I must
dissent from those who advise a general levy and arming of the
slaves for the duty of soldiers. Until our white population
shall prove insufficient for the armies we require and can
afford to keep in the field, to employ as a soldier the negro,
who has merely been trained to labor, and, as a laborer, the
white man accustomed from his youth to the use of arms, would
scarcely be deemed wise or advantageous by any; and this is the
question now before us. But should the alternative ever be
presented of subjugation, or of the employment of the slave as a
soldier, there seems no reason to doubt what should then be our
decision. Whether our view embraces what would, in so extreme a
case, be the sum of misery entailed by the dominion of the
enemy, or be restricted solely to the effect upon the welfare
and happiness of the negro population themselves, the result
would be the same. The appalling demoralization, suffering,
disease, and death, which have been caused by partially
substituting the invaders' system of police for the kind
relation previously subsisting between the master and slave,
have been a sufficient demonstration that external interference
with our institution of domestic slavery is productive of evil
only. If the subject involved no other consideration than the
mere right of property, the sacrifices heretofore made by our
people have been such as to permit no doubt of their readiness
to surrender every possession in order to secure independence.
But the social and political question which is exclusively under
the control of the several States has a far wider and more
enduring importance than that of pecuniary interest. In its
manifold phases it embraces the stability of our republican
institutions, resting on the actual political equality of all
its citizens, and includes the fulfillment of the task which has
been so happily begun--that of Christianizing and improving the
condition of the Africans who have by the will of Providence
been placed in our charge. Comparing the results of our own
experience with those of the experiments of others who have
borne similar relations to the African race, the people of the
several States of the Confederacy have abundant reason to be
satisfied with the past, and to use the greatest circumspection
in determining their course. These considerations, however, are
rather applicable to the improbable contingency of our need of
resorting to this element of assistance than to our present
condition. If the recommendation above, made for the training of
forty thousand negroes for the service indicated, shall meet
your approval, it is certain that even this limited number, by
their preparatory training in intermediate duties, would form a
more valuable reserve force in case of urgency than threefold
their number suddenly called from field-labor, while a fresh
levy could to a certain extent supply their places in the
special service for which they are now employed."
Subsequent events advanced my views from a prospective to a present need
for the enrollment of negroes to take their place in the ranks.
Strenuously I argued the question with members of Congress who called to
confer with me. To a member of the Senate (the House in which we most
needed a vote) I stated, as I had done to many others, the fact of
having led negroes against a lawless body of armed white men, and the
assurance which the experiment gave me that they might, under proper
conditions, be relied on in battle, and finally used to him the
expression which I believe I can repeat exactly: "If the Confederacy
falls, there should be written on its tombstone, 'Died of a theory.'"
General Lee was brought before a committee to state his opinion as to
the probable efficiency of negroes as soldiers, and disappointed the
probable expectation by his unqualified advocacy of the proposed
measure.
After much discussion in Congress, a bill authorizing the President to
ask for and accept from their owners such a number of able-bodied negro
men as he might deem expedient subsequently passed the House, but was
lost in the Senate by one vote. The Senators of Virginia opposed the
measure so strongly that only legislative instruction could secure their
support of it. Their Legislature did so instruct them, and they voted
for it. Finally, the bill passed, with an amendment providing that not
more than twenty-five per cent. of the male slaves between the ages of
eighteen and forty-five should be called out. But the passage of the act
had been so long delayed that the opportunity was lost. There did not
remain time enough to obtain any result from its provisions.
[Footnote 194: Article I, section 10, paragraph 3.]
[Footnote 195: Ibid., section 9, Part XIII.]
[Footnote 196: Ibid., section 9, paragraph 16.]
[Footnote 197: Section 8, paragraph 15.]
[Footnote 198: Ibid., paragraph 16.]
APPENDIXES.
[Transcriber's Note: There is no Appendix A.]
APPENDIX B.
THE OREGON QUESTION.
Extracts from speech of Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, in the House of
Representatives, February 6, 1846, on the resolution to terminate the
joint occupation of the Oregon Territory.
Mr. Chairman: In negotiations between governments, in attempts to modify
existing policies, the circumstances of the time most frequently decide
between success and failure.
How far the introduction of this question may affect our foreign
intercourse, the future only can determine; but I invite attention to
the present posture of affairs. Amicable relations, after a serious
interruption, have been but recently restored between the United States
and Mexico. The most delicate and difficult of questions, the adjustment
of a boundary between us, remains unsettled; and many eyes are fixed
upon our minister at Mexico, with the hope that he may negotiate a
treaty which will remove all causes of dispute, and give to us
territorial limits, the ultimate advantages of which it would be
difficult to over-estimate.
If, sir, hereafter we shall find that, by this excited discussion,
portentous of a war with England, unreasonable demands upon the part of
Mexico should be encouraged, the acquisition of California be defeated,
that key to Asiatic commerce be passed from our hands for ever--what
will we have gained to compensate so great a loss? We know the influence
which Great Britain exercises over Mexico; we should not expect her to
be passive, nor doubt that the prospect of a war between England and the
United States would serve to revive the former hopes and to renew the
recent enmity of Mexico.
Sir, I have another hope, for the fulfillment of which the signs of the
times seem most propitious. An unusually long exemption from a general
war has permitted the bonds of commerce to extend themselves around the
civilized world, and nations from remote quarters of the globe have been
drawn into that close and mutual dependence which foretold unshackled
trade and a lasting peace. In the East, there appeared a rainbow which
promised that the waters of national jealousy and proscription were
about to recede from the earth for ever, and the spirit of free trade to
move over the face thereof.
In perspective, we saw the ports of California united to the ports and
forests of Oregon, and our countrymen commanding the trade of the
Pacific. The day seemed at hand when the overcharged granaries of the
West should be emptied to the starving millions of Europe and Asia; when
the canvas-winged doves of our commerce should freely fly forth from the
ark, and return across every sea with the olive of every land. Shall
objects like these be endangered by the impatience of petty ambition,
the promptings of sectional interest, or the goadings of fanatic hate?
Shall the good of the whole be surrendered to the voracious demands of
the few? Shall class interests control the great policy of our country,
and the voice of reason be drowned in the clamor of causeless
excitement? If so, not otherwise, we may agree with him who would
reconcile us to the evils of war by the promise of "emancipation from
the manufacturers of Manchester and Birmingham"; or leave unanswered the
heresy boldly announced, though by history condemned, that war is the
purifier, blood is the aliment, of free institutions. Sir, it is true
that republics have often been cradled in war, but more often they have
met with a grave in that cradle. Peace is the interest, the policy, the
nature of a popular government. War may bring benefits to a few, but
privation and loss are the lot of the many. An appeal to arms should be
the last resort, and only by national rights or national honor can it be
justified.
To those who have treated this as a case involving the national honor, I
reply that, whenever that question shall justly be raised, I trust an
American Congress will not delay for weeks to discuss the chances, or
estimate the sacrifices, which its maintenance may cost. But, sir,
instead of rights invaded or honor violated, the question before us is,
the expediency of terminating an ancient treaty, which, if it be unwise,
it can not be dishonorable, to continue. Yet, throughout this long
discussion, the recesses and vaulted dome of this hall have reëchoed to
inflammatory appeals and violent declamations on the sanctity of
national honor; and then, as if to justify them, followed reflections
most discreditable to the conduct of our Government. The charge made
elsewhere has been repeated here, that we have trodden upon Mexico, but
cowered under England.
Sir, it has been my pride to believe that our history was unstained by
an act of injustice or of perfidy; that we stood recorded before the
world as a people haughty to the strong, generous to the weak; and
nowhere has this character been more exemplified than in our intercourse
with Mexico. We have been referred to the treaty of peace that closed
our last war with Great Britain, and told that our injuries were
unredressed, because the question of impressment was not decided. There
are other decisions than those made by commissioners, and sometimes they
outlast the letter of a treaty. On sea and land we settled the question
of impressment before negotiations were commenced at Ghent. Further, it
should be remembered that there was involved within that question a
cardinal principle of each Government. The power of expatriation, and
its sequence, naturalization, were denied by Great Britain; and hence a
right asserted to impress native-born Britons, though naturalized as
citizens of the United States. This violated a principle which lies at
the foundation of our institutions, and could never be permitted; but,
not being propagandists, we could afford to leave the political opinion
unnoticed, after having taught a lesson which would probably prevent any
future attempt to exercise it to our injury. Let the wisdom of that
policy be judged by subsequent events....
Mr. Davis then proceeded to state and argue at length the historical
questions involved, making copious citations from original authorities.
He continued:
Waiving the consideration of any sinister motive or sectional hate which
may have brought allies to the support of the resolution now before us,
I will treat it as simply aiming at the object which in common we
desire--to secure the whole of Oregon to the United States.
Thus considered, the dissolution of the Oregon convention becomes a mere
question of time. As a friend to the extension of our Union, and
therefore prone to insist upon its territorial claims, I have thought
this movement premature; that we should have put ourselves in the
strongest attitude for the enforcement of our claims before we fixed a
day on which negotiations should be terminated. That nation negotiates
to most advantage which is best prepared for war. Gentlemen have treated
the idea of preparation for war as synonymous with the raising of an
army. It is not so; indeed, that is the last measure, and should only be
resorted to when war has become inevitable; and then a very short time
will always be, I trust, sufficient. But, sir, there are preparations
which require years, and can only be made in a state of peace. Such are
the fortifications of the salient points and main entrances of our
coast. For twenty-odd years Southern men have urged the occupation of
the Tortugas. Are those who have so long opposed appropriations for that
purpose ready to grant them now in such profusion that the labor of
three years may be done in one? No, sir; the occasion, by increasing the
demand for money elsewhere, must increase the opposition. That rock,
which Nature placed like a sentinel to guard the entrance into the
Mediterranean of our continent, and which should be Argus-eyed to watch
it, will stand without an embrasure to look through.
How is the case in Oregon? Our settlements there must be protected, and
under present circumstances an army of operations in that country must
draw its food from this; but we have not a sufficient navy to keep open
a line of communication by sea around Cape Horn; and the rugged route
and the great distance forbid the idea of supplying it by transportation
across the mountains. Now, let us see what time and the measures more
pointedly recommended by the President would effect. Our jurisdiction
extended into Oregon, the route guarded by stockades and troops, a new
impulse would be given to immigration: and in two or three years the
settlement on the Willamette might grow into a colony, whose flocks and
herds and granaries would sustain an army, whenever one should be
required.
By agencies among the Indian tribes, that effective ally of Great
Britain, which formerly she has not scrupled to employ, would be
rendered friendly to our people. In the mean time, roads could be
constructed for the transportation of munitions of war. Then we should
be prepared to assert, and effectively maintain, our claims to their
ultimate limits.
I could not depreciate my countrymen; I would not vaunt the prowess of
an enemy; but, sir, I tell those gentlemen who, in this debate, have
found it so easy to drive British troops out of Oregon, that, between
England and the United States, if hostilities occur in that remote
territory, the party must succeed which has bread within the country....
Mr. Chairman, unfortunately, the opinion has gone forth that no
politician dares to be the advocate of peace when the question of war is
mooted. That will be an evil hour--the sand of our republic will be
nearly run--when it shall be in the power of any demagogue, or fanatic,
to raise a war-clamor, and control the legislation of the country. The
evils of war must fall upon the people, and with them the war-feeling
should originate. We, their representatives, are but a mirror to reflect
the light, and never should become a torch to fire the pile. But, sir,
though gentlemen go, torch in hand, among combustible materials, they
still declare there is no danger of a fire. War-speeches and measures
threatening war are mingled with profuse assurances of peace. Sir, we
can not expect, we should not require, our adversary to submit to more
than we would bear; and I ask, after the notice has been given and the
twelve months have expired, who would allow Great Britain to exercise
exclusive jurisdiction over Oregon? If we would resist such act by force
of arms, before ourselves performing it we should prepare for war.
Some advocates of this immediate notice have urged their policy by
reference to a resolution of the Democratic Baltimore Convention, and
contended that the question was thereby closed to members of the
Democratic party. That resolution does not recommend immediate notice,
but recommends "the reannexation of Texas" and the "reoccupation of
Oregon" at the "earliest practicable period." The claim is strongly made
to the "whole of Oregon"; and the resolution seems directed more
pointedly to space than time. Texas and Oregon were united in the
resolution; and, had there been a third question involving our
territorial extension, I doubt not it would have been united with the
other two. The addition of territory to our Union is part of the
Democratic faith, and properly was placed in the declaration of our
policy at that time. To determine whether that practicable period has
arrived is now the question; and those who cordially agree upon the
principle of territorial enlargement have differed, and may continue
still to differ, on that question. Sir, though it is demonstrable that
haste may diminish but can not increase our chances to secure the whole
of Oregon, yet, because Southern men have urged the wisdom of delay, we
have had injurious comparisons instituted between our conduct on Texas
annexation and Oregon occupation. Is there such equality between the
cases that the same policy must apply to each? Texas was peopled, the
time was present when it must be acquired, or the influences active to
defeat our annexation purpose would probably succeed, and the country be
lost to us for ever. Oregon is, with a small exception, still a
wilderness; our claim to ultimate sovereignty can not be weakened during
the continuance of the Oregon convention. That ill-starred partnership
has robbed us of the advantages which an early occupation would have
given to our people in the fur-trade of the country, and we are now
rapidly advancing to a position from which we can command the entire
Territory. In Texas annexation we were prompted by other and higher
considerations than mere interest. Texas had been a member of our
family: in her infancy had been driven from the paternal roof,
surrendered to the government of harsh, inquisitorial Spain; but, true
to her lineage, preserved the faith of opposition to monarchical
oppression. She now returned, and asked to be admitted to the hearth of
the homestead. She pointed to the band of noble sons who stood around
her and said: "Here is the remnant of my family; the rest I gave a
sacrifice at the altar of our fathers' God--the God of Liberty." One,
two, three, of the elder sisters strove hard to close the door upon her;
but the generous sympathy, the justice of the family, threw it wide
open, and welcomed her return. Such was the case of Texas; is there a
parallel in Oregon?
But who are those that arraign the South, imputing to us motives of
sectional aggrandizement? Generally, the same who resisted Texas
annexation, and now most eagerly press on the immediate occupation of
the whole of Oregon. The source is worthy the suspicion. These were the
men whose constitutional scruples resisted the admission of a country
gratuitously offered to us, but who now look forward to gaining Canada
by conquest. These, the same who claim a weight to balance Texas, while
they attack others as governed by sectional considerations.
Sir, this doctrine of a political balance between different sections of
our Union is not of Southern growth. We advocated the annexation of
Texas as a "great national measure"; we saw in it the extension of the
principles intrusted to our care; and, if in the progress of the
question it assumed a sectional hue, the coloring came from the
opposition that it met--an opposition based, not upon a showing of the
injury it would bring to them, but upon the supposition that benefits
would be obtained by us.
Why is it that Texas is referred to, and treated as a Southern measure
merely, though its northern latitude is 42°? And why has the West so
often been reminded of its services upon Texas annexation? Is it to
divide the South and West? If so, let those who seek this object cease
from their travail, for their end can never be obtained. A common
agricultural interest unites us in a common policy, and the hand that
sows seeds of dissension between us will find, if they spring from the
ground, that the foot of fraternal intercourse will tread them back to
earth.
The streams that rise in the West flow on and are accumulated into the
rivers of the South; they bear the products of one to the other, and
bind the interests of the whole indissolubly together. The wishes of the
one wake the sympathies of the other. On Texas annexation the voice of
Mississippi found an echo in the West, and Mississippi reëchoes the call
of the West on the question of Oregon. Though this Government has done
nothing adequate to the defense of Mississippi, though by war she has
much to lose and nothing to gain, yet she is willing to encounter it, if
necessary to maintain our rights in Oregon. Her Legislature has recently
so resolved, and her Governor, in a late message, says, "If war comes,
to us it will bring blight and desolation, yet we are ready for the
crisis." Sir, could there be a higher obligation on the representative
of such a people than to restrain excitement--than to oppose a policy
that threatens an unnecessary war?...
Mr. Chairman, why have such repeated calls been made upon the South to
rally to the rescue? When, where, or how, has she been laggard or
deserter?
In 1776 the rights of man were violated in the outrages upon the
Northern colonies, and the South united in a war for their defense. In
1812 the flag of our Union was insulted, our sailors' rights invaded;
and, though the interests infringed were mainly Northern, war was
declared, and the opposition to its vigorous prosecution came not from
the South. We entered it for the common cause, and for the common cause
we freely met its sacrifices. If, sir, we have not been the "war party
in peace," neither have we been the "peace party in war," and I will
leave the past to answer for the future.
If we have not sought the acquisition of provinces by conquest, neither
have we desired to exclude from our Union such as, drawn by the magnet
of free institutions, have peacefully sought for admission. From sire to
son has descended our federative creed, opposed to the idea of sectional
conflict for private advantage, and favoring the wider expanse of our
union. If envy and jealousy and sectional strife are eating like rust
into the bonds our fathers expected to bind us, they come from causes
which our Southern atmosphere has never furnished. As we have shared in
the toils, so we have gloried in the triumphs, of our country. In our
hearts, as in our history, are mingled the names of Concord, and Camden,
and Saratoga, and Lexington, and Plattsburg, and Chippewa, and Erie, and
Moultrie, and New Orleans, and Yorktown, and Bunker Hill. Grouped
together, they form a record of the triumphs of our cause, a monument of
the common glory of our Union. What Southern man would wish it less by
one of the Northern names of which it is composed? Or where is he who,
gazing on the obelisk that rises from the ground made sacred by the
blood of Warren, would feel his patriot's pride suppressed by local
jealousy? Type of the men, the event, the purpose, it commemorates, that
column rises, stern, even severe in its simplicity; neither niche nor
molding for parasite or creeping thing to rest on; composed of material
that defies the waves of time, and pointing like a finger to the source
of noblest thought. Beacon of freedom, it guides the present generation
to retrace the fountain of our years and stand beside its source; to
contemplate the scene where Massachusetts and Virginia, as stronger
brothers of the family, stood foremost to defend our common rights; and
remembrance of the petty jarrings of to-day are buried in the nobler
friendship of an earlier time.
Yes, sir, and when ignorance, led by fanatic hate, and armed by all
uncharitableness, assails a domestic institution of the South, I try to
forgive, for the sake of the righteous among the wicked--our natural
allies, the Democracy of the North. Thus, sir, I leave to silent
contempt the malign predictions of the member from Ohio, who spoke in
the early stage of this discussion, while it pleases me to remember the
manly and patriotic sentiments of the gentleman who sits near me [Mr.
McDowell], and who represents another portion of that State. In him I
recognize the feelings of our Western brethren; his were the sentiments
that accord with their acts in the past, and which, with a few ignoble
exceptions, I doubt not they will emulate, if again the necessity should
exist. Yes, sir, if ever they hear that the invader's foot has been
pressed upon our soil, they will descend to the plain like an avalanche,
rushing to bury the foe.
In conclusion, I will say that, free from any forebodings of evil, above
the influence of taunts, beyond the reach of treasonable threats, and
confiding securely in the wisdom and patriotism of the Executive, I
shrink from the assertion of no right, and will consent to no
restrictions on the discretion of the treaty-making power of our
Government.
APPENDIX C.
SPEECHES, AND EXTRACTS FROM SPEECHES, OF THE AUTHOR IN THE SENATE OF THE
UNITED STATES DURING THE FIRST SESSION OF THE THIRTY-FIRST CONGRESS,
1849-1850.
Speech of Mr. Davis, of Mississippi, in the Senate of the United States,
on the resolutions of compromise proposed by Mr. Clay, January 29, 1850:
I do not rise to continue the discussion, but, as it has been made an
historical question as to what the position of the Senate was twelve
years ago, and, as with great regret I see this, the conservative branch
of the Government, tending toward that fanaticism which seems to prevail
with the majority in the United States, I wish to read from the journals
of that date the resolutions then adopted, and to show that they went
further than the honorable Senator from Kentucky has stated. I take it
for granted, from the date to which the honorable Senator has alluded,
he means the resolutions introduced by the honorable Senator from South
Carolina [Mr. Calhoun], not now in his seat, and to which the Senator
from Kentucky proposed certain amendments. Of the resolutions introduced
by the Senator from South Carolina, I will read the fifth in the series,
that to which the honorable Senator from Kentucky must have alluded. It
is in these words:
"_Resolved_, That the intermeddling of any State or States, or their
citizens, to abolish slavery in the District, or any of the Territories,
on the ground, or under the pretext, that it is immoral or sinful, or
the passage of any act or measure of Congress with that view, would be a
direct and dangerous attack on the institutions of all the slaveholding
States."
Such is the general form of the proposition. It was variously modified,
but never, in my opinion, improved. On the 27th, the fifth resolution
being again under consideration, Mr. Clay, of Kentucky, moved to amend
the amendment by striking out all after the word "resolved," and insert:
"That the interference, by the citizens of any of the States, with a
view to the abolition of slavery in this District, is endangering the
rights and security of the people of the District; and that any act or
measure of Congress designed to abolish slavery in this District would
be a violation of the faith implied in the cessions by the States of
Virginia and Maryland; a just cause of alarm to the people of the
slaveholding States, and have a direct and inevitable tendency to
disturb and endanger the Union.
"_And, resolved_, That it would be highly inexpedient to abolish slavery
within any district of country set apart for the Indian tribes, where it
now exists, or in Florida, the only Territory of the United States in
which it now exists, because of the serious alarm and just apprehensions
which would be thereby excited in the States sustaining that domestic
institution; because the people of that Territory have not asked it to
be done, and, when admitted into the Union, will be exclusively entitled
to decide that question for themselves; because it would be in violation
of the stipulations of the treaty between the United States and Spain of
the 22d of February, 1819; and, also, because it would be in violation
of a solemn compromise, made at a memorable and critical period in the
history of this country, by which, while slavery was prohibited north,
it was admitted south, of the line of thirty-six degrees and thirty
minutes north latitude."
But this resolution was not finally adopted. Upon the motion of Mr.
Buchanan to amend said amendment, by striking out the second clause
thereof, commencing with the word "resolved," it was determined in the
affirmative, and finally the resolution which here follows was
substituted in place of the second clause:
"That the interference by the citizens of any of the States, with a view
to the abolition of slavery in this District, is endangering the rights
and security of the people of the District; and that any act or measure
of Congress designed to abolish slavery in this district, would be a
violation of the faith implied in the cessions by the States of Virginia
and Maryland; a just cause of alarm to the people of the slaveholding
States, and have a direct and inevitable tendency to disturb and
endanger the Union."
This was the form in which the resolution was finally adopted, passing
by a vote of thirty-six to eight. Here, then, was fully and broadly
asserted the danger resulting from the interference in the question of
slavery in the District of Columbia, as trenching upon the rights of the
slaveholding States. Twelve years only have elapsed, yet this brief
period has swept away even the remembrance of principles then deemed
sacred and necessary to secure the safety of the Union. Now, an
honorable and distinguished Senator, to whom the country has been
induced to look for something that would heal the existing dissensions,
instead of raising new barriers against encroachment, dashes down those
heretofore erected and augments the existing danger. A representative
from one of the slaveholding States raises his voice for the first time
in disregard of this admitted right. Nor, Mr. President, did he stop
here. The boundary of a State, with which we have no more right to
interfere than with the boundary of the State of Kentucky, is encroached
upon. The United States, sir, as the agent for Texas, had a right to
settle the question of boundary between Texas and Mexico. Texas was not
annexed as a Territory, but was admitted as a State, and, at the period
of her admission, her boundaries were established by her Congress. She,
by the terms of annexation, gave to the United States the right to
define her boundary by treaty with Mexico; but the United States, in the
treaty made with Mexico subsequent to the war with that country,
received from Mexico not merely a cession of the territory that was
claimed by Texas, but much that lay beyond the asserted limits. Shall
we, then, acting simply as the cogent of Texas in the settlement of this
question of boundary, take from the principal for whom we act that
territory which belongs to her, to which we asserted her title against
Mexico, and appropriate it to ourselves? Why, sir, it would be a
violation of justice, and of a principle of law which is so plain that
it does not require one to have been bred to the profession of law to
understand it. The principle I refer to is, that an agent can not take
for his own benefit anything resulting from the matter in controversy,
after having acquired it as belonging to the principal for whom he acts.
The agent can not appropriate to himself rights acquired for his client.
The right of Texas, therefore, to that boundary was made complete by the
treaty of peace, which silenced the only rival claim to the territory.
It was distinctly defined by the acts of her Congress, before the time
of annexation; and I have only to refer to those acts to show that the
boundary of Texas was the Rio Bravo del Norte, from its mouth to its
source. What justice, or even decent regard for fairness, can there be,
now that Texas has acceded to annexation upon certain terms, to propose
a change of boundary, in violation of those terms, and by the power we
hold over her as a part of the Union? Can this power extend so far as to
take from her a portion of her territory, or to assert that there is a
portion to which she is not entitled?
These constitute with me two great objections to the propositions of the
honorable Senator from Kentucky; but, without stating all the objections
that I have, and they are very many, I will merely point out a few of
the prominent points to which I object in the argument of the Senator.
He assumes as facts things which are mere matters of opinion, and, I
think, of erroneous and injurious opinion. But, deferring the discussion
to another occasion, I desire at present merely to notice the assertion
of the honorable Senator, that slavery would never under any
circumstances be established in California. This, though stated as a
fact, is but a mere opinion--an opinion with which I do not accord. It
was to work the gold-mines on this continent that the Spaniards first
brought Africans to the country. The European races now engaged in
working the mines of California sink under the burning heat and sudden
changes of the climate to which the African race are altogether better
adapted. The production of rice, sugar, and cotton, is no better adapted
to slave-labor than the digging, washing, and quarrying of the
gold-mines.
We, sir, have not asked that slavery should be established in
California. We have only asked that there should be no restriction; that
climate and soil should be left free to establish the institution or
not, as experience should determine. Sir, after the agitation of the
subject within these halls and elsewhere has prevented the introduction
of slavery--by preventing the emigration of slaveholders with their
property--are we now to be told that the question is settled? More than
that: when we have acquired territory over which the Constitution of the
United States is thereby extended, and which the citizens of the United
States have a right to occupy, and to establish therein what laws they
please, in accordance with the principles of the Constitution--in which
they have a right to establish what institutions they please--it is now
claimed that the municipal regulations which previously existed shall
still govern the people, and that a portion of the citizens of the
United States shall thus be precluded from going there with their
property. This rule has, however, in discussion here, only been applied
to the property of slaveholders; as though slaves were the only property
under the laws of Mexico prohibited from entering California. It is to
be remembered that the late Secretary of the Treasury, in a report to
Congress, stated that the Mexican law prohibited the entrance of some
sixty articles of commerce; this was prohibition by law of Congress, and
slavery has never been so prohibited. It never has been prohibited by
the Mexican Congress in California; and the only prohibition ever issued
was that contained in the edict of a usurper, under the specious pretext
that it was necessary, in order to oppose the invasion of the country by
Spain. This decree was recognized by a subsequent Congress, so far as to
pass a law authorizing payment for slaves so liberated. It was the
emancipation of all the slaves in Mexico; an act, if you please, of
abolition, not of prohibition; not, whatever construction may be placed
upon it, done in the forms of law and requirements of their
Constitution. But we have not proposed to inquire into the legality of
the abolition, neither has any Southern man asked that that decree
should be repealed, or that those liberated under its provisions should
be returned to slavery. We only claim that there shall be an equality of
immunities and privileges among citizens of all parts of the United
States; that Mexican law shall not be applied so as to create inequality
between citizens, by preventing the immigration of any.
But, sir, we are called on to receive this as a measure of compromise!
Is a measure in which we of the minority are to receive nothing a
compromise? I look upon it as but a modest mode of taking that, the
claim to which has been more boldly asserted by others; and, that I may
be understood upon this question, and that my position may go forth to
the country in the same columns that convey the sentiments of the
Senator from Kentucky, I here assert that never will I take less than
the Missouri compromise line extended to the Pacific Ocean, with the
specific recognition of the right to hold slaves in the territory below
that line; and that, before such Territories are admitted into the Union
as States, slaves may be taken there from any of the United States at
the option of their owners. I can never consent to give additional power
to a majority to commit further aggressions upon the minority in this
Union; and will never consent to any proposition which will have such a
tendency, without a full guarantee or counteracting measure is connected
with it. I forbear commenting at any further length upon the
propositions embraced in the resolutions at this time.
Remarks of Mr. Davis, of Mississippi, in the Senate of the United
States, on the question of the reception of a memorial from inhabitants
of Pennsylvania and Delaware, presented by Mr. Hale, of New Hampshire,
praying that Congress would adopt measures for an immediate and peaceful
dissolution of the Union. February 8, 1850.
Mr. President: I rise merely to make a few remarks upon the right of
petition, and to notice the error which I think has pervaded the
comparisons that have been instituted between certain resolutions which
were presented by the Senator from North Carolina and the petition which
it is now proposed shall be received. The resolutions which were
presented from North Carolina were published in yesterday's paper, and,
after reading them, I think they refer to a state of case which the
people of North Carolina might properly present as their grievance. They
were resolutions for preserving the Union, calling upon Congress to take
all measures in its power for that purpose. This was all legitimate.
They had a right to petition Congress for a redress of grievances; and,
if it were in our power to redress those grievances, if it were within
the legitimate functions of our legislation, we were bound to receive
the petition and respectfully consider it. This case is exactly the
reverse. Here is no grievance, unless the Union is a grievance to those
who petition. And they call upon Congress to do that which every one
must admit Congress has no power to do--to dissolve peaceably the union
of the States. Then, sir, in the first place, there is no grievance; in
the next place, there is no power; and, beyond all that, it is offensive
to the Senate. It is offensive to recommend legislation for the
dissolution of the Union--offensive to the Senate and to the whole
country. If this Union is ever to be dissolved, it must be by the action
of the States and their people. Whatever power Congress holds, it bolds
under the Constitution, and that power is but a part of the Union.
Congress has no power to legislate upon that which will be the
destruction of the whole foundation upon which its authority rests.
I recollect, a good many years ago, that the Senator from Massachusetts
[Mr. John Davis], who addressed the Senate this morning, very pointedly
described the right of petition as a very humble right--as the mere
right to beg. This is my own view. The right peaceably to assemble, I
hold as the right which it was intended to grant to the people; that was
the only right which had ever been denied in our colonial condition. The
right of petition had never been denied by Parliament. It was intended
only to secure to the people, I say, the right peaceably to assemble,
whenever they choose to do so, with intent to petition for a redress of
grievances.
But, sir, the right of petition, though but a poor right--the mere right
to beg--may yet be carried to such an extent that we are bound to abate
it as a nuisance. If the avenues to the Capitol were to be obstructed,
so that members would find themselves unable to reach the halls of
legislation, because hordes of beggars presented themselves in the way
calling for relief, it would be a nuisance that would require to be
abated, and Congress, in self-defense, would be compelled to remove
them. But such a collection of beggars would not be half so great an
evil as the petitions presented here on the subject of slavery. They
disturb the peace of the country; they impede and pervert legislation by
the excitement they create; they do more to prevent rational
investigation and proper action in this body than any, if not all, other
causes. Good, if ever designed, has never resulted, and it would be
difficult to suppose that good is expected ever to flow from them. Why,
then, should we be bound to receive such petitions to the detriment of
the public business; or, rather, why are they presented? I am not of
those who believe we should be turned from the path of duty by
out-of-door clamor, or that the evil can be removed by partial
concession. To receive is to give cause for further demands, and our
direct and safe course is rejection.
Yes, sir, their reception would serve only to embarrass Congress, to
disturb the tranquillity of the country, and to peril the Union of the
States. By every obligation, therefore, that rests upon us under the
Constitution, upon every great principle upon which the Constitution is
founded, we are bound to abate this as a great and growing evil. This
petition, sir, was well described by the Senator from Pennsylvania as
being spurious; and I have been assured of the fact, from other sources
of information, that petitions are sent round in reference to other
subjects--of temperance, generally--and, after a long list of names has
been obtained, the caption is cut off, and the list of signatures
attached to an abolition caption and sent here to excite one section of
the Union against the other, to disturb the country, and distract the
legislation of Congress, to execute which we have our seats in this
Chamber. For the reasons first stated, I voted to receive the
resolutions that were presented by the Senator from North Carolina, and
for the reasons I have just given shall vote to reject this petition.
Conclusion of speech of Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, in the Senate
of the United States, on the resolutions of Mr. Clay, relative to
slavery in the Territories, etc., February 13 and 14, 1850.
... Sir, it has been asked on several occasions during the present
session, What ground of complaint has the South? Is this agitation in
the two halls of Congress, in relation to the domestic institutions of
the South, no subject for complaint? Is the denunciation heaped upon us
by the press of the North, and the attempts to degrade us in the eyes of
Christendom--to arraign the character of our people and the character of
our fathers, from whom our institutions are derived--no subject for
complaint? Is this sectional organization, for the purpose of hostility
to our portion of the Union, no subject for complaint? Would it not,
between foreign nations--nations not bound together and restrained as we
are by compact--would it not, I say, be just cause for war? What
difference is there between organizations for circulating incendiary
documents and promoting the escape of fugitives from a neighboring State
and the organization of an armed force for the purpose of invasion? Sir,
a State relying securely on its own strength would rather court the open
invasion than the insidious attack. And for what end, sir, is all this
aggression? They see that the slaves in their present condition in the
South are comfortable and happy; they see them advancing in
intelligence; they see the kindest relations existing between them and
their masters; they see them provided for in age and sickness, in
infancy and in disability; they see them in useful employment,
restrained from the vicious indulgences to which their inferior nature
inclines them; they see our penitentiaries never filled, and our
poor-houses usually empty. Let them turn to the other hand, and they see
the same race in a state of freedom at the North; but, instead of the
comfort and kindness they receive at the South, instead of being happy
and useful, they are, with few exceptions, miserable, degraded, filling
the penitentiaries and poor-houses, objects of scorn, excluded in some
places from the schools, and deprived of many other privileges and
benefits which attach to the white men among whom they live. And yet
they insist that elsewhere an institution which has proved beneficial to
this race shall be abolished, that it may be substituted by a state of
things which is fraught with so many evils to the race which they claim
to be the object of their solicitude! Do they find in the history of St.
Domingo, and in the present condition of Jamaica, under the recent
experiments which have been made upon the institution of slavery in the
liberation of the blacks, before God, in his wisdom, designed it should
be done--do they there find anything to stimulate them to future
exertion in the cause of abolition? Or should they not find there
satisfactory evidence that their past course was founded in error? And
is it not the part of integrity and wisdom, as soon as they can, to
retrace their steps? Should they not immediately cease from a course
mischievous in every stage, and finally tending to the greatest
catastrophe? We may dispute about measures, but, as long as parties have
nationality, as long as it is a difference of opinion between
individuals passing into every section of the country, it threatens no
danger to the Union. If the conflicts of party were the only cause of
apprehension, this Government might last for ever--the last page of
human history might contain a discussion in the American Congress upon
the meaning of some phrase, the extent of the power conferred by some
grant of the Constitution. It is, sir, these sectional divisions which
weaken the bonds of union and threaten their final rupture. It is not
differences of opinion--it is geographical lines, rivers and
mountains--which divide State from State, and make different nations of
mankind.
Are these no subjects of complaint for us? And do they furnish no cause
for repentance to you? Have we not a right to appeal to you as brethren
of this Union? Have we not a right to appeal to you, as brethren bound
by the compact of our fathers, that you should, with due regard to your
own rights and interests and constitutional obligations, do all that is
necessary to preserve our peace and promote our prosperity?
If, sir, the seeds of disunion have been sown broadcast over this land,
I ask by whose hand they have been scattered? If, sir, we are now
reduced to a condition when the powers of this Government are held
subservient to faction; if we can not and dare not legislate for the
organization of territorial governments--I ask, sir, who is responsible
for it? And I can with proud reliance say, it is not the South--it is
not the South! Sir, every charge of disunion which is made on that part
of the South which I in part represent, and whose sentiments I well
understand, I here pronounce to be grossly calumnious. The conduct of
the State of Mississippi in calling a convention has already been
introduced before the Senate; and on that occasion I stated, and now
repeat, that it was the result of patriotism, and a high resolve to
preserve, if possible, our constitutional Union; that all its
proceedings were conducted with deliberation, and it was composed of the
first men of the State.
The Chief-Justice--a man well known for his high integrity, for his
powerful intellect, for his great legal attainments, and his ability in
questions of constitutional law-presided over that Convention. After
calm and mature deliberation, resolutions were adopted, not in the
spirit of disunion, but announcing, in the first resolution of the
series, their attachment to the Union. They call on their brethren of
the South to unite with them in their holy purpose of preserving the
Constitution, which is its only bond and reliable hope. This was their
object; and for this and for no other purpose do they propose to meet in
general convention at Nashville. As I stated on a former occasion, this
was not a party movement in Mississippi. The presiding officer belongs
to the political minority in the State; the two parties in the State
were equally represented in the numbers of the Convention, and its
deliberations assumed no partisan or political character whatever. It
was the result of primary meetings in the counties; an assemblage of men
known throughout the State, having first met and intimated to those
counties a time when the State Convention should, if deemed proper, be
held. Every movement was taken with deliberation, and every movement
then taken was wholly independent of the action of anybody else; unless
it be intended, by the remarks made here, to refer its action to the
great principles of those who have gone before us, and who have left us
the rich legacy of the free institutions under which we live. If it be
attempted to assign the movement to the nullification tenets of South
Carolina, as my friend near me seemed to understand, then I say you must
go further back, and impute it to the State rights and strict-
construction doctrines of Madison and Jefferson. You must refer these in
their turn to the principles in which originated the Revolution and
separation of these then colonies from England. You must not stop there,
but go back still further, to the bold spirit of the ancient barons of
England. That spirit has come down to us, and in that spirit has all the
action since been taken. We will not permit aggressions. We will defend
our rights; and, if it be necessary, we will claim from this Government,
as the barons of England claimed from John, the grant of another _Magna
Charta_ for our protection.
Sir, I can but consider it as a tribute of respect to the character for
candor and sincerity which the South maintains, that every movement
which occurs in the Southern States is closely scrutinized, and the
assertion of a determination to maintain their constitutional rights is
denounced as a movement of disunion; while violent denunciations against
the Union are now made, and for years have been made, at the North by
associations, by presses and conventions, yet are allowed to pass
unnoticed as the idle wind--I suppose for the simple reason that nobody
believed there was any danger in them. It is, then, I say, a tribute
paid to the sincerity of the South, that every movement of hers is
watched with such jealousy; but what shall we think of the love for the
Union of those in whom this brings us corresponding change of conduct,
who continue the wanton aggravations which have produced and justify the
action they deprecate? Is it well, is it wise, is it safe, to disregard
these manifestations of public displeasure, though it be the displeasure
of a minority? Is it proper, or prudent, or respectful, when a
representative, in accordance with the known will of his constituents,
addresses you the language of solemn warning, in conformity to his duty
to the Constitution, the Union, and to his own conscience, that his
course should be arraigned as the declaration of ultra and dangerous
opinions? If these warnings were received in the spirit in which they
are given, it would augur better for the country. It would give hopes
which are now denied us, if the press of the country, that great lever
of public opinion, would enforce these warnings, and bear them to every
cottage, instead of heaping abuse upon those whose love of ease would
prompt them to silence--whose speech, therefore, is evidence of
sincerity. Lightly and loosely, representatives of Southern people have
been denounced as disunionists by that portion of the Northern press
which most disturbs the harmony and endangers the perpetuity of the
Union. Such, even, has been my own case, though the man does not breathe
at whose door the charge of disunion might not as well be laid as at
mine. The son of a Revolutionary soldier, attachment to this Union was
among the first lessons of my childhood; bred to the service of my
country, from boyhood to mature age, I wore its uniform. Through the
brightest portion of my life I was accustomed to see our flag, historic
emblem of the Union, rise with the rising and fall with the setting sun.
I look upon it now with the affection of early love, and seek to
preserve it by a strict adherence to the Constitution, from which it had
its birth, and by the nurture of which its stars have come so much to
outnumber its original stripes. Shall that flag, which has gathered
fresh glory in every war, and become more radiant still by the conquest
of peace--shall that flag now be torn by domestic faction, and trodden
in the dust by sectional rivalry? Shall we of the South, who have shared
equally with you all your toils, all your dangers, all your adversities,
and who equally rejoice in your prosperity and your fame--shall we be
denied those benefits guaranteed by our compact, or gathered as the
common fruits of a common country? If so, self-respect requires that we
should assert them; and, as best we may, maintain that which we could
not surrender without losing your respect as well as our own.
If, sir, this spirit of sectional aggrandizement--or, if gentlemen
prefer, this love they bear the African race--shall cause the disunion
of these States, the last chapter of our history will be a sad
commentary upon the justice and the wisdom of our people. That this
Union, replete with blessings to its own citizens, and diffusive of hope
to the rest of mankind, should fall a victim to a selfish aggrandizement
and a pseudo-philanthropy, prompting one portion of the Union to war
upon the domestic rights and peace of another, would be a deep
reflection on the good sense and patriotism of our day and generation.
But, sir, if this last chapter in our history shall ever be written, the
reflective reader will ask, Whence proceeded this hostility of the North
against the South? He will find it there recorded that the South, in
opposition to her own immediate interests, engaged with the North in the
unequal struggle of the Revolution. He will find again, that, when
Northern seamen were impressed, their brethren of the South considered
it cause for war, and entered warmly into the contest with the haughty
power then claiming to be mistress of the seas. He will find that the
South, afar off, unseen and unheard, toiling in the pursuits of
agriculture, had filled the shipping and supplied the staple for
manufactures, which enriched the North. He will find that she was the
great consumer of Northern fabrics--that she not only paid for these
their fair value in the markets of the world, but that she also paid
their increased value, derived from the imposition of revenue duties.
And, if, still further, he seeks for the cause of this hostility, it at
last is to be found in the fact that the South held the African race in
bondage, being the descendants of those who were mainly purchased from
the people of the North. And this was the great cause. For this the
North claimed that the South should be restricted from future
growth--that around her should be drawn, as it were, a sanitary cordon
to prevent the extension of a "moral leprosy"; and, if for that it shall
be written that the South resisted, it would be but in keeping with
every page she has added to the history of our country.
It depends on those in the majority to say whether this last chapter in
our history shall be written or not. It depends on them now to decide
whether the strife between the different sections shall be arrested
before it has become impossible, or whether it shall proceed to a final
catastrophe. I, sir--and I only speak for myself--am willing to meet any
fair proposition--to settle upon anything which promises security for
the future; anything which assures me of permanent peace, and I am
willing to make whatever sacrifice I may properly be called on to render
for that purpose. Nor, sir, is it a light responsibility. If I strictly
measured my conduct by the late message of the Governor, and the recent
expressions of opinion in my State, I should have no power to accept any
terms save the unqualified admission of the equal rights of the citizens
of the South to go into any of the Territories of the United States with
any and every species of property held among us. I am willing, however,
to take my share of the responsibility which the crisis of our country
demands. I am willing to rely on the known love of the people I
represent for the whole country, and the abiding respect which I know
they entertain for the Union of these States. If, sir, I distrusted
their attachment to our Government, and if I believed that they had that
restless spirit of disunion which has been ascribed to the South, I
should know full well that I had no such foundation as this to rely
upon--no such great reserve in the heart of the people to fall back upon
in the hour of accountability.
Mr. President, is there such incompatibility of interest between the two
sections of this country that they can not profitably live together?
Does the agriculture of the South injure the manufactures of the North?
On the other hand, are they not their life-blood? And think you, if one
portion of the Union, however great it might be in commerce and
manufactures, was separated from all the agricultural districts, that it
would long maintain its supremacy? If any one so believes, let him turn
to the written history of commercial states: let him look upon the
moldering palaces of Venice; let him ask for the faded purple of Tyre,
and visit the ruins of Carthage; there he will see written the fate of
every country which rests its prosperity on commerce and manufactures
alone. United we have grown to our present dignity and power--united we
may go on to a destiny which the human mind cannot measure. Separated, I
feel that it requires no prophetic eye to see that the portion of the
country which is now scattering the seeds of disunion to which I have
referred will be that which will suffer most. Grass will grow on the
pavements now worn by the constant tread of the human throng which waits
on commerce, and the shipping will abandon your ports for those which
now furnish the staples of trade. And we who produce the great staples
upon which your commerce and manufactures rest, we will produce those
staples still; shipping will fill our harbors; and why may we not found
the Tyre of modern commerce within our own limits? Why may we not bring
the manufacturers to the side of agriculture, and commerce, too, the
ready servant of both?
But, sir, I have no disposition to follow this subject. I certainly can
derive no pleasure from the contemplation of anything which can impair
the prosperity of any portion of this Union; and I only refer to it that
those who suppose we are tied by interest or fear should look the
question in the face and understand that it is mainly a feeling of
attachment to the Union which has long bound, and now binds, the South.
But, Mr. President, I ask Senators to consider how long affection can be
proof against such trial, and injury, and provocation, as the South is
continually receiving.
The case in which this discrimination against the South is attempted,
the circumstances under which it was introduced, render it especially
offensive. It will not be difficult to imagine the feeling with which a
Southern soldier during the Mexican war received the announcement that
the House of Representatives had passed that odious measure, the Wilmot
Proviso; and that he, although then periling his life, abandoning all
the comforts of home, and sacrificing his interests, was, by the
Legislature of his country, marked as coming from a portion of the Union
which was not entitled to the equal benefits of whatever might result
from the service to which he was contributing whatever power he
possessed. Nor will it be difficult to conceive, of the many sons of the
South whose blood has stained those battle-fields, whose ashes now
mingle with Mexican earth, that some, when they last looked on the flag
of their country, may have felt their dying moments embittered by the
recollection that that flag cast not an equal shadow of protection over
the land of their birth, the graves of their parents, and the homes of
their children, so soon to be orphans. Sir, I ask Northern Senators to
make the case their own--to carry to their own firesides the idea of
such intrusion and offensive discrimination as is offered to us--realize
these irritations, so galling to the humble, so intolerable to the
haughty, and wake, before it is too late, from the dream that the South
will tamely submit. Measure the consequences to us of your assumption,
and ask yourselves whether, as a free, honorable, and brave people, you
would submit to it?
It is essentially the characteristic of the chivalrous that they never
speculate upon the fears of any man, and I trust that no such
speculations will be made upon the idea that may be entertained in any
quarter that the South, from fear of her slaves, is necessarily opposed
to a dissolution of the Union. She has no such fear; her slaves would be
to her now, as they were in the Revolution, an element of military
strength. I trust that no speculations will be made upon either the
condition or the supposed weakness of the South. They will bring sad
disappointments to those who indulge them. Rely upon her devotion to the
Union, rely upon the feeling of fraternity she inherited and has never
failed to manifest; rely upon the nationality and freedom from sedition
which have in all ages characterized an agricultural people; give her
justice, sheer justice, and the reliance will never fail you.
Then, Mr. President, I ask that some substantial proposition may be made
by the majority in regard to this question. It is for those who have the
power to pass it to propose one. It is for those who are threatening us
with the loss of that which we are entitled to enjoy, to state, if there
be any compromise, what that compromise is. We are unable to pass any
measure, if we propose it; therefore I have none to suggest. We are
unable to bend you to any terms which we may offer; we are under the ban
of your purpose: therefore from you, if from anywhere, the proposition
must come. I trust that we shall meet it, and bear the responsibility as
becomes us; that we shall not seek to escape from it; that we shall not
seek to transfer to other places, or other times, or other persons, that
responsibility which devolves upon us; and I hope the earnestness which
the occasion justifies will not be mistaken for the ebullition of
passion, nor the language of warning be construed as a threat. We
cannot, without the most humiliating confession of the supremacy of
faction, evade our constitutional obligations, and our obligations under
the treaty with Mexico to organize governments in the Territories of
California and New Mexico. I trust that we will not seek to escape from
the responsibility, and leave the country unprovided for, unless by an
irregular admission of new States; that we will act upon the good
example of Washington in the case of Tennessee, and of Jefferson in the
case of Louisiana; that we will not, if we abandon those high standards,
do more than come down to modern examples; that we will not go further
than to permit those who have the forms of government, under the
Constitution, to assume sovereignty over territory of the United States;
that we may at least, I say, assert the right to know who they are, how
many they are--where they voted, how they voted--and whose certificate
is presented to us of the fact, before it is conceded to them to
determine the fundamental law of the country, and to prescribe the
conditions on which other citizens of the United States may enter it. To
reach all this knowledge, we must go through the intermediate stage of
territorial government.
How will you determine what is the seal, and who are the officers, of a
community unknown as an organized body to the Congress of the United
States? Can the right be admitted in that community to usurp the
sovereignty over territory which belongs to the States of the Union? All
these questions must be answered before I can consent to any such
irregular proceeding as that which is now presented in the case of
California.
Mr. President, thanking the Senate for the patience they have shown
toward me, I again express the hope that those who have the power to
settle this distracting question--those who have the ability to restore
peace, concord, and lasting harmony to the United States--will give us
some substantial proposition, such as magnanimity can offer, and such as
we can honorably accept. I, being one of the minority in the Senate and
the Union, have nothing to offer, except an assurance of coöperation in
anything which my principles will allow me to adopt, and which promises
permanent, substantial security.
APPENDIX D.
Speech of Mr. Davis, of Mississippi, in the Senate of the United States
(chiefly in answer to Mr. Fessenden, of Maine, on the message of the
President of the United States transmitting to Congress the "Lecompton
Constitution" of Kansas), February 8, 1858:
I wish to express not only my concurrence with the message of the
President, but my hearty approbation of the high motive which actuated
him when he wrote it. In that paper breathes the sentiment of a patriot,
and it stands out in bold contrast with the miserable slang by which he
was pursued this morning. It may serve the purposes of a man who little
regards the Union to perpetrate a joke on the hazard of its dissolution.
It may serve the purpose of a man who never looks to his own heart to
find there any impulses of honor, to arraign everybody, the President
and the Supreme Court, and to have them impeached and vilified on his
mere suspicion. It ill becomes such a man to point to Southern
institutions as to him a moral leprosy, which he is to pursue to the end
of extermination, and, perverting everything, ancient and modern, to
bring it tributary to his own malignant purposes. Not even could that
clause of the Constitution which refers to the importation or migration
of persons be held up to public consideration by the Senator [Mr.
Fessenden] in a studied argument, save as a permission for the
slave-trade. Then, everything that is most prominent in relation to the
protection of property in that instrument he holds to have been swept
away by a statute which prohibited the further importation of Africans.
The language of that clause of the Constitution is far broader than the
importation of Africans. It is not confined or limited at all to that
subject. It says:
"The migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now
existing shall think proper to admit shall not be prohibited by the
Congress prior to the year 1808, but a tax or duty may be imposed on
such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person."
That was a power given to Congress far broader than the slave-trade; and
yet the Senator gravely argues that, when that prohibition against the
further importation of Africans took place by act of Congress,
thenceforward the constitutional shield, which had been thrown over
slave property, fell. Sir, it is the only private property in the United
States which is specifically recognized in the Constitution and
protected by it.
There was a time when there was a higher and holier sentiment among the
men who represented the people of this country. As far back as the time
of the Confederation, when no narrow, miserable prejudice between
Northern and Southern men governed those who ruled the States, a
committee of three, two of whom were Northern men, reporting upon what
they considered the bad faith of Spain in Florida, in relation to
fugitive slaves, proposed that negotiations should be instituted to
require Spain to surrender, as the States did then surrender, all
fugitives escaped into their limits. Hamilton and Sedgwick from the
North, and Madison from the South, made that report--men, the loftiness
of whose purpose and genius might put to shame the puny efforts now made
to disturb that which lies at the very foundation of the Government
under which we live.
A man not knowing into what presence he was introduced, coming into this
Chamber, might, for a large part of this session, have supposed that
here stood the representatives of belligerent States, and that, instead
of men assembled here to confer together for the common welfare, for the
general good, he saw here ministers from States preparing to make war
upon each other; and then he would have felt that vain, indeed, was the
vaunting of the prowess of one to destroy another. Or if, sir, he had
known more--if he had recognized the representatives of the States of
the Union--still he would have traced through this same eternal, petty
agitation about sectional success, that limit which can not fail,
however the Senator from New York (Mr. Seward) may regret it, to bring
about a result which every man should, from his own sense of honor,
feel, when he takes his seat in this Chamber, that he is morally bound
to avoid as long as he retains possession of his seat.
To express myself more distinctly: I hold that a Senator, while he sits
here as the representative of a State in the Federal Government, is in
the relation of a minister to a friendly court, and that the moment he
sees this Government in hostility to his own, the day he resolves to
make war on this Government, his honor and the honor of his State compel
him to vacate the seat he holds.
It is a poor evasion for any man to say: "I make war on the rights of
one whole section; I make war on the principles of the Constitution; and
yet, I uphold the Union, and I desire to see it protected." Undermine
the foundation, and still pretend that he desires the fabric to stand!
Common sense rejects it. No one will believe the man who makes the
assertion, unless he believes him under the charitable supposition that
he knows not what he is doing.
Sir, we are arraigned, day after day, as the aggressive power. What
Southern Senator, during this whole session, has attacked any portion,
or any interest, of the North? In what have we now, or ever, back to the
earliest period of our history, sought to deprive the North of any
advantage it possessed? The whole charge is, and has been, that we seek
to extend our own institutions into the common territory of the United
States. Well and wisely has the President of the United States pointed
to that common territory as the joint possession of the country. Jointly
we held it, jointly we enjoyed it in the earlier period of our country;
but when, in the progress of years, it became apparent that it could not
longer be enjoyed in peace, the men of that day took upon themselves,
wisely or unwisely, a power which the Constitution did not confer, and,
by a geographical line, determined to divide the Territories, so that
the common field, which brothers could not cultivate in peace, should be
held severally for the benefit of each. Wisely or unwisely, that law
was denied extension to the Pacific Ocean.
I was struck, in the course of these debates, to which I have not
been in the habit of replying, to hear the Senator from New Hampshire
[Mr. Hale], who so very ardently opposed the extension of that line
to the Pacific Ocean, who held it to be a political stain upon the
history of our country, and who would not even allow the southern
boundary of Utah to be the parallel of 36° 30', because of the
political implication which was contained in it (the historical
character of the line), plead, as he did a few days ago, for the
constitutionality and legality and for the sacred character of that
so-called Missouri Compromise.
I, for one, never believed Congress had the power to pass that law;
yet, as one who was willing to lay down much then, as I am now, to
the peace, the harmony, and the welfare of our common country, I
desired to see that line extended to the Pacific Ocean, and that
strife which now agitates the country never renewed; but with a
distinct declaration: "Go ye to the right, and we will go to the
left; and we go in peace and good-will toward each other." Those
who refused then to allow the extension of that line, those who
declared then that it was a violation of principle, and insisted
on what they termed non-intervention, must have stood with very
poor grace in the same Chamber when, at a subsequent period, the
Senator from Illinois [Mr. Docoias], bound by his honor on account
of his previous course, moved the repeal of that line to throw open
Kansas; they must have stood with very bad grace, in this presence,
to argue that that line was now sacred, and must be kept for ever.
The Senator from Illinois stood foremost as one who was willing, at
an early period, to sacrifice his own prejudices and his own interests
(if, in deed, his interests be girt and bounded by the limits of a
State) by proposing to extend that line of pacification to the
Pacific Ocean; and, failing in that, then became foremost in the
advocacy of the doctrine of non-intervention; and upon that, I say,
he was in honor bound to wipe out that line and throw Kansas open,
like any other Territory. But, sir, was it then understood by the
Senator from Illinois, or anybody else, that throwing open the
Territory of Kansas to free emigration was to be the signal for the
marching of cohorts from one section or another to fight on that
battle field for mastery? Or, did he not rather think that
emigration was to be allowed to take its course, and soil and
climate be permitted to decide the great question? We were willing
to abide by it. We were willing to leave natural causes to decide
the question. Though I differed from the
Senator from New York [Mr. Seward], though I did not believe
that natural causes, if permitted to flow in their own channel, would
have produced any other result than the introduction of slave property
into the Territory of Kansas, I am free to admit that I have not yet
reached the conclusion that that property would have permanently
remained there. That is a question which interest decides. Vermont would
not keep African slaves, because they were not valuable to her; neither
will any population, whose density is so great as to trade rapidly on
the supply of bread, be willing to keep and maintain an improvident
population, to feed them in infancy, to care for them in sickness, to
protect them in age. And thus it will be found in the history of
nations, that, whenever population has reached that density in the
temperate zones, serfdom, villenage, or slavery, whatever it has been
called, has disappeared.
Ours presents a new problem, one not stated by those who wrote on it in
the earlier period of our history. It is the problem of a semi-tropical
climate, the problem of malarial districts, of staple products. This
produces a result different from that which would be found in the
farming districts and cooler climates. A race suited to our labor exists
there. Why should we care whether they go into other Territories or not?
Simply because of the war which is made against our institutions; simply
because of the want of security which results from the action of our
opponents in the Northern States. Had you made no political war upon us,
had you observed the principles of our confederacy as States, that the
people of each State were to take care of their domestic affairs, or, in
the language of the Kansas bill, to be left perfectly free to form and
regulate their institutions in their own way, then, I say, within the
limits of each State the population there would have gone on to attend
to their own affairs, and would have had little regard to whether this
species of property, or any other, was held in any other portion of the
Union. You have made it a political war. We are on the defensive. How
far are you to push us?
The Senator from Alabama [Mr. Clay] has been compelled to notice the
resolutions of his State; nor does that State stand alone. To what issue
are you now pressing us? To the conclusion that, because within the
limits of a Territory slaves are held as property, a State is to be
excluded from the Union. I am not in the habit of paying lip-service to
the Union. The Union is strong enough to confer favors; it is strong
enough to command service. Under these circumstances, the man deserves
but little credit who sings pæans to its glory. If, through a life, now
not a short one, a large portion of which has been spent in the public
service, I have given no better proof of my affection for this Union
than by declarations, I have lived to little purpose, indeed. I think I
have given evidence, in every form in which patriotism is ever subjected
to a test, and I trust, whatever evil may be in store for us by those
who wage war on the Constitution and our rights under it, that I shall
be able to turn at least to the past and say, "Up to that period when I
was declining into the grave, I served a Government I loved, and served
it with my whole heart." Nor will I stop to compare services with those
gentlemen who have fair phrases, while they undermine the very
foundation of the temple our fathers built. If, however, there be those
here who do really love the Union, and the Constitution, which is the
life-blood of the Union, the time has come when we should look calmly,
though steadily, the danger which besets us in the face.
Violent speeches, denunciatory of people in any particular section of
the Union, the arraignment of institutions which they inherited and
intend to transmit, as leprous spots on the body-politic, are not the
means by which fraternity is to be preserved, or this Union rendered
perpetual. These were not the arguments which our fathers made when,
through the struggles of the Revolutionary War, they laid the foundation
of the Union. These are not the principles on which our Constitution, a
bundle of compromises, was made. Then the navigating and the
agricultural States did not war to see which could most injure the
other; but each conceded something from that which it believed to be its
own interest to promote the welfare of the other. Those debates, while
they brought up all that straggle which belongs to opposite interests
and opposite localities, show none of that bitterness which, so
unfortunately, characterizes every debate in which this body is
involved.
The meanest thing--I do not mean otherwise than the smallest
thing--which can arise among us, incidentally, runs into this sectional
agitation, as though it were an epidemic and gave its type to every
disease. Not even could the committees of this body, when we first
assembled, before any one had the excuse of excitement to plead, be
organized without sectional agitation springing up. Forcibly, I suppose
gravely and sincerely, it was contended here that a great wrong was done
because New York, the great commercial State, and the emporium of
commerce within her limits, was not represented upon the Committee of
Commerce. This will go forth to remote corners, and descend, perhaps, to
after-times, as an instance in which the Democratic party of the Senate
behaved with unfairness toward its opponents; for with it will not
descend the fact that the Democratic party only arranged for itself its
own portion of the committees, taking the control of them, and left
blanks on the committees to be filled by the Opposition; that the
Opposition did fill the blanks; that the Opposition had both the
Senators from New York, but did not choose to put either of them on that
committee, though it afterward formed the basis and staple of their
complaint.
Mr. President, I concur with my friend from Virginia [Mr. Hunter], and
when I rose I did not intend to consume anything like so much time as I
have occupied. I think there are points, which have been sprung upon the
Senate to-day and heretofore, that require to be answered and to be met.
Like my friend from Virginia, I shall feel that it devolves on me, as a
representative in part of that constituency which is peculiarly
assailed, on another occasion to meet, and, if I am able, to answer, the
allegations and accusations which have been heaped, as well on the
section in which I live as upon every man who has performed his duty by
extending over them the protection for which our Constitution and
Government were formed.
APPENDIX E.
In the summer of 1858, Mr. Davis being in Portland, Maine, a vast
concourse of its citizens assembled in front of his hotel to offer him a
welcome to their city, whereupon he made to them an address, from which
the following extracts are given:
Fellow-Citizens: Accept my sincere thanks for this manifestation of your
kindness. Vanity does not lead me so far to misconceive your purpose as
to appropriate the demonstration to myself; but it is not the less
gratifying to me to be made the medium through which Maine tenders an
expression of regard to her sister, Mississippi. It is, moreover, with
feelings of profound gratification that I witness this indication of
that national sentiment and fraternity which made us, and which alone
can keep us, one people. At a period but as yesterday, when compared
with the life of nations, these States were separate, and in some
respects opposing colonies; their only relation to each other was that
of a common allegiance to the Government of Great Britain. So separate,
indeed almost hostile, was their attitude, that when General Stark, of
Bennington memory, was captured by savages on the head-waters of the
Kennebec, he was subsequently taken by them to Albany, where they went
to sell furs, and again led away a captive, without interference on the
part of the inhabitants of that neighboring colony to demand or obtain
his release. United as we now are, were a citizen of the United States,
as an act of hostility to our country, imprisoned or slain in any
quarter of the world, whether on land or sea, the people of each and
every State of the Union, with one heart and with one voice, would
demand redress, and woe be to him against whom a brother's blood cried
to as from the ground! Such is the fruit of the wisdom and the justice
with which our fathers bound contending colonies into confederation, and
blended different habits and rival interests into an harmonious whole,
so that, shoulder to shoulder, they entered on the trial of the
Revolution, and step with step trod its thorny paths until they reached
the height of national independence, and founded the constitutional
representative liberty which is our birthright....
By such men, thus trained and ennobled, our Constitution was framed. It
stands a monument of principle, of forecast, and, above all, of that
liberality which made each willing to sacrifice local interest,
individual prejudice, or temporary good to the general welfare and the
perpetuity of the republican institutions which they had passed through
fire and blood to secure. The grants were as broad as were necessary for
the functions of the general agent, and the mutual concessions were
twice blessed, blessing him who gave and him who received. Whatever was
necessary for domestic government--requisite in the social organization
of each community--was retained by the States and the people thereof;
and these it was made the duty of all to defend and maintain. Such, in
very general terms, is the rich political legacy our fathers bequeathed
to us. Shall we preserve and transmit it to posterity? Yes, yes, the
heart responds; and the judgment answers, the task is easily performed.
It but requires that each should attend to that which most concerns him,
and on which alone he has rightful power to decide and to act; that each
should adhere to the terms of a written compact, and that all should
coöperate for that which interest, duty, and honor demand.
For the general affairs of our country, both foreign and domestic, we
have a national Executive and a national Legislature. Representatives
and Senators are chosen by districts and by States, but their acts
affect the whole country, and their obligations are to the whole people.
He, who, holding either seat, would confine his investigations to the
mere interests of his immediate constituents, would be derelict to his
plain duty; and he who would legislate in hostility to any section would
be morally unfit for the station, and surely an unsafe depositary, if
not a treacherous guardian, of the inheritance with which we are
blessed. No one more than myself recognizes the binding force of the
allegiance which the citizen owes to the State of his citizenship, but,
that State being a party to our compact, a member of the Union, fealty
to the Federal Constitution is not in opposition to, but flows from the
allegiance due to, one of the United States. Washington was not less a
Virginian when he commanded at Boston, nor did Gates or Greene weaken
the bonds which bound them to their several States by their campaigns in
the South. In proportion as a citizen loves his own State will he strive
to honor her by preserving her name and her fame, free from the tarnish
of having failed to observe her obligations and to fulfill her duties to
her sister States. Each page of our history is illustrated by the names
and deeds of those who have well understood and discharged the
obligation. Have we so degenerated that we can no longer emulate their
virtues? Have the purposes for which our Union was formed lost their
value? Has patriotism ceased to be a virtue, and is narrow sectionalism
no longer to be counted a crime? Shall the North not rejoice that the
progress of agriculture in the South has given to her great staple the
controlling influence of the commerce of the world, and put
manufacturing nations under bond to keep the peace with the United
States?
Shall the South not exult in the fact that the industry and persevering
intelligence of the North have placed her mechanical skill in the front
ranks of the civilized world; that our mother-country, whose haughty
minister, some eighty-odd years ago, declared that not a hobnail should
be made in the colonies which are now the United States, was brought,
some four years ago, to recognize our preëminence by sending a
commission to examine our workshops and our machinery, to perfect their
own manufacture of the arms requisite for their defense? Do not our
whole people, interior and seaboard, North, South, East, and West, alike
feel proud of the hardihood, the enterprise, the skill, and the courage
of the Yankee sailor, who has borne our flag far as the ocean bears its
foam, and caused the name and character of the United States to be known
and respected wherever there is wealth enough to woo commerce, and
intelligence to honor merit? So long as we preserve and appreciate the
achievements of Jefferson and Adams, of Franklin and Madison, of
Hamilton, of Hancock, and of Rutledge, men who labored for the whole
country, and lived for mankind, we can not sink to the petty strife
which would sap the foundations and destroy the political fabric our
fathers erected and bequeathed as an inheritance to our posterity for
ever.
Since the formation of the Constitution, a vast extension of territory
and the varied relations arising therefrom have presented problems which
could not have been foreseen. It is just cause for admiration, even
wonder, that the provisions of the fundamental law should have been so
fully adequate to all the wants of a government, new in its
organization, and new in many of the principles on which it was founded.
Whatever fears may have once existed as to the consequences of
territorial expansion must give way before the evidence which the past
affords. The General Government, strictly confined to its delegated
functions, and the State left in the undisturbed exercise of all else,
we have a theory and practice which fit our Government for immeasurable
domain, and might, under a millennium of nations, embrace mankind.
From the slope of the Atlantic our population, with ceaseless tide, has
poured into the wide and fertile valley of the Mississippi, with eddying
whirl has passed to the coast of the Pacific; from the West and the East
the tides are rushing toward each other, and the mind is carried to the
day when all the cultivable land will be inhabited, and the American
people will sigh for more wilderness to conquer. But there is here a
physico-political problem presented for our solution. Were it purely
physical, your past triumphs would leave but little doubt of your
capacity to solve it. A community which, when less than twenty thousand,
conceived the grand project of crossing the White Mountains, and
unaided, save by the stimulus which jeers and prophecies of failure
gave, successfully executed the herculean work, might well be impatient
if it were suggested that a physical problem was before us too difficult
for mastery. The history of man teaches that high mountains and wide
deserts have resisted the permanent extension of empire, and have formed
the immutable boundaries of states. From time to time, under some able
leader, have the hordes of the upper plains of Asia swept over the
adjacent country, and rolled their conquering columns over Southern
Europe. Yet, after the lapse of a few generations, the physical law to
which I have referred has asserted its supremacy, and the boundaries of
those states differ little now from those which were obtained three
thousand years ago.
Rome flew her conquering eagles over the then known world, and has now
subsided into the little territory on which the great city was
originally built. The Alps and the Pyrenees have been unable to restrain
imperial France; but her expansion was a feverish action, her advance
and her retreat were tracked with blood, and those mountain-ridges are
the reëstablished limits of her empire. Shall the Rocky Mountains prove
a dividing barrier to us? Were ours a central, consolidated Government,
instead of a Union of sovereign States, our fate might be learned from
the history of other nations. Thanks to the wisdom and independent
spirit of our forefathers, this is not the case. Each State having sole
charge of its local interests and domestic affairs, the problem, which
to others has been insoluble, to us is made easy. Rapid, safe, and easy
communication between the Atlantic and the Pacific will give
cointelligence, unity of interest, and coöperation among all parts of
our continent-wide republic. The network of railroads which bind the
North and the South, the slope of the Atlantic and the valley of the
Mississippi, together, testifies that our people have the power to
perform, in that regard, whatever it is their will to achieve.
We require a railroad to the States of the Pacific for present uses; the
time no doubt will come when we shall have need of two or three, it may
be more. Because of the desert character of the interior country, the
work will be difficult and expensive. It will require the efforts of a
united people. The bickerings of little politicians, the jealousies of
sections, must give way to dignity of purpose and zeal for the common
good. If the object be obstructed by contention and division as to
whether the route shall be Northern, Southern, or central, the
handwriting is on the wall, and it requires little skill to see that
failure is the interpretation of the inscription. You are practical
people, and may ask, How is that contest to be avoided? By taking the
question out of the hands of politicians altogether. Let the Government
give such aid as it is proper for it to render to the company which
shall propose the most feasible plan; then leave to capitalists, with
judgments sharpened by interest, the selection of the route, and the
difficulties will diminish, as did those which you overcame when you
connected your harbor with the Canadian provinces.
It would be to trespass on your kindness, and to violate the proprieties
of the occasion, were I to detain the vast concourse which stands before
me, by entering on the discussion of controverted topics, or by further
indulging in the expression of such reflections as circumstances
suggest. I came to your city in quest of health and repose. From the
moment I entered it you have showered upon me kindness and hospitality.
Though my experience has taught me to anticipate good rather than evil
from my fellow-man, it had not prepared me to expect such unremitting
attentions as have here been bestowed. I have been jocularly asked in
relation to my coming here, whether I had secured a guarantee for my
safety, and lo! I have found it. I stand in the midst of thousands of my
fellow-citizens. But, my friends, I came neither distrusting nor
apprehensive....
In the autumn of 1858 Mr. Davis visited Boston, and was invited to
address a public meeting at Faneuil Hall. He was introduced by the Hon.
Caleb Cushing, with whom he had been four years associated in the
Cabinet of President Pierce. Mr. Cushing's speech, on account of its
great merit, is inserted here, except some complimentary portions of it.
Mr. President--Fellow Citizens: I present myself before you at the
instance of your chairman, not so much in order to occupy your time with
observations of my own, as to prepare you for that higher gratification
which you are to receive from the remarks of the eminent man here
present to address you in the course of the evening. I will briefly and
only suggest to you such reflections as are appropriate to that duty.
We are assembled here, my friends, at the call of the Democratic ward
and county committee of Suffolk, for the purpose of ratifying the
nominations made at the late Democratic State Convention--the nomination
of our distinguished and honored fellow-citizen [Hon. Erasmus D. Beach]
who has already addressed to you the words of wisdom and of patriotism;
as also the nomination of others of our fellow-citizens, whom--if we
may--we ought, whom the welfare and the honor of our Commonwealth demand
of us, to place in power in the stead of the existing authorities of the
Commonwealth. I would to God it were in our power to say with confidence
that shall be done! ["It can be done."] We do say that it shall not
depend upon us that it shall not be done. We do say that in so far as
depends upon us it shall be done; and whatsoever devoted love of our
country and our Commonwealth; whatsoever of our noble and holy
principles; whatsoever desire to vindicate our Commonwealth from the
stain that has so long rested upon the name may prompt us to do, that we
will do, leaving the result to the good providence of God.
I say we are invited here by the ward and county committee to ratify
these nominations, and we do ratify them with our whole heart. And we
pledge our most earnest efforts at the polls to give success to these
nominations. That call is comprehensive; it is addressed not only to
Democrats, but to all national men, and so it should be. We know full
well that there are multitudes of men in this Commonwealth who oppose
the Democratic party, but who are yet impelled toward us by sympathy for
the principles we profess, and by the repulsion they have toward the
opinions and purposes of the leaders of the Republican party. They
sympathize with our principles, and we invite them to coöperate with us
in the maintenance of the principles of the Constitution and in the
vindication of the Commonwealth--all national men, whatsoever may have
been their past party affinities. But, while we do so, we declare that
it is our belief that the Democratic party is now recognized as that
only existing national party in the United States--the only
constitutional party--the only party which by its present principles is
competent to govern these United States, whose principles are based upon
the Constitution--the only party with a platform coextensive with this
great Union--this is the great Democratic party. I have heard again and
again, remonstrances have been addressed to me more than once, because
of the condemnation which Democratic speakers so continually utter about
the unnationality as well as the unconstitutionality of the Republican
party.
Let us reflect a moment; let us recall to mind that the honor of the
existing organization of this Federal Administration was by the votes of
the people of these United States sustained when James Buchanan was
nominated for the Presidency, and that he is a worthy representative of
the Democratic party. Let us reflect also that John C. Fremont was
nominated as the candidate of the Republican party. I pray you,
gentlemen, to reflect upon the different methods by which these
nominations were presented to the people of the United States. On the
one hand, there assembled at the Democratic Convention, at Cincinnati,
the delegates of every one of the States in the Union. That Convention
was national in its constitution, national in its character, national in
its purpose, and cordially presented to the suffrages of the people of
the United States a national candidate, a candidate of the whole United
States; and that candidate was elected not by the votes of one section
of the Union alone, or another section of the Union alone, but by the
concurrent votes of the South and the North.
How was it on the other side? On the other side there assembled a
convention which, by the very tenor of its call, was confined to sixteen
of the thirty-one States of the Union, which, by the very tenor of its
call, excluded from its councils fifteen of the thirty-one States of the
Union, a convention in which appeared the representatives of only
sixteen of the States of the Union--nay, I mistake--as to the remaining
fifteen States of the Union, in their name, pretendedly in their name
and their behalf, there appeared one man--one man only--and he a
self-appointed delegate by pretension from the State of Maryland. That
was the Convention which presented John C. Fremont to the people of the
United States. I say that was a sectional Convention, a sectional
nomination, a sectional party; and no reasoning, no remonstrances, no
protestations, can discharge the Republican party from the ineffaceable
stigma of that sectional Convention, that sectional nomination, and that
sectional candidate for the suffrages of the United States. That party
itself has placed upon its back that shirt of Nessus which clings to it
and stings it to death. I repeat, then, and I say it in confidence and
vindication, in so far as regards my own belief, I say it in all good
spirit toward multitudes of men in this Commonwealth of the Whig and
American parties in their heretofore organization; I say it to
multitudes of men who have been betrayed by the passions of the hour
into joining the sectional combinations of the Republican party; I say
that in the Democratic party and in that alone is the tower of strength
for the liberties, the position, and the honor of the United States. But
why need I indulge in these reflections in proof of my proposition?
Gentlemen, we have here this evening the living proof, the visible,
tangible, audible, incontestable, immortal proof, that the position of
the Democratic party, in the existing organization of parties, is the
national, constitutional party of the United States. Gentlemen, I ask
you to challenge your memories, and look upon the history of the past
four years of the United States, and can you point me to a Republican
assembly here, in the city of Boston, or anywhere else; can you point me
in the last four years of our history to any occasion on which Faneuil
Hall has been crowded to its utmost capability with a Republican
assembly in which appeared any one of those preëminent statesmen of the
Southern States to honor not merely their States, but these United
States? When, sir, did that ever happen? When, sir, was that a possible
fact, morally speaking, that any eminent Southern statesman appeared in
a Republican assembly in any one of the States of this Union? There
never was a Republican assembly--an assembly of the Republican party in
fifteen of these States--and I again ask, when, in the remaining sixteen
States, was there ever convened an assembly of the Republican party
which, by reason of bigotry, proscriptive bigotry, of unnational hatred
of the South, and of determined insult of all Southern statesmen, did
not render it an impossible fact that any Southern statesman should thus
make his appearance as a member in such Republican Convention? You know
it is so, gentlemen; and yet, have we not a common country? Did those
thirteen colonies which, commencing with that combat at Concord, and
following it with that battle at Bunker's Hill, and pursuing it in every
battlefield of this continent, did those thirteen colonies form one
country or thirteen countries? Nay, did they form two countries, or one
country? I would imagine when I listen to a Republican speech here in
the State of Massachusetts, when I read a Republican address in
Massachusetts, I would imagine fifteen States of this Union--our
fellow-citizens or fellow-sufferers, our fellow-heroes of the
Revolution--I would imagine not that they are our countrymen endeared to
us by ties of consanguinity, but that they are from some foreign
country, that they belong to some French or British or Mexican enemies.
There never was a day in which the forces of war were marshaled against
the most flagrant abuses toward these United States; there never was a
war in which these United States have been engaged, never even in the
death-struggle of the Revolution, never in our war for maritime
independence, never in our war with France and Mexico, never was there a
time when any party in these United States expressed, avowed,
proclaimed, ostentatiously proclaimed more intense hostility to the
British, French, Mexican enemy, than I have heard uttered or proclaimed
concerning our fellow-citizens--brothers in the fifteen States of this
Union. It is the glory of the Democratic party that we can assume the
burden of our nationality for the Union; that we can make all due
sacrifices in order to show our reprobation of sectionalism, that we of
the North can sacrifice to the South, from dear attachment to our
fellow-citizens of the South, and they in the South in like manner meet
with us upon that ground, in order to show their love for the Federal
Union, and at the risk of encountering local prejudices. In the
Democratic party alone, as parties are now organized, is this catholic,
generous, universal spirit to be found. I say, then, the Democratic
party has such a character of constitutionality and of nationality.
And now, gentlemen, I have allowed myself unthinkingly to be carried
beyond my original purpose. I return to it to remind you that here among
us is a citizen of one of the Southern States, eloquent among the most
eloquent in debate, wise among the wisest in council, and brave among
the bravest in the battle-field. A citizen of a Southern State who knows
that he can associate with you, the representatives of the Democracy and
the nationality of Massachusetts, that he can associate with you on
equal footing with the fellow-citizens and common members of these
United States.
My friends, there are those here present, and in fact there is no one
here present of whom it can not be said that, in memory and admiration
at least, and if not in the actual fact, yet in proud and bounding
memory, they have been able to tread the glorious tracks of the
victorious achievements of Jefferson Davis on the fields of Monterey and
Buena Vista, and all have heard or have read the accents of eloquence
addressed by him to the Senate of the United States; and there is one at
least who, from his own personal observation, can bear witness to the
fact of the surpassing wisdom of Jefferson Davis in the administration
of the Government of the United States. Such a man, fellow-citizens, you
are this evening to hear, and to hear as a beautiful illustration of the
working of our republican institutions of these United States; of the
republican institutions which in our own country, our own republic, as
in the old republics of Athens and of Rome, exhibit the same
combinations of the highest military and civic qualities in the same
person. It must naturally be so, for in a republic every citizen is a
soldier, and every soldier a citizen. Not in these United States on the
occurrence of foreign war is that spectacle exhibited which we have so
recently seen in our mother-country, of the administration of the
country going abroad begging and stealing soldiers throughout Europe and
America. No! And while I ask you, my friends, to ponder this fact in
relation to that disastrous struggle of giants which so recently
occurred in our day--the Crimean War--I ask you whether any English
gentleman, any member of the British House of Commons, any member of the
British House of Peers, abandoned the ease of home, abandoned his easy
hours at home, and went into the country among his friends, tenants, and
fellow-countrymen, volunteering there to raise troops for the service of
England in that hour of her peril; did any such fact occur? No! But here
in these United States we had examples, and illustrious ones, of the
fact that men, eminent in their place in Congress, abandoned their
stations and their honors to go among fellow-citizens of their own
States, and there raise troops with which to vindicate the honor and the
flag of their country. Of such men was Jefferson Davis.
There is now living one military man of prominent distinction in the
public eye of England and the United States--I mean Sir Colin Campbell,
now Lord Clyde of Clydesdale. He deserves the distinction he enjoys, for
he has redeemed the British flag on the ensanguined, burning plains of
India. He has restored the glory of the British name in Asia. I honor
him. Scotland, England, Wales, and Ireland are open, for their counties,
as well as their countries, and their poets, orators, and statesmen, and
their generals, belong to our history as well as theirs. I will never
disavow Henry V on the plains of Agincourt; never Oliver Cromwell on the
fields of Marston Moor and Naseby; never Sarsfield on the banks of the
Boyne. The glories and honors of Sir Colin Campbell are the glories of
the British race, and the races of Great Britain and Ireland, from whom
we are descended.
But what gained Sir Colin Campbell the opportunity to achieve those
glorious results in India? Remember that, and let us see what it was. On
one of those bloody battles fought by the British before the fortress of
Sebastopol, in the midst of the perils, the most perilous of all the
battle-fields England ever encountered in Europe, in one of the bloody
charges of the Russian cavalry, there was an officer--a man who felt and
who possessed sufficient confidence in the troops he commanded, and in
the authority of his own voice and example--received that charge not in
the ordinary, commonplace, and accustomed manner, by forming his troops
into a hollow square, and thus arresting the charge, but by forming into
two diverging lines, and thus receiving upon the rifles of his
Highlandmen the charge of the Russian cavalry and repelling it. How all
England rang with the glory of that achievement! How the general voice
of England placed upon the brows of Sir Colin Campbell the laurels of
the future mastership of victory for the arms of England! And well they
might do so. But who originated that movement; who set the example of
that gallant operation--who but Colonel Jefferson Davis, of the First
Mississippi Regiment, on the field of Buena Vista? He was justly
entitled to the applause of the restorer of victory to the arms of the
Union. Gentlemen, in our country, in this day, such a man, such a master
of the art of war, so daring in the field, such a man may not only
aspire to the highest places in the executive government of the Union,
but such a man may acquire what nowhere else, since the days of Cimon
and Miltiades, of the Cincinnati and the Cornelii of Athens and of Rome,
has been done by the human race, the combination of eminent powers, of
intellectual cultivation, and of eloquence with the practical, qualities
of a statesman and general.
But, gentlemen, I am again betrayed beyond my purpose. Sir [addressing
General Davis], we welcome you to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. You
may not find here the ardent skies of your own sunny South, but you will
find as ardent hearts, as warm and generous hands to welcome you to our
Commonwealth. We welcome you to the city of Boston, and you have already
experienced how open-hearted, how generous, how free from all possible
taint of sectional thought are the hospitality and cordiality of the
city of Boston. We welcome you to Faneuil Hall. Many an eloquent voice
has in all times resounded from the walls of Faneuil Hall. It is said
that no voice is uttered by man in this air we breathe but enters into
that air. It continues there immortal as the portion of the universe
into which it has passed. If it be so, how instinct is Faneuil Hall with
the voice of the great, good, and glorious of past generations, and of
our own, whose voices have echoed through its walls, whose eloquent
words have thrilled the hearts of hearers, as if a pointed sword were
passing them through and through. Here Adams aroused his countrymen in
the War of Independence, and Webster invoked them almost with the dying
breath of his body--invoked with that voice of majesty and power which
he alone possessed--invoked them to a union between the North and South.
Ay, sir, and who, if he were here present, who from those blest abodes
on high from which he looks down upon us would congratulate us for this
scene. First, and above all, because his large heart would have
appreciated the spectacle of a statesman eminent among the most eminent
of the Southern States here addressing an assembly of the people in the
city of Boston. Because, in the second place, he would have remembered
that, though divided from you by party relations, in one of the critical
hours of his fame and his honor, your voice was not wanting for his
vindication in the Congress of the United States. Sir, again, I say we
welcome you to Faneuil Hall.
And now, my fellow-citizens, I will withdraw myself and present to you
the Hon. Jefferson Davis.
Address of Jefferson Davis, at Faneuil Hall, Boston, October 12, 1858.
Countrymen, Brethren, Democrats: Most happy am I to meet you, and to
have received here renewed assurance--of that which I have so long
believed--that the pulsation of the Democratic heart is the same in
every parallel of latitude, on every meridian of longitude, throughout
the United States. It required not this to confirm me in a belief I have
so long and so happily enjoyed. Your own great statesman [the Hon. Caleb
Cushing], who has introduced me to this assembly, has been too long
associated with me, too nearly connected, we have labored too many
hours, until one day ran into another, in the cause of our country, for
me to fail to understand that a Massachusetts Democrat has a heart as
wide as the Union, and that its pulsations always beat for the liberty
and happiness of his country. Neither could I be unaware that such was
the sentiment of the Democracy of New England. For it was my fortune
lately to serve under a President drawn from the neighboring State of
New Hampshire, and I know that he spoke the language of his heart, for I
learned it in four years of intimate relations with him, when he said he
knew "no North, no South, no East, no West, but sacred maintenance of
the common bond and true devotion to the common brotherhood." Never,
sir, in the past history of our country, never, I add, in its future
destiny, however bright it may be, did or will a man of higher and purer
patriotism, a man more devoted to the common weal of his country, hold
the helm of our great ship of state, than Franklin Pierce.
I have heard the resolutions read and approved by this meeting; I have
heard the address of your candidate for Governor; and these, added to
the address of my old and intimate friend, General Cushing, bear to me
fresh testimony, which I shall be happy to carry away with me, that the
Democracy, in the language of your own glorious Webster, "still lives";
lives, not as his great spirit did, when it hung 'twixt life and death,
like a star upon the horizon's verge, but lives like the germ that is
shooting upward; like the sapling that is growing to a mighty tree, and
I trust it may redeem Massachusetts to her glorious place in the Union,
when she led the van of the defenders of State rights.
When I see Faneuil Hall thus thronged it reminds me of another meeting,
when it was found too small to contain the assembly that met here, on
the call of the people, to know what should be done in relation to the
tea-tax, and when, Faneuil Hall being too small, they went to the old
South Church, which still stands a monument of your early day. I hope
the time will soon come when many Democratic meetings in Boston will be
too large for Faneuil Hall. I am welcomed to this hall, so venerable for
all the associations of our early history; to this hall of which you are
so justly proud, and the memories of which are part of the inheritance
of every American citizen; and I felt, as I looked upon it, and
remembered how many voices of patriotic fervor have filled it--how here
the first movement originated from which the Revolution sprang; how here
began the system of town meetings and free discussion--that, though my
theme was more humble than theirs, as befitted my humbler powers, I had
enough to warn me that I was assuming much to speak in this sacred
chamber. But, when I heard your distinguished orator say that words
uttered here could never die, that they lived and became a part of the
circumambient air, I feel a hesitation which increases upon me with the
remembrance of his expressions. But, if those voices which breathed the
first impulse into the colonies--now the United States--to proclaim
independence, and to unite for resistance against the power of the
mother-country--if those voices live here still, how must they fare who
come here to preach treason to the Constitution and to assail the union
of these States? It would seem that their criminal hearts would fear
that those voices, so long slumbering, would break silence, that those
forms which hang upon these walls behind me might come forth, and that
the sabers so long sheathed would leap from their scabbards to drive
from this sacred temple those who desecrate it as did the money-changers
who sold doves in the temple of the living God.
Here you have, to remind you, and to remind all who enter this hall, the
portraits of those men who are dear to every lover of liberty, and part
and parcel of the memory of every American citizen; and highest among
them all I see you have placed Samuel Adams and John Hancock. You have
placed them the highest, and properly; for they were two, the only two,
excepted from the proclamation of mercy, when Governor Gage issued his
anathema against them and against their fellow-patriots. These men, thus
excepted from the saving grace of the crown, now occupy the highest
places in Faneuil Hall, and thus seem to be the highest in the reverence
of the people of Boston. This is one of the instances in which we find
tradition so much more reliable than history; for tradition has borne
the name of Samuel Adams to the remotest of the colonies, and the new
States formed out of what was territory of the old colonies; and there
it is a name as sacred among us as it is among you.
We all remember how early he saw the necessity of community
independence. How, through the dim mists of the future, and in advance
of his day, he looked forward to the proclamation of the independence of
Massachusetts; how he steadily strove, through good report and evil
report, with a great, unwavering heart, whether in the midst of his
fellow-citizens, cheered by their voices, or communing with his own
heart, when driven from his home, his eyes were still fixed upon his
first, last hope, the community independence of Massachusetts! Always a
commanding figure, we see him, at a later period, the leader in the
correspondence which waked the feelings of the other colonies to united
fraternal association--the people of Massachusetts with the people of
the other colonies--there we see his letters acknowledging the receipt
of rice of South Carolina, and the money of New York and
Pennsylvania--all these poured in to relieve Boston of the sufferings
inflicted upon her when the port was closed by the despotism of the
British crown--we see the beginning of that which insured the
coöperation of the colonies throughout the desperate struggle of the
Revolution. And we there see that which, if the present generation be
true to the memory of their sires, to the memory of the noble men from
whom they descended, will perpetuate for them that spirit of fraternity
in which the Union began. But it is not here alone, nor in reminiscences
connected with the objects which present themselves within this hall,
that the people of Boston have much to excite their patriotism and carry
them back to the great principles of the Revolutionary struggle. Where
will you go and not meet some monument to inspire such sentiments? Go to
Lexington and Concord, where sixty brave countrymen came with their
fowling-pieces to oppose six hundred veterans--where they forced those
veterans back, pursuing them on the road, fighting from every barn, and
bush, and stock, and stone, till they drove them, retreating, to the
ships from which they went forth! And there stand those monuments of
your early patriotism, Breed's and Bunker's Hills, whose soil drank the
martyr-blood of men who lived for their country and died for mankind!
Can it be that any of you should tread that soil and forget the great
purposes for which those men died? While, on the other side, rise the
heights of Dorchester, where once stood the encampment of the Virginian,
the man who came here, and did not ask, Is this a town of Virginia? but,
Is this a town of my brethren? The steady courage and cautious wisdom of
Washington availed to drive the British troops out from the city which
they had so confidently held. Here, too, you find where once the old
Liberty Tree, connected with so many of your memories, grew. You ask
your legend, and learn that it was cut down for firewood by British
soldiers, as some of your meeting-houses were destroyed; they burned the
old tree, and it warmed the soldiers long enough to leave town, and, had
they burned it a little longer, its light would have shown Washington
and his followers where their enemies were.
But they are gone, and never again shall a hostile foot set its imprint
upon your soil. Your harbor is being fortified, to prevent an unexpected
attack on your city by a hostile fleet. But woe to the enemy whose fleet
shall bear him to your shores to set his footprint upon your soil; he
goes to a prison or to a grave! American fortifications are not built
from any fear of invasion, they are intended to guard points where
marine attacks can be made; and, for the rest, the hearts of Americans
are our ramparts.
But, my friends, it is not merely in these associations, so connected
with the honorable pride of Massachusetts, that one who visits Boston
finds much for gratification, hope, and instruction. If I were selecting
a place where the advocate of strict construction, the extreme expounder
of democratic State-rights doctrine should go for his texts, I would
send him into the collections of your historical associations. Instead
of going to Boston as a place where only consolidation would be found,
he would find written, in letters of living light, that sacred creed of
State rights which has been miscalled the ultra opinions of the South;
he could find among your early records that this Faneuil Hall, the
property of the town at the time when Massachusetts was under a colonial
government, administered by a man appointed by the British crown,
guarded by British soldiers, was refused to a British Governor in which
to hold a British festival, because he was going to bring with him the
agents for collecting, and naval officers sent here to enforce, an
oppressive tax upon your Commonwealth. Such was the proud spirit of
independence manifested even in your colonial history. Such is the great
foundation-stone on which may be erected an eternal monument of State
rights. And so, in an early period of our country, you find
Massachusetts leading the movements, prominent of all the States, in the
assertion of that doctrine which has been recently so much belied.
Having achieved your independence, having passed through the
Confederation, you assented to the formation of our present
constitutional Union. You did not surrender your sovereignty. Your
fathers had sacrificed too much to claim, as a reward of their toil,
merely that they should have a change of masters; and a change of
masters it would have been had Massachusetts surrendered her State
sovereignty to the central Government, and consented that that central
Government should have the power to coerce a State. But, if this power
does not exist, if this sovereignty has not been surrendered, then, who
can deny the words of soberness and truth spoken by your candidate this
evening, when he has pleaded to you the cause of State independence, and
the right of every community to be judge of its own domestic affairs?
This is all we have ever asked--we of the South, I mean--for I stand
before you as one of those who have always been called the ultra men of
the South, and I speak, therefore, for that class; and I tell you that
your candidate for Governor has uttered to-night everything which we
have claimed as a principle for our protection. And I have found the
same condition of things in the neighboring State of Maine. I have found
that the Democrats there asserted the same broad constitutional
principle for which we have been contending, by which we are willing to
live, for which we are willing to die!
In this state of the case, my friends, why is the country agitated? The
old controversies have passed away, or they have subsided, and have been
covered up by one dark pall of somber hue, which increases with every
passing year. Why is it, then, I say, that you are thus agitated in
relation to the domestic affairs of other communities? Why is it that
the peace of the country is disturbed in order that one people may judge
of what another people may do? Is there any political power to authorize
such interference? If so, where is it? You did not surrender your
sovereignty. You gave to the Federal Government certain functions. It
was your agent, created for specified purposes. It can do nothing save
that which you have given it power to perform. Where is the grant? Has
it a right to determine what shall be property? Surely not; that belongs
to every community to decide for itself; you judge in your case--every
other State must judge in its case. The Federal Government has no power
to destroy property. Do you pay taxes, then, to an agent, that he may
destroy your property? Do you support him for that purpose? It is an
absurdity on the face of it. To ask the question is to answer it. The
Government is instituted to protect, not to destroy, property. And, in
abundance of caution, your fathers provided that the Federal Government
should not take private property for its own use unless by making due
compensation therefor. It is prohibited from attempting to destroy
property. One of its great purposes was protection to the States.
Whenever that power is made a source of danger, we destroy the purpose
for which the Government was formed.
Why, then, have you agitators? With Pharisaical pretension it is
sometimes said it is a moral obligation to agitate, and I suppose they
are going through a sort of vicarious repentance for other men's sins.
With all due allowance for their zeal, we ask, how do they decide that
it is a sin? By what standard do they measure it? Not the Constitution;
the Constitution recognizes the property in slaves in many forms, and
imposes obligations in connection with that recognition. Not the Bible;
that justifies it. Not the good of society; for, if they go where it
exists, they find that society recognizes it as good. What, then, is
their standard? The good of mankind? Is that seen in the diminished
resources of the country? Is that seen in the diminished comfort of the
world? Or is not the reverse exhibited? Is there, in the cause of
Christianity, a motive for the prohibition of the system which is the
only agency through which Christianity has reached that inferior race,
the only means by which they have been civilized and elevated? Or is
their piety manifested in denunciation of their brethren, who are
deterred from answering their denunciation only by the contempt which
they feel for a mere brawler, who intends to end his brawling only in
empty words?
What, my friends, must be the consequences? Good or evil? They have been
evil, and evil they must be only to the end. Not one particle of good
has been done to any man, of any color, by this agitation. It has been
insidiously working the purpose of sedition, for the destruction of that
Union on which our hopes of future greatness depend.
On the one side, then, you see agitation tending slowly and steadily to
that separation of States, which, if you have any hope connected with
the liberty of mankind; if you have any national pride connected with
making your country the greatest on the face of the earth; if you have
any sacred regard for the obligations which the deeds and the blood of
your fathers entailed upon you, that hope should prompt you to reject
anything that would tend to destroy the result of that experiment which
they left it to you to conclude and perpetuate. On the other hand, if
each community, in accordance with the principles of our Government,
should regard its domestic interests as a part of the common whole, and
struggle for the benefit of all, this would steadily lead us to
fraternity, to unity, to coöperation, to the increase of our happiness
and the extension of the benefits of our useful example over mankind.
The flag of the Union, whose stars have already more than doubled their
original number, with its ample folds may wave, the recognized flag of
every State or the recognized protector of every State upon the
Continent of America.
In connection with the view which I have presented of the early idea of
community independence, I will add the very striking fact that one of
the colonies, about the time they had resolved to unite for the purpose
of achieving their independence, addressed the Colonial Congress to know
in what condition it would be in the interval between its separation
from the Government of Great Britain and the establishment of a
government on this continent. The answer of the Colonial Congress was
exactly what might have been expected--exactly what State-rights
Democracy would answer to-day to such an inquiry--that they "had nothing
to do with it." If such sentiment had continued, if it had governed in
every State, if representatives had been chosen upon it, then your halls
of Federal legislation would not have been disturbed about the question
of the domestic institutions of the different States. The peace of the
country would not be hazarded by the arraignment of the family relations
of people over whom the Government has no control. If in harmony working
together, with co-intelligence for the conservation of the interests of
the country--if protection to the States and the other great ends for
which the Government was established, had been the aim and united effort
of all--what effects would not have been produced? As our Government
increases in expansion it would increase in its beneficent effect upon
the people; we should, as we grow in power and prosperity, also grow in
fraternity, and it would be no longer a wonder to see a man coming from
a Southern State to address a Democratic audience in Boston.
But I have referred to the fact that Massachusetts stood preëminently
forward among those who asserted community independence: and this
reminds me of another incident. President Washington visited Boston when
John Hancock was Governor, and Hancock refused to call upon the
President, because he contended that any man who came within the limits
of Massachusetts must yield rank and precedence to the Governor of the
State. He eventually only surrendered the point on account of his
personal regard and respect for the character of George Washington. I
honor him for this, and value it as one of the early testimonies in
favor of State rights. I wish all our Governors had the same regard for
the dignity of the State as had the great and glorious John Hancock.
In the beginning the founders of this Government were true democratic
State-rights men. Democracy was State rights, and State rights was
democracy, and it is so to-day. Your resolutions breathe it. The
Declaration of Independence embodied the sentiments which had lived in
the hearts of the country for many years before its formal assertion.
Our fathers asserted the great principle--the right of the people to
choose their own government--and that government rested upon the consent
of the governed. In every form of expression it uttered the same idea,
community independence and the dependence of the Union upon the
communities of which it consisted. It was an American declaration of the
unalienable right of man; it was a general truth, and I wish it were
accepted by all men. But I have said that this State sovereignty--this
community independence--has never been surrendered, and that there is no
power in the Federal Government to coerce a State. Will any one ask me,
then, how a State is to be held to the fulfillment of its obligations?
My answer is, by its honor. The obligation is the more sacred to observe
every feature of the compact, because there is no power to enforce it.
The great error of the Confederation was, that it attempted to act upon
the States. It was found impracticable, and our present form of
government was adopted, which acts upon individuals, and is not designed
to act upon States. The question of State coercion was raised in the
Convention which framed the Constitution, and, after discussion, the
proposition to give power to the General Government to enforce against
any State obedience to the laws was rejected. It is upon the ground that
a State can not be coerced that observance of the compact is a sacred
obligation. It was upon this principle that our fathers depended for the
perpetuity of a fraternal Union, and for the security of the rights that
the Constitution was designed to preserve. The fugitive slave compact in
the Constitution of the United States implied that the States should
fulfill it voluntarily. They expected the States to legislate so as to
secure the rendition of fugitives; and in 1778 it was a matter of
complaint that the Spanish colony of Florida did not restore fugitive
negroes from the United States who escaped into that colony, and a
committee, composed of Hamilton, of New York, Sedgwick, of
Massachusetts, and Mason, of Virginia, reported resolutions in the
Congress, instructing the Secretary of Foreign Affairs to address the
_chargé d'affaires_ at Madrid to apply to his Majesty of Spain to issue
orders to his governor to compel them to secure the rendition of
fugitive negroes. This was the sentiment of the committee, and they
added, also, that the States would return any slaves from Florida who
might escape into their limits.
When the constitutional obligation was imposed, who could have doubted
that every State, faithful to its obligations, would comply with the
requirements of the Constitution, and waive all questions as to whether
the institution should or should not exist in another community over
which they had no control? Congress was at last forced to legislate on
the subject, and they have continued, up to a recent period, to
legislate, and this has been one of the causes by which you have been
disturbed. You have been called upon to make war against a law which
need never to have been enacted, if each State had done the duty which
she was called upon by the Constitution to perform.
Gentlemen, this presents one phase of agitation--negro agitation: there
is another and graver question, it is in relation to the prohibition by
Congress of the introduction of slave property into the Territories.
What power does Congress possess in this connection? Has it the right to
say what shall be property anywhere? If it has, from what clause of the
Constitution does it derive that power? Have other States the power to
prescribe the condition upon which a citizen of another State shall
enter upon and enjoy territory--common property of all? Clearly not.
Shall the inhabitants who first go into the Territory deprive any
citizen of the United States of those rights which belong to him as an
equal owner of the soil? Certainly not. Sovereign jurisdiction can only
pass to these inhabitants when the States, the owners of that Territory
shall recognize their right to become an equal member of the Union.
Until then, the Constitution and the laws of the Union must be the rule
governing within the limits of a Territory.
The Constitution recognizes all property, and gives equal privileges to
every citizen of the States; and it would be a violation of its
fundamental principles to attempt any discrimination.
There is nothing of truth or justice with which to sustain this
agitation, or ground for it, unless it be that it is a very good bridge
over which to pass into office; a little stock of trade in politics
built up to aid men who are missionaries staying at home; reformers of
things which they do not go to learn; preachers without a congregation;
overseers without laborers and without wages; war-horses who snuff the
battle afar off and cry: "Aha! aha! I am afar off."
Thus it is that the peace of the Union is disturbed; thus it is that
brother is arrayed against brother; thus it is that the people come to
consider not how they can promote each other's interests, but how they
may successfully war upon them. And among the things most odious to my
mind is to find a man who enters upon a public office, under the
sanction of the Constitution, and taking an oath to support the
Constitution--the compact between the States binding each for the common
defense and general welfare of the other--and retaining to himself a
mental reservation that he will war upon the institutions and the
property of any of the States of the Union. It is a crime too low to
characterize as it deserves before this assembly. It is one which would
disgrace a gentleman--one which a man with self-respect would never
commit. To swear that he will support the Constitution, to take an
office which belongs in many of its relations to all the States, and to
use it as a means of injuring a portion of the States of whom he is thus
an agent, is treason to everything that is honorable in man. It is the
base and cowardly attack of him who gains the confidence of another in
order that he may wound him. But I have often heard it argued, and I
have seen it published: I have seen a petition that was circulated for
signers, announcing that there was an incompatibility between the
different sections of the Union; that it had been tried long enough, and
that they must get rid of those sections in which the curse of slavery
existed. Ah! those sages, so much wiser than our fathers, have found out
that there is incompatibility in that which existed when the Union was
formed. They have found an incompatibility inconsistent with union, in
that which existed when South Carolina sent her rice to Boston, and
Maryland and Pennsylvania and New York brought in their funds for her
relief. The fact is that, from that day to this, the difference between
the people of the colonies has been steadily diminishing, and the
possible advantages of union in no small degree augmented. The variety
of product of soil and of climate has been multiplied, both by the
expansion of our country and by the introduction of new tropical
products not cultivated at that time; so that every motive to union
which your fathers had, in a diversity which should give prosperity to
the country, exists in a higher degree to-day than when this Union was
formed, and this diversity is fundamental to the prosperity of the
people of the several sections of the country.
It is, however, to-day, in sentiment and interest, less than on the day
when the Declaration of Independence was made. Diversity there
is--diversity of character--but it is not of that extreme kind which
proves incompatibility; for your Massachusetts man, when he comes into
Mississippi, adopts our opinions and our institutions, and frequently
becomes the most extreme man among us. As our country has extended, as
new products have been introduced into it, this Union and the free trade
that belongs to it have been of increasing value. And I say, moreover,
that it is not an unfortunate circumstance that this diversity of
pursuit and character still remains. Originally it sprang in no small
degree from natural causes. Massachusetts became a manufacturing and
commercial State because of her fine harbors--because of her
water-power, making its last leap into the sea, so that the ship of
commerce brought the staple to the manufacturing power. This made you a
commercial and a manufacturing people. In the Southern States great
plains interpose between the last leaps of the streams and the sea.
Those plains were cultivated in staple crops, and the sea brought their
products to your streams to be manufactured. This was the first
beginning of the differences.
Then your longer and more severe winters, your soil not so favorable for
agriculture, in a degree kept you a manufacturing and a commercial
people. Even after the cause had passed away--after railroads had been
built--after the steam-engine had become a motive power for a large part
of manufacturing machinery, the natural causes from which your people
obtained a manufacturing ascendancy and ours became chiefly
agriculturists continued to act in a considerable measure to preserve
that relation. Your interest is to remain a manufacturing, and ours to
remain an agricultural people. Your prosperity, then, is to receive our
staple and to manufacture it, and ours to sell it to you and buy the
manufactured goods. This is an interweaving of interests which makes us
all the richer and happier.
But this accursed agitation, this intermeddling with the affairs of
other people, is that alone which will promote a desire in the mind of
any one to separate these great and glorious States. The seeds of
dissension may be sown by invidious reflections. Men may be goaded by
the constant attempts to infringe upon rights and to disturb
tranquillity, and in the resentment which follows it is not possible to
tell how far the wave may rush. I therefore plead to you now to arrest a
fanaticism which has been evil in the beginning and must be evil in the
end. You may not have the numerical power requisite; and those at a
distance may not understand how many of you there are desirous to put a
stop to the course of this agitation. For me, I have learned since I
have been in New England the vast mass of true State-rights Democrats to
be found within its limits--though not represented in the halls of
Congress. And if it comes to the worst--if, availing themselves of a
majority in the two Houses of Congress, they should attempt to trample
upon the Constitution; if they should attempt to violate the rights of
the States; if they should attempt to infringe upon our equality in the
Union--I believe that even in Massachusetts, though it has not had a
representative in Congress for many a day, the State-rights Democracy,
in whose breasts beats the spirit of the Revolution, can and will whip
the black Republicans. I trust we shall never be thus purified, as it
were, by fire; but that the peaceful, progressive revolution of the
ballot-box will answer all the glorious purposes of the Constitution and
the Union. And I marked that the distinguished orator and statesman who
preceded me, in addressing you, used the words "national" and
"constitutional" in such relation to each other as to show that in his
mind the one was a synonym of the other. I say so: we became national by
the Constitution, the bond for uniting the States, and national and
constitutional are convertible terms.
Your candidate for the high office of Governor--whom I have been once or
twice on the point of calling Governor, and whom I hope I may be able
soon to call so--in his remarks to you has presented the same idea in
another form. And well may Massachusetts orators, without even
perceiving what they are saying, utter sentiments which lie at the
foundation of your colonial as well as your subsequent political
history, which existed in Massachusetts before the Revolution, and have
existed ever since, whenever the true spirit which comes down from the
Revolutionary sires has swelled and found utterance within her limits.
It has been not only, my friends, in this increasing and mutual
dependence of interest that we have found new ties to you. Those bonds
are both material and mental. Every improvement or invention, every
construction of a railroad, has formed a new reason for our being one.
Every new achievement, whether it has been in arts or science, in war or
in manufactures, has constituted for us a new bond and a new sentiment
holding us together.
Why, then, I would ask, do we see these lengthened shadows which follow
in the course of our political history? Is it because our sun is
declining to the horizon? Are they the shadows of evening, or are they,
as I hopefully believe, but the mists which are exhaled by the sun as it
rises, but which are to be dispersed by its meridian glory? Are they but
the little evanishing clouds that flit between the people and the great
objects for which the Constitution was established? I hopefully look
toward the reaction which will establish the fact that our sun is still
in the ascendant--that that cloud which has so long covered our
political horizon is to be dispersed--that we are not again to be
divided on parallels of latitude and about the domestic institutions of
States--a sectional attack on the prosperity and tranquillity of a
nation--but only by differences in opinion upon measures of expediency,
upon questions of relative interest, by discussions as to the powers of
the States and the rights of the States, and the powers of the Federal
Government--such discussion as is commemorated in this picture of your
own great and glorious Webster, when he specially addressed our best,
most tried, and greatest man, the pure and incorruptible Calhoun,
represented as intently listening to catch the accents of eloquence that
fell from his lips. Those giants strove each for his conviction, not
against a section--not against each other; they stood to each other in
the relation of personal affection and esteem, and never did I see Mr.
Webster so agitated, never did I hear his voice falter, as when he
delivered the eulogy on John C. Calhoun.
But allusion was made to my own connection with your great and favorite
departed statesman. Of that I will only say, on this occasion, that very
early in my Congressional life Mr. Webster was arraigned for an offense
which affected him most deeply. He was no accountant, and all knew that.
He was arraigned on a pecuniary charge--the misapplication of what is
known as the secret-service fund--and I was one of the committee that
had to investigate the charge. I endeavored to do justice. I endeavored
to examine the evidence with a view to ascertain the truth. It is true I
remembered that he was an eminent American statesman. It is true that as
an American I hoped he would come out without a stain upon his garments.
But I entered upon the investigation to find the truth and to do
justice. The result was, he was acquitted of every charge that was made
against him, and it was equally my pride and my pleasure to vindicate
him in every form which lay within my power. No one that knew Daniel
Webster could have believed that he would ever ask whether a charge was
made against a Massachusetts man or a Mississippian. No! It belonged to
a lower, to a later, and I trust a shorter-lived race of statesmen, who
measure all facts by considerations of latitude and longitude.
I honor that sentiment which makes us oftentimes too confident, and to
despise too much the danger of that agitation which disturbs the peace
of the country. I respect that feeling which regards the Union as too
strong to be broken. But, at the same time, in sober judgment, it will
not do to treat too lightly the danger which has existed and still
exists. I have heard our Constitution and Union compared to the granite
shores which face the sea, and, dashing back the foam of the waves,
stand unmoved by their fury. Now I accept the simile: and I have stood
upon the shore, and I have seen the waves of the sea dash upon the
granite of your own shores which frowns over the ocean, have seen the
spray thrown back from the cliffs. But, when the tide had ebbed, I saw
that the rock was seamed and worn; and, when the tide was low, the
pieces that had been riven from the granite rock were lying at its base.
And thus the waves of sectional agitation are dashing themselves against
the granite patriotism of the land. But even that must show the seams
and scars of the conflict. Sectional hostility will follow. The danger
lies at your door, and it is time to arrest it. Too long have we allowed
this influence to progress. It is time that men should go back to the
first foundation of our institutions. They should drink the waters of
the fountain at the source of our colonial and early history.
You, men of Boston, go to the street where the massacre occurred in
1770. There you should learn how your fathers strove for community
rights. And near the same spot you should learn how proudly the
delegation of democracy came to demand the removal of the troops from
Boston, and how the venerable Samuel Adams stood asserting the rights of
democracy, dauntless as Hampden, clear and eloquent as Sidney; and how
they drove out the myrmidons who had trampled on the rights of the
people.
All over our country, these monuments, instructive to the present
generation, of what our fathers did, are to be found. In the library of
your association for the collection of your early history, I found a
letter descriptive of the reading of the church service to his army by
General Washington, during one of those winters when the army was
ill-clad and without shoes, when he built a little log-cabin for a
meeting-house, and there, reading the service to them his sight failed
him, he put on his glasses and, with emotion which manifested the
reality of his feelings, said, "I have grown gray in serving my country,
and now I am growing blind."
By the aid of your records you may call before you the day when the
delegation of the army of the democracy of Boston demanded compliance
with its requirements for the removal of the troops. A painfully
thrilling case will be found in the heroic conduct of your fathers'
friends, the patriots in Charleston, South Carolina. The prisoners were
put upon the hulks, where the small-pox existed, and where they were
brought on shore to stay the progress of the infection, and were
offered, if they would enlist in his Majesty's service, release from all
their sufferings, present and prospective; while, if they would not, the
rations would be taken from their families, and they would be sent back
to the hulks and again exposed to the infection. Emaciated as they were,
with the prospect of being returned to confinement, and their families
turned out into the streets, the spirit of independence, the devotion to
liberty, was so supreme in their breasts, that they gave one loud huzza
for General Washington, and went to meet death in their loathsome
prison. From these glorious recollections, from the emotions which they
create, when the sacrifices of those who gave you the heritage of
liberty are read in your early history, the eye is directed to our
present condition. Mark the prosperity, the growth, the honorable career
of your country under the voluntary union of independent States. I do
not envy the heart of that American whose pulse does not beat quicker,
and who does not feel within him a high exultation and pride, in the
past glory and future prospects of his country. With these prospects are
associated--if we are only wise, true, and faithful, if we shun
sectional dissension--all that man can conceive of the progression of
the American people. And the only danger which threatens those high
prospects is that miserable spirit which, disregarding the obligations
of honor, makes war upon the Constitution; which induces men to assume
powers they do not possess, trampling as well upon the great principles
which lie at the foundation of the Declaration of Independence, and the
Constitution of the Union, as upon the honorable obligations which were
fixed upon them by their fathers. They with internecine strife would
sacrifice themselves and their brethren to a spirit which is a disgrace
to our common country. With these views, it will not be surprising, to
those who most differ from me, that I feel an ardent desire for the
success of this State-rights Democracy; that, convinced as I am of the
ill consequences of the described heresies unless they be corrected; of
the evils upon which they would precipitate the country unless they are
restrained--I say, none need be surprised if, prompted by such
aspirations, and impressed by such forebodings as now open themselves
before me, I have spoken freely, yielding to motives I would suppress
and can not avoid. I have often, elsewhere than in the State of which I
am a citizen, spoken in favor of that party which alone is national, in
which alone lies the hope of preserving the Constitution and the
perpetuation of the Government and of the blessings which it was
ordained and established to secure.
My friends, my brethren, my countrymen, I thank you for the patient
attention you have given me. It is the first time it has ever befallen
me to address an audience here. It will probably be the last. Residing
in a remote section of the country, with private as well as public
duties to occupy the whole of my time, it would only be for a very
hurried visit, or under some such necessity for a restoration to health
as brought me here this season, that I could ever expect to remain long
among you, or in any other portion of the Union than the State of which
I am a citizen.
I have staid long enough to feel that generous hospitality which evinces
itself to-night, which has evinced itself in Boston since I have been
here, and showed itself in every town and village of New England where I
have gone. I have staid here, too, long enough to learn that, though not
represented in Congress, there is a large mass of as true Democrats as
are to be found in any portion of the Union within the limits of New
England. Their purposes, their construction of the Constitution, their
hopes for the future, their respect for the past, is the same as that
which exists among my beloved brethren in Mississippi....
In the hour of apprehension I shall turn back to my observations here,
in this consecrated hall, where men so early devoted themselves to
liberty and community independence; and I shall endeavor to impress upon
others, who know you only as you are represented in the two Houses of
Congress, how true and how many are the hearts that beat for
constitutional liberty, and faithfully respect every clause and
guarantee which the Constitution contains for any and every portion of
the Union.
APPENDIX F.
Speech of Mr. Davis, of Mississippi, in the Senate of the United States,
on the resolutions offered by him relative to the relations of the
States, the Federal Government, and the Territories, May 7, 1860.
Mr. President: Among the many blessings for which we are indebted to our
ancestry is that of transmitting to us a written Constitution; a fixed
standard to which, in the progress of events, every case may be
referred, and by which it may be measured. But for this, the wise men
who formed our Government dared not have hoped for its perpetuity; for
they saw, floating down the tide of time, wreck after wreck, marking the
short life of every republic which had preceded them. With this,
however, to check, to restrain, and to direct their posterity, they
might reasonably hope the Government they founded should last for ever;
that it should secure the great purposes for which it was ordained and
established; that it would be the shield of their posterity equally in
every part of the country, and equally in all time to come. It was this
which mainly distinguished the formation of our Government from those
confederacies or republics which had preceded it; and this is the best
foundation for our hope to-day. The resolutions which have been read,
and which I had the honor to present to the Senate, are little more than
the announcement of what I hold to be the clearly-expressed declarations
of the Constitution itself. To that fixed standard it is sought, at this
time, when we are drifting far from the initial point, and when clouds
and darkness hover over us, to bring back the Government, and to test
our condition to-day by the rules which our fathers laid down for us in
the beginning.
The differences which exist between different portions of the country,
the rivalries and the jealousies of to-day, though differing in degree,
are exactly of the nature of those which preceded the formation of the
Constitution. Our fathers were aware of the different interests of the
navigating and planting States, as they were then regarded. They sought
to compose those difficulties, and, by compensating advantages given by
one to the other, to form a Government equal and just in its operation,
and which, like the gentle showers of heaven, should fall twice blessed,
blessing him that gives and him that receives. This beneficial action
and reaction between the different interests of the country constituted
the bond of union and the motive of its formation. They constitute it
to-day, if we are sufficiently wise to appreciate our interests, and
sufficiently faithful to observe our trust. Indeed, with the extension
of territory, with the multiplication of interests, with the varieties,
increasing from time to time, of the products of this great country, the
bonds which bind the Union together should have increased. Rationally
considered, they have increased, because the free trade which was
established in the beginning has now become more valuable to the people
of the United States than their trade with all the rest of the world.
I do not propose to argue questions of natural rights and inherent
powers. I plant my reliance upon the Constitution; that Constitution
which you have all sworn to support; that Constitution which you have
solemnly pledged yourself to maintain while you hold the seat you now
occupy in the Senate; to which you are bound in its spirit and in its
letter, not grudgingly, but willingly, to render your obedience and
support as long as you hold office under the Federal Government.
When the tempter entered the garden of Eden and induced our common
mother to offend against the law which God had given to her through
Adam, he was the first teacher of that "higher law" which sets the will
of the individual above the solemn rule which he is bound, as a part of
every community, to observe. From the effect of the introduction of that
higher law in the garden of Eden, and the fall consequent upon it, came
sin into the world; and from sin came death and banishment and
subjugation, as the punishment of sin; the loss of life, unfettered
liberty, and perfect happiness followed from that first great law which
was given by God to fallen man.
Why, then, shall we talk about natural rights? Who is to define them?
Where is the judge who is to sit over the court to try natural rights?
What is the era at which you will fix the date by which you will
determine the breadth, the length, and the depth of those called the
rights of nature? Shall it be after the fall, when the earth was covered
with thorns, and man had to earn his bread in the sweat of his brow? Or
shall it be when there was equality between the sexes, when he lived in
the garden, when all his wants were supplied, and when thorns and
thistles were unknown on the face of the earth? Shall it be then? Shall
it be after the flood, when, for the first sin committed after the
waters retired from the face of the earth, the doom of slavery was fixed
upon the mongrel descendants of Ham? If after the flood, and after that
decree, how idle is all this prating about natural rights as standing
above the obligations of civil government! The Constitution is the law
supreme to every American. It is the plighted faith of our fathers; it
is the hope of our posterity. I say, then, I come not to argue questions
outside of or above the Constitution, but to plead the cause of right,
of law and order, under the Constitution and to plead it to those who
have sworn to abide by that obligation.
One of the fruitful sources, as I hold it, of the errors which prevail
in our country, is the theory that this is a Government of one people;
that the Government of the United States was formed by a mass. The
Government of the United States is a compact between the sovereign
members who formed it; and, if there be one feature common to all the
colonies planted upon the shores of America, it is desire for community
independence. It was for this the Puritan, the Huguenot, the Catholic,
the Quaker, the Protestant, left the land of their nativity, and, guided
by the shadows thrown by the fires of European persecution, they sought
and found the American refuge of civil and religious freedom. While they
existed as separate and distinct colonies they were not forbearing
toward each other. They oppressed opposite religions. They did not come
here with the enlarged idea of no established religion. The Puritans
drove out the Quakers; the Church-of-England men drove out the
Catholics. Persecution reigned through the colonies, except, perhaps,
that of the Catholic colony of Maryland; but the rule was--persecution.
Therefore, I say the common idea, and the only common idea, was
community independence--the right of each independent people to do as
they pleased in their domestic affairs.
The Declaration of Independence was made by the colonies, each for
itself. The recognition of their independence was not for the colonies
united, but for each of the colonies which had maintained its
independence; and so, when the Constitution was formed, the delegates
were not elected by the people _en masse_, but they came from each one
of the States; and when the Constitution was formed it was referred, not
to the people _en masse_, but to the States severally, and severally by
them ratified and approved. But, if there be anything which enforces
this idea more than another, it is the unequal dates at which it
received this approval. From first to last, nearly two years and a half
elapsed; and the Government went into operation something like a year--I
believe more than a year--before the last ratification was made. Is it
then contended that, by this ratification and adoption of the
Constitution, the States surrendered that sovereignty which they had
previously gained? Can it be that men who braved the perils of the
ocean, the privations of the wilderness, who fought the war of the
Revolution, in the hour of their success, when all was sunshine and
peace around them, came voluntarily forward to lay down that community
independence for which they had suffered so much and so long? Reason
forbids it; but, if reason did not furnish a sufficient answer, the
action of the States themselves forbids it. The great State of New
York--great, relatively, then, as she is now--manifested her wisdom in
not receiving merely that implication which belongs to the occasion,
which was accepted by the other States, but she required the positive
assertion of that retention of her sovereignty and power over all her
affairs as the condition on which she ratified the Constitution itself.
I read from Elliott's "Debates" (page 327). Among her resolutions of
ratification is the following:
"That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people whensoever
it shall become necessary to their happiness; that every power,
jurisdiction, and right which is not by the said Constitution clearly
delegated to the Congress of the United States, or the departments of
the Government thereof, remain to the people of the several States, or
to their respective State governments to which they may have granted the
same."
North Carolina, with the Scotch caution which subsequent events have so
well justified, in 1788 passed this resolution:
"_Resolved_, That a declaration of rights, asserting and securing from
encroachments the great principles of civil and religious liberty, and
the unalienable rights of the people, together with amendments to the
most ambiguous and exceptionable parts of the said Constitution of
Government, ought to be laid before Congress and the convention of the
States that shall or may be called for the purpose of amending the said
Constitution, for their consideration, previous to the ratification of
the Constitution aforesaid, on the part of the State of North Carolina."
And in keeping with this North Carolina withheld her ratification; she
allowed the Government to be formed with the number of States which was
required to put it in operation, and still she remained out of the
Union, asserting and recognized in the independence which she had
maintained against Great Britain, and which she had no idea of
surrendering to any other power; and the last State which ratified the
Constitution long after it had in fact gone into effect, Rhode Island,
in the third of her resolutions, says:
"III. That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people
whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness. That the rights
of the States respectively to nominate and appoint all State officers,
and every other power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by the said
Constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United States, or
the departments of Government thereof, remain to the people of the
several States, or their respective State governments to whom they may
have granted the same."
Here the use of the phrase "State governments" shows how utterly
unwarrantable the construction has been, to say that the reference here
was to the whole people of the States--to the people of all the
States--and not to the people of each of the States severally.
I spoke, however, Mr. President, but a moment ago, of the difference of
politics, products, population, constituting the great motive for the
Union. It was, indeed, its necessity. Had all the people been alike--had
their institutions all been the same--there would have been no interest
to bring them together; there would have been no cause or necessity for
any restraint being imposed upon them. It was the fact that they
differed which rendered it necessary to have some law governing their
intercourse. It was the fact that their products were opposite--that
their pursuits were various--that rendered it the great interest of the
people that they should have free trade existing among each other; that
free trade which Franklin characterized as being between the States such
as existed between the counties of England.
Since that era, however, a fiber then unknown in the United States, and
the production of which is dependent upon the domestic institution of
African slavery, has come to be cultivated in such amounts, to enter so
into the wearing apparel of the world, so greatly to add to the comfort
of the poor, that it may be said to-day that that little fiber, cotton,
wraps the commercial world and binds it to the United States in bonds to
keep the peace with us which no Government dare break. It has built up
the Northern States. It is their great manufacturing interest to-day. It
supports their shipping abroad. It enables them to purchase in the
markets of China, when the high premium to be paid on the milled dollar
would otherwise exclude them from that market. These are a part of the
blessings resulting from that increase and variety of product which
could not have existed if we had all been alike; which would have been
lost to-day unless free trade between the United States was still
preserved.
And here it strikes me as somewhat strange that a book recently issued
has received the commendation of a large number of the representatives
of the manufacturing and commercial States, though, apart from its
falsification of statistics and low abuse of Southern States,
institutions, and interests, the great feature which stands prominently
out from it is the arraignment of the South for using their surplus
money in buying the manufactures of the North. How a manufacturing and
commercial people can be truly represented by those who would inculcate
such doctrines as these, is to me passing strange. Is it vain boasting
which renders you anxious to proclaim to the world that we buy our
buckets, our rakes, and our shovels from you? No, there is too much good
sense in the people for that; and, therefore, I am left at a loss to
understand the motive, unless it be that deep-rooted hate which makes
you blind to your own interest when that interest is weighed in the
balance with the denunciation and detraction of your brethren of the
South.
The great principle which lay at the foundation of this fixed standard,
the Constitution of the United States, was the equality of rights
between the States. This was essential; it was necessary; it was a step
which had to be taken first, before any progress could be made. It was
the essential requisite of the very idea of sovereignty in the State; of
a compact voluntarily entered into between sovereigns; and it is that
equality of right under the Constitution on which we now insist. But
more: when the States united they transferred their forts, their
armament, their ships, and their right to maintain armies and navies, to
the Federal Government. It was the disarmament of the States, under the
operation of a league which made the warlike operations, the powers of
defense, common to them all. Then, with this equality of the States,
with this disarmament of the States, if there had been nothing in the
Constitution to express it, I say the protection of every constitutional
right would follow as a necessary incident, and could not be denied by
any one who could understand and would admit the true theory of such a
Government.
We claim protection, first, because it is our right; secondly, because
it is the duty of the General Government; and, thirdly, because we have
entered into a compact together, which deprives each State of the power
of using all the means which it might employ for its own defense. This
is the general theory of the right of protection. What is the exception
to it? Is there an exception? If so, who made it? Does the Constitution
discriminate between different kinds of property? Did the Constitution
attempt to assimilate the institutions of the different States
confederated together? Was there a single State in this Union that would
have been so unfaithful to the principles which had prompted them in
their colonial position, and which had prompted them, at a still earlier
period, to seek and try the temptations of the wilderness; is there one
which would have consented to allow the Federal Government to control or
to discriminate between her institutions and those of her confederate
States?
But, if it be contended that this is argument, and that you need
authority, I will draw it from the fountain; from the spring before it
had been polluted; from the debates in the formation of the
Constitution; from the views of those who at least it will be admitted
understood what they were doing.
Mr. Randolph, it will be recollected, introduced a _projet_ for a
Government, consisting of a series of resolutions. Among them was one
which proposed to give Congress the power "to call forth the force of
the Union against any member of the Union failing to fulfill its duty
under the articles thereof." That was, to give Congress the power to
coerce the States; to bring the States into subjection to the Federal
Government. Now, sir, let us see how that was treated; and first I will
refer to one whose wisdom, as we take a retrospective view, seems to me
marvelous. Not conspicuous in debate, at least not among the names which
first occur when we think of that bright galaxy of patriots and
statesmen, he was the man who, above all others, it seems to me, laid
his finger upon every danger, and indicated the course which that danger
was to take. I refer to Mr. Mason.
"Mr. Mason observed, not only that the present Confederation was
deficient in not providing for coercion and punishment against
delinquent States, but argued very cogently that punishment could not,
in the nature of things, be executed on the States collectively; and,
therefore, that such a Government was necessary as could directly
operate on individuals, and would punish those only whose guilt required
it."[199]
Mr. Madison, who has been called sometimes the father of the
Constitution, upon the same question, said:
"A union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide
for its own destruction. The use of force against a State would look
more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment, and
would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of
all previous compacts by which it might be bound."
Mr. Hamilton, who, if I were to express a judgment by way of comparison,
I would say was the master intellect of the age in which he lived, whose
mind seemed to penetrate profoundly every question with which he
grappled, and who seldom failed to exhaust the subject which he
treated--Mr. Hamilton, in speaking of the various powers necessary to
maintain a Government, came to clause four:
"4. Force, by which may be understood a _coercion of laws, or coercion
of arms_. Congress have not the former, except in few cases. In
particular States, this coercion is nearly sufficient; though he held
it, in most cases, not entirely so. A certain portion of military force
is absolutely necessary in large communities. Massachusetts is now
feeling this necessity, and making provision for it. But how can this
force be exerted on the States collectively? It is impossible. It
amounts to a war between the parties. Foreign powers, also, will not be
idle spectators. They will interpose; the confusion will increase; and a
dissolution of the Union will ensue."
The consequence was, the proposition was lost. In support of this same
idea of community independence, which I have suggested, the argument
upon the proposition least likely to have exhibited it, that to give
power to restrain the slave-trade, shows the Northern and Southern men
all arguing and presenting different views, yet concurred in this, that
there could be no power to restrain a State from importing what she
pleased. As the Senator from Vermont [Mr. Collamer] looks somewhat
surprised at my statement, I will refer to the authority. Mr. Rutledge
said:
"Religion and humanity had nothing to do with this question. Interest
alone is the governing principle with nations. The true question at
present is, whether the Southern States shall or shall not be parties to
the Union. If the Northern States consult their interest, they will not
oppose the increase of slaves, which will increase the commodities of
which they will become the carriers."[200]
Mr. Pinckney: "South Carolina can never receive the plan if it prohibits
the slave-trade. In every proposed extension of the powers of Congress,
that State has expressly and watchfully excepted that of meddling with
the importation of negroes. If the States be all left at liberty on this
subject, South Carolina may, perhaps, by degrees, do of herself what is
wished, as Virginia and Maryland already have done."[201]
"Mr. Sherman was for leaving the clause as it stands. He disapproved of
the slave-trade; yet, as the States were now possessed of the right to
import slaves, as the public good did not require it to be taken from
them, and as it was expedient to have as few objections as possible to
the proposed scheme of government, he thought it best to leave the
matter as we find it."[202]
"Mr. Baldwin had conceived national objects alone to be before the
Convention: not such as, like the present, were of a local nature.
Georgia was decided on this point. That State has always hitherto
supposed a General Government to be the pursuit of the central States,
who wished to have a vortex for everything; that her distance would
preclude her from equal advantage; and that she could not prudently
purchase it by yielding national powers. From this, it might be
understood in what light she would view an attempt to abridge one of her
favorite prerogatives.
"If left to herself, she may probably put a stop to the evil. As one
ground for this conjecture, he took notice of the sect of ----, which,
he said was a respectable class of people who carried their ethics
beyond the mere _equality of men_, extending their humanity to the
claims of the whole animal creation."[203]
"Mr. Gerry thought we had nothing to do with the conduct of the States
as to slaves, but ought to be careful not to give any sanction to
it."[204]
"Mr. King thought the subject should be considered in a political light
only. If two States will not agree to the Constitution, as stated on one
side, he could affirm with equal belief, on the other, that great and
equal opposition would be experienced from the other States. He remarked
on the exemption of slaves from duty, while every other import was
subjected to it, as an inequality that could not fail to strike the
commercial sagacity of the Northern and Middle States."[205]
Here, as will be observed, everywhere was recognized and admitted the
doctrine of community independence and State equality--no interference
with the institutions of a State--no interference even prospectively
save and except with their consent; and thus it followed that at one
time it was proposed to except, from the power to prohibit the further
introduction of Africans, those States which insisted upon retaining the
power; and finally it was agreed that a date should be fixed beyond
which, probably, none of them desired to retain it. These were States
acting in their sovereign capacity; they possessed power to do as they
pleased; and that was the view which they took of it. I ask, then, how
are we, their descendants, those holding under their authority, to
assume a power which they refused to admit, upon principles eternal and
lying at the foundation of the Constitution itself?
If, then, there be no such distinction or discrimination; if protection
be the duty (and who will deny it?) with which this Government is
charged, and for which the States pay taxes, because of which they
surrendered their armies and their navies; if general protection be the
general duty, I ask, in the name of reason and constitutional right--I
ask you to point me to authority by which a discrimination is made
between slave-property and any other. Yet this is the question now
fraught with evil to our country. It is this which has raised the
hurricane threatening to sweep our political institutions before it.
This is the dark spot which some already begin to fear may blot out the
constellation of the Union from the political firmament of mankind. Does
it not become us, then, calmly to consider it, justly to weigh it; to
hold it in balances from which the dust has been blown, in order that we
may see where truth, right, and the obligations of the Constitution
require us to go?
It may be pardoned to one who, from his earliest youth up, has been
connected with a particular party, who has always believed that the
welfare and the safety of the country most securely rested with that
party, who has seen in the triumph of Democracy the triumph of the
Union, and who has believed for years past that the downfall of
Democracy would be its destruction--it may be pardoned, I say, under
such circumstances as these, to such a person as that, to refer even in
this connection to that feature of the particular point which I am
discussing, which has been brought forward by the recent action of that
party. States met together to consult as brethren, to see whether they
could agree as well upon the candidate as upon the creed, and it was
apparent that division had entered into our ranks. After days of
discussion, we saw that party convention broken. We saw the enemies of
Democracy waiting to be invited to its funeral, and jestingly looking
into the blank faces of those of us to whom the telegraph brought the
sad intelligence. I hope this is, however, but the mist of the morning.
I have faith in the Democracy, and that it still lives. I have faith in
the patriotism and in the good sense of the Democracy, that they will
assert the truth, boldly pronounce it, meet the issue, and I trust in
the good sense and patriotism of the people for their success.
In this connection, it may be permissible to review our present party
condition. For a long time two parties divided the people of the United
States. The controversy was mainly upon questions of expediency;
sometimes of constitutionality. They divided men in all of the States.
The contest was sometimes won by one, and sometimes by the other. The
Whig party lives now but in history, yet it has a history of which any
of its members may be proud. It bore the high but not successful part of
stemming the tide of popular impulse, and thus failed to attain the
highest power. Differing from them upon the points at issue, I offer the
homage of my respect to those who, adhering to what they believed to be
true, go down sooner than find success in the abandonment of principle.
With the disappearance of that party--and perhaps for the very reasons
that caused its disappearance--up rose radical organizations who strode
so far beyond progressive Democracy that Democracy took the place now
left vacant by the old Whig party, and became the reservoir into which
all conservatism was poured. Therefore it is that so many of those men,
eminent in their day, eminent for their services, eminent in their
history, have approved of the Democratic party in the present condition
of the country as the only conservative element which remains in our
politics. In the midst of this radicalism, of this revolutionary
tendency, it becomes not the regret of a partisan merely; it is the
sadness of an American citizen, that the party on which the conservative
hopes of the country hang has been threatened with division, and
possibly may not hereafter be united. Thanks to a sanguine temperament,
thanks to an abiding faith, thanks to a confidence in the Providence
which has so long ruled for good the destiny of my country, I believe it
will reunite, and reunite upon sound and acceptable principles. At
least, I hope so.
From the postulates which I have laid down result the fourth and fifth
resolutions. They are the two which I expect to be opposed. They contain
the assertion of the equality of rights of all the people of the United
States in the Territories, and they declare the obligation of the
Congress to see these rights protected. I admit that the United States
may acquire eminent domain. I admit that the United States may have
sovereignty over territory; otherwise the sovereign jurisdiction which
we obtained by conquest or treaty would not pass to us. I deny that
their agent, the Federal Government, under the existing Constitution,
can have eminent domain; I deny that it can have sovereignty. I consider
it as the mere agent of the States--an agent of limited power; and that
it can do nothing save that which the Constitution empowers it to
perform; and that, though the treaty or the deed of cession may direct
or control, it can not enlarge or expand the powers of the Congress;
that it is not sovereign in any essential particular. It has functions
to perform, and those functions I propose now to consider.
The power of Congress over the Territories--a subject not well defined
in the Constitution of the United States--has been drawn from various
sources by different advocates of that power. One has found it in the
grant of power to dispose of the Territory and other public property.
That is to say, because the agent was authorized to sell a particular
thing, or to dispose of it by grant or barter, therefore he has
sovereign power over that and all else which the principal, constituting
him an agent, may hereafter acquire! The property, besides the land,
consisted of forts, of ships, of armaments, and other things which had
belonged to the States in their separate capacity, and were turned over
to the Government of the Confederation, and transferred to the
Government of the United States, and of this, together with the land so
transferred, the Federal Government had the power to dispose; and of
territory thereafter acquired, of arms thereafter made or purchased, of
forts thereafter constructed, or custom-houses, or docks, or lights, or
buoys; of all these, of course, it had power to dispose. It had the
power to create them; it must, of necessity, have had the power to
dispose of them. It was only necessary to confer the power to dispose of
those things which the Federal Government did not create, of those
things which came to it from the States, and over which they might
signify their will for its control.
I look upon it as the mere power to dispose of, for considerations and
objects defined in the trust, the land held in the United States, none
of which then was within the limits of the States, and the other public
property which the United States received from the States after the
formation of the Union. I do not agree with those who say the Government
has no power to establish a temporary and civil government within a
Territory. I stand half-way between the extremes of squatter sovereignty
and of Congressional sovereignty. I hold that the Congress has power to
establish a civil government; that it derives it from the grants of the
Constitution--not the one which is referred to; and I hold that that
power is limited and restrained, first, by the Constitution itself, and
then by every rule of popular liberty and sound discretion, to the
narrowest limits which the necessities of the case require. The Congress
has power to defend the territory, to repel invasion, to suppress
insurrection; the Congress has power to see the laws executed. For this
it may have a civil magistracy--territorial courts. It has the power to
establish a Federal judiciary. To that Federal judiciary, from these
local courts, may come up to be decided questions with regard to the
laws of the United States and the Constitution of the United States.
These, combined, give power to establish a temporary government,
sufficient, perhaps, for the simple wants of the inhabitants of a
Territory, until they shall acquire the population, until they shall
have the resources and the interests which justify them in becoming a
State. I am sustained in this view of the case by an opinion of the
Supreme Court of the United States in 1845, in the case of Pollard's
Lessee _vs_. P. Hagan (3 Howard, 222, 223), in which the Court say:
"Taking the legislative acts of the United States, and the States of
Virginia and Georgia, and their deeds of cession to the United States,
and giving to each separately, and to all jointly, a fair
interpretation, we must come to the conclusion that it was the intention
of the parties to invest the United States with the eminent domain of
the country ceded, both national and municipal, for the purposes of
temporary government; and to hold it in trust for the performance of the
stipulations and conditions expressed in the deeds of cession and the
legislative acts connected with them."
This was a question of land. It was land lying between high and low
water, over which the United States claimed to have and to exercise
authority, because of the terms on which Alabama had been admitted into
the Union. In that connection the Court say, in the same case:
"When Alabama was admitted into the Union, on an equal footing with the
original States, she succeeded to all the rights of sovereignty,
jurisdiction, and eminent domain which Georgia possessed at the date of
the cession, except so far as this right was diminished by the public
lands remaining in the possession and under the control of the United
States for the temporary purpose provided for in the deeds of cession
and the legislative acts connected with it. Nothing remained in the
United States, according to the terms of the agreement, but the public
lands; and if an express stipulation had been inserted in the agreement,
granting the municipal right of sovereignty and eminent domain to the
United States, such stipulation would have been void and inoperative;
because the United States has no constitutional capacity to exercise
municipal jurisdiction, sovereignty, or eminent domain within the limits
of a State or elsewhere, except in the cases in which it is expressly
granted."
Another case arose not long afterward, in which not land, but religion,
was involved, where suit was brought against the municipality of New
Orleans because they would not allow a dead body to be exposed at a
place where, according to the religious rites of those interested, it
was deemed they had a right thus to expose it. On that the Supreme Court
say, speaking of the ordinance for the government of Louisiana:
"So far as they conferred political rights and secured civil and
religious liberties (which are political rights) the laws of Congress
were all suspended by the State Constitution; nor is any part of them in
force, unless they were adopted by the Constitution of Louisiana, as
laws of the State."[206]
Thus we find the Supreme Court sustaining the proposition that the
Federal Government has power to establish a temporary civil government
within the limits of a Territory, but that it can enact no law which
will endure beyond the temporary purposes for which such government was
established. In other cases the decisions of the Court run in the same
line; and in 1855 the then Attorney-General, most learned in his
profession--and in what else is he not learned, for he may be said to be
a man of universal acquirements?--Attorney-General Cushing then foretold
what must have been the decision of the Supreme Court on the Missouri
Compromise, anticipating the decision subsequently made in the case of
Dred Scott; that decision for which the venerable justices have been so
often and so violently arraigned. He foretold it as the necessary
consequence from the line of precedents descending from 1842, affirmed
and reaffirmed in different cases, and now bearing on a case similar in
principle, and only different in the mere reference to the subject
involved from those which had gone before. As connected with the
decision which had agitated the peace of the country; as the
anticipation of that decision before it was made, viewing it as the
necessary consequence of the decisions which the court had made before;
if it be the pleasure of the Senate, I ask my friend from South Carolina
[Mr. Chesnut] to read for me a letter of the Attorney-General, being an
official answer made by him in relation to the military reservation
which was involved in the question before him.
Mr. Chesnut read from the "Opinions of the Attorneys-General," vol. vii,
page 575:
"The Supreme Court has determined that the United States never held any
municipal sovereignty, jurisdiction, or right of soil in the territory
of which any of the new States have been formed, except for temporary
purposes, and to execute the trusts created by the deeds of cession....
"By the force of the same principle, and in the same line of
adjudications, the Supreme Court would have had to decide that the
provision of the act of March 6, 1820, which undertakes to determine in
advance the municipal law of all that portion of the original province
of Louisiana which lies north of the parallel 36° 30' north latitude,
was null and void _ab incepto_, if it had not been repealed by a recent
act of Congress. (Compare iv, Statutes at Large, p. 848, and x, Statutes
at Large, p. 289.) For an act of Congress which pretends of right, and
without consent or compact, to impose on the municipal power of any new
State or States limitations and restrictions not imposed on all, is
contrary to the fundamental condition of the Confederation, according to
which there is to be equality of right between the old and new States
'in all respects whatsoever.'"
Mr. Davis: It was not long after this official opinion of the
Attorney-General before the case arose on which the decision was made
which has so agitated the country. Fortunate indeed was it for the
public peace that land and religion had been decided--those questions on
which men might reason had been the foundation of judicial
decision--before that which drives all reason, it seems, from the mind
of man, came to be presented the question whether Cuffee should be kept
in his normal condition or not; the question whether the Congress of the
United States could decide what might or might not be property in a
Territory--the case being that of an officer of the army sent into a
Territory to perform his public duty, having taken with him his negro
slave. The court, however, in giving their decision in this case--or
their opinion, if it suits gentlemen better--have gone into the question
with such clearness, such precision, and such amplitude, that it will
relieve me from the necessity of arguing it any further than to make a
reference to some sentences contained in that opinion. And here let me
say, I can not see how those who agreed on a former occasion that the
constitutional right of the slaveholder to take his property into the
Territory--the constitutional power of the Congress and the
constitutional power of the Territory to legislate upon that
subject--should be a judicial question, can now attempt to escape the
operation of an opinion which covers the exact political question which,
it was known beforehand, the Court would be called upon to decide.
Decided in strictness of technical language, it was known it could not
be. Hundreds, thousands, a vast variety of cases may arise, and
centuries elapse, and leave that Court, if our Union still exists,
deciding questions in relation to that character of property in the
Territories; but the great and fundamental idea was that, after thirty
years of angry controversy, dividing the people and paralyzing the arm
of the Federal Government, some umpire should be sought which would
compose the difficulty and set it upon a footing to leave us in future
to proceed in peace; and that umpire was selected which the Constitution
had provided to decide questions of law. I ask my friend to read some
extracts from the decision.
Mr. Chesnut read as follows, from the case of Dred Scott _vs._ Sandford,
pp. 55-57:
"The Territory being a part of the United States, the Government and the
citizen both enter it under the authority of the Constitution, with
their respective rights defined and marked out; and the Federal
Government can exercise no power over his person or property beyond what
that instrument confers, nor lawfully deny any right which it has
reserved....
"The powers over person and property, of which we speak, are not only
not granted to Congress, but are in express terms denied, and they are
forbidden to exercise them. And this prohibition is not confined to the
States, but the words are general, and extend to the whole territory
over which the Constitution gives it power to legislate, including those
portions of it remaining under territorial government, as well as that
covered by States. It is a total absence of power everywhere within the
dominion of the United States, and places the citizens of a Territory,
so far as these rights are concerned, on the same footing with citizens
of the States, and guards them as firmly and plainly against any inroads
which the General Government might attempt under the plea of implied or
incidental powers. And if Congress itself can not do this--if it is
beyond the powers conferred on the Federal Government--it will be
admitted, we presume, that it could not authorize a territorial
government to exercise them. It could confer no power on any local
government, established by its authority, to violate the provisions of
the Constitution....
"And if the Constitution recognizes the right of property of the master
in the slave, and makes no distinction between that description of
property and other property owned by a citizen, no tribunal, acting
under the authority of the United States, whether it be legislative,
executive, or judicial, has a right to draw such a distinction, or deny
to it the benefit of the provisions and guarantees which have been
provided for the protection of private property against the
encroachments of the Government....
"This is done in plain words--too plain to be misunderstood. And no word
can be found in the Constitution which gives Congress a greater power
over slave-property, or which entitles property of that kind to less
protection than property of any other description. The only power
conferred is the power coupled with the duty of guarding and protecting
the owner in his rights.
"Upon these considerations, it is the opinion of the Court that the act
of Congress which prohibited a citizen from holding and owning property
of this kind, in the territory of the United States north of the line
therein mentioned, is not warranted by the Constitution, and is
therefore void; and that neither Dred Scott himself, nor any of his
family, were made free by being carried into this territory, even if
they had been carried there by the owner, with the intention of becoming
a permanent resident."
Mr. Davis: Here, then, Mr. President, I say the umpire selected as the
referee in the controversy has decided that neither the Congress nor its
agent, the territorial government, has the power to invade or impair the
right of property within the limits of a Territory. I will not inquire
whether it be technically a decision or not. It was obligatory on those
who selected the umpire and agreed to abide by the award.
It is well known to those who have been associated with me in the two
Houses of Congress that, from the commencement of the question, I have
been the determined opponent of what is called squatter sovereignty. I
never gave it countenance, and I am now least of all disposed to give it
quarter. In 1848 it made its appearance for good purposes. It was
ushered in by a great and good man. He brought it forward because of
that distrust which he had in the capacity of the Government to bear the
rude shock to which it was exposed. His apprehension, no doubt, to some
extent sharpened and directed his patriotism, and his reflection led him
to a conclusion to which, I doubt not, to-day he adheres as tenaciously
as ever; but from which it was my fortune, good or ill, to dissent when
his letter was read to me in manuscript--I being, together with some
other persons, asked, though not by the writer, whether or not it should
be sent. At the first blush I believed it to be a fallacy--a fallacy
fraught with mischief; that it escaped an issue which was upon us which
it was our duty to meet; that it escaped it by a side path, which led to
a greater danger. I thought it a fallacy which would surely be exploded.
I doubted then, and still more for some time afterward, when held to a
dread responsibility for the position which I occupied. I doubted
whether I should live to see that fallacy exploded. It has been more
speedily, and, to the country, more injuriously than I anticipated. In
the mean time, what has been its operation? Let Kansas speak--the first
great field on which the trial was made. What was then the consequence?
The Federal Government withdrawing control, leaving the contending
sections, excited to the highest point upon this question, each to send
forth its army, Kansas became the battle-field, and Kansas the cry,
which wellnigh led to civil war. This was the first fruit. More deadly
than the fatal upas, its effect was not limited to the mere spot of
ground on which the dew fell from its leaves, but it spread throughout
the United States; it kindled all which had been collected for years of
inflammable material. It was owing to the strength of our Government and
the good sense of the quiet masses of the people that it did not wrap
our country in one widespread conflagration.
What right had Congress then, or what right has it now, to abdicate any
power conferred upon it as trustee of the States? What right had
Congress then, or has it now, to shrink from the performance of a duty
because the mere counters spread on the table may be swept off, when
they have not answered the purposes for which they were placed? What is
it to you, or me, or any one, when we weigh our own continuation in
place against the great interests of which we are conservators; against
the welfare of the country, and the liberty of our posterity to the
remotest ages? What is it, I say, which can be counted in the balance on
our side against the performance of that duty which is imposed upon us?
If any one believes Congress has not the constitutional power, he acts
conscientiously in insisting upon Congress not usurping it. If any one
believes that the squatters upon the lands of the United States within a
Territory are invested with sovereignty, having won it by some of those
processes unknown to history, without grant, or without revolution,
without money and without price, he, adhering to the theory, may pursue
it to its conclusion. To the first class, those who claim sovereign
power over the Territories for Congress, I say, lay your hand upon the
Constitution, and find there the warrant of your authority. Of the
second, those of whom I have last spoken, I ask, in the Constitution,
reason, right, or justice, what is there to sustain your theory?
The phraseology which has been employed on this question seems to me to
betray a strange confusion of ideas--to speak of a sovereignty, a
plenary legislative power deriving its power from an agent; a
sovereignty, held subject to articles with the formation of which that
sovereignty had nothing to do; a compact to which it was not a party!
You say to a sovereign: "A and B have agreed on certain terms between
themselves, and you must govern your conduct according to them; yet I do
not deny your sovereignty!" That is, the power to do as they please,
provided it conforms to the rule which others chose to lay down! Can
this be a definition of sovereignty?
But again, sir, nothing seems to me more illogical than the argument
that this power is acquired by a grant from the Congress, connected with
the other argument that Congress have not got the power to do the act
themselves; that is to say, that the recipient takes more than the giver
possessed; that a Territorial Legislature can do anything which a State
Legislature can do, and that "subject to the Constitution" means merely
the restraints imposed upon both. This is confounding the whole theory
and the history of our Government. The States were the grantors; they
made the compact; they gave the Federal agent its powers; they inhibited
themselves from doing certain things, and all else they retained to
themselves. This Federal agent got just so much as the States chose to
give--no more. It could do nothing save by warrant of the authority of
the grant made by the States. Therefore its powers are not comparable to
the powers of the State Legislature, because one is the creature of
grant, and the other the exponent of sovereign power. The Supreme Court
have covered the whole ground of the relation of the Congress to the
Territorial Legislatures--the agent of the States and the agent of the
Congress--and the restrictions put upon the one are those put upon the
other, in language so clear as to render it needless further to labor
the subject.
In 1850, following the promulgation of this notion of squatter
sovereignty, we had the idea of non-intervention introduced into the
Senate of the United States, and it is strange to me how that idea has
expanded. It seems to have been more malleable than gold; to have been
hammered out to an extent that covers boundless regions undiscovered by
those who proclaimed the doctrine. Non-intervention then meant, as the
debates show, that Congress should neither prohibit nor establish
slavery in the Territories. That I hold to now. Will any one suppose
that Congress then meant by non-intervention that Congress should
legislate in no regard in respect to property in slaves? Why, sir, the
very acts which they passed at the time refute it. There is the fugitive
slave law, and that abomination of laws which assumed to confiscate the
property of a citizen who should attempt to bring it into this District
with intent to remove it to sell it at some other time and at some other
place. Congress acted then upon the subject--acted beyond the limit of
its authority, as I believed, confidently believed; and, if ever that
act comes before the Supreme Court, I feel satisfied they will declare
it null and void. Are we to understand that those men, thus acting at
the very moment, intended by non-intervention to deny and repudiate the
laws they were then creating? The man who stood most prominently the
advocate of the measures of that year, who, great in many periods of our
history, perhaps shone then with the brightest light his genius ever
emitted--I refer to Henry Clay--has given his own view on this subject;
and I suppose he may be considered as the highest authority. On June 18,
1850, I had introduced an amendment to the compromise bill, providing:
"And that all laws, or parts of laws, usages, or customs, preëxisting in
the Territories acquired by the United States from Mexico, and which in
said Territories restrict, abridge, or obstruct, the full enjoyment of
any right of person or property of a citizen of the United States, as
recognized or guaranteed by the Constitution or laws of the United
States, are hereby declared and shall be held as repealed."
Upon that, Mr. Clay said:
"Mr. President: I thought that upon this subject there had been a clear
understanding in the Senate that the Senate would not decide itself upon
the _lex loci_ as it respects slavery; that the Senate would not allow
the Territorial Legislature to pass any law upon that question. In other
words, that it would leave the operation of the local law, or of the
Constitution of the United States upon that local law, to be decided by
the proper and competent tribunal--the Supreme Court of the United
States."--(_Appendix to Congressional Globe_, Thirty-first Congress,
first session, p. 916.)
That was the position taken by Mr. Clay, the leader. A mere sentence
will show with what view I regarded the dogma of non-intervention when
that amendment was offered. I said:
"But what is non-intervention seems to vary as often as the light and
shade of every fleeting cloud. It has different meanings in every State,
in every county, in every town. If non-intervention means that we shall
not have protection for our property in slaves, then I always was, and
always shall be, opposed to it. If it means that we shall not have the
protection of the law because it would favor slaveholders, that Congress
shall not legislate so as to secure to us the benefits of the
Constitution, then I am opposed to non-intervention, and shall always be
opposed to it."--(_Appendix to Congressional Globe_, Thirty-first
Congress, first session, p. 919.)
Mr. Downs, one of the Committee of Thirteen, and an advocate of the
measures, said:
"What I understand by non-intervention is, an interposition of Congress
prohibiting, or establishing, or interfering with slavery."--(_Appendix
to Congressional Globe_, Thirty-first Congress, first session, p. 99.)
By what species of legerdemain this doctrine of non-intervention has
come to extend to a paralysis of the Government on the whole subject, to
exclude the Congress from any kind of legislation whatever, I am at a
loss to conceive. Certain it is, it was not the theory of that period,
and it was not contended for in all the controversies we had then. I had
no faith in it then; I considered it an evasion; I held that the duty of
Congress ought to be performed; that the issue was before us, and ought
to be met, the sooner the better; that truth would prevail if presented
to the people; borne down to-day, it would rise up to-morrow; and I
stood then on the same general plea which I am making now. The Senator
from Illinois [Mr. Douglas] and myself differed at that time, as I
presume we do now. We differed radically then. He opposed every
proposition which I made, voting against propositions to give power to a
Territorial Legislature to protect slave-property which should be taken
there; to remove the obstructions of the Mexican laws; voting for a
proposition to exclude the conclusion that slavery might be taken there;
voting for the proposition expressly to prohibit its introduction;
voting for the proposition to keep in force the laws of Mexico which
prohibited it. Some of these votes, it is but just to him I should say,
I think he gave perforce of his instructions; but others of them, I
think it is equally fair to suppose, were outside of the limits of any
instructions which could have been given before the fact.
In 1854, advancing in this same general line of thought, the Congress,
in enacting territorial bills, left out a provision which had before
been usually contained in them, requiring the Legislature of the
Territory to submit its laws to the Congress of the United States. It
has been sometimes assumed that this was the recognition of the power of
the Territorial Legislature to exercise plenary legislation, as might
that of a State. It will be remembered that, when our present form of
government was instituted, there were those who believed the Federal
Government should have the power of revision over the laws of a State.
It was long and ably contended for in the Convention which formed the
Constitution; and one of the compromises which was made was an appellate
power--to lodge power in the Supreme Court to decide all questions of
constitutional law.
But did this omission of the obligation to send here the laws of the
Territories work this grant of power to the Territorial Legislature?
Certainly not; it could not; and that it did not is evinced by the fact
that, at a subsequent period, the organic act was revised because the
legislation of the Territory of Kansas was offensive to the Congress of
the United States. Congress could not abdicate its authority; it could
not abandon its trust; and, when it omitted the requirement that the
laws should be sent back, it created a _casus_ which required it to act
without the official records being laid before it, as they would have
been if the obligation had existed. That was all the difference. It was
not enforcing upon the agent the obligation to send the information. It
left Congress, as to its power, just where it was. I find myself
physically unable to go as fully into the subject as I intended, and
therefore, omitting a reference to those acts, suffice it to say that
here was the recognition of the obligation of Congress to interpose
against a Territorial Legislature for the protection of personal right.
That is what we ask of Congress now. I am not disposed to ask this
Congress to go into speculative legislation. I am not one of those who
would willingly see this Congress enact a code to be applied to all
Territories and for all time to come. I only ask that cases, as they
arise, may be met according to the exigency. I ask that when personal
and property rights in the Territories are not protected, then the
Congress, by existing laws and governmental machinery, shall intervene
and provide such means as will secure in each case, as far as may be, an
adequate remedy. I ask no slave code, nor horse code, nor machine code.
I ask that the Territorial Legislature be made to understand beforehand
that the Congress of the United States does not concede to them the
power to interfere with the rights of person or property guaranteed by
the Constitution, and that it will apply the remedy, if the Territorial
Legislature should so far forget its duty, so far transcend its power,
as to commit that violation of right. That is the announcement of the
fifth resolution.
* * * * *
These are the general views which I entertain of our right of protection
and the duty of the Government. They are those which are entertained by
the constituency I have the honor to represent, whose delegation has
recently announced those principles at Charleston. I honor them, and I
approve their conduct. I think their bearing was worthy of the
mother-State which sent them there; and I doubt not she will receive
them with joy and gratitude. They have asserted and vindicated her
equality of right. By that asserted equality of right I doubt not she
will stand. For weal or for woe, for prosperity or adversity, for the
preservation of the great blessings which we enjoy, or the trial of a
new and separate condition, I trust Mississippi never will surrender the
smallest atom of the sovereignty, independence, and equality, to which
she was born, to avoid any danger or any sacrifice to which she may
hereby be exposed.
The sixth resolution of the series declares at what time a State may
form a Constitution and decide upon her domestic institutions. I deny
this right to the territorial condition, because the Territory belongs
in common to the States. Every citizen of the United States, as a joint
owner of that Territory, has a right to go into it with any property
which he may possess. These territorial inhabitants require municipal
law, police, and government. They should have them, but they should be
restricted to their own necessities. They have no right within their
municipal power to attempt to decide the rights of the people of the
States. They have no right to exclude any citizen of the United States
from owning and equally enjoying this common possession; it is for the
purpose of preserving order, and giving protection to rights of person
and property, that a municipal territorial government should be
instituted.
The last resolution refers to a law founded on a provision of the
Constitution, which contains an obligation of faith to every State of
the Union; and that obligation of faith has been violated by thirteen
States of the Confederacy--as many as originally fought the battles of
the Revolution and established the Confederation. Is it to be expected
that a compact thus broken in part, violated in its important features,
will be regarded as binding in all else? Is the free trade which the
North sought in the formation of the Union, and for which the States
generally agreed to give Congress the power to regulate commerce, to be
trampled under foot by laws of obstruction, not giving to the citizens
of the South that free transit across the territory of the Northern
States which we might claim from any friendly state under Christendom;
and is Congress to stand powerless by, on the doctrine of
non-intervention? We have a right to claim abstinence from interference
with our rights from any Government on the earth. Shall we claim no more
from that which we have constituted for our own purposes, and which we
support by draining our own means for its support?
We have had agitation, changing in its form, and gathering intensity,
for the last forty years. It was first for political power, and directed
against new States; now it has assumed a social form, is all-prevailing,
and has reached the point of revolution and civil war. For it was only
last fall that an overt act was committed by men who were sustained by
arms and money, raised by extensive combination among the
non-slaveholding States, to carry treasonable war against the State of
Virginia, because now, as before the Revolution, and ever since, she
held the African in bondage. This is part of the history and marks the
necessity of the times. It warns us to stop and reflect, to go back to
the original standard, to measure our acts by the obligation of our
fathers, by the pledges they made one to the other, to see whether we
are conforming to our plighted faith, and to ask seriously, solemnly,
looking each other inquiringly in the face, what we should do to save
our country.
This agitation being at first one of sectional pride for political
power, has at last degenerated or grown up to (as you please) a trade.
There are men who habitually set aside a portion of money which they are
annually to apply to what are called "charitable purposes"--that is to
say, so far as I understand it, to support some vagrant lecturer, whose
purpose is agitation and mischief wherever he goes. This constitutes,
therefore, a trade; a class of people are thus employed--employed for
mischief, for incendiary purposes, perhaps not always understood by
those who furnish the money; but such is the effect; such is the result
of their action; and in this state of the case I call upon the Senate to
affirm the great principles on which our institutions rest. In no spirit
of crimination have I stated the reasons why I present it. For these
reasons I call upon them now to restrain the growth of evil passion, and
to bring back the public sense as far as in them lies, by earnest and
united effort, if it may be, to crown our country with peace, and start
it once more in its primal channel on a career of progressive prosperity
and justice.
The majority section can not be struggling for additional power in order
to preserve their rights. If any of them ever believed in what is called
Southern aggression, they know now they have the majority in the
representative districts and in the electoral college. They can not,
therefore, fear an invasion of their rights. They need no additional
political power to protect them from that. The argument, then, or the
reason on which this agitation commenced, has passed away; and yet we
are asked, if a party hostile to our institutions shall gain possession
of the Government, that we shall stand quietly by, and wait for an overt
act. Overt act! Is not a declaration of war an overt act? What would be
thought of a country that, after a declaration of war, and while the
enemy's fleets were upon the sea, should wait until a city had been
sacked before it would say that war existed, or resistance should be
made? The power of resistance consists, in no small degree, in meeting
the evil at the outer gate. I can speak for myself--and I have no right
to speak for others--when I say, that, if I belonged to a party
organized on the basis of making war on any section or interest in the
United States, if I know myself, I would instantly quit it. We have made
no war against you. We have asked no discrimination in our favor. We
claim to have but the Constitution fairly and equally administered. To
consent to less than this would be to sink in the scale of manhood;
would be to make our posterity so degraded that they would curse this
generation for robbing them of the rights their Revolutionary fathers
bequeathed them....
Among the great purposes declared in the preamble of the Constitution is
one to provide for the general welfare. Provision for the general
welfare implies general fraternity. This Union was not expected to be
held together by coercion; the power of force as a means was denied.
They sought, however, to bind it perpetually together with that which
was stronger than triple bars of brass and steel--the ceaseless current
of kind offices, renewing and renewed in an eternal flow, and gathering
volume and velocity as it rolled. It was a function intended not for the
injury of any. It declared its purpose to be the benefit of all.
Concessions which were made between the different States in the
Convention prove the motive. Each gave to the other what was necessary
to it; what each could afford to spare. Young as a nation, our triumphs
under this system have had no parallel in human history. We have tamed a
wilderness; we have spanned a continent. We have built up a granary that
secures the commercial world against the fear of famine. Higher than all
this, we have achieved a moral triumph. We have received, by hundreds of
thousands, a constant tide of immigrants--energetic, if not well
educated, fleeing, some from want, some from oppression, some from the
penalties of violated law--received them into our society; and by the
gentle suasion of a Government which exhibits no force, by removing want
and giving employment, they have subsided into peaceful citizens, and
have increased the wealth and power of our country.
If, then, this temple so blessed, and to the roof of which we were about
to look to see it extended over the continent, giving a protecting arm
to infant republics that need it--if this temple is tottering on its
pillars, what, I ask, can be a higher or nobler duty for the Senate to
perform than to rush to its pillars and uphold them, or be crushed in
the attempt? We have tampered with a question which has grown in
magnitude by each year's delay. It requires to be plainly met--the truth
to be told. The patriotism and the sound sense of the people, whenever
the Federal Government from its high places of authority shall proclaim
the truth in unequivocal language, will, in my firm belief, receive and
approve it. But so long as we deal, like the Delphic oracle, in words of
double meaning, so long as we attempt to escape from responsibility, and
exhibit our fear to declare the truth by the fact that we do not act
upon it, we must expect speculative theory to occupy the mind of the
public, and error to increase as time rolls on. But, if the sad fate
should be ours, for this most minute cause, to destroy our Government,
the historian who shall attempt philosophically to examine the question
will, after he has put on his microscopic glasses and discovered it, be
compelled to cry out, "Veritably so the unseen insect in the course of
time destroys the mighty oak!" Now, I believe--may I not say I believe?
if not, then I hope--there is yet time, by the full, explicit
declaration of the truth, to disabuse the popular mind, to arouse the
popular heart, to expose the danger from lurking treason and
ill-concealed hostility; to rally a virtuous people to their country's
rescue, who, circling closer and deeper as the storm gathers fury,
around the ark of their fathers' covenant, will place it in security,
there happily to remain a sign of fraternity, justice, and equality, to
our remotest posterity.
[Footnote 199: Elliott's "Debates," vol. v, p. 133.]
[Footnote 200: Ibid., p. 457.]
[Footnote 201: Elliot's "Debates," vol. v, p. 457.]
[Footnote 202: Ibid.]
[Footnote 203: Ibid, p. 459.]
[Footnote 204: Ibid.]
[Footnote 205: Ibid., p. 460.]
[Footnote 206: Permoli _vs_. First Municipality, 3 Howard, 610.]
APPENDIX G.
Correspondence between the Commissioners of South Carolina and the
President of the United States (Mr. Buchanan) relative to the forts in
the harbor of Charleston.
_Letter of the Commissioners to the President_.
Washington, _December_ 28, 1860.
Sir: We have the honor to transmit to you a copy of the full powers from
the Convention of the People of South Carolina, under which we are
"authorized and empowered to treat with the Government of the United
States for the delivery of the forts, magazines, lighthouses, and other
real estate, with their appurtenances, within the limits of South
Carolina, and also for an apportionment of the public debt, and for a
division of all other property held by the Government of the United
States as agent of the confederated States of which South Carolina was
recently a member; and generally to negotiate as to all other measures
and arrangements proper to be made and adopted in the existing relation
of the parties, and for the continuance of peace and amity between this
Commonwealth and the Government at Washington."
In the execution of this trust, it is our duty to furnish you, as we now
do, with an official copy of the ordinance of secession, by which the
State of South Carolina has resumed the powers she delegated to the
Government of the United States, and has declared her perfect
sovereignty and independence.
It would also have been our duty to have informed you that we were ready
to negotiate with you upon all such questions as are necessarily raised
by the adoption of this ordinance, and that we were prepared to enter
upon this negotiation with the earnest desire to avoid all unnecessary
and hostile collision, and so to inaugurate our new relations as to
secure mutual respect, general advantage, and a future of good-will and
harmony beneficial to all the parties concerned.
But the events of the last twenty-four hours render such an assurance
impossible. We came here the representatives of an authority which
could, at any time within the past sixty days, have taken possession of
the forts in Charleston Harbor, but which, upon pledges given in a
manner that, we can not doubt, determined to trust to your honor rather
than to its own power. Since our arrival here an officer of the United
States, acting, as we are assured, not only without but against your
orders, has dismantled one fort and occupied another, thus altering, to
a most important extent, the condition of affairs under which we came.
Until these circumstances are explained in a manner which relieves us of
all doubt as to the spirit in which these negotiations shall be
conducted, we are forced to suspend all discussion as to any
arrangements by which our mutual interests might be amicably adjusted.
And, in conclusion, we would urge upon you the immediate withdrawal of
the troops from the harbor of Charleston. Under present circumstances,
they are a standing menace which renders negotiation impossible, and, as
our recent experience shows, threatens speedily to bring to a bloody
issue questions which ought to be settled with temperance and judgment.
We have the honor, sir, to be, very respectfully, your obedient
servants,
R. W. BARNWELL,}
J. H. ADAMS, } _Commissioners_.
JAMES L. ORR, }
To the President of the United States.
_Reply of the President to the Commissioners_.
Washington City, _December_ 30, 1860.
Gentlemen: I have the honor to receive your communication of 28th inst.,
together with a copy of your "full powers from the Convention of the
People of South Carolina," authorizing you to treat with the Government
of the United States on various important subjects therein mentioned,
and also a copy of the ordinance bearing date on the 20th inst.,
declaring that "the union now subsisting between South Carolina and
other States, under the name of 'The United States of America,' is
hereby dissolved."
In answer to this communication, I have to say that my position as
President of the United States was clearly defined in the message to
Congress of the 3d instant. In that I stated that, "apart from the
execution of the laws, so far as this may be practicable, the Executive
has no authority to decide what shall be the relations between the
Federal Government and South Carolina. He has been invested with no such
discretion. He possesses no power to change the relations heretofore
existing between them, much less to acknowledge the independence of that
State. This would be to invest a mere executive officer with the power
of recognizing the dissolution of the confederacy among our thirty-three
sovereign States. It bears no resemblance to the recognition of a
foreign _de facto_ government--involving no such responsibility. Any
attempt to do this would, on his part, be a naked act of usurpation. It
is, therefore, my duty to submit to Congress the whole question, in all
its bearings."
Such is my opinion still. I could, therefore, meet you only as private
gentlemen of the highest character, and was entirely willing to
communicate to Congress any proposition you might have to make to that
body upon the subject. Of this you were well aware. It was my earnest
desire that such a disposition might be made of the whole subject by
Congress, who alone possess the power, as to prevent the inauguration of
a civil war between the parties in regard to the possession of the
Federal forts in the harbor of Charleston; and I therefore deeply regret
that, in your opinion, "the events of the last twenty-four hours render
this impossible." In conclusion, you urge upon me "the immediate
withdrawal of the troops from the harbor of Charleston," stating that,
"under present circumstances, they are a standing menace, which renders
negotiation impossible, and, as our present experience shows, threatens
speedily to bring to a bloody issue questions which ought to be settled
with temperance and judgment."
The reason for this change in your position is that, since your arrival
in Washington, "an officer of the United States, acting as we (you) are
assured, not only without your (my) orders, has dismantled one fort and
occupied another, thus altering, to a most important extent, the
condition of affairs under which we (you) came." You also allege that
you came here "the representatives of an authority which could at any
time within the past sixty days have taken possession of the forts in
Charleston Harbor, but which, upon pledges given in a manner that we
(you) can not doubt, determined to trust to your (my) honor rather than
to its own power."
This brings me to a consideration of the nature of those alleged
pledges, and in what manner they have been observed. In my message of
the 3d of December last, I stated, in regard to the property of the
United States in South Carolina, that it "has been purchased for a fair
equivalent 'by the consent of the Legislature of the State, for the
erection of forts, magazines, arsenals,' etc., and over these the
authority 'to exercise exclusive legislation' has been expressly granted
by the Constitution to Congress. It is not believed that any attempt
will be made to expel the United States from this property by force;
but, if in this I should prove to be mistaken, the officer in command of
the forts has received orders to act strictly on the defensive. In such
a contingency, the responsibility for consequences would rightfully rest
upon the heads of the assailants." This being the condition of the
parties on Saturday, 8th December, four of the representatives from
South Carolina called upon me and requested an interview. We had an
earnest conversation on the subject of these forts, and the best means
of preventing a collision between the parties, for the purpose of
sparing the effusion of blood. I suggested, for prudential reasons, that
it would be best to put in writing what they said to me verbally. They
did so accordingly, and on Monday morning, the 10th instant, three of
them presented to me a paper signed by all the representatives from
South Carolina, with a single exception, of which the following is a
copy:
"To his Excellency James Buchanan, _President of the United States_:
"In compliance with our statement to you yesterday, we now express to
you our strong convictions that neither the constituted authorities, nor
any body of the people of the State of South Carolina, will either
attack or molest the United States forts in the harbor of Charleston,
previously to the action of the Convention, and, we hope and believe,
not until an offer has been made, through an accredited representative,
to negotiate for an amicable arrangement of all matters between the
State and the Federal Government, provided that no reënforcements shall
be sent into those forts, and their relative military _status_ shall
remain as at present.
"John McQueen,
"William Porcher Miles,
"M. L. Bonham,
"W. W. Boyce,
"Lawrence M. Keitt.
"Washington, _December 9, 1860_."
And here I must, in justice to myself, remark that, at the time the
paper was presented to me, I objected to the word "provided," as it
might be construed into an agreement, on my part, which I never would
make. They said that nothing was further from their intention; they did
not so understand it, and I should not so consider it. It is evident
they could enter into no reciprocal agreement with me on the subject.
They did not profess to have authority to do this, and were acting in
their individual character. I considered it as nothing more, in effect,
than the promise of highly honorable gentlemen to exert their influence
for the purpose expressed. The event has proved that they have
faithfully kept this promise, although I have never since received a
line from any one of them, or from any member of the Convention on the
subject. It is well known that it was my determination, and this I
freely expressed, not to reënforce the forts in the harbor, and thus
produce a collision, until they had been actually attacked, or until I
had certain evidence that they were about to be attacked. This paper I
received most cordially, and considered it as a happy omen that peace
might still be preserved, and that time might thus be gained for
reflection. This is the whole foundation for the alleged pledge.
But I acted in the same manner I would have done had I entered into a
positive and formal agreement with parties capable of contracting,
although such an agreement would have been, on my part, from the nature
of my official duties, impossible.
The world knows that I have never sent any reënforcements to the forts
in Charleston Harbor, and I have certainly never authorized any change
to be made "in their relative military _status_."
Bearing upon this subject, I refer you to an order issued by the
Secretary of War, on the 11th instant, to Major Anderson, but not
brought to my notice until the 21st instant. It is as follows:
"_Memorandum of verbal instructions to Major_ Anderson, _First
Artillery, commanding Fort Moultrie, South Carolina_:
"You are aware of the great anxiety of the Secretary of War that a
collision of the troops with the people of this State shall be avoided,
and of his studied determination to pursue a course, with reference to
the military force and forts in this harbor, which shall guard against
such a collision. He has, therefore, carefully abstained from increasing
the force at this point, or taking any measures which might add to the
present excited state of the public mind, or which would throw any doubt
on the confidence he feels that South Carolina will not attempt by
violence to obtain possession of the public works, or to interfere with
their occupancy. But, as the counsel of rash and impulsive persons may
possibly disappoint these expectations of the Government, he deems it
proper that you should be prepared with instructions to meet so unhappy
a contingency. He has, therefore, directed me, verbally, to give you
such instructions.
"You are carefully to avoid every act which would needlessly tend to
provoke aggression; and, for that reason, you are not, without evident
and imminent necessity, to take up any position which could be construed
into the assumption of a hostile attitude; but you are to hold
possession of the forts in this harbor, and, if attacked, you are to
defend yourself to the last extremity. The smallness of your force will
not permit you, perhaps, to occupy more than one of the three forts; but
an attack on or attempt to take possession of either of them will be
regarded as an act of hostility, and you may then put your command into
either of them which you may deem most proper, to increase its power of
resistance. You are also authorized to take similar defensive steps
whenever you have tangible evidence of a design to proceed to a hostile
act.
"D. P. Butler, _Assistant Adjutant-General_.
"Fort Moultrie, South Carolina, _December 11, 1860_.
"This is in conformity to my instructions to Major Buel.
"John B. Floyd, _Secretary of War_."
These were the last instructions transmitted to Major Anderson before
his removal to Fort Sumter, with a single exception in regard to a
particular which does not, in any degree, affect the present question.
Under these circumstances it is clear that Major Anderson acted upon his
own responsibility, and without authority, unless, indeed, he had
"tangible evidence of a design to proceed to a hostile act" on the part
of the authorities of South Carolina, which has not yet been alleged.
Still he is a brave and honorable officer, and justice requires that he
should not be condemned without a fair hearing.
Be this as it may, when I learned that Major Anderson had left Fort
Moultrie, and proceeded to Fort Sumter, my first promptings were to
command him to return to his former position, and there to await the
contingencies presented in his instructions. This could only have been
done, with any degree of safety to the command, by the concurrence of
the South Carolina authorities. But, before any steps could possibly
have been taken in this direction, we received information, dated on the
28th instant, that "the Palmetto flag floated out to the breeze at
Castle Pinckney, and a large military force went over last night (the
27th) to Fort Moultrie." Thus the authorities of South Carolina, without
waiting or asking for any explanation, and doubtless believing, as you
have expressed it, that the officer had acted not only without, but
against my orders, on the very next day after the night when the removal
was made, seized, by a military force, two of the three Federal forts in
the harbor of Charleston, and have covered them under their own flag,
instead of that of the United States. At this gloomy period of our
history, startling events succeed each other rapidly. On the very day
(the 27th instant) that possession of these two forts was taken, the
Palmetto flag was raised over the Federal Custom-House and Post-Office
in Charleston; and on the same day every officer of the
customs--collector, naval officers, surveyor, and appraisers--resigned
their offices. And this, although it was well known, from the language
of my message, that as an executive officer I felt myself bound to
collect the revenue at the port of Charleston under the existing laws.
In the harbor of Charleston we now find three forts confronting each
other, over all of which the Federal flag floated only four days ago;
but now over two of them this flag has been supplanted, and the Palmetto
flag has been substituted in its stead. It is under all these
circumstances that I am urged immediately to withdraw the troops from
the harbor of Charleston, and am informed that, without this,
negotiation is impossible. This I can not do; this I will not do. Such
an idea was never thought of by me in any possible contingency. No
allusion to it had ever been made in any communication between myself
and any human being. But the inference is, that I am bound to withdraw
the troops from the only fort remaining in the possession of the United
States in the harbor of Charleston, because the officer then in command
of all the forts thought proper, without instructions, to change his
position from one of them to another. I can not admit the justice of any
such inference.
At this point of writing I have received information, by telegram, from
Captain Humphreys, in command of the arsenal at Charleston, that "it has
to-day (Sunday, the 30th) been taken by force of arms." It is estimated
that the munitions of war belonging to the United States in this arsenal
are worth half a million of dollars.
Comment is needless. After this information, I have only to add that,
while it is my duty to defend Fort Sumter, as a portion of the public
property of the United States, against hostile attacks from whatever
quarter they may come, by such means as I may possess for this purpose,
I do not perceive how such a defense can be construed into a menace
against the city of Charleston.
With great personal regard, I remain
Yours, very respectfully,
JAMES BUCHANAN.
To Honorable Robert W. Barnwell, James H. Adams, James L. Orr.
_Reply of the Commissioners to the President_.
Washington, D.C., _January_ 1, 1861.
Sir: We have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the
30th December, in reply to a note addressed by us to you on the 28th of
the same month, as commissioners from South Carolina.
In reference to the declaration with which your reply commences, that
"your position as President of the United States was clearly defined in
the message to Congress of the 3d instant," that you possess "no power
to change the relations heretofore existing between South Carolina and
the United States, much less to acknowledge the independence of that
State"; and that, consequently, you could meet us only as private
gentlemen of the highest character, with an entire willingness to
communicate to Congress any proposition we might have to make, we deem
it only necessary to say that, the State of South Carolina having, in
the exercise of that great right of self-government which underlies all
our political organizations, declared herself sovereign and independent,
we, as her representatives, felt no special solicitude as to the
character in which you might recognize us. Satisfied that the State had
simply exercised her unquestionable right, we were prepared, in order to
reach substantial good, to waive the formal considerations which your
constitutional scruples might have prevented you from extending. We came
here, therefore, expecting to be received as you did receive us, and
perfectly content with that entire willingness of which you assured us,
to submit any proposition to Congress which we might have to make upon
the subject of the independence of the State. That willingness was ample
recognition of the condition of public affairs which rendered our
presence necessary. In this position, however, it is our duty, both to
the State which we represent and to ourselves, to correct several
important misconceptions of our letter into which you have fallen.
You say, "It was my earnest desire that such a disposition might be made
of the whole subject by Congress, who alone possesses the power to
prevent the inauguration of a civil war between the parties in regard to
the possession of the Federal forts in the harbor of Charleston; and I,
therefore, deeply regret that, in your opinion, 'the events of the last
twenty-four hours render this impossible.'" We expressed no such
opinion, and the language which you quote as ours is altered in its
sense by the omission of a most important part of the sentence. What we
did say was, "But the events of the last twenty-four hours render _such
an assurance_ impossible." Place that "assurance," as contained in our
letter, in the sentence, and we are prepared to repeat it.
Again, professing to quote our language, you say: "Thus the authorities
of South Carolina, without waiting or asking for any explanation, and
doubtless believing, as you have expressed it, that the officer had
acted not only without, but against my orders," etc. We expressed no
such opinion in reference to the belief of the people of South Carolina.
The language which you have quoted was applied solely and entirely to
_our assurance_, obtained here, and based, as you well know, upon your
own declaration--a declaration which, at that time, it was impossible
for the authorities of South Carolina to have known. But, without
following this letter into all its details, we propose only to meet the
chief points of the argument.
Some weeks ago, the State of South Carolina declared her intention, in
the existing condition of public affairs, to secede from the United
States. She called a convention of her people to put her declaration in
force. The Convention met and passed the ordinance of secession. All
this you anticipated, and your course of action was thoroughly
considered. In your annual message you declared that you had no right,
and would not attempt, to coerce a seceding State, but that you were
bound by your constitutional oath, and would defend the property of the
United States within the borders of South Carolina, if an attempt was
made to take it by force. Seeing very early that this question of
property was a difficult and delicate one, you manifested a desire to
settle it without collision. You did not reënforce the garrisons in the
harbor of Charleston. You removed a distinguished and veteran officer
from the command of Fort Moultrie, because he attempted to increase his
supply of ammunition. You refused to send additional troops to the same
garrison when applied for by the officer appointed to succeed him. You
accepted the resignation of the oldest and most eminent member of your
Cabinet, rather than allow these garrisons to be strengthened. You
compelled an officer stationed at Fort Sumter to return immediately to
the arsenal forty muskets which he had taken to arm his men. You
expressed, not to one, but to many, of the most distinguished of our
public characters, whose testimony will be placed upon the record
whenever it is necessary, your anxiety for a peaceful termination of
this controversy, and your willingness not to disturb the military
_status_ of the forts, if commissioners should be sent to the
Government, whose communications you promised to submit to Congress. You
received and acted on assurances from the highest official authorities
of South Carolina, that no attempt would be made to disturb your
possession of the forts and property of the United States, if you would
not disturb their existing condition until commissioners had been sent,
and the attempt to negotiate had failed. You took from the members of
the House of Representatives a written memorandum that no such attempt
should be made, "provided that no reënforcements shall be sent into
those forts, and their relative military _status_ shall remain as at
present." And, although you attach no force to the acceptance of such a
paper, although you "considered it as nothing more in effect than the
promise of highly honorable gentlemen," as an obligation on one side
without corresponding obligation on the other, it must be remembered (if
we are rightly informed) that you were pledged, if you ever did send
reënforcements, to return it to those from whom you had received it
before you executed your resolution. You sent orders to your officers,
commanding them strictly to follow a line of conduct in conformity with
such an understanding.
Besides all this, you had received formal and official notice, from the
Governor of South Carolina, that we had been appointed commissioners and
were on our way to Washington. You knew the implied condition under
which we came; our arrival was notified to you, and an hour appointed
for an interview. We arrived in Washington on Wednesday, at three
o'clock, and you appointed an interview with us at one the next day.
Early on that day, Thursday, the news was received here of the movement
of Major Anderson. That news was communicated to you immediately, and
you postponed our meeting until half-past two o'clock on Friday, in
order that you might consult your Cabinet. On Friday we saw you, and we
called upon you then to redeem your pledge. You could not deny it. With
the facts we have stated, and in the face of the crowning and conclusive
fact that your Secretary of War had resigned his seat in the Cabinet,
upon the publicly avowed ground that the action of Major Anderson had
violated the pledged faith of the Government, and that unless the pledge
was instantly redeemed he was dishonored, denial was impossible; you did
not deny it. You do not deny it now, but you seek to escape from its
obligations on two grounds: 1. That _we_ terminated all negotiation by
demanding, as a preliminary, the withdrawal of the United States troops
from the harbor of Charleston; and, 2. That the authorities of South
Carolina, instead of asking explanation and giving you the opportunity
to vindicate yourself, took possession of other property of the United
States. We will examine both.
In the first place, we deny positively that we have ever, in any way,
made any such demand. Our letter is in your possession; it will stand by
this on the record. In it we inform you of the objects of our mission.
We say that it would have been our duty to assure you of our readiness
to commence negotiations with the most earnest and anxious desire to
settle all questions between us amicably, and to our mutual advantage,
but that events had rendered that assurance impossible. We stated the
events, and we said that, until some satisfactory explanation of these
events was given us, we could not proceed; and then, having made this
request for explanation, we added: "And, in conclusion, we would urge
upon you the immediate withdrawal of the troops from the harbor of
Charleston. Under present circumstances they are a standing menace,
which renders negotiation impossible," etc. "Under present
circumstances!" What circumstances? Why, clearly the occupation of Fort
Sumter, and the dismantling of Fort Moultrie by Major Anderson, in the
face of your pledges, and without explanation or practical disavowal.
And there is nothing in the letter which would or could have prevented
you from declining to withdraw the troops, and offering the restoration
of the _status_ to which you were pledged, if such had been your desire.
It would have been wiser and better, in our opinion, to have withdrawn
the troops, and this opinion we urged upon you, but we _demanded_
nothing but such an explanation of the events of the last twenty-four
hours as would restore our confidence in the spirit with which the
negotiation should be conducted. In relation to this withdrawal of the
troops from the harbor, we are compelled, however, to notice one passage
of your letter. Referring to it, you say: "This I can not do; this I
will not do. Such an idea was never thought of by me in any possible
contingency. No allusion to it had ever been made in any communication
between myself and any human being."
In reply to this statement, we are compelled to say that your
conversation with us left upon our minds the distinct impression that
you did seriously contemplate the withdrawal of the troops from
Charleston Harbor. And, in support of this impression, we would add that
we have the positive assurance of gentlemen of the highest possible
public reputation and the most unsullied integrity--men whose name and
fame, secured by long service and patriotic achievement, place their
testimony beyond cavil--that such suggestions had been made to and urged
upon you by them, and had formed the subject of more than one earnest
discussion with you. And it was this knowledge that induced us to urge
upon you a policy which had to recommend it its own wisdom and the
weight of such authority. As to the second point, that the authorities
of South Carolina, instead of asking explanations, and giving you the
opportunity to vindicate yourself, took possession of other property of
the United States, we would observe, first, that, even if this were so,
it does not avail you for defense, for the opportunity for decision was
afforded you before these facts occurred. We arrived in Washington on
Wednesday. The news from Major Anderson reached here early on Thursday,
and was immediately communicated to you. All that day, men of the
highest consideration--men who had striven successfully to lift you to
your great office--who had been your tried and true friends through the
troubles of your Administration--sought you and entreated you to act--to
act at once. They told you that every hour complicated your position.
They only asked you to give the assurance that, if the facts were so--if
the commander had acted without and against your orders, and in
violation of your pledges--you would restore the _status_ you had
pledged your honor to maintain.
You refused to decide. Your Secretary of War--your immediate and proper
adviser in this whole matter--waited anxiously for your decision, until
he felt that delay was becoming dishonor. More than twelve hours passed,
and two Cabinet meetings had adjourned before you knew what the
authorities of South Carolina had done, and your prompt decision at any
moment of that time would have avoided the subsequent complications.
But, if you had known the acts of the authorities of South Carolina,
should that have prevented your keeping your faith? What was the
condition of things? For the last sixty days, you have had in Charleston
Harbor not force enough to hold the forts against an equal enemy. Two of
them were empty; one of those two, the most important in the harbor. It
could have been taken at any time. You ought to know, better than any
man, that it would have been taken, but for the efforts of those who put
their trust in your honor. Believing that they were threatened by Fort
Sumter especially, the people were, with difficulty, restrained from
securing, without blood, the possession of this important fortress.
After many and reiterated assurances given on your behalf, which we can
not believe unauthorized, they determined to forbear, and in good faith
sent on their commissioners to negotiate with you. They meant you no
harm, wished you no ill. They thought of you kindly, believed you true,
and were willing, as far as was consistent with duty, to spare you
unnecessary and hostile collision. Scarcely had their commissioners
left, than Major Anderson waged war. No other words will describe his
action. It was not a peaceful change from one fort to another; it was a
hostile act in the highest sense--one only justified in the presence of
a superior enemy and in imminent peril. He abandoned his position,
spiked his guns, burned his gun-carriages, made preparations for the
destruction of his post, and withdrew under cover of the night to a
safer position. This was war. No man could have believed (without your
assurance) that any officer could have taken such a step, "not only
without orders, but against orders." What the State did was in simple
self-defense; for this act, with all its attending circumstances, was as
much war as firing a volley; and, war being thus begun, until those
commencing it explained their action, and disavowed their intention,
there was no room for delay; and, even at this moment, while we are
writing, it is more than probable, from the tenor of your letter, that
reënforcements are hurrying on to the conflict, so that, when the first
gun shall be fired, there will have been, on your part, one continuous
consistent series of actions commencing in a demonstration essentially
warlike, supported by regular reënforcement, and terminating in defeat
or victory. And all this without the slightest provocation; for, among
the many things which you have said, there is one thing you can not
say--you have waited anxiously for news from the seat of war, in hopes
that delay would furnish some excuse for this precipitation. But this
"tangible evidence of a design to proceed to a hostile act, on the part
of the authorities of South Carolina" (which is the only justification
of Major Anderson), you are forced to admit "has not _yet_ been
alleged." But you have decided. You have resolved to hold by force what
you have obtained through our misplaced confidence, and, by refusing to
disavow the action of Major Anderson, have converted his violation of
orders into a legitimate act of your Executive authority. Be the issue
what it may, of this we are assured, that, if Fort Moultrie has been
recorded in history as a memorial of Carolina gallantry, Fort Sumter
will live upon the succeeding page as an imperishable testimony of
Carolina faith.
By your course you have probably rendered civil war inevitable. Be it
so. If you choose to force this issue upon us, the State of South
Carolina will accept it, and, relying upon Him who is the God of justice
as well as the God of hosts, will endeavor to perform the great duty
which lies before her, hopefully, bravely, and thoroughly.
Our mission being one for negotiation and peace, and your note leaving
us without hope of a withdrawal of the troops from Fort Sumter, or of
the restoration of the _status quo_ existing at the time of our arrival,
and intimating, as we think, your determination to reënforce the
garrison in the harbor of Charleston, we respectfully inform you that we
propose returning to Charleston on to-morrow afternoon.
We have the honor to be, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servants,
R. W. BARNWELL, }
J. H. ADAMS, } _Commissioners_.
JAMES L. ORR, }
To his Excellency the President of the United States.
The last communication is endorsed as follows:
Executive Mansion, 3½ _o'clock, Wednesday_.
This paper, just presented to the President, is of such a character that
he declines to receive it.
APPENDIX H.
Speech on the state of the country, by Mr. Davis, of Mississippi, in the
Senate of the United States, January 10, 1861--a motion to print the
special message of the President of the United States, of January 9th,
being under consideration.
Mr. Davis: Mr. President, when I took the floor yesterday, I intended to
engage somewhat in the argument which has heretofore prevailed in the
Senate upon the great questions of constitutional right, which have
divided the country from the beginning of the Government. I intended to
adduce some evidences, which I thought were conclusive, in favor of the
opinions which I entertain; but events, with a current hurrying on as it
progresses, have borne me past the point where it would be useful for me
to argue, by the citing of authorities, the question of rights. To-day,
therefore, it is my purpose to deal with events. Abstract argument has
become among the things that are past. We have to deal now with facts;
and, in order that we may meet those facts and apply them to our present
condition, it is well to inquire what is the state of the country. The
Constitution provides that the President shall, from time to time,
communicate information on the state of the Union. The message which is
now under consideration gives us very little, indeed, beyond that which
the world--less, indeed, than reading men generally--knew before it was
communicated.
What, Senators, to-day is the condition of the country? From every
corner of it comes the wailing cry of patriotism, pleading for the
preservation of the great inheritance we derived from our fathers. Is
there a Senator who does not daily receive letters appealing to him to
use even the small power which one man here possesses to save the rich
inheritance our fathers gave us? Tears are trickling down the stern
faces of men who have bled for the flag of their country, and are
willing now to die for it; but patriotism stands powerless before the
plea that the party about to come into power laid down a platform, and
that come what will, though ruin stare us in the face, consistency must
be adhered to, even though the Government be lost.
In this state of the case, then, we turn and ask, What is the character
of the Administration? What is the Executive department doing? What
assurance have we there for the safety of the country? But we come back
from that inquiry with a mournful conviction that feeble hands now hold
the reins of state; that drivelers are taken in as counselors, not
provided by the Constitution; that vacillation is the law; and the
policy of this great Government is changed with every changing rumor of
the day; nay, more, it is changing with every new phase of causeless
fear. In this state of the case, after complications have been
introduced into the question, after we were brought to the verge of war,
after we were hourly expecting by telegraph to learn that the conflict
had commenced, after nothing had been done to insure the peace of the
land, we are told in this last hour that the question is thrown at the
door of Congress, and here rests the responsibility.
Had the garrison at Charleston, representing the claim of the Government
to hold the property in a fort there, been called away thirty days, nay,
ten days ago, peace would have spread its pinions over this land, and
calm negotiation would have been the order of the day. Why was it not
recalled? No reason yet has been offered, save that the Government is
bound to preserve its property; and yet look from North to South, from
East to West, wherever we have constructed forts to defend States
against a foreign foe, and everywhere you find them without a garrison,
except at a few points where troops are kept for special purposes; not
to coerce or to threaten a State, but stationed in seacoast
fortifications, there merely for the purposes of discipline and
instruction as artillerists. You find all the other forts in the hands
of fort-keepers and ordnance-sergeants, and, before a moral and
patriotic people, standing safely there as the property of the country.
I asked in this Senate, weeks ago: "What causes the peril that is now
imminent at Fort Moultrie; is it the weakness of the garrison?" and then
I answered, "No, it is its presence, not its weakness." Had an
ordnance-sergeant there represented the Federal Government, had there
been no troops, no physical power to protect it, I would have pledged my
life upon the issue that no question ever would have been made as to its
seizure. Now, not only there, but elsewhere, we find movements of troops
further to complicate this question, and probably to precipitate us upon
the issue of civil war; and, worse than all, this Government, reposing
on the consent of the governed; this Government, strong in the
affections of the people; this Government (I describe it as our fathers
made it) is now furtively sending troops to occupy positions lest "the
mob" should seize them. When before in the history of our land was it
that a mob could resist the sound public opinion of the country? When
before was it that an unarmed magistrate had not the power, by crying,
"I command the peace," to quell a mob in any portion of the land? Yet
now we find, under cover of night, troops detached from one position to
occupy another. Fort Washington, standing in its lonely grandeur, and
overlooking the home of the Father of his Country, near by the place
where the ashes of Washington repose, built there to prevent a foreign
foe from coming up the Potomac with armed ships to take the
capital--Fort Washington is garrisoned by marines sent secretly away
from the navy yard at Washington. And Fort McHenry, memorable in our
history as the place where, under bombardment, the star-spangled banner
floated through the darkness of night, the point which was consecrated
by our national song--Fort McHenry, too, has been garrisoned by a
detachment of marines, sent from this place in an extra train, and sent
under cover of the night, so that even the mob should not know it.
Senators, the responsibility is thrown at the door of Congress. Let us
take it. It is our duty in this last hour to seize the pillars of our
Government and uphold them, though we be crushed in the fall. Then what
is our policy? Are we to drift into war? Are we to stand idly by, and
allow war to be precipitated upon the country? Allow an officer of the
army to make war? Allow an unconfirmed head of a department to make war?
Allow a general of the army to make war? Allow a President to make war?
No, sir. Our fathers gave to Congress the power to declare war, and even
to Congress they gave no power to make war upon a State of the Union. It
could not have been given, except as a power to dissolve the Union.
When, then, we see, as is evident to the whole country, that we are
drifting into a war between the United States and an individual State,
does it become the Senate to sit listlessly by and discuss abstract
questions, and read patchwork from the opinions of men now mingled with
the dust? Are we not bound to meet events as they come before us,
manfully and patriotically to struggle with the difficulties which now
oppress the country?
In the message yesterday, we were even told that the District of
Columbia was in danger. In danger of what? From whom comes the danger?
Is there a man here who dreads that the deliberations of this body are
to be interrupted by an armed force? Is there one who would not prefer
to fall with dignity at his station, the representative of a great and
peaceful Government, rather than to be protected by armed bands? And yet
the rumor is--and rumors seem now to be so authentic that we credit them
rather than other means of information--that companies of artillery are
to be quartered in this city to preserve peace, where the laws have
heretofore been supreme, and that this District is to become a camp by
calling out every able-bodied man within its limits to bear arms under
the militia law. Are we invaded? Is there an insurrection? Are there two
Senators here who would not be willing to go forth as a file, and put
down any resistance which showed itself in this District against the
Government of the United States? Is the reproach meant against these, my
friends from the South, who advocate Southern rights and State rights?
If so, it is a base slander. We claim our rights under the Constitution;
we claim our rights reserved to the States; and we seek by no brute
force to gain any advantage which the law and the Constitution do not
give us. We have never appealed to mobs. We have never asked for the
army and the navy to protect us. On the soil of Mississippi, not the
foot of a Federal soldier has been impressed since 1819, when, flying
from the yellow fever, they sought refuge within the limits of our
State; and on the soil of Mississippi there breathes not a man who asks
for any other protection than that which our Constitution gives us, that
which our strong arms afford, and the brave hearts of our people will
insure in every contingency.
Senators, we are rapidly drifting into a position in which this is to
become a government of the army and navy; in which the authority of the
United States is to be maintained, not by law, not by constitutional
agreement between the States, but by physical force; and will you stand
still and see this policy consummated? Will you fold your arms, the
degenerate descendants of those men who proclaimed the eternal principle
that government rests on the consent of the governed; and that every
people have a right to change, modify, or abolish a government when it
ceases to answer the ends for which it was established, and permit this
Government imperceptibly to slide from the moorings where it was
originally anchored, and become a military despotism? It was well said
by the Senator from New York [Mr. Seward], whom I do not now see in his
seat--well said in a speech wherein I found but little to commend--that
this Union could not be maintained by force, and that a Union of force
was a despotism. It was a great truth, come from what quarter it may.
That was not the Government instituted by our fathers; and against it,
so long as I live, with heart and hand, I will rebel.
This brings me to a passage in the message which says:
"I certainly had no right to make aggressive war upon any State; and I
am perfectly satisfied that the Constitution has wisely withheld that
power even from Congress"--very good--"but the right and the duty to use
military force defensively against those who resist the Federal officers
in the exercise of their legal functions, and against those who assail
the power of the Federal Government, are clear and undeniable."
Is it so? Where does he get it? Our fathers were so jealous of a
standing army, that they scarcely would permit the organization and
maintenance of any army! Where does he get the "clear and undeniable"
power to use the force of the United States in the manner he there
proposes? To execute a process, troops may be summoned in a posse
comitatus; and here, in the history of our Government, it is not to be
forgotten that in the earlier and, as it is frequently said, the better
days of the republic--and painfully we feel that they were better
indeed--a President of the United States did not recur to the army; he
went to the people of the United States. Vaguely and confusedly, indeed,
did the Senator from Tennessee [Mr. Johnson] bring forward the case of
the great man, Washington, as one in which he had used a means which, he
argued, was equivalent to the coercion of a State; for he said that
Washington used the military power against a portion of a people of the
State; and why might he not as well have used it against the whole
State? Let me tell that Senator that the case of General Washington has
no such application as he supposes. It was a case of insurrection in the
State of Pennsylvania; and the very message from which he read
communicated the fact that Governor Mifflin thought it was necessary to
call the militia of the adjoining States to aid him. President
Washington coöperated with Governor Mifflin; he called the militia of
adjoining States to coöperate with those of Pennsylvania. He used the
militia, not as a standing army. It was by the consent of the Governor;
it was by his advice. It was not the invasion of the State; it was not
the coercion of the State; but it was aiding the State to put down
insurrection, and in the very manner provided for in the Constitution
itself.
But, I ask again, what power has the President to use the army and navy
except to execute process? Are we to have drum-head courts substituted
for those which the Constitution and laws provide? Are we to have
sergeants sent over the land instead of civil magistrates? Not so
thought the elder Adams; and here, in passing, I will pay him a tribute
he deserves, as the one to whom, more than any other man among the early
founders of this Government, credit is due for the military principles
which prevail in its organization. Associated with Mr. Jefferson
originally, in preparing the rules and articles of war, Mr. Adams
reverted through the long pages of history back to the empire of Rome,
and drew from that foundation the very rules and articles of war which
govern in our country to-day, and drew them thence because he said they
had brought two nations to the pinnacle of glory--referring to the
Romans and the Britons, whose military law was borrowed from them. Mr.
Adams, however, when an insurrection occurred in the same State of
Pennsylvania, not only relied upon the militia, but his orders, through
Secretary McHenry, required that the militia of the vicinage should be
employed; and, though he did order troops from Philadelphia, he required
the militia of the northern counties to be employed as long as they were
able to execute the laws; and the orders given to Colonel McPherson,
then in New Jersey, were, that Federal troops should not go across the
Jersey line except in the last resort. I say, then, when we trace our
history to its early foundation, under the first two Presidents of the
United States, we find that this idea of using the army and the navy to
execute the laws at the discretion of the President was one not even
entertained, still less acted upon, in any case.
Then, Senators, we are brought to consider passing events. A little
garrison in the harbor of Charleston now occupies a post which, I am
sorry to say, it gained by the perfidious breach of an understanding
between the parties concerned; and here, that I may do justice to one
who had not the power, on this floor at least, to right himself--who has
no friend here to represent him--let me say that remark does not apply
to Major Anderson; for I hold that, though his orders were not so
designed, as I am assured, they did empower him to go from one post to
another, and to take his choice of the posts in the harbor of
Charleston; but in so doing he committed an act of hostility. When he
dismantled Fort Moultrie, when he burned the carriages and spiked the
guns bearing upon Fort Sumter, he put Carolina in the attitude of an
enemy of the United States; and yet he has not shown that there was any
just cause for apprehension. Vague rumors had reached him--and causeless
fear seems now to be the impelling motive of every public act--vague
rumors of an intention to take Fort Moultrie. But, sir, a soldier should
be confronted by an overpowering force before he spikes his guns and
burns his carriages. A soldier should be confronted by a public enemy
before he destroys the property of the United States lest it should fall
into the hands of such an enemy. Was that fort built to make war upon
Carolina? Was an armament put into it for such a purpose? Or was it
built for the protection of Charleston Harbor; and was it armed to make
that protection effective? If so, what right had any soldier to destroy
that armament lest it should fall into the hands of Carolina?
Some time since I presented to the Senate resolutions which embodied my
views upon this subject, drawing from the Constitution itself the data
on which I based those resolutions. I then invoked the attention of the
Senate in that form to the question as to whether garrisons should be
kept within a State against the consent of that State. Clear was I then,
as I am now, in my conclusion. No garrison should be kept within a
State, during a time of peace, if the State believes the presence of
that garrison to be either offensive or dangerous. Our army is
maintained for common defense; our forts are built out of the common
Treasury, to which every State contributes; and they are perverted from
the purpose for which they were erected whenever they are garrisoned
with a view to threaten, to intimidate, or to control a State in any
respect.
Yet, we are told this is no purpose to coerce a State; we are told that
the power does not exist to coerce a State; but the Senator from
Tennessee [Mr. Johnson] says it is only a power to coerce individuals;
and the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Wade] seems to look upon this latter
power as a very harmless power in the hands of the President, though the
results of such coercion might be to destroy the State. What is a State?
Is it land and houses? Is it taxable property? Is it the organization of
the local government? Or is it all these combined with the people who
possess them? Destroy the people, and yet not make war upon the State!
To state the proposition is to answer it, by reason of its very
absurdity. It is like making desolation, and calling it peace. There
being, as it is admitted on every hand, no power to coerce a State, I
ask what is the use of a garrison within a State where it needs no
defense? The answer from every candid mind must be, there is none. The
answer from every patriotic breast must be, peace requires under all
such circumstances that the garrison should be withdrawn. Let the Senate
to-day, as the responsibility is thrown at our door, pass those
resolutions, or others which better express the idea contained in them,
and you have taken one long step toward peace, one long stride toward
the preservation of the Government of our fathers.
The President's message of December, however, has 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 were 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 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 defense, 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.
What is the message before us? Does it benefit the case? Is there a
solution offered here? We are informed in it of propositions made by
commissioners from South Carolina. We are not informed even as to how
they terminated. No countervailing proposition is presented; no
suggestion is made. We are left drifting loosely, without chart or
compass.
There is in our recent history, however, an event which might have
suggested a policy to be pursued. When foreigners having no citizenship
within the United States declared war against it and made war upon it;
when the inhabitants of a Territory, disgraced by institutions offensive
to the laws of every State of the Union, held this attitude of
rebellion; when the Executive there had power to use troops, he first
sent commissioners of peace to win them back to their duty. When South
Carolina, a sovereign State, resumes the grants she had delegated; when
South Carolina stands in an attitude which threatens within a short
period to involve the country in a civil war unless the policy of the
Government be changed, no suggestion is made to us that this Government
might send commissioners to her; no suggestion is made to us that better
information should be sought; there is no policy of peace, but we are
told the army and navy are in the hands of the President of the United
States, to be used against those who assail the power of the Federal
Government.
Then, my friends, are we to allow events to drift onward to this fatal
consummation? Are we to do nothing to restore peace? Shall we not, in
addition to the proposition I have already made, to withdraw the force
which complicates the question, send commissioners there in order that
we may learn what this community desire, what this community will do,
and put the two Governments upon friendly relations?
I will not weary the Senate by going over the argument of coercion. My
friend from Ohio [Mr. Pugh], I may say, has exhausted the subject. I
thank him, because it came appropriately from one not identified by his
position with South Carolina. It came more effectively from him than it
would have done from me, had I (as I have not) a power to present it as
forcibly as he has done. Sirs, let me say, among the painful reflections
which have crowded upon me by day and by night, none have weighed more
heavily upon my heart than the reflection that our separation severs the
ties which have so long bound us to our Northern friends, of whom we are
glad to recognize the Senator as a type.
Now let us return a moment to consider what would have been the state of
the case if the garrison at Charleston had been withdrawn. The fort
would have stood there, not dismantled, but unoccupied. It would have
stood there in the hands of an ordnance-sergeant. Commissioners would
have come to treat of all questions with the Federal Government, of
these forts as well as others. They would have remained there to answer
the ends for which they were constructed--the ends of defense. If South
Carolina was an independent State, then she might hold to us such a
relation as Rhode Island held after the dissolution of the Confederation
and before the formation of the Union, when Rhode Island appealed to the
sympathies existing between the States connected in the struggles of the
Revolution, and asked that a commercial war should not be waged upon
her. These forts would have stood there then to cover the harbor of a
friendly State; and, if the feeling which once existed among the people
of the States had subsisted still, and that fort had been attacked,
brave men from every section would have rushed to the rescue, and there
imperiled their lives in the defense of a State identified with their
early history, and still associated in their breasts with affectionate
memories; the first act of this kind would have been one appealing to
every generous motive of those people, again to reconsider the question
of how we could live together, and through that bloody ordeal to have
brought us into the position in which our fathers left us. There need
have been no collision, as there could have been no question of property
which that State was not ready to meet. If it was a question of dollars
and cents, they came here to adjust it. If it was a question of covering
an interior State, their interests were identical. In whatever way the
question could have been presented, the consequence would have been to
relieve the Government of the charge of maintaining the fort, and to
throw it upon the State which had resolved to be independent.
Thus we see that no evil could have resulted. We have yet to learn what
evil the opposite policy may bring. Telegraphic intelligence, by the man
who occupied the seat on the right of me in the old Chamber, was never
relied on. He was the wisest statesman I ever knew--a man whose
prophetic vision foretold all the trials through which we are now
passing; whose clear intellect, elaborating everything, borrowing
nothing from anybody, seemed to dive into the future, and to unveil
those things which are hidden to other eyes. Need I say I mean Calhoun?
No other man than he would have answered this description. I say, then,
not relying upon telegraphic dispatches, we still have information
enough to notify us that we are on the verge of civil war; that civil
war is in the hands of men irresponsible, as it seems to us; their acts
unknown to us; their discretion not covered by any existing law or
usage; and we now have the responsibility thrown upon us, which
justifies us in demanding information to meet an emergency in which the
country is involved.
Is there any point of pride which prevents us from withdrawing that
garrison? I have heard it said by a gallant gentleman, to whom I make no
special reference, that the great objection was an unwillingness to
lower the flag. To lower the flags! Under what circumstances? Does any
man's courage impel him to stand boldly forth to take the life of his
brethren? Does any man insist upon going upon the open field with deadly
weapons to fight his brother on a question of courage? There is no point
of pride. These are your brethren; and they have shed as much glory upon
that flag as any equal number of men in the Union. They are the men, and
that is the locality, where the first Union flag was unfurled, and where
was fought a gallant battle before our independence was declared--not
the flag with thirteen stripes and thirty-three stars, but a flag with a
cross of St. George, and the long stripes running through it. When the
gallant Moultrie took the British Fort Johnson and carried it, for the
first time, I believe, did the Union flag fly in the air; and that was
in October, 1775. When he took the position and threw up a temporary
battery with palmetto-logs and sand, upon the site called Fort Moultrie,
that fort was assailed by the British fleet, and bombarded until the old
logs, clinging with stern tenacity, were filled with balls, but the flag
still floated there, and, though many bled, the garrison conquered.
Those old logs are gone; the eroding current is even taking away the
site where Fort Moultrie stood; the gallant men who held it now mingle
with the earth; but their memories live in the hearts of a brave people,
and their sons yet live, and they, like their fathers, are ready to
bleed and to die for the cause in which their fathers triumphed.
Glorious are the memories clinging around that old fort which now, for
the first time, has been abandoned--abandoned not even in the presence
of a foe, but under the imaginings that a foe might come; and guns
spiked and carriages burned where the band of Moultrie bled, and, with
an insufficient armament, repelled the common foe of all the colonies.
Her ancient history compares proudly with the present.
Can there, then, be a point of pride upon so sacred a soil as this,
where the blood of the fathers cries to heaven against civil war? Can
there be a point of pride against laying upon that sacred soil to-day
the flag for which our fathers died? My pride, Senators, is different.
My pride is that that flag shall not set between contending brothers;
and that, when it shall no longer be the common flag of the country, it
shall be folded up and laid away like a vesture no longer used; that it
shall be kept as a sacred memento of the past, to which each of us can
make a pilgrimage and remember the glorious days in which we were born.
In the answer of the commissioners which I caused to be read yesterday,
I observed that they referred to Fort Sumter as remaining a memento of
Carolina faith. It is an instance of the accuracy of the opinion which I
have expressed. It stood without a garrison. It commanded the harbor,
and the fort was known to have the armament in it capable of defense.
Did the Carolinians attack it? Did they propose to seize it? It stood
there safe as public property; and there it might have stood to the end
of the negotiations without a question, if a garrison had not been sent
into it. It was the faith on which they relied, that the Federal
Government would take no position of hostility to them, that constituted
its safety, and by which they lost the advantage they would have had in
seizing it when unoccupied.
I think that something is due to faith as well as fraternity; and I
think one of the increasing and accumulative obligations upon us to
withdraw the garrison from that fort is from the manner in which it was
taken--taken, as we heard by the reading of the paper yesterday, while
Carolina remained under the assurance that the _status_ would not be
violated; while I was under that assurance, and half a dozen other
Senators now within the sound of my voice felt secure under the same
pledge, that nothing would be done until negotiations had terminated,
unless it was to withdraw the garrison. Then we, the Federal Government,
broke the faith; we committed the first act of hostility; and from this
first act of hostility arose all those acts to which reference is made
in the message as unprovoked aggressions--the seizing of forts
elsewhere. Why were they seized? Self-preservation is the first law of
nature; and when they no longer had confidence that this Federal
Government would not seize the forts constructed for their defense, and
use them for their destruction, they only obeyed the dictates of
self-preservation when they seized the forts to prevent the enemy from
taking possession of them as a means of coercion, for they then were
compelled to believe this Federal Government had become an enemy.
Now, what is the remedy? To assure them that you do not intend to use
physical force against them is your first remedy; to assure them that
you intend to consider calmly all the propositions which they make, and
to recognize the rights which the Union was established to secure; that
you intend to settle with them upon a basis in accordance with the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.
When you do that, peace will prevail over the land, and force become a
thing that no man will consider necessary.
I am here confronted with a question which I will not argue. The
position which I have taken necessarily brings me to its consideration.
Without arguing it, I will merely state it. It is the right of a State
to withdraw from the Union. The President says it is not a
constitutional right. The Senator from Ohio [Mr. Wade], and his ally,
the Senator from Tennessee [Mr. Johnson], argued it as no right at all.
Well, let us see. What is meant by a constitutional right? Is it meant
to be a right derived from the Constitution--a grant made in the
Constitution? If that is what is meant, of course we all see at once
that we do not derive it in that way. Is it intended that it is not a
constitutional right, because it is not granted in the Constitution?
That shows, indeed, but a poor appreciation of the nature of our
Government. All that is not granted in the Constitution belongs to the
States; 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?
I know it has been argued here that the Confederation said the Articles
of Confederation were to be a perpetual bond of union, and that the
Constitution was made to form a more perfect union; that is to say, a
Government beyond perpetuity, or one day, or two or three days, after
doomsday. But that has no foundation in the Constitution itself; it has
no basis in the nature of our Government. The Constitution was a compact
between independent States; it was not a national Government; and hence
Mr. Madison answered with such effectiveness to Patrick Henry, in the
Convention of Virginia, which ratified the Constitution, denying his
proposition that it was to form a nation, and stating to him the
conclusive fact that "we sit here as a convention of the State to ratify
or reject that Constitution; and how, then, can you say that it forms a
nation, and is adopted by the mass of the people?" It was not adopted by
the mass of the people, as we all know historically; it was adopted by
each State; each State, voluntarily ratifying it, entered the Union; and
that Union was formed whenever nine States should enter it; and, in
abundance of caution, it was stated, in the resolutions of ratification
of three of the States, that they still possessed the power to withdraw
the grants which they had delegated, whenever they should be used to
their injury or oppression. I know it is said that this meant the people
of all the States; but that is such an absurdity that I suppose it
hardly necessary to answer it--for to speak of an elective Government
rendering itself injurious and oppressive to the whole body of the
people by whom it is elected is such an absurdity that no man can
believe it; and to suppose that a State convention, speaking for a
State, and having no authority to speak for anybody else, would say that
it was declaring what the people of the other States would do, would be
an assumption altogether derogatory to the sound sense and well-known
sentiments of the men who formed the Constitution and ratified it.
But in abundance of caution not only was this done, but the tenth
amendment of the Constitution declared that all which had not been
delegated was reserved to the States or to the people. Now, I ask, where
among the delegated grants to the Federal Government do you find any
power to coerce a State; where among the provisions of the Constitution
do you find any prohibition on the part of a State to withdraw; and, if
you find neither one nor the other, must not this power be in that great
depository, the reserved rights of the States? How was it ever taken out
of that source of all power to be given to the Federal Government? It
was not delegated to the Federal Government; it was not prohibited to
the States; it necessarily remains, then, among the reserved powers of
the States.
This question has been so forcibly argued by the Senator from Louisiana
[Mr. Benjamin] that I think it unnecessary to pursue it. Three times the
proposition was made to give power to coerce the States, in the
Convention, and as often refused--opposed as a proposition to make war
on a State, and refused on the ground that the Federal Government could
not make war upon a State. The Constitution was to form a Government for
such States as should unite; it had no application beyond those who
should voluntarily adopt it. Among the delegated powers there is none
which interferes with the exercise of the right of secession by a State.
As a right of sovereignty it remained to the States under the
Confederation; and, if it did not, you arraign the faith of the men who
framed the Constitution to which you appeal, for they provided that nine
States should secede from thirteen. Eleven did secede from the thirteen,
and put themselves in the very position which, by a great abuse of
language, is to-day called treason, against the two States of North
Carolina and Rhode Island; they still claiming to adhere to the
perpetual Articles of Confederation, these eleven States absolving
themselves from the obligations which arose under them.
The Senator from Tennessee, to whom I must refer again--and I do so
because he is a Southern Senator--taking the most hostile ground against
us, refers to the State of Tennessee, and points to the time when that
State may do those things which he has declared it an absurdity for any
State to perform. I will read a single paragraph from his speech,
showing what his language is, in order that I may not, by any
possibility, produce an impression upon others which his language does
not justify. Here are the expressions to which I refer. I call the
Senator's attention to them:
"If there are grievances, why can not we all go together, and write them
down and point them out to our Northern friends after we have agreed on
what those grievances were, and say: 'Here is what we demand; here our
wrongs are enumerated; upon these terms we have agreed; and now, after
we have given you a reasonable time to consider these additional
guarantees in order to protect ourselves against these wrongs, if you
refuse them, then, having made an honorable effort, having exhausted all
other means, we may declare the association to be broken up, and we may
go into an act of revolution.' We can then say to them, 'You have
refused to give us guarantees that we think are needed for the
protection of our institutions and for the protection of our other
interests.' When they do this, I will go as far as he who goes the
farthest."
Now, it does appear that he will go that far; and he goes a little
further than anybody, I believe, who has spoken in vindication of the
right, for he says:
"We do not intend that you shall drive us out of this House that was
reared by the hands of our fathers. It is our House. It is the
constitutional House. We have a right here; and because you come forward
and violate the ordinances of this House, I do not intend to go out;
and, if you persist in the violation of the ordinances of the House, we
intend to eject you from the building and retain the possession
ourselves."
I wonder if this is what caused the artillery companies to be ordered
here, and the militia of this city to be organized? I think it was a
mere figure of speech. I do not believe the Senator from Tennessee
intended to kick you out of the House; and, if he did, let me say to
you, in all sincerity, we who claim the constitutional right of a State
to withdraw from the Union do not intend to help him. He says, however,
and this softens it a little:
"We do not think, though, that we have just cause for going out of the
Union now. We have just cause of complaint; but we are for remaining in
the Union, and fighting the battle like men."
What does that mean? In the name of common sense, I ask how are we to
fight in the Union? We take an oath of office to maintain the
Constitution of the United States. The Constitution of the United States
was formed for domestic tranquillity; and how, then, are we to fight in
the Union? I have heard the proposition from others; but I have not
understood it. I understand how men fight when they assume attitudes of
hostility; but I do not understand how men, remaining connected together
in a bond as brethren, sworn to mutual aid and protection, still propose
to fight each other. I do not understand what the Senator means. If he
chooses to answer my question, I am willing to hear him, for I do not
understand how we are to fight in the Union.
Mr. Johnson, of Tennessee: When my speech is taken altogether, I think
my meaning can be very easily understood. What I mean by fighting the
battle in the Union is, I think, very distinctly and clearly set forth
in my speech; and, if the Senator will take it from beginning to end, I
apprehend that he will have no difficulty in ascertaining what I meant.
But, for his gratification upon this particular point, I will repeat, in
substance, what I then said as to fighting the battle in the Union. I
meant that we should remain here under the Constitution of the United
States and contend for all its guarantees; and by preserving the
Constitution and all its guarantees we would preserve the Union. Our
true place, to maintain these guarantees and to preserve the
Constitution, is in the Union, there to fight our battle. How? By
argument; by appeals to the patriotism, to the good sense, and to the
judgment of the whole country; by showing the people that the
Constitution had been violated; that all its guarantees were not
complied with; and I have entertained the hope that, when they were
possessed of that fact, there would be found patriotism and honesty
enough in the great mass of the people, North and South, to come forward
and do what was just and right between the contending sections of the
country. I meant that the true way to fight the battle was for us to
remain here and occupy the places assigned to us by the Constitution of
the country. Why did I make that statement? It was because on the 4th
day of March next we shall have six majority in this body; and if, as
some apprehended, the incoming Administration shall show any disposition
to make encroachments upon the institution of slavery, encroachments
upon the rights of the States, or any other violation of the
Constitution, we, by remaining in the Union, and standing at our places,
will have the power to resist all these encroachments. How? We have the
power even to reject the appointment of the Cabinet officers of the
incoming President. Then, should we not be fighting the battles in the
Union, by resisting even the organization of the Administration in a
constitutional mode, and thus, at the very start, disable an
Administration which was likely to encroach on our rights and to violate
the Constitution of the country? So far as appointing even a Minister
abroad is concerned, the incoming Administration will have no power
without our consent, if we remain here. It comes into office handcuffed,
powerless to do harm. We, standing here, hold the balance of power in
our hands; we can resist it at the very threshold effectually; and do it
inside of the Union, and in our House. The incoming Administration has
not even the power to appoint a postmaster whose salary exceeds one
thousand dollars a year, without consultation with and the acquiescence
of the Senate of the United States. The President has not even the power
to draw his salary--his twenty-five thousand dollars per annum--unless
we appropriate it. I contend, then, that the true place to fight the
battle is in the Union, and within the provisions of the Constitution.
The army and navy cannot be sustained without appropriations by
Congress; and, if we were apprehensive that encroachments would be made
on the Southern States and on their institutions, in violation of the
Constitution, we could prevent him from having a dollar even to feed his
army or his navy.
Mr. Davis: I receive the answer from the Senator, and I think I
comprehend now that he is not going to use any force, but it is a sort
of fighting that is to be done by votes and words; and I think,
therefore, the President need not bring artillery and order out the
militia to suppress them. I think, altogether, we are not in danger of
much bloodshed in the mode proposed by the Senator from Tennessee.
Mr. Johnson: I had not quite done; but if the Senator is satisfied--
Mr. Davis: Quite satisfied. I am entirely satisfied that the answer of
the Senator shows me he did not intend to fight at all; that it was a
mere figure of speech, and does not justify converting the Federal
capital into a military camp. But it is a sort of revolution which he
proposes; it is a revolution under the forms of the Government. Now, I
have to say, once for all, that, as long as I am a Senator here, I will
not use the powers I possess to destroy the very Government to which I
am accredited. I will not attempt, in the language of the Senator, to
handcuff the President. I will not attempt to destroy the Administration
by refusing any officers to administer its functions. I should vote, as
I have done in Administrations to which I stood in nearest relation,
against a bad nomination; but I never would agree, under the forms of
the Constitution, and with the powers I bear as a Senator of the United
States, to turn those powers to the destruction of the Government I was
sent to support. I leave that to gentlemen who take the oath with a
mental reservation. It is not my policy. If I must have revolution, I
say let it be a revolution such as our fathers made when they were
denied their natural rights.
So much for that. It has quieted apprehension; and I hope that the
artillery will not be brought here; that the militia will not be called
out; and that the female schools will continue their sessions as
heretofore. [Laughter.] The authority of Mr. Madison, however, was
relied on by the Senator from Tennessee; and he read fairly an extract
from Mr. Madison's letter to Mr. Webster, and I give him credit for
reading what it seems to me destroys his whole argument. It is this
clause:
"The powers of the Government being exercised, as in other elective and
responsible governments, under the control of its constituents, the
people, and the Legislatures of the States, and subject to the
revolutionary rights of the people in extreme cases."
Now, sir, we are confusing language very much. Men speak of revolution;
and when they say revolution they mean blood. Our fathers meant nothing
of the sort. When they spoke of revolution they meant an unalienable
right. When they declared as an unalienable right the power of the
people to abrogate and modify their form of government whenever it did
not answer the ends for which it was established, they did not mean that
they were to sustain that by brute force. They meant that it was a
right; and force could only be invoked when that right was wrongfully
denied. Great Britain denied the right in the case of the colonies, and
therefore our revolution for independence was bloody. If Great Britain
had admitted the great American doctrine, there would have been no blood
shed; and does it become the descendants of those who proclaimed this as
the great principle on which they took their place among the nations of
the earth, now to proclaim, if that is a right, it is one which you can
only get as the subjects of the Emperor of Austria may get their rights,
by force overcoming force? Are we, in this age of civilization and
political progress, when political philosophy had advanced to the point
which seemed to render it possible that the millennium should now be
seen by prophetic eyes--are we now to roll back the whole current of
human thought, and again to return to the mere brute force which
prevails between beasts of prey, as the only method of settling
questions between men?
If the Declaration of Independence be true (and who here gainsays it?),
every community may dissolve its connection with any other community
previously made, and have no other obligation than that which results
from the breach of an alliance between States. Is it to be supposed;
could any man, reasoning _a priori_, come to the conclusion that the men
who fought the battles of the Revolution for community independence--
that the men who struggled against the then greatest military power on
the face of the globe in order that they might possess those unalienable
rights which they had declared--terminated their great efforts by
transmitting posterity to a condition in which they could only gain
those rights by force? If so, the blood of the Revolution was shed in
vain; no great principles were established; for force was the law of
nature before the battles of the Revolution were fought.
I see, then--if gentlemen insist on using the word "revolution" in the
sense of a resort to force--a very great difference between their
opinion and that of Mr. Madison. Mr. Madison put the rights of the
people over and above everything else, and he said this was the
Government _de jure_ and _de facto_. Call it by what name you will, he
understood ours to be a Government of the people. The people never have
separated themselves from those rights which our fathers had declared to
be unalienable. They did not delegate to the Federal Government the
powers which the British Crown exercised over the colonies; they did not
achieve their independence for any purpose so low as that. They left us
to the inheritance of freemen, living in independent communities, the
States united for the purposes which they thought would bless posterity.
It is in the exercise of this reserved right as defined by Mr. Madison,
as one to which all the powers of Government are subject, that the
people of a State in convention have claimed to resume the functions
which in like manner they had made to the Federal Government....
The question which now presents itself to the country is, What shall we
do with events as they stand? Shall we allow this separation to be
total? Shall we render it peaceful, with a view to the chance that, when
hunger shall brighten the intellects of men, and the teachings of hard
experience shall have tamed them, they may come back, in the spirit of
our fathers, to the task of reconstruction? Or will they have that
separation partial; will they give to each State all its military power;
will they give to each State its revenue power; will they still preserve
the common agent, and will they thus carry on a Government different
from that which now exists, yet not separating the States so entirely as
to make the work of reconstruction equal to a new creation; not
separating them so as to render it utterly impossible to administer any
functions of the Government in security and peace?
I waive the question of duality, considering that a dual Executive would
be the institution of a King Log. I consider a dual legislative
department would be to bring into antagonism the representatives of two
different countries, to war perpetually, and thus to continue, not
union, but the irrepressible conflict. There is no duality possible
(unless there be two confederacies) which seems to me consistent with
the interests of either or of both. It might be that two confederacies
could be so organized as to answer jointly many of the ends of our
present Union; it might be that States, agreeing with each other in
their internal policy--having a similarity of interests and an identity
of purpose--might associate together, and that these two confederacies
might have relations to each other so close as to give them a united
power in time of war against any foreign nation. These things are
possibilities; these things it becomes us to contemplate; these things
it devolves on the majority section to consider now; 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. We have
waited long; we have come to the conclusion that you mean to do nothing.
In the Committee of Thirteen, where the resolutions of the Senator from
Kentucky [Mr. Crittenden] were considered, various attempts were made,
but no prospect of any agreement on which it was possible for us to
stand, in security for the future, could be matured. I offered a
proposition, which was but the declaration of that which the
Constitution announces; but that which the Supreme Court had, from time
to time, and from an early period asserted; but that which was necessary
for equality in the Union. Not one single vote of the Republican portion
of that committee was given for the proposition.
Looking, then, upon separation as inevitable, not knowing how that
separation is to occur, or at least what States it is to embrace, there
remains to us, I believe, as the consideration which is most useful, the
inquiry, How can this separation be effected so as to leave to us the
power, whenever we shall have the will, to reconstruct? It can only be
done by adopting a policy of peace. It can only be done by denying to
the Federal Government all power to coerce. It can only be done by
returning to the point from which we started, and saying, "This is a
Government of fraternity, a Government of consent, and it shall not be
administered in a departure from those principles."
I do not regard the failure of our constitutional Union, as very many
do, to be the failure of self-government--to be conclusive in all future
time of the unfitness of man to govern himself. Our State governments
have charge of nearly all the relations of person and property. This
Federal Government was instituted mainly as a common agent for foreign
purposes, for free trade among the States, and for common defense.
Representative liberty will remain in the States after they are
separated. Liberty was not crushed by the separation of the colonies
from the mother-country, then the most constitutional monarchy and the
freest Government known. Still less will liberty be destroyed by the
separation of these States, to prevent the destruction of the spirit of
the Constitution by the mal-administration of it. There will be
injury--injury to all; differing in degree, differing in manner. The
injury to the manufacturing and navigating States will be to their
internal prosperity. The injury to the Southern States will be mainly to
their foreign commerce. All will feel the deprivation of that high pride
and power which belong to the flag now representing the greatest
republic, if not the greatest Government, upon the face of the globe. 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 power; for
pride and passion do not often take counsel of pecuniary interest, at
least among those whom I represent. But you have chosen to take the
policy of clinging to words [the Chicago platform], in disregard of
passing events, and have hastened them onward. It is true, as shown by
the history of all revolutions, that they are most precipitated and
intensified by obstinacy and vacillation. The want of a policy, the
obstinate adherence to unimportant things, have brought us to a
condition where I close my eyes, because I can not see anything that
encourages me to hope.
In the long period which elapsed after the downfall of the great
republics of the East, when despotism seemed to brood over the civilized
world, and only here and there constitutional monarchy even was able to
rear its head--when all the great principles of republican and
representative government had sunk deep, fathomless, into the sea of
human events--it was then that the storm of our Revolution moved the
waters. The earth, the air, and the sea became brilliant; and from the
foam of ages rose the constellation which was set in the political
firmament, as a sign of unity and confederation and community
independence, coexistent with confederate strength. That constellation
has served to bless our people. Nay, more; its light has been thrown on
foreign lands, and its regenerative power will outlive, perhaps, the
Government as a sign for which it was set. It may be pardoned to me,
sir, 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, 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 was ready to follow; to hail with the
rising and bless with the setting sun. But God, who knows the hearts of
men, will judge between you and us, at whose door lies the
responsibility. Men will see the efforts made, here and elsewhere; that
we have been silent when words would not avail, and have curbed an
impatient temper, and hoped that conciliatory counsels might do that
which could not be effected by harsh means. And yet, the only response
which has come from the other side has been a stolid indifference, as
though it mattered not: "Let the temple fall, we do not care!" Sirs,
remember that such conduct is offensive, and that men may become
indifferent even to the objects of their early attachments.
If our Government should fail, it will not be from the defect of the
system, though each planet was set to revolve in an orbit of its own,
each moving by its own impulse, yet being all attracted by the
affections and interests which countervailed each other; there was no
inherent tendency to disruption. It has been the perversion of the
Constitution; it has been the substitution of theories of morals for
principles of government; it has been forcing crude opinions upon the
domestic institutions of others, which has disturbed these planets in
their orbit; it is this which threatens to destroy the constellation
which, in its power and its glory, had been gathering stars one after
another, until, from thirteen, it had risen to thirty-three.
If we accept the argument of to-day in favor of coercion as the theory
of our Government, its only effect will be to precipitate men who have
pride and self-reliance into the assertion of the freedom and
independence to which they were born. Our fathers would never have
entered into a confederate Government which had within itself the power
of coercion; they would not agree to remain one day in such a Government
after I had the power to get out of it. To argue that the man who
follows the mandate of his State, resuming her sovereign jurisdiction
and power, is disloyal to his allegiance to the United States, which
allegiance he only owed through his State, is such a confusion of ideas
as does not belong to an ordinary comprehension of our Government. It is
treason to the principle of community independence. It is to recur to
that doctrine of passive obedience which, in England, cost one monarch
his head and drove another into exile; a doctrine which, since the
Revolution of 1688, has obtained nowhere where men speak the English
tongue. Yet all this it is needful to admit, before we accept this
doctrine of coercion, which is to send an army and a navy to do that
which there are no courts to perform; to execute the law without a
judicial decision, and without an officer to serve process. This, I say,
would degrade us to the basest despotism under which man could live--the
despotism of a many-headed monster, without the sensibility or regardful
consideration which might belong to an hereditary king.[207]
* * * * *
There is a strange similarity in the position of affairs at the present
day to that which the colonies occupied. Lord North asserted the right
to collect the revenue, and insisted on collecting it by force. He sent
troops to Boston Harbor and to Charlestown, and he quartered troops in
those towns. The result was, collision; and out of that collision came
the separation of the colonies from the mother-country. The same thing
is being attempted to-day. Not the law, not the civil magistrate, but
troops, are relied upon now to execute the laws. To gather taxes in the
Southern ports, the army and navy must be sent to perform the functions
of magistrates. It is the old case over again. Senators of the North,
you are reënacting the blunders which statesmen in Great Britain
committed; but among you there are some who, like Chatham and Burke,
though not of our section, yet are vindicating our rights.
I have heard, with some surprise, for it seemed to me idle, the
repetition of the assertion heretofore made, that the cause of the
separation was the election of Mr. Lincoln. It may be a source of
gratification to some gentlemen that their friend is elected; but no
individual had the power to produce the existing state of things. It was
the purpose, the end, it was the declaration by himself and his friends,
which constitute the necessity of providing new safeguards for
ourselves. The man was nothing, save as he was the representative of
opinions, of a policy, of purposes, of power, to inflict upon us those
wrongs to which freemen never tamely submit.
Senators, I have spoken longer than I desired. I had supposed it was
possible, avoiding argument and not citing authority, to have made to
you a brief address. It was thought useless to argue a question which
now belongs to the past. 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 for ever. 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 can not live peaceably together, to leave with the
rights we had before we were united, since we can not 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.
If you will not have it thus--if in the pride of power, if in contempt
of reason, and reliance upon force, you say we shall not go, but shall
remain as subjects to you--then, gentlemen of the North, a war is to be
inaugurated the like of which men have not seen. Sufficiently numerous
on both sides, in close contact, with only imaginary lines of division,
and with many means of approach, each sustained by productive sections,
the people of which will give freely both of money and of store, the
conflicts must be multiplied indefinitely, and masses of men, sacrificed
to the demon of civil war, will furnish hecatombs, such as the recent
campaign in Italy did not offer. At the end of all this what will you
have effected? Destruction upon both sides; subjugation upon neither; a
treaty of peace leaving both torn and bleeding; the wail of the widow
and the cry of the orphan substituted for those peaceful notes of
domestic happiness that now prevail throughout the land; and then you
will agree that each is to pursue his separate course as best he may.
This is to be the end of war. Through a long series of years you may
waste your strength, distress your people, and yet at last must come to
the position which you might have had at first, had justice and reason,
instead of selfishness and passion, folly and crime, dictated your
course.
Is there wisdom, is there patriotism in the land? If so, easy must be
the solution of this question. If not, then Mississippi's gallant sons
will stand like a wall of fire around their State; and I go hence, not
in hostility to you, but in love and allegiance to her, to take my place
among her sons, be it for good or for evil.
I shall probably never again attempt to utter here the language either
of warning or of argument. I leave the case in your hands. If you solve
it not before I go, you will have still to decide it. Toward you
individually, as well as to those whom you represent, I would that I had
the power now to say there shall be peace between us for ever. I would
that I had the power now to say the intercourse and the commerce between
the States, if they can not live in one Union, shall still be
uninterrupted; that all the social relations shall remain undisturbed;
that the son in Mississippi shall visit freely his father in Maine, and
the reverse; and that each shall be welcomed when he goes to the other,
not by himself alone, but also by his neighbors; and that all that
kindly intercourse which has subsisted between the different sections of
the Union shall continue to exist. This is not only for the interest of
all, but it is my profoundest wish, my sincerest desire, that such
remnant of that which is passing away may grace the memory of a glorious
though too brief existence.
Day by day you have become more and more exasperated. False reports have
led you to suppose there was in our section hostility to you with
manifestations which did not exist. In one case, I well remember when
the Senator from Vermont [Mr. Collamer] was serving with me on a special
committee, it was reported that a gentleman who had gone from a
commercial house in New York had been inhumanly treated at Vicksburg,
and this embarrassed a question which we then had pending. I wrote to
Vicksburg for information, and my friends could not learn that such a
man had ever been there; but, if he had been there, no violence
certainly had been offered to him. Falsehood and suspicion have thus led
you on step by step in the career of crimination, and perhaps has
induced to some part of your aggression. Such evil effects we have
heretofore suffered, and the consequences now have their fatal
culmination. On the verge of war, distrust and passion increase the
danger. To-day it is in the power of two bad men, at the opposite ends
of the telegraphic line between Washington and Charleston, to
precipitate the State of South Carolina and the United States into a
conflict of arms without other cause to have produced it.
And still will you hesitate; still will you do nothing? Will you sit
with sublime indifference and allow events to shape themselves? No
longer can you say the responsibility is upon the Executive. He has
thrown it upon you. He has notified you that he can do nothing; and you
therefore know he will do nothing. He has told you the responsibility
now rests with Congress; and I close as I began, by invoking you to meet
that responsibility, bravely to act the patriot's part. If you will, the
angel of peace may spread her wings, though it be over divided States;
and the sons of the sires of the Revolution may still go on in friendly
intercourse with each other, ever renewing the memories of a common
origin; the sections, by the diversity of their products and habits,
acting and reacting beneficially, the commerce of each may swell the
prosperity of both, and the happiness of all be still interwoven
together. Thus may it be; and thus it is in your power to make it.
[Footnote 207: Here occurred a colloquy with another Senator, followed
by some paragraphs not essential to the completeness of the subject.]
APPENDIX I.
Correspondence and extracts from correspondence relative to Fort Sumter,
from the affair of the Star of the West, January 9, 1861, to the
withdrawal of the envoy of South Carolina from Washington, February 8,
1861.
_Major Anderson to the Governor of South Carolina.
To his Excellency the Governor of South Carolina._
Sir: Two of your batteries fired this morning upon an unarmed vessel
bearing the flag of my Government. As I have not been notified that war
has been declared by South Carolina against the Government of the United
States, I can not but think that this hostile act was committed without
your sanction or authority. Under that hope, and that alone, did I
refrain from opening fire upon your batteries.
I have the honor, therefore, respectfully to ask whether the
above-mentioned act--one I believe without a parallel in the history of
our country, or of any other civilized Government--was committed in
obedience to your instructions, and to notify you, if it be not
disclaimed, that I must regard it as an act of war, and that I shall
not, after a reasonable time for the return of my messenger, permit any
vessels to pass within range of the guns of my fort.
In order to save as far as in my power the shedding of blood, I beg that
you will have due notification of this my decision given to all
concerned.
Hoping, however, that your answer may be such as will justify a further
continuance of forbearance on my part, I have the honor to be,
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
ROBERT ANDERSON,
_Major First Artillery U. S. A., commanding_.
Fort Sumter, South Carolina, _January 9, 1861_.
_Extracts from reply of the Governor to Major Anderson_.
State of South Carolina, Executive Office, Headquarters,
Charleston, _January 9, 1861_.
Sir: Your letter has been received. In it you make certain statements
which very plainly show that you have not been fully informed by your
Government of the precise relations which now exist between it and the
State of South Carolina. Official information has been communicated to
the Government of the United States that the political connection
heretofore existing between the State of South Carolina and the States
which were known as the United States had ceased, and that the State of
South Carolina had resumed all the power it had delegated to the United
States under the compact known as the Constitution of the United States.
The right which the State of South Carolina possessed to change the
political relations it held with other States, under the Constitution of
the United States, has been solemnly asserted by the people of this
State, in convention, and now does not admit of discussion.
* * * * *
The attempt to reënforce the troops now at Fort Sumter, or to retake and
resume possession of the forts within the waters of this State, which
you have abandoned, after spiking the guns placed there, and doing
otherwise much damage, can not be regarded by the authorities of this
State as indicative of any other purpose than the coercion of the State
by the armed force of the Government. To repel such an attempt is too
plainly its duty to allow it to be discussed. But, while defending its
waters, the authorities of the State have been careful so to conduct the
affairs of the State that no act, however necessary for its defense,
should lead to a useless waste of life. Special agents, therefore, have
been off the bar, to warn all approaching vessels, if armed, or unarmed
and having troops to reënforce the forts on board, not to enter the
harbor of Charleston; and special orders have been given to the
commanders of all the forts and batteries not to fire at such vessels
until a shot fired across their bows would warn them of the prohibition
of the State.
Under these circumstances, the Star of the West, it is understood, this
morning attempted to enter this harbor, with troops on board; and,
having been notified that she could not enter, was fired into. The act
is perfectly justified by me.
In regard to your threat in relation to vessels in the harbor, it is
only necessary to say, that you must judge of your responsibilities.
Your position in this harbor has been tolerated by the authorities of
the State. And, while the act of which you complain is in perfect
consistency with the rights and duties of the State, it is not perceived
how far the conduct which you propose to adopt can find a parallel in
the history of any country, or be reconciled with any other purpose of
your Government than that of imposing upon this State the condition of a
conquered province.
F. W. PICKENS.
To Major Robert Anderson, _commanding Fort Sumter_.
_Major Anderson to the Governor._
Headquarters, Fort Sumter, South Carolina, _January 9, 1861_.
To his Excellency F. W. PICKENS,
_Governor of the State of South Carolina._
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your communication
of to-day, and to say that, under the circumstances, I have deemed it
proper to refer the whole matter to my Government; and that I intend
deferring the course indicated in my note of this morning until the
arrival from Washington of the instructions I may receive. I have the
honor also to express a hope that no obstructions will be placed in the
way of, and that you will do me the favor to afford every facility to,
the departure and return of the bearer, Lieutenant T. Talbot, U. S.
Army, who has been directed to make the journey.
I have the honor to be, very respectfully,
ROBERT ANDERSON,
_Major U. S. Army, commanding._
_The Governor to the President of the United States._
State of South Carolina, Executive Office,
Headquarters, Charleston, _January 11, 1861_.
Sir: At the time of the separation of the State of South Carolina from
the United States, Fort Sumter was, and still is, in the possession of
troops of the United States, under the command of Major Anderson. I
regard that possession as not consistent with the dignity or safety of
the State of South Carolina; and I have this day addressed to Major
Anderson a communication to obtain from him the possession of that fort,
by the authorities of this State. The reply of Major Anderson informs me
that he has no authority to do what I required, but he desires a
reference of the demand to the President of the United States.
Under the circumstances now existing, and which need no comment by me, I
have determined to send to you the Hon. I. W. Hayne, the
Attorney-General of the State of South Carolina, and have instructed him
to demand the delivery of Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, to
the constituted authorities of the State of South Carolina.
The demand I have made of Major Anderson, and which I now make of you,
is suggested because of my earnest desire to avoid the bloodshed which a
persistence in your attempt to retain the possession of that fort will
cause, and which will be unavailing to secure you that possession, but
induce a calamity most deeply to be deplored.
If consequences so unhappy shall ensue, I will secure for this State, in
the demand which I now make, the satisfaction of having exhausted every
attempt to avoid it.
In relation to the public property of the United States within Fort
Sumter, the Hon. I. W. Hayne, who will hand you this communication, is
authorized to give you the pledge of the State that the valuation of
such property will be accounted for, by this State, upon the adjustment
of its relations with the United States, of which it was a part.
F. W. PICKENS.
_To the_ President _of the United States_.
_Extracts from instructions of the State Department of South Carolina to
Hon. I. W. Hayne_.
State of South Carolina, Executive Office,
State Department, Charleston, _January 12, 1861_.
Sir: The Governor has considered it proper, in view of the grave
questions which now affect the State of South Carolina and the United
States, to make a demand upon the President of the United States for the
delivery to the State of South Carolina of Fort Sumter, now within the
territorial limits of this Sate and occupied by troops of the United
States.
* * * * *
You are now instructed to proceed to Washington, and there, in the name
of the government of the State of South Carolina, inquire of the
President of the United States whether it was by his order that troops
of the United States were sent into the harbor of Charleston to
reënforce Fort Sumter; if he avows that order, you will then inquire
whether he asserts a right to introduce troops of the United States
within the limits of this State, to occupy Fort Sumter; and you will, in
case of his avowal, inform him that neither will be permitted, and
either will be regarded as his declaration of war against the State of
South Carolina.
The Governor, to save life, and determined to omit no course of
proceeding usual among civilized nations, previous to that condition of
general hostilities which belongs to war, and not knowing under what
order, or by what authority, Fort Sumter is now held, demanded from
Major Robert Anderson, now in command of that fort, its delivery to the
State. That officer, in his reply, has referred the Governor to the
Government of the United States at Washington. You will, therefore,
demand from the President of the United States the withdrawal of the
troops of the United States from that fort, and its delivery to the
State of South Carolina.
You are instructed not to allow any question of property claimed by the
United States to embarrass the assertion of the political right of the
State of South Carolina to the possession of Fort Sumter. The possession
of that fort by the State is alone consistent with the dignity and
safety of the State of South Carolina; but such possession is not
inconsistent with a right to compensation in money in another
Government, if it has against the State of South Carolina any just claim
connected with that fort. But the possession of the fort can not, in
regard to the State of South Carolina, be compensated by any
consideration of any kind from the Government of the United States, when
the possession of it by the Government is invasive of the dignity and
affects the safety of the State. That possession can not become now a
matter of discussion or negotiation. You will, therefore, require from
the President of the United States a positive and distinct answer to
your demand for the delivery of the fort. And you are further authorized
to give the pledge of the State to adjust all matters which may be, and
are in their nature, susceptible of valuation in money, in the manner
most usual, and upon the principles of equity and justice always
recognized by independent nations, for the ascertainment of their
relative rights and obligations in such matters....
Respectfully, your obedient servant, A. G. MAGRATH.
_To Hon._ W. Hayne, _special envoy from the State of South Carolina to
the President of the United States_.
_Letter of Senators of seceding States to Hon. I. W. Hayne_.
Washington City, _January 15, 1861_.
Hon. Isaac W. Hayne.
Sir: We are apprised that you visit Washington, as an envoy from the
State of South Carolina, bearing a communication from the Governor of
your State to the President of the United States, in relation to Fort
Sumter. Without knowing its contents, we venture to request you to defer
its delivery to the President for a few days, or until you and he have
considered the suggestions which we beg leave to submit.
We know that the possession of Fort Sumter by troops of the United
States, coupled with the circumstances under which it was taken, is the
chief, if not only, source of difficulty between the government of South
Carolina and that of the United States. We would add that we, too, think
it a just cause of irritation and of apprehension on the part of your
State. But we have also assurances, notwithstanding the circumstances
under which Major Anderson left Fort Moultrie and entered Fort Sumter
with the forces under his command, that it was not taken, and is not
held, with any hostile or unfriendly purpose toward your State, but
merely as property of the United States, which the President deems it
his duty to protect and preserve.
We will not discuss the question of right or duty on the part of either
Government touching that property, or the late acts of either in
relation thereto; but we think that, without any compromise of right or
breach of duty on either side, an amicable adjustment of the matter of
differences may and should be adopted. We desire to see such an
adjustment, and to prevent war or the shedding of blood. We represent
States which have already seceded from the United States, or will have
done so before the 1st of February next, and which will meet your State
in convention on or before the 15th of that month. Our people feel that
they have a common destiny with your people, and expect to form with
them, in that Convention, a new Confederation and Provisional
Government. We must and will share your fortunes, suffering with you the
evils of war if it can not be avoided; and enjoying with you the
blessings of peace, if it can be preserved. We, therefore, think it
especially due from South Carolina to our States--to say nothing of
other slaveholding States--that she should, as far as she can,
consistently with her honor, avoid initiating hostilities between her
and the United States or any other power. We have the public declaration
of the President that he has not the constitutional power or the will to
make war on South Carolina, and that the public peace shall not be
disturbed by any act of hostility toward your State.
We, therefore, see no reason why there may not be a settlement of
existing difficulties, if time be given for calm and deliberate counsel
with those States which are equally involved with South Carolina. We,
therefore, trust that an arrangement will be agreed on between you and
the President, at least till the 15th of February next; by which time
your and our States may, in convention, devise a wise, just, and
peaceable solution of existing difficulties.
In the mean time, we think your State should suffer Major Anderson to
obtain necessary supplies of food, fuel, or water, and enjoy free
communication, by post or special messenger, with the President; upon
the understanding that the President will not send him reënforcements
during the same period. We propose to submit this proposition and your
answer to the President.
If not clothed with power to make such arrangement, then we trust that
you will submit our suggestions to the Governor of your State for his
instructions. Until you have received and communicated his response to
the President, of course your State will not attack Fort Sumter, and the
President will not offer to reënforce it.
We most respectfully submit these propositions, in the earnest hope that
you, or the proper authority of your State, may accede to them.
We have the honor to be, with profound esteem,
Your obedient servants,
LOUIS T. WIGFALL,
JOHN HEMPHILL,
D. L. YULEE,
S. R. MALLORY,
JEFFERSON DAVIS,
C. C. CLAY, Jr.,
BENJAMIN FITZPATRICK,
A. IVERSON,
JOHN SLIDELL,
J. P. BENJAMIN.
_Letter of Hon. I. W. Hayne in reply to Senators from seceding States._
Washington, _January, 1861_.
Gentlemen: I have just received your communication, dated the 15th
instant. You represent, you say, States which have already seceded from
the United States, or _will have_ done so before the 1st of February
next, and which will meet South Carolina in convention, on or before
the 15th of that month; that your people feel they have a common destiny
with our people, and expect to form with them in that Convention a new
Confederacy and Provisional Government; that you must and _will_ share
our fortunes, suffering with us the evils of war, if it can not be
avoided, and enjoying with us the blessings of peace, if it _can_ be
preserved.
I feel, gentlemen, the force of this appeal, and, so far as my authority
extends, most cheerfully comply with your request.
I am _not_ clothed with power to make the arrangements you suggest, but
provided you can get assurances, with which you are entirely satisfied,
that _no_ reënforcements will be sent to Fort Sumter in the interval,
and that public peace shall _not_ be disturbed by any act of hostility
toward South Carolina, I will refer your communication to the
authorities of South Carolina, and, withholding their communication,
with which I am at present charged, will wait for their instructions.
Major Anderson and his command, let me assure you, _do_ now obtain all
necessary supplies of food (including fresh meat and vegetables), and, I
believe, fuel and water; and _do_ now enjoy free communication, by post
and special messengers, with the President, and will continue to do so,
certainly, until the door of negotiation shall be closed.
If your proposition is acceded to, you may assure the President that
_no_ attack will be made on Fort Sumter until a response from the
Governor of South Carolina has been received by me, and communicated to
him.
With great consideration and profound esteem,
Your obedient servant,
ISAAC W. HAYNE,
_Envoy from the Governor and Council of South Carolina._
_Letter of Senators of seceding States to the President._
Senate-Chamber, _January 19, 1861_.
Sir: We have been requested to present to you copies of a correspondence
between certain Senators of the United States and Colonel Isaac W.
Hayne, now in this city, in behalf of the government of South Carolina,
and to ask that you will take into consideration the subject of said
correspondence. Very respectfully, your obedient servants,
BENJAMIN FITZPATRICK,
S. R. MALLORY,
JOHN SLIDELL.
To his Excellency James Buchanan, _President United States_.
To the letter above, an evasive reply was returned on the 22d by the
Hon. Joseph Holt, Secretary of War _ad interim_, on behalf of the
President, the material points of which are contained in the following
paragraph:
In regard to the proposition of Colonel Hayne, that "no reënforcements
will be sent to Fort Sumter in the interval, and that the public peace
will not be disturbed by any act of hostility toward South Carolina," it
is impossible for me to give you any such assurances. The President has
no authority to enter into such an agreement or understanding. As an
executive officer, he is simply bound to protect the public property, so
far as this may be practicable; and it would be a manifest violation of
his duty to place himself under engagements that he would not perform
this duty either for an indefinite or limited period. At the present
moment it is not deemed necessary to reënforce Major Anderson, because
he makes no such request, and feels quite secure in his position. Should
his safety, however, require reënforcements, every effort will be made
to supply them.
Mr. Holt concludes his letter by saying:
Major Anderson is not menacing Charleston; and I am convinced that the
happiest result which can be attained is, that both he and the
authorities of South Carolina shall remain on their present amicable
footing, neither party being bound by any obligations whatever, except
the high Christian and moral duty to keep the peace, and to avoid all
causes of mutual irritation. Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
J. HOLT, _Secretary of War ad interim._
_Letter of Senators of seceding States to Hon. I. W. Hayne._
Hon. Isaac W. Hayne. Washington, _January 23, 1861_.
Sir: In answer to your letter of the 17th inst. we have now to inform
you that, after communicating with the President, we have received a
letter signed by the Secretary of War, and addressed to Messrs.
Fitzpatrick, Mallory, and Slidell, on the subject of our proposition,
which letter we now inclose to you. Although its terms are not as
satisfactory as we could have desired, in relation to the ulterior
purposes of the Executive, we have no hesitation in expressing our
entire confidence that no reënforcements will be sent to Fort Sumter,
nor will the public peace be disturbed within the period requisite for
full communication between yourself and your government; and we trust,
therefore, that you will feel justified in applying for further
instructions before delivering to the President any message with which
you may have been charged.
We take this occasion to renew the expression of an earnest hope that
South Carolina will not deem it incompatible with her safety, dignity;
or honor to refrain from initiating any hostilities against any power
whatsoever, or from taking any steps tending to produce collision, until
our States, which are to share her fortunes, shall have an opportunity
of joining their counsels with hers.
We are, with great respect, your obedient servants,
LOUIS T. WIGFALL,
D. L. YULEE,
J. P. BENJAMIN,
A. IVERSON,
JOHN HEMPHILL,
JOHN SLIDELL,
C. C. CLAY, Jr.
P.S.--Some of the signatures to the former letter addressed to you are
not affixed to the foregoing communication, in consequence of the
departure of several Senators, now on their way to their respective
States.
_Letter of Hon. I. W. Hayne to Senators of seceding States._
To the Honorable Louis T. Wigfall, D. L. Yulee, J. P. Benjamin, A.
Iverson, John Hemphill, John Slidell, and C. C. Clay, Jr.
Gentlemen: I have received your letter of the 23d inst., inclosing a
communication dated the 22d inst., addressed to Messrs. Fitzpatrick,
Mallory, and Slidell, from the Secretary of War _ad interim_. This
communication from the Secretary is far from being satisfactory to me.
But, inasmuch as you state that "we (you) have no hesitation in
expressing an entire confidence that no reënforcement will be sent to
Fort Sumter, nor will the public peace be disturbed within the period
requisite for full communication between yourself (myself) and your (my)
Government," in compliance with our previous understanding, I withhold
the communication with which I am at present charged, and refer the
whole matter to the authorities of South Carolina, and will await their
reply.
Mr. Gourdin, of South Carolina, now in this city, will leave here by the
evening's train, and will lay before the Governor of South Carolina and
his Council the whole correspondence between yourselves and myself, and
between you and the Government of the United States, with a
communication from me, asking further instructions.
I can not, in closing, but express my deep regret that the President
should deem it necessary to keep a garrison of troops at Fort Sumter for
the protection of the "_property_" of the United States. South Carolina
scorns the idea of appropriating to herself the _property_ of another,
whether of a government or an individual, without accounting, to the
last dollar, for everything which, for the protection of her citizens
and in vindication of her own honor and dignity, she may deem it
necessary to take into her own possession. As _property_, Fort Sumter is
in far greater jeopardy occupied by a garrison of United States troops
than it would be if delivered over to the State authorities, with the
pledge that, in regard to that and all other property claimed by the
United States within the jurisdiction of South Carolina, they would
fully account, upon a fair adjustment.
Upon the other point of the preservation of the peace, and the avoidance
of bloodshed--is it supposed that the occupation of a fort in the midst
of a harbor, with guns bearing upon every position of it, by a
Government no longer acknowledged, can be other than the occasion of
constant irritation, excitement, and indignation? It creates a condition
of things which I fear is but little calculated to advance the
observance of the "high Christian and moral duty to keep the peace, and
to avoid all causes of mutual irritation," recommended by the Secretary
of War in his communication.
In my judgment, to continue to hold Fort Sumter, by United States
troops, is the worst possible means of protecting it as property, and
the worst possible means for effecting a peaceful solution of present
difficulties.
I beg leave, in conclusion, to say that it is in deference to the
unanimous opinion expressed by the Senators present in Washington,
"representing States which have already seceded from the United States,
or will have done so before the 1st of February next," that I comply
with your suggestions. And I feel assured that suggestions from such a
quarter will be considered with profound respect by the authorities of
South Carolina, and will have great weight in determining their action.
With high consideration, I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your
obedient servant,
ISAAC W. HAYNE,
_Envoy from the Governor and Council of South Carolina._
_Mr. Hayne to the President of the United States_.
Washington, _January_ 31, 1861.
To his Excellency James Buchanan, _President_.
Sir: I had the honor to hold a short interview with you on the 14th
inst., informal and unofficial. Having previously been informed that you
desired that whatever was official should be, on both sides, conducted
by written communications, I did not at that time present my
credentials, but verbally informed you that I bore a letter from the
Governor of South Carolina in regard to the occupation of Fort Sumter,
which I would deliver the next day under cover of a written
communication from myself. The next day, before such communication could
be made, I was waited upon by a Senator from Alabama, who stated that he
came on the part of all the Senators then in Washington from the States
which had already seceded from the United States, or would certainly
have done so before the 1st day of February next. The Senator from
Alabama urged that he and they were interested in the subject of my
mission in almost an equal degree with the authorities of South
Carolina. He said that hostilities commenced between South Carolina and
your Government would necessarily involve the States represented by
themselves in civil strife, and, fearing that the action of South
Carolina might complicate the relations of your Government to the
seceded and seceding States, and thereby interfere with a peaceful
solution of existing difficulties, these Senators requested that I would
withhold my message to yourself until a consultation among themselves
could be had. To this I agreed, and the result of the consultation was
the letter of these Senators addressed to me, dated 15th January, a copy
of which is in your possession. To this letter I replied on the 17th,
and a copy of that reply is likewise in your possession. This
correspondence, as I am informed, was made the subject of a
communication from Senators Fitzpatrick, Mallory, and Slidell, addressed
to you, and your attention called to the contents. These gentlemen
received on the 22d day of January a reply to their application,
conveyed in a letter addressed to them, dated the 22d, signed by the
Hon. J. Holt, Secretary of War _ad interim_. Of this letter you of
course have a copy. This letter from Mr. Holt was communicated to me
under the cover of a letter from all the Senators of the seceded and
seceding States, who still remained in Washington; and of this letter,
too, I am informed you have been furnished with a copy.
This reply of yours through the Secretary of War _ad interim_ to the
application made by the Senators, was entirely unsatisfactory to me. It
appeared to me to be not only a rejection in advance of the main
proposition made by these Senators, to wit, that "an arrangement should
be agreed on between the authorities of South Carolina and your
Government, at least until the 15th of February next, by which time
South Carolina and the States represented by the Senators might, in
convention, devise a wise, just, and peaceable solution of existing
difficulties"; "in the mean time," they say, "we think" (that is, these
Senators) "that your State" (South Carolina) "should suffer Major
Anderson to obtain necessary supplies of food, fuel, or water, and enjoy
free communication, by post or special messenger, with the President,
upon the understanding that the President will not send him
reënforcements during the same period"; but, besides this rejection of
the main proposition, there was in Mr. Holt's letter a distinct refusal
to make any stipulation on the subject of reënforcement, even for the
short time that might be required to communicate with my government.
This reply to the Senators was, as I have stated, altogether
unsatisfactory to me, and I felt sure that it would be so to the
authorities whom I represented. It was not, however, addressed to me, or
to the authorities of South Carolina; and, as South Carolina had
addressed nothing to your Government, and had asked nothing at your
hands, I looked not to Mr. Holt's letter but to the note addressed to me
by the Senators of the seceded and seceding States. I had consented to
withhold my message at _their_ instance, provided they could get
assurances _satisfactory to them_ that no reënforcements would be sent
to Fort Sumter in the interval, and that the peace should not be
disturbed by any act of hostility. The Senators expressed, in their note
to me of the 23d instant, their "entire confidence that no
reënforcements will be sent to Fort Sumter, nor will the public peace be
disturbed within the period requisite for full communication between you
(myself) and your (my) Government"; and renewed their request that I
would withhold the communication with which I stood charged, and await
further instructions. This I have done. The further instructions arrived
on the 30th instant and bear date the 26th. I now have the honor to make
to you my first communication as special envoy from the government of
South Carolina. You will find inclosed the original communication to the
President of the United States from the Governor of South Carolina, with
which I was charged in Charleston on the 12th day of January, instant,
the day on which it bears date. I am now instructed by the Governor of
South Carolina to say that "his opinion as to the propriety of the
demand which is contained in this letter has not only been confirmed by
the circumstances which your (my) mission has developed, but is now
increased to a conviction of its necessity. The safety of the State
requires that the position of the President should be distinctly
understood. The safety of all seceding States requires it as much as the
safety of South Carolina. If it be so, that Fort Sumter is held as
_property_, then as property, the rights, whatever they may be, of the
United States can be ascertained, and for the satisfaction of these
rights the pledge of the State of South Carolina you are" (I am)
"authorized to give. If Fort Sumter is not held as property, it is
held," say my instructions, "as a military post, and such a post within
the limits of South Carolina can not be tolerated."
You will perceive that it is upon the presumption that it is solely as
property that you continue to hold Fort Sumter that I have been selected
for the performance of the duty upon which I have entered. I do not come
as a military man to demand the surrender of a fortress, but as the
legal officer of the State, its Attorney-General, to claim for the State
the exercise of its undoubted right of eminent domain, and to pledge the
State to make good all injury to the rights of property which may arise
from the exercise of the claim.
South Carolina, as a separate, independent sovereignty, assumes the
right to take into her possession everything within her limits essential
to maintain her honor or her safety, irrespective of the question of
property, subject only to the moral duty requiring that compensation
should be made to the owner. This right she can not permit to be drawn
into discussion. As to compensation for any property, whether of an
individual or a Government, which she may deem it necessary for her
honor or safety to take into her possession, her past history gives
ample guarantee that it will be made, upon a fair accounting, to the
last dollar. The proposition now is, that her law officer should, under
authority of the Governor and his Council, distinctly pledge the faith
of South Carolina to make such compensation in regard to Fort Sumter,
and its appurtenances and contents, to the full extent of the money
value of the property of the United States delivered over to the
authorities of South Carolina by your command.
I will not suppose that a pledge like this can be considered
insufficient security. Is not the money value of the property of the
United States in this fort, situated where it can not be made available
to the United States for any one purpose for which it was originally
constructed, worth more to the United States than the property itself?
Why, then, _as property_, insist on holding it by an armed garrison? Yet
such has been the ground upon which you have invariably placed your
occupancy of this fort by troops; beginning, prospectively, with your
annual message of the 4th December; again in your special message of the
9th (8th) January, and still more emphatically in your message of the
28th January. The same position is set forth in your reply to the
Senators, through the Secretary of War _ad interim_. It is there
virtually conceded that Fort Sumter "is held merely as property of the
United States, which you deem it your duty, to protect and preserve."
Again, it is submitted that the continuance of an armed possession
actually jeopards the property you desire to protect. It is impossible
but that such a possession, if continued long enough, must lead to
collision. No people, not completely abject and pusillanimous, could
submit, indefinitely, to the armed occupation of a fortress in the midst
of the harbor of its principal city, and commanding the ingress and
egress of every ship that enters the port, the daily ferry-boats that
ply upon the waters moving but at the sufferance of aliens. An attack
upon this fort would scarcely improve it as property, whatever the
result; and, if captured, it would no longer be the subject of account.
To protect Fort Sumter, merely as property, it is submitted that an
armed occupancy is not only unnecessary, but that it is manifestly the
worst possible means which can be resorted to for such an object.
Your reply to the Senators, through Mr. Holt, declares it to be your
sole object "to act strictly on the defensive, and to authorize no
movement against South Carolina unless justified by a hostile movement
on their part," yet, in reply to the proposition of the Senators that no
reënforcements should be sent to Fort Sumter, provided South Carolina
agrees that during the same period no attack should be made, you say:
"It is impossible for me (your Secretary) to give you (the Senators) any
such assurance," that it "would be a manifest violation of his (your)
duty to place himself (yourself) under engagements that he (you) would
not perform the duty either for an indefinite or a limited period."
In your message of the 28th inst., in expressing yourself in regard to a
similar proposition, you say: "However strong may be my desire to enter
into such an agreement, I am convinced that I do not possess the power.
Congress, and Congress alone, under the war-making power, can exercise
the discretion of agreeing to abstain 'from any and all acts calculated
to produce a collision of arms' between this and other governments. It
would, therefore, be a usurpation for the Executive to attempt to
restrain their hands by an agreement in regard to matters over which he
has no constitutional control. If he were thus to act, they might pass
laws which he should be bound to obey, though in conflict with his
agreement." The proposition, it is suggested, was addressed to you under
the laws as they now are, and was not intended to refer to a new
condition of things arising under new legislation. It was addressed to
the Executive discretion, acting under existing laws. If Congress
should, under the war-making power, or in any other way, legislate in a
manner to affect the peace of South Carolina, her interests or her
rights, it would not be accomplished in secret. South Carolina would
have timely notice, and she would, I trust, endeavor to meet the
emergency.
It is added in the letter of Mr. Holt that "at the present moment it is
not deemed necessary to reënforce Major Anderson, because he makes no
such request, and feels quite secure in his position. But, should his
safety require it, every effort will be made to supply reënforcements."
This would seem to ignore the other branch of the proposition made by
the Senators, viz., that no attack was to be made on Fort Sumter during
the period suggested, and that Major Anderson should enjoy the
facilities of communication, etc.
I advert to this point, however, for the purpose of saying that to send
reënforcements to Fort Sumter could not serve as a means of _protecting_
and _preserving_ property, for, as must be known to your Government, it
would inevitably lead to immediate hostilities, in which property on all
sides would necessarily suffer.
South Carolina has every disposition to preserve the public peace, and
feels, I am sure, in full force, those high "Christian and moral duties"
referred to by your Secretary; and it is submitted that on her part
there is scarcely any consideration of mere property, apart from honor
and safety, which could induce her to do aught to jeopard that peace,
still less to inaugurate a protracted and bloody civil war. She rests
her position on something higher than mere property. It is a
consideration of her own dignity as a sovereign, and the safety of her
people, which prompts her to demand that this property should not longer
be used as a military post by a Government she no longer acknowledges.
She feels this to be an imperative duty. It has, in fact, become an
absolute necessity of her condition.
Repudiating, as you do, the idea of coercion, avowing peaceful
intentions, and expressing a patriot's horror for civil war and bloody
strife among those who once were brethren, it is hoped that on further
consideration you will not, on a mere question of property, refuse the
reasonable demand of South Carolina, which honor and necessity alike
compel her to vindicate. Should you disappoint this hope, the
responsibility for the result surely does not rest with her. If the
evils of war are to be encountered, especially the calamities of civil
war, an elevated statesmanship would seem to require that it should be
accepted as the unavoidable alternative of something still more
disastrous, such as national dishonor or measures materially affecting
the safety or permanent interests of a people--that it should be a
choice deliberately made, and entered upon as war, and of set purpose.
But that war should be the incident or accident, attendant on a policy
professedly peaceful, and not required to effect the object which is
avowed as the only end intended, can only be excused when there has been
no warning given as to the consequences.
I am further instructed to say that South Carolina can not, by her
silence, appear to acquiesce in the imputation that she was guilty of an
act of unprovoked aggression in firing on the Star of the West. Though
an unarmed vessel, she was filled with armed men entering her territory
against her will, with the purpose of reënforcing a garrison held,
within her limits, against her protest. She forbears to recriminate by
discussing the question of the propriety of attempting such a
reënforcement at all, as well as of the disguised and secret manner in
which it was intended to be effected. And on this occasion she will say
nothing as to the manner in which Fort Sumter was taken into the
possession of its present occupants.
The interposition of the Senators who have addressed you was a
circumstance unexpected by my government, and unsolicited certainly by
me. The Governor, while he appreciates the high and generous motives by
which they were prompted, and while he fully approves the delay which,
in deference to them, has taken place in the presentation of this
demand, feels that it can not longer be withheld.
I conclude with an extract from the instructions just received by me
from the government of South Carolina:
"The letter of the President, through Mr. Holt, may be received as the
reply to the question you were instructed to ask, as to his assertion of
his right to send reënforcements to Fort Sumter. You were instructed to
say to him, if he asserted that right, that the State of South Carolina
regarded such a right when asserted, or with an attempt at its exercise,
as a declaration of war.
"If the President intends it shall not be so understood, it is proper,
to avoid any misconception hereafter, that he should be informed of the
manner in which the Governor will feel bound to regard it.
"If the President, when you have stated the reasons which prompt the
Governor in making the demand for the delivery of Sumter, shall refuse
to deliver the fort upon the pledge you have been authorized to make,
you will communicate that refusal without delay to the Governor. If the
President shall not be prepared to give you an immediate answer, you
will communicate to him that his answer may be transmitted within a
reasonable time to the Governor at this place (Charleston, South
Carolina).
"The Governor does not consider it necessary that you (I) should remain
longer in Washington than is necessary to execute this, the closing duty
of your (my) mission, in the manner now indicated to you (me). As soon
as the Governor shall receive from you information that you have closed
your mission, and the reply, whatever it may be, of the President, he
will consider the conduct which may be necessary on his part."
Allow me to request that you would, as soon as possible, inform me
whether, under these instructions, I need await your answer in
Washington; and, if not, I would be pleased to convey from you, to my
government, information as to the time when an answer may be expected in
Charleston.
With high consideration,
I am, very respectfully,
ISAAC W. HAYNE, _Special Envoy_.
Some further correspondence ensued, but without the presentation of any
new feature necessary to a full understanding of the case. The result
was to leave it as much unsettled in the end as it had been in the
beginning, and the efforts at negotiation were terminated by the
retirement from Washington of Colonel Hayne on the 8th of February,
1861.
APPENDIX K.
THE CONSTITUTIONS.
The Provisional Constitution of the Confederate States, adopted on the
8th of February, 1861, is here presented, followed by the Constitution
of the United States, with all its amendments to the period of the
secession of the Southern States, and the permanent Constitution of the
Confederate States (adopted on the 11th of March, 1861), in parallel
columns. The variations from the Constitution of the United States, in
the permanent Constitution of the Confederate States, are indicated by
italics; the parts omitted by periods.
Constitution for the Provisional Government of the Confederate States of
America.
We, the deputies of the sovereign and independent States of South
Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana,
invoking the favor of Almighty God, do hereby, in behalf of these
States, ordain and establish this Constitution for the provisional
Government of the same: to continue one year from the inauguration of
the President, or until a permanent Constitution or Confederation
between the said States shall be put in operation, whichsoever shall
first occur.
ARTICLE I.
Section 1.--All legislative powers herein delegated shall be vested in
this Congress now assembled until otherwise ordained.
Section 2.--When vacancies happen in the representation from any State,
the same shall be filled in such manner as the proper authorities of the
State shall direct.
Section 3.--1. The Congress shall be the judge of the elections,
returns, and qualifications of its members; any number of deputies from
a majority of the States being present, shall constitute a quorum to do
business; but a smaller number may adjourn from day to day, and may be
authorized to compel the attendance of absent members; upon all
questions before the Congress each State shall be entitled to one vote,
and shall be represented by any one or more of its deputies who may be
present.
2. The Congress may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its
members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two
thirds, expel a member.
3. The Congress shall keep a journal of its proceedings, and from time
to time publish the same, excepting such parts as may in their judgment
require secrecy; and the yeas and nays of the members on any question
shall, at the desire of one fifth of those present, or at the instance
of any one State, be entered on the journal.
Section 4.--The members of Congress shall receive a compensation for
their services, to be ascertained by law, and paid out of the Treasury
of the Confederacy. They shall in all cases, except treason, felony, and
breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance
at the session of the Congress, and in going to and returning from the
same; and for any speech or debate they shall not be questioned in any
other place.
Section 5.--1. Every bill which shall have passed the Congress shall,
before it becomes a law, be presented to the President of the
Confederacy; if he approve, he shall sign it; but, if not, he shall
return it with his objections to the Congress, who shall enter the
objections at large on their journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If,
after such reconsideration, two thirds of the Congress shall agree to
pass the bill, it shall become a law. But in all such cases the votes
shall be determined by yeas and nays; and the names of the persons
voting for and against the bill shall be entered on the journal. If any
bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays
excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a
law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress, by
their adjournment, prevent its return, in which case it shall not be a
law. The President may veto any appropriation or appropriations, and
approve any other appropriation or appropriations, in the same bill.
2. Every order, resolution, or vote intended to have the force and
effect of a law, shall be presented to the President, and, before the
same shall take effect, shall be approved by him, or, being disapproved
by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Congress, according to
the rules and limitations prescribed in the case of a bill.
3. Until the inauguration of the President, all bills, orders,
resolutions, and votes adopted by the Congress shall be of full force
without approval by him.
Section 6.--1. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes,
duties, imposts, and excises, for the revenue necessary to pay the debts
and carry on the Government of the Confederacy; and all duties, imposts,
and excises shall be uniform throughout the States of the Confederacy.
2. To borrow money on the credit of the Confederacy.
3. To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several
States, and with the Indian tribes.
4. To establish a uniform rule of naturalization and uniform laws on the
subject of bankruptcies throughout the Confederacy.
5. To coin money, regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin, and
fix the standard of weights and measures.
6. To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and
current coin of the Confederacy.
7. To establish post-offices and post-roads.
8. To promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for
limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their
respective writings and discoveries.
9. To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court.
10. To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the
high-seas, and offenses against the law of nations.
11. To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules
concerning captures on land and water.
12. To raise and support armies; but no appropriation of money to that
use shall be for a longer term than two years.
13. To provide and maintain a navy.
14. To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and
naval forces.
15. To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the
Confederacy, suppress insurrections, and repel invasion.
16. To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and
for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the
Confederacy, reserving to the States respectively the appointment of the
officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the
discipline prescribed by Congress.
17. To make all laws that shall be necessary and proper for carrying
into execution the foregoing powers and all other powers expressly
delegated by this Constitution to this provisional Government.
18. The Congress shall have power to admit other States.
19. This Congress shall also exercise executive powers until the
President is inaugurated.
Section 7.--1. The importation of African negroes from any foreign
country, other than the slaveholding States of the United States, is
hereby forbidden; and Congress are required to pass such laws as shall
effectually prevent the same.
2. The Congress shall also have power to prohibit the introduction of
slaves from any State not a member of this Confederacy.
3. The privilege of the writ of _habeas corpus_ shall not be suspended
unless, when in case of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may
require it.
4. No bill of attainder or _ex post facto_ law shall be passed.
5. No preference shall be given, by any regulation of commerce or
revenue, to the ports of one State over those of another; nor shall
vessels bound to or from one State be obliged to enter, clear, or pay
duties in another.
6. No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of
appropriations made by law; and a regular statement and account of the
receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published from
time to time.
7. Congress shall appropriate no money from the Treasury unless it be
asked and estimated for by the President or some one of the heads of
departments, except for the purpose of paying its own expenses and
contingencies.
8. No title of nobility shall be granted by the Confederacy; and no
person holding any office of profit or trust under it shall, without the
consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or
title of any kind whatever from any king, prince, or foreign state.
9. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to
assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of such grievances
as the delegated powers of this Government may warrant it to consider
and redress.
10. A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free
state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be
infringed.
11. No soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house
without the consent of the owner; nor in time of war, but in a manner to
be prescribed by law.
12. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses,
papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not
be violated; and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause,
supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place
to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
13. No person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise
infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury,
except in cases arising in the land or naval forces or in the militia,
when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any
person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of
life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a
witness against himself; nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property
without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for
public use without just compensation.
14. In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a
speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the State and district
wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have
been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and
cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witness against him;
to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor; and to
have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
15. In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed
twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved; and no
fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise reëxamined in any court of the
Confederacy than according to the rules of the common law.
16. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed,
nor cruel and unusual punishment inflicted.
17. The enumeration, in the Constitution, of certain rights shall not be
construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
18. The powers not delegated to the Confederacy by the Constitution, nor
prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively,
or to the people.
19. The judicial power of the Confederacy shall not be construed to
extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one
of the States of the Confederacy, by citizens of another State, or by
citizens or subjects of any foreign state.
Section 8.--1. No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or
confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit
bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in
payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, _ex post facto_ law, or
law impairing the obligation of contracts; or grant any title of
nobility.
2. No State shall, without the consent of the Congress, lay any imposts
or duties on imports or exports, except what may be absolutely necessary
for executing its inspection laws; and the net produce of all duties and
imposts, laid by any State on imports or exports, shall be for the use
of the Treasury of the Confederacy, and all such laws shall be subject
to the revision and control of the Congress. No State shall, without the
consent of Congress, lay any duty on tonnage, enter into any agreement
or compact with another State, or with a foreign power, or engage in war
unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of
delay.
ARTICLE II.
Section 1.--1. The Executive power shall be vested in a President of the
Confederate States of America. He, together with the Vice-President,
shall hold his office for one year, or until this Provisional Government
shall be superseded by a permanent Government, whichsoever shall first
occur.
2. The President and Vice-President shall be elected by ballot by the
States represented in this Congress, each State casting one vote, and a
majority of the whole being requisite to elect.
3. No person except a natural-born citizen, or a citizen of one of the
States of this Confederacy at the time of the adoption of this
Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither
shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained
the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident of one
of the States of this Confederacy.
4. In case of the removal of the President from office, or of his death,
resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said
office (which inability shall be determined by a vote of two thirds of
the Congress), the same shall devolve on the Vice-President; and the
Congress may by law provide for the case of removal, death, resignation,
or inability both of the President and Vice-President, declaring what
officer shall then act as President; and such officer shall act
accordingly, until the disability be removed or a President shall be
elected.
5. The President shall, at stated times, receive for his services during
the period of the Provisional Government a compensation at the rate of
twenty-five thousand dollars per annum; and he shall not receive during
that period any other emolument from this Confederacy, or any of the
States thereof.
6. Before he enters on the execution of his office, he shall take the
following oath or affirmation:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the
office of President of the Confederate States of America, and will, to
the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution
thereof.
Section 2.--1. The President shall be Commander-in-Chief of the Army and
Navy of the Confederacy, and of the militia of the several States, when
called into the actual service of the Confederacy; he may require the
opinion in writing of the principal officer in each of the executive
departments, upon subjects relating to the duties of their respective
offices; and he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for
offenses against the Confederacy, except in cases of impeachment.
2. He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the
Congress, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Congress concur;
and he shall nominate and, by and with the advice and consent of the
Congress, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers, and
consuls, judges of the courts, and all other officers of the Confederacy
whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which
shall be established by law. But the Congress may, by law, vest the
appointment of such inferior officers as they think proper in the
President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.
3. The President shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may
happen during the recess of the Congress, by granting commissions which
shall expire at the end of their next session.
Section 3.--1. He shall from time to time give to the Congress
information of the state of the Confederacy, and recommend to their
consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient;
he may, on extraordinary occasions, convene the Congress at such times
as he shall think proper; he shall receive ambassadors and other public
ministers; he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed; and
shall commission all the officers of the Confederacy.
2. The President, Vice-President, and all civil officers of the
Confederacy shall be removed from office on conviction by the Congress
of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors; a vote of
two thirds shall be necessary for such conviction.
ARTICLE III.
Section 1.--1. The judicial power of the Confederacy shall be vested in
one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as are herein directed,
or as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.
2. Each State shall constitute a district in which there shall be a
court called a District Court, which, until otherwise provided by the
Congress, shall have the jurisdiction vested by the laws of the United
States, as far as applicable, in both the District and Circuit Courts of
the United States, for that State; the judge whereof shall be appointed
by the President by and with the advice and consent of the Congress, and
shall, until otherwise provided by the Congress, exercise the power and
authority vested by the laws of the United States in the judges of the
District and Circuit Courts of the United States for that State, and
shall appoint the times and places at which the courts shall be held.
Appeals may be taken directly from the District Courts to the Supreme
Court, under similar regulations to those which are provided in cases of
appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, or under such
regulations as may be provided by the Congress. The commissions of all
the judges shall expire with this provisional Government.
3. The Supreme Court shall be constituted of all the district judges, a
majority of whom shall be a quorum, and shall sit at such times and
places as the Congress shall appoint.
4. The Congress shall have power to make laws for the transfer of any
causes which were pending in the courts of the United States to the
courts of the Confederacy, and for the execution of the orders, decrees,
and judgments heretofore rendered by the said courts of the United
States; and also all laws which may be requisite to protect the parties
to all such suits, orders, judgments, or decrees, their heirs, personal
representatives, or assignees.
Section 2.--1. The judicial power shall extend to all cases of law and
equity arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States
and of this Confederacy, and treaties made, or which shall be made,
under its authority; to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public
ministers and consuls; to all cases of admiralty and maritime
jurisdiction; to controversies to which the Confederacy shall be a
party; controversies between two or more States; between citizens of
different States; between citizens of the same State claiming lands
under grants of different States.
2. In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and
consuls, and those in which a State shall be a party, the Supreme Court
shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before
mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction both as
to law and fact, with such exceptions and under such regulations as the
Congress shall make.
3. The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by
jury, and such trial shall be held in the State where the said crimes
shall have been committed; but, when not committed within any State, the
trial shall be at such place or places as the Congress may by law have
directed.
Section 3.--1. Treason against this Confederacy shall consist only in
levying war against it, or in adhering to its enemies, giving them aid
and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the
testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in
open court.
2. The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason;
but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or
forfeiture, except during the life of the person attainted.
ARTICLE IV.
Section 1.--1. Full faith and credit shall be given in each State to the
public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other State. And
the Congress may by general laws prescribe the manner in which such
acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect of such
proof.
Section 2.--1. The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all
privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.
2. A person charged in any State with treason, felony, or other crime,
who shall flee from justice, and be found in another State, shall, on
demand of the Executive authority of the State from which he fled, be
delivered up to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the
crime.
3. A slave in one State escaping to another shall be delivered up, on
claim of the party to whom said slave may belong, by the Executive
authority of the State in which such slave shall be found, and, in case
of any abduction or forcible rescue, full compensation, including the
value of the slave and all costs and expenses, shall be made to the
party by the State in which such abduction or rescue shall take place.
Section 3.--1. The Confederacy shall guarantee to every State in this
Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them
against invasion; and on application of the Legislature, or of the
Executive (when the Legislature can not be convened), against domestic
violence.
ARTICLE V.
1. The Congress, by a vote of two thirds, may at any time alter or amend
this Constitution.
ARTICLE VI.
1. This Constitution, and the laws of the Confederacy which shall be
made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be
made, under the authority of the Confederacy, shall be the supreme law
of the land; and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby,
anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary
notwithstanding.
2. The Government hereby instituted shall take immediate steps for the
settlement of all matters between the States forming it, and their other
late confederates of the United States, in relation to the public
property and public debt at the time of their withdrawal from them;
these States hereby declaring it to be their wish and earnest desire to
adjust everything pertaining to the common property, common liability,
and common obligations of that Union upon the principles of right,
justice, equity, and good faith.
3. Until otherwise provided by the Congress, the city of Montgomery, in
the State of Alabama, shall be the seat of government.
4. The members of the Congress and all executive and judicial officers
of the Confederacy shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support this
Constitution; but no religious test shall be required as a qualification
to any office or public trust under this Confederacy.
[Transcriber's Note: Following are the constitutions of the United
States of America, and of the Confederate States of America, listed
essentially sentence by sentence, with the corresponding sentences from
each constitution. This is the listing "in parallel columns" described
earlier. Each sentence is prefixed with either USA or CSA to indicate
the source.]
[USA] Constitution of the United States of America.[208]
[CSA] Constitution of the Confederate States of America.
[USA] We the People of the United States, in order to form a more
perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide
for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the
Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and
establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
[CSA] We, the People of the _Confederate_ States, _each State acting in
its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent
Federal Government_, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity,
and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our
posterity--_invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God_--do ordain
and establish this Constitution for the _Confederate_ States of America.
[USA] ARTICLE I.
[CSA] ARTICLE I.
[USA] Section 1. All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested
in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and
House of Representatives.
[CSA] Section 1. All legislative powers herein _delegated_ shall be
vested in a Congress of the _Confederate_ States, which shall consist of
a Senate and House of Representatives.
[USA] Section 2. The House of Representatives shall be composed of
Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States,
and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite
for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.
[CSA] Section 2. The House of Representatives shall be composed of
members chosen every second year by the people of the several States;
and the electors in each State shall _be citizens of the Confederate
States_, _and_ have the qualifications requisite for electors of the
most numerous branch of the State Legislature; _but no person of foreign
birth, not a citizen of the Confederate States, shall be allowed to vote
for any officer, civil or political, State or Federal_.
[USA] No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to
the Age of twenty-five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the
United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that
State in which he shall be chosen.
[CSA] No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained
the age of twenty-five years, and _be a citizen of the Confederate_
States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that State
in which he shall be chosen.
[USA] Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the
several States, which may be included within this Union, according to
their respective Numbers,[209] which shall be determined by adding to
the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a
Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all
other Persons.[210] The actual Enumeration shall be made within three
Years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and
within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall
by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for
every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one
Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of
New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight,
Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New York
six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six,
Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia
three.
[CSA] Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the
several States which may be included within this _Confederacy_,
according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by
adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to
service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three
fifths of all _slaves_. The actual enumeration shall be made within
three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the _Confederate_
States, and within every subsequent term of ten years, in such manner as
they shall be by law direct. The number of Representatives shall not
exceed one for every _fifty_ thousand, but each State shall have at
least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the
State of _South Carolina_ shall be entitled to choose _six, the State of
Georgia ten, the State of Alabama nine, the State of Florida two, the
State of Mississippi seven, the State of Louisiana six, and the State of
Texas six_.
[USA] When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the
Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such
Vacancies.
[CSA] When vacancies happen in the representation from any State, the
Executive authority thereof shall issue writs of election to fill such
vacancies.
[USA] The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other
officers;[211] and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.
[CSA] The House of Representatives shall choose their Speaker and other
officers; and shall have the sole power of impeachment, _except that any
judicial or other Federal officer, resident and acting solely within the
limits of any State, may be impeached by a vote of two thirds of both
branches of the Legislature thereof_.
[USA] Section 3. The Senate of the United States shall be composed of
two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six
Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.
[CSA] Section 3. The Senate of the _Confederate_ States shall be
composed of two Senators from each State, chosen for six years by the
Legislature thereof, _at the regular session next immediately preceding
the commencement of the term of service_; and each Senator shall have
one vote.
[USA] Immediately after they shall be assembled in Consequence of the
first Election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three
Classes. The Seats of the Senators of the first Class shall be vacated
at the Expiration of the second Year, of the second Class at the
Expiration of the fourth Year, and of the third class at the Expiration
of the sixth Year, so that one-third may be chosen every second year;
and if Vacancies happen by Resignation, or otherwise, during the Recess
of the Legislature of any State, the Executive thereof may make
temporary Appointments until the next Meeting of the Legislature, which
shall then fill such Vacancies.
[CSA] Immediately after they shall be assembled, in consequence of the
first election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three
classes. The seats of the Senators of the first class shall be vacated
at the expiration of the second year; of the second class at the
expiration of the fourth year; and of the third class at the expiration
of the sixth year; so that one third may be chosen every second year;
and if vacancies happen by resignation or otherwise, during the recess
of the Legislature of any State, the Executive thereof may make
temporary appointments until the next meeting of the Legislature, which
shall then fill such vacancies.
[USA] No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the
Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States,
and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for
which he shall be chosen.
[CSA] No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained the age
of thirty years, and _be a citizen of the Confederate_ States; and who
shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of _the_ State for which he
shall be chosen.
[USA] The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the
Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.
[CSA] The Vice-President of the _Confederate_ States shall be President
of the Senate, but shall have no vote unless they be equally divided.
[USA] The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President
pro tempore, in the absence of the Vice President, or when he shall
exercise the Office of President of the United States.
[CSA] The Senate shall choose their other officers; and also a President
_pro tempore_ in the absence of the Vice-President, or when he shall
exercise the office of President of the _Confederate_ States.
[USA] The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When
sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the
President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall
preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of
two-thirds of the Members present.
[CSA] The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments. When
sitting for that purpose, they shall be on oath or affirmation. When the
President of the _Confederate_ States is tried, the Chief-Justice shall
preside; and no person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two
thirds of the members present.
[USA] Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to
removal from Office, and Disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office
of Honour, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party
convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial,
Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.
[CSA] Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to
removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office
of honor, trust, or profit, under the _Confederate_ States; but the
party convicted shall, nevertheless, be liable and subject to
indictment, trial, judgment, and punishment according to law.
[USA] Section 4. The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for
Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the
Legislature thereof: but the Congress may at any time by Law make or
alter such Regulations, except as to the places of chusing Senators.
[CSA] Section 4. The times, place, and manner of holding elections for
Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the
Legislature thereof, _subject to the provisions of this Constitution_;
but the Congress may, at any time, by law, make or alter such
regulations, except as to the _times and_ places of choosing Senators.
[USA] The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year, and such
Meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by
Law appoint a different Day.
[CSA] The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year; and such
meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall, by
law, appoint a different day.
[USA] Section 5. Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns
and Qualifications of its own Members and a Majority of each shall
constitute a Quorum to do Business; but a smaller Number may adjourn
from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the Attendance of
absent Members, in such Manner, and under such Penalties as each House
may provide.
[CSA] Section 5. Each House shall be the judge of the elections,
returns, and qualifications of its own members, and a majority of each
shall constitute a quorum to do business; but a smaller number may
adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the attendance
of absent members, in such manner and under such penalties as each House
may provide.
[USA] Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its
Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of
two-thirds, expel a Member.
[CSA] Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its
members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two thirds
of the whole number, expel a member.
[USA] Each House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time
to time publish the same, excepting such Parts as may in their Judgment
require Secrecy; and the Yeas and Nays of the Members of either House on
any question shall, at the Desire of one-fifth of those Present, be
entered on the Journal.
[CSA] Each House shall keep a journal of its proceedings, and from time
to time publish the same, excepting such parts as may in their judgment
require secrecy; and the yeas and nays of the members of either House,
on any question, shall, at the desire of one fifth of those present, be
entered on the journal.
[USA] Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the
Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other
Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.
[CSA] Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the
consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other
place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.
[USA] Section 6. The Senators and Representatives shall receive a
Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out
of the Treasury of the United States. They shall in all Cases, except
Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest
during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and
in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in
either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.
[CSA] Section 6. The Senators and Representatives shall receive a
compensation for their services, to be ascertained by law, and paid out
of the Treasury of the _Confederate_ States. They shall in all cases,
except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from
arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective
Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and, for any speech
or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other
place.
[USA] No Senator or Representative shall, during the time for which he
was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the
United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof
shall have been increased during such time; and no Person holding any
Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during
his Continuance in Office.
[CSA] No Senator or Representative shall, during the time for which he
was elected, be appointed to any civil office under the authority of the
_Confederate_ States, which shall have been created, or the emoluments
whereof shall have been increased during such time; and no person
holding any office under the _Confederate_ States, shall be a member of
either House during his continuance in office. _But Congress may, by
law, grant to the principal officer in each of the executive departments
a seat upon the floor of either House, with the privilege of discussing
any measures appertaining to his department._
[USA] Section 7. All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the
House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with
Amendments as on other Bills.
[CSA] Section 7. All bills for raising _the_ revenue shall originate in
the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with
amendments, as on other bills.
[USA] Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives
and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the
President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if
not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it
shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their
Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration
two-thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent,
together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall
likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two-thirds of that House,
it shall become a Law. But in all such Cases the Votes of Both Houses
shall be determined by Yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons
voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each
House respectively. If any Bill shall not be returned by the President
within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to
him, the Same shall be a law, in like Manner as if he had signed it,
unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which
Case it shall not be a Law.
[CSA] Every bill which shall have passed _both Houses_, shall, before it
becomes a law, be presented to the President of the _Confederate_
States; if he approve, he shall sign it; but if not, he shall return it,
with his objections, to that House in which it shall have originated,
who shall enter the objections at large on their journal, and proceed to
reconsider it. If, after such reconsideration, two thirds of that House
shall agree to pass the bill, it shall be sent, together with the
objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be
reconsidered, and, if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall
become a law. But, in all such cases, the votes of both Houses shall be
determined by yeas and nays, and the names of the persons voting for and
against the bill shall be entered on the journal of each House,
respectively. If any bill shall not be returned by the President within
ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him,
the same shall be a law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless
the Congress, by their adjournment, prevent its return; in which case it
shall not be a law. _The President may approve any appropriation and
disapprove any other appropriation in the same bill. In such case he
shall, in signing the bill, designate the appropriations disapproved;
and shall return a copy of such appropriations, with his objections, to
the House in which the bill shall have originated; and the same
proceedings shall then be had as in case of other bills disapproved by
the President._
[USA] Every Order, Resolution, or Vote to which the Concurrence of the
Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a
question of Adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the
United States; and before the Same shall take Effect, shall be approved
by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two-thirds of
the Senate and House of Representatives, according to the Rules and
Limitations prescribed in the Case of a Bill.
[CSA] Every order, resolution, or vote, to which the concurrence of
_both Houses_ may be necessary (except on a question of adjournment),
shall be presented to the President of the _Confederate_ States; and,
before the same shall take effect, shall be approved by him; or, being
disapproved, shall be repassed by two thirds of _both Houses_, according
to the rules and limitations prescribed in case of a bill.
[USA] Section 8. The Congress shall have Power
[CSA] Section 8. The Congress shall have power--
[USA] To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the
Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the
United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform
throughout the United States;
[CSA] To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, _for
revenue necessary_ to pay the debts, provide for the common defense,
_and carry on the Government of the Confederate_ States; _but no
bounties shall be granted from the Treasury; nor shall any duties or
taxes on importations from foreign nations be laid to promote or foster
any branch of industry; and all duties, imposts, and excises shall be
uniform throughout the Confederate States_;
[USA] To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
[CSA] To borrow money on the credit of the _Confederate_ States;
[USA] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several
States, and with the Indian Tribes;
[CSA] To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several
States, and with the Indian tribes; _but neither this, nor any other
clause contained in the Constitution, shall ever be construed to
delegate the power to Congress to appropriate money for any internal
improvement intended to facilitate commerce; except for the purpose of
furnishing lights, beacons, and buoys, and other aid to navigation upon
the coasts, and the improvement of harbors and the removing of
obstructions in river navigation, in all which cases, such duties shall
be laid on the navigation facilitated thereby, as may be necessary to
pay the costs and expenses thereof_;
[USA] To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws
on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
[CSA] To establish uniform _laws_ of naturalization, and uniform laws on
the subject of bankruptcies, throughout the _Confederate_ States; _but
no law of Congress shall discharge any debt contracted before the
passage of the same_;
[USA] To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin,
and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
[CSA] To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign Coin,
and fix the standard of weights and measures;
[USA] To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and
current Coin of the United States;
[CSA] To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and
current coin of the _Confederate_ States;
[USA] To establish Post Offices and post Roads;
[CSA] To establish post-offices and post _routes; but the expenses of
the Post-Office Department, after the first day of March, in the year of
our Lord eighteen hundred and sixty-three, shall be paid out of its own
revenue_;
[USA] To promote the progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing
for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their
respective Writings and Discoveries;
[CSA] To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing
for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their
respective writings and discoveries;
[USA] To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
[CSA] To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;
[USA] To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high
Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;
[CSA] To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the
high-seas, and offenses against the law of nations;
[USA] To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make
Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
[CSA] To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make
rules concerning captures on land and on water;
[USA] To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that
Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
[CSA] To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that
use shall be for a longer term than two years;
[USA] To provide and maintain a Navy;
[CSA] To provide and maintain a navy;
[USA] To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and
naval Forces;
[CSA] To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and
naval forces;
[USA] To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of
the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
[CSA] To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of
the _Confederate_ States, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions;
[USA] To provide for organizing, arming and disciplining, the Militia,
and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of
the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment
of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to
the Discipline prescribed by Congress;
[CSA] To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia,
and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of
the _Confederate_ States, reserving to the States, respectively, the
appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia
according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
[USA] To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over
such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of
particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of
the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over
all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in
which the Same shall be, for the Erection for Forts, Magazines,
Arsenals, Dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;--And
[CSA] To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over
such district (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of
_one or more_ States, and the acceptance Congress, become the seat of
the Government of the _Confederate_ States, and to the exercise like
authority over all places purchased by the consent of the Legislature of
the Sate in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts,
magazines, arsenals, dock-yards, and other needful buildings; and
[USA] To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying
into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this
Constitution in the Government of the United Sates, or in any Department
or Officer thereof.
[CSA] To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying
into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this
Constitution in the Government of the _Confederate_ States, or in any
department or officer thereof.
[USA] Section 9. The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of
the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be
prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred
and eight, but a Tax or Duty may be imposed on such Importation, and not
exceeding ten dollars for each Person.
[CSA] Section 9. The importation of _negroes of the African race, from
any foreign country other than the slave-holding States or Territories
of the United States of America, is hereby forbidden; and Congress is
required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same._
[CSA] _Congress shall also have power to prohibit the introduction of
slaves from any State not a member of, or Territory not belonging to,
this Confederacy._
[USA] The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended,
unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may
require it.
[CSA] The privilege of the writ of _habeas corpus_ shall not be
suspended, unless when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public
safety may require it.
[USA] No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
[CSA] No bill of attainder, _ex post facto_ law, _or law denying or
impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed_.
[USA] No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in
Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be
taken.
[CSA] No capitation or other direct tax shall be laid, unless in
proportion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to be
taken.
[USA] No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.
[CSA] No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any State
_except by a vote of two thirds of both Houses_.
[USA] No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or
Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall
Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay
Duties in another.
[CSA] No preference shall be given by any regulation of commerce or
revenue to the ports of one State over those of another.
[USA] No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of
Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the
Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from
time to time.
[CSA] No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of
appropriations made by law; and a regular statement and account of the
receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published from
time to time.
[CSA] _Congress shall appropriate no money from the Treasury, except by
a vote of two thirds of both Houses, taken by yeas and nays, unless it
be asked and estimated for by some one of the heads of departments, and
submitted to Congress by the President; or for the purpose of paying its
own expenses and contingencies; or for the payment of claims against the
Confederate States, the justice of which shall have been judicially
declared by a tribunal for the investigation of claims against the
Government, which it is hereby made the duty of Congress to establish._
_All bills appropriating money shall specify, in Federal currency, the
exact amount of each appropriation, and the purposes for which it is
made; and Congress shall grant no extra compensation to any public
contractor, officer, agent, or servant, after such contract shall have
been made or such service rendered_.
[USA] No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no
Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without
the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office,
or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
[CSA] No title of nobility shall be granted by the _Confederate_ States;
and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them shall,
without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument,
office, or title of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign
state.
[CSA] Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the
freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably
to assemble and petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
[CSA] A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free
state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be
infringed.
[CSA] No soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house
without the consent of the owner; nor in time of war, but in a manner to
be prescribed by law.
[CSA] The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses,
papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall
not be violated; and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause,
supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place
to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
[CSA] No person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise
infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury,
except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia,
when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any
person be subject, for the same offense, to be twice put in jeopardy of
life or limb; nor be compelled, in any criminal case, to be a witness
against himself; nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without
due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use
without just compensation.
[CSA] In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to
a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and
district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district
shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the
nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses
against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his
favor; and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
[CSA] In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall
exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved;
and no fact _so_ tried by a jury shall be otherwise reëxamined in any
court of the _Confederacy_, than according to the rules of the common
law.
[CSA] Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed,
nor cruel and unusual punishment inflicted.
[CSA] _Every law, or resolution having the force of law, shall relate to
but one subject, and that shall be expressed in the title._
[USA] Section 10. No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or
Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit
Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in
Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law
impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
[CSA] Section 10. No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or
confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; make
anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any
bill of attainder, or _ex post facto_ law, or law impairing the
obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility.
[USA] No State shall, without the consent of the Congress, lay any
Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely
necessary for executing its inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all
Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be
for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws
shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.
[CSA] No State shall, without the consent of the Congress, lay any
imposts or duties on imports or exports, except what may be absolutely
necessary for executing its inspection laws; and the net produce of all
duties and imposts, laid by any State on imports or exports, shall be
for the use of the Treasury of the _Confederate_ States; and all such
laws shall be subject to the revision and control of Congress.
[USA] No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of
Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any
Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or
engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as
will not admit of Delay.
[CSA] No State shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty _on_
tonnage, _except on sea-going vessels for the improvement of its rivers
and harbors navigated by the said vessels; but such duties shall not
conflict with any treaties of the Confederate States with foreign
nations. And any surplus revenue thus derived shall, after making such
improvement, be paid into the common Treasury; nor shall any_ State keep
troops or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement of
compact with another State, or with a foreign power, or engage in war
unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of
delay. _But when any river divides or flows through two or more States,
they may enter into compacts with each other to improve the navigation
thereof._
[USA] ARTICLE II.
[USA] Section 1. The executive Power shall be vested in a President of
the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term
of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the
same Term, be elected, as follows:
[CSA] ARTICLE II.
[CSA] Section 1. The executive Power shall be vested in a President of
the _Confederate_ States of America. _He and the Vice-President shall
hold their offices for_ the term of _six_ years; _but the President
shall not be reëligible. The President and the Vice-President shall_ be
elected as follows:
[USA] Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature
thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of
Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the
Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office
of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an
Elector.
[CSA] Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature
thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of
Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the
Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office
of trust or profit under the _Confederate_ States, shall be appointed an
elector.
[USA] [212]The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote
by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an
Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List
of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which
List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the
Government of the United States, directed to the President of the
Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate
and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes
shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes
shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number
of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such
Majority and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of
Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for
President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest
on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But
in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the
Representation from each State having one Vote; a Quorum for this
Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two-thirds of the
States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice.
In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the
greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President.
But if there should remain two or more have equal Votes, the Senate
shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.
[CSA] The electors shall meet in their respective States and vote by
ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall
not be an inhabitant of the same State with themselves; they shall name
in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct
ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make
distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons
voted for as Vice-President and of the number of votes for each, which
list they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the
Government of the _Confederate_ States, directed to the President of the
Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate
and House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the votes
shall then be counted. The person having the greatest number of votes
for President shall be the President, if such number be a majority of
the whole number of electors appointed; and if no person have such
majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding
three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of
Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But
in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by States, the
representation from each State having one vote; a quorum for this
purpose shall consist of a member or members from two thirds of the
States, and a majority of all the States shall be necessary to a choice.
And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President
whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth
day of March next following, then the Vice-President shall act as
President, as in the case of the death or other constitutional
disability of the President.
[CSA] The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President,
shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole
number of electors appointed; and if no person have a majority, then
from the two highest numbers on the list the Senate shall choose the
Vice-President. A quorum for the purpose shall consist of two thirds of
the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall
be necessary to a choice.
[CSA] But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of
President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the
_Confederate_ States.
[USA] The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and
the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the
same throughout the United States.
[CSA] The Congress may determine the time of choosing the electors, and
the day on which they shall give their votes; which day shall be the
same throughout the _Confederate_ States.
[USA] No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the
United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall
be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be
eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of
thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United
States.
[CSA] No person except a natural born citizen of the _Confederate_
States, or a citizen thereof at the time of the adoption of this
Constitution, _or a citizen thereof born in the United States prior to
the 20th of December, 1860_, shall be eligible to the office of
President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall
not have attained the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years
a resident within the _limits of the Confederate States, as they may
exist at the time of his election_.
[USA] In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his
Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of
the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the
Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation,
or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what
Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act
accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be
elected.
[CSA] In case of the removal of the President from office, or of his
death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of
the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice-President; and the
Congress may, by law, provide for the case of removal, death,
resignation, or inability, both of the President and Vice-President,
declaring what officer shall then act as President; and such officer
shall act accordingly, until the disability be removed or a President
shall be elected.
[USA] The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a
Compensation, which shall neither be encreased nor diminished during the
Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive
within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of
them.
[CSA] The President shall, at stated times, receive for his services a
compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the
period for which he shall have been elected; and he shall not receive
within that period any other emolument from the _Confederate_ States, or
any of them.
[USA] Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the
following Oath or Affirmation:
[CSA] Before he enters on the execution of his office, he shall take the
following oath or affirmation:
[USA] "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute
the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my
Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United
States."
[CSA] "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute
the office of President of the _Confederate_ States _of America_, and
will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the
Constitution _thereof_."
[USA] Section 2. The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army
and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States,
when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require
the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the
executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their
respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and
Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of
Impeachment.
[CSA] Section 2. The President shall be Commander-in-Chief of the Army
and Navy of the _Confederate_ States, and of the militia of the several
States, when called into the actual service of the _Confederate_ States;
he may require the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each
of the executive departments, upon any subject relating to the duties of
their respective offices, and he shall have power to grant reprieves and
pardons for offenses against the _Confederacy_, except in cases of
impeachment.
[USA] He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the
Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present
concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of
the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and
Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the
United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for,
and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest
the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the
President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
[CSA] He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the
Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present
concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of
the Senate shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and
consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court and all other officers of the
_Confederate_ States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise
provided for, and which shall be established by law; but the Congress
may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think
proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of
departments.
[CSA] _The principal officer in each of the executive departments, and
all persons connected with the diplomatic service, may be removed from
office at the pleasure of the President. All other civil officers of the
executive department may be removed at any time by the President, or
other appointing power, when their services are unnecessary, or for
dishonesty, incapacity, inefficiency, misconduct, or neglect of duty;
and, when so removed the removal shall be reported to the Senate,
together with the reasons therefor._
[USA] The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may
happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which
shall expire at the End of their next Session.
[CSA] The President shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may
happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which
shall expire at the end of their next session. _But no person rejected
by the Senate shall be reappointed to the same office during their
ensuing recess._
[USA] Section 3. He shall from time to time give to the Congress
Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their
Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient;
he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of
them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the time
of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think
proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he
shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall
Commission all the officers of the United States.
[CSA] Section 3. _The President_ shall from time to time give to the
Congress information of the state of the _Confederacy_, and recommend to
their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and
expedient: he may on extraordinary occasions convene both Houses, or
either of them; and in case of disagreement between them, with respect
to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall
think proper; he shall receive ambassadors and other public ministers;
he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and shall
commission all the officers of the _Confederate_ States.
[USA] Section 4. The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of
the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and
Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
[CSA] Section 4. The President, Vice-President, and all civil officers
of the _Confederate_ States, shall be removed from office on impeachment
for and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and
misdemeanors.
[USA] ARTICLE III.
[CSA] ARTICLE III.
[USA] Section 1. The Judicial Power of the United States, shall be
vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress
may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the
supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good
Behavior, and shall, at stated times, receive for their Services, a
Compensation which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in
Office.
[CSA] Section 1. The judicial power of the _Confederate_ States shall be
vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress
may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the
Supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their offices during good
behavior, and shall, at stated times, receive for their services a
compensation, which shall not be diminished during their continuance in
office.
[USA] Section 2. The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law
and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United
States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their
Authority;--to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers
and Consuls;--to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;--to
Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;--to
Controversies between two or more States;--between a State and Citizens
of another State;--between Citizens of different States,--between
Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different
States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign
States, Citizens or Subjects.
[CSA] Section 2. The judicial power shall extend to all cases arising
under this Constitution, the laws of the _Confederate_ States, and
treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority; to all
cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers, and consuls; to all
cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction; to controversies to which
the _Confederate_ States shall be a party; to controversies between two
or more States; between a State and citizens of another State, _where
the State is plaintiff_; between citizens claiming lands under grants of
different States, and between a State or the citizens thereof, and
foreign states, citizens, or subjects. _But no State shall be sued by a
citizen or subject of any foreign state._
[USA] In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and
Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court
shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before
mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as
to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the
Congress shall make.
[CSA] In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and
consuls, and those in which a State shall be party, the Supreme Court
shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before
mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as
to law and fact, with such exceptions and under such regulations as the
Congress shall make.
[USA] The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be
by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes
shall have been committed; but when not committed with any State, the
Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have
directed.
[CSA] The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be
by jury; and such trial shall be held in the State where the said crimes
shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State the
trial shall be at such place or places as the Congress may by law have
directed.
[USA] Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only
in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving
them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on
the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession
in open Court.
[CSA] Section 3. Treason against the _Confederate_ States shall consist
only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies,
giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason
unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on
confession in open court.
[USA] The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of
Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or
Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.
[CSA] The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of
treason; but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or
forfeiture, except during the life of the person attainted.
[USA] ARTICLE IV.
[CSA] ARTICLE IV.
[USA] Section 1. Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to
the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State.
And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such
Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.
[CSA] Section 1. Full faith and credit shall be given in each State to
the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other State.
And the Congress may, by general laws, prescribe the manner in which
such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect
thereof.
[USA] Section 2. The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all
Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.
[CSA] Section 2. The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the
privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States, _and shall
have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy,
with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said
slaves shall not be thereby impaired_.
[USA] A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other
Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall
on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be
delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the
Crime.
[CSA] A person charged in any State with treason, felony, or other crime
_against the laws of such State_, who shall flee from justice, and be
found in another State, shall on demand of the Executive authority of
the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the
State having jurisdiction of the crime.
[USA] No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws
thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or
Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall
be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may
be done.
[CSA] _No slave or other_ person held to service or labor _in any State
or Territory of the Confederate States_, under the laws thereof,
escaping _or lawfully carried_ into another, shall, in consequence of
any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor;
but shall be delivered up on claim of the party _to whom such slave
belongs, or_ to whom such service or labor may be due.
[USA] Section 3. New States may be admitted by the Congress into this
Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the
Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction
of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the
Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.
[CSA] Section 3. _Other States may be admitted into this Confederacy by
a vote of two thirds of the whole House of Representatives and two
thirds of the Senate, the Senate voting by States_; but no new State
shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other State;
nor any State be formed by the junction of two or more States, or parts
of States, without the consent of the Legislatures of the States
concerned, as well as of the Congress.
[USA] The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful
Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property
belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall
be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of
any particular State.
[CSA] The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful
rules and regulations _concerning_ the _property of the Confederate_
States, _including the lands thereof_.
[CSA] _The Confederate States may acquire new territory; and Congress
shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the
inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying
without the limits of the several States; and may permit them, at such
times and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form States to be
admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory, the institution,
of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be
recognized and protected by Congress and by the territorial government;
and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories
shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held
by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States._
[USA] Section 4. The United States shall guarantee to every State in
this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of
them against Invasion, and on Application of the Legislature, or of the
Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic
Violence.
[CSA] The _Confederate_ States shall guarantee to every State _that now
is, or hereafter may become, a member of this Confederacy_, a republican
form of government; and shall protect each of them against invasion; and
on application of the Legislature (or of the Executive when the
Legislature _is not in session_), against domestic violence.
[USA] ARTICLE V.
[CSA] ARTICLE V.
[USA] The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both Houses shall deem it
necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the
Application of the Legislatures of two-thirds of the several States,
shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case,
shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this
Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three-fourths of the
several States, or by Conventions in three-fourths thereof, as the one
or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress:
Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year one
thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first
and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that
no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage
in the Senate.
[CSA] _Section 1. Upon the demand of any three States, legally assembled
in their several conventions, the Congress shall summon a Convention of
all the States, to take into consideration such amendments to the
Constitution as the said States shall concur in suggesting at the time
when the said demand is made; and should any of the proposed amendments
to the Constitution be agreed on by the said Convention--voting by
States--and the same be ratified by the Legislatures of two thirds of
the several States, or by conventions in two-thirds thereof_--as the one
or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the _general
Convention--they shall thenceforward form_ a _part of this Constitution.
But_ no State shall, without its consent, be deprived of its equal
_representation_ in the Senate.
[USA]ARTICLE VI.
[CSA]ARTICLE VI.
[USA] All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the
Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United
States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.
[CSA] _The Government established by this Constitution is the successor
of the Provisional Government of the Confederate States of America, and
all the laws passed by the latter shall continue in force until the same
shall be repealed or modified; and all the officers appointed by the
same shall remain in office until their successors are appointed and
qualified, or the offices abolished._
[CSA] All debts contracted and engagements entered into before the
adoption of this Constitution shall be as valid against the
_Confederate_ States under this Constitution as under the _Provisional
Government_.
[USA] This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall
be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be
made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law
of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any
Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary
notwithstanding.
[CSA] This Constitution, and the laws of the _Confederate_ States made
in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made or which shall be made under
the authority of the _Confederate_ States, shall be the supreme law
of the land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby,
anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary
notwithstanding.
[USA] The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members
of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial
Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be
bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no
religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office
or public Trust under the United States.
[CSA] The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members
of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial
officers, both of the _Confederate_ States and of the several States,
shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support this Constitution; but
no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any
office or public trust under the _Confederate_ States.
[CSA] The enumeration, in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not
be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people of _the
several States_.
[CSA] The powers not delegated to the _Confederate_ States by the
Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the
States, respectively, or to the people _thereof_.
[USA] ARTICLE VII.
[CSA] ARTICLE VII.
[USA] The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be
sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States
so ratifying the Same.
[CSA] The ratification of the Conventions of _five_ States shall be
sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution between the States
so ratifying the same.
[CSA] _When five States shall have ratified this Constitution, in the
manner before specified, the Congress under the Provisional Constitution
shall prescribe the time for holding the election of President and
Vice-President, and for the meeting of the electoral college, and for
counting the votes, and inaugurating the President. They shall also
prescribe the time for holding the first election of members of Congress
under this Constitution, and the time for assembling the same. Until the
assembling of such Congress, the Congress under the Provisional
Constitution shall continue to exercise the legislative powers granted
them; not extending beyond the time limited by the Constitution of the
Provisional Government._
_Articles in Addition to, and Amendment of, the Constitution of the
United States of America. Proposed by Congress, and ratified by the
Legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the fifth article of the
original Constitution._
ARTICLE I.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to
assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
ARTICLE II.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free
State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be
infringed.
ARTICLE III.
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without
the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be
prescribed by law.
ARTICLE IV.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,
and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,
supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place
to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
ARTICLE V.
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous
crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in
cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in
actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be
subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or
limb; nor shall be compelled in any Criminal Case to be a witness
against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without
due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use,
without just compensation.
ARTICLE VI.
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a
speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district
wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have
been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and
cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against
him; to have Compulsory process for obtaining Witnesses in his favour,
and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
ARTICLE VII.
In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed
twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no
fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the
United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
ARTICLE VIII.
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor
cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
ARTICLE XII.[213]
The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot
for President and Vice President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an
inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their
ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the
person voted for as Vice President, and they shall make distinct lists
of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as
Vice President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they
shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the
government of the United States, directed to the President of the
Senate;--The President of the Senate shall, in presence of the Senate
and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes
shall then be counted;--The person having the greatest number of votes
for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of
the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such
majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding
three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of
Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But
in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the
representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this
purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the
states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice.
And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President
whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth
day of March next following, then the Vice President shall act as
President, as in the case of the death or other constitutional
disability of the President.--The person having the greatest number of
votes as Vice President, shall be the Vice President, if such number be
a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed, and if no person
have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the
Senate shall choose the Vice President; a quorum for the purpose shall
consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of
the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person
constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible
to that of Vice President of the United States.
[Footnote 208: This is an exact copy of the original in punctuation,
spelling, capitals, etc.]
[Footnote 209: Under the census of 1860 one representative is allowed
for every 127,381 persons.]
[Footnote 210: "Other persons" refers to slaves. See Amendments, Art.
XIV., Sections 1 and 2.]
[Footnote 211: The principal of these are the clerk, sergeant-at-arms,
door-keeper, and postmaster.]
[Footnote 212: Superseded by the twelfth amendment.]
[Footnote 213: This article is substituted for Clause 3, Sec. I., Art.
II., page 662, and annuls it. It was declared adopted in 1804.]
APPENDIX L.
CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN THE CONFEDERATE COMMISSIONERS, MR. SECRETARY
SEWARD AND JUDGE CAMPBELL.
_The Commissioners to Mr. Seward._
Washington City, _March 12, 1861_.
Hon. William H. Seward, _Secretary of State of the United States_.
Sir: The undersigned have been duly accredited by the Government of the
Confederate States of America as commissioners to the Government of the
United States, and, in pursuance of their instructions, have now the
honor to acquaint you with that fact, and to make known, through you to
the President of the United States, the objects of their presence in
this capital.
Seven states of the late Federal Union, having in the exercise of the
inherent right of every free people to change or reform their political
institutions, and through conventions of their people, withdrawn from
the United States and reassumed the attributes of sovereign power
delegated to it, have formed a government of their own. The Confederate
States constitute an independent nation, _de facto_ and _de jure_, and
possess a government perfect in all its parts, and endowed with all the
means of self-support.
With a view to a speedy adjustment of all questions growing out of this
political separation, upon such terms of amity and good-will as the
respective interests, geographical contiguity, and future welfare of the
two nations may render necessary, the undersigned are instructed to make
to the Government of the United States overtures for the opening of
negotiations, assuring the Government of the United States, that the
President, Congress, and people of the Confederate States earnestly
desire a peaceful solution of these great questions; that it is neither
their interest nor their wish to make any demand which is not founded in
strictest justice, nor do any act to injure their late confederates.
The undersigned have now the honor, in obedience to the instructions of
their Government, to request you to appoint as early a day as possible,
in order that they may present to the President of the United States the
credentials which they bear and the objects of the mission with which
they are charged.
We are, very respectfully, your obedient servants,
(Signed) JOHN FORSYTH.
(Signed) MARTIN J. CRAWFORD.
_Memorandum._
Department of State, Washington, _March_ 15, 1861.
Mr. John Forsyth, of the State of Alabama, and Mr. Martin J. Crawford,
of the State of Georgia, on the 11th inst., through the kind offices of
a distinguished Senator, submitted to the Secretary of State their
desire for an unofficial interview. This request was, on the 12th inst.,
upon exclusively public considerations, respectfully declined.
On the 13th inst., while the Secretary was preoccupied, Mr. A. D. Banks,
of Virginia, called at this department, and was received by the
Assistant Secretary, to whom he delivered a sealed communication, which
he had been charged by Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford to present to the
Secretary in person.
In that communication Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford inform the Secretary
of State that they have been duly accredited by the Government of the
Confederate States of America as commissioners to the Government of the
United States, and they set forth the objects of their attendance at
Washington. They observe that seven States of the American Union, in the
exercise of a right inherent in every free people, have withdrawn,
through conventions of their people, from the United States, reassumed
the attributes of sovereign power, and formed a government of their own,
and that those Confederate States now constitute an independent nation,
_de facto_ and _de jure_, and possess a government perfect in all its
parts, and fully endowed with all the means of self-support.
Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford, in their aforesaid communication,
thereupon proceeded to inform the Secretary that, with a view to a
speedy adjustment of all questions growing out of the political
separation thus assumed, upon such terms of amity and good-will as the
respective interests, geographical contiguity, and the future welfare of
the supposed two nations might render necessary, they are instructed to
make to the Government of the United States overtures for the opening of
negotiations, assuring this Government that the President, Congress, and
the people of the Confederate States earnestly desire a peaceful
solution of these great questions, and that it is neither their interest
nor their wish to make any demand which is not founded in the strictest
justice, nor do any act to injure their late confederates.
After making these statements, Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford close their
communication, as they say, in obedience to the instructions of their
Government, by requesting the Secretary of State to appoint as early a
day as possible, in order that they may present to the President of the
United States the credentials which they bear and the objects of the
mission with which they are charged.
The Secretary of State frankly confesses that he understands the events
which have recently occurred, and the condition of political affairs
which actually exists in the part of the Union to which his attention
has thus been directed, very differently from the aspect in which they
are presented by Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford. He sees in them, not a
rightful and accomplished revolution and an independent nation, with an
established Government, but rather a perversion of a temporary and
partisan excitement to the inconsiderate purposes of an unjustifiable
and unconstitutional aggression upon the rights and the authority vested
in the Federal Government, and hitherto benignly exercised, as from
their very nature they always must so be exercised, for the maintenance
of the Union, the preservation of liberty, and the security, peace,
welfare, happiness, and aggrandizement of the American people. The
Secretary of State, therefore, avows to Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford
that he looks patiently, but confidently, for the cure of evils which
have resulted from proceedings so unnecessary, so unwise, so unusual,
and so unnatural, not to irregular negotiations, having in view new and
untried relations with agencies unknown to and acting in derogation of
the Constitution and laws, but to regular and considerate action of the
people of those States, in coöperation with their brethren in the other
States, through the Congress of the United States, and such
extraordinary conventions, if there shall be need thereof, as the
Federal Constitution contemplates and authorizes to be assembled.
It is, however, the purpose of the Secretary of State, on this occasion,
not to invite or engage in any discussion of these subjects, but simply
to set forth his reasons for declining to comply with the request of
Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford.
On the 4th of March instant, the then newly elected President of the
United States, in view of all the facts bearing on the present question,
assumed the Executive Administration of the Government, first
delivering, in accordance with an early, honored custom, an inaugural
address to the people of the United States. The Secretary of State
respectfully submits a copy of this address to Messrs. Forsyth and
Crawford.
A simple reference to it will be sufficient to satisfy these gentlemen
that the Secretary of State, guided by the principles therein announced,
is prevented altogether from admitting or assuming that the States
referred to by them have, in law or in fact, withdrawn from the Federal
Union, or that they could do so in the manner described by Messrs.
Forsyth and Crawford, or in any other manner than with the consent and
concert of the people of the United States, to be given through a
National Convention, to be assembled in conformity with the provisions
of the Constitution of the United States. Of course, the Secretary of
State can not act upon the assumption, or in any way admit that the
so-called Confederate States constitute a foreign power, with whom
diplomatic relations ought to be established.
Under these circumstances, the Secretary of State, whose official duties
are confined, subject to the direction of the President, to the
conducting of the foreign relations of the country, and do not at all
embrace domestic questions, or questions arising between the several
States and the Federal Government, is unable to comply with the request
of Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford, to appoint a day on which they may
present the evidences of their authority and the objects of their visit
to the President of the United States. On the contrary, he is obliged to
state to Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford that he has no authority, nor is
he at liberty, to recognize them as diplomatic agents, or hold
correspondence or other communication with them.
Finally, the Secretary of State would observe that, although he has
supposed that he might safely and with propriety have adopted these
conclusions, without making any reference of the subject to the
Executive, yet, so strong has been his desire to practice entire
directness, and to act in a spirit of perfect respect and candor toward
Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford, and that portion of the people of the
Union in whose name they present themselves before him, that he has
cheerfully submitted this paper to the President, who coincides
generally in the views it expresses, and sanctions the Secretary's
decision declining official intercourse with Messrs. Forsyth and
Crawford.
_April 8, 1861._
The foregoing memorandum was filed in this department on the 15th of
March last. A delivery of the same to Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford was
delayed, as was understood, with their consent. They have now, through
their secretary, communicated their desire for a definite disposition of
the subject. The Secretary of State therefore directs that a duly
verified copy of the paper be now delivered.
_The Commissioners in reply to Mr. Seward._
Washington, _April 9, 1861._
Hon. William H. Seward, _Secretary of State for the United States,
Washington:_
The "memorandum" dated Department of State, Washington, March 15, 1861,
with postscript under date of 8th instant, has been received through the
hands of Mr. J. T. Pickett, secretary of this commission, who, by the
instructions of the undersigned, called for it on yesterday at the
department.
In that memorandum you correctly state the purport of the official note
addressed to you by the undersigned on the 12th ultimo. Without
repeating the contents of that note in full, it is enough to say here
that its object was to invite the Government of the United States to a
friendly consideration of the relations between the United States and
the seven States lately the Federal Union, but now separated from it by
the sovereign will of their people, growing out of the pregnant and
undeniable fact that those people have rejected the authority of the
United States, and established a government of their own. Those
relations had to be friendly or hostile. The people of the old and new
Governments, occupying contiguous territories, had to stand to each
other in the relation of good neighbors, each seeking their happiness
and pursuing their national destinies in their own way, without
interference with the other; or they had to be rival and hostile
nations. The Government of the Confederate States had no hesitation in
electing its choice in this alternative. Frankly and unreservedly,
seeking the good of the people who had intrusted them with power, in the
spirit of humanity, of the Christian civilization of the age, and of
that Americanism which regards the true welfare and happiness of the
people, the Government of the Confederate States, among its first acts,
commissioned the undersigned to approach the Government of the United
States with the olive-branch of peace, and to offer to adjust the great
questions pending between them in the only way to be justified by the
consciences and common sense of good men who had nothing but the welfare
of the people of the two confederacies at heart.
Your Government has not chosen to meet the undersigned in the
conciliatory and peaceful spirit in which they are commissioned.
Persistently wedded to those fatal theories of construction of the
Federal Constitution always rejected by the statesmen of the South, and
adhered to by those of the Administration school, until they have
produced their natural and often predicted result of the destruction of
the Union, under which we might have continued to live happily and
gloriously together, had the spirit of the ancestry who framed the
common Constitution animated the hearts of all their sons, you now, with
a persistence untaught and uncured by the ruin which has been wrought,
refuse to recognize the great fact presented to you of a completed and
successful revolution; you close your eyes to the existence of the
Government founded upon it, and ignore the high duties of moderation and
humanity which attach to you in dealing with this great fact. Had you
met these issues with the frankness and manliness with which the
undersigned were instructed to present them to you and treat them, the
undersigned had not now the melancholy duty to return home and tell
their Government and their countrymen that their earnest and ceaseless
efforts in behalf of peace had been futile, and that the Government of
the United States meant to subjugate them by force of arms. Whatever may
be the result, impartial history will record the innocence of the
Government of the Confederate States, and place the responsibility of
the blood and mourning that may ensue upon those who have denied the
great fundamental doctrine of American liberty, that "governments derive
their just powers from the consent of the governed," and who have set
naval and land armaments in motion to subject the people of one portion
of this land to the will of another portion. That that can never be
done, while a free-*man survives in the Confederate States to wield a
weapon, the undersigned appeal to past history to prove. These military
demonstrations against the people of the seceded States are certainly
far from being in keeping and consistency with the theory of the
Secretary of State, maintained in his memorandum, that these States are
still component parts of the late American Union, as the undersigned are
not aware of any constitutional power in the President of the United
States to levy war, without the consent of Congress, upon a foreign
people, much less upon any portion of the people of the United States.
The undersigned, like the Secretary of State, have no purpose to "invite
or engage in discussion" of the subject on which their two Governments
are so irreconcilably at variance. It is this variance that has broken
up the old Union, the disintegration of which has only begun. It is
proper, however, to advise you that it were well to dismiss the hopes
you seem to entertain that, by any of the modes indicated, the people of
the Confederate States will ever be brought to submit to the authority
of the Government of the United States. You are dealing with delusions,
too, when you seek to separate our people from our Government, and to
characterize the deliberate sovereign act of that people as a
"perversion of a temporary and partisan excitement" If you cherish these
dreams, you will be awakened from them and find them as unreal and
unsubstantial as others in which you have recently indulged. The
undersigned would omit the performance of an obvious duty, were they to
fail to make known to the Government of the United States that the
people of the Confederate States have declared their independence with a
full knowledge of all the responsibilities of that act, and with as firm
a determination to maintain it by all the means with which nature has
endowed them as that which sustained their fathers when they threw off
the authority of the British Crown.
The undersigned clearly understand that you have declined to appoint a
day to enable them to lay the objects of the mission with which they are
charged before the President of the United States, because so to do
would be to recognize the independence and separate nationality of the
Confederate States. This is the vein of thought that pervades the
memorandum before us. The truth of history requires that it should
distinctly appear upon the record that the undersigned did not ask the
Government of the United States to recognize the independence of the
Confederate States. They only asked audience to adjust, in a spirit of
amity and peace, the new relations springing from a manifest and
accomplished revolution in the Government of the late Federal Union.
Your refusal to entertain these overtures for a peaceful solution, the
active naval and military preparations of this Government, and a formal
notice to the commanding General of the Confederate forces in the harbor
of Charleston that the President intends to provision Fort Sumter by
forcible means, if necessary, are viewed by the undersigned, and can
only be received by the world, as a declaration of war against the
Confederate States; for the President of the United States knows that
Fort Sumter can not be provisioned without the effusion of blood. The
undersigned, in behalf of their Government and people, accept the gage
of battle thus thrown down to them; and, appealing to God and the
judgment of mankind for the righteousness of their cause, the people of
the Confederate States will defend their liberties to the last, against
this flagrant and open attempt at their subjugation to sectional power.
This communication can not be properly closed without adverting to the
date of your memorandum. The official note of the undersigned, of the
12th of March, was delivered to the Assistant Secretary of State on the
13th of that month, the gentleman who delivered it informing him that
the secretary of this commission would call at twelve o'clock, noon, on
the next day, for an answer. At the appointed hour Mr. Pickett did call,
and was informed by the Assistant Secretary of State that the
engagements of the Secretary of State had prevented him from giving the
note his attention. The Assistant Secretary of State then asked for the
address of Messrs. Crawford and Forsyth, the members of the commission
then present in this city, took note of the address on a card, and
engaged to send whatever reply might be made to their lodgings. Why this
was not done, it is proper should be here explained. The memorandum is
dated March 15th, and was not delivered until April 8th. Why was it
withheld during the intervening twenty-three days? In the postscript to
your memorandum you say it "was delayed, as was understood, with their
(Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford's) consent." This is true; but it is also
true that, on the 15th of March, Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford were
assured by a person occupying a high official position in the
Government, and who, as they believed, was speaking by authority, that
Fort Sumter would be evacuated in a very few days, and that no measure
changing the existing _status_ prejudicially to the Confederate States,
as respects Fort Pickens, was then contemplated, and these assurances
were subsequently repeated, with the addition that any contemplated
change as respects Pickens would be notified to us. On the 1st of April
we were again informed that there might be an attempt to supply Fort
Sumter with provisions, but that Governor Pickens should have previous
notice of this attempt. There was no suggestion of any reinforcement.
The undersigned did not hesitate to believe that these assurances
expressed the intentions of the Administration at the time, or at all
events of prominent members of that Administration. This delay was
assented to for the express purpose of attaining the great end of the
mission of the undersigned, to wit, a pacific solution of existing
complications. The inference deducible from the date of your memorandum,
that the undersigned had, of their own volition and without cause,
consented to this long _hiatus_ in the grave duties with which they were
charged, is therefore not consistent with a just exposition of the facts
of the case. The intervening twenty-three days were employed in active
unofficial efforts, the object of which was to smooth the path to a
pacific solution, the distinguished personage alluded to coöperating
with the undersigned; and every step of that effort is recorded in
writing and now in the possession of the undersigned and of their
Government. It was only when all those anxious efforts for peace had
been exhausted, and it became clear that Mr. Lincoln had determined to
appeal to the sword to reduce the people of the Confederate States to
the will of the section or party whose President he is, that the
undersigned resumed the official negotiation temporarily suspended, and
sent their secretary for a reply to their official note of March 12th.
It is proper to add that, during these twenty-three days, two gentlemen,
of official distinction as high as that of the personage hitherto
alluded to, aided the undersigned as intermediaries in these unofficial
negotiations for peace.
The undersigned, commissioners of the Confederate States of America,
having thus made answer to all they deem material in the memorandum
filed in the department on the 15th of March last, have the honor to be
JOHN FORSYTH,
MARTIN J. CRAWFORD,
A. B. ROMAN.
_Mr. Seward in reply to the Commissioners._
Department Of State, Washington, _April 10, 1861._
Messrs. Forsyth, Crawford, and Roman, having been apprised by a
memorandum, which has been delivered to them, that the Secretary of
State is not at liberty to hold official intercourse with them, will, it
is presumed, expect no notice from him of the new communication which
they have addressed to him under date of the 9th inst., beyond the
simple acknowledgment of the receipt thereof, which he hereby very
cheerfully gives.
_Judge Campbell to Mr. Seward._
Washington City, _Saturday, April 18, 1861._
Sir: On the 15th of March, ultimo, I left with Judge Crawford, one of
the commissioners of the Confederate States, a note in writing, to the
effect following:
"I feel entire confidence that Fort Sumter will be evacuated in the next
ten days. And this measure is felt as imposing great responsibility on
the Administration.
"I feel entire confidence that no measure changing the existing _status_
prejudicially to the Southern Confederate States is at present
contemplated.
"I feel an entire confidence that an immediate demand for an answer to
the communication of the commissioners will be productive of evil and
not of good. I do not believe that it ought, at this time, to be
pressed."
The substance of this statement I communicated to you the same evening
by letter. Five days elapsed, and I called with a telegram from General
Beauregard, to the effect that Sumter was not evacuated, but that Major
Anderson was at work making repairs.
The next day, after conversing with you, I communicated to Judge
Crawford in writing that the failure to evacuate Sumter was not the
result of bad faith, but was attributable to causes consistent with the
intention to fulfill the engagement, and that, as regarded Pickens, I
should have notice of any design to alter the existing _status_ there.
Mr. Justice Nelson was present at these conversations, three in number,
and I submitted to him each of my written communications to Judge
Crawford, and informed Judge Crawford that they had his (Judge Nelson's)
sanction. I gave you, on the 22d of March, a substantial copy of the
statement I had made on the 15th.
The 30th of March arrived, and at that time a telegram came from
Governor Pickens, inquiring concerning Colonel Lamon, whose visit to
Charleston he supposed had a connection with the proposed evacuation of
Fort Sumter. I left that with you, and was to have an answer the
following Monday (1st of April). On the 1st of April I received from you
the statement in writing, "I am satisfied the Government will not
undertake to supply Fort Sumter without giving notice to Governor P."
The words "I am satisfied" were for me to use as expressive of
confidence in the remainder of the declaration.
The proposition, as originally prepared, was, "The President _may
desire_ to supply Sumter, but will not do so," etc., and your verbal
explanation was, that you did not believe any such attempt would be
made, and that there was no design to reënforce Sumter.
There was a departure here from the pledges of the previous month, but,
with the verbal explanation, I did not consider it a matter then to
complain of. I simply stated to you that I had that assurance
previously.
On the 7th of April I addressed you a letter on the subject of the alarm
that the preparations by the Government had created, and asked you if
the assurances I had given were well or ill-founded. In respect to
Sumter, your reply was, "Faith as to Sumter fully kept--wait and see."
In the morning's paper I read, "An authorized messenger from President
Lincoln informed Governor Pickens and General Beauregard that provisions
will be sent to Fort Sumter--peaceably, or _otherwise by force_." This
was the 8th of April, at Charleston, the day following your last
assurance, and is the last evidence of the full faith I was invited to
_wait for_ and _see_. In the same paper I read that intercepted
dispatches disclosed the fact that Mr. Fox, who had been allowed to
visit Major Anderson, on the pledge that his purpose was pacific,
employed his opportunity to devise a plan for supplying the fort by
force, and that this plan had been adopted by the Washington Government,
and was in process of execution. My recollection of the date of Mr.
Fox's visit carries it to a day in March. I learn he is a near
connection of a member of the Cabinet. My connection with the
commissioners and yourself was superinduced by a conversation with
Justice Nelson. He informed me of your strong disposition in favor of
peace, and that you were oppressed with a demand of the commissioners of
the Confederate States for a reply to their first letter, and that you
desired to avoid it, if possible, at that time.
I told him I might perhaps be of some service in arranging the
difficulty. I came to your office entirely at his request, and without
the knowledge of either of the commissioners. Your depression was
obvious to both Judge Nelson and myself. I was gratified at the
character of the counsels you were desirous of pursuing, and much
impressed with your observation that a civil war might be prevented by
the success of my mediation. You read a letter of Mr. Weed, to show how
irksome and responsible the withdrawal of troops from Sumter was. A
portion of my communication to Judge Crawford, on the 16th of March, was
founded upon these remarks, and the pledge to evacuate Sumter is less
forcible than the words you employed. These words were, "Before this
letter reaches you [a proposed letter by me to President Davis], Sumter
will have been evacuated." The commissioners who received those
communications conclude they have been abused and overreached. The
Montgomery Government hold the same opinion. The commissioners have
supposed that my communications were with you, and upon the [that]
hypothesis were prepared to arraign you before the country, in
connection with the President. I placed a peremptory prohibition upon
this, as being contrary to the terms of my communications with them. I
pledged myself to them to communicate information, upon what I
considered as the best authority, and they were to confide in the
ability of myself, aided by Judge Nelson, to determine upon the
credibility of my informant.
I think no candid man, who will read over what I have written, and
considers for a moment what is going on at Sumter, but will agree that
the equivocating conduct of the Administration, as measured and
interpreted in connection with these promises, is the proximate cause of
the great calamity.
I have a profound conviction that the telegrams of the 8th of April, of
General Beauregard, and of the 10th of April, of General Walker, the
Secretary of War, can be referred to nothing else than their belief that
there has been systematic duplicity practiced on them through me. It is
under an impressive sense of the weight of this responsibility that I
submit to you these things for your explanation.
Very respectfully,
(Signed) JOHN A. CAMPBELL,
_Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, United States._
Hon. William H. Seward, _Secretary of State_.
_Judge Campbell to Mr. Secretary Seward_.
Washington, _April 20, 1861._
Sir: I inclose you a letter, corresponding very nearly with one I
addressed to you one week ago (April 13th), to which I have not had any
reply. The letter is simply one of inquiry in reference to facts
concerning which, I think, I am entitled to an explanation. I have not
adopted any opinion in reference to them which may not be modified by
explanation; nor have I affirmed in that letter, nor do I in this, any
conclusion of my own unfavorable to your integrity in the whole
transaction. All that I have said and mean to say is, that an
explanation is due from you to myself. I will not say what I shall do in
case this request is not complied with, but I am justified in saying
that I shall feel at liberty to place these letters before any person
who is entitled to ask an explanation of myself.
Very respectfully,
JOHN A. CAMPBELL,
_Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, United States_.
Hon. William H. Seward, _Secretary of State_.
No reply has been made to this letter, April 24, 1861.
INDEX TO VOL. I.
_Abolition of African servitude_; its first public agitation, 33;
activity of the propagandists, 34;
misuse of the sacred word liberty, 34.
_Absurdity of the construction_, attempted to be put on expressions of
the Constitution, 175;
a brief analysis, 175.
_Accede_, discussions on the word, 136;
its former use, 137.
Adams, James H, commissioner from South Carolina to Washington, 213.
Adams, John, stumbled at the preamble of the Constitution, 121.
Adams, John Quincy, his declaration of the rights of the people of the
States, 190, 191.
_African servitude_, its aid to the Confederacy in the war, 303;
confidence of the people in the Africans, 303.
_Agreement_, between Generals Harney and Price, at St. Louis, Missouri,
416.
_Agricultural products, Southern_, mainly for export, 302;
a change of habits in the planters required, 302;
our success largely due to African servitude, 303;
condition of the Africans, 303;
diminished every year during the war, 505.
_Alabama_, withdraws from the Union, 220.
_All powers not delegated_, etc., what does it mean? 175.
_Allegiance_, inconsistent ideas of, 182;
paramount to the Government, a monstrous view, 182;
the sovereign is the people, 182;
obligation to support a Constitution derived from the allegiance due
to the sovereign, 183;
oath to support the Constitution based on the sovereignty of the
States, 183;
the oath of military and naval officers, 183;
how false to attribute "treason" to the Southern States, 183;
an oath to support the Constitution, 183.
_Amendment_ of the Constitution, distinct from the delegation of power,
196.
Anderson, Robert, commands forts in Charleston Harbor, 212;
instructions from the War Department of the United States, 212;
removes to Fort Sumter, 213;
acquaintance and past associations with the author, 216;
his protest against relieving Fort Sumter, 281;
the letter of protest, 282;
reply to the demand for evacuation, 286.
_Annapolis, Maryland_, first meeting of the commissioners to revise
Articles of Confederation held there, 87;
how revision was effected, 88.
_Anti-slavery and pro-slavery_, terms misleading the sympathies and
opinions of the world, 6.
_Armories_, the chief, where located, 480.
_Armory at Harper's Ferry_, burned by order of the United States
Government, 317;
a breach of pledges, 317;
machinery and materials largely saved, 317;
removed to Richmond, 317;
and Fayetteville, North Carolina, 317;
Armorer Ball, his skill and fate, 318.
_Arms and ammunition_, arrangements for the purchase of, 311;
agent sent to Europe, 311;
do. sent North, 311;
letter to Admiral Semmes, 311.
_Army officers_ choose their future place of service in disintegration
of the army, 306;
act of Confederate Congress relative to, 307.
_Arms_ within the limits of the Confederacy in 1861, 471;
do. powder, 472;
do. arsenals, 472;
cannon-foundries, 472;
the increased supply, 476.
_Army, Confederate_, its organization, instruction, and equipment, the
first object, 303;
provisions of the first bill of Congress, 304;
its modification for twelve months' men, 304;
fifth section of the act, 304;
system of organization, 305;
acts of Congress providing for its organization, 305;
act to establish army of Confederate States, 306;
its provisions, 306;
the army belongs to the States, and its officers return to the States
on its disintegration, 306;
provision securing rank to officers of the United States Army, 307;
the constitutional view, 307;
how observed, 307;
Generals appointed, 308;
efforts to increase the efficiency of, 384;
desire to employ the available force, 384;
organization of--early circumstances relating to it, 443;
the largest army in 1861 that of the Potomac, 443;
act of Congress relating to organization, 444;
the right to preserve for volunteers the character of State troops
surrendered by the States, 444;
efforts to comply with the law, 444;
obstruction to its execution, 444;
correspondence, 444.
_Arrest_, threats of, against Senators withdrawing from Congress, 226.
_Arrest and imprisonment_ of police authorities of Baltimore, 334.
_Arsenals_, contents of, in 1861, 471;
do. in Richmond, 479.
_Artillery_, extent of its manufacture, 473.
_Assault on us_, The, made by the hostile descent of the fleet to
relieve Fort Sumter, 292.
_Assertions_, of Everett and Motley examined, 130.
Baker, Edward, Colonel, killed at Ball's Bluff, 437.
Ball, Armistead, master armorer at Harper's Ferry, 317;
his gallant services, 317;
his capacity and fidelity, 318.
_Ball's Bluff_, defeat of the enemy at, 437;
losses, 437.
_Baltimore_, manly effort of her citizens to resist the progress of the
armies of invasion, 299;
occupied by United States troops, 333;
the city disarmed, 334;
arrest and imprisonment of police commissioners by General Banks,
334-'35;
provost-marshal appointed, 334;
search for and seizure of arms, 335;
report of a committee of the Legislature on the arrests, 335.
Banks, Major-General, unlawful proceeding of, in Baltimore, 334.
_Bargain, A_, can not be broken on one side, says Webster, and still
bind the other side, 167.
Barnwell, Robert W., commissioner from South Carolina to Washington,
213;
offered the place of Secretary of State under Provisional
Constitution, 241.
Bartow, Colonel, killed at Manassas, 357.
Beauregard, General P. G. T., correspondence with the Confederate
Government relative to Fort Sumter, 285, 286-287;
demands its evacuation; commands army at Manassas, 340;
orders troops from left to right at Manassas, 352;
his promotion, 359;
his statement of the defenses of Washington, 360;
report of the battle of Manassas, 368;
endorsement of the President, 369.
Bee, General Bernard, wounded at Manassas, 357.
Bell, John, nominated for the Presidency in 1860, 50;
offers to withdraw, 52.
_Belmont, Missouri_, occupied by Federal troops, 403;
afterward garrisoned by Confederate troops, 403;
Grant attempts to surprise the garrison, 403;
the battle that ensued, 404.
Benjamin, Judah P., Attorney-General under Provisional Constitution,
242.
"_Bible and Sharpe's rifles_," declaration of a famous preacher, 29.
"_Bloodletting, A little more_," the letter recommending, 249.
_Bond of Union, A_, necessary after the Declaration of Independence,
193;
Articles of Confederation followed, 193;
how amended, 193;
difference in the new form of government from the old one, 194;
the same principle for obtaining grants of power in both, 194;
amendments made more easy, 195.
_Border States_ promptly accede to the proposition of Virginia for a
Congress to adjust controversies, 248;
secession of the, 328.
Bonham, General, marches to Virginia with his brigade on her secession,
300;
commands brigade at Manassas, 353;
proposal that he shall pursue the enemy, 353.
_Bowling Green, Kentucky_, occupied by General Johnston, 406.
Breckinridge, John C., nominated for the Presidency in 1860, 50;
willing to withdraw, 52;
ex-Vice-President of United States, 399;
his address to the citizens of Kentucky, 399.
Brown, John, his raid into Virginia, 41;
how viewed, 41;
report of United States Senate committee, 41.
Brown, Mayor of Baltimore, visits with citizens President Lincoln, 332;
his report, 332.
Buchanan, President, his views and action in 1860, 54;
his objection to withdrawing the garrison from the forts in Charleston
Harbor, 215;
opposed to the coercion of States, 216;
view of the cession of a site for a fort, 217;
hope to avert a collision, 217;
message to Congress, with letter of South Carolina commissioners, and
his answer, 218;
his alarm at the state of affairs, 265.
Butler, Major-General B. F., occupies Baltimore with troops, 333.
Cabell, W. L., statement of field transportation at Manassas, 383.
_Cabinet_ of the President under the Provisional Constitution, 241.
_Cabinet, Mr. Lincoln's_, a transaction in, 276.
Calhoun, John C., his death, 17;
remarks of Mr. Webster, 17;
anecdote, 17;
extract from his speech, "How to save the Union," 55.
_California_, circumstances of its admission to the Union, 16.
Campbell, J. A. P., letter relative to the views of the Provisional
President, 238.
_Camp Jackson_ surrounded by General Lyon's force, 414;
massacre at, 416.
Campbell, Judge, his statement relative to the intercourse between our
commissioners and the Federal State Department, 267, 268;
his own views, 268, 269.
_Capon Springs_, speech of Webster at, 167.
Cass, Lewis, his "Nicholson letter," 38;
resigns as United States Secretary of State, 214;
his reason, 214.
_Causes_ which led the Southern States into the position they held at
the close of 1860, recapitulation of, 77.
_Cavils, verbal_, relative to the Constitution and the Articles of
Confederation, 135, 136.
_Centralism_, its fate in the Constitutional Convention, 161.
_Centreville_, conflagration at, 467;
retreat from, 468.
_Change of government_, a question that the States had the power to
decide, by virtue of the unalienable rights announced in the
Declaration of Independence, 438.
Chandler, Z., his letter on a "little more bloodletting," 249.
_Charleston Harbor defenses_, a subject of anxiety in the secession of
the State, 212;
Representatives in Congress call on the President, 212;
proposal to observe a peaceful military status, 212;
secret preparations for reënforcement by United States Government,
212;
instructions to the commander, 212;
modified, 213;
commissioners sent by the State to treat for the delivery of the
forts, 213;
change of military condition in the harbor, 213;
how regarded, 213;
interview of commissioners with President, 214;
sharp correspondence, 214.
Chesnut, James, letter on the election of Provisional President, 289.
Clark, John B., of Missouri, letter from President Davis, 427.
_Clause second of Article VI_ of the Constitution, adduced by the
friends of centralism, 149;
how magnified and perverted, 150.
Clay, C. C., letter relative to certain misstatements relative to the
author, 206-208.
Clayton, Alexander M., letter relative to the election of Provisional
President, 237.
_Coercion of a State_, views in 1850, 55;
do. 1860, 55;
declaration of the Convention that framed the Constitution, 56;
other declarations, 56;
the idea absolutely excluded, 101;
the alternative of secession, if no such right exists, 177;
the proposition before the Convention, 177;
views of the delegates, 177;
coercion military, treated with abhorrence, 179;
the right to, repudiated, 252, 253;
language of the New York press, 253;
do. of Northern speeches, 254;
do. of Thayer, 254;
remarks of Governor Seymour, 255;
do. of Chancellor Walworth, 255;
do. of the Northern press, 256;
words of Mr. Lincoln in his inaugural, 256;
views of Southern people, 257.
_Columbus, Kentucky_, occupation by Confederate forces, 402.
_Commissioners_ to the United States appointed, 246;
nature of, 246;
how treated, 247;
negotiations of Judges Nelson and Campbell, 267;
statement of Judge Campbell, 268;
his views, 268;
declarations of Mr. Seward, 268;
his assurances, 269;
expectations of the commissioners and of the Confederate Government,
269;
pledge given by Federal authorities, 270;
telegram to General Beauregard, 270;
his reply, 270;
explanations of Mr. Seward, 270;
plan to reënforce and supply Sumter, 271;
proceedings for its execution by Secretary Fox, 271;
facts presented to Mr. Seward, 273;
the point of honor, 273;
further declarations of Mr. Seward, 273;
official notification from Washington to Governor Pickens and General
Beauregard, 274;
letter to President Buchanan, 264;
their arrival, 264;
incidents, 265;
letter of Judge Crawford describing his reception, 265;
arrival of Mr. Forsyth--their letter to Mr. Seward, 266;
no answer received for twenty-seven days, 266;
a paper filed in the State Department, 266;
an oral answer, 266;
state of affairs relative to Fort Sumter, 266, 267;
their letters to General Beauregard, 277, 278;
failure of their mission, 296.
_Commissioners from South Carolina_ to President Buchanan relative to
the delivery of the forts in Charleston Harbor, 213.
_Community independence_, its origin and development, 116.
_Compact, The original_, causes that blighted its fair prospects, 48;
the Articles of Confederation a compact, 135;
been denied of the Constitution, 135;
denied by Webster, 135;
cavils on the words of the Constitution compared with the Articles of
Confederation, 136;
the wood accede considered, 136;
use of the words "compact, accede, Confederacy," 137;
compact used by Gerry, Morris, Madison, Washington, Martin, and
others, 138;
in the ratification of Massachusetts, 137;
the Constitution shown to be one by its structure, 140;
provisions, 140;
representation in the Senate, etc., 140.
_Compromise measures of 1850_, their origin, 14;
bear the impress of the sectional spirit, 14.
_Compromise, Missouri_, how constituted, 13;
votes on, 13.
_Confederacies_, the first local formed in New England, 115.
_Confederacy_, the growth of, 485;
financial system of, 485;
the state of the finances in 1862, 485.
_Confederate Government_, its instructions to General Beauregard
relative to Fort Sumter, 284;
the correspondence, 285, 286;
aid given to Missouri, 429.
_Confederation, The old_, declares independence of each State, 86;
its articles, 86;
affairs, how managed, 87;
the first idea of reorganization, 87;
consequences, 87;
term applied to the articles, 88;
revision, how effected, 88;
how could it be superseded without secession? 100.
_Conference of the President and generals_, after the victory at
Manassas, 352;
order to pursue the enemy, 353;
letter of the President respecting, 353;
answer from General Beauregard, 354, 355;
subjects considered, 356;
second do. of the President and generals, after the victory at
Manassas, inquiry as to what more it was practicable to do, 360;
fortifications said to exist at Washington, 360;
subsequent reports, 360;
at variance with the information then possessed, 360;
why an advance was not contemplated to south bank of Potomac, 360;
returns to Richmond to increase army, 361;
charge of preventing the pursuit, 361.
_Congress of the Confederation_, its distinction from the United States
Congress, 26;
language of its resolution for a revision of its articles, 88;
its recommendation, 89;
instructions to the commissioners to the Constitutional Convention by
the several States, 89;
early acts of, 243;
laws of United States not inconsistent continued in force till
altered, 243;
financial officers continued in office, 243;
early steps required to be taken for a settlement with United States,
244;
act relative to free navigation of the Mississippi River, 245;
coasting trade opened to foreign vessels, 245;
resolutions after the victory at Manassas, 383.
_Congress, Provisional_, of seceding States assembles at Montgomery,
220;
resolution to remove the seat of government to Richmond, 339.
_Congress of the Confederation and that of the United States_,
difference between, 10, 11.
_Congress, United States_, decision on first abolition petition, 5;
prohibits importation of slaves, vote on the bill, 5;
its action on the petition of Indiana Territory for the suspension of
the ordinance prohibiting slavery, 8;
report of the committee, 8;
future action on resolutions, 10;
has only delegated powers, 26;
action in the Senate in 1860-'61, 68;
action of its committee, 69;
failures of adjustment in the House, 70.
_Connecticut_, instructions to her delegates to the Constitutional
Convention, 92;
her ratification of the Federal Constitution, 107.
"_Constitution, The_, a covenant with hell," use of the expression, 56;
signification of the word, 88;
the seventh article, a provision for secession, 101;
not established by the people in the aggregate, nor by the States in
the aggregate, 101;
delegates were chosen by the States as States, and voted as States,
102;
object for which they were sent, 102;
terms used then in the same sense as now, 102;
a national Government distinctly rejected, 102;
final words of the Constitution, 102;
not adopted by the people in the aggregate, 114;
the assertion a monstrous fiction, 114;
as British colonies they did not constitute one people, 114;
confused views of Judge Story, 115;
exposition of them, 115;
some facts, 115;
local confederacies, 115;
the form of the first, 115;
its existence, 115;
assertion of Edward Everett, 116;
unsustainable, 116;
his quotations, 117;
letter of General Gage to Congress in 1774, 117;
extract, 117;
a citation from the Declaration of Independence, 118;
a palpable misconception, 118;
as united States Independence was achieved, 118;
as united States they entered into a new compact, 119;
in no single instance was the action by the people in the aggregate or
as one body, 119;
facts, 119, 120;
by what authority was it ordained? 131;
denied by Webster to be a compact, 135.
_Constitution, Confederate_, the permanent of the Confederate States,
prepared and ratified, 258;
remarks of Mr. Stephens, 258;
followed the model of the United States Constitution, 259;
some of its distinctive features, 259, 260;
term of the President's office, 259;
removals from office, 259;
admission of Cabinet officers to seats on floor of Congress, 259;
protective duties prohibited, 260;
two-thirds vote for appropriations, 260;
impeachment by State Legislature, 260;
the States make a compact for improvement of navigation, 260;
amendments obligatory by convention, 260;
provisions relative to slavery, 261;
other provisions, 261;
words of Mr. Lincoln, 262;
words of "New York Herald," 263.
_Constitution, Provisional_, for the Confederacy, adopted, 229;
officers elected, 230.
_Constitutional Convention_, the original, rejected the doctrine of the
coercion of a State, 56;
conclusions drawn from the instructions of the States to their
delegates, 93;
assembling of the Convention, 94;
the work takes a wider range than was contemplated, 94;
diversity of opinion among the members, 95;
Luther Martin's description of the three parties in the Convention,
95;
the equality of the States, how adjusted, 96;
plan of government of Edmund Randolph, 96;
how the word "national" was treated, 97.
_Constitutional questions_ involved in the position of the Southern
States, recapitulation of, 77.
_Constitutional Union party_ of 1860, its principles, 51.
_Constitutional Union Convention_ in 1860, its nominations and
resolutions, 60.
_Convention_, the original idea of calling, 98;
its powers merely advisory, 103;
how its work was approved, 103.
_Conventions, State_, representatives of sovereignty, 97.
Cooper, Samuel, resigns in United States Army, 308;
his rank, 308;
appointment in the Confederate Army, 308.
Count of Paris, his travesty of history, 200, 201;
libels the memory of Major Anderson, 283.
Coxe, Tench, words relative to separate sovereignties, 128.
Crawford, Martin J., appointed commissioner to United States, 246;
commissioner to Washington arrives, 246;
describes the incidents and his reception, 265;
other proceedings, 266.
Crittenden, J. C., offers in the Senate a joint resolution proposing
amendments to the Constitution, 60;
how received, 60.
Davis, Jefferson, reëlected to United States Senate in 1851, 18;
subject of the compromise measures agitating Mississippi, 18;
division of opinion, 18;
the principles of the Declaration of Independence of more value than
the Union, 18;
his position and views, 19;
invited to become candidate for Governor, 19;
not accepted, 20;
active canvass, 20;
nominated again on the withdrawal of the former nominee, 20;
resigns as United States Senator, 20;
his position relative to the Union, 21;
letter to W. J. Brown, 21;
enters the Cabinet of President Pierce, 22;
charge of the Pacific Railroad survey, 23;
charge of the Capitol extension, 23;
charge of changes in the model of arms, 23;
increase of the army, 23;
its officers, 24; clerkships, 24;
anecdote of General Jesup, 24;
again elected Senator from Mississippi, 25;
no change in President Pierce's Cabinet during his term, 25;
extract from a speech in the Senate on the relation of master and
servant in a Territory, 30;
remarks in the Senate on the "Nicholson letter" of General Cass, 37;
offers a series of resolutions in United States Senate, 42;
the resolutions, 42;
discussion and vote in the Senate, 43;
position of the mover shown in extract from his speech, 44-46;
meets with the Congressional representatives and Governor of
Mississippi in consultation, 57;
his views, 57;
summoned to Washington, 58;
state of affairs there and his proceedings, 59;
extract from a speech in December, 1860, in the Senate, showing his
position, 61-68;
position and feelings at the beginning of 1861, 205;
previous life, 205;
office of Senator, 206;
in the Cabinet, 206;
letter of C. C. Clay, relative to misstatements respecting, 206;
conversation with President Buchanan relative to the forts in
Charleston Harbor, 214;
advises him to withdraw the garrison, 215;
his objections, 215;
presents rejoinder of South Carolina Commissioners to President
Buchanan in the Senate, 218;
his speech, 219;
notified of the secession of Mississippi, 220;
states the position of the State in his final address to the United
States Senate 221-224;
elected President of the Confederate States, 230;
engaged at home, 230;
disappointed, 230;
better fitted for command in the field, 230;
anecdote of W. L. Sharkey, 230;
addresses on the way to Montgomery, 231;
inaugural address, 232;
letter to President Buchanan, 264;
message to Congress on April 28th, 278, 279;
writes to Governor Letcher to sustain Baltimore, 300;
remained in the Senate after Mississippi called her convention, in
order to obtain such measures as would prevent the final step, 302;
when her ordinance was enacted the question was no longer open, and
her Senator could only retire from the United States Senate, 302;
letter of instructions to Captain Semmes, 311;
message to Congress in April, 1861, 326;
reply to the Maryland Commissioners, 333;
answer to Johnston relative to the rank of the latter, 348;
goes to the Manassas battle-field, 348;
scenes witnessed and described, 348, 349;
arrives at Beauregard's headquarters, 349;
meets General Johnston, 350;
appearance of the enemy, 350;
the field on the left, 351;
meets General Beauregard, 352;
conference with the generals after Manassas battle, 352;
subject of conference, 356;
necessity of pursuit, 356;
condition of the troops, 356;
meets the wounded, 357;
letter promoting General Beauregard, 359;
charged with preventing the pursuit at Manassas, 361;
letter to General Johnston on the subject, 362;
answer of Johnston, 363;
reference to another conference, 363;
letter to General Beauregard relative to the plea of a want of
transportation for not pursuing the enemy, 365;
endorsement on the report of General Johnston, 366;
remarks upon it, 366;
letter to Beauregard relative to his report, 366;
the objectionable point reviewed, 367;
the part of the report and objections suppressed by Congress, 367;
the report, 368;
the endorsement of the President, 369;
letter calling for information on the wants of the army, 384;
reply to the letter of the Governor of Kentucky, 390;
anxiety about affairs in Missouri, 426;
letter to John B. Clark, 427;
answer to the request of General J. E. Johnston for reënforcements,
442;
letter to General G. W. Smith on the reorganization of the army, 445;
letter to General Beauregard, 446;
letter to General Beauregard, 447;
letter to General J. E. Johnston, 448;
letter to General J. E. Johnston on enemy's movements, 452;
letter to General G. W. Smith on movements against the enemy, 453;
letter to General J. E. Johnston on inspection of the line between
Dumfries and Fredericksburg, 454;
letter to General J. E. Johnston on Jackson's movement in the Valley,
457;
letter to General J. E. Johnston on the order of the Secretary of War
for the troops to retire to the Valley, 460;
letter to General J. E. Johnston on the complaint of irregular action
by the Secretary of War, 461;
letter to General J. E. Johnston in answer to a letter stating that
his position was considered unsafe, 462;
letter to General J. E. Johnston on mobilizing his army, 463;
letter to General J. E. Johnston in answer to a notice that the army
was in retreat, 464;
visit to General Johnston's headquarters, 465;
reconnaissance, 466;
extract from the inaugural address in 1862, 484;
message on the employment of slaves in the army, 515.
_Debt, Foreign_, at the close of the war, 496;
attempts to discredit the Government abroad, 497;
reference to Union bank-bonds, 497.
_Delaware_, instructions to her delegates to the Constitutional
Convention, 93;
her words of ratification of the Federal Constitution, 104.
_Delicate truth, A_, to be veiled, 101.
_Democratic Convention of 1860_, disagreement, 50;
adjournment of divisions, 50;
nominations by the friends of popular sovereignty, 50;
nominations by the Conservatives, 50.
_Democratic party_, dissensions in, 36.
D'Wolf, James, president of a slave-trading company, anecdote of, 84.
_Disguise with Confederate Commissioners_ thrown off on the reduction of
Sumter, 297.
_Dissolution and secession_ from the first Union gave existence to the
present Union, 171;
the right to withdraw in either case results from the same principles,
171.
_Dogma, A new_, created at the Chicago Convention in 1860, 49.
Douglas, Stephen A., on the doctrine of squatter sovereignty, 38;
nominated for the Presidency in 1860, 50;
unwilling to withdraw, 52;
his resolution in the Senate recommending evacuation of the forts,
281;
his remarks, 281.
_Dred Scott case_; the question, 83;
the salient points established, 84;
remarks of the Chief-Justice, 84.
Early, General Jubal, commands regiment at Manassas, 351;
extracts relative to the first battle of Manassas written by him, 372;
sketch of him, 372-378;
remarks on the retreat from Centreville, 468;
do. on the loss of supplies, 468.
_Election, Presidential, of 1860_, votes and result, 53.
Ellis, Governor, of North Carolina, reply to Mr. Lincoln's call for
troops, 412;
sketch of Governor Ellis, 413;
letter to President Buchanan restoring Forts Johnson and Caswell, 413.
Ellsworth, Oliver, views of, on the coercion of a State, 178.
Elzy, General, commands brigade at Manassas, 351.
_Endorsement of the President_, on the report of the victory at
Manassas, by General Beauregard, 369.
_Equality of the States_ a condition of the Union, 180, 181.
_Equilibrium between the sections_ destroyed by the action of the
General Government, 32.
_Equipments for armies_, the supply of, 478;
their manufacture, 478.
Everett, Edward, nominated for the Vice-Presidency in 1860, 50;
his assertions relative to the Constitution, 129;
views on the sovereignty of the States, 148.
Evans, General N. S., his force near Leesburg, 437;
fight at Ball's Bluff, 437.
_Expedition, Naval_, to reënforce Fort Sumter, 274;
the circumstances, 274;
its arrival delayed by a storm, 274;
dissensions in Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet, 274;
impossible that he was ignorant of the communications of the
Secretary, 275;
yet the Secretary was not impeached, 275;
a transaction in the Cabinet, 275;
letter of Mr. Blair, 277;
letters of the Commissioners, 277, 278;
message of President Davis to Congress, 277;
the relief squadron, 284;
correspondence of Major Anderson, 288;
arrival of the fleet off Charleston Harbor, 289;
its failure to relieve the fort, 289;
report of Captain McGowan, 291.
_Fairfax Court-House_, The conference at, 445;
circumstances, 449;
questions considered at the conference, 449;
a paper relating to the conference, 450;
details respecting it, 450;
position unfavorable for defense, 452;
establishment of a battery near Acquia Creek, 452;
possibilities in the Valley of the Shenandoah, 452;
correspondence, 452;
reference to, 464.
"_Faith as to Sumter fully kept_"--the written answer of Secretary
Seward, 273;
official notification of reënforcement served on Governor Pickens on
the same day, 274.
_False representations_ made of us at the close of 1860, 77.
_Federal Constitution_, how the term was freely used, 93.
_Federal Government_, the tendency to pervert the functions delegated to
it, and to use them with sectional discrimination against the
minority, 32.
_Federalist, The_, its use of the word "sovereign" as applied to the
States, 144.
"_Fighting in the Union_," what was meant by it, 225.
_Financial system of The Confederacy_ adopted from necessity, 485;
its operation during eighteen months, 485;
issue of notes and bonds, 486, 487;
efforts to fund Treasury notes, 487;
provisions of Congress relative to, 488;
measure to reduce the currency, 489;
a review of the financial legislation, 489;
a war-tax, 490;
internal taxation a partial failure, 490;
compulsory reduction of the currency, 491;
its success, 492;
financial condition of the Government at its close, 492;
amount of the public debt, 493;
taxation, 493.
"_Firing on the flag_," the disingenuous rant of demagogues, 292.
"_Flaunting lie, A_," the compact of Union, 326.
_Florida_ withdraws from the Union, 220.
Floyd, General John B., resigns as United States Secretary of War, 214;
his reason, 214;
advances to the support of General Wise, 433;
his skirmishes with the enemy, 433;
defeats them, 435;
assailed by General Rosecrans, 433;
Rosecrans falls back, 433.
Foote, Samuel A., states the true issue relative to the admission of
Missouri to the Union, 12.
_Foreign relations_, efforts at recognition, 469;
seizure of our commissioners on board the Trent, 469;
indignation in England, 469;
their restoration, 469.
Forsyth, John, appointed commissioner to United States, 246.
_Forts and arsenals_, course of United States Government relative to,
281;
resolution, 202;
do. taken possession of by the Southern States, 202;
assertion made that the absence of troops was the result of collusion,
202;
this absence was the ordinary condition of peace, 203;
as defenseless now as in 1861, 203;
some exceptions, 203;
the situation long maintained at Pensacola Bay, 203;
conditional cession to United States, 209;
condition of the cession of Massachusetts, 209;
do. of New York, 209;
do. of South Carolina, 210;
stipulations made by Virginia in ceding the ground for Fortress
Monroe, 210;
act of cession, 211.
Fox, G. V., his plan to reënforce and furnish supplies to Fort Sumter,
271;
describes the details, 271.
_Framework of the Government_, how constructed, 97.
Franklin, Benjamin, his use of the word "sovereignties" as applied to
the States, 144.
_Freedom_ and _slavery_, terms misleading the opinions and sympathies of
the world, 6.
Fremont, General John C., his confiscation proclamation in Missouri,
430.
Frost, General D.M., commands militia at Camp Jackson, 415;
surrenders to Captain Lyon, 415;
efforts for release, 415;
his letter to General Harney, 415, 416.
_Fugitives_, law for the rendition of, occasion of its passage, 16;
tended to lead other States to believe they might evade their
constitutional obligations, 16;
action of the States which had passed personal liberty laws, 16;
the rendition of, not the proper subject for the legislation of
Congress, 81;
how it was in early times, 82.
Garnett, General Robert, killed at Rich Mountain, 338;
biographical notice, 338.
_General Government_, its claim of a right to judge of the extent of its
own authority, 191.
_Georgia_, efforts to prohibit importation of slaves, 4;
instructions to her deputies to the Constitutional Convention, 91;
her ratification of the Federal Constitution, 106;
withdraws from the Union, 220.
Gerry, Elbridge, objects to the provision for nine States to ratify, as
a virtual dissolution of the Union, 100;
his use of the word "compact," 137.
Gorgas, General, appointed chief of ordnance, 310;
states the growth of his department, 481;
statement relative to the charge against Secretary of War Floyd, 482.
_Government, The United States_, exalted above the States which created
it, 127;
no such unit as United States ever mentioned, 127;
instances, 127;
words of Tench Coxe, 128;
forgotten misconceptions revived by Daniel Webster, 128;
his assertions in debate, 128;
specimen of views of sectionists, 129;
assertion of Edward Everett, 129;
do. of J. L. Motley, 129;
most remarkable of these assertions, 130;
Constitution mentions the States as States seventy times, 130;
what authority ordained and established the Constitution, 131;
statements of Everett and Motley, 131;
question of Story and its answer, 132;
views of Madison on the nature of the ratification, 133;
legislation can not alter a fact, 134;
its treatment of citizens of Kentucky, 398;
not supreme, but subject to the Constitution and laws, 151;
accepted of sites for forts on the conditions prescribed by the State,
211;
confounded with the oath to support the Constitution, 151.
_Government, Confederate_, seat of, removed to Richmond, 340;
reasons for the removal, 340.
_Governments_ only agents of the sovereign, 142;
responsible to it, and subject to its control, 154.
Grant, General, attempts to capture the garrison at Belmont, 403;
his defeat, 404;
became willing to exchange prisoners, 405.
_Grants to the Federal Government_, not surrenders, says Hamilton, but
delegations of power, 163.
_Great Britain_, charge preferred against the Government of, in the
Declaration of Independence, 82.
Green, James S., offers a resolution in the United States Senate
relative to preserving peace between the States, 61.
_Grievance_, the intolerable, 83.
Hamilton, Alexander, his use of the word "sovereignty" as applied to the
States, 144;
on the supremacy of the Constitution, 150;
on a confederated republic, 162;
extract from "The Federalist," 162;
further views, 162;
his views on the coercion of a State, 178;
on the omission of a State to appoint Senators, 179.
Harney, Major-General, removed from command in Missouri, 421.
_Harper's Ferry_, burned and evacuated, 328;
President Lincoln expresses his approbation, 328;
destruction caused, 329;
an important, position for military and political considerations, 340;
its occupation needful for the removal of machinery, 341.
Harris, Governor of Tennessee, reply to Mr. Lincoln's call for troops,
413.
Harrison, William Henry, Governor of Indiana Territory, 8;
letter to Congress with resolutions requesting the suspension of the
ordinance prohibiting slavery, 9.
_Hartford Convention_, proceedings relative to a dissolution of the
Union, 74.
Hayne, I. W., Commissioner from South Carolina to Washington, 219.
_Hemp, bales of_, used for a breastwork, 430.
Henry, Patrick, asks what right had they to say, "We the people," 121;
his objection to "one people," 174.
Hicks, Governor of Maryland, his declarations, 331;
his proclamation, 331.
Hill, Colonel A. P., orders the affair near Romney, 343;
sketch of, 344.
Hill, Colonel D. H., afterward lieutenant-general, 342;
report of the combat at Bethel Church, 342.
_Honor of the United States Government_, how maintained relative to the
forts in Charleston Harbor, 217;
a point easy to concede, 217.
_Hope of reconciliation_, the last expires, 250.
_Hostile expedition_, the, made the reduction of Sumter necessary before
it should be reënforced, 297.
Howard, Charles, arrest and imprisonment by General Banks, 335.
Huger, General, commands a force at Norfolk, 340.
Hurlburt, a captive prisoner, 361;
his career, 361.
Huse, Major Caleb, sent to Europe for the purchase of munitions of war,
311;
our agent in Europe, 482;
his letter relative to the shipment of supplies, 482.
_Immigration_, causes which combined for its direction to the Northern
States, 32.
_Inaction of the Army of the Potomac_, the President alleged to be
responsible for it, 449;
the question for consideration at the Fairfax conference, 449;
a paper relative to the conference, 450;
proceedings at the Conference, 451, 452;
correspondence, 452, 453;
application of General Jackson, 454;
correspondence relative to, 455, 456;
further correspondence, 457, etc.
_Inaugural address_ of the author as President of the Confederate
States, 232.
_Incendiaries_, trained in scenes of Kansas strife, 31.
_Independence_ of North Carolina and Rhode Island while not members of
the Union, 112;
relations between them and the United States, 112;
letter from the Governor of Rhode Island, 112.
_Indiana Territory_, petitions for the suspension of the Ordinance of
1787,
prohibiting slavery, 8;
action on the petitions, 8;
subsequent action and resolutions, 9.
_Insurrection, An_, was it? 325.
_Introduction_, The, 1.
_Irrepressible conflict_, how the declaration of, arose, 34.
"_Is thy servant a dog?_" its use in the United States Senate, 34.
_Invasions of States_, no right in the Federal government to, 411;
words of the Constitution, 411;
deemed a high crime, 411;
response of Governors to President Lincoln's call for troops, 411.
_Invention_ exhausted itself in the creation of imaginary "cabals,"
"conspiracies," and "intrigues," 200;
examples, 209.
Jackson, General T. J., skill and daring in checking the enemy's forces
in June, 1861, 344;
character, 454;
letter proposing a movement into the Shenandoah Valley, 455;
letter of the President, 457.
Jackson, Governor of Missouri, reply to Mr. Lincoln's call for troops,
412;
issues a call for fifty thousand volunteers, 421;
words of the Governor, 421;
his efforts to preserve the peace, 422;
his declarations, 422;
demands of the Federal officers, 422;
his march, 459;
its results, 459.
_Jersey Plan, The_, States rights, and opposed to national, as proposed
in the Federal Constitutional Convention, 105;
arguments for it, 106.
Johnston, General Albert Sidney, resigns in United States Army, 308;
rank, 308;
appointment in Confederate Army, 309;
his early career, 405;
resigns in United States army, 406;
assigned to the command of the Confederate Department of the West,
406;
destitution at Nashville, 406;
his movements, 406;
his military positions, 406;
takes command at Bowling Green, 406;
his force, 407;
force of the enemy, 407;
efforts to procure arms and men, 407;
letter to the Governor of Alabama, 407;
letter to the Governor of Georgia, 407;
telegram to Richmond, 407;
answer of the Secretary of War, 407;
aid from the Governor and Legislature of Tennessee, 408;
measures taken to concentrate and recruit his forces, 408;
the result, 408;
resolves on a levy _en masse_, 409;
letters to the Governors of States, 409;
reënforced from Virginia, 410.
Johnson, Herschel V., nominated for the Vice-Presidency in 1860, 50.
Johnston, General Joseph E., commands army near Harper's Ferry, 340;
desires to retire, 341;
official letter addressed to him, 341;
apparent effort of the enemy to detain him in the Valley of the
Shenandoah, 344;
his junction with Beauregard becomes necessary, 344;
extract from official letter, 345;
urged to join General Beauregard, 345;
correspondence lost, 346;
telegram sent to, by General Cooper, 346;
confidence reposed in him, 346;
the meaning of an order, 347;
the junction made with marked skill, 347;
answer to telegram to join Beauregard, 347;
his telegram asking his position relative to Beauregard, 348;
answer, 348;
his rank in the Confederate Army, 348;
letter relative to obstacles to the pursuit of the enemy at Manassas,
363;
his report, and the endorsement put on it by the President, 366;
remonstrates against the movement of General Jackson in the valley,
454;
letter, 456;
reconnaissance, 465.
Johnson, John M., chairman of committee of Kentucky Senate on military
occupation, 393;
letter to General Polk, 393.
Jordan, Colonel Thomas, letter respecting the pursuit of the enemy after
battle at Manassas, 354;
his order, 355.
_Judiciary, The Federal_, views of Marshall on the power of, 166.
_Justification, A_, efforts of President Lincoln to make out his, 322;
words of his message, 322;
his question, 322;
its answer very plain, 322;
his supposed answer, 322;
nothing more erroneous than such views, 323;
the beginning and end of all the powers of government are to be found
in the instrument of delegation, 323;
for what purpose must he call out the war power? 324;
his blockade proclamation, 324;
its scheme, 324;
how based, 324;
its assumption of an insurrection, 325;
was it an insurrection? 325.
Kane, Police Marshal, arrested and imprisoned at Baltimore, 334.
_Kansas and Nebraska Bill_, some facts connected with it, 26;
declaration of 1850, 26;
its discussion, 27;
proceedings relative to, 28;
not inspired by President Pierce's Cabinet, 28;
true intent and meaning of the act, 28;
its terms, 29.
_Kansas_ Territory, its organization, 26.
Kenner, Duncan F., letter on the election of Provisional President, 238.
_Kentucky_, the principles announced by her, 385;
resolutions, 385;
her position in the conflict, 386;
the question of neutrality, 386;
how could it be maintained, 386;
correspondence between Governor Magoffin and President Lincoln, 387;
correspondence with President Davis, 389, 390;
advance of General Polk, 391;
the occasion of it, 390;
correspondence between General Polk and the authorities of Kentucky,
392;
resolutions of the Legislature relative to the occupation of points in
the State by troops, 392;
treatment of her citizens by United States Government, 398.
King, Rufus, on the danger to the Union, 186.
Lamon, Colonel, application to visit Fort Sumter, 272.
Lane, Joseph, nominated for the Vice-Presidency in 1860, 50;
Senator from Oregon, some remarks relative to affairs, 250.
_Language of the Northern press_, on the right to coerce a State,
253-256;
language of Northern speeches, on resistance to an attempt to coerce a
State, 254.
_Laurel Hill_, West Virginia, the conflict at, 338.
Lay, Colonel, reminiscences of the battle of Manassas, 381, 382.
Lee, Robert E., resigns in the United States Army, 308;
rank, 308;
appointment in the Confederate Army, 309;
appointed commander-in-chief of the military forces of Virginia, 328;
commands the Army of Virginia, 340;
remarks, 340;
goes to western Virginia, 434;
his movements, 434;
the bad season, 434;
decides to attack the encampment of the enemy, 434;
the instructions, 435;
refrains from the attack, 435;
cause, 435;
moves to the support of Wise and Floyd, 436;
the enemy withdraws, 436;
Lee returns to Richmond, 436;
sent to South Carolina, 437.
_Leesburg_, movement of the enemy to cross the Potomac near, 437.
Letcher, Governor, reply to Mr. Lincoln's call for troops, 412.
"_Let the Union slide_," origin of the expression, 56.
_Lexington, Missouri_, the battle at, 430;
surrender of the enemy, 431.
_Liberty_, misuse of the word by abolitionists, 34.
Lincoln, President, his language relative to coercion, 256;
approves the plan of Fox to reënforce Sumter, 272;
issues his proclamation introducing the farce of combinations, 297;
no power to declare war, 298;
section 4, Article IV, of the Constitution, 298;
no justification for the invasion of a State, 298;
a palpable violation of the Constitution, 298;
his effort to justify himself before the world for attacking us, 322;
expresses his approbation at the burning of Harper's Ferry, 329;
his explanation of his policy, 329;
letter relative to the passage of troops through Baltimore, 332;
reply to the letter of the Governor of Kentucky, 388;
calls on the Governors of States for troops, 412;
their answers, 412.
_Louisiana Territory_, its purchase one of
the earliest occasions for the manifestation
of sectional jealousy, 12; withdraws
from the Union, 220.
Loring, General, commands at Valley Mountain, Virginia, 434.
Lyons, General, begins hostilities in Missouri, 415;
announces the intention of the Administration to reduce Missouri to
the exact condition of Maryland, 423;
killed at Springfield, 429;
disposal of his body, 430.
Madison, James, asks on what principle the old Confederation can be
superseded, 100;
his answer, 100;
says the parties to the Constitution are the people as composing
thirteen sovereignties, 122;
views on the nature of the ratification of the Constitution, 133;
his use of the word "compact" as applied to the Constitution, 138;
his use of the word "sovereignties" as applied to the States, 144;
on the supremacy of the Constitution, 150;
his interpretation of the fundamental principles of the Constitution,
164;
his argument to show that the great principles of the Constitution are
an expansion of the principles in the Articles of Confederation, 171;
his view of "one people," 174;
on the coercion of a State, 177;
on the danger to the perpetuity of the Union, 185.
Magoffin, B., Governor of Kentucky, 287;
letter to President Lincoln, 287;
letter to President Davis, 389;
reply to Mr. Lincoln's call for troops, 412.
Magruder, General, commands the force on the Peninsula, 340.
Mallory, S. B., Secretary of State under Provisional Constitution, 242;
Secretary of Confederate Navy, 314;
his experience, 314.
_Manassas_, first battle at, 348;
appearance of the field, 348;
condition of our forces afterward, 356;
evidences of the rout of the enemy, 356;
cost of the victory, 356;
dispersion of our troops after the battle, 357;
reasons why it was an extraordinary victory, 358;
nature of the field, 358;
the line of the retreating foe followed, 359;
articles abandoned, 359;
the spoils gathered, 360;
strength of the two armies, 371;
amount of field transportation, 383;
dissatisfaction that followed the victory, 442;
unjust criticisms, 442;
their effect on the Government, 442.
_Manufacturing industry_, more extensive than ever, 505.
Marshall, John, on the powers of the States, 165;
on the power of the Federal judiciary, 166.
Martin, Luther, his use of the word "compact" as applied to the
Constitution, 138.
_Maryland_, instructions to her delegates to the Constitutional
Convention, 92;
her ratification of the Federal Constitution, 108;
refused to be bound by the Articles of Confederation, 126;
first to be invaded, 330;
warning to all the slaveholding States, 330;
views of Governor Hicks, 330;
a commissioner from Mississippi, 330;
declarations of Governor Hicks, 331;
Baltimore resists the passage of troops, 332;
efforts of the police and Governor, 332;
letter of President Lincoln, 332;
visit of the Mayor of Baltimore, 332;
his report, 332;
Legislature appoints commissioners to the Confederate Government, 333;
also to Washington, 333;
reply of President Davis, 333;
Baltimore occupied by United States troops, 333;
the city disarmed, 334;
authorities arrested and imprisoned, 334;
arrest of members of the Legislature, 336;
imprisonment, 336;
Governor Hicks's final message, 336;
her story sad to the last degree, 337;
how relieved, 337;
the Maryland line of the Revolution, 337;
tender ministrations of her daughters to the wounded, 337.
Mason, George, views on the coercion of a State, 177.
Mason and Slidell, Messrs., sent as Commissioners to Europe, 469;
seized on their passage by Captain Wilkes, United States Navy, 469;
their treatment and restoration, 470.
_Massachusetts_, threats of a dissolution of the Union in 1844-'45, 76;
instructions to her delegates to the Constitutional Convention, 92;
tenacious of her State independence, 107;
action on the ratification of the Federal Constitution, 107;
her terms of ratification, 139;
her use of the word "compact," as applied to the Constitution, 139;
use of the word "sovereign," as applied to the State, 143;
on the reserved powers of the States, 146;
resolutions of her Legislature express perhaps too decided a doctrine
of nullification, 190;
terms of cession of land for forts and navy-yard to the United States,
209.
McClellan, Major-General George B., commands force in Western Virginia,
338;
commands enemy's forces at Rich Mountain and Laurel Hill, 338.
McDowell, General, moves to attack General Beauregard, 344.
_Medicines_, declared by the enemy contraband of war, 310;
substitutes sought from the forest, 310.
Memminger, C. G., Secretary of the Treasury under the Provisional
Constitution, 242.
_Michigan_, action of her Senators relative to the Peace Congress, 248,
249;
the "bloodletting" letter, 249.
Miles, W. Porcher, letter on the election of Provisional President, 240.
_Military organizations, quasi_, in the North in 1860, 55.
_Military service_, laws relating to, 506;
a constitutional question raised, 506;
its discussion at length, 506.
_Mississippi_, agitated by compromise measures of 1850, 18;
diversity of views, 18;
Governor calls special session of the Legislature after the
Presidential election in 1860, 57;
its Senators and Representatives in Congress convened for
consultation, 57;
views of the author, 57, 58;
letter of O. R. Singleton on the consultation, 58;
withdraws from the Union, 220;
State Convention makes provision for a State army, 228;
appoints the author major-general, and other officers, 228;
State divided into districts, and troops apportioned, 228;
destitution of arms showed the absence of expectation of war, 228.
_Mississippi River_, misrepresentations relative to the free navigation
of, 244;
act of Congress relative to, 245.
_Mississippi Union Bank_ bonds, the facts in relation to them, 497.
_Missouri Compromise_, without Constitutional authority, 11.
_Missouri_, controversy relative to the admission of, to the Union, 12;
its origin, 12;
history of the excitement occasioned, 12;
its result, 12;
true issue stated by Samuel A. Foote, 12;
the compromise, how constituted, 13;
votes on, 13;
line obliterated in 1850, 14;
its effect, 14, 15;
resistance to its admission as a State, owing merely to political
motives, 33;
the issue of subjugation presented to her, 403;
her condition similar to that of Kentucky, 414;
hostilities instituted by Captain Lyon, 414;
Camp Jackson surrounded, 414;
its surrender, 415;
imprisonment of General Frost, 415;
efforts to restore order, 416;
agreement between Generals Price and Harney, 416;
signification of the agreement between Generals Harney and Price, 417;
favorable prospect of peace in the State, 418;
misrepresentations by a cabal, 418;
an incident, 418;
General Harney removed, 419;
arms removed from the United States Arsenal to St. Louis, 419;
houses of citizens searched for arms, 419;
the excitement in the State, 420;
General Jackson an object of special persecution, 420;
activity of Lieutenant-Governor Reynolds, 420;
position of the State in 1860, 420;
interference of unauthorized parties, 420;
the volunteers attacked at Booneville by General Lyon and United
States troops, 424;
a party of the enemy routed, 424;
General Price moves to southwestern part of the State, 424;
the patriot army of Missouri, 425;
rout of the enemy at Carthage, 425;
anxiety about affairs in Missouri, 426;
General Price's efforts, 427, 428;
complaints and embarrassments in, 427;
correspondence with John B. Clark, 427;
destitution of arms, 428;
Missourians at Vicksburg, 428;
aid from Confederate States, 429;
battle at Springfield, 429;
action of General Fremont, 430;
conflict at Lexington, 430;
asserts her right to exercise supreme control over her domestic
affairs, 421;
proceedings in, 421;
attack of Kansas troops, 431;
put to flight, 431;
increase of the force of the enemy, 432;
General Price retires, 432;
evidence that the ordinance of secession was the expression of the
popular will of Missouri, 432.
_Misrepresentations_, inspired by a cabal in St. Louis, 418.
Monroe, Judge, citizen of Kentucky, his treatment by the Government of
the United States, 398.
Moore, Surgeon L. P., appointed Surgeon-general, 310.
Morris, Gouverneur, his use of the word "compact," 137;
his remarkable propositions in the Convention, and their fate, 159,
160.
Motley, John L., his assertions relative to the Constitution, 129;
his declaration relative to the words "sovereign" and "sovereignty,"
143;
views on the second clause of the sixth article, 150.
_Munitions of war_, preparations to provide them, 316;
prompt measures to supply niter, saltpeter, charcoal, 316.
Myers, Lieutenant-Colonel A. C., appointed quartermaster-general, 310.
"_National_," how the word was treated in the Convention that framed the
Constitution, 97.
_Nationalism_, its fate in the Constitutional Convention, 161.
_Naval officers, Southern_, view of their position, 313;
returned all vessels to the North, 314.
_Naval vessels_, instructions to Captain Semmes to seek for, 313;
views relative to Southern naval officers, 313;
officer sent to England, 314.
Nelson, Judge, coöperates between the Commissioners and the Federal
authorities, 267;
his own views, 267.
_Neutrality_, the position assumed by Kentucky, 386.
_Neutrality of Kentucky_ not respected by United States Government, 397;
historical statement, 398.
_New Hampshire_, instructions to her deputies to the Constitutional
Convention, 92;
her ratification of the Federal Constitution, 108;
use of the word "compact" as applied to the Constitution, 134;
use of the word "sovereign" as applied to the State, 143;
on the reserved powers of the States, 147.
_New Jersey_, instructions to her delegates to the Constitutional
Convention, 90;
her ratification of the Federal Constitution, 106.
_New States_, practice of the Government relative to the admission of,
38;
the usual process of transition, 39;
question of sovereignty, 39;
Territorial Legislatures the agents of Congress, 40.
_New York_, instructions to her delegates to the Constitutional
Convention, 92;
how the ratification was secured, 109;
a declaration of principles, 110;
her declaration on the reserved powers of the States, 147;
conditions upon which the land for Brooklyn Navy Yard was ceded to the
United States, 209;
nine States to ratify, reason for the adoption of this number, 98;
why referred to State Conventions, 99;
a dissolution of the Union, 100;
the right of, to form a government for themselves under the seventh
article of the Constitution, 101;
a refutation of the assertion that the Constitution was formed by the
people in the aggregate, 101.
_Niter and Mining Bureau_, organized, 477;
its operation, 477.
_North, The_, the cause of undue caution, 314.
_North Carolina_, instructions to her commissioners to the
Constitutional Convention, 90;
her declaration on the reserved powers of the States, 147.
_Northern States_, at the last moment, refuse to make any concessions,
or offer any guarantees to check the current toward secession of the
complaining States, 438;
responsible for whatever of bloodshed, of devastation, or shock to
republican government has resulted from the war, 439.
Northrop, Colonel L. B., placed at the head of the subsistence
department, 303;
his experience and capacity, 303;
rank, 310;
his efforts to provide for present and future supplies, 315;
lack of transportation, 315.
_Nullification_ and _secession_, distinction between, 184.
_Oath_ required by the Constitution, some took it and made use of the
powers and opportunities of the offices held under its sanctions to
nullify its obligations, 81.
_Object of the war_, our subjugation by the North, 321.
_Obstacles_ to the formation of a more perfect Union, 31.
"_On to Richmond_," changed at Manassas to "off to Washington," 351.
_Order of pursuit_, after the victory at Manassas, details of, 353, 354;
not sent, 355;
another order sent, 355.
_Ordinance of Virginia_ in 1787, its articles, 7;
urged as a precedent in support of the claim of a power in Congress to
determine the question of the admission of slaves into the
Territories, 10;
its validity examined, 10, 11.
Orr, James L., Commissioner from South Carolina to Washington, 213.
_Pandora's box_, the opening of, 15.
_Paradoxical theories_, relative to sovereignty in the United States,
142;
no government is sovereign, 142.
_Patriot army of_ Missouri, description of, 425.
Patterson, William, arguments for the Jersey plan in the Constitutional
Convention, 206.
Patterson, Major-General, commands force at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania,
337;
its object, 338.
_Pause, A_, to consider the attitude of the parties to the contest, and
the grounds on which they stand, 289.
_Peace Congress_, it assembles, 248;
States represented, 248;
its officers and proceedings, 249;
the plan proposed, 250;
how treated by the majority, 250;
the failure of, 296.
Pegram, Colonel, second in command at Rich Mountain, 338.
Pendleton, Captain W. N., commands an effective battery at Manassas,
358.
_Peninsula of Virginia_, features for defense, 300.
_Pennsylvania_, instructions to her deputies to the Constitutional
Convention, 90;
words with which she ratified the Federal Constitution, 105.
_People in the aggregate, The_, no instance of the action of the people
as one body, 119;
use of the word by Virginia, 125;
its early use, 125;
do. in the Declaration of Independence, 126;
views of Story, 126;
speak as the people of the States, 152.
_People of the State_, the only sovereign political community before the
adoption of the Federal Constitution, 154.
_People of the United States_, understood to mean the people of the
respective States, 174;
views of Virginia, of Massachusetts, and others, 174.
_People of the South_, their hope and wish that the disagreeable
necessity of separation would be peaceably met, 438;
every step of the Confederate Government directed to that end, 439.
_Perpetuity of the Union_, danger to, foreshadowed, 185.
Pickens, Governor, his dispatch relative to Colonel Lamon, 272.
_Pickens, Fort_, its condition at the outbreak of the war, 203.
Pickering, Timothy, letter in 1803-'4 on a separation of the Union, 71;
his prediction, 79.
Pierce, Franklin, President, his character, 25.
_Plans of the enemy_, their development, 468.
_Pledge_ given by Federal authorities to Confederate Commissioners and
Government for the evacuation of Sumter and unchanged condition of
Pickens, 269.
_Plighted faith_, the last vestige of, disappeared, 274.
_Point of honor_, the, raised by Secretary Seward, 273.
_Political parties_, the changes occurring in, 35;
their names and signification, 35.
Polk, Major-General Leonidas, enters Kentucky and occupies Hickman and
Columbus, 391;
his dispatch to the President and the answer, 392;
answer to Kentucky Committee, 394;
letter to the Governor of Kentucky, 396;
his proposition, 397;
repulses the assailants at Belmont, 404;
his report of the conflict, 405.
_Popular sovereignty party_ of 1860, its principles, 51.
_Powder_, our supply in 1861, 472;
first efforts to obtain, 473;
mills in existence, 472;
progress of development, 474;
amount of powder annually required, 474;
how supplied, 474, 475;
Government mills, 475.
Powell, Senator, offers a resolution in the United States Senate
relative to the state of affairs in 1860, 61;
action on the resolution, 68.
_Power, Political_, the balance of, the basis of sectional controversy,
11;
its earlier manifestations, 11.
_Power of amendment_, special examination of, 195;
what is the Constitution? 195;
the States have only intrusted to a common agent certain functions,
196;
a power to amend the delegated grants, 196;
the first ten amendments, 196;
distinction between amendment and delegation of power, 196;
smaller power required for amendment than for a grant, 196;
apprehensions of the power of amendment, 197;
restrictions placed on the exercise of the delegated powers, 197;
effect on New England, 198.
_Power of the Confederate Government_ over its own armies and the
militia, 506;
object of confederations, 506;
the war powers granted, 507;
two modes of raising armies in the Confederate States, 507;
is the law necessary and proper? 508;
Congress is the judge, under the grant of specific power, 508;
what is meant by militia, 509;
whole military strength divided into two classes, 510;
powers of Congress, 510;
objections answered, 511;
the limitations enlarged, 512;
result of the operations of these laws, 515;
act for the employment of slaves, 515;
message to Congress, 515;
died of a theory, 518;
act passed, 518;
not time to put it in operation, 519.
_Power to prohibit slavery_ in a Territory, argument for its possession
by the United States Congress, 26.
_Preamble to the Constitution_, its words, 121;
the stronghold of the advocates of consolidation, 121;
we, the People, interpreted as a nation, 121;
words of John Adams, 121;
do. of Patrick Henry, 121;
other words of Henry, 122;
answer of Madison to Henry, 122;
the people were those of the respective States, 123;
proceeding in the Convention, 123;
the original words reported, 124;
vote on them unanimous, 124;
reason of modification, 124;
the word _people_--its signification, 125;
examples from Scripture, 125;
instances in the Declaration of Independence, 126;
revolt of Maryland, 126;
do. of North Carolina and Rhode Island, 126.
_Precipitation_, the calmness with which Southern measures were adopted
refutes the charge of, 199.
_Prediction_ of Timothy Pickering, 79.
_Presidential election of 1800_, the basis of the contest, 189;
the last contest on them, 189.
_Pretension, Absurdity of_ the, by which a factitious sympathy was
obtained in certain quarters for the war upon the South, on the ground
that it was a war in behalf of freedom against slavery, 262;
letter of Mr. Seward, 263.
Price, General, agreement with General Harney, 416;
address to the people of Missouri, 421, 422;
his efforts in Missouri, 427, 428;
his enthusiasm, 428;
magnanimity at the battle of Springfield, 429.
_Proclamation of President Lincoln_ on April 15, 1861, an official
declaration of war, 319;
his words, 319;
power granted in the Constitution, how expressed, 320;
delegated to Congress, 320;
action of South Carolina, 320;
the State designated as a combination, 320;
not recognized as a State, 320;
its effect, 321;
reason of President Lincoln for designating the State as a
combination, 321;
no authority to enter a State on insurrection arising, 321;
words of the Constitution, 321;
his efforts to justify himself, 322;
was it an insurrection? 325.
_Prohibitory clauses_, relative to the States, 149.
_Propositions_ clearly established relative to sovereignty, 157, 158.
_Proposition of Major-General Polk_ to the Governor of Kentucky, 397.
_Public opinion_, how drifted from the landmarks set up by the sages and
patriots who formed the constitutional Union, 216.
Quincy, Josiah, member of Congress from Massachusetts, declaration of a
dissolution of the Union in 1811, 73.
Quitman, John A., nominated for Governor of Mississippi, 20;
accepts and subsequently withdraws, 20.
_Railroads_, insufficient in number, 315;
poorly furnished, 315;
dependent on Northern foundries, 315.
Rains, General G. W., his experience, 316;
charged with the manufacture of powder, 316;
undertakes the manufacture of powder, 475.
Randolph, Edmund, plan of government offered in the Convention, 96;
his views on the coercion of a State, 178.
Reagan, J. H., Postmaster-General under Provisional Constitution, 242.
Rector, Governor of Arkansas, reply to Mr. Lincoln's call for troops,
412.
_Relay House_, occupied by United States troops, 333.
_Remedy, The_, invoked by Mr. Calhoun 189.
_Representatives of the South_, their proceedings at Washington.
_Republic, An American_, never transfers or surrenders its sovereignty,
154.
_Republican (so-called) Convention_ of 1860, a purely sectional body,
49;
its selection of candidates, 49;
declaration of Mr. Lincoln, 49.
_Republican party_, its growth, 36;
its principle, 36;
votes, 36;
of 1860, its principles, 51.
_Republicans_, demand made on them in the United States Senate for a
declaration of their policy, 69;
no answer, 69.
_Resolutions_, relating to Territories offered by Senator Davis, 42;
discussion and vote upon them, 43;
position of the Senator, 44;
adopted by Southern Senators, 204;
their significance, 204;
further efforts would be unavailing, 205.
_Resolutions of_ 1798-'99, the corner-stone of the political edifice of
Mr. Jefferson, 385.
_Reserved powers of the States_, views of Massachusetts and New
Hampshire, 146, 147;
declaration of New York, 147;
do. of South Carolina, 147;
do. of North Carolina, 147;
do. of Rhode Island, 148;
no objection made to the principle, 148.
_Resumption of powers, etc._, some objections considered, 180;
as to new States, 180;
every State equal, 180;
States formed of purchased territory, 181;
allegiance to the Federal Government said to be paramount, 182;
examined, 182;
the sovereign is the people, 182;
the right asserted in the ratifications of Virginia, New York, and
Rhode Island, 173;
effort to construe these as declaring the right of one people, 174.
_Revolutionary measures in the extreme_, acts of the United States
Government in Missouri, 420.
Reynolds, Lieutenant-Governor, ably seconds the efforts of Governor
Jackson in Missouri, 423.
_Rhode Island_, the Constitution rejected by a vote of the people, 111;
subsequently ratified, 111;
terms of ratification, 111;
letter of her Governor to President Washington relative to her
position as not a member of the new Union, 113;
her declaration on the reserved powers of the States, 148.
_Rich Mountain_, West Virginia, the contest at, 338.
_Richmond_, a campaign against, planned by the enemy, 466.
_Right, the_, enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, 386;
determination of the States to exercise it, 386;
to attack Fort Sumter, South Carolina a State, 290;
ground on which the fort stood ceded in trust to the United States for
her defense, 290;
no other had an interest in the maintenance of the fort except for
aggression against her, 290;
remarks of Senator Douglas, 290.
_Rights of the States_, assertions of, in various quarters, 190;
resolutions of Massachusetts Legislature, 190;
declaration on the purchase of Louisiana, 190;
on the admission of the State, 190;
on the annexation of Texas, 190.
_Right of the Federal troops to enter a State_, 411;
words of the Constitution, 411;
how could they be sent to overrule the will of the people? 411.
Roman, A. B., appointed Commissioner to United States, 246.
_Romney_, the affair near, in June, 1861, 343.
"_Rope of sand_," the expression examined, 176.
Scott, Major-General, advises the evacuation of the forts, 282.
_Seat of sovereignty_, never disturbed heretofore in this country, 154.
_Secession_, the tendency of the Southern movement to, 60;
repeated instances of the assertion of this right in the prior history
of the country, 71;
several instances, 71;
letters, 71;
provision made for, 100;
the right of, to be veiled, 101;
a question easily determined, 168;
the compact between the States was in the nature of a partnership,
168;
law of partnerships, 168;
formation of the Confederation, 169;
do. of the "more perfect Union," 169;
an amended Union not a consolidation, 169;
the very powers of the Federal Government and prohibitions to the
States, relied upon by the advocates of centralism as incompatible
with State sovereignty, were in force under the old Confederation,
170;
arguments of Madison to show that the great principles of the
Constitution and the Articles of Confederation are the same, 170;
extract, 171;
why was it not expressly renounced if it was intended to surrender it?
172;
it would have been extraordinary to put in the Constitution a
provision for the dissolution of the Union, 172;
in treaties there is a provision for perpetuity, but the right to
dissolve the compact is not less clearly understood, 172;
the movements which culminated in, began before the session of
Congress of December, 1860, 201;
action of the author, 201, 202.
_Secession and coercion_, views on, that had been held in all parts of
the country, 252.
_Secessionists per se_, number so small as not to be felt in any popular
decision, 301;
only alternative to a surrender of equality in the union, 301.
_Sectional controversy_, the basis of, 11;
no question of the right or wrong of slavery involved in the earlier,
13.
_Sectional hostility_, not the consequence of any difference on the
abstract question of slavery, 79;
the offspring of sectional rivalry and political ambition, 79.
_Sectional rivalry_, its efforts to prevent free emigration, 29.
_Self-defense_, preparations for, 326;
declarations of the message to Congress, 326;
the state of affairs, 326, 327;
acts for military purposes passed, 327;
our object and desire distinctly declared, 327;
the patriotic devotion of every portion of the country, 328;
secession of the border States, 328.
Semmes, Captain, afterward Admiral, 311;
sent North to purchase arms, ammunition, etc., etc., 311;
letter of instructions, 311.
_Senators, Southern_, efforts to dissuade from aggressive movements,
204;
how exerted, 204.
_Separation_ made familiar to the people by agitation, 227.
_Settlement with the United States_, views relative to, 245.
Seward, W. H., letter to Mr. Dayton on the views and purposes of the
United States Government, 262;
proceedings as Secretary of State relative to our Commissioners, 267;
his declarations, 268;
assurances given, 269;
his representations and misrepresentations to the Commissioners, 273,
425;
further statements, 277.
Seymour, Horatio. remarks relative to coercion, 255.
Sharkey, William L., anecdote of, 230.
_Sharp correspondence_ between the Commissioners from South Carolina and
President Buchanan, 214 (see Appendix).
Sherman, Roger, his use of the word "sovereign" as applied to the
States, 144.
Singleton, O. R., letter on conference of Senators and Representatives
in Congress from Mississippi with the Governor, 58.
_Slaves_, importation forbidden by Southern States, 4.
_Slave-trade_, interference with, by Congress forbidden in the
Constitution, 4;
importation forbidden by Southern States, 4;
its final abolition, 5.
_Slavery_, a right understanding of questions growing out of, 3;
existed at the adoption of the Federal Constitution, 3;
occasion of diversities, 3;
cause of its abolition, 4;
first petitions for abolition of, 5;
question of maintenance of, belongs exclusively to the States, 6;
how raised by zealots in the North, 6;
the extension of, a term misleading the opinions of the world, 6;
did not imply the addition of a single slave to the number existing,
7;
signified distribution or dispersion, 7;
no question of the right or wrong of, involved in the earlier
sectional controversies, 13;
historical sketch of its existence among us, 78;
far from being the cause of the conflict, 73;
only an incident, 80;
a matter entirely subject to the control of the States, 80;
its existence and validity distinctly recognized by the Constitution,
80.
_Slaves_, message on the employment of, in the army, 515;
act passed, 519.
Smith, General E. K., wounded at Manassas, 351.
_South Carolina_ repeals law to prohibit importation of slaves, 4;
instructions to her representatives to the Constitutional Convention,
91;
adopts an ordinance of secession, 70;
her representatives in Congress withdraw, 70;
action of other States, 71;
her ratification of the Federal Constitution, 108;
her declaration on the reserved powers of the States, 147;
conditions of her cession of sites for ports in Charleston Harbor to
United States, 210;
any delay by her to secede could not have changed the result, 300;
nature of her act of secession, 320.
_South, The_, growth of overweening confidence in, 314.
_Southern manifestations_, cause of, after the Presidential election of
1860, 53;
their deliberate action, 54.
_Southern_ people, in advance of their leaders throughout, 199;
their grounds to hope there would be no war, 257;
their conservative temper, 258;
the prevailing sentiment, a cordial attachment to the Union, 301.
_Southern States_, only alternative to seek security out of the Union,
85;
what course remained for them to adopt, 192;
over sovereigns there is no common judge, 192;
their defenseless condition in 1861, 228;
their calamities a result of their credulous reliance on the power of
the Constitution, 228;
satisfied with a Federal Government such as their fathers had formed,
439;
against the violations of the Constitution they remonstrated, argued,
and finally appealed to the undelegated power of the States, 439;
years of fruitless effort to secure from their Northern associates a
faithful observance of the compact, 439;
a peaceful separation preferred to a continuance in a hostile Union,
439;
pleas for peace met deceptive answers, 440.
_Sovereignty resides alone in the States, 26;
assertion of Story, 141;
increased the unnecessary confusion of ideas, 141;
definition of Burlamaqui, 141;
sovereignty seated in the people, 141;
they can exercise it only through the State, 141;
the States were sovereign under the articles of Confederation, 142;
never been divested of it, 142;
paradoxical theories in the United States, 142;
if the people have transferred their sovereignty, to whom was it made?
143;
declaration of Motley, 143;
refutation by articles of Confederation, 143;
action of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, 143;
declarations of Madison, Hamilton, and others, 143, 144;
views of others, 145;
reservations in the tenth amendment, 146;
its meaning, 146;
views of the States on signification of it, 147, 148.
_Sovereign will_, two modes of expressing known to the people of this
country, 153;
an effort to make it clear beyond the possibility of misconception,
153;
propositions clearly established, 157, 158.
_Special friends of the Union_, claim arrogated by the abolitionists,
34.
_Springfield, Missouri_, the battle at, 429.
_Squatter sovereignty_, responsibilities of the authors of, 31;
its origin, 36;
when fully developed, 38;
the theory in its application to Territories, 40.
_Star of the West,_ attempts to reënforce Fort Sumter, 217;
the result, 218.
_Statements_, unfounded, relative to the election of Provisional
President, 236.
_State_, a suit against, views of Hamilton, 162.
_State seceding, A_, assumes control of all her defenses intrusted to
the United States, 211.
_States, The_, their separate independence acknowledged by Great
Britain, 47;
to whom could they have surrendered their sovereignty, 156;
represented in the Peace Congress, 248;
as States, mentioned in the Constitution seventy times, 130;
ratification by, alone gave validity to the Constitution, 132;
have never been divested of sovereignty, 142.
_States Rights party_ of 1860, its principles, 51.
Stephens, Alexander H., elected Vice-President of the Confederate
States, 230;
remarks on the permanent Constitution, 258.
St. John, General, appointed commissary-general of subsistence, 318;
his report, 318.
Story, Judge Joseph, a question asked by him, 132;
its answer, 132.
Stuart, General J. E. B., activity and vigilance in Virginia, 344.
_Subjugation_; the measures of the United States Government in Missouri
designed for the subjugation of the State, 423.
_Sumter, Fort_, correspondence relative to occupancy of, between Colonel
I.W. Hayne and President Buchanan, 219;
state of affairs relative to, after the inauguration of President
Lincoln, 267;
pledges given relative to, 269;
proceedings of G. V. Fox relative to reënforcing and furnishing
supplies to, 271;
official notification from Washington, 274;
correspondence relative to bombardment of, 285, 286;
do. relative to evacuation of, 288;
the right to claim it as public property is untenable, apart from a
claim of coercive control over the State, 290;
the right of the Federal Government to coerce a State to submission,
291;
no hope of peaceful settlement existed, 291;
repeated attempts at negotiation, 291;
met by evasion, prevarication, and perfidy, 291;
the right to demand that there should be no hostile grip pending a
settlement, 291;
the forbearance of the Confederate Government unexampled, 292;
he who makes the assault is not necessarily the one who strikes the
first blow, 292;
the attempt to represent us as the aggressors unfounded, 292;
"firing on the flag," 292;
idea of the commander of the Pawnee, 292;
remark of Greeley, 293;
the conflict, 293;
nobody injured, 293;
extract from Mr. Lincoln's message, 294;
reply, 294;
a word from him would have relieved the hungry, 294;
suppose the Confederate authorities had consent to supplies for the
garrison, 294;
what would have been the next step, 294;
what reliance could be placed on his assurances, 294;
fire upon, opened by General Beauregard, 293;
the conflict, 293;
final surrender, 293;
an incident of ex-Senator Wigfall, 293;
terms of surrender, 293;
bombardment in anticipation of the fleet, 296.
_Supremacy of the Constitution_, considerations conducing to a clearer
understanding of, 150;
declared to be in the Constitution and laws, not in the Government of
the United States, 151.
_Supremacy, State_, the controlling idea in the Confederate army bill,
304;
arms and munitions within the several States were considered as
belonging to them, 305;
the forces could only be drawn from the several States by their
consent, 305;
the system of organization, 305;
provision for the discharge of the forces, 305;
the act to provide for the public defense, 305;
the law for the establishment and organization of the army of the
Confederate States, 306;
wish and object of the Government were peace, 306;
provisions of the act, 306.
Taney, Chief-Justice, remark in the Dred Scott case, 84.
_Tariff laws_, enacted for protection against foreign competition, 32;
a burden on the Southern States, 32;
a most prolific source of sectional strife, 498;
its early history, 498;
policy of the British Government with the colonies, 499;
a difficulty in the Constitutional Convention, 499;
progress after the formation of the Union, 500;
all laws based on the principle of duties for revenue, 500;
the first time a tariff law had protection for its object, it for the
first time produced discontent, 501;
geographical differences between North and South, 501;
legislation for the benefit of Northern manufactures a Northern
policy, 501;
the controversy quadrennially renewed, 502;
motion of Mr. Drayton, of South Carolina, 502;
progress of parties, 503;
position of Southern representatives, 503;
other causes, 503;
general effect on the character of our institutions, 504.
_Texas_, her division, how effected, 16;
compared with California, 16.
_Taxation_, the system of measures for, 493;
objects of taxation, 494;
direct taxes, 494;
obstacle to the levy of these taxes, 495.
Thayer, James S., speech of, in New York, on the attempt to coerce a
State, 254.
_Thirteen, Senate Committee_ of, consequences of their failure to come
to an agreement, 199.
_Thoroughfare Gap_, meat-packing establishment at, 462.
Toombs, Robert, Secretary of State under Provisional Constitution, 242.
Townsend, Colonel Frederick, commands Third Regiment of the enemy's
force at Bethel Church, 342;
his account of the combat at Bethel Church, 342.
_Travesty of history_, statements of a foreign writer, 201;
their absurdity shown, 201.
_Trent, The steamer_, seizure of our Commissioners on board, 470;
their treatment and restoration, 470.
_Tribune, The New York_, declaration relative to the coercion of States,
56;
its declarations relative to coercion, 252.
_Troops, Southern_, rush to Virginia, 300;
also sent by Confederate Government, 300.
_Troops_ of the two armies, exemplification of the difference before
either was trained to war, 342, 343.
_Union, The_, no moral or sentimental considerations involved in the
controversies that ruptured the Union, 6.
_Union, Dissolution of the_, first threats or warnings of, from New
England, 12;
ground of opposition stated, 12;
Colonel Timothy Pickering in 1803, 71;
do. in 1804, 72;
its peaceful character, 72;
declaration of Josiah Quincy in Congress in 1811, 73;
action of the House, 74;
the celebrated Hartford Convention, 74;
its proceedings, 74;
published report, 74;
their declaration, 75;
threats of Massachusetts in 1844, 76.
_Union_, the, how to be saved, views of President Buchanan, 54;
declaration of Senator Calhoun, 55.
_Union, A perpetual_, provided for in the last article of the
Confederation, 98;
a serious difficulty, 98;
danger of failure, 98.
_Union_, A, necessarily involves the idea of competent States, 128;
was not formed to destroy the States, but to secure the blessings of
liberty, 176;
a voluntary junction of free and independent States, 439.
_Union of the armies of Johnston and Beauregard_, decided at Richmond,
347;
order sent to Johnston, 347.
_United States Supreme Court_, decision of, flouted, denounced, and
disregarded, 85.
_Usurpation_, tendency to, in the Federal Government, 176;
last effort to stay the tide of, 247;
set on foot by Virginia, 247;
an effort for adjustment, 247;
the Peace Congress, 248.
Vattel, his views on the sovereignty of a state, 145.
Vaughn, Colonel, report of the affair near Romney, in June, 1861, 343;
a notice of Vaughn, 344.
_Virginia_, made efforts to prohibit the importation of slaves, 4;
first to prohibit, 5;
her cession of territory in 1784, 7;
Ordinance of 1787, 7;
the occasion of her cession of territory north of the Ohio River, 47;
instructions to her Commissioners to the Constitutional Convention,
90;
long debates in her Convention, 108;
the speakers, 108;
her terms of ratification, 109;
her cession of sites for forts to United States, 210;
act of cession, 211;
proposes a convention to adjust existing controversies, 247;
appoints commissioners, 247;
her ordinance subject to the ratification of the people, 299;
forms a convention with the Confederate States, 299;
prompt to reclaim the grants she had made on the appearance of
President Lincoln's proclamation, 298;
passes an ordinance of secession, 299;
liable to be invaded from north, east, and west, 300;
the forces assembled in, 340;
divided into three armies, 340;
their positions, 340;
junction possible between first and second, 340;
her history a long course of sacrifices for the benefit of her sister
States, 440;
her efforts to check dissolution, 440;
her mediations rejected in the Peace Congress, 440;
required to furnish troops for subjugation, or reclaim her grants to
the Federal Government, 440;
one course left consistent with her stainless reputation, 440;
the forces of the enemy around her, 440;
Richmond threatened, 441.
_Volunteers_, sufficient secured during the first year, 505;
laws relating to the military service, 506.
Walker, L. P., Secretary of War under Provisional Constitution, 242.
Walworth, Chancellor, remarks on the coercion of the Southern States,
255.
_War of the Revolution_, its causes were grievances inflicted on the
Northern colonies, 148;
the South had no material cause of complaint, 48.
_War, the late bloody_, the theory on which it was waged, 160;
proposition in the Convention to incorporate it in the Constitution,
160;
not seconded, 160.
_War between the Slates_, who was responsible for? 440;
the probability of, discussed by the people, 227;
opinion that it would be long and bloody, 230.
_War-cry, the_, employed to train the Northern mind, 29;
its success, 30.
_Washington_, the great effort of invasion to be from that point, 337;
accumulation of troops, 337.
Washington, George, his use of the word "compact" as applied to the
Constitution, 138;
repeatedly refers to the proposed Union as a confederacy, 164;
extracts from his letters, 164.
Washington, John A., killed on a reconnaissance, 436.
Webster, Daniel, remark of, at the death of Mr. Calhoun, 17;
first to revive refuted misconceptions, 128;
a remark of his, 134;
denies the Constitution to be a compact, 135;
on the word "accede," 136;
his concessions, 137;
denied what Massachusetts and New Hampshire affirmed, 139;
on the sovereignty of the Government, 151;
his inconsistent ideas, 152;
his views in 1819, 166;
his speech at Capon Springs, 167;
on the omission of a State to appoint Senators, 179.
Welles, Gideon, statement of proceedings in Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet, 276.
Wise, General Henry A., sent to western Virginia, 433;
his success, 433.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Rise and Fall of the Confederate
Government, Vol. 1 (of 2), by Jefferson Davis
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