by Bruce Catton
Seward had assured Russell a few days earlier that "we will give up nothing we have" and had insisted that the line laid down in the inaugural (to hold, occupy, and possess) clearly expressed administration policy. Now the general of the armies was saying that this policy must be abandoned, and when the President finished reading the memorandum, there was a brief, stunned silence. Less than a fortnight earlier the cabinet had agreed, almost to a man, that Fort Sumter ought to be abandoned, but in the days since then the urge to "soothe and give confidence" to the slave states that remained in the Union had grown perceptibly weaker. Blair spoke up angrily to say that General Scott was far out of line; he was "playing the part of a politician, not a general," and as far as Blair could see, there was no military reason to give up Fort Pickens. The meeting ended at last, with the understanding that the cabinet would reassemble the next day and that each member once more would submit in writing his ideas concerning what ought to be done.2
By noon of March 29, when the cabinet came together, it was evident that there had been a change of heart. General Scott's surprising pronunciamento about Fort Pickens seemed to have thrown the whole business into sharper relief. Secretary Chase, who had wavered uncertainly at the first meeting, had been purged of his doubts. If war would come from an attempt to provision Fort Sumter, he wrote, it would come just as certainly from an attempt to keep Fort Pickens. He himself was definitely in favor of retaining Fort Pickens; by now he was "just as clearly in favor of provisioning Fort Sumter." If the attempt to send rations to Major Anderson should be resisted by military force, Anderson should be reinforced: "If war is to be the result I perceive no reason why it may not be best begun in consequence of military resistance to the fforts of the administration to sustain troops of the Union Siationed under the authority of the government in a fort of the Union in the ordinary course of service."
Chase spoke for most of his colleagues. Attorney General Bates hedged slightly; he would reinforce Fort Pickens, but as to Sumter, his best judgment was that "the time is come either to evacuate or relieve it." Caleb Smith still remained where he had been at the first cabinet meeting—he wanted the government to pull out of Fort Sumter—and in this he did no more than reflect the attitude of his politician guardian, Secretary Seward. For Seward, despite the firm words he had uttered to correspondent Russell, wanted Major Anderson withdrawn.
Seward was fully prepared to have the Federal government take a stand that would mean war, but he believed that Fort Pickens rather than Fort Sumter was the place where the stand ought to be taken. He felt (as he wrote the President) that the notion of coming to Major Anderson's relief by force of arms was simply impractical and hence ought not to be tried. "The dispatch of an expedition to supply or re-enforce Sumter," he asserted, "would provoke an attack and so involve a war at that point. The fact of preparation for such an expedition would inevitably transpire, and would therefore precipitate the war—and probably defeat the object. I do not think it wise to provoke a civil war beginning at Charleston and in rescue of an untenable position." Fort Pickens, however, was a different case: "I would at once and at every cost prepare for a war at Pensacola ... to be taken however only as a consequence of maintaining the possession and authority of the United States."8
The ordinary human eye could not quite follow all that Secretary Seward was doing in the weeks immediately following Lincoln's inauguration, and his course in connection with the Sumter-Pickens business was downright subterranean. During the winter Seward had become, in the Senate, the Republican party's semi-official voice of moderation, the conciliator who thought a peace by compromise and adjustment possible to attain. More recently he had been playing the same part with a more official touch, playing it as if he could make as well as enunciate administration policy. If he was now drawing a sharp distinction between a war begun at Charleston and a war begun at Pensacola, he was speaking partly from principle, partly in support of promises already made (by grapevine) to Jefferson Davis's representatives, and partly as a bid to lodge the effective final authority of the new administration in the hands of the Secretary of State—Seward's hands.
Two days before this momentous cabinet meeting, Seward had talked in confidence with the sympathetic Charles Francis Adams, whom he was naming (with the President's approval) United States Minister to Great Britain. Adams noted in his diary that Seward "spoke of the President kindly and as gradually coming right," but this qualified approval was followed by words of sharp criticism. The President, said Seward, had "no system, no relative ideas, no conception of his situation," and showed "little application to great ideas"— all of which made things most difficult for his Secretary of State. Not long after this meeting, Adams wrote gloomily that the country seemed to be drifting into war, and he certainly reflected Seward's feeling if he did not actually echo it when he added: "I see nothing but incompetency in the head. The man is not equal to the hour."4
Observing the inauguration of Jefferson Davis, Mr. Yancey, of Alabama, had discerned a happy meeting of the man and the hour. Observing the first three weeks of Lincoln's administration, Mr. Adams, of Massachusetts, had been able to see nothing of the kind. The incompetency that he did see might perhaps be remedied if Secretary Seward acted fast and with firmness, and this much Seward was quite eager to do. Seward used two instruments: a memorandum for the President, written out in his own hand and saying astounding things with an air of superior detachment; and a competent, hard-working captain in the army's Corps of Engineers, Montgomery Meigs, who had ideas about Fort Pickens along with a refreshing readiness to behave irregularly in irregular times like the present.
Seward got to work with Meigs first. He began on March 29, not long after the new orientation of the cabinet had been manifest, taking him to the White House and introducing him to President Lincoln; the purpose of the meeting apparently being little more than to register Captain Meigs on the mind of the President as a loyal soldier who knew what to do about this Florida fort. (Meigs told the President that Fort Pickens most certainly could be held, provided the navy had not already given it away.) After the brief meeting at the White House Seward explained the situation to Meigs.
All men of sense, the Secretary said, knew that a war must come. He wanted to see "the burden of it"—by which, apparently, he meant the onus of starting it—fall upon those who by rebellion had provoked it. He had always wanted the troops withdrawn from Fort Sumter, which he considered too close to Washington. He wanted to have the real showdown at Fort Pickens, and possibly along the Texas coast as well, where Sam Houston might conceivably restore Texas to her duty if properly supported by United States troops. (On the latter point, Seward was indulging in one of the vainest of all the vain hopes of the 1860s.) But whatever happened elsewhere, Fort Pickens was to be held, and Captain Meigs was to develop his plans in that connection.5
March 31 was a Sunday, and Captain Meigs was getting ready to go to church when Colonel Erasmus Keyes, military secretary to General Scott, interrupted him and took him off to see Secretary Seward, who had precise orders: Col. Keyes and Captain Meigs were to commit to paper a suitable plan for relieving and holding Fort Pickens and were to take it to the White House and submit it to the President by four o'clock that afternoon. Keyes and Meigs went over to the War Department, compared notes, found that their views on Fort Pickens were in harmony, and by half-past two had their plan drafted. It did not seem likely that they could get the paper to General Scott, win his approval, and then get to the White House by four o'clock, so they left Scott out of it and went directly to see the President. Lincoln listened to their plan, approved it, and told them to take it to General Scott and tell him this was something the President wanted imperatively: "I depend on you gentlemen," said Lincoln, "to push this thing through." Off to see Scott went the two officers. Scott made no objection to anything; Secretary Seward came in, and as Meigs remembered it, "the matter was talked over and resolved upon."6
Resolved upon, be it noted, by the Secre
tary of State. Simon Cameron, the Secretary of War, who held actual authority over Scott, Keyes, Meigs, and the troops that were to be dispatched, had been bypassed. It was Seward who was selecting officers, taking them to the White House, visiting the general-in-chief and expediting matters generally. President Lincoln had made up his mind to reinforce Fort Pickens, but it was Seward who was translating the decision into action. The plan itself was simple enough. A transport would land soldiers and stores at Fort Pickens, on the seaward side; at the same time a warship, cleared for action, would steam in through the harbor entrance and keep the Confederates from interfering. Nothing was being done through channels. (Seward had even picked the naval officer to command the warship, bustling Lieutenant David Dixon Porter, without saying anything to Secretary Welles about it, and was drafting orders for the President to sign in that connection.) The incompetency in administration which had so grieved Mr. Adams would at least be given a different guise by the intense dynamism of the Secretary of State.
There was always a chance, of course, that Lincoln himself would fail to realize where the authority was being exercised, and Seward had written a memorandum to give the President guidance. This document, headed "Some Thoughts for the President's Consideration," landed on Lincoln's desk on April 1. The President had, on that day, other matters demanding his consideration; years later the editor of his papers found twenty-four documents for April 1, referring to appointments or to the planned expeditions. Now there was this one: as completely fantastic a note as any American President ever received from his Secretary of State.
Seward began by baldly remarking: "We are at the end of a month's administration, and yet without a policy, either domestic or foreign." This, to be sure, he conceded, was unavoidable, but now was the time for action; "further delay to adopt and prosecute our policies for both domestic and foreign affairs would not only bring scandal on the Administration but danger upon the country."
For domestic policy, Seward went on, the big thing was to "change the question before the public from one upon slavery, or about slavery, for a question upon union or disunion. In other words, from what would be regarded as a party question to one of Patriotism or Union." Fort Sumter had somehow got itself identified with the slavery issue as a matter of party politics; forget about it, therefore, concentrate heavily on retention of the Gulf Coast forts, recall all warships from foreign stations to be prepared for a blockade, and thus "raise distinctly the question of Union or Disunion."
Foreign policy should be vigorous. France and England had been pressing Mexico for payment of certain debts, and Spain had been meddling with affairs in Santo Domingo; explanations should be demanded at once, agents should be sent through Canada, Mexico, and Central America to arouse a "continental spirit of independence against European intervention," and if the governments from which explanations were demanded returned unsatisfactory answers, war should be declared. Then, clipping his argument off into terse paragraphs, Secretary Seward got down to bed rock:
"But whatever policy we adopt, there must be energetic prosecution of it.
"For this purpose it must be somebody's business to pursue and direct it incessantly.
"Either the President must do it himself, and be all the while active in it, or
"Devolve it on some member of his Cabinet. Once adopted, debates on it must end and all agree and abide.
"It is not in my especial province.
"But I neither seek to evade nor assume responsibility."7
As President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln received his full share of odd letters, all of them demanding something and demanding it with especial fervor because the times were so perilous. Until this first day of April, the oddest of his letters was possibly one that came to him from a certain Amalia Majocchi Valtellina, an opera singer who found herself at a dead end in Rahway, New Jersey, and who demanded that the President assume the mortgage on her villa there so that she could go back to Italy and resume her career. "The orrible future of our situation, fright me," she had written. "I have tryd to find some persons in Rahway, to hold the mortgag; but hunapply, in the hard time, is impracticable. The thought com to me, to lay our circumstances, to your Excellence ... I confess my temerity, but our situation is orrible and frightful, that make me daring, hoping in your Noble heart a favorable answer."8
Thus Signora Valtellina, whose plea went unanswered. Now there was Secretary Seward, who felt, as did the singer, that the situation was "orrible and frightful" and who knew just what the President ought to do about it—and who offered a suggestion that was quite as fantastic on its own level as the one she had offered. Secretary Seward had to be answered.
It was a busy day at the White House, but Lincoln lost no time in writing a reply.
As far as he could see, he wrote, the administration had a perfectly clear and definite policy—the one set forth in the inaugural about the determination to hold, occupy, and possess government property in areas where people believed they had seceded: the determination, in other words, to maintain an unbroken Union. At the time this policy was enunciated, it had had Seward's express approval, and it had governed the administration's actions ever since. Furthermore, it was hard for the President to understand how the reinforcement of Fort Sumter "would be done on a slavery, or party issue, while that of Fort Pickens would be on a more national and patriotic one." As to foreign policy, the demanding of explanations, the making of war, and so on: "I remark that if this is to be done, I must do it." Then Lincoln summed it all up in words that even an infatuated power seeker was bound to understand:
"When a general line of policy is adopted, I apprehend there is no danger of its being changed without good reason, or continuing to be the subject of unnecessary debate; still, upon points arising in its progress, I wish, and I suppose I am entitled to have the advice of all the cabinet."9
It is not entirely clear whether Lincoln gave Seward the letter to read or simply let him have the gist of it verbally, but in either case he made his point: Lincoln would run the administration and he would also run the cabinet; policy was what he said it was, and the execution of it lay in his own hands. It would take the Secretary a few days to assimilate this, but he would do it eventually and no soreness would remain; in the end there would be more of human warmth and liking between Lincoln and Seward than between Lincoln and any other members of the cabinet. Once put firmly in his place, Seward would fill that place loyally and with much of the competency that Mr. Adams prized so highly.
It would not appear just yet, however. First Seward would have to extricate himself and his government from the tangle that he had been so industriously creating, and before this could be done, there would be a windy mess, which, if it did not actually help to start the war, at least had a good deal to do with the way in which the war was started. Seward was badly overextended. He had made unequivocal promises, at a time when he and others supposed that their fulfillment would rest entirely with him, and he was abruptly learning that he could not deliver what he had said he would deliver. Greatly deceiving himself, he had deceived others, and the memory of the deception would linger for many years, adding to a bitterness and misunderstanding that would have been almost too strong even without this final addition.
Meanwhile the whole business meant delay and a general slowing-down, and the administration was at last aware that it was in a desperate race with time. Major Anderson could keep his flag flying for two more weeks, which meant that Lincoln had precisely a fortnight to show that his inaugural address, his adminstration policy, and he himself had to be taken seriously. When Major Anderson hauled down his flag, everything would be over—unless, before the flag was struck, some imposing and unmistakable act made clear to everyone the government's fixed determination to do what it had said it was going to do. This act might have taken place at Fort Pickens: could not now, because the new expedition could not possibly reach the place before Major Anderson's time expired. Whatever would be done must be done at For
t Sumter, and unless it were done more deftly than there was any reason to think possible, the mere doing of it would cause a war.
3. "If You Have No Doubt..."
SECRETARY SEWARD grossly deceived Jefferson Davis's representatives, but they at least met him halfway. They were men prepared to be deceived. Believing firmly that any reasonable man must eventually concede the justice of the Southern cause and the independence of the Confederate states, they would find plausible any words that hinted they were right. Reaching Washington shortly after Lincoln's inauguration, they took it for granted that both Seward and Cameron meant to follow a peace policy and they assumed that these men would carry Lincoln with them. As early as March 6 Commissioner M. J. Crawford informed Secretary Toombs that "the President himself is really not aware of the condition of the country and his Secretaries of State and War are to open the difficulties and dangers to him in cabinet today."1
On March 11 the commissioners—Mr. Crawford, Mr. Roman, and Mr. Forsyth—made formal application for a meeting with Secretary Seward, at which they hoped to arrange for the surrender of Fort Sumter and the recognition of Confederate independence. Seward of course could not see them without tacitly admitting that they somehow represented something which was entitled to deal with the Secretary of State. He talked instead with their emissary, Senator R. M. T. Hunter, of Virginia, and he wrote a memorandum, addressed to no one, which seems to have reached the commissioners' hands. In it Seward was quite starchy. The Secretary of State, he wrote, saw in the events that had recently taken place in the South, "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 authority vested in the Federal government."2