On March 13, at a caucus of Republican senators, it was proposed that they call on Lincoln to demand that Sumter be held. Ben Wade of Ohio said “he never much believed in total depravity, but in these apostate times he begins to think it is true, and that the Republican party will furnish a striking example of it, being likely to be damned before it is fairly born.”23 Although the caucus turned down the proposal, word of it leaked to the press and may have affected Lincoln’s decision to resist the advice of Scott and Seward. At the end of the month, Lyman Trumbull introduced a resolution stating that it was the president’s duty to enforce the law in the seceded states; this move was widely regarded as an attempt to intimidate Lincoln and compel him to resupply Sumter.
Montgomery Blair sought to convince the president that Sumter could be held despite the growing ring of South Carolina artillery surrounding it. On March 12, Blair summoned his brother-in-law, Gustavus V. Fox, a 34-year-old former naval officer who, in consultation with an expert on Charleston harbor, had devised a plan to relieve the fort. The previous month, that plan had won the endorsement of General Scott and other military men, but Buchanan refused to implement it lest he antagonize the newly formed Confederate government. Fox called for troops and supplies to be carried to the bar of Charleston harbor by a large commercial vessel, then transferred to light, fast tugboats that would convey them to the fort under cover of darkness and with the protection of an accompanying warship. The next day, Blair took the energetic, industrious, and self-assured Fox to the White House, where he outlined his scheme to the president.
Lincoln came to like and admire Fox, a cheerful, buoyant raconteur whose wife’s sister was married to Montgomery Blair. Fox thus had a close personal connection to the administration and enjoyed an entrée to the White House, which he often visited. In August 1861 he became assistant secretary of the navy and in effect served as chief of naval operations, working smoothly with Navy Secretary Gideon Welles. Lincoln trusted Fox’s judgment and often consulted him.
On the Ides of March, Fox briefed the cabinet. At that meeting, Generals Totten and Scott reiterated their objections. The president then asked all the secretaries to answer in writing a simple question: “Assuming it to be possible to now provision Fort-Sumpter, under all the circumstances, is it wise to attempt it?”24 In a lengthy reply, Seward raised a number of objections: it would needlessly trigger a civil war, it was militarily impracticable, it would accomplish nothing worthwhile, and it would drive the Upper South and Border States into the Confederacy. In addition, he emphasized that the nation could never be made whole again, that a policy of conciliation should be pursued, and that Sumter was strategically unimportant. But he would insist that ships outside Southern ports collect import duties, even at the risk of provoking hostilities. Seward closed melodramatically, saying: “If this counsel seems to be impassive and even unpatriotic, I console myself by the reflection that it is such as Chatham gave to his country under circumstances not widely different.”25 (In 1775, William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, had urged the British government to be forbearing in its dealings with the American colonies, which were then on the verge of revolt.)
Attorney General Bates argued that provisioning the fort would be legal and physically possible, though imprudent. “It may indeed involve a point of honor or a point of pride, but I do not see any great national interest involved in the bare fact of holding the fort.” He feared that if war resulted, it would seem to the world as if the North had provoked it and would lead to unimaginably horrid slave uprisings. He would, however, take a tough stand against any attempt to block the mouth of the Mississippi River and would make a show of resolve at the other forts remaining in Union hands, most notably Pickens in Florida.26 Similarly, Welles argued that even though a relief expedition like the one being contemplated might work, the North could be compelled to fire the opening shot and thereby become guilty of shedding the first blood. Cameron said the administration should defer to those military men who denied the feasibility of resupplying the fort. Smith maintained that an expedition should be sent to Charleston only if it were able to bring overwhelming force to bear. While it was important to uphold the honor and authority of the government, there were other ways to achieve that end. Chase waffled, saying he would recommend provisioning the fort as long as it would not touch off a war, which the nation could ill afford. But such a war seemed to him unlikely. (According to Blair, Chase said: “Let the South go; it is not worth fighting for.”)27
Montgomery Blair was the only cabinet secretary to favor the relief effort unconditionally. Secessionists were taking heart from Northern timidity and vacillation, he asserted; to continue an appeasement policy would only encourage them. To provision the fort, which was feasible in his view, would demoralize them and spark a Southern movement to reunite the country. (Indeed, many Southerners did doubt that the North would fight. “You may slap a Yankee in the face and he’ll go off and sue you but he won’t fight!” said one.)28
While mulling over his options, Lincoln urged the cabinet to avoid offending the South. According to Welles, “he was disinclined to hasty action, and wished time for the Administration to get in working order and its policy to be understood.”29 Yet, despite advice from prominent military and civilian leaders, Lincoln hesitated to abandon Sumter. He knew that step would outrage the North, for as March dragged on, public opinion was growing ever more discontented with the president’s “namby pamby course.”30 Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury William L. Hodge told a New York banker that the administration “is losing precious time by their shilly shally policy which is as much a mystery to us here [in Washington] as it must be to you.”31 The president “must act soon, or forfeit his claim to our regard,” declared young abolitionist Charles Russell Lowell.32 Congressmen like Albert G. Porter of Indiana were starting to describe the president as “a timid indecisive man” who “lacks decision of character.”33 Lincoln’s friends in Illinois were growing impatient with the administration’s “do nothing policy.”34 Such a policy “is well enough for awhile, but it cannot answer much longer,” observed an Ohio journalist on March 29.35
Edwin M. Stanton, who had served in Buchanan’s cabinet as attorney general, was especially harsh in his criticism, complaining that there “is no settled principle or line of action—no token of any intelligent understanding by Lincoln, or the crew that govern him, of the state of the country, or the exigencies of the times. Bluster & Bravado alternate with timidity & despair—recklessness, and helplessness by turns rule the hour. What but disgrace & disaster can happen?” On March 19, he reported “that the administration not only have, as yet, no line of policy, but also believe that it never can have any—but will drift along, from day to day, without a compass.”36
A western member of Congress asked Lincoln if the administration would collect import revenues in Southern ports.
“If I can,” he replied.
“How about the forts? Will they be held?”
“If they can be.”
“But, under existing laws, do you believe the revenues can be collected?”
Lincoln “confessed that he did not see how it could be done.” His interlocutor left the White House dissatisfied.37
Even his good friend David Davis conceded that Lincoln “lacks will” and “yields to pressure.”38 The New York Herald called the administration “imbecile and weak.”39 The Washington States and Union scornfully demanded action: “We want Mr. Lincoln to show his hand; we want him to let us know decidedly and unequivocally what he means to do. These are pressing times; everything is going to the devil at a breakneck speed, which must, before long, precipitate his own government in hopeless bankruptcy. The people are clamoring for a policy.”40 On April 7, an Iowa Republican leader expressed fear that “our party and our country will go down together” if the administration did not adopt “a policy of some kind soon.”41
In New England, where elections took place in the early spring, the public vigorously obj
ected to appeasing the Confederacy. Pennsylvania Congressman John Covode reported after stumping New Hampshire that the Democrats would have won there if he and other Republican campaigners had not assured voters that the Southern forts would be held and the revenue would be collected. Meanwhile, Midwestern voters defeated Republicans in municipal elections because of the administration’s failure to confront the secessionists. A Cincinnati Republican told Lincoln that the party has “been beaten in our city election—the same in St. Louis—Cleveland—Rhode Island—Brooklyn—and lost two Members of Congress in Connecticut—all from the demoralization and discouraging effect produced by the apparent inaction and temperizing policy of the new Administration, and the impression that Fort Pickens was going to be given up also to the rebels!” He urged the president to “Hold Fort Pickens—re-enforce it to its full capacity.”42 A Connecticut Republican leader lamented that “the patriotic ardor of our friends … has been much dampened by the proposed withdrawal from Fort Sumpter, and the fear of a general back-down policy on the part of the Administration.”43
With disgust, Benjamin Brown French complained that the “Administration seems to me to be playing ‘shilly shally,’ one day one way the next another way, & if this course is long persisted in all confidence will be lost, by every body, in Mr. Lincoln. I want him either way to say ‘War’ and let it come, or to back out honorably from Sumter & Pickens, & make the best of it. Not say, as he is now virtually saying, ‘My Republican friends, you have elected me, & now you must lie quietly down, and permit the Courageous & Chivalric South to spit on you, & walk over you, & kick you, and do just as they d[am]n please with you.’ This seems to be the policy in acts, if not in words.”44 Letters poured into the Capitol and White House insisting that if Sumter were abandoned, something else must be done to prove that the nation still had a government.
One obvious way to offset the evacuation of Sumter was to reinforce the only other major Deep South fort still in Union hands, Pickens off Pensacola, Florida. Bates had suggested that strategy privately, and some newspapers did so publicly. To make it possible to implement such a plan, Lincoln on March 5 verbally instructed Scott to hold Pickens and other Southern forts. A week later, when the president discovered that nothing had been done to carry out this order, he put it in writing. Two months earlier, Buchanan had sent reinforcements to Fort Pickens, but after dispatching them Old Buck agreed to an informal truce agreement whereby those troops would not be landed, and in return the Confederates would not attack the fort or emplace artillery threatening it. Thus matters stood when Lincoln was inaugurated. On March 12, in obedience to the new president’s instructions, Scott ordered the two hundred troops aboard the U.S.S. Brooklyn to transfer to the fort, supplementing the eighty-one men already there.
To obtain more information before making up his mind, Lincoln took a number of steps, some of which were unconventional. For one, he asked the wife of an officer stationed at Fort Sumter, Abner Doubleday, if she would show him her husband’s letters. In addition, he dispatched troubleshooters to Charleston, including Fox, who volunteered to visit that city and ascertain the feasibility of his plan after a consultation with Major Anderson. The president and General Scott approved his proposal, and on March 19 Fox left, telling his wife that “our Uncle Abe Lincoln has taken a high esteem for me.”45 Two days later Lincoln asked his Illinois friend Stephen A. Hurlbut, a bibulous native of Charleston who had studied law with the eminent South Carolina attorney and Unionist James L. Pettigru, to return to his hometown and sample public opinion. To accompany him as an informal bodyguard, the president dispatched Ward Hill Lamon, over Cameron’s protest.
After three days spent interviewing many lawyers, merchants, working men, and transplanted Northerners, Hurlbut reported “that Separate Nationality is a fixed fact—that there is an unanimity of sentiment which is to my mind astonishing—that there is no attachment to the Union.” He expressed serious doubt “that any policy which may be adopted by this Government will prevent the possibility of armed collision,” and he was sure that “a ship known to contain only provisions for Sumpter would be stopped & refused admittance.” He did not predict that such a ship would be fired upon or that its dispatch would provoke an attack on Sumter. After hearing this assessment, Lincoln had Hurlbut repeat his findings to Seward, who continued to insist that Southern Unionists would thwart the secessionists. Hurlbut replied that Sumter “was commanded by batteries which had been erected without molestation,” and “that it was the intention to reduce the fort at all hazards.” He added that there “was no mistaking the entire unanimity and earnestness of the secession sentiment. There were hundreds of men delicately brought up, who never had done a day’s work in their lives, yet who were out there on those islands throwing up entrenchments.” After Hurlbut wrote up his report, Lincoln read it to the cabinet.46
That document clearly destroyed whatever hope Lincoln may have entertained that the Deep South would voluntarily return to the fold. Seward’s faith in a peaceful reconstruction seemed more and more chimerical; war appeared to be the only means to restore the Union. Hurlbut’s report may well have convinced Lincoln that since war was inevitable no matter what he did, it made sense to relieve Sumter and thus placate Northern hard-liners.
While Hurlbut was interviewing Charlestonians, Fox consulted with Anderson at Fort Sumter. Arriving in Charleston on March 21, he was allowed to visit the major, who predicted that his supplies would run out by April 15 and that any attempt to provision or reinforce the garrison would precipitate a war. It was too late, Anderson believed, and no relief vessels could slip past the South Carolina defenses. Fox did not argue the matter, but instead closely observed the fort and surrounding waters. What he saw convinced him that his plan would work, and he so informed Lincoln. When the president asked if a competent senior naval officer would endorse his proposal, Fox cited Captain Silas Stringham, who came to the White House and assured Lincoln and Scott that both he and Commodore Charles Stewart thought Fox’s plan eminently practicable.
While the missions of Hurlbut and Fox yielded useful information, Lamon’s provided harmful disinformation. The egotistical Cavalier misled South Carolina Governor Francis Pickens and Major Anderson by assuring them, without any authorization, that the Sumter garrison would soon be removed. He explained to the governor that his mission was to facilitate the evacuation of the fort. He also had a conversation with Anderson, after which he wrote Seward that he was “satisfied of the policy and propriety of immediately evacuating Fort Sumpter.”47 (Why Lamon reported to Seward is a mystery, since he was an old friend of Lincoln, who sent him on the mission.) Upon leaving town, Lamon told Governor Pickens he would return soon to help Anderson and his men withdraw. Apropos of this episode, Cameron later asked incredulously: “How came the President to have so much faith in Lamon?” It was a good question.48
More misleading still was Seward’s conduct. In his frequent dealings with Upper South Unionists, he virtually assured them that Sumter would be evacuated. He did the same thing while acting as an intermediary between the administration and the three commissioners sent by the Confederate government to demand formal recognition from Lincoln (Martin J. Crawford, John Forsyth, and André B. Roman). Forbidden by Lincoln to receive those emissaries officially, Seward employed go-betweens to negotiate with them. At first, William M. Gwin, who had just finished a term as senator from California, played that role, but he grew suspicious of Seward, dropped out, and drafted a telegram to Jefferson Davis stating that the appointment of Chase to the cabinet meant war. Seward revised the text to read: “Notwithstanding Mr. Chase’s appointment, the policy of the administration would be for peace, and the amicable settlement of all questions between the sections.” Gwin sent the revised message to Montgomery and then departed Washington for the South, where he had grown up. Seward was thus communicating almost directly with the Confederate president without his own president’s authorization.
For a brief time, R. M. T. Hunte
r of Virginia replaced Gwin as Seward’s intermediary, but soon U.S. Supreme Court Justice John A. Campbell of Alabama assumed that function. On March 13, when the commissioners demanded that the Confederacy be acknowledged as an independent nation, Seward, fearing that a blunt refusal might precipitate war, desperately tried to stall them. (Actually, they were bluffing; the Confederacy needed time to get organized—especially to install more batteries around Charleston harbor—and they were playing for that time.) Two days later Seward told Justice Campbell that the administration was going to withdraw the Sumter garrison within a week, an act which would cause a political uproar in the North; if in addition to that concession Lincoln were to recognize the Confederacy directly or indirectly, his administration would be ruined. Moreover, the president would have to maintain the status quo at Fort Pickens in Florida. When Campbell asked what he could write to Jefferson Davis, Seward replied: “You may say to him that before that letter reaches him: (How far is it to Montgomery?)”
“Three days.”
“You may say to him that before that letter reaches him, the telegraph will have informed him that Sumter will have been evacuated.”
Based on his conversation with Seward, Campbell assured both Davis and the Confederate commissioners that he had “perfect confidence in the fact that Fort Sumter will be evacuated in the next five days.” He sent a copy of this letter to Seward, who did not correct him. (Technically, Seward had made a prediction, not a pledge; but Campbell’s language to the commissioners made it sound more like the latter than the former. If Seward thought Campbell’s letter misrepresented him, he did not tell him so. Campbell had every reason to believe that Seward spoke for Lincoln.)
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