by Bruce Catton
On November 7, the day after election, Buchanan wrote an anxious note to Floyd. He had been told that armed South Carolinians had assaulted and taken the forts at Charleston; would the Secretary of War please visit him at once? The Secretary did so, assured the President that the rumor was false, and agreed that the signs were all bad: disunion apparently was on the way, Floyd wrote, but Buchanan’s emotions “repelled the convictions of his mind.” Two days later there was a cabinet meeting to consider the annual message to Congress, and at this meeting, as Floyd remembered it, Buchanan asked for advice regarding an idea he had developed. He admitted that he was “compelled to notice the alarming condition of the country,” and he proposed calling a general convention of all of the states to provide some means for compromising the disputes between extremists of the North and the South. The cabinet hemmed and hawed and said nothing very definite. There was another meeting on the following day, November 10, at which Buchanan presented his proposal in the form of a draft that might either go into his annual message to Congress or be presented to the country in the form of a presidential proclamation. The paper was supported by an opinion from Attorney General Black, which in effect asserted the Federal government’s legal power to maintain the Union by force if necessary.
The cabinet promptly divided on sectional lines. The Northerners praised Buchanan’s proposal—Floyd wrote that it “met with extravagant commendation” from Black, Cass, Holt and Toucey—and the Southerners expressed grave doubts, objecting in particular to the statement that the government possessed and could use the power of coercion. Both Cobb and Thompson felt that the President was urging “submission to Lincoln’s election,” and Floyd wrote that Buchanan failed to understand “the temper of the Southern people” and was adopting an improper stand in respect to the use of force. Floyd added: “I do not see what good can come of the paper, as prepared, and I do see how much mischief may flow from it.”3
In the face of this split, Buchanan temporized, which was unfortunate. It was not yet too late to handle the developing crisis. Formal action for secession had not been taken anywhere, and there was still a strong nucleus of Unionist sentiment in the South, as evidenced by the substantial vote that had been cast for Bell and for Douglas. A forthright move by the executive to encourage this Unionist sentiment and to bring all of the states together in an attempt to settle the growing argument by negotiation and compromise might have made a vast difference. Buchanan could not take the lead. He told Attorney General Black that he had a “desire to stand between the factions … with my hand on the head of each counselling peace,” but a more decisive step was called for. If he proposed to lead the country away from secession, his first step must be to get rid of the secessionists in his own cabinet, and this was beyond him. He asked Black to give him a second, more moderate opinion, exploring in detail the government’s legal capacities in the situation, and the plan for a convention of the states began to drift out of sight.4
Black was a stalwart Union man, but now the fire went out of him. In effect, he seemed now to say that the government had the legal power to prevent secession but that it could not legally use this power. “Your right to take such measures as may seem to be necessary for the protection of the public property is very clear … you may employ such parts of the land and naval forces as you may judge necessary for the purpose of causing the laws to be duly executed.” But these powers were purely defensive; with its armed forces the government could do no more than what might be done by an ordinary civil posse, called out to suppress combinations that were obstructing the execution of the laws. Suppose the judges and other civil authorities in the areas where obstruction was taking place were themselves on the side of the obstructionists, so that there were no courts to issue judicial process and no ministerial officers to execute it? “In that event troops would certainly be out of place and their use wholly illegal.” If they were sent to aid courts and marshals, there must be courts and marshals to aid, and if such were lacking—as they obviously would be in a state that had seceded—“the laws cannot be executed in any event, no matter what may be the strength which the government has at its command.”
If a state announced that it was leaving the Union, Black continued, it might be exercising a right guaranteed under the Constitution or it might be engaging in a revolutionary movement, but whether it was acting legally or illegally made no difference; “it is certain that you have not in either case the authority to recognize her independence or to absolve her from her Federal obligations.” Whether Congress had the right to make war against one or more states was something for Congress to determine, but “if Congress shall break up the present Union by unconstitutionally putting strife and enmity and armed hostility between different sections of the country, instead of the domestic tranquility which the Constitution was meant to insure, will not all the States be absolved from their Federal obligations?” And so, in conclusion: “If this view of the subject be correct, as I think it is, then the Union must utterly perish at the moment when Congress shall arm one part of the people against another for any purpose beyond that of merely protecting the General Government in the exercise of its proper constitutional functions.”5
Here was a charter for inaction which the baffled Buchanan for the time being could do nothing but follow religiously. And at this point, with the proposed convention of the states receding forever into the shadows, a significant new turn was given the whole sectional argument. Up to this moment slavery itself, in one way or another, was what men were arguing about, and the argument had brought up the question of secession. Now, with secession about to take place, the big question was the legal right of a state to secede, which was something very different; for now the question came down from the level at which only the impassioned extremists would be willing to fight about it and got into an area where it touched the deep emotions of millions of men, North and South alike. A state’s right to make its own laws respecting slavery was unquestioned even by the radical Republicans, and the rights of the several states in regard to slavery in the territories were abstractions. But the question of a state’s right to leave the Union entirely, and the linked question of the central government’s right to prevent this by force—here was something infinitely broader, something that went to the very heart of the democratic experiment. Without entirely realizing it, the President and cabinet, in these days following the election, were witnessing the development of a situation that could easily lead to war. What old General Scott had so ponderously spoken of as “the laceration and despotism of the sword” had drawn perilously close.
If all of this was not clearly seen by the country at large, it was beginning to be very clearly felt. South Carolina had not yet seceded, but no one had the least doubt that she would presently do so, and that other cotton states were very likely to follow, and South Carolina officials were working to lay in a supply of arms—if there was going to be any coercion, this state would be prepared to meet it. While the cabinet was considering the President’s plan for a convention, Thomas L. Drayton, of South Carolina, was in Washington negotiating with Secretary Floyd for the purchase of surplus army muskets. He could, he wrote to Governor Gist, buy 10,000 old smooth bores, flint locks altered to percussion, and although these were rather out of date they were at least lethal weapons, and the quartermaster-general of the army, Joseph E. Johnston, who was also president of the Ordnance Board, had assured him that “for our purposes” they were perfectly acceptable. They could be shipped from the arsenal at Watervliet, New York, and Drayton urged that the deal be put through without delay: “The cabinet may break up at any moment on differences of opinion with the President as to the right of secession—and a new Secretary of War might stop the muskets going south, if not already on the way when he comes into office.” A South Carolina militia officer, Roswell S. Ripley, who was shopping for guns in Philadelphia, wrote that his state would probably have to buy in Europe if it wanted first-rate weapons, and he believed the st
ate could not be fully prepared until February; in view of which fact he urged that no overt act be taken until Lincoln had been inaugurated. “Let her take her position & act March 4th & until that time she cannot be interfered with—other states will do the same thing & Mr. Lincoln will walk into a house gutted of its best furniture.”6
As South Carolina proceeded with the election of delegates for the convention that would pass the ordinance of secession, her leaders were kept posted on the drift of affairs in Washington. The key figure here was a cheerful little man from Charleston, William Henry Trescot, a lawyer and a planter who had written books on diplomacy and who was now Assistant Secretary of State; a sincere patriot but also a man who could see the fun in things—Mrs. Chesnut, who liked him, called him “a man without indignation.” Trescot was reporting now on the cabinet’s activities. On November 17 he wrote, “I have no idea that any intention to use coercive measures is entertained,” and shortly after this he wrote to Drayton that it could be taken for granted, as long as Cobb and Thompson remained in the cabinet, that “no action has been taken which seriously affects the position of any Southern State.” He himself would know as soon as any decision was reached, and “upon such knowledge I will act as I ought.”7 Meanwhile, everything awaited the convening of Congress.
Congress convened on December 3. No Southern members had resigned except for Senators Chesnut and Hammond, of South Carolina; all the rest were present to look out for their states’ interests in what might be a history-making session. It was possible that some compromise might be worked out, but the chances were dim. Everybody seemed to hope that there could be peace, but most of the cotton-state men were deeply committed to secession by now and their opposite numbers, the Republicans, were equally committed to a resolute containment of slavery, and unless one group or the other gave ground, the chances for peace were not good. Perhaps the President would have something to suggest.
The President’s annual message, delivered on December 4, pleased practically nobody, and reflected accurately the state of distressed indecision which Mr. Buchanan had brought out of the long cabinet meetings. He began by denouncing Northern abolitionists, urging them to let the sovereign states of the South manage their own domestic institutions in their own way, and he balanced this by remarking that the mere “election of any one of our fellow-citizens to the office of President does not of itself afford just cause for dissolving the Union.” He believed that secession was nothing less than revolution—justifiable, possibly, but nevertheless revolution. It was a time for calmness and deliberation; the slavery question, like everything else, would have its day, but if the excitement about it caused the Union to dissolve, “the evil may then become irreparable.” As to coercion: “Our Union rests upon public opinion and can never be cemented by the blood of its citizens shed in a civil war. If it cannot live in the affections of its people it must one day perish. Congress possesses many means of preserving it by conciliation but the sword was not placed in their hands to preserve it by force.”
By way of making a concrete proposal, Buchanan suggested that Congress might submit “an explanatory amendment” to the Constitution on the subject of slavery. Such an amendment might expressly recognize the right of property in slaves in states where slavery existed, might state the duty of protecting this right in the territories, and might stress the right of a master to have a fugitive slave speedily restored to him. With this, which did no more than restate the very issues over which the country was dividing, the President had said his say.8
There was something here to irritate everyone and to encourage no one. Facing both ways, Buchanan had been able to see nothing but the difficulties. Obviously, his administration through the months that remained to it would mark time, trying to avoid collisions and hoping for the best. The next step was going to be up to South Carolina.
CHAPTER THREE
The Long Farewell
1: The Union Is Dissolved
Beyond any question, almost all of the people in the United States in 1860 wanted to remain at peace. Wanting this, they kept drifting toward war, and as they drifted, the power to make the final, irrevocable decision—the ability to say or to leave unsaid the words that would start the guns firing—got farther and farther out of their hands. This meant that 600,000 young men who otherwise might have lived were going to die, but it seemed that there was no help for it.
It seemed so because the powers that could have been used were not used. In the spring every piece of the intricate machinery by which a democracy can make its solemn choice was available-party conventions, speeches and petitions and debates, a national-election campaign, finally a vote on candidates and parties; yet by mid-November all of this had gone by and nothing had been settled. So then the focus narrowed to the White House and the national Capitol; what was said and done there might still determine whether the crisis could be solved or must be brought to the point of explosion.
Somehow this did not work, either; from the noblest of motives, all of the public servants involved seemed to shy away from the crucial point. So now it came down, in December, to an even more constricted field: specifically, to the state convention of South Carolina, which brought 170 men together to say what was going to happen next. These 170, elderly and slightly tired by the standards of that day but nevertheless good men and true, had been chosen by the voters of South Carolina to say whether the Union of states would endure or dissolve. (The focus would become even narrower in the weeks just ahead, so very narrow that when the explosion finally came it would seem a thing foreordained, brought on by nobody in particular; but even in December it was too narrow for comfort.) The people had lost control over their own destiny. One trouble was that they had passed beyond the stage of reason and wanted only an act. The act would quickly be forthcoming.
Pursuant to instructions from the general assembly of South Carolina, delegates chosen by the several electoral districts of the state came together in the state capital, Columbia, on December 17, seated themselves in the Baptist Church, and permitted themselves to be called to order. President of the convention was a state patriot and militia officer, D. F. Jamison, who addressed his compatriots with much eloquence.
In the auditorium before him were the state’s best men—clergymen and railroad presidents, manufacturers and planters and merchants, present and former United States Senators, including the noted secessionist R. Barnwell Rhett, not to mention Robert W. Barnwell, William F. DeSaussure, and James Chesnut, Jr., and five former governors, one of them being the W. H. Gist who had just been replaced in the gubernatorial chair by Francis W. Pickens. Most of these and the lesser delegates had come here to vote for secession, but they were faintly nervous about it. They wanted it done peacefully, and they hoped everything would come out all right; still, they had no love for the old Union, they were not prepared to compromise, and they had a deep sense of their historic responsibilities. They would lead their state out into what might be a starless dark, and they had the kind of courage that keeps forlorn hopes alive beyond rational expectation, but they believed that the rest of the South would follow them and they clung to the hope that whatever they did would have a peaceful aftermath. President Jamison rose to talk to them.
Jamison mentioned a point that was familiar to all: the elections that had created this convention had shown that South Carolina was determined to get out of the Union as quickly as might be. There were, however, two dangers—“overtures from without, and precipitation within.” He did not believe that any overtures from men in the North would have any effect. “As there is no common bond of sympathy or interest between the North and the South, all efforts to preserve this Union will be not only fruitless but fatal to the less numerous section”; but there might be trouble, arising from “too great impatience on the part of our people to precipitate the issue, in not waiting until they can strike with the authority of law.” With proper caution but with iron hearts, therefore, the people of South Carolina must go forward,
trusting in the revolutionary motto of Danton (who, after all, did come to the guillotine, although this was not mentioned): “To dare! and again to dare! and without end to dare!”1
The speech was applauded, and it was clear that the delegates had met not to debate secession but to accomplish it. Unanimously, the convention voted to instruct a select committee to prepare a proper resolution separating the palmetto state from the rest of the American Union. Then, small pox being prevalent in Columbia, the convention voted to reconvene in Charleston, and adjourned.2
The delegates reached Charleston early in the afternoon of December 18, and there was a fifteen-gun salute at the railroad station and a big parade. The Marion Artillery Company, on no more than two and one-half hours’ notice, assembled to fire the salute and do the honors, and a battalion of State Cadets stood in line at the railroad station to meet the delegates. With shouldered arms, the cadets escorted President Jamison to his carriage, and infantry and artillery together marched down to the Mills House, where the chief dignitaries would be quartered. An outlander, reporting these events for the New York Times, said that most of the adult males in Charleston were members of one or another of the numerous military organizations; all in all, he wrote, the state could put 33,000 armed men in uniform (about twice as many men as were enlisted in all of the United States Army), and he asserted that these men had taken guns and uniforms for no purpose but to resist, if need be, the power of the Federal government.3
Meeting in Institute Hall amid the shadows of the Democratic convention of the past spring, the convention appointed committees, referred sundry motions and resolutions to them, received commissions sent to observe and report by the governors of Alabama and Mississippi, and agreed to hold subsequent meetings in St. Andrews’ Hall. Two days passed thus; then, on December 20, the convention sat back to hear the report from the Committee to Prepare an Ordinance of Secession, Mr. John A. Inglis.