by Bruce Catton
Davis had been ill. He was tortured by agonizing migraine headaches that had kept him in bed for a week, and this morning his doctor had not thought him able to go to the Senate at all. Yet there was a fire in this man, a thin flame burning on the edge of darkness, and by its light he would follow the path of duty despite any imaginable physical weakness. He came in now, erect and deliberate, taking his final look at the Senate of a dissolving nation. His wife, Varina Howell Davis, watching from the gallery, felt that he gazed about him “with the reluctant look the dying cast on those upon whom they gaze for the last time.” When he began to speak, his voice was low and he seemed to falter, but he gained strength as he went on and presently his words rang out firmly.
He had received satisfactory evidence, he told the Senators, that his state had formally declared its separation from the United States. His functions here, accordingly, were terminated; he concurred in the action of his people, but he would feel bound by that action even if he did not concur. He was offering no argument today. He had argued for his people’s cause before now, had said all that he could say, and nothing had come of it. A conservative who loved the Union, he had cast his lot with his state, and he still hoped that there might be in the North enough tolerance and good will to permit a peaceful separation; but if there was 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.”
So it was time for good-bys, and the hush deepened as Davis spoke his valedictory:
“I am sure I feel no hostility to 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 cannot now say, in the presence of my God, I wish you well.… 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 farewell.”1
That night Davis prayed earnestly: “May God have us in His holy keeping, and grant that before it is too late peaceful councils may prevail.” To a friend he wrote that his farewell had been wrung from him “by the stern conviction of necessity, the demands of honor”; his words “were not my utterances but rather leaves torn from the book of fate.” To another friend he wrote, in more bitterness: “We have piped but they would not dance, and now the Devil may care.” And to former President Franklin Pierce, in whose cabinet he had served, Davis confessed a deep pessimism and said bluntly that the Buchanan administration had mishandled the situation so badly that war was likely to be the result: “When Lincoln comes in he will have but to continue in the path of his predecessor to inaugurate a civil war, and leave a soi disant democratic administration responsible for the fact.” He himself would go at once to Mississippi, and he did not know what the future might hold: “Civil war has only horror for me, but whatever circumstances demand shall be met as a duty and I trust be so discharged that you will not be ashamed of our former connection or cease to be my friend.”2
It was over. With Davis, the other cotton-state Senators took their departure, and a few more of the frail threads that bound the Union together were snapped. The immediate effect was surprising, although quite logical. The deep South no longer had a voice in the national legislature, and as a result the long-impending measure to admit Kansas to the Union as a free state was promptly brought forward and passed. The Kansas issue had been at the very heart of the whole controversy; it had contributed much to the fury and suspicion that were now tearing the country apart; and here, on the heels of the first acts of that secession which it had done so much to bring about, it was at last settled, leaving its own bitter legacy. Old states were leaving, the first of the new states was coming in, and the country hereafter would look very different.
There was no way to undo what was being done; and yet the steady drift toward separation and war was subject to curious eddies and counter-currents, and the pattern refused to become clear. By February, six states had left the Union and one more, Texas, was about to follow; yet the slave states were far from united, and only the cotton states of the deep South—the Gulf Squadron, as men called them, with some bitterness—had taken the decisive step. It was beginning to be clear that the border and middle-South states were not ready to secede. Some of them would not go at all; others would go only if they were pushed. The slave empire was not monolithic, and it was beginning to crumble around the edges.
Early in January a roving commissioner from Mississippi addressed both houses of the legislature of slave-state Delaware, urging immediate secession and adherence to a Southern confederacy. The legislators heard him out, then unanimously adopted a resolution: “… we deem it proper and due to ourselves and the people of Delaware to express our unqualified disapproval of the remedy for the existing difficulties suggested by the resolutions of the legislature of Mississippi.” In Maryland things were no better. Pro-slavery Democratic leaders urged Governor Hicks to call a special session of the legislature to consider an ordinance of secession, and Hicks flatly refused. Both Northern and Southern extremists, he remarked, had said that secession would lead to war, “and no man of sense, in my opinion, can question it.” The governor had been ill, and he believed that he might not have long to live; “but should I be compelled to witness the downfall of that Government inherited from our fathers, established, as it were, by the special favor of God, I will at least have the consolation, in my dying hour, that I neither by word nor deed assisted in hastening its disruption.”3 North Carolina, whose citizens had seized two forts in an excess of zeal and whose governor had promptly returned the forts to Federal control, held a plebiscite at the end of January. The legislature had presented a two-pronged bill for a state convention on secession; the voters could elect delegates to the convention, and at the same time they could say whether or not the convention ought to be held. In the end, they chose a substantial majority of Unionist delegates and also, by a narrow margin, voted against having a convention at all. The vote was not quite as solid a Unionist victory as it looked, because a great deal of the pro-Union sentiment would obviously evaporate if the Federal government made any move toward “coercion” of any Southern state. Still, for the moment, North Carolina was definitely refusing to join the procession.
In Tennessee the situation was somewhat the same. The legislature listened to much oratory, considered the problem at length, and at last resolved that delegates from all slave states ought to meet as soon as might be to work out some program by which Southern rights could be protected through amendments to the Federal Constitution. It resolved that if such a program could not be obtained, the formation of a new Southern confederacy ought to be undertaken, and it summoned a state convention to meet late in February to consider the matter of secession; but it provided also that if the convention should adopt an ordinance of secession, the action would not be valid unless the people of the state ratified it at a special election. Tennessee, in short, would wait a while. It was a slave state and its sympathies ran strongly with the men from the deep South, but it was not yet ready to go out of the Union.
Kentucky likewise would wait. Governor Beriah Magoffin told a commissioner from Mississippi that Kentuckians were strongly Southern in sympathy, and he predicted that if the Union broke apart, Kentucky would enter the Southern confederacy, but he believed that the prevailing sentiment “was unquestionably in favor of exhausting every honorable means of securing their rights within the Union.” The legislature, considering the matter in the final week in January, recommended a national convention to work out a solution for the problem and suggested that Senator Crittenden’s amendments might be a basis for a permanent settlement. In the direction of outright secession it moved not an inch.4
In Missouri, also, people wanted the situation clarified before they took any action. When the legislature convened in mid-January, the retiring governor, R. M. Stewart, remarked that the state “cannot be frightene
d by the past unfriendly legislation of the North, or dragooned into secession by the restrictive legislation of the extreme South,” and the new governor, Claiborne Jackson, said that Missouri ought to stand with the other slave states but should remain in the Union as long as there was any hope of maintaining Constitutional guarantees regarding slavery. The legislature voted to summon a state convention for February 18, “to ascertain the will of the people,” with a proviso that any secession ordinances would have to be ratified by a state-wide vote.
Sentiment in Arkansas seemed to be divided, with Unionists strong in the northwestern part of the state and secessionists from the cotton counties displaying eagerness for action. (One reason the people of the northwest hesitated about secession was the presence along the border of powerful Indian tribes, which were held under control only by the long arm of the Federal government.) Late in December the legislature called for an election on February 18, to determine whether there should be a convention to consider secession and to elect delegates if such a convention should be approved; meanwhile, secessionist leaders began to take things into their own hands. Early in February, disturbed by reports that the Federal government was going to reinforce the garrison at the Little Rock arsenal, several hundred armed citizens moved in to take possession of the place. Governor Henry M. Rector had had nothing to do with all of this, but to prevent an open fight he took control of this impromptu army and made formal demand, in the name of the state, for surrender of the arsenal. Captain James Totten, of the 2nd U. S. Artillery, a Pennsylvania-born regular, reflected on the matter for twenty-four hours and then agreed to turn the arsenal over to state authorities and to march his little detachment out of Arkansas—an action for which the grateful ladies of Little Rock presented him with a sword, along with a fancy scroll that told Totten: “You feared the danger of a civil war and the consequence to your country.” Totten took the sword and, to the chagrin of the Little Rock ladies, wore it later as a Union brigadier general leading troops against the South.5
Only Texas was ready to act. Governor Sam Houston argued against secession, but late in January he yielded to pressure and called the legislature in special session. He was gloomy about what might happen, and to the secessionist leaders he had dark words of warning: “You may, after the sacrifice of countless thousands of treasure and hundreds of thousands of precious lives, as a bare possibility, win Southern independence, if God be not against you; but I doubt it.” Texas, however, refused to listen to him, and on February 1 a state convention passed an ordinance of secession by the lopsided vote of 166 to 8.6 Now there were seven states that considered that they had left the Union, and the formation of a new confederacy would proceed apace.
A great deal would depend on Virginia, traditionally a leader, a state with powerful Southern sympathies but also with a strong attachment to the Union. The new Southern nation that was struggling to be born needed Virginia as a man needs the breath of life. With Virginia it might in fact become a nation; without Virginia it could hardly, in the long run, hope to be more than a splinter; and Virginia was by no means ready to act.
Governor John Letcher addressed his state legislature on January 7, and he spoke broodingly, like a man who looks into a dark future but refuses to give up all hope. He had about abandoned the notion that the Union could be preserved; still, it was not too late to make the attempt, and at the very least Virginia might be able to get Federal guarantees that would justify her in rejecting secession. With somber insight, he put his finger on the fantastic central point: “It is monstrous to see a Government like ours destroyed merely because men cannot agree about a domestic institution.” He felt that there should be a national convention of all the states, and he urged that a commission be sent to each of the Northern states (except those in New England, which he considered beyond the reach of reasonable appeal) to see whether they would agree to a program acceptable to Virginia. Such a program would include, roughly, guarantees of non-interference with the interstate slave trade, tightening of the fugitive slave laws, non-interference with slavery in the District of Columbia, Federal laws providing punishment for anyone who tried to get slaves to rise in rebellion, and a promise that the new administration would not, in the slave states, give Federal offices to anti-slavery characters.
For the rest, Governor Letcher made it clear that Virginia would resist coercion to the utmost. He would regard any attempt by Federal troops to pass through Virginia for the purpose of coercing any Southern state as an act of invasion, which Virginia would repel; a warning that contained teeth, since Washington could not easily send troops South without somewhere crossing Virginia’s borders. Governor Letcher did not think there should be a state convention just yet, but the legislature disagreed. It adopted his plea for a national convention, and it invited all the states to send delegates to a meeting in Washington on February 4 “to unite with Virginia in an earnest effort to adjust the present unhappy controversies in the spirit in which the Constitution was originally formed and consistently with its principles,” and it resolved that Virginia would resist any Federal step toward coercion; it also voted to call a state convention for February 13 to consider the matter of secession. At the same time it voted that if the attempt to bring about an adjustment of “the unhappy differences existing between the two sections of the country shall prove to be abortive,” then Virginia ought to cast her lot with the slave states of the South.7
Virginia, in short, like the other border states, would wait and see, but while waiting it would make an honest effort to get the whole quarrel settled. The state was balanced on a knife edge. Of unconditional unionism it betrayed not a trace, except for the western counties beyond the mountains—which, before long, would definitely be heard from—and it had given fair warning that it would leave the Union unless the present impasse got a strictly Southern solution; but it had not yet acted, and in effect it had provided the country with a little breathing spell, a brief extension of the time in which the drift toward war might be halted.
But more than time was needed. Among the leaders on both sides some evidence of an honest desire to make a compromise would have to appear unless the time gained should be wasted, and this evidence was lacking.
Shortly after South Carolina seceded, Stephen Douglas had written that “many of the Republican hordes are for disunion while professing intense devotion to the Union.” And he amplified this in another letter by remarking that many Republican leaders “wish to get rid of the Southern Senators in order to have a majority in the Senate to confirm Lincoln’s appointments.” He himself had not quite given up hope for a peaceful settlement, but he could never agree “that any State can secede and separate from us without our consent,” and he felt that no adjustment would work if it failed to “banish the slavery question from Congress forever.”8
In the House of Representatives a committee of thirty-three had been wrestling with the problem, and in January this committee found itself unable to agree on anything. Charles Francis Adams, of Massachusetts, dryly remarked that no adjustment would satisfy the deep South unless it put into the Federal Constitution “a recognition of this obligation to protect and extend slavery”; and in the end the helpless committee simply directed its chairman, stout Tom Corwin, of Ohio, to present to the House, with such comments as he cared to make, the principal resolutions the committee had had under consideration. Corwin eventually managed to win House approval of a resolution asking for repeal of the free state “personal liberty laws” and faithful execution of the fugitive slave laws, and late in February both Houses approved a constitutional amendment providing that the Constitution could never be amended in such a manner as to give Congress the power to interfere with slavery in any slave state. Yet this meant little, the projected amendment died of simple inanition, and Corwin wrote to Lincoln that “Southern men are theoretically crazy … Extreme Northern men are practical fools.” If the several states, he said, were no more ready to seek harmony than the members of the com
mittee of thirty-three, “we must dissolve & a long & bloody civil war must follow.” For whatever consolation there might be, he added: “I think, if you live, you may take the oath.”9
In the Senate the aging Senator John J. Crittenden, of Kentucky, fought valiantly and without success for a plan by which the old Missouri compromise line would be restored and written into the Constitution for all time—no slave states to be formed in territory north of the parallel of thirty-six thirty, slavery to be permitted (at the option of the citizens) in any states to be formed from territory south of that line. But Crittenden could not even bring his proposition to a vote. He at last demanded that his compromise be submitted to the people of the entire nation in a solemn referendum, and as good an abolitionist as Horace Greeley wrote later that if this could have been done, the plan would almost certainly have carried with a large majority. But the Senate refused to vote on this suggestion, either, and any possibilities it might have offered were never put to the test. Crittenden argued for it with moving eloquence: “It will be an open shame to the Senate of the United States, an open shame to the Government of the United States, if, under such circumstances as now exist, this great Government is allowed to fall in ruins.… Peace and harmony and union in a great nation were never purchased at so cheap a rate as we now have it in our power to do.… The people will give good advice as to how this matter ought to be settled.… Balance the consequences of a civil war and the consequences of your now agreeing to the stipulated terms of peace here, and see how they compare with one another.”10
This won no votes. In twelve months the country had heard much talk—too much, perhaps; it had lived too long in a cave of the winds, and now it seemed to be reaching a point where things done were more persuasive than things said. In the North, men could see that there was great danger, but they continued to hope that things might yet be settled peaceably; Major Anderson was a popular hero, partly because he had stood firm, but even more, apparently, because he had refrained from shooting when he had his loaded guns trained on a hostile target. There were odd crosscurrents. Mayor Fernando Wood, of New York, was openly proposing that New York declare itself a free city, dealing with both North and South on a friendly basis and so offering “the only light and hope for a future reconstruction of our once blessed confederacy.” Senator Seward was telling the Senate that the notion that a settlement could be worked out after peaceful separation looked like an admission that destruction must go before reconstruction, and he doubted that the Union could be saved “by some cunning and insincere compact of pacification.” Abolitionist orators were openly welcoming secession, as if this convulsive step would at last take the great evil of slavery off forever beyond the horizon; but audiences were cool to this sort of talk, as if they were beginning to consider Union more important than slavery. The famous agitator Wendell Phillips told a Boston meeting that he was a disunion man, and that he hoped the slave states would leave the Union as quickly as possible; he was hissed and jostled, and police had to escort him out of the hall, and in Rochester a crowd broke up an abolitionist meeting, gave three cheers for the Union, and passed informal resolutions commending Major Anderson and General Scott.11