THE GREAT factor in the destruction of slavery was the election of Abraham Lincoln as President in 18601 by the Republican party, who had declared against the extension of slavery into the territories. The territories were those divisions of the national domain2 which lacked as yet the necessary qualifications for statehood through insufficient population or certain other impediments; they were under the control of Congress and the President. The Republicans were opposed to any interference with slavery in the States where it already existed, but they demanded freedom for the vast unorganized territory west of the Missouri river. How the election of Lincoln was brought about I have already related at length in my History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the Final Restoration of Home Rule at the South in 18773 and more briefly in the first of my Oxford Lectures.4 It was a sectional triumph, inasmuch as Lincoln did not receive a single vote in ten out of the eleven States that afterwards seceded and made up the Confederate States. Charleston, South Carolina, an ultra pro-slavery city and eager for secession, rejoiced equally with the Northern cities over the election of Lincoln, but the Charleston crowds were cheering for a Southern confederacy.5 Herein were they supported by the people of South Carolina generally, who saw in the election of Lincoln an attack on their cherished institution of slavery and cared no longer for political union with a people who held them to be living in the daily practice of evil. They regarded their slaves as property and believed that they had the same constitutional right to carry that property into the common territory as the Northern settlers had to take with them their property in horses and mules. Lincoln as President would deny them that privilege; in other words he would refuse them equality. In his speeches he had fastened a stigma upon slavery; believing it wrong, he must oppose it wherever he had the power, and he certainly would limit its extension. Could a free people, they asked, have a more undoubted grievance? Were they not fired by the spirit of 1776 and ought they not to strike before any distinct act of aggression? Revolution was a word on every tongue. The crisis was like one described by Thucydides when "the meaning of words had no longer the same relation to things.… Reckless daring was held to be loyal courage; prudent delay was the excuse of a coward; moderation was the disguise of unmanly weakness.… Frantic energy was the true quality of a man."6 The people of South Carolina amid great enthusiasm demanded almost with one voice that their State secede from the Federal Union. The authorities promptly responded. A Convention duly called and chosen passed an Ordinance of secession which was termed a Declaration of Independence of the State of South Carolina.7 This act, in view of the South Carolinians and of the people of the other cotton States, was based on the State's reserved right "under the compact entitled the Constitution." Martial music, bonfires, pistol firing, fireworks, illuminations, cries of joy and exultation greeted the passage of the Ordinance, which seemed to the people of Charleston to mark the commencement of a revolution as glorious as that of 1776.8
Meanwhile the United States Senate, through an able and representative committee of thirteen, was at work on a compromise in the spirit of earlier days. In 1820, according to Jefferson, the knell of the Union had been rung; the slavery question, said he, "like a fire-bell in the night awakened and filled me with terror." But then the Missouri Compromise had saved the Union.9 Again, in 1850 when the South and the North were in bitter opposition on the same issue of slavery and threats of dissolution of the Union were freely made by Southern men, the controversy was ended by Clay's Compromise.10 And now in 1860 the people of the Northern and of the border slave States, ardent for the preservation of the Union, believed that Congress could somehow compose the dispute as it had done twice before. The Senate committee of thirteen at once took up the only expedient that could be expected to retain the six remaining cotton States in the Union.11 This was the Crittenden Compromise, called after its author, a senator from Kentucky; and the portion of it on which union or disunion turned was the article regarding territorial slavery. Crittenden proposed as a constitutional amendment that the old Missouri Compromise line of 36° 30´ should serve as the boundary between slavery and freedom in the Territories; north of it slavery should be prohibited, south of it protected. As phrased, the article was satisfactory to the Northern Democratic and border slave State senators, who together made up six of the committee. The two senators from the cotton States would have accepted it, had the understanding been clear that protection to slavery was to apply to all territory acquired in the future south of the Compromise line. The five Republican senators opposed the territorial article, and, as it had been agreed that any report to be binding must have the assent of a majority of these five, they defeated in committee this necessary provision of the Compromise. William H. Seward,12 one of the thirteen, the leader of the Republicans in Congress, and the prospective head of Lincoln's Cabinet, would undoubtedly have assented to this article, could he have secured Lincoln's support. But Lincoln, though ready to compromise every other matter in dispute, was inflexible on the territorial question: that is to say as regarded territory which might be acquired in the future. He could not fail to see that the Territories which were a part of the United States in 1860 were, in Webster's words, dedicated to freedom by "an ordinance of nature" and "the will of God"; and he was willing to give the slaveholders an opportunity to make a political slave State out of New Mexico, which was south of the Missouri Compromise line.13 But he feared that, if a parallel of latitude should be recognized by solemn exactment as the boundary between slavery and freedom, "filibustering for all south of us and making slave States of it would follow in spite of us." "A year will not pass," he wrote further, "till we shall have to take Cuba as a condition upon which they [the cotton States] will stay in the Union." Lincoln, therefore, using the powerful indirect influence of the President-elect, caused the Republican senators to defeat the Crittenden Compromise in the committee, who were thus forced to report that they could not agree upon a plan of adjustment. Then Crittenden proposed to submit his plan to a vote of the people. So strong was the desire to preserve the Union that, had this been done, the majority would probably have been overwhelming in favor of the Compromise; and, although only an informal vote, it would have been an instruction impossible for Congress to resist. Crittenden's resolution looking to such an expression of public sentiment was prevented from coming to a vote in the Senate by the quiet opposition of Republican senators: the last chance of retaining the six cotton States in the Union was gone.14
Between January 9 and February 1, 1861, the conventions of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas passed ordinances of secession. Early in February the Confederate States was formed. Delegates from six cotton States15 assembled in Montgomery and, proceeding in an orderly manner, formed a government, the cornerstone of which rested "upon the great truth … that slavery is the negro's natural and normal condition." They elected Jefferson Davis16 President and adopted a Constitution modelled on that of the United States, but departing from that instrument in its express recognition of slavery and the right of secession.17
When Lincoln was inaugurated President on March 4, he confronted a difficult situation. Elected by a Union of thirty-three States, he had lost, before performing an official act, the allegiance of seven. Believing "that no State can in any way lawfully get out of the Union without the consent of the others and that it is the duty of the President … to run the machine as it is,"18 he had to determine on a line of policy toward the States that had constituted themselves the Southern Confederacy. But any such policy was certain to be complicated by the desirability of retaining in the Union the border slave States of Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri, as well as North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas, whose affiliations were close with the four border States. All seven were drawn towards the North by their affection for the Union and towards the South by the community of interest in the social system of slavery. One of Lincoln's problems then was to make the love for the Union outweigh the sympathy with the slaveholding States that had seceded.
It is difficult to see how he could have bettered the policy to which he gave the keynote in his inaugural address. "I hold," he said, "that the union of these States is perpetual.… Physically speaking we cannot separate.… The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy and possess the property and places belonging to the Government." This last declaration, though inevitable for a President in his position, outweighed all his words of conciliation and rendered of no avail his closing pathetic appeal to his "dissatisfied fellow countrymen" not to bring civil war on the country.19
During the progress of the secession, the forts, arsenals, custom-houses and other property of the Federal government within the limits of the cotton States were taken possession of by these States and, in due time, all this property was turned over to the Southern Confederacy, so that on March 4, all that Lincoln controlled was four military posts, of which Fort Sumter, commanding Charleston, was much the most important.20 Since the very beginning of the secession movement, the eyes of the North had been upon South Carolina. For many years she had been restive under the bonds of the Union; her chief city, Charleston, had witnessed the disruption of the Democratic national convention,21 and the consequent split in the party which made certain the Republican success of 1860, that in turn had led to the secession of the State and the formation of the Southern Confederacy. Fort Sumter had fixed the attention of the Northern mind by an occurrence in December, 1860. Major Anderson with a small garrison of United States troops had occupied Fort Moultrie; but, convinced that he could not defend that fort against any attack from Charleston, he had, secretly on the night after Christmas, withdrawn his force to Fort Sumter, a much stronger post. Next morning, when the movement was discovered, Charleston fumed with rage whilst the North, on hearing the news, was jubilant and made a hero of Anderson.22 Lincoln recognized the importance of holding Fort Sumter but he also purposed to use all means short of the compromise of his deepest convictions to retain the border slave States and North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas in the Union. The action of these three turned upon Virginia, whose convention was in session, ready to take any action which the posture of affairs seemed to demand. The fundamental difficulty now asserted itself. To hold Fort Sumter was to Lincoln a bounden duty but to the Virginians it savored of coercion; and coercion in this case meant forcing a State which had seceded, back into the Union. If an attempt was made to coerce a State, Virginia would join the Southern Confederacy. The Confederate States now regarded the old Union as a foreign power whose possession of a fort within their limits, flying the American flag, was a daily insult. They attempted to secure Sumter by an indirect negotiation with the Washington government and were encouraged by the assurances of Seward, Lincoln's Secretary of State and most trusted counsellor. Had the President known of Seward's intimation, which was almost a promise, that Sumter would be evacuated, he would have been greatly perturbed and would have called a halt in the negotiations to the end that the Southern commissioners be undeceived. On April 1 he was further troubled by a paper, "Some Thoughts for the President's Consideration," which Seward had privately submitted to him as an outline of the fit policy to be pursued. This was briefly: the evacuation of Fort Sumter; the reënforcement of the other posts in the South; a demand at once for explanations from Spain and France and, if they were not satisfactory, a call of a special session of Congress to declare war against those two nations; also explanations to be sought from Great Britain and Russia. With that same rash disregard of his chief and blind reliance on his own notions of statecraft which he had shown in his negotiations with Justice Campbell, the intermediary between himself and the Southern commissioners, who had been sent to Washington by Davis, he gave the President a strong hint that the execution of this policy should be devolved upon some member of the Cabinet and that member, himself. The proposed foreign policy was reckless and wholly unwarranted. Our relations with these four powers were entirely peaceful; to use Seward's own words less than three months before, "there is not a nation on earth that is not an interested, admiring friend."23 Seward had got it into his head that, if our nation should provoke a foreign war, the cotton States would unite in amity with the North and like brothers fight the common foe under the old flag. Lincoln of course saw that the foreign policy proposed was wild and foolish but ignored it in his considerate reply to "Some Thoughts for the President's Consideration"; he kept the existence of the paper rigidly a secret;24 he did not demand the Secretary's resignation; he had for him no word of sarcasm or reproach.
The President submitted to another drain on his time and strength in the persistent scramble for office. "The grounds, halls, stairways, closets of the White House," wrote Seward, are filled with office seekers; and Lincoln said, "I seem like one sitting in a palace assigning apartments to importunate applicants, while the structure is on fire and likely soon to perish in ashes."25 When he ought to have been able to concentrate his mind on the proper attitude to the seceding States, he was hampered by the ceaseless demands for a lucrative recognition from his supporters and by the irrational proposals of the chief of his Cabinet.
The great problem now was Sumter. What should be done about it? On the day after his inauguration, the President was informed that Anderson believed a reënforcement of 20,000 men necessary for the defence of the post;26 after being transported to the neighborhood by sea, they must fight their way through to the fort. For the South Carolinians had been steadily at work on the islands in Charleston harbor erecting batteries and strengthening the forts which bore on Sumter. Moreover, Anderson's provisions would not last beyond the middle of April. General Scott, the head of the army, advised the evacuation of Sumter, a logical step in the course of action toward the South, which he and other men of influence had advocated and which he expressed in the pertinent words, "Wayward sisters depart in peace."27 At the Cabinet meeting of March 15 the President asked his advisers, If it be possible to provision Fort Sumter, is it wise to attempt it? Four agreed with Seward, saying, No; only two gave an affirmative answer. Lincoln undoubtedly had moments of thinking that the Fort must be evacuated.28 With his eye upon Virginia, whose convention he hoped might adjourn without action, he may have promised one of her representatives that he would withdraw Anderson, provided the Virginia convention, always a menace of secession while it continued to sit, would adjourn sine die. The evidence is too conflicting to justify a positive assertion; but if such a proposal were made, it was never transmitted to and acted upon by the convention.29
In the final decision, the sentiment of the North had to be taken into account. To abandon Sumter would seem to indicate that a peaceful separation would follow; that the principle of the sovereignty of the States and secession had triumphed. Finally, with increasing support in his Cabinet, Lincoln came to a wise decision. Reënforcement from a military point of view was impracticable; to reach the fort the North might have to fire the first shot. But, as a political measure, he decided to "send bread to Anderson,"30 so that Sumter would not have to be evacuated from lack of food. In accordance with his previous promise,31 he sent word to the Governor of South Carolina of his intention. Beauregard, commander of the Confederate troops at Charleston, who in company with the Governor heard the formal notification, telegraphed it to the Confederate Secretary of War at Montgomery, receiving two days later [April 10] the order to demand the evacuation of Fort Sumter and, if this was refused, to proceed to reduce it.
The demand was made; and when Anderson had written his refusal to comply with it he observed to the Confederate aides, the bearers of Beauregard's note, "If you do not batter the fort to pieces about us, we shall be starved out in a few days."32 Beauregard, acting with caution, transmitted this remark to Montgomery where equal caution not to precipitate hostilities was shown in the reply: "Do not desire needlessly to bombard Fort Sumter. If Major Anderson will state the time at which … he will evacuate Sumter … you are authorized thus to avoid the effusion of blood." Evacuation was redemanded by Beauregard's aides at three quarters of an hour after midnight of April 11. This was again refused, but Anderson wrote, "I will … 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."33 The aides considered these terms "manifestly futile"34 and, acting in accordance with the letter of their instructions, they gave the order to Fort Johnson to open fire; the first shell was fired at half past four on the morning of April 12. This shot, the signal for the bombardment to begin, caused a profound thrill throughout the United States and in point of fact it inaugurated four years of civil war.35
The bombardment was unnecessary. Sumter might have been had without it. Beauregard was needlessly alarmed over the relief expedition that was bringing bread to Anderson. He feared a descent upon the South Carolina coast by "the United States fleet then lying at the entrance of the harbor" for the supposed purpose of reënforcing Fort Sumter. One of his aides reported that "four large steamers are plainly in view standing off the bar." The people in Charleston thought that there were six men-of-war in the offing.36 In connection with the general alarm on shore, it is interesting to note the actual mishaps of the relief expedition. This was intended to consist of four war-ships, three steam-tugs and the merchant steamer Baltic. The Baltic, with G. V. Fox, who had command of the expedition, on board, arrived off Charleston one hour and a half before the bombardment began, but found there only one warship.37 Another38 arrived at seven in the morning; but without the Powhatan,39 the most important of the war-ships and the one carrying the equipment necessary for the undertaking, nothing could be accomplished, and no attempt was made to provision the fort. Administrative inefficiency, Seward's meddlesomeness and a heavy storm at sea conjoined to cause the failure of the expedition. Fox and his companions watched the bombardment, chafing at their powerlessness to render their brothers-in-arms any assistance.
Before leaving Sumter Beauregard's aides notified Anderson in writing that in an hour their batteries would open on the fort. Anderson and his officers went through the casemates where the men were sleeping, waked them, told them of the impending attack and of his decision not to return the fire until after daylight. The first shell was from Fort Johnson; at half past four, it "rose high in air and curving in its course burst almost directly over the fort."40 The next shot came from Cummings Point, fired, it is said, by a venerable secessionist from Virginia who had long awaited the glory of this day. The official account does not confirm the popular impression, but the Lieutenant-Colonel in command wrote that his men were "greatly incited" by the "enthusiasm and example" of this old Virginian who was at one of the Cummings Point batteries "during the greater part of the bombardment."41 After Cummings Point all the batteries opened in quick succession; Sumter was "surrounded by a circle of fire."42 Meanwhile the men in the fort, alive to the novelty of the scene, watched the shot and shell directed at them, until, realizing the danger of exposure, they retired to the bomb-proofs to await the usual roll-call and order for breakfast. Having no more bread, they ate pork and damaged rice. At seven o'clock, Anderson gave the order and Sumter discharged its first gun at Cummings Point, following up this shot with a vigorous fire. An hour and a half later Sumter opened upon Moultrie and from that time "a steady and continuous fire" between the two "was kept up throughout the day."43 For the people of Charleston who gathered on the house-tops and thronged to the wharves and to their favorite promenade, the Battery, this artillery duel was a mighty spectacle. They had lost all love for the Union; they hated the American flag somewhat as the Venetians hated the Austrian and, though apprehensive of danger to their husbands, sons and brothers, they rejoiced that the time was drawing near when the enemy should no longer hold a fort commanding their harbor and city.
In the early afternoon the fire of Sumter slackened; cartridges were lacking, "although the six needles in the fort were kept steadily employed" until all "the extra clothing of the companies, all coarse paper and extra hospital sheets" had been used.44 After dark Sumter stopped firing; the Confederate batteries continued to throw shells, though at longer intervals. As, during the dark and stormy night, "it was almost confidently expected that the United States fleet would attempt to land troops upon the islands or to throw men into Fort Sumter by means of boats," there was ceaseless vigilance on Morris and Sullivan's islands.45 Early on Saturday morning [April 13] the bombardment was renewed. The men in the fort ate the last of the damaged rice with pork, but they sprang briskly to their work. "Fort Sumter opened early and spitefully and paid especial attention to Fort Moultrie," wrote Moultrie's commander.46 Soon hot shot from Moultrie and other batteries set the officers' quarters on fire. The powder magazine was in danger. Anderson ordered fifty barrels removed and distributed around in the casemates, the magazine doors to be closed and packed with earth. As in the meantime the wooden barracks had taken fire, endangering the powder in the casemates, he commanded that all but five barrels should be thrown into the sea. At one o'clock the flag-staff was struck and fell; and the fallen flag, though soon hoisted again, together with the smoke and the flames gave the Confederates reason to believe that Anderson was in distress. An aide under a white flag was despatched to him from Cummings Point; three more from the city by Beauregard. Negotiations followed resulting in honorable terms. "I marched out of the fort Sunday afternoon the 14th instant," reported Anderson, "with colors flying and drums beating, bringing away company and private property, and saluting my flag with fifty guns."47
In this momentous battle, no man on either side was killed. As compared with the military writing of two years later, the crudity of the contemporary correspondence and reports is grimly significant. They told of the work of boys learning the rudiments of war-boys who would soon be seasoned veterans wise in the methods of destruction. A strenuous schooling this; and the beginning of it was the artillery duel in Charleston harbor.
Beauregard's aides assumed too great a responsibility in giving the order to fire the first shot; they should have referred Anderson's reply to their chief. There can be no doubt that the Confederate States would have obtained peacefully on Monday what they got by force on Sunday. If Beauregard had had Anderson's last response, he would unquestionably have waited to ask Montgomery for further instructions. The presence of the United States fleet was of course disquieting; yet the danger from this source, even as exaggerated in Beauregard's mind, could be averted quite as well by acting on the defensive, as by the bombardment of Fort Sumter.48 But South Carolina was hot for possession of the fort and the aides who gave the order that precipitated hostilities were swayed by the passion of the moment.
In April, 1861, war was undoubtedly inevitable. The House divided against itself could not stand. The irrepressible conflict had come to a head; words were a salve no longer. Under the circumstances it was fortunate for Lincoln that the South became the aggressor. Davis's elaborate apology49 and the writing inspired by it could never answer the questions put by Northern to Southern soldiers, when they met under a flag of truce or in the banter between Confederates and Federals when opportunities offered, "Who began the war? Who struck the first blow? Who battered the walls of Fort Sumter?"50"At one stamp of his foot, the President called the whole nation to arms," wrote Henry Adams in 1861 while in Washington.51 He referred to the Proclamation asking for 75,000 volunteers whose first service would probably be "to repossess the forts, places and property which have been seized from the Union." Lincoln wrote this on the Sunday when Anderson marched out of Sumter (April 14) and, following closely the act of February 28, 1795, his authority, he called forth that number of militia, apportioned among twenty-seven States, to suppress, in the seven cotton States, combinations beyond "the ordinary course of judicial proceedings," and he summoned Congress to meet on July 4 in special session. In the particulars communicated by the War department to the several governors, the time of service was fixed at three months, but this represented in no way the President's opinion as to the probable duration of the war; he was simply following the act of 1795 which provided that the militia could be held to service for only thirty days after the next meeting of Congress.
After two days full of indignant outbursts at the insult to the flag, the people of the North read the President's call for troops. "That first gun at Sumter," wrote Lowell, "brought all the free States to their feet as one man." "The heather is on fire," said George Ticknor. "I never before knew what a popular excitement can be. At the North there never was anything like it."52 Governors, legislatures, wherever these were in session, and private citizens acted in generous coöperation. Men forgot that they had been Republicans or Democrats; the partisan was sunk in the patriot. Washington was supposed to be in danger of capture by the Southern troops flushed with their victory at Sumter; armed and equipped soldiers were needed for its defence. The Sixth Massachusetts was the first regiment to respond, leaving Boston on April 17 and arriving in Baltimore two days later. The only approach by rail to Washington was through Baltimore where the strong feeling for secession was vented in threats that Northern troops, bent on the invasion of the South, would not be permitted to pass through its streets. The Colonel of the Sixth, being informed in Philadelphia of the situation, timed his arrival in Baltimore for the morning (April 19). Here a transfer was usually made by means of horses, drawing the passenger cars through the streets from the Philadelphia to the Washington station, a mile distant, where a change was made to the cars of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, which owned the forty miles of single track to the nation's capital. Seven companies were thus driven rapidly through the city. Meanwhile an angry mob had collected, torn up the railroad and erected a barricade to dispute the passage of the rest of the regiment. Informed of this the captains of the four remaining companies decided that they must march to the station; but before they had started, up came the mob, carrying a secession flag and threatening that, if an attempt were made to march through the streets, every "white nigger" of them would be killed. The Captain, on whom the command devolved, gave the order to march, a policeman leading the way. As the soldiers stepped forward, they received a volley of brick-bats and paving-stones from the mob; a hundred yards farther on they came to a bridge which had been partially demolished. "We had to play scotch-hop to get over it," said the Captain. The order "double-quick" was then given, which led the mob to believe that the soldiers either had no ammunition or dared not use it. In their growing rage, they fired pistol-shots into the ranks, and one soldier fell dead. The Captain gave the order "fire"; a number of the mob fell. The mayor of Baltimore arrived and placed himself at the head of the column. "The mob grew bolder," he wrote, "and the attack became more violent. Various persons were killed and wounded on both sides." As his presence failed to allay the tumult, the mayor left the head of the column, but the four companies marched on, fighting their way through to their comrades, aided by the city marshal with fifty policemen who covered their rear. In the Baltimore and Ohio cars with the blinds closed, the regiment received a volley of stones which so infuriated one of the soldiers that he fired and killed a prominent citizen, a mere looker-on. Finally the train got away and reached Washington late in the afternoon. Of the regiment four had been killed and thirty-six wounded. The casualties in the mob were larger.
In Baltimore the excitement was intense. "The streets are red with Maryland blood" are the marshal's words. Secessionists and Southern sympathizers were rampant; stifling the Union sentiment of the city, they carried everything with a high hand and dictated the action of the constituted authorities. "The excitement is fearful. Send no more troops here," is the joint despatch of the governor of Maryland and the mayor of Baltimore to the President. So great was the commotion that a part of the State and city military was called out; citizens volunteered, and, after being more or less adequately furnished with arms, were enrolled for the purpose of defence under the direction of the board of police. In Monument Square a mass-meeting assembled, whose sentiment was decidedly opposed to any attempt at coercion of the Confederate States. Apprehending "a severe fight and bloodshed" if more Northern troops attempted to pass through Baltimore, the mayor and city marshal ordered the burning of certain bridges on the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore railroad, the line to Philadelphia, and on the Northern Central, the line to Harrisburg; three bridges on each railroad were burned, thus completely severing the rail communication with the North.53
The seven days since the evacuation of Sumter had been crowded with events of a deeply ominous character. On April 17, the Virginia convention, sitting in secret, had passed an ordinance of secession, an act which became known to the authorities in Washington on the following day. As a rejoinder to Lincoln's call for 75,000 troops, Jefferson Davis by proclamation invited applications for letters of marque and reprisal against the merchant marine of the United States. The President retorted (April 19) by proclaiming a blockade of Southern ports from South Carolina to Texas inclusive, and declaring that privateers acting "under the pretended authority" of the Confederate States would be treated as pirates. On the 18th, the United States commander at Harper's Ferry in Virginia, deeming his position untenable, abandoned it after demolishing the arsenal and burning the armory building. On the 20th the Gosport navy-yard was partially destroyed by the Union forces and left to the possession of the Virginians. On the same day Robert E. Lee, who was esteemed by Scott the ablest officer next to himself in the service, and who had been unofficially offered the active command of the Union army, resigned his commission, thus indicating that he had decided to cast his lot with the South. The gravity of the situation was heightened by the severance of communications between the national capital and the North, as a result of the trouble in Baltimore.54 On Sunday night (April 21) the telegraph ceased to be available. The only connection the government now had with its loyal territory and people was by means of private couriers; these made their way with difficulty through Maryland, where for the moment an unfriendly element prevailed. Correct information was difficult to get, and rumors of all sorts filled the air. The government and citizens alike were apprehensive of an attack on the capital. They feared that Beauregard's South Carolina army would be transported North as fast as the railroads could carry it and, reënforced in Richmond by Virginia troops, would easily take Washington. Preparations were made to withstand a siege. Panic seized the crowds of office-seekers, driving them northwards. Many secessionist citizens, fearing that the whole male population of the city would be impressed for its defence, left for the South. Washington, wrote General Scott, on April 22, is "now partially besieged, threatened and in danger of being attacked on all sides in a day or two or three." The arrival of the Eighth Massachusetts and Seventh New York at Annapolis, who had finished their journey to that point by water, prompted the governor to telegraph to the President advising that "no more troops be ordered or allowed to pass through Maryland"; and he suggested "that Lord Lyons [the English minister] be requested to act as mediator between the contending parties of our country."55
John Hay, then one of the President's private secretaries, has given in his diary a graphic account of these days. Of the novel scene of the Sixth Massachusetts quartered in the Capitol, he wrote, "The contrast was very painful between the grey-haired dignity that filled the Senate chamber when I saw it last, and the present throng of bright-looking Yankee boys, the most of them bearing the signs of New England rusticity in voice and manner, scattered over the desks, chairs and galleries, some loafing, many writing letters slowly and with plough-hardened hands or with rapid-glancing clerkly fingers while Grow [representative from Pennsylvania, later speaker of the House] stood patient by the desk and franked for everybody.… The town is full to-night (April 20) of feverish rumors about a meditated assault upon the city.… This morning (April 21) we mounted the battlements of the Executive Mansion and the Ancient (Lincoln) took a long look down the bay [troops were expected to arrive via Fort Monroe, Chesapeake bay, and the Potomac river]. It was a 'water-haul.' … A telegram intercepted on its way to Baltimore states that our Yankees (Eighth Massachusetts) and New Yorkers (Seventh New York) have landed at Annapolis (April 22). Weary and foot-sore but very welcome, they will probably greet us to-morrow.… Housekeepers here are beginning to dread famine. Flour has made a sudden spring to $18 a barrel."56
The President was keenly alive to the importance of holding the capital and feared greatly for its safety. As Tuesday the 23d passed and no soldiers came, he paced the floor of the executive office in restless anxiety looking out of the window down the Potomac for the long expected boats; thinking himself alone he exclaimed in tones of anguish, "Why don't they come! Why don't they come!" That same day had brought a mail from New York three days old, containing newspapers which told that the uprising of the North continued with growing strength and unbounded enthusiasm, that the Seventh New York regiment had already departed and that troops from Rhode Island were on the way. Next day (April 24), wrote Hay, was one "of gloom and doubt. Everybody seems filled with a vague distrust and recklessness. The idea seemed to be reached by Lincoln when, chatting with the volunteers (Sixth Massachusetts) this morning, he said: 'I don't believe there is any North! The Seventh regiment is a myth! Rhode Island is not known in our geography any longer. You are the only Northern realities.'"57
Meanwhile the Seventh New York and Eighth Massachusetts were marching to Annapolis junction where they found a train which took them quickly to Washington. The Seventh regiment arrived first (April 25). Forming as soon as they left the cars, they marched up Pennsylvania avenue to the White House. To the people who noted their military bearing and to the President who reviewed them, they were a goodly sight. Their arrival indicated that a route from the loyal North to its capital was open, that other regiments were on the way soon to arrive and that Washington was safe.58 It was not until May 9, however, that Northern troops attempted to pass through Baltimore; coming from Perryville in transports and landing under the guns of a revenue steamer, they were then carried in cars under ample police protection through South Baltimore; they were not molested. Four days later, and twenty-four after the severance of communication, the first train from Philadelphia arrived at the capital, and shortly afterwards regular railroad communication with the Northern cities, for passengers as well as for the military, was reëstablished.59 The people of the Confederate States looked upon Lincoln's call for 75,000 troops as a declaration of war, implying a policy of invasion of their territory, an attack upon themselves and their property. The uprising in the South was precisely similar to that in the North. The people declared that they would resist the Lincoln government as long as they could command a man or a dollar. The coöperation of governors and individuals with Davis matches the cooperation of Northerners with Lincoln. If a European, ignorant of the names of our States or of our public men in 1861, were to read the Official Records, the only way he could tell which side he was reading about would be by reference to the editors' titles of "Union" or "Confederate correspondence."
The first stakes for Lincoln and Davis to play for were Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri and Arkansas. Despite the unfortunate demonstrations in her chief city, Baltimore, Maryland contained a powerful element whose love of the Union was shared by her governor; under his guidance with the tactful help of the President she cast her lot with the North.
Two days before the bombardment of Sumter, Roger A. Pryor, a Virginia secessionist, in an impassioned speech in Charleston, said, "I will tell you, gentlemen, what will put Virginia in the Southern Confederacy in less than an hour by Shrewsbury clock-strike a blow." He knew his countrymen. The excitement in Virginia was equal to that in the cotton States. To the requisition for her quota of troops under the President's call for 75,000, her governor expressed the public opinion in a defiant refusal. Montgomery had already heard that Virginia was "in a blaze of excited indignation against Lincoln's proclamation."60 On April 17, her convention, by a vote of 103 : 46, adopted an ordinance of secession, which was to be valid if ratified by a vote of the people on the fourth Thursday of May.61 As the authorities assumed the result of the popular vote, they proceeded to join the fortunes of Virginia with the Confederate States. Having telegraphed to Montgomery the common desire, the governor received at once this despatch from Davis: "Resolution for alliance received. Proposition cordially accepted. Commissioner will be sent by next train."62 In fulfilment of this promise Alexander H. Stephens, the Vice-President of the Confederate States, went to Richmond. Although he wrote of the "embarrassments and difficulties" in getting the arrangement effected, the common aim and sympathy were so certain that he negotiated a military alliance between the Confederate States and Virginia, giving the control and direction of her military force to Davis.63 On May 7, the Confederate Congress admitted her into the Confederacy and, accepting the offer of her convention (April 27), made Richmond their capital (May 21).64
The governor of North Carolina replied to the Secretary of War: "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 gross usurpation of power. I can be no party … to this war upon the liberties of a free people. You can get no troops from North Carolina."65 Before Lincoln's call for troops two-thirds of the people of North Carolina were opposed to secession;66 now, however, as speedily as a convention could be assembled, an ordinance of secession was adopted by a unanimous vote, and North Carolina became one of the Confederate States.67
On May 6, Arkansas, through her convention, passed an ordinance of secession with only one dissenting vote; soon afterwards she joined the Southern Confederacy.
In answer to Lincoln's requisition for troops, Tennessee's governor said, "Tennessee will not furnish a single man for purpose of coërcion."68 She did not adopt an ordinance of secession, but during the month of May her legislature made a military league with the Confederate States, and she became one of them, subject to the vote of the people which was taken on June 8; by a majority of nearly 58,000, they declared in favor of separation from the Union and of joining the Southern Confederacy.69
"Kentucky," so telegraphed her governor, "will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern States."70 But he could not draw her into the secession movement. A drift of conflicting opinions held her in the balance, but Lincoln knew his native State well and, by tact and forbearance, he guided the Union men so that their influence continually spread until the month of August, when, in the newly elected legislature, they had a majority of nearly three-fourths in each branch.71
Missouri's governor was likewise favorable to secession, replying to the call for troops: "Your requisition, in my judgment, is illegal, unconstitutional and revolutionary in its object, inhuman and diabolical.… Not one man will the State of Missouri furnish to carry on any such unholy crusade."72 He had, however, a resolute antagonist in Francis P. Blair, Jr., a man of extraordinary physical and moral courage, of high social position in St. Louis and personally very popular. Between him and the governor, there ensued four months of political and martial manœuvring, but Blair won in the end and Missouri remained in the Union.73
The array was now complete. Twenty-three States were pitted against eleven; twenty-two million people against nine, and of the nine, three and one-half million were slaves. Each side had peculiar advantages.74 But neither section understood the other. If the South had known that secession must result in war and that the foe would be a united North, it is doubtful if she would have proceeded to the last extremity. It is still more doubtful if the North would have fought, had she known that she must contend against a united Southern people. The remark of Chatham, "Conquer a free population of three million souls? the thing is impossible," had become an axiom of the English race. But now the North confronted five and a half million earnest and brave people, supported by three and a half million servants, who grew the food and took care of the women and children at home while the men fought in the field. The North was contending for the Union on the theory that a strong and unscrupulous minority had overridden the majority of Southerners who had no desire for secession, loathed the idea of civil war and, if protected and encouraged, would make themselves felt in a movement looking towards allegiance to the national government. Lincoln comprehended the sentiment of the North and he never gave public expression to any opinion that he did not sincerely hold. In his fourth of July message to the special session of Congress he said: "It may well be questioned whether there is to-day a majority of the legally qualified voters of any State, except perhaps South Carolina, in favor of disunion. There is much reason to believe that the Union men are the majority in many, if not in every other one, of the so-called seceded States."
I have discussed this matter so thoroughly in my History that it is unnecessary for me to recur to it at length. Nevertheless, I may observe that on returning to the subject twenty years after my first discussion of it, and on going through the original materials again, I have been more firmly convinced than before of the unanimity of the Confederate States after the President's call for troops. The citations from William H. Russell's letters to the London Times and from his Diary, which I gave in my third volume, furnish an authoritative corroboration of the other evidence. This intelligent and fair-minded man, who sympathized with the North because he hated slavery and was convinced that the invocation of State-rights was for "protection to slavery, extension of slave territory and free-trade in slave produce with the outer world," made a journey through the Southern States between April 14 and June 19, 1861, and became convinced that the people of the Confederacy were united. Summing up the results of his tour, he wrote: "I met everywhere with but one feeling, with exceptions which proved its unanimity and force. To a man the people went with their States, and had but one battle-cry, 'States'-rights and death to those who make war against them!"
In spite of his supercilious criticism, Russell wished the North to win because he foresaw in her victory the destruction of slavery. But he did not believe that she could triumph. In April, while in Charleston, he wrote, "I am more satisfied than ever that the Union can never be restored as it was, and that it has gone to pieces, never to be put together again in the old shape, at all events, by any power on earth." In New Orleans, on May 31, he set down in his Diary, "Now that the separation has come, there is not, in the Constitution, or out of it, power to cement the broken fragments together." On the steamer on the Mississippi which brought him from a Confederate camp to Cairo, he met an Englishman who was steward of the boat and not averse to giving his opinion, which Russell quotes with apparent approval of the concluding statement. "This war," the steward said, "is all about niggers; I've been sixteen years in the country, and I never met one of them yet was fit to be anything but a slave; I know the two sections well and I tell you, sir, the North can't whip the South let them do their best."75
Mixed with the stern determination on both sides to fight out the conflict was a sincere regret that the Union should be broken. When an old gentleman, whom Russell met in Charleston, spoke of the prospect of civil war "tears rolled down his cheeks," but regarding it "as the natural consequence of the insults, injustice and aggression of the North against Southern rights" he had no apprehension for the result. Mrs. Chesnut wrote of the separation, "The wrench has been awful." When the Virginia convention was considering the ordinance of secession, one delegate, who spoke against it, became incoherent in his emotion and finally broke down sobbing. Another, who voted for it, wept like a child at the thought of rending ancient ties.76 It is Henry Adams's opinion based on his recollections of Washington in the winter of 1861 that, "Not one man in America wanted the civil war or expected or intended it." Similar was Nicolay's impression at the same period in Springfield while assisting Lincoln. "Nobody wanted war" is the word.77 And when it came, J. D. Cox and James A. Garfield, then members of the Ohio legislature, groaned at "the shame, the folly, the outrage" of "civil war in our land."78
John T. Morse, in his biography of Lincoln, which possesses somehow the authority of a contemporary document as well as the interest of an artistic study of a great man, wrote, "Historians say rhetorically that the North sprang to arms; and it really would have done so if there had been any arms to spring to; but muskets were scarce."798081