CH. X.] THE EIGHTH CENSUS. 553 1860. The Prince of Wales, having made a which was taken this year. Total tour through the British Provinces, ar-white population, 27,003,314; free colrived at Detroit, Sept. 21st; thence he ored, 487,996; slaves, 3,953,proceeded by way of Chicago, St. Louis, 760. The population of the Cincinnati, and Baltimore, to Washing- free States was, 18,912,454. The popu ton, where he arrived on the 3d of lation of the slave States was, 8,090,860, October. He remained for several days making, with the slaves, 12,044,620. as the guest of the President; visited The increase of population in the free Richmond, Philadelphia, and New York, States, during ten years, was 7,446,043. in which latter city especial honor was The increase of population in the slave done to him; he visited also West States was, 2,428,376. The grand Point, Albany, and Boston; and having total of the population of the United reached Portland, October 20th, he States (including territories) in 1860, embarked for home. The manifesta- was, 31,445,080*. In the new apportions of good feeling towards the heir tionment of Representatives (the numof the English throne were in all re- ber being, by law, 233) the free States spects cordial and freely tendered, and gained six, making their number 149; there is reason to believe that they were and the slave States lost six, reducing fully appreciated by the Queen and their number to 84. people of England. We may take occasion here, also, to give the results of the eighth census VOL III-7 and Territories, and Chinese; there being 37,329 In- *This includes taxed Indians in the several States CHAPTER XI. 1860-1861. THE LAST YEAR OF BUCHANAN'S ADMINISTRATION. The great political struggle for the presidency -The election in November, 1860-Abraham Lir.coln and Hannibal Hamlin chosen president and vice-president of the United States Excitement and violent denunciations of the Southern leaders- South Carolina takes the lead in the mad outbreak - Secession ordinance of the Palmetto State - Address, Declaration, etc - Congress meets for the second session - Mr. Buchanan's message - Difficulties of his position-Condemns secession, but thought there was no power of coercion to prevent it- Suggests an explanatory amendment of the Constitution The House and Senate committees - The Crittenden "Compromise measures The "peace propositions"-President's special messages- Peace conference at Washington Secession convention at Montgomery, Alabama — Davis and Stephens at head of new Confederacy - Dishonest course of the South-Charleston harbor, forts, etc - Proceedings of the Charlestonians — Major Anderson-Resignations of members of the Cabinet-Resignations of Congressmen, speeches, etc - End of the session and result - Review of James Buchanan's administration - APPENDIX TO CHAPTER XI. — I. Buchanan's Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion. II. South Carolina's Address to the Slave-holding States. III. South Carolina's Declaration as to Secession. - - THE several distinguished gentlemen, On the whole, the canvass was conduct named on a preceding page, accepted ed with as much moderation and fairness the nominations for president and vice- as is usual; although, at the South, president, and each party had strong there was no disguise of the hatred to hopes of success. The republicans ex-wards the republicans and their prinpected to carry the North and West ciples, and no hesitation in avowing without difficulty, while the democrats, a settled purpose never to submit although weakened by the divisions in their ranks, still believed themselves able to defeat Mr. Lincoln. The union party also persuaded themselves that it was quite possible to secure the election of their candidates. The canvass was vigorously prosecuted; speeches were made in all directions by Messrs. Douglas, Seward, Lincoln, and 1860. other prominent men; the press entered as usual most warmly into the contest; and the people were roused to the consideration of the impor- known. Abraham Lincoln was elect tant issues depending on the election. ed president of the United States, and to the government, if placed in Mi Lincoln's hands. These bitter de nunciations and threatenings were, at the time, looked upon as only the ordin ary effervescence of political excitement, but subsequent events showed that the Southern disunionists were in earnest in their fell designs against the integrity and honor of the country. The election took place, Tuesday, November 6th, and by means of the telegraph, was immediately made Cu. XI.] RESULTS OF THE ELECTION. 555 race and the necessary perpetual slavery of the black race;-these were among the things talked of every where and by all; and to accomplish these the Hannibal Hamlin vice-president, by a ists and mechanics, a nation founded on considerable majority. Mr. Lincoln the absolute supremacy of the white received 1,857,610 votes, and 180 out of the 183 electoral votes of the free States; Mr. Douglas received 1,365,976 votes, but only twelve electoral votes (three from New Jersey, nine from Southern leaders now set themselves Missouri); Mr. Breckenridge received resolutely at work.* 847,953 votes, and 72 electoral votes from the Southern States; Mr. Bell received 590,631 votes, and thirty-nine electoral votes from Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. 1860. Such was the result of the contest. It was plain to those who had been watching the progress of events, that the long-existing supremacy of the South in national affairs had now received its death-blow; it was plain, also, that they who had been defeated in the recent presidential election must now submit to the condition of things under republican rule, or seek to obtain redress in carrying out into action their violent and oft-repeated threats of disunion. The excitement was intense, and Southern leaders scrupled not to increase it in every way possible. By some strange hallucination, they seemed to consider it a personal wrong done to them, because the people of the United States, acting in the way appointed by the Constitution, had decided to place the government in the hands of Mr. Lincoln and his advisers. They threatened vengeance, and all other horrible things, and they soon began to make it evident what were their long cherished designs. Secession, a breaking up of the Union, a Southern Confederacy, a new republic free from contamination with Northern abolition South Carolina took the lead in this mad outbreak against the Union. Governor Gist, early in November, so soon as the presidential election became known, recommended the legislature, then in session, to make immediate preparation for the crisis, by organizing the militia for active service, calling for volunteers, collecting arms and ammunition, summoning a convention to com. plete the secession of the State, etc. Delegates were elected on the 6th of December; on the 10th, F. W. Pickens "The remedy of the South is not in such a process. It is in a diligent organization of her true men for prompt resistance to the next aggression. It must save us: no sectional party can ever do it. But if we could do as our fathers did, organize committees of that we can hope for any effective movement), we shall fire the southern heart, instruct the southern mind, give courage to each other, and at the proper moment, by one come in the nature of things. No additional party can safety' all over the cotton States (and it is only in them organized, concerted action, we can precipitate the cotton States into a revolution. The idea has been shadowed forth in the South by Mr. Ruffin; has been taken up and recommended in the Advertiser, under the name of League of United Southerners, who keeping up their old party relations on all other questions, will hold the southern issue paramount, and will influence parties, legislatures and statesmen."-Yancey died, July 28th, 1863 1860. became governor, and zealously urged Union had refused to fulfil their constiforward extreme measures; on the 17th, tutional obligations; that the North the convention assembled at Columbia, hated and reviled slavery; that a man but as the small pox was prevail- had been elected president whose whole ing there, it met at Charleston soul was hostile to slavery; that nethe next day; on the 20th, the ordinance groes, in some states, had been allowed of secession was reported and adopted in even to become citizens; and such like. the following words:-" We, the people Governor Pickens, the same day, issued of the State of South Carolina, in Con- a proclamation, asserting, among other vention assembled, do declare and or- things, "that the State of South Carodain, and it is hereby declared and or- lina had resumed her position among dained, that the ordinance adopted by us the nations of the world as a free, soverin Convention on the 23d day of May, in eign, and independent state;" and the the year of our Lord 1788, whereby the legislature, after the various acts called Constitution of the United States of for by the anomalous condition of af America was ratified, and also all acts fairs, and the need of getting ready to or parts of acts of the General Assembly resist any movements on the part of the of this State ratifying the amendments government to enforce the laws, adto said Constitution, are hereby repeal- journed on the 5th of January, 1861.* ed, and that the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States under the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved." The convention also put forth an "Address to the People of the Slaveholding States," and a " Declaration of the Causes which justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union."* After a good deal of debate both these papers were adopted, December 24th. The address was an attempt to justify the course which had been taken, on the ground mainly of northern aggression, and urged especially upon the neighboring states to unite with South Carolina and form "a great slave-holding confederacy." The declaration re-affirmed the state rights theory in its most stringent form; and asserted that fifteen of the states in the While South Carolina was thus taking the lead in rebellion, aided and encouraged by other violent pro-slavery portions of the South, the national legislature was just entering upon its momentous work. On Monday, December 3d, the Thirty-sixth Congress met for its second session. The next day Mr. Buchanan sent in his message, in which he entered into an elaborate discussion of the state of the country, and made various recom mendations requiring special attention. He evidently felt himself to be in a very difficult and uncomfortable position. All his political life had been marked by partiality for the southern views of 1860 * The headlong precipitancy and folly of South Carolina were gladly and skilfully used by secession leaders in other states. Ordinances, similar to that above quoted, were passed by Mississippi, January 9th, 1861; by Alabama and Florida, January 11th; by * For some extracts from these papers, see Appendix Georgia, January 18th by Louisiana, January 26th II. at the end of the present chapter and by Texas, February 1st CH. XL.] MR. BUCHANAN'S MESSAGE. the great questions at issue, and by a spirit of unmanly subserviency, and so he condemned the North, without scruple, as the authors of the trouble now existing;* at the same time he could hardly venture to stultify himself by justifying the course of the hotheaded politicians who were inaugurating armed insurrection, and so he took occasion to set forth very plainly the folly and impudence of the claim on the part of any state to secede and break up the Union, whenever it saw fit to make the attempt. 557 Having strangely enough-declar-powers, the Constitution of the United ed that Mr. Lincoln's election to the States is as much a part of the Constipresidency "does not, of itself, afford tution of each state, and is as binding just cause for dissolving the Union ;" upon its people, as though it had been Mr. Buchanan went on to say: "in textually inserted therein. This gov. order to justify secession as a constitu- ernment, therefore, is a great and tional remedy, it must be on the prin- powerful government, invested with all ciple, that the federal government is a the attributes of sovereignty over the mere voluntary association of states, to special subjects to which its authority be dissolved at pleasure by any one of extends. Its framers never intended to the contracting parties. If this be so, implant in its bosom the seeds of its the confederacy is a rope of sand, to be own destruction, nor were they at its penetrated and dissolved by the first creation guilty of the absurdity of proadverse wave of public opinion in any viding for its own dissolution. It was of the states. In this manner our not intended by its framers to be the thirty-three states may resolve them- baseless fabric of a vision, which, at the into thin air, but a substantial and touch of the enchanter, would vanish mighty fabric, capable of resisting the slow decay of time, and of defying the storms of ages." The right to resist oppression could not of course be denied. "It exists independently of all constitutions, and has been exercised at all periods of the world's history. Under it old governments have been destroyed, and new ones have taken their place. It is embodied in strong and * Mr. Giddings, in his “ History of the Rebellion," p. 449, denounces in no measured terms, "the mendacious effrontery" of Mr. Buchanan in asserting "the long continued and intemperate interference of the northern people with the question of slavery in the southern states." On the other hand, Mr. George Lunt, of Massachusetts, a gentleman of years and experience in public affairs, published a volume of some 500 pp. to set forth "The Origin of the Late War, traced from the beginning of the Constitution to the Revolt of the southern states." (New York, 1866.) Mr. Lunt's views are of the old-fashioned, pro-slavery sort, so that, of course, he charges upon the North aggression upon the rights of the South, and justifies the secession leaders in seeking redress by seceding and thus compelling the North to yield to their demands. |