ᏢᎪᎡᎢ XI

NATIONALISM VICTORIOUS, 1860-1876

CHAPTER LVII

THE CALL TO ARMS

655. NOVEMBER 10, four days after Lincoln's election, the legislature of South Carolina appropriated money for arms, and called a State convention to act on the question of secession. All over the State, Palmetto banners unfurled and "liberty poles" rose. December 17, the convention met. Three days later, it unanimously "repealed " the ratification of the Federal Constitution by the State convention of 1788, and declared that "the State of South Carolina has resumed her place among the nations of the world." By February 1, like action had been taken in Georgia and the five Gulf States the entire southern tier of States.1

1 Northern writers have sometimes charged that the Southern leaders carried secession as a "conspiracy," and that they were afraid to refer the matter to a direct vote. This is absolutely wrong. Public opinion forced Jefferson Davis onward faster than he liked; and the mass of small farmers were more :rdent than the aristocracy - whose large property interests tended, perhaps, keep them conservative. For more than a year, in the less aristocratic unties, popular conventions, local meetings, and newspapers had been reatening secession if a President unfriendly to the Dred Scott decision sould be elected; and when even the "Fire-eater" Toombs paused at the last ment, to contemplate compromise, his constituents talked indignantly of presenting him with a tin sword. The South was vastly more united in 1861 than the colonies were in 1776. The leaders acted through conventions, not because they feared a popular vote, but because their political methods had remained unchanged for seventy years.

February 4, a convention of delegates from the seven seceding States met to form a new union "the Confederate States of America." The constitution was modeled upon that of the old Union, with some new emphasis on State sovereignty. Jefferson Davis was soon chosen President of the Confederacy, and Alexander H. Stephens Vice President.

656. Few Southerners questioned the right of a "sovereign State "to secede. The sole difference of opinion was whether sufficient provocation existed to make such action wise. When a State convention had voted for secession, even the previous "Union men" went with their State, conscientiously and enthusiastically. Thus, Alexander H. Stephens made a desperate struggle in Georgia for the Union, both in the State campaign and in the convention; but when the convention decided against him 208 to 69,1 he cast himself devotedly into secession. He would have thought any other course treason. Allegiance, the South felt, was due primarily to one's State.

To understand the splendid devotion of the South to a hopeless cause during the bloody years that followed, we must understand this viewpoint. The South fought “to keep the past upon its throne"; but it believed, with every drop of its blood, that it was fighting for the sacred right of self-government, against “conquest” by tyrannical “invaders."

657. The Confederacy did not believe the North would use force against secession. Still it made vigorous preparation for possible war. As each State seceded, its citizens in Congress and in the service of the United States resigned their offices. The small army and navy of the Union was in this way completely demoralized, losing nearly half its officers. Each seceding State, too, seized promptly upon the Federal forts and arsenals within its limits, sending commissioners to Washington to arrange for money compensation. In the seven seceded States, the Federal government retained only Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor and three forts on the Gulf.

1 The real test vote had come a little earlier-165 to 130. This was the strongest Union vote in the Lower South. In Mississippi, the test stood 84 to 15; in Florida, 62 to 7; in Alabama, 61 to 39; in Louisiana, 113 to 17. In Texas the question was referred to the people, and in spite of a vigorous Union campaign by Governor Sam Houston, they voted three to one for secession.

§ 660]

SECESSION AND CONFEDERACY

553

Federal courts ceased to be held in the seceded States, because of the resignation of judges and other officials and the absolute impossibility of securing jurors. Federal tariffs were no longer collected. Only the post office remained as a symbol of the

old Union.

658. President Buchanan, in his message to Congress in December, declared that the Constitution gave no State the right to secede, but a curious paradox-that it gave the government no right "to coerce a sovereign State" if it did secede. For the remaining critical three months of his term he let secession gather head as it liked. With homely wit, Seward wrote to his wife that the Message shows "conclusively that it is the President's duty to execute the laws unless some one opposes him; and that no State has a right to go out of the Union less it wants to."

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659. This flabby policy, moreover, was much like the attitude of the masses of the North during those same months. Even from Republican leaders resounded the cry, "Let the erring sisters go in peace."

In October, General Scott, Commander of the army, suggested to the President a division of the country into four confederacies, for which he outlined boundaries. Northern papers declared "coercion " both wrong and impossible. Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, for years the greatest antislavery organ and the chief molder of Republican opinion, expressed these views repeatedly : "We hope never to live in a republic, whereof one section is pinned to another by bayonets" (November 9); "Five millions of people . . can never be subdued while fighting around their own hearthstones" (November 30); "The South has as good a right to secede from the Union as the colonies had to secede from Great Britain" (December 17);"If the Cotton States wish to form an independent nation, they have a clear moral right to do so" (February 23, 1861). Even Lowell thought the South "not worth conquering back." And Wendell Phillips asserted (April 9), "Abraham Lincoln has no right to a soldier in Fort Sumter."

660. The Border States urged one more try at compromise. Virginia called a Peace Convention which was well attended and which sat at Washington through February. This body, and

many Republican leaders, proposed various amendments to the Constitution to fortify slavery and so conciliate the South: especially (1) to provide Federal compensation for escaped slaves, and (2) to divide the National domain, present and future, between slavery and freedom, along the line of the old Missouri Compromise.

But the only outcome of the compromise agitation was the hasty submission to the country of an amendment prohibiting Congress from ever interfering with slavery in the States. As Lincoln said, this merely made express what was already clearly implied in the Constitution, and it was wholly inadequate to satisfy the South. It passed Congress with a solid Republican vote, however, and was ratified by three Northern States before war stopped the process.

661. Lincoln's inaugural, on March 4, was a winning answer to Southern claims and a firm declaration of policy.

[As to the reason for secession]: "Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that . . . their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. I have no purpose, directly

or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists."

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[After demolishing the constitutional "right" of secession]: "I therefore consider that, in view of the Constitution and the laws, the Union is unbroken; and to the extent of my ability, I shall take care laws of the Union shall be faithfully executed in all the States. doing this there need be no bloodshed. . . unless it is forced upon the National authority. . . The power confided to me will be used to hold ... the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects there will be no invasion, no using of force against the people anywhere."

[Then, recognizing the right of revolution, the deplorable loss from any division of the Union is set forth]: "Physically speaking, we cannot separate we cannot remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them. . . . Intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory after separation than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws?

"In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine,

§ 663]

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

555

is the momentous issue of civil war. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect, and defend' it."

662. Statesmen showered the new President with advice. Lincoln heard all patiently; but his real efforts were given to keeping in touch, not with "leaders," but with the plain people whom he so well understood. His own eyes were set unwavering upon his goal-the preservation of the Union-while with unrivaled skill, he kept his finger on the Nation's pulse, to know how fast he might move toward that end. For a time he was railed at by noisy extremists, who would have had him faster or slower; but the silent masses responded to his sympathy and answered his appeal with love and perfect trust, and enabled him to carry through successfully the greatest task so far set for any American statesman:1

Despite the seeming cowardice or apathy of Northern statesmen, the masses needed only a blow and a leader to rally them for the Union. South Carolina fired on the flag, and Abraham Lincoln called the North to arms.

663. From November to April, Major Anderson and sixty soldiers had held Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor. In vain he had pleaded to Buchanan for reinforcements. In January, Buchanan made a feeble show of sending some; 2 but the unarmed vessel, weakly chosen for the purpose, was easily turned

1 The country now paid heavily, through the wear upon its burdened chieftain, for its low tone toward the spoils system. Washington was thronged, beyond all precedent, with office seekers, who were "Republicans for revenue"; and the first precious weeks of the new administration had to go largely to settling petty personal disputes over plunder. Lincoln compared himself to a man busied in assigning rooms in a palace to importunate applicants, while the structure itself was burning over his head; and in 1862, when an old Illinois friend remarked on his careworn face, he exclaimed with petulant humor, "It isn't this war that's killing me, Judge: it's your confounded Pepperton postoffice!"

2 Buchanan was shamed or forced to this step by his Cabinet, who threatened otherwise to resign. That body was now made up of Northern Democrats; and they meant at least to defend the National property.