NORTHERN VIEW OF SECESSION
[Charles L. C. Minor’s Real Lincoln.]
W. H. Russell, the famous correspondent of the London Times, in his diary (page 13) quotes Bancroft, the historian, afterwards Minister to England, for the opinion, in 1860, that the United States had no authority to coerce the people of the South; and Russell reports the 267 same opinion prevailing in March, 1861, in New York and in Washington.
The life of Charles Francis Adams, Lincoln’s Minister to England, says that up to the very day of the firing on the flag the attitude of the Northern States, even in case of hostilities, was open to grave question, while that of the border States did not admit of a doubt; that Mr. Seward, the member of the President’s Cabinet, repudiated not only the right but the wish even to use armed force in subjugating the Southern States.
Morse’s Lincoln (Volume I, page 131) makes the following remarkable statement: “Greeley and Seward and Wendell Phillips, representative men, were little better than secessionists. The statement sounds ridiculous, yet the proof against each one comes from his own mouth. The Tribune had retracted none of these disunion sentiments of which examples have been given.”
Even so late as April 10, 1861, Seward wrote officially to Charles Francis Adams, Minister to England:
“Only an imperial and despotic government could subjugate thoroughly disaffected and insurrectionary members of the State.”
On April 9th, the rumor of a fight at Sumter being spread abroad, Wendell Phillips said:
“Here are a series of States girding the gulf who think that their peculiar institutions require that they should have a separate government; they have a right to decide the question without appealing to you and to me. * * * Standing with the principles of ’76 behind us, who can deny them that right?”
Woodrow Wilson’s Division and Reunion says (page 214) that President Buchanan agreed with the Attorney General (Hon. Jere Black, of Pennsylvania) that there was no constitutional means for coercing a State (as his last message shows beyond a doubt) and adds that such for the time seemed to be the general opinion of the country.