Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 / From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860

by James Gillespie Blaine

CHAPTER X.

Presidential Election of 1860.—The Electoral and Popular Vote.— Wide Divergence between the Two.—Mr. Lincoln has a Large Majority of Electors.—In a Minority of 1,000,000 on Popular Vote.—Beginning of Secession.—Rash Course of South Carolina.—Reluctance on the Part of Many Southern States.—Unfortunate Meeting of South-Carolina Legislature.—Hasty Action of South-Carolina Convention.—The Word "Ordinance."—Meeting of Southern Senators in Washington to promote Secession.—Unwillingness in the South to submit the Question to Popular Vote.—Georgia not eager to Secede.—Action of Other States. —Meeting of Congress in December, 1860.—Position of Mr. Buchanan. —His Attachment to the Union as a Pennsylvanian.—Sinister Influences in his Cabinet.—His Evil Message to Congress.—Analysis of the Message.—Its Position destructive to the Union.—The President's Position Illogical and Untenable.—Full of Contradictions.—Extremists of the South approve the Message.—Demoralizing Effect of the Message in the North and in the South.—General Cass resigns from State Department.—Judge Black succeeds him.—Character of Judge Black.—Secretaries Cobb, Floyd, and Thompson.—Their Censurable Conduct in the Cabinet.—Their Resignation.—Re-organization of Cabinet.—Dix, Holt, Stanton.—Close of Mr. Buchanan's Administration. —Change in the President's Course.—The New Influences.—Analysis of the President's Course.—There were two Mr. Buchanans.—Personal and Public Character of Mr. Buchanan.

The winter following the election of Mr. Lincoln was filled with deplorable events. In the whole history of the American people, there is no epoch which recalls so much that is worthy of regret and so little that gratifies pride. The result of the election was unfortunate in the wide divergence between the vote which Mr. Lincoln received in the electoral colleges and the vote which he received at the polls. In the electoral colleges he had an aggregate of 180. His opponents, united, had but 123. Of the popular vote, Lincoln received 1,866,452; Douglas, 1,291,547; Breckinridge, 850,082; Bell, 646,124. Mr. Lincoln's vote was wholly from the free States, except some 26,000 cast for him in the five border slave States. In the other slave States his name was not presented as a candidate. Mr. Douglas received in the South about 163,000 votes. In the North the votes cast distinctively for the Breckinridge electoral ticket were less than 100,000, and distinctively for the Bell electoral ticket about 80,000.

It was thus manifest that the two Northern Presidential candidates, Lincoln and Douglas, had absorbed almost the entire vote in the free States, and the two Southern Presidential candidates, Breckinridge and Bell, had absorbed almost the entire vote in the slave States. The Northern candidate received popular support in the South in about the same degree that the Southern candidate received popular support in the North. In truth as well as in appearance it was a sectional contest in which the North supported Northern candidates, and the South supported Southern candidates. It was the first time in the history of the government in which the President was chosen without electoral votes from both the free and the slave States. This result was undoubtedly a source of weakness to Mr. Lincoln,— weakness made more apparent by his signal failure to obtain a popular majority. He had a large plurality, but the combined vote of his opponents was nearly a million greater than the vote which he received.

The time had now come when the Southern Disunionists were to be put to the test. The event had happened which they had declared in advance to be cause of separation. It was perhaps the belief that their courage and determination were challenged, which forced them to action. Having so often pledged themselves not to endure the election of an anti-slavery President, they were now persuaded that, if they quietly submitted, they would thereby accept an inferior position in the government. This assumed obligation of consistency stimulated them to rash action; for upon every consideration of prudence and wise forecast, they would have quietly accepted a result which they acknowledged to be in strict accordance with the Constitution. The South was enjoying exceptional prosperity. The advance of the slave States in wealth was more rapid then at any other period of their history. Their staple products commanded high prices and were continually growing in amount to meet the demands of a market which represented the wants of the civilized world. In the decade between 1850 and 1860 the wealth of the South had increased three thousand millions of dollars, and this not from an overvalution of slaves, but from increased cultivation of land, the extension of railways, and all the aids and appliances of vast agricultural enterprises. Georgia alone had increased in wealth over three hundred millions of dollars, no small proportion of which was from commercial and manufacturing ventures that had proved extremely profitable. There was never a community of the face of the globe whose condition so little justified revolution as that of the slave States in the year 1860. Indeed, it was a sense of strength born of exceptional prosperity which led them to their rash adventure of war.

THE FIRST EFFORT AT SECESSION.

It would however be an injustice to the People of the South to say that in November, 1860, they desired, unanimously, or by a majority, or on the part of any considerable minority, to engage in a scheme of violent resistance to the National authority. The slave-holders were in the main peacefully disposed, and contented with the situation. But slavery as an economical institution and slavery as a political force were quite distinct. Those who viewed it and used it merely as a system of labor, naturally desired peace and dreaded commotion. Those who used it as a political engine for the consolidation of political power had views and ambitions inconsistent with the plans and hopes of law-abiding citizens. It was only by strenuous effort on the part of the latter class that an apparent majority of the Southern people committed themselves to the desperate design of destroying the National Government.

The first effort at secession was made, as might have been expected, by South Carolina. She did not wait for the actual result of the election, but early in October, on the assumption of Lincoln's success, began a correspondence with the other Cotton States. The general tenor of the responses did not indicate a decided wish or purpose to separate from the Union. North Carolina was positively unwilling to take any hasty step. Louisiana, evidently remembering the importance and value of the Mississippi River and of its numerous tributaries to her commercial prosperity, expressed an utter disinclination to separate from the North-West. Georgia was not ready to make resistance, and at most advocated some form of retaliatory legislation. It was evident that even in the Cotton- belt and the Gulf States there was in the minds of sober people the gravest objection to revolutionary measures.

It happened, most unfortunately, that the South-Carolina Legislature assembled early in November for the purpose of choosing Presidential electors, who in that State were never submitted to the popular vote. While it might seem extravagant to ascribe the revolution which convulsed the country to an event so disconnected and apparently so inadequate, it is nevertheless true that the sudden furor which seized a large number of the Southern people came directly from that event. Indeed, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the great civil war, which shook a continent, was precipitated by the fact that the South-Carolina Legislature assembled at the unpropitious moment. Without taking time for reflection, without a review of the situation, without stopping to count the cost, with a boldness born of passionate resentment against the North, the rash men of South Carolina fired the train. In a single hour they created in their own State a public sentiment which would not brook delay or contradiction or argument. The leaders of it knew that the sober second thought, even in South Carolina, would be dangerous to the scheme of a Southern confederacy. They knew that the feeling of resentment among the Southern people must be kept at white-heat, and that whoever wished to speak a word of caution or moderation must be held as a public enemy, and subjected to the scorn and the vengeance of the people.

In this temper a convention was ordered by the Legislature. The delegates were to be chosen directly by the people, and when assembled were to determine the future relation of South Carolina to the Government of the United States. The election was to be held in four weeks, and the convention was to assemble on the 17th of December. The unnatural and unprecedented haste of this action, by which South Carolina proceeded, as she proclaimed, to throw off her national relations, is more easily comprehended by recalling the difficult mode provided in every State for a change in its constitution. In not a single State of the American Union can the organic law be changed in less than a year, or without ample opportunity for serious consideration by the people. At that very moment the people of South Carolina were inhibited from making the slightest alteration in their own constitution except by slow and conservative processes which gave time for deliberation and reflection. In determining a question momentous beyond all calculation to themselves and to their posterity, they were hurried into the election of delegates, and the delegates were hurried into convention, and the convention was hurried into secession by a terror of public opinion that would not endure resistance and would not listen to reason.

The few who were left in possession of coolness and sound judgment among the public men of South Carolina, desired to stay the rush of events by waiting for co-operation with the other slave-holding States. Their request was denied and their argument answered by the declaration that co-operation had been tried in 1850, and had ended in defeating all measures looking to Disunion. One of the members declared that if South Carolina again waited for co-operation, slavery and State-rights would be abandoned, State-sovereignty and the cause of the South would be lost forever. The action of the convention was still further stimulated by the resignation of Mr. Hammond and Mr. Chestnut, United-States senators from South Carolina, and by the action of Governor Pickens in appointing a cabinet of the same number and of the same division of departments that had been adopted in the National Government.

THE ACTION OF SOUTH CAROLINA.

South Carolina was urged forward in this course by leading Disunionists in other States who needed the force of one bold example of secession to furnish the requisite stimulus to their own communities. The members of the South Carolina convention, recognizing the embarrassment and incongruity of basing their action simply upon the constitutional election of a President, declared that the public opinion of their State "had for a long period been strengthening and ripening for Disunion." Mr. Rhett, eminent in the public service of his State, asserted "that the secession of South Carolina was not produced by Mr. Lincoln's election, or by the non-execution of the Fugitive- slave Law; that it was a matter which had been gathering head for thirty years," and that they were now "determined upon their course at whatever risk."

Among the singular incidents of the South-Carolina secession, followed subsequently by other States, was the solemn import attached to the word ordinance. The South gave it a significance which elevated its authority above the Constitution, and above the laws of their own State and of the United States. And yet, neither in legal definition nor in any ordinary use of the word, was there precedent or authority for attaching to it such impressive meaning. An ordinance of Parliament was but a temporary Act which the Commons might alter at their pleasure. An Act of Parliament could not be changed except by the consent of king, lords, and commons. In this country, aside from the use of the word in declaring the freedom of the North-west Territory in 1787, ordinance has uniformly been applied to Acts of inferior bodies, to the councils of cities, to the authorities of towns, to the directors of corporations,—rarely if ever to the Acts of legislative assemblies which represent the power of the State.

It is still more singular that, in passing the ordinance of Secession, the convention worded it so that it should seem to be the repeal of the ordinance of the 23d of May, 1788, whereby the Constitution of the United States was ratified by South Carolina, when, in simple truth, the Act of that State ratifying the Federal Constitution was never called an ordinance. Mirabeau said that words were things; and this word was so used in the proceedings of Secession conventions as to impress the mind of the Southern people with its portentous weight and solemnity. With an amendment to the constitutions of their States they had all been familiar. In the enactment of their laws thousands had participated. But no one of them had ever before seen or heard or dreamed of any thing of such momentous and decisive character as an Ordinance. Even to this day, when disunion, secession, rebellion have all been destroyed by the shock of arms, and new institutions have been built over their common grave, the word "ordinance" has, in the minds of many people both in the North and in the South, a sound which represents the very majesty of popular power.

If the other Southern States would have been left to their own counsels, South Carolina would have stood alone, and her Secession of 1860 would have proved as abortive as her Nullification of 1832. The Disunion movement in the remaining States of the South originated in Washington. Finding that the Cotton States, especially those bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, were moving too slowly, the senators from Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, and Florida held a meeting in Washington on the 5th of January, 1861. The South had always contended for the right of States to instruct their senators, but now the Southern senators proceeded to instruct their States. In effect they sent out commands to the governing authorities and to the active political leaders, that South Carolina must be sustained; that the Cotton States must stand by her; and that the secession of each and all of them must be accomplished in season for a general convention to be held at Montgomery, not later than Feb. 15, and, in any event, before the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln. The design was that the new President of the United States should find a Southern Confederacy in actual existence, with the ordinary departments of government in regular operation, with a name and a flag and a great seal, and all the insignia of national sovereignty visible.

It is a suggestive fact that, in carrying out these designs, the political leaders determined, as far as possible, to prevent the submission of the ordinances of Secession to the popular vote. It is not indeed probable that, in the excited condition to which they had by this time brought the Southern mind, Secession would have been defeated; but the withholding of the question from popular decision is at least an indication that there was strong apprehension of such a result, and that care was taken to prevent the divisions and acrimonious contests which such submission might have caused. In the Georgia convention the resolution declaring it to be her right and her duty to secede was adopted only by a vote of 165 to 130. A division of similar proportion in the popular vote would have stripped the secession of Georgia of all moral force, and hence the people were not allowed to pass upon the question.

ACTION OF OTHER COTTON STATES.

Georgia was really induced to secede, only upon the delusive suggestion that better terms could be made with the National Government by going out for a season than by remaining steadfastly loyal. The influence of Alexander H. Stephens, while he was still loyal, was almost strong enough to hold the State in the Union; and but for the phantasm of securing better terms outside, the Empire State of the South would have checked and destroyed the Secession movement at the very outset. Mississippi followed Jefferson Davis with a vote amounting almost to unanimity. Florida, Louisiana, and Alabama followed with secession ordained by conventions and no vote allowed to the people. Texas submitted the ordinance, after the other States had seceded, and by the force of their example carried it by a vote of about three to one. These were the original seven States that formed the nucleus of the Confederacy. They had gone through what they deemed the complete process of separation from the Union, without the slightest obstruction from any quarter and without the interposition of any authority from the National Government against their proceedings.

Long before the Secession movement had been developed to the extent just detailed, Congress was in session. It assembled one month after the Presidential election, and fifteen days before the Disunionists of South Carolina met in their ill-starred convention. Up to that time there had been excitement, threats of resistance to the authority of the government in many sections of the South, and an earnest attempt in the Cotton States to promote co-operation in the fatal step which so many were bent on taking. But there had been no overt act against the national authority. Federal officers were still exercising their functions in all the States; the customs were still collected in Southern ports; the United- States mails were still carried without molestation from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. But the critical moment had come. The Disunion conspiracy had reached a point where it must go forward with boldness, or retreat before the displayed power and the uplifted flag of the Nation. The administration could adopt no policy so dangerous as to permit the enemies of the Union to proceed in their conspiracy, and the hostile movement to gain perilous headway. At that juncture Mr. Buchanan confronted a graver responsibility than had ever before been imposed on a President of the United States. It devolved on him to arrest the mad outbreak of the South by judicious firmness, or by irresolution and timidity to plunge the Nation into dangers and horrors, the extent of which was mercifully veiled from the vision of those who were to witness and share them.

PENNSYLVANIA AND THE UNION.

There could be no doubt in the mind of any one that the destruction of the Union would be deplored by Mr. Buchanan as profoundly as by any living man. His birth and rearing as a Pennsylvanian leave no other presumption possible. In the original Union, Pennsylvania was appropriated denominated the Keystone of the arch, supported by, and in turn supporting, the strength of all. Of the "old thirteen" there were six free States north of her, and six slave States south of her. She was allied as warmly by ties of friendship and of blood with her Maryland and Virginia neighbors on the one side as with those of New Jersey and New York on the other. Her political and social connection on both sides were not more intimate than those of a business and commercial character. As the Union grew in power and increased in membership, Pennsylvania lost nothing of her prestige. She held to the new States as intimate relations as she held to the old. The configuration of the country and the natural channels of communication have bound her closely to all sections. Her northern border touching the great lakes, connected her by sail and steam, before the era of the railway, with the magnificent domain which lies upon the shores of those inland seas. Her western rivers, whose junction marks the site of a great city, form part of the most extensive system of interior water-communications on the globe, affording a commercial highway twenty thousand miles in length through seventeen States not included in the original Union. Patriotic tradition increased Pennsylvania's attachment to the National Government. It was on her soil that the Declaration of Independence was proclaimed. It was in her Legislative halls that the Constitution was formed and the "more perfect Union" of the States ordained. From geographical position therefore, from material interest, from inherited pride, from every association and sympathy, from every aspiration, and from every hope, Pennsylvania was for the Union, inviolable and indissoluble. No threat of its destruction ever came from her councils, and no stress of circumstances could ever seduce her into a calculation of its value, or drive her to the contemplation of its end.

With all his attachment to the Union, Mr. Buchanan had been brought under influences which were hostile to it. In originally constituting his Cabinet, sinister agencies had controlled him, and far-seeing men anticipated trouble when the names were announced. From the South he had selected Howell Cobb of Georgia for the Treasury, John B. Floyd of Virginia for Secretary of War, Jacob Thompson of Missouri for the Interior, and Aaron V. Brown of Tennessee for Postmaster- General. From the North he had selected Lewis Cass of Michigan for the State Department, Isaac Toucey of Connecticut for the Navy, and Jeremiah S. Black of Pennsylvania for Attorney-General. It seemed extraordinary that out of seven Cabinet officers four should be given to the South, when the North had a vast preponderance of population and wealth. It was hardly less than audacious that the four departments assigned to the South should be those which dealt most intimately and most extensively with the finances, the manufactures, and the commerce of the country. The quiet manner in which the North accepted this inequitable distribution of political power added only another proof of the complete ascendency which the South had acquired in the councils of the Democratic party.

Mr. Buchanan had always looked to the statesmen of the South as a superior class; and after a political life wholly spent in close association and constant service with them, it could not be expected that, even in a crisis threatening destruction to the Union, he would break away from them in a day. They had fast hold of him, and against the influence of the better men in his Cabinet they used him for a time to carry out their own ends. Secessionists and Abolitionists Mr. Buchanan no doubt regarded as equally the enemies of the Union. But the Secessionists all came from the party that elected him President, and the Abolitionists had all voted against him. The Abolitionists, in which phrase Mr. Buchanan included all men of anti-slavery conviction, had no opportunity, even if they had desired, to confer with the President, while the Secessionists from old and friendly association, were in daily and intimate relations with him. They undoubtedly persuaded the President by the most plausible arguments that they were not in fault; that the whole responsibility lay at the door of the Northern anti-slavery men; and that, if these disturbers of the peace could be suppressed, all would be well. It was under these influences, artfully insinuated and persistently plied, that Mr. Buchanan was induced to write his mischievous and deplorable message of the first Monday of December, 1860,—a message whose evil effect can never be estimated, and whose evil character can hardly be exaggerated.

The President informed Congress that "the long-continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of slavery in the Southern States has at last produced its natural effect. . . . The time has arrived so much dreaded by the Father of his Country, when hostile geographical parties have been formed." He declared that he had "long foreseen and often forewarned" his countrymen of "the impending danger." Apparently arguing the case for the Southern extremists, the President believed that the danger "does not proceed solely from the attempt to exclude slavery from the Territories, nor from the efforts to defeat the execution of the Fugitive-slave Law." Any or all of these evils, he said, "might have been endured by the South," trusting to time and reflection for a remedy. "The immediate peril," Mr. Buchanan informed the country, "arises from the fact that the long-continued agitation in the free States has at length produced its malign influence on the slaves, and inspired them with vague notions of freedom. Hence a sense of security no longer exists around the family altar. The feeling of peace at home has given place to apprehensions of servile insurrections, and many a matron throughout the South retires at night in dread of what may befall herself and her children before morning." The President was fully persuaded that "if this apprehension of domestic danger should extend and intensify itself, disunion will become inevitable."

PRESIDENT BUCHANAN AND THE SOUTH.

Having thus stated what he believed to be the grievances of the South, Mr. Buchanan proceeded to give certain reasons why the slave- holders should not break up the government. His defensive plea for the North was worse, if worse were possible, than his aggressive statements on behalf of the South. "The election of any one of our fellow-citizens to the office of President," Mr. Buchanan complacently asserted, "does not of itself afford just cause for dissolving the Union." And then he adds an extraordinary qualification: "This is more especially true if his election has been effected by a mere plurality, and not a majority, of the people, and has resulted from transient and temporary causes, which may probably never again occur." Translated into plainer language, this was an assurance to the Southern Disunionists that they need not break up the government at that time, because Mr. Lincoln was a minority President, and was certain to be beaten at the next election. He reminded the Southern leaders moreover that in the whole history of the Federal Government "no single Act had ever passed Congress, unless the Missouri Compromise be an exception, impairing in the slightest degree the rights of the South to their property in slaves." The Missouri Compromise had been repealed, so that the entire body of national statutes, from the origin of the government to that hour was, according to President Buchanan, guiltless of transgression against the rights of slave-holders. Coming from such a source, the admission was one of great historic value.

The President found that the chief grievance of the South was in the enactments of the free States known as "personal liberty laws." When the Fugitive-slave Law subjected the liberty of citizens to the decision of a single commissioner, and denied jury trial to a man upon the question of sending him to lifelong and cruel servitude, the issue throughout the free States was made one of self-preservation. Without having the legal right to obstruct the return of a fugitive slave to his servitude, they felt not only that they had the right, but that it was their duty, to protect free citizens in their freedom. Very likely these enactments, inspired by an earnest spirit of liberty, went in many cases too far, and tended to produce conflicts between National and State authority. That was a question to be determined finally and exclusively by the Federal Judiciary. Unfortunately Mr. Buchanan carried his argument beyond that point, coupling it with a declaration and an admission fatal to the perpetuity of the Union. After reciting the statutes which he regarded as objectionable and hostile to the constitutional rights of the South, and after urging their unconditional repeal upon the North, the President said: "The Southern States, standing on the basis of the Constitution, have a right to demand this act of justice from the States of the North. Should it be refused, then the Constitution, to which all the States are parties, will have been willfully violated by one portion of them in a provision essential to the domestic security and happiness of the remainder. In that event, the injured States, after having used all peaceful and constitutional means to obtain redress, would be justified in revolutionary resistance to the government of the Union."

By this declaration the President justified, and in effect advised, an appeal from the constitutional tribunals of the country to a popular judgment in the aggrieved States, and recognized the right of those States, upon such popular judgment, to destroy the Constitution and Union. The "constitutional means" of redress were the courts of the country, and to these the President must have referred in the paragraph quoted. After an appeal to the courts, and a decision upon the questions presented, it would have been the plain duty of the parties to accept the decision as authoritative and final. By the advice of the President, the States of the South were to accept the decision obtained by constitutional means, in case it was favorable to them, and to disregard it, and to destroy both the Constitution and the Union, if it should prove to be adverse to the popular opinion in those States.

It is not improbable that the President's language conveyed more than his real meaning. He may have intended to affirm that if the free States should refuse to repeal their obnoxious statutes after a final decision against their constitutionality, then the slave States would be justified in revolutionary resistance. But he had no right to make such an argument or suggest such an hypothesis, for never in the history of the Federal Government had the decision of the Supreme judicial tribunal been disobeyed or disregarded by any State or by any individual. The right of "revolutionary resistance" was not so foreign to the conception of the American citizen as to require suggestion and enforcement from Mr. Buchanan. His argument in support of the right at that crisis was prejudicial to the Union, and afforded a standing-ground for many Southern men who were beginning to feel that the doctrine of Secession was illogical, unsafe, untenable. They now had the argument of a Northern President in justification of "revolutionary resistance." Throughout the South, the right of Secession was abandoned by a large class, and the right of Revolution substituted.

FATAL ADMISSION OF THE PRESIDENT.

Having made his argument in favor of the right of "Revolution," Mr. Buchanan proceeded to argue ably and earnestly against the assumption by any State of an inherent right to secede from the government at its own will and pleasure. But he utterly destroyed the force of his reasoning by declaring that "after much serious reflection" he had arrived at "the conclusion that no power has been delegated to Congress, or to any other department of the Federal Government, to coerce a State into submission which is attempting to withdraw, or has actually withdrawn," from the Union. He emphasized his position by further declaring that, "so far from this power having been delegated to Congress, it was expressly refused by the convention which framed the Constitution." Congress "possesses many means," Mr. Buchanan added, "of preserving the Union by conciliation; but the sword was not placed in their hands to preserve it by force."

The fatal admission was thus evolved from the mind of the President, that any State which thought itself aggrieved and could not secure the concessions demanded, might bring the Government down in ruins. The power to destroy was in the State. The power to preserve was not in the Nation. The President apparently failed to see that if the Nation could not be preserved by force, its legal capacity for existence was dependent upon the concurring and continuing will of all the individual States. The original bond of union was, therefore, for the day only, and the provision of the Constitution which gave to the Supreme Court jurisdiction in controversies between States was binding no further than the States chose to accept the decisions of the Court.

The difference between the President and the Secessionists of the South was a difference of opinion as to the time for action, and as to the name by which that action should be called. In principle there was concurrence. The President insisted that the injured party should appeal to the aggressor, and then to the courts, with the reserved right of revolution always in view and to be exercised if neither the aggressor nor the courts furnished satisfactory redress. The President recognized the reserved right of revolution in the States, and it was a necessary incident of that right that each State might decide when the right should be exercised. He suggested that, as justification of revolution, the Federal Government must be guilty of "a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise" of powers not granted by the Constitution, quoting from the text of the State-rights declaration by Virginia in 1798. But in all his arguments he left the State to be the ultimate judge of the constitutionality of the Acts of the Federal Government. Under these doctrines the Government of the United States was shorn of all power to preserve its own existence, and the Union might crumble and fall while its constituted authorities stood paralyzed and impotent.

This construction was all that the extremists of the South desired. With so much conceded, they had every thing in their own hands. They could march out of the Union at their own will and caprice, without resistance from the National Government, and they could come back upon such conditions as, with the President's aid, they might extort from an alarmed and weakening North. Assured by the language of the President that they could with impunity defy the constitutional authority of the government, the Secessionists were immeasurably encouraged. The Southern men had for three generations been cherishing the belief that they were as a class superior to Northern men, and they were more than ever confirmed in this pleasing illusion when they saw a Northern President, with the power of the nation in his hands, deliberately affirming that he could exercise no authority over or against them.

Men who, under the wholesome restraint of executive power, would have refrained from taking aggressive steps against the National Government, were by Mr. Buchanan's action forced into a position of hostility. Men in the South, who were disposed to avoid extreme measures, were by taunt and reproach driven into the ranks of Secession. They were made to believe, after the President's message, that the South would be ruined if she did not assert a position which the National authority confessed it had no right and no means to contest. The Republicans had been taunting Southern men with the intention of using only bluster and bravado, and if they should now fail to take a decisive step in the direction of Disunion, they felt that it would be a humiliating retraction of all they had said in the long struggle over slavery. It would be an invitation to the Abolitionists and fanatics of the North, to deal hereafter with the South, and with the question of slavery, in whatever manner might seem good in their sight. No weapon of logic could have been more forcible; and, wielded as it was by Southern leaders with skill and courage, they were able to consolidate the public opinion and control the political action of their section.

The evil effects of Mr. Buchanan's message were not confined to the slave States. It did incalculable harm in the free States. It fixed in the minds of tens of thousands of Northern men who were opposed to the Republican party, the belief that the South was justified in taking steps to break up the government, if what they termed a war on Southern institutions should be continued. This feeling had in turn a most injurious influence in the South, and stimulated thousands in that section to a point of rashness which they would never have reached but for the sympathy and support constantly extended to them from the North. Even if a conflict of arms should be the ultimate result of the Secession movement, its authors and its deluded followers were made to believe that, against a South entirely united, there would be opposed a North hopelessly divided. They were confident that the Democratic party in the free States held the views expressed in Mr. Buchanan's message. They had conclusively persuaded themselves that the Democrats, together with a large proportion of the conservative men in the North who had supported Mr. Bell for the Presidency, would oppose an "abolition war," and would prove a distracting and destructive force in the rear of the Union army if it should ever commence its march Southward.

THE SECRETARY OF STATE RESIGNS.

The most alarming feature of the situation to reflecting men in the North was that, so far as known, all the members of Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet approved the destructive doctrines of the message. But as the position of the President was subjected to examination and criticism by the Northern press, uneasiness was manifested in Administration circles. It was seen that if the course foreshadowed by Mr. Buchanan should be followed, the authority of the Union would be compelled to retreat before the usurpations of seceding States, and that a powerful government might be quietly overthrown, without striking one blow of resistance, or uttering one word of protest. General Cass was the first of the Cabinet to feel the pressure of loyalty from the North. The venerable Secretary of State, whose whole life had been one of patriotic devotion to his country, suddenly realized that he was in a false position. When it became known that the President would not insist upon the collection of the national revenue in South Carolina, or upon the strengthening of the United-States forts in the harbor of Charleston, General Cass concluded that justice to his own reputation required him to separate from the Administration. He resigned on the twelfth of December,—nine days after Mr. Buchanan had sent his fatal message to Congress.

CHARACTER AND CONDUCT OF JUDGE BLACK.

Judge Black, who had from the beginning of the Administration been Mr. Buchanan's chief adviser, now became so by rank as the successor of General Cass in the State Department. He was a man of remarkable character. He was endowed by nature with a strong understanding and a strong will. In the profession of the law he had attained great eminence. His learning had been illustrated by a prolonged service on the bench before the age at which men, even of exceptional success at the bar, usually attract public observation. He had added to his professional studies, which were laborious and conscientious, a wide acquaintance with our literature, and had found in its walks a delight which is yielded to few. In history, biography, criticism, romance, he had absorbed every thing in our language worthy of attention. Shakspeare, Milton, indeed all the English poets, were his familiar companions. There was not a disputed passage or an obscure reading in any one of the great plays upon which he could not off-hand quote the best renderings, and throw original light from his own illumined mind. Upon theology he had apparently bestowed years of investigation and reflection. A sincere Christian, he had been a devout and constant student of the Bible, and could quote its passages and apply its teachings with singular readiness and felicity. To this generous store of knowledge he added fluency of speech, both in public address and private communication, and a style of writing which was at once unique, powerful, and attractive. He had attained unto every excellence of mental discipline described by Lord Byron. Reading had made him a full man, talking a ready man, writing an exact man. The judicial literature of the English tongue may be sought in vain for finer models than are found in the opinions of Judge Black when he sat, and was worthy to sit, as the associate of John Bannister Gibson, on the Supreme Bench of Pennsylvania.

In political opinion he was a Democrat, self-inspired and self- taught, for his father was a Whig who had served his State in Congress. He idolized Jefferson and revered Jackson as embodying in their respective characters all the elements of the soundest political philosophy, and all the requisites of the highest political leadership. He believed in the principles of Democracy as he did in a demonstration of Euclid,—all that might be said on the other side was necessarily absurd. He applied to his own political creed the literal teachings of the Bible. If Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had held slaves without condemnation or rebuke from the Lord of hosts, he believed that Virginia, Carolina, and Georgia might do the same. He found in the case of Onesiums, St. Paul's explicit approval of the Fugutive-slave Law of 1850, and in the cruel case of Passmore Williamson he believed himself to be enforcing the doctrines of the New Testament. Personally unwilling to hold even a beast of burden in oppressive bondage, nothing could induce him to condemn slave-holding in those whose conscience permitted them to practice it. In the Abolitionists he found the chief disturbers of the Republic, and he held New England answerable to posterity and to God for all the heresies which afflicted either Church or State. He had an uncompromising hostility to what are termed New- England ideas, though the tenderest ties of his life were of New- England origin. "The New-Englander individually I greatly affect," he often said, "but, in the mass, I judge them to be stark mad." "I think, too," he would add, "that if you are going to make much of a New-Englander, he should, like Dr. Johnson's Scotchman, be caught young."

To his native State Judge Black was devotedly attached. He inherited the blood of two strong elements of its population,—the German and the Scotch-Irish,—and he united the best characteristics of both in his own person. He had always looked upon Pennsylvania as the guardian of the Federal Union, almost as the guarantor of its safety and its perpetuity. He spoke of her as the break-water that protected the slave States from the waves of radicalism which were threatening to ingulf Southern institutions. The success of the Republican party in 1860 he regarded as a portent of direst evil, —indeed, as a present disaster, immeasurably sorrowful. The excitement in the Southern States over the probability of Mr. Lincoln's election he considered natural, their serious protest altogether justifiable. He desired the free States to be awakened to the gravity of the situation, to be thoroughly alarmed, and to repent of their sins against the South. He wished it understood from ocean to ocean that the position of the Republican party was inconsistent with loyalty to the Union, and that its permanent success would lead to the destruction of the government. It was not unnatural that with these extreme views he should be carried beyond the bounds of prudence, and that, in his headlong desire to rebuke the Republican party as enemies of the Union, he should aid in precipitating a dissolution of the government before the Republicans could enter upon its administration. He thus became in large degree responsible for the unsound position and the dangerous teachings of Mr. Buchanan. In truth some of the worst doctrines embodied in the President's evil message came directly from an opinion given by Judge Black as Attorney-General, and, made by Mr. Buchanan still more odious and more dangerous by the quotation of a part and not the whole.

It was soon manifest however to Judge Black, that he was playing with fire, and that, while he was himself desirous only of arousing the country to the dangers of anti-slavery agitation, Mr. Buchanan's administration was every day effectually aiding the Southern conspiracy for the destruction of the Union. This light dawned on Judge Black suddenly and irresistibly. He was personally intimate with General Cass, and when that venerable statesman retired from the Cabinet to preserve his record of loyalty to the Union, Judge Black realized that he was himself confronted by an issue which threatened his political destruction. Could he afford, as Secretary of State, to follow a policy which General Cass believed would destroy his own fame? General Cass was nearly fourscore years of age, with his public career ended, his work done. Judge Black was but fifty, and he had before him possibly the most valuable and most ambitious period of his life. He saw at a glance that if General Cass could not be sustained in the North-West, he could not be sustained in Pennsylvania. He possessed the moral courage to stand firm to the end, in defiance of opposition and regardless of obloquy, if he could be sure he was right. But he had begun to doubt, and doubt led him to review with care the position of Mr. Buchanan, and to examine its inevitable tendencies. He did it with conscience and courage. He had none of that subserviency to Southern men which had injured so many Northern Democrats. Until he entered the Cabinet in 1857, he had never come into personal association with men from the slave-holding States, and his keen observation could not fail to discern the inferiority to himself of the four Southern members of the Cabinet.

Judge Black entered upon his duties as Secretary of State on the 17th of December,—the day on which the Disunion convention of South Carolina assembled. He found the malign influence of Mr. Buchanan's message fully at work throughout the South. Under its encouragement only three days were required by the convention at Charleston to pass the Ordinance of Secession, and four days later Governor Pickens issued a proclamation declaring "South Carolina a separate, sovereign, free, and independent State, with the right to levy war, conclude peace, and negotiate treaties." From that moment Judge Black's position towards the Southern leaders was radically changed. They were no longer fellow-Democrats. They were the enemies of the Union to which he was devoted: they were conspirators against the government to which he had taken a solemn oath of fidelity and loyalty.

Judge Black's change, however important to his own fame, would prove comparatively fruitless unless he could influence Mr. Buchanan to break with the men who had been artfully using the power of his administration to destroy the Union. The opportunity and the test came promptly. The new "sovereign, free, and independent" government of South Carolina sent commissioners to Washington to negotiate for the surrender of the national forts, and the transfer of the national property within her limits. Mr. Buchanan prepared an answer to their request which was compromising to the honor of the Executive and perilous to the integrity of the Union. Judge Black took a decided and irrevocable stand against the President's position. He advised Mr. Buchanan that upon the basis of that fatal concession to the Disunion leaders he could not remain in his Cabinet. It was a sharp issue, but was soon adjusted. Mr. Buchanan gave way, and permitted Judge Black, and his associates Holt and Stanton, to frame a reply for the administration.

THE PRESIDENT AND THE SOUTHERN LEADERS.

Jefferson Davis, Mr. Toombs, Mr. Benjamin, Mr. Slidell, who had been Mr. Buchanan's intimate and confidential advisers, and who had led him to the brink of ruin, found themselves suddenly supplanted, and a new power installed at the White House. Foiled, and no longer able to use the National Administration as an instrumentality to destroy the National life, the Secession leaders in Congress turned upon the President with angry reproaches. In their rage they lost all sense of the respect due to the Chief Magistrate of the Nation, and assaulted Mr. Buchanan with coarseness as well as violence. Senator Benjamin spoke of him as "a senile Executive under the sinister influence of insane counsels." This exhibition of malignity towards the misguided President afforded to the North the most convincing and satisfactory proof that there had been a change for the better in the plans and purposes of the Administration. They realized that it must be a deep sense of impending danger which could separate Mr. Buchanan from his political associations with the South, and they recognized in his position a significant proof of the desperate determination to which the enemies of the Union had come.

The stand taken by Judge Black and his loyal associates was in the last days of December, 1860. The re-organization of the Cabinet came as a matter of necessity. Mr. John B. Floyd resigned from the War Department, making loud proclamation that his action was based on the President's refusal to surrender the national forts in Charleston Harbor to the Secession government of South Carolina. This manifesto was not necessary to establish Floyd's treasonable intentions toward the government; but, in point of truth, the plea was undoubtedly a pretense, to cover reasons of a more personal character which would at once deprive him of Mr. Buchanan's confidence. There had been irregularities in the War Department tending to compromise Mr. Floyd, for which he was afterwards indicted in the District of Columbia. Mr. Floyd well knew that the first knowledge of these shortcomings would lead to his dismissal from the Cabinet. Whatever Mr. Buchanan's faults as an Executive may have been, his honor in all transactions, both personal and public, was unquestionable, and he was the last man to tolerate the slightest deviation from the path of rigid integrity.

Mr. Thompson, the Secretary of the Interior, followed Mr. Floyd after a short interval. Mr. Cobb had left the Treasury a few days before General Cass resigned from the Cabinet, and had gone to Georgia to stimulate her laggard movements in the scheme of destroying the government. His successor was Philip Francis Thomas of Maryland, who entered the Cabinet as a representative of the principles whose announcement had forced General Cass to resign. The change of policy to which the President was now fully committed, forced Mr. Thomas to retire, after a month's service. He frankly stated that he was unable to agree with the President and his chief advisers "in reference to the condition of things in South Carolina," and therefore tendered his resignation. Mr. Thomas adhered to the Union, and always maintained an upright and honorable character, but his course at that crisis deprived him subsequently of a seat in the United-States Senate, though at a later period he served in the House as representative from Maryland.

Mr. Cobb, Mr. Floyd, and Mr. Thompson had all remained in the Cabinet after the Presidential election in November, in full sympathy, and so far as was possible in full co-operation, with the men in the South who were organizing resistance to the authority of the Federal Government. Neither those gentlemen, nor any friend in their behalf, ever ventured to explain how, as sworn officers of the United States, they could remain at their posts consistently with the laws of honor,—laws obligatory upon them not only as public officials who had taken a solemn oath of fidelity to the Constitution, but also as private gentlemen whose good faith was pledged anew every hour they remained in control of the departments with whose administration they had been intrusted. Their course is unfavorably contrasted with that of many Southern men (of whom General Lee and the two Johnstons were conspicuous examples), who refused to hold official positions under the National Government a single day after they had determined to take part in the scheme of Disunion.

BUCHANAN'S RECONSTRUCTED CABINET.

By the re-organization of the Cabinet, the tone of Mr. Buchanan's administration was radically changed. Judge Black had used his influence with the President to secure trustworthy friends of the Union in every department. Edwin M. Stanton, little known at the time to the public, but of high standing in his profession, was appointed Attorney-General soon after Judge Black took charge of the State Department. Judge Black had been associated with Stanton personally and professionally, and was desirous of his aid in the dangerous period through which he was called to serve.

Joseph Holt, who, since the death of Aaron V. Brown in 1859, had been Postmaster-General, was now appointed Secretary of War, and Horatio King of Maine, for many years the upright first assistant, was justly promoted to the head of the Post-office Department. Mr. Holt was the only Southern man left in the Cabinet. He was a native of Kentucky, long a resident of Mississippi, always identified with the Democratic party, and affiliated with its extreme Southern wing. Without a moment's hesitation he now broke all the associations of a lifetime, and stood by the Union without qualification or condition. His learning, his firmness, and his ability, were invaluable to Mr. Buchanan in the closing days of his administration.

General John A. Dix of New York was called to the head of the Treasury. He was a man of excellent ability, of wide experience in affairs, of spotless character, and a most zealous friend of the Union. He found the Treasury bankrupt, the discipline of its officers in the South gone, its orders disregarded in the States which were preparing for secession. He at once imparted spirit and energy into the service,—giving to the administration of this department a policy of pronounced loyalty to the government. No act of his useful and honorable life has been so widely known or will be so long remembered as his dispatch to the Treasury agent at New Orleans to take possession of a revenue cutter whose commander was suspected of disloyalty and of a design to transfer his vessel to the Confederate service. Lord Nelson's memorable order at Trafalgar was not more inspiring to the British navy than was the order of General Dix to the American people, when, in the gloom of that depressing winter, he telegraphed South his peremptory words, "If any man attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot."

Thus reconstructed, the Cabinet as a whole was one of recognized power,—marked by high personal character, by intellectual training, by experience in affairs, and by aptitude for the public service. There have been Cabinets perhaps more widely known for the possession of great qualities; but, if the history of successive administrations from the origin of the government be closely studied, it will be found that the re-organized Cabinet of President Buchanan must take rank as one of exceptional ability.

For the remaining two months of Mr. Buchanan's administration the destinies of the country were in the keeping of these constitutional advisers. If in any respect they failed to come to the standard of a loyalty that was quickened by subsequent developments, they no doubt fairly represented the demand of the Northern States at the time. There was everywhere the most earnest desire to avert a conflict, and an unwillingness to recognize the possibility of actual war. The majority of the Republican party in both branches of Congress was not advocating a more decided or more aggressive course with the South, during the months of January and February, than the Cabinet, with Judge Black at its head, was pursuing. The time for executive acts of a more pronounced character was directly after the Presidential election, when the first symptoms of resistance to national authority were visible in the South. If the new Cabinet had been then in power, the history of the civil revolt might have been different. But the force that will arrest the first slow revolution of a wheel cannot stand before it when, by unchecked velocity, it has acquired a destructive momentum. The measures which might have secured repression in November would only have produced explosion in January.

THE PRESIDENT'S NEW POSITION.

The change of position on the part of Mr. Buchanan was not left to inference, or to the personal assurance of the loyal men who composed his re-organized Cabinet. He announced it himself in a special message to Congress on the 8th of January, 1861. The tone was so different from the message of December, that it did not seem possible that the two could have been written by the same man. It was evident from many passages in the second message that he was trying to reconcile it with the first. This was the natural course suggested by the pride of one who overrated the virtue of consistency. The attempt was useless. The North with unaffected satisfaction, the South with unconcealed indignation, realized that the President had entirely escaped from the influences which dictated the first message. He now asserted that, "as the Chief Executive under the Constitution of the United States," he had no alternative but "to collect the public revenues, and to protect the public property, so far as this might be practicable under existing laws." Remarking that his province "was to execute, and not to make, the laws," he threw upon Congress the duty "of enlarging their provisions to meet exigencies as they may occur." He declared it as his own conviction that "the right and the duty to use military force defensively against those who resist the federal officers in the execution of their legal functions, and against those who assail the property of the Federal Government, are clear and undeniable." Conceding so much, the mild denial which the President re-asserted, of "the right to make aggressive war upon any State," may be charitably tolerated; for, under the defensive power which he so broadly approved, the whole force of national authority could be used against a State aggressively bent upon Secession.

The President did not fail to fortify his own position at every point with great force. The situation had become so serious, and had "assumed such vast and alarming proportions, as to place the subject entirely above and beyond Executive control." He therefore commended "the question, in all its various bearings, to Congress, as the only tribunal possessing the power to meet the existing exigency." He reminded Congress that "to them belongs exclusively the power to declare war, or to authorize the employment of military force in all cases contemplated by the Constitution." Not abandoning the hope of an amicable adjustment, the President pertinently informed Congress that "they alone possess the power to remove grievances which might lead to war, and to secure peace and union." As a basis of settlement, he recommended a formal compromise by which "the North shall have exclusive control of the territory above a certain line, and Southern institutions shall have protection below that line." This plan, he believed, "ought to receive universal approbation." He maintained that on Congress, and "on Congress alone, rests the responsibility." As Congress would certainly in a few days be under the control of the Republicans in both branches,—by the withdrawal of senators and representatives from the seceding States,—Mr. Buchanan's argument had a double force. Not only was he vindicating the position of the Executive and throwing the weight of responsibility on the Legislative Department of the government, but he was protecting the position of the Democratic party by saying, in effect, that the President chosen by that party stood ready to approve and to execute any laws for the protection of the government and the safety of the Union which a Republican Congress might enact.

A certain significance attached to the date which the President had selected for communicating his message to Congress. It was the eighth day of January, the anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans, celebrated that year with enthusiastic demonstrations in honor of the memory of Andrew Jackson, who had, on a memorable occasion not unlike the present, sworn an emphatic oath that "the Federal Union must and shall be preserved." There was also marked satisfaction throughout the loyal States with Mr. Buchanan's assurance of the peace of the District of Columbia on the ensuing 4th of March, on the occasion of Mr. Lincoln's inauguration. He did not himself "share in the serious apprehensions that were entertained of disturbance" on that occasion, but he made this declaration, which was received in the North with hearty applause: "In any event, it will be my duty to preserve the peace, and this duty shall be performed."

The change of sentiment towards Mr. Buchanan after the delivery of the special message, was as marked in the North as it was in the South, though in the opposite direction. It would not be true to say that any thing like popularity attended the President in his new position; but the change of feeling was so great that the Legislature of Massachusetts, on the 23d of January, 1861, adopted resolutions in which they declared that they regarded "with unmingled satisfaction the determination evinced in the recent firm and patriotic special message of the President of the United States to amply and faithfully discharge his constitutional duty of enforcing the laws, and preserving the integrity of the Union." The Legislature "proffered to the President, through the Governor of the Commonwealth, such aid in men and money as he may require to maintain the authority of the National Government." These resolutions were forwarded to Mr. Buchanan by Governor Andrew. They were only one of many manifestations which the President received of approval of his course.

The Massachusetts Legislature was radically Republican in both branches, and even in making a reference to "men and money" as requisite to maintain the Union, they had gone farther than the public sentiment at that time approved. Coercive measures were generally condemned. A few days after the action of the Legislature, a large meeting of the people of Boston, held in Faneuil Hall, declared that they "depended for the return of the seceding States, and the permanent preservation of the Union, on conciliatory counsels, and a sense of the benefits which the Constitution confers on all the States, and not on military coercion." They declared that they shrunk "with horror from the thought of civil war between the North and the South."

It must always be remembered that the disbelief in ultimate secession was nearly universal throughout the free States. The people of the North could not persuade themselves that the proceedings in the Southern States would lead to any thing more serious than hostile demonstrations, which would end, after coaxing and compromise, in a return to the Union. But with this hope of final security there was, on the part of the great mass of the people in the free States, the gravest solicitude throughout the winter of 1860-61, and a restless waiting and watching for a solution of the troubles. Partisan leaders were busy on both sides seeking for an advantage that might survive the pending trials. Northern Democrats in many instances sought to turn the occasion to one of political advantage by pointing out the lamentable condition to which anti-slavery agitation had brought the country. This was naturally answered by Republicans with defiance, and with an affected contempt and carelessness of what the South might do. Much that was written and much that was spoken throughout the North during that winter, both by Democrats and Republicans, would have remained unwritten and unspoken if they had realized the seriousness and magnitude of the impending calamity.