A Cabinet Session.
The President: Secretaries Seward, Chase, Bates, Smith, Blair and Welles. Enter Mr. Stanton.
Mr. Lincoln. Gentlemen, I officially present Mr. Stanton!
[Mr. Stanton, bowing with graceful dignity, seats himself at the table.]
Mr. Seward (breaking the momentary pause in his jocular way). Remember, Mr. Secretary of War, you are now in the old chair of Floyd and Davis: and sit thee down as if on nettles.
Mr. Chase. Aye; but out of the 'nettle danger' pluck thou 'the flower safety.'
Mr. Stanton (with emphasis). Believe me, I appreciate not so much the honor as the responsibilities of my new position. I claim a good omen, for, as I turned just now towards the gate, a little boy, seated upon one of the granite blocks for the new building hereabout, trolled out as my salutation the lines of the national air,—
'Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just,
And this be our motto, In God is our trust.'
Mr. Welles. Amen!
Mr. Bates. I suppose you passed not a few interesting hours in this room at the twilight of Mr. Buchanan's day, whilst holding my portfolio?
Mr. Stanton. Too momentous to be called by me interesting. Posterity, reading, will say that. And those twilight hours, as you felicitously term them, were followed by anxious vigils. But these belong to confidences.
Mr. Lincoln (abruptly and familiarly). Talking of confidences, what do you think of the news about Zollicoffer?
Mr. Stanton. It appears reliable, and is a most providential success. Eastern Tennessee was tending to the position which Lucknow sustained towards the Indian rebellion. It is now relieved, and a fortnight or so will bring intelligence that the whole of it has practically joined forces to Western Virginia. I regard it as of the highest importance to prove, by industrious acts, that we recognize and reward the sufferings of these American Albigenses in their Cumberland fastnesses. How grandly would swell the old Miltonian hymn, properly paraphrased, when a brigade of the loyal Tennessians may sing
'Avenge, Columbia, thy slaughtered hosts, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Western mountains cold,'
and so forth!
Mr. Lincoln. Now, you are stepping into Seward's province. He is the poet of my cabinet!
Mr. Seward. Granted for the argument: but there is more truth than poetry in what our new brother has just said. Throughout how many weary months have those brave thousands who voted against secession awaited the crack of our rifles and our cannon-smoke—true music and sacred incense to them.
Mr. Blair (practically). Next to the border States we must take care of the newspapers.
Mr. Welles. Ah, those newspapers: bothersome as urchins in a nursery, and yet as necessary to the perfect development of life's enjoyment.
Mr. Chase. Well said for the navy. But what do you say of the magnificent Neckars, whose monied articles from Boston to Chicago would swamp the treasury in a week, if they were believed in?
Mr. Lincoln. Being born and raised so far from the great metropolitan centres, I don't seem to take to newspapers so kindly as the rest of you do.
Mr. Stanton. With great respect to your Honor (as we say in court), I deem it a great mistake to neglect newspaper suggestions, however provincial. 'Do you hear (as Hamlet says), let them be well used; for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time.' And your metropolitan editor, after all, follows the bent of the public opinion of the provinces as he scissors it from his thousand and one exchanges. The village or country editor has time to mix among the people, and hears them talk to reproduce it artistically. The city editor finds little time for this. Besides, there is very little of reliable public opinion amid cities. The American mind is styled fickle; so it may be in the great marts. From them come your sensations and spasms. The interior is more stable, and less swayed by impulses. Aggregate a hundred county editorials all over the North, then strike an average, and you will find the product in the last big journal. The misfortune of Washington social life is that we walk in it over a circle. Hither come 'needy knife-grinders,' and axe-sharpeners, and place-hunters, who say what they think will be agreeable to the ears of power. But the other kind of mails, presided over by Mr. Blair, bring us wholesome, although sometimes disagreeable, truths. They are worth attending to, Mr. President. Let us 'strike,' but let us 'hear.'
Mr. Seward. In the matter of newspapers, my son Fred and I divide reading. He distils the metropolitan gazettes, and I those of England and France. Then we exchange commodities at breakfast time. Fred, having been an editor, can boil down the news very rapidly, and so put its essence into our coffee-pot. The foreign journals, however, have so much in them that is dissimulative and latent, they require more care and discernment. Mr. Hunter aids me in dissecting them.
Mr. Lincoln. You are the son of an editor, Montgomery; how do you stand on this subject of Colfax's bill to carry all the papers in your mails? The rebel postmaster-general, in his report, made, you remember, an elaborate argument to justify the Jeff Davis law, which forbids the sending of newspapers and periodicals by expressmen.
Mr. Blair. When Colfax will accept as an amendment a prohibition of telegrams, and the obliging our mails to transmit all intelligence, then I will consider of his views.
Mr. Smith. Well said; as good an extract that from the last edition of Blair's rhetoric as could be wished for.
Mr. Chase. Or in the Tribune satires of Horace! But let me ask Mr. Blair what he thinks of a newspaper tax.
Mr. Blair. Very favorably. I am for a mill stamp on every paper, obliging every ten readers to pay the government one cent.
Mr. Stanton. Mr. Secretary of the Interior, what is the average circulation of newspapers in the loyal section?
Mr. Smith. A thousand million.
Mr. Chase (rapidly computing). Which on Mr. Blair's proposition would yield a million dollars revenue.
Mr. Welles. And support the government at our present rate of expenditure for one day!
Mr. Seward. The public would bear half a cent on each paper. The publisher could make his readers insensibly pay the tax, and improve both paper and issue by receiving another half cent: and so add one cent of charge per copy.
Mr. Chase. Which would yield a revenue of five millions per year.
Mr. Lincoln. Would the people stand such a charge?
Mr. Stanton (good humoredly). Will our friend the Secretary of State smoke fewer cigars when you come to tax tobacco?
Mr. Welles (naïvely). But newspaper reading is not a vice.
Mr. Bates. Be not so sure of that. The passion for newspapers excites the minds of the whole republic. Now-a-days your servant reads the news as he works. The clergy peruse the Sunday extras, and the crossing-sweeper begs your worn-out copy instead of a cigar-stump.
Mr. Blair. Yet Gen. McClellan has not read a newspaper in three months.
Mr. Lincoln. The subject brings to my mind a good old parson in Springfield who used to complain that the Weekly Republican was as bad as himself. He was preaching his old sermons over and over again with new texts. Come to find out, he had a waggish grandson who for three previous weeks had neatly gummed the fresh date over the old one, and the dear divine had been perusing the same paper as many times.
(Omnes laughing heartily.)
Mr. Stanton. Talking of General McClellan,—I had my first engagement with him last night at one o'clock.
Mr. Welles (startled). One o'clock! No wonder he has had typhoid fever.
Mr. Lincoln. I think he is napping it now. He has a wonderful facility at the sleep business. Forty winks seem to refresh him as much as four hours do other people. At my last levee, according to the newspapers, he and his wife retired early. He went up stairs and napped for two hours, desiring to see me for half an hour alone afterward. Then he spent several hours at the topographical bureau, hunting for some old maps which he insisted had been there since the Creek campaign. He was rewarded for his industry by finding also an admirable map and survey of the situation around New Orleans.
Mr. Seward. The General is a believer in Robert Bruce's spider. The American spider's-web didn't reach Richmond in July, nor Columbus in November, but McClellan has kept on busily spinning.
Mr. Blair. Can any one tell me what is the General's platform?
Mr. Stanton. I can. Long before I dreamed of being here, he told me. It is in three words.
Mr. Lincoln. That's the shortest I ever heard of next to that of the English parson—'What I say is orthodox, what I don't believe is heterodox.'
Mr. Smith. But the three words?
Mr. Seward. Cæsar's was in these words: Veni, vidi, vici.
Mr. Stanton. It is to be fervently hoped they will become the Latin translation of his own platform. McClellan's is, 'TO RETRIEVE BULL RUN!'
Mr. Lincoln (laughing). Then, if the General told you that, he is a plagiarist: for that is my platform. When he was made commander here, he asked me what I wanted done. Said I, 'Retrieve Bull Run.' He said he would, and turned to go. I jocularly added, 'But can't you tell us how you are going to do it?' He mused a moment, and then said, 'I must work it out algebraically, and from unknown quantities produce the certain result. "Drill" shall be my "x" and "Transportation" my "y" and "Patience" my "z." Then x + y + z = success.' And now that Mr. Stanton is here, I doubt not the slate is ready for the figuring.
Mr. Stanton. Thank you, Mr. President, for the compliment. May it prove a simple equation.
Mr. Chase (with energy). Now we call for your platform, Mr. Secretary of War.
Mr. Stanton (gracefully bowing). The President's—yours—ours (looking all around).
Mr. Seward. But the allusion is a proper personal one, nevertheless. Remember court-martial law—the youngest always speaks first!
(Omnes compose themselves in a listening attitude.)
Mr. Stanton. First and foremost, I believe slavery to be the casus belli. To treat the casus belli above and beyond all other considerations I hold to be the duty of the true commander-in-chief: as the surgeon disregards secondary symptoms and probes the wound. I would treat this casus belli as the Constitution allows us to treat it—not one hair's breadth from the grand old safeguard would I step. Under the Constitution I believe slavery to be a purely local institution. In Louisiana and Texas, a slave is an immovable by statute, and is annexed to the realty as hop-poles are in the law of New York. In Alabama and Mississippi, the slave is a chattel. In the first-named States he passes by deed of national act and registration; in the other, by simple receipt or delivery. Thus even among slave States there is no uniform system respecting the slave property. To the Northern States the slave is a person in his ballot relation to congressional quota and constituency, and also an apprentice to labor, to be delivered up on demand. The slave escaping from Maryland to Pennsylvania is not to be delivered up, nor cared about, nor thought about, until he is demanded. Liberty is the law of nature. Every man is presumed free in choice, and not even to be trammeled by apprenticeship, until the contrary is made clearly to appear. One man may be a New York discharged convict, for instance—an unpardoned convict. He emigrates southward, he obtains property, according to local law, in a slave. The slave escapes to New York. The convict—unpardoned—master enters the tribunal there on his demand. Quoth the escaped apprentice, producing the record of the conviction, 'Mr. Claimant, you have no standing in court. Your civil rights are suspended in this State until you are pardoned. You are not pardoned, therefore I will not answer aye or no to your claim, until you are legitimately in court, and recognized by the judges.' I take it that plea would avail. And if the crier wanted to employ a person to sweep the court-room the next moment, he could employ that defendant to do it. There is not a man in the rebel States (whom we publicly know of) who has a standing under the Constitution regarding this slavery question. By his own argument he lives in a foreign country; by our own argument he is not rectus in curia. Were I an invading general and wanted horses, I would decoy them from the rebels with hay and stable enticements. If I wanted trench-diggers, camp scullions, or artillerists, or pilots, or oarsmen, or guides, and, being that general, saw negroes about me, I should press them into my service. Time enough to talk about the rights of some one to possess the negroes by better claim of title to service when that somebody, with the Constitution in one hand and stipulation of allegiance in the other, demands legal possession. Even the fugitive slave is emancipated practically whilst in Ohio, and whilst not yet demanded. Rebel soldiers daily leave their plantations and abandon their negroes. Pro tem, at least, the latter are then emancipated. Let them, when within Our lines, continue emancipated.
Mr. Welles. Would you arm them?
Mr. Stanton. Yes, if exigencies of situation so demanded. The beleaguered garrison at Lucknow armed every one about the place—natives or not, servants or masters. Did General Washington spare the whisky stills in the time of the insurrection in Western Virginia when they were in his way? Yet the stills were universally agreed to be property, and were not taken by due process of law. Shall we fight a rebel in Charleston streets, and at the same time protect his negro by a guard in the Charleston jail?
Mr. Blair. But what instructions would you give to the soldiers about this casus belli?
Mr. Stanton. None at all. The soldier should know nothing about casus belli. General Buell answered the correspondent well when he said, 'I know nothing about the cause of this war. I am to fight the rebels and obey orders.' Cries a general to a subaltern—'Yonder smokes a battery—go and take it.' Do we issue specific instructions to the troops about the women, the children, the chickens, the forage, the mules-persons or property—whom they encounter? The circumstances and the exigencies of the situation determine their conduct. A household mastiff who will pin a rebel by the throat when he passes his kennel, flying from pursuit, is just as serviceable as would prove a loyal bullet sped to the rebel's brain. I believe that the acknowledged fact, the necessary fact, that wherever our army advances, emancipation practically ensues, will carry more terror to the slave-owner than any other warlike incident. But I would have them understand that this result is not our design, but a necessity of their rebellion.
Mr. Bates. You are like the last witness upon the stand—subjected to a vigorous cross-examination upon everything gone before. Have you ever thought what is to be the upshot of the contention?
Mr. Stanton. Restoration of the Union!
Mr. Bates. Aye, but how to be brought about? Are not the pride and the obstinacy growing stronger every day at the South?
Mr. Stanton. 'Men are but children of a larger growth.' Who of us has not conquered pride and obstinacy in the nursery? I have seen the boy of a mild-tempered father fairly admire the parent when he broke the truce of affection and vigorously thrashed him. The large majority of the Southern people have been educated to believe the men of the North cowardly, mean, and avaricious. Cowardly, because they persistently refused the duel. Mean, because all classes worked, and there seemed among them no arrogance of birth. Avaricious, because they crouched to the planters with calico and manufactures, or admired their bullying for the sake of their cotton.
And the great masses of the South have been and are learning how the present leaders have duped them upon all these points. They have discovered we are not cowards. Every prisoner, from the chivalric Corcoran to the urchin drummer-boy at Richmond who spat on the sentinel, has afforded proof of courage and fortitude, whilst thousands and thousands of people have secretly admired it. The very death vacancies at family boards throughout the plantations perpetually remind the Southrons that we are not cowards in fight. They have learned, too, that we are neither mean nor avaricious, when the millionaire merchant, whom they knew two years ago, cheerfully accepts the poor man's lot of to-day; or when they behold all classes without one murmur hear of a million dollars per day being spent on the war, and then clamor to be taxed! If they perceive the negroes leaving them, they at once also perceive that in loyal Maryland, loyal Virginia, loyal Kentucky and loyal Missouri,—in Baltimore, St. Louis, and Louisville,—the slaves under local laws are protected to their owners. Thus the most stupid will reason, It is our own act which has placed in jeopardy this our property. With a restored Union, Georgia and Louisiana must be as Maryland and Kentucky continued even in the midst of camps. Who, during the acme of the French revolution, could have believed that the people of Paris would so soon and so readily accept even despotism as the panacea of turmoil? Show a real grievance, and I grant you that rebellion achieves the dignity of revolution. Provide an imaginary or a colored evil as the basis of insurrection, and even pride and obstinacy will eventually comprehend the sophistry of the leaders.
Mr. Lincoln. Seward's secret correspondence with Southern loyalists proves these things. Mr. Stanton must read that last letter from....
Mr. Stanton. Indeed! You surprise me. Pray how could you receive intelligence from him?
Mr. Lincoln (opening a drawer). Do you see this button? I unscrew this eye. The two discs now separate. Between them you can put a sheet of French letter paper. When the troops advanced to Bull Run, certain of the soldiers were provided with such buttons. Various deserters have had them.
Mr. Seward (laughing.) Who knows but General Scott's coachman had one or two?[13]
Mr. Stanton. This practically corroborates my theories. If we in Washington find it so difficult to repress communication and spies, is it not fair to presume that in Richmond, Savannah, New Orleans and Memphis (where there is real incentive from suffering and persecution), it is equally impossible to stop information? It was impossible to procure it when the three rifled cannon at the Richmond foundry were found spiked. It would prove serviceable to the patience of the nation, could it only step behind the scenes and learn much—known to us—which it must ere long understand.
Mr. Lincoln. I have just received by our secret mail a very affecting letter from Col. Corcoran. I will read an extract. [Reads.]
'Of my physical suffering I will not speak. If restored to friends and home I shall, however, be a memorable example of the victory of mind over body. I determined to lay down my life for my country when I left that home; and if it will serve the cause, as I have repeatedly told the people here, to hang, or draw, or quarter me, I am ready for the sacrifice. But there are hundreds among the prisoners whose minds are not so buoyant as mine, who do suffer terribly. Can not some means be devised to clothe and feed them, or to exchange for them?'
Mr. Blair. A patriot soul. The clerkship left in the New York post-office when the Colonel departed for the war has been retained for him.
Mr. Lincoln (quickly). Ah! that heroic sufferer shall have something better than a clerkship if he ever returns.
Mr. Stanton. I have thought much of this exchange of prisoners and captivity amelioration. When the insurrection was inchoate, we could afford to be punctilious. But its present gigantic proportions surely affect the question (so to term it) of ransom. When our countrymen were in the Algerine prisons we took means to treat for them. What say you, gentlemen, against sending commissioners to Richmond for the purpose of supervising the medicines, clothing, food and exchange of our prisoners?
Mr. Seward. That may only be conceded by accepting commissioners for a similar purpose from the rebel government.
Mr. Chase. Our plans are now so perfectly matured that even the danger of spies recedes. I am in favor of Mr. Stanton's proposition.
Mr. Lincoln. I think you can try it. There are so many prisoners, from all parts of the country, that public sentiment must uphold the measure.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Secretary of State, you were taking notes whilst Mr. Stanton was giving his views upon the restoration question. Were they on that subject?
Mr. Seward. Yes. Some fleeting thoughts occurred to me which I was desirous of preserving for to-morrow. I have a great deal of faith in establishing Southern 'doughfacery.'
Mr. Welles. Doughfacery?
Mr. Seward. Yes: that supremacy of pocket over pride which so long afflicted the North. Above and beyond the slave-owners must rise the great class of manufacturers and merchants,—almost every third man of Northern origin, too,—whose pocket is the great sufferer, and without whose property, hereafter, plantations can not prosper. Given a decent pretext for adjustment, when pride will go to the wall. Once allow the masses to grasp the reins, and the slave-owners will be driven to the wall-side of the political highway also. This I call Southern doughfacery for the sake of a phrase well understood.
Mr. Blair. Then your old plan of the great national convention comes in vogue?
Mr. Lincoln. My plan! (Good humoredly.) You must not all steal my thunder. By the way, Seward, your pleasant friend Judge D——, who came from New York about Col. Corcoran, told me the meaning of that phrase. It seems a Dublin stage manager got up a scenic play with thunder in it perfectly imitated by a diapason of bass drums. A rival got up another scenic play, to which, out of jealous pique, the inventor repaired as a spectator. To his surprise he heard his own invention from behind the scenes. He instantly exclaimed aloud, 'The rascal, he's stolen my thunder!'
Mr. Seward (jocularly). The President finds a parallel between a national convention and thunder. Well, well, the clearest atmosphere is breathed after the clouds culminate in thunder and lightning. I accept the application.
Mr. Chase. But if the South is to surrender pride, what are we to surrender?
Mr. Seward (quickly). Political pride. The battle of freedom was fought and won when the Inaugural was pronounced. The South can not recover from the present stagnation in a quarter-century, by which time it will again have accepted contentedly the original belief that slavery, like one of the lotteries of Georgia, or one of the red-dog banks of Arkansas, is a purely local institution.
Mr. Stanton. I heartily accept the project of a national convention. But I am against any agitation or committal to leading ideas which are to control it. One convention ruined France, and another saved it. We can better obtain consent of North and South to holding a convention by forbearance from discussing its probable platform. Let it meet. No fear but it will elucidate some satisfactory result.
Mr. Welles. You have just discussed this question of war. I wish something could be done to settle this affair of privateering. To my reflection it appears to embrace a very important consideration of 'policy' as well as of law. A man does not always punish his embezzling clerk because the law gives him authority to do so. The ocean rebel who to-day captures our transports laden with soldiers, may to-morrow put off twenty boats in the Potomac, and capture our men on the river schooner. The Attorney General's opinion and the law of Judge Kelson in New York hang the former; but military law will exchange the latter whenever a satisfactory opportunity presents itself.
Mr. Lincoln. The policy question has become a grave one. I have been much struck by the letter of Judge Daly, of New York, to Senator Harris—a most opportune, learned, and temperate paper.
[Enter an attendant.]
Mr. Lincoln. Gen. McClellan is at the door. Invite him in.
Mr. Stanton. By all means. He is 'the very head and front of our offending.'
[Enter Gen. McClellan.]
Gen. McC. Good evening, Mr. President and Cabinet. (Speaking rapidly and brusquely.) The bridge equipages are now entirely complete. Here is a dispatch acknowledging the receipt of the last supply. With February is ushered in the Southern spring, which, as you all know, must end 'this winter of our discontent.' The Western V now is perfect from Cairo and Harper's Ferry at the top to Cumberland Gap at the bottom. It is the first letter in Victory.
Mr. Lincoln. When the General becomes oratorical, then indeed has he good news.
Gen. McC. I have, sir; but, with great respect to all these our friends, it must be for your own ears, to-night at least.
Mr. Lincoln (rising). We will withdraw to the library. Gentlemen, pray come to some understanding during our absence respecting the reply to be sent to M. Thouvenel's extraordinary secret dispatch. I will rejoin you in—
Gen, McC. Seven minutes, Mr. President—those are all I can spare. Good evening, gentlemen.