A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3

by De Alva Stanwood Alexander

Nevertheless, when, on November 16, the South Carolina Legislature passed an act calling a convention to meet on December 17, the Republicans, still enthusiastic over their success, began seriously to consider the question of disunion. "Do you think the South will secede?" became as common a salutation as "Good-morning;" and, although a few New Yorkers, perhaps, gave the indifferent reply of Henry Ward Beecher—"I don't believe they will; and I don't care if they do"[317]—the gloom and uncertainty which hung over business circles made all anxious to hear from the leaders of their party. Heretofore, Horace Greeley, Thurlow Weed, and William H. Seward, backed by Henry J. Raymond of the New York Times and James Watson Webb of the Courier, had been quick to meet any emergency, and their followers now looked to them for direction.

Horace Greeley was admittedly the most influential Republican journalist. He had not always agreed with the leaders, and just now an open break existed in the relations of himself and the powerful triumvirate headed by Thurlow Weed; but Greeley had voiced the sentiment of the rank and file of his party more often than he had misstated it, and the Tribune readers naturally turned to their prophet for a solution of the pending trouble. As usual, he had an opinion. The election occurred on November 6, and on the 9th he declared that "if the cotton States shall decide that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace. The right to secede may be a revolutionary one, but it exists nevertheless.... Whenever a considerable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep it in. We hope never to live in a republic, whereof one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets."[318] Two weeks later, on November 26, he practically repeated these views. "If the cotton States unitedly and earnestly wish to withdraw peacefully from the Union, we think they should and would be allowed to go. Any attempt to compel them by force to remain would be contrary to the principles enunciated in the immortal Declaration of Independence, contrary to the fundamental ideas on which human liberty is based."[319] As late as December 17, when South Carolina and other Southern States were on the threshold of secession, Greeley declared that "if the Declaration of Independence justified the secession from the British Empire of three millions of colonists in 1776, we do not see why it should not justify the secession of five millions of Southrons from the Union in 1861."[320] In January, he recanted in a measure. Yet, on February 23, he announced that "Whenever it shall be clear that the great body of the Southern people have become conclusively alienated from the Union, and anxious to escape from it, we will do our best to forward their views."[321]

Henry Ward Beecher[322] and the Garrison Abolitionists[323] also inclined to this view; and, in November and December, a few Republicans, because of a general repugnance to the coercion of a State, did not despise it. Naturally, however, the Greeley policy did not please the great bulk of Lincoln's intelligent supporters. The belief obtained that, the election having been fair and constitutional, the South ought to submit to the decision as readily as Northern Democrats acquiesced in it. Besides, a spontaneous feeling existed that the United States was a nation, that secession was treason, and seceders were traitors. Such people sighed for "an hour of Andrew Jackson;" and, to supply the popular demand, Jackson's proclamation against the nullifiers, written by Edward Livingston, a native of New York, then secretary of state, was published in a cheap and convenient edition. To the readers of such literature Greeley's peaceable secession seemed like the erratic policy of an eccentric thinker, and its promulgation, especially when it began giving comfort and encouragement to the South, contributed not a little to the defeat of its author for the United States Senate in the following February.

Thurlow Weed also had a plan, which quickly attracted the attention of people in the South as well as in the North. He held that suggestions of compromise which the South could accept might be proposed without dishonour to the victors in the last election, and, in several carefully written editorials in the Evening Journal, he argued in favour of restoring the old line of the Missouri Compromise, and of substituting for the fugitive slave act, payment for rescued slaves by the counties in which the violation of law occurred. "When we refer, as we often do, triumphantly to the example of England," he said, "we are prone to forget that emancipation and compensation were provisions of the same act of Parliament."[324]

Weed was now sixty-three years of age—not an old man, and of little less energy than in 1824, when he drove about the State in his first encounter with Martin Van Buren. The success of the views he had fearlessly maintained, in defiance of menacing opponents, had been achieved in full measure, and he had reason to be proud of his conspicuous part in the result; but now, in the presence of secession which threatened the country because of that success, he seemed suddenly to revolt against the policy he himself had fostered. As his biographer expressed it, "he cast aside the weapons which none could wield so well,"[325] and, betraying the influences of his early training under the great Whig leaders, began to show his love for the Union after the manner of Clay and Webster.

Weed outlined his policy with rare skill, hoping that the discussion provoked by it might result in working out some plan to avoid disunion.[326] Raymond, in the Times, and Webb in the Courier, gave it cordial support; the leading New York business men of all parties expressed themselves favourable to conciliation and compromise. "I can assure you," wrote August Belmont to Governor Sprague of Rhode Island, on December 13, "that all the leaders of the Republican party in our State and city, with a few exceptions of the ultra radicals, are in favour of concessions, and that the popular mind of the North is ripe for them." On December 19 he wrote again: "Last evening I was present at an informal meeting of about thirty gentlemen, comprising our leading men, Republicans, Union men, and Democrats, composed of such names as Astor, Aspinwall, Moses H. Grinnell, Hamilton Fish, R.M. Blatchford, &c. They were unanimous in their voice for reconciliation, and that the first steps have to be taken by the North."[327]

Belmont undoubtedly voiced the New York supporters of Douglas, Breckenridge, and Bell, and many conservative Republicans, representing the business interests of the great metropolis; but the bulk of the Republicans did not like a plan that overthrew the corner-stone of their party, which had won on its opposition to the extension of slavery into free territory. To go back to the line of 36° 30´, permitting slavery to the south of it, meant the loss of all that had been gained, and a renewal of old issues and hostilities in the near future. Republican congressmen from the State, almost without exception, yielded to this view, voicing the sentiment that it was vain to temporise longer with compromises. With fluent invective, James B. McKean of Saratoga assailed the South in a speech that recalled the eloquence of John W. Taylor, his distinguished predecessor, who, in 1820, led the forces of freedom against the Missouri Compromise. "The slave-holders," he said, "have been fairly defeated in a presidential election. They now demand that the victors shall concede to the vanquished all that the latter have ever claimed, and vastly more than they could secure when they themselves were victors. They take their principles in one hand, and the sword in the other, and reaching out the former they say to us, 'Take these for your own, or we will strike.'"[328]

Nevertheless, Weed kept at work. In an elaborate article, he suggested a "Convention of the people consisting of delegates appointed by the States, to which North and South might bring their respective griefs, claims, and reforms to a common arbitrament, to meet, discuss, and determine upon a future. It will be said that we have done nothing wrong, and have nothing to offer. This is precisely why we should both purpose and offer whatever may, by possibility, avert the evils of civil war and prevent the destruction of our hitherto unexampled blessings of Union."[329]

Preston King, the junior United States senator from New York, clearly voicing the sentiment of the majority of his party in Congress and out of it, bitterly opposed such a policy. "It cannot be done," he wrote Weed, on December 7. "You must abandon your position. It will prove distasteful to the majority of those whom you have hitherto led. You and Seward should be among the foremost to brandish the lance and shout for joy."[330] To this the famous editor, giving a succinct view of his policy, replied with his usual directness. "I have not dreamed of anything inconsistent with Republican duty. We owe our existence as a party to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. But for the ever blind spirit of slavery, Buchanan would have taken away our ammunition and spiked our guns. The continued blindness of Democracy and the continued madness of slavery enabled us to elect Lincoln. That success ends our mission so far as Kansas and the encroachments of slavery into free territory are concerned. We have no territory that invites slavery for any other than political objects, and with the power of territorial organisation in the hands of Lincoln, there is no political temptation in all the territory belonging to us. The fight is over. Practically, the issues of the late campaign are obsolete. If the Republican members of Congress stand still, we shall have a divided North and a united South. If they move promptly, there will be a divided South and a united North."[331]