It was well for the country that at this early period Mr. Buchanan had the wisdom to foresee and the firmness to enunciate the only doctrine that could save the Government of the United States from the consequences of making war upon a State, and at the same time enable it to suppress all insurrectionary resistance to its constitutional authority. It might suit the secessionists to claim that their States would become, by their ordinances of secession, independent nations, capable as such of waging war against the United States, or of having it waged upon them by the United States, if such was the pleasure of the latter. It might suit them to put the alternative of such a war against the consent of the United States to their peaceful renunciation of their connection with the Federal Government. It might suit them to confound all the distinctions between revolutionary resistance to a government because some actual oppression has been suffered from it, and the secession of States from the American Union because future oppression is to be feared. It might suit them to say that to coerce the individual inhabitants of a State to obey the laws of the United States, after the State has absolved them from that obligation by its sovereign will, is the same thing as to coerce a State to remain in the Union. But this was not a dispute about words; it was a controversy about the substantive powers of a constitutional Government; a great question of things, and of things drawing after them the most important consequences. If there was to be a war, it was a matter of supreme importance what that war was to be, in its inception. Mr. Buchanan did not mean that its character, if it must come, should be obscured. He did not mean that it should be a war waged aggressively by the United States to prevent a State from adopting an ordinance of what she might call secession. He did not mean to concede the possibility that the Federal Government could begin or carry on a war against a State, as a power which could by its own act erect itself into a nation to be conquered and subdued and destroyed, as one nation may conquer, subdue and destroy another. Knowing that such a recognition of the potency of an ordinance of secession would be fatal to the future of the whole Union, and knowing from long study of the Constitution how the laws of the United States may be enforced upon individuals notwithstanding that their State has claimed a paramount sovereignty over them, or a paramount dispensing power, he left upon the records of the country the clear line of demarcation which would have to be observed by his successor, and which would make the use of force, if force must be used, a war, not of aggression, but of defence; a war not for the conquest and obliteration of a State, but a war for the assertion of the authority of the Constitution over the individuals subject to its sway. It was only by treating secession as a nullity, and by acting upon the principle that the people of a State would be equally bound to obey the laws of the United States after secession as they had been before, that the President could furnish to Congress any principle on which force could be used. It is not remarkable that the secession leaders should have rejected his doctrine. But it is strange, passing strange, that Northern men should have misrepresented it. Yet there was not a single public man in the whole North, in all the discussion that followed this message, on the Republican side, who saw, or who, if he saw, had the candor to say, that the President had furnished to Congress a principle of action that would alone prevent secession from working the consequences which its advocates claimed for it, or that could prevent the conquest and subjugation of States as foreign nations. And now, when we look back upon the war that ensued, and when we measure the disparity of force that enabled the United States eventually to prevail over the exhausted Southern Confederacy, there are no people in the whole Union who have more cause than the secessionists themselves, to be grateful to President Buchanan for not having admitted the possibility of legitimate war upon the States that seceded; while for the people of the whole Union there remains a debt of gratitude to him, for having laid down the principle that saved them from crushing the political autonomy of those States, in a war that could have had no result but to reduce them to the condition of subjugated provinces.
CHAPTER XVIII.
1860—December.
GENERAL SCOTT AGAIN ADVISES THE PRESIDENT—MAJOR ANDERSON'S REMOVAL FROM FORT MOULTRIE TO FORT SUMTER—ARRIVAL OF COMMISSIONERS FROM SOUTH CAROLINA IN WASHINGTON—THEIR INTERVIEW AND COMMUNICATION WITH THE PRESIDENT—THE SUPPOSED PLEDGE OF THE STATUS QUO—THE “CABINET CRISIS” OF DECEMBER 29TH—REPLY OF THE PRESIDENT TO THE SOUTH CAROLINA COMMISSIONERS—THE ANONYMOUS DIARIST OF THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW CONFUTED.
On the 12th of December General Scott arrived in Washington from New York, where he had been ill for a long time. Since the presentation of his “views” of October 29th-30th, the President had not heard from him on the subject of the Southern forts. On the 11th of December Major Anderson, then at Fort Moultrie, and in no danger of attack or molestation by the authorities of South Carolina, had received his instructions from Major Buell, Assistant Adjutant General of the Army, who had been sent by the President expressly to Fort Moultrie, in order that Anderson might be guided in his course with reference to all probable contingencies.[[83]] The South Carolina convention had not assembled when Anderson received his instructions. General Scott, on the 15th of December, had an interview with the President, in which he urged that three hundred men be sent to reinforce Anderson at Fort Moultrie. The President declined to give this order, for the following reasons: First, Anderson was fully instructed what to do in case he should at any time see good reason to believe that there was any purpose to dispossess him of any of the forts. Secondly, at this time, December 15th, the President believed—and the event proved the correctness of his belief—that Anderson was in no danger of attack. He and his command were then treated with marked kindness by the authorities and people of Charleston. Thirdly, the President, in his annual message, had urged upon Congress measures of conciliation by the adoption of certain amendments of the Constitution; and Mr. Crittenden’s propositions, of substantially the same character as those of the President, called the “Crittenden Compromise,” were before the Senate. Strong hopes were at this time entertained throughout the country that Congress would adopt these or some other measures to quiet the agitation in the South, so that South Carolina, in case she should “secede,” would be left alone in her course. Under all these circumstances, to have sent additional troops to Fort Moultrie would only have been, as Mr. Buchanan afterward said, “to impair the hope of compromise, to provoke collision and disappoint the country.”[[84]]
On the same day, General Scott sent a note to the President, reminding him of General Jackson’s measures in regard to the threatened nullification of the tariff in 1833; an occasion, the circumstances of which bore little resemblance to the situation of the country in December, 1860, as I have already had reason to say in commenting on General Scott’s “views” of October 29th-30th.
In the controversy which General Scott had with Mr. Buchanan in 1862, in the National Intelligencer, the General reported the President as saying to him, on the 15th of December, 1860, among other reasons for not reinforcing Anderson at that time, that he should await the action of the South Carolina convention, in the expectation that a commission would be appointed and sent to negotiate with him (the President) and Congress, respecting the secession of the State, and the property of the United States within the borders of that State; and that if Congress should decide against the secession, he would then send a reinforcement, and would telegraph to Anderson to hold the forts against any attack. General Scott made two palpable mistakes in thus representing what the President said to him on the 15th of December, 1860.[[85]] In the first place, as will presently appear, the President never gave any person or persons claiming to represent South Carolina to understand that he would receive a commission to negotiate with him for an admission of the right of secession, or for a surrender of the forts. In his annual message, he had most distinctly and emphatically declared that, as an executive officer, he had no power whatever to hold such a negotiation, but that it belonged to Congress to deal with the property of the United States as it should see fit; and that it was his duty to maintain the possession of the forts until Congress should authorize and direct him to surrender them. When commissioners were subsequently appointed by the State of South Carolina, they were told by the President that he could not receive them in a diplomatic character, and that he would not himself negotiate with them for a surrender of the forts. In the next place, the President could not have told General Scott that he would send a reinforcement to Anderson in a certain contingency, and would then telegraph him to hold the forts. Anderson had already received instructions to hold them, and had been directed how to act.
Mr. Buchanan has said—and it deserves to be quoted—that “it is scarcely a lack of charity to infer that General Scott knew at the time he made this recommendation (on the 15th of December), that it must be rejected. The President could not have complied with it, the position of affairs remaining unchanged, without at once reversing his entire policy, and without a degree of inconsistency amounting almost to self-stultification.” He adds:
This, the General’s second recommendation, was wholly unexpected. He had remained silent for more than six weeks from the date of his supplemental “views,” convinced, as the President inferred, that he had abandoned the idea of garrisoning all these forts with “the five companies only” within his reach. Had the President never so earnestly desired to reinforce the nine forts in question, at this time, it would have been little short of madness to undertake the task with the small force at his command. Without authority to call forth the militia, or accept the services of volunteers for the purpose, this whole force now consisted of six hundred recruits, obtained by the General since the date of his “views,” in addition to the five regular companies. Our army was still out of reach on the remote frontiers, and could not be withdrawn during midwinter in time for this military operation. Indeed, the General had never suggested such a withdrawal. He knew that had this been possible, the inhabitants on our distant frontiers would have been immediately exposed to the tomahawk and scalping knife of the Indians.
While he was unwilling at this moment to send reinforcements into the harbor of Charleston, and thereby to incur the risk of provoking the secession of other States, the President did not neglect the use of any means that were in his power to prevent the secession of South Carolina. He sent the Hon. Caleb Cushing to Charleston, with a letter to Governor Pickens, in which he said:
From common notoriety I assume the fact that the State of South Carolina is now deliberating on the propriety and necessity of seceding from the Union. Whilst any hope remains that this may be prevented, or even retarded, so long as to enable the people of her sister States to have opportunity to manifest their opinion regarding the matters which may have impelled the State to take this step, it is my duty to exert all the means in my power to avoid so dread a catastrophe. I have, therefore, deemed it advisable to send to you the Hon. Caleb Cushing, to counsel and advise with you, in regard to the premises, and to communicate such information as he may possess concerning the condition of public opinion in the North touching the same. I need scarcely add, that I entertain full confidence in his integrity, ability, and prudence. He will state to you the reasons which exist to prevent, or to delay, the action of the State for the purpose which I have mentioned.