Life of James Buchanan, Fifteenth President of the United States. v. 2 (of 2)

by George Ticknor Curtis

W. W. Boyce,

Lawrence M. Keitt.

Washington, December 9, 1860.

The following memorandum is indorsed upon the original letter, in the handwriting of the President:

Monday morning, 10th December, 1860, the within paper was presented to me by Messrs. McQueen, Miles and Bonham. I objected to the word “provided,” as this might be construed into an agreement on my part which I never would make. They said nothing was further from their intention. They did not so understand it, and I should not so consider it. Afterwards, Messrs. McQueen and Bonham called, in behalf of the delegation, and gave me the most positive assurance that the forts and public property would not be molested until after commissioners had been appointed to treat with the Federal Government in relation to the public property, and until the decision was known. I informed them that what would be done was a question for Congress and not for the Executive. That if they [the forts] were assailed, this would put them completely in the wrong, and making them the authors of the civil war. They gave the same assurances to Messrs. Floyd, Thompson and others.

Mr. Buchanan’s subsequent account of the interview at which this letter was delivered to him in person, reads as follows:

Both in this and in their previous conversation, they declared that in making this statement, they were acting solely on their own responsibility, and expressly disclaimed any authority to bind their State. They, nevertheless, expressed the confident belief that they would be sustained both by the State authorities and by the convention, after it should assemble. Although the President considered this declaration as nothing more than the act of five highly respectable members of the House from South Carolina, yet he welcomed it as a happy omen, that by means of their influence collision might be prevented, and time afforded to all parties for reflection and for a peaceable adjustment. From abundant caution, however, he objected to the word “provided” in their statement, lest, if he should accept it without remark, this might possibly be construed into an agreement on his part not to reinforce the forts. Such an agreement, he informed them, he would never make. It would be impossible for him, from the nature of his official responsibility, thus to tie his own hands and restrain his own freedom of action. Still, they might have observed from his message, that he had no present design, under existing circumstances, to change the condition of the forts at Charleston. He must, notwithstanding, be left entirely free to exercise his own discretion, according to exigencies as they might arise. They replied that nothing was further from their intention than such a construction of this word; they did not so understand it, and he should not so consider it.[^[87]]

No one, therefore, I presume, will now question that I am fully justified in asserting, as I do, that Mr. Buchanan gave no pledge, express or implied, formal or informal, that no reinforcements should be sent into Charleston harbor, or that the military status, as it existed at the time of this interview, should remain unchanged, or that he in any way fettered himself on the subject.[^[88]] To have done so in advance of the action of the South Carolina convention, or at any other time, would have been an act of inconsistency and folly quite beyond anything that the worst enemy of the President could have ever desired to impute to him.

But the South Carolina commissioners having asserted in their letter of December 28th, that the removal of Major Anderson from Moultrie to Sumter was a violation of a pledge that had been given by the President, it became important that the denial should instantly follow the assertion. The President, relying not only on his recollection, but on his written memoranda of his conversation with the South Carolina members of Congress, which completely refuted the assertion, did not, in the first draft of an answer to the commissioners, which he prepared with his own hand, repel the assertion as flatly and explicitly as he might have done. He evidently did not at once see that unless he expressly and pointedly denied the assertion, he might be construed as giving an implied assent to it. He was considering how he could best carry on this conference with persons whom he could not receive in the official character in which they came, and with whom he could only deal as distinguished citizens of South Carolina; and his first attention was directed to the means of convincing them that the people of South Carolina could have no excuse for breaking the peace, because it was not his purpose to reinforce Major Anderson unless the authorities of the State should make it absolutely necessary to do so. But to three members of his cabinet, Judge Black, Mr. Holt, and Mr. Stanton, the omission of the President to give a pointed and explicit denial to the assertion of a pledge not to change the military status, appeared a fatal defect in the paper which the President had drawn up. They were also apprehensive that the first and the concluding paragraph of his proposed answer would be regarded as acknowledging the right of South Carolina to be represented near the Government of the United States by diplomatic officers, as if she were a foreign nation. As the draft of an answer which the President had prepared is not in existence, and as the paper of objections presented by Judge Black to the President did not quote the paragraphs objected to, although that paper has been preserved, it is impossible to judge how far the criticism was right, or was called for. Certain it is that at the first and only interview which the President had with those commissioners, he told them in the plainest terms that he could only recognize them as private gentlemen, and not as commissioners of an independent State. He also told them that as to any surrender to South Carolina of the forts, within her limits, or any propositions concerning a sale of them, he, as President, had no authority, and that the only tribunal to which they could apply was Congress. I am inclined to believe that it was the repetition of this suggestion of an appeal to Congress, which caused the three members of the cabinet to fear that the paragraphs to which they objected might be considered as implicitly yielding to the commissioners the point of their diplomatic character. But it is not necessary to speculate about this, because the President’s draft of an answer is no longer accessible, and because it is evident from all that occurred that the President, in drawing up that form of his answer, meant to hold open a door to the commissioners which it would be perfectly proper for him to allow them to enter, if they chose. He meant to give them an opportunity to stipulate that if Major Anderson were restored to his former position, their State would not molest either Fort Moultrie or any of the other forts or property of the United States. Instead of this, their demand from first to last was the withdrawal of all the troops of the United States from the harbor of Charleston, and an abandonment of all the forts to South Carolina; which, if acceded to by the Executive, would have been a recognition by him of her right to secede from the Union. “This,” says Mr. Buchanan, “was not to be thought of for a moment;” and I know of no evidence that he thought of it or contemplated it, when he was writing his first draft of an answer to the South Carolina gentlemen. On the contrary, he steadily resisted it to the end of the conference, and ever afterward.

Another point on which the three members of the cabinet differed from the President was in regard to having any negotiation at all with these gentlemen. It would seem from the paper of objections presented to the President by Judge Black, that the President was at first disposed, in the answer which he had prepared, to express his regret that the commissioners were unwilling to proceed further with the negotiation, after they had learned that he would not receive them as diplomatic agents and would not comply with their extreme demands. Here, then, was a ground for a real, but temporary, difference of opinion between the President and three members of his cabinet. On the one side, the President, holding these South Carolina gentlemen firmly in the attitude of private citizens of great weight and influence in their State, but denying to them any diplomatic character which he could recognize, and making them to clearly understand that the Executive would not withdraw the troops or surrender the forts, might well and wisely have considered that if he could draw from them any proposition which it would be fit for him to present to Congress, that body would have to express an authoritative opinion on the asserted right of secession. The great object of preserving the peace of the country, and of gaining time for angry passions to subside, might thus be gained. On the other hand, Judge Black and his two colleagues, considering, as the President considered, that these South Carolina citizens could not be recognized as commissioners of a foreign State, held that there could legally be no negotiation with them, whether they were willing or not. Reduced to the ultimate difference, the question was whether there should be no further conference at all, because it could have no legal force, or whether there might still be useful further communication with them as private citizens, whose propositions, if they chose to make any in that capacity, the President could submit to Congress for such action as that body might think proper.