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

by George Ticknor Curtis

My Dear Sir:—

I think you may rely upon tranquillity at the South. Since you left me I have made particular inquiries. General Davis has been written to and will be written to. He is advised to send a commissioner, and to go to Charleston himself to represent and quiet all things. In fact, from information from one directly from Richmond, and who travelled with merchants from the South going North, the probability is that he is now in Charleston. The fact may probably be announced in the papers to-morrow. Every one that I have seen, secessionists and others, concur with myself in the improbability of any movement until a commissioner shall come on here and a failure in the mission.

Truly and faithfully yours,

John Tyler.

The explanation of the last of these notes is that Mr. Jefferson Davis had assumed at this time, at Montgomery, the office of President of the Confederate States. His inaugural address was delivered on the 18th of February, and his cabinet was organized immediately thereafter. In compliance with the intimation sent by Mr. Tyler, steps were at once taken by Mr. Davis to send commissioners to Washington. It was, therefore, not the “cue” of the Confederate government to have an immediate attack made on Fort Sumter. Mr. Davis did not go to Charleston, but he doubtless exerted there, for a time, the influence which Mr. Tyler desired.

CHAPTER XXIII.
1861—January, February, and March.

INTERVENTION OF VIRGINIA TO PREVENT A COLLISION OF ARMS—EX-PRESIDENT TYLER’S MISSION TO THE PRESIDENT—THE PRESIDENT’S PREPARATIONS TO REINFORCE ANDERSON, IN CASE OF NECESSITY—THE MONTGOMERY CONGRESS AND THE CONFEDERATE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT—MR. LINCOLN’S JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON—THE NEGLECTS OF CONGRESS.

To a right understanding of these complicated affairs that were occurring in the months of January and February, many threads require to be taken up separately, and interwoven in the narrative. The last messenger or envoy from South Carolina, Colonel Hayne, was in Washington from the 13th of January to the 8th of February, during which period, as the reader has seen, the President’s hands were so far tied by Major Anderson’s truce, that reinforcements could not be sent to him while it lasted. But after this temporary truce began, and before it terminated, there occurred another intervention, altogether different from that of any of the Senators. This was the action of the General Assembly of Virginia, which, besides instituting the Peace Convention, took, at the same time, a step which interposed an insurmountable obstacle to the reinforcement of Fort Sumter, unless it should be attacked, or be in immediate danger of attack. There is no reason to doubt that what the State of Virginia then did was done in entire good faith, and with an honorable and beneficent purpose to preserve the peace of the country. At all events, the President was not at liberty to regard her action in any other light, nor was he disposed to do so.

On the 19th of January, ten days after the affair of the Star of the West, and six days after the arrival of Colonel Hayne in Washington, the General Assembly of Virginia, among their other proceedings, appointed ex-President Tyler a commissioner to the President of the United States, and Judge John Robertson a commissioner to the State of South Carolina and the other States which had seceded, or might thereafter secede, with instructions to procure a mutual agreement to “abstain from any and all acts calculated to produce a collision of arms between the States and the Government of the United States,” pending the proceedings of the Peace Convention. Mr. Tyler, who was also a member of the Peace Convention, arrived in Washington on the 23d of January, two weeks before the departure of Col. Hayne. On the following day, he presented the resolutions of his State to the President, at the same time assuring him that the efforts of Virginia to secure peace and a reconstruction of the basis of the Union depended for their success on her being allowed to conduct them undisturbed by any outside collision. The resolutions of Virginia requested the President, and not Congress, to enter into the proposed agreement. The President, already informed unofficially of the tenor of the resolutions, was then preparing a special message to Congress on the subject.[^[137]] What occurred at this first interview between Mr. Tyler and the President will appear from the following memorandum the original of which is in the President’s handwriting:

Thursday morning, January 24, 1861.