[65]. It will be seen that I do not regard the election of Mr. Lincoln as a defiance of the South, nor do I consider that the threats of secession, so far as such threats were uttered in the South, had much to do with the success of the Republican candidate. Multitudes of men voted for that candidate in no spirit of defiance towards the South, and his popular vote would have been much smaller than it was, if it had been believed at the North that his election would be followed by an attempted disruption of the Union.
[66]. See post, for the history of Secretary Floyd’s resignation.
[67]. Letter from Mr. Buchanan to the Editors of the National Intelligencer, October 28, 1862.—If the reader chooses to consult the controversy of 1862 between General Scott and Mr. Buchanan, he will find there the sources from which General Scott drew his conclusions. One of them was information given to him while the controversy was going on, in a telegram from Washington, sent by a person whose name he did not disclose. A reference to Mr. Buchanan’s last letter in the controversy will show how he disposed of this “nameless telegram.” The period when the alleged improper transfers of arms into the Southern States were said to have occurred was, as Mr. Buchanan states, long before the nomination of Mr. Lincoln, and nearly a year before his election. General Scott’s reply to this shows that in 1862 he had convinced himself that the revolt of the Southern States had been planned for a long time before the nomination of Mr. Lincoln, and that it was to be carried out in the event of the election of any Northern man to the Presidency. It had become the fashion in 1862, in certain quarters, to believe, or to profess to believe, in this long-standing plot. There are several conclusive answers to the suggestion: 1st. It is not true, as a matter of fact, that at any time before the nomination of Mr. Lincoln, there were any transfers of arms to the South which ought to have led even to the suspicion of the existence of such a plot. 2d. That it is not true, as a matter of fact, that at any time after Mr. Lincoln’s nomination, and before his election, there were any transfers of arms whatever from the Northern arsenals of the United States into the Southern States. 3d. That after Mr. Lincoln’s election, viz., in December, 1860, a transfer of ordnance from Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania, to Mississippi and Texas, which had been ordered by Secretary Floyd a few days before he left office, was immediately countermanded by his successor, Mr. Holt, by order of the President, and the guns remained at Pittsburgh. 4th. That the entire political history of the country, prior to the nomination of Mr. Lincoln, and prior to the Democratic Convention at Charleston, does not afford a rational ground of belief that any considerable section of the Southern people, or any of their prominent political leaders, were looking forward to a state of parties which would be likely to result in the election of any Northern man, under circumstances that would produce a conviction among the people of the Southern States that it would be unsafe for them to remain in the Union. Even after the nomination of Mr. Lincoln, and after the division of the Democratic party into two factions, resulting in the nomination of two Democratic candidates (Breckinridge and Douglas), with a fourth candidate in the field (Bell), nominated by the “Old Line Whigs,” it was not so morally certain that the Republican candidate would be elected, as to give rise, before the election, to serious plots or preparations for dissolving the Union. Mr. Lincoln obtained but a majority of fifty-seven electoral votes over all his competitors. It was the sectional character of his 180 electoral votes, out of 303,—the whole 180 being drawn from the free States—and the sectional character of the “platform” on which he was nominated and elected, and not the naked fact that he was a Northern man, that the secessionists of the cotton States were able to use as the lever by which to carry their States out of the Union. Undoubtedly the Southern States committed the great folly of refusing to trust in the conservative elements of the North to redress any grievances of which the people of the South could justly complain. But I know of no tangible proofs that before the nomination of Mr. Lincoln there was any Southern plot to break up the Union in the event of the election of any Northern man. The reader must follow the precipitation of secession through the events occurring after the election, before he can reach a sound conclusion as to the causes and methods by which it was brought about. He will find reason to conclude, if he studies the votes in the seceding conventions of the cotton States prior to the attack on Fort Sumter, that even in that region there was a Union party which could not have been overborne and trampled down, by any other means than by appeals to unfounded fears, which the secession leaders professed to draw from the peculiar circumstances of the election. He will find reason to ask himself why it was, in these secession conventions, rapidly accomplished between December, 1860, and February, 1861, the Unionists were at last so few, and he will find the most important answer to this inquiry in the fact that it was because the advocates of secession, from the circumstances of the election, succeeded in producing the conviction that the whole North was alienated in feeling from the South, and was determined to trample upon Southern rights. It is a melancholy story of perversion, misrepresentation and mistake, operating upon a sensitive and excited people. But it does not justify the belief that the secession of those States was the accomplishment of a previous and long-standing plot to destroy the Union; nor, if such a plot ever existed, is there any reason to believe that any member of Mr. Buchanan’s cabinet was a party to it. General Scott, in 1862, adopted and gave currency to charges which had no foundation in fact, and which were originated for the purpose of making Mr. Buchanan odious to the country.
The General, however, went further than the adoption of charges originated by others. He claimed credit for himself for the discovery and prevention of the “robbery” of the Pittsburgh ordnance. In his letter of November 8, 1862, he said: “Accidentally learning, early in March (!), that, under this posthumous order, the shipment of these guns had commenced, I communicated the fact to Secretary Holt, acting for Secretary Cameron, just in time to defeat the robbery.” This was a tissue of absurd misstatements. Copies of the official papers relating to this order are before me. The order was given by the Ordnance Office on the 22d of December, 1860. The shipment of the guns was never commenced. General Scott had nothing to do with the countermand of the order. On the 25th of December, certain citizens of Pittsburgh telegraphed to the President that great excitement had been caused there by this order, and advising that it be immediately revoked. Floyd was Secretary of War when the order was given for the removal of the guns, but at that time he was not a secessionist, or aiding the secessionists. He tendered his resignation of the office on the 29th of December, under circumstances which will be fully related hereafter. It was promptly accepted, and Mr. Holt was appointed Secretary of War ad interim. By the President’s direction, Mr. Holt countermanded the order, and the guns remained at Pittsburgh. Judge Black, at the President’s request, investigated the whole affair, and made the following brief report to the President on the 27th: “Mr. President: The enclosed are the two orders of the War Department. I suppose the forts happened to be in that state of progress which made those guns necessary just at this time, and they were directed to be sent without any motive beyond what would have caused the same act at any other time.
Ever yours,
J. S. Black”[Black”].
[68]. Mr. Buchanan’s Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1866. This book will hereafter be referred to as “Mr. Buchanan’s Defence.” The history and reasons for this publication will be found in a future chapter.
[69]. It is worthy of special remark that General Scott, in his autobiography recently published, vol. ii, p. 609, entirely omits to copy this part of his views on which we have been commenting; so also his supplementary views of the next day, though together they constitute but one whole. He merely copies that which relates to garrisoning the Southern forts.
[70]. 3 Senate Documents, 1857-'58, p. 48.
[71]. Senate Executive Documents, 1858-'59, vol. ii., part 3, p. 761.