[101]. When this extraordinary blunder was brought to the General’s attention, in his controversy with Mr. Buchanan, in 1862, he said that the only error he had made was in giving March instead of January as the time when the order was countermanded, and that this error was immaterial! He still insisted that he gave the information to Mr. Holt that the shipment had commenced, and that he stopped it. It is certainly most remarkable that he did not see that time was of the essence of his charge against the Buchanan administration, for his charge imputed to that administration a delay from January to March in countermanding the order, and claimed for himself the whole merit of the discovery and the countermand. He would better have consulted his own dignity and character if he had frankly retracted the whole statement. But probably the story of the Pittsburgh ordnance, as he put it, has been believed by thousands, to the prejudice of President Buchanan. (See the letters of General Scott, published in the National Intelligencer.)
[102]. Buchanan’s Defence, chapter vii.
[103]. All the remaining territory south of the line of 36° 30´ was an Indian reservation, secured to certain tribes by solemn treaties.
[104]. Mr. Greeley’s utterances must be cited, that I may not be supposed to have in any way misrepresented him. But three days after Mr. Lincoln’s election, the New York Tribune announced such sentiments as the following: “If the cotton States shall become satisfied 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...... We must ever resist the right of any State to remain in the Union and nullify or defy the laws thereof. To withdraw from the Union is quite another matter; and 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 another by bayonets.”
And again on the 17th December, three days before the secession of South Carolina: “If it [the Declaration of Independence] justified the secession from the British Empire of three millions of colonists in 1776, we do not see why it would not justify the secession of five millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861. If we are mistaken on this point, why does not some one attempt to show wherein and why? For our part, while we deny the right of slaveholders to hold slaves against the will of the latter, we cannot see how twenty millions of people can rightfully hold ten, or even five, in a detested Union with them by military force. ...... If seven or eight contiguous States shall present themselves authentically at Washington, saying, ‘We hate the Federal Union; we have withdrawn from it; we give you the choice between acquiescing in our secession and arranging amicably all incidental questions on the one hand, and attempting to subdue us on the other,’ we would not stand up for coercion, for subjugation, for we do not think it would be just. We hold the right of self-government, even when invoked in behalf of those who deny it to others. So much for the question of principle.”
In this course the Tribune persisted from the date of Mr. Lincoln’s election until after his inauguration, employing such remarks as the following: “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.”
Even after the cotton States had formed their confederacy, and adopted a provisional constitution at Montgomery, on the 23d February, 1861, it gave them encouragement to proceed in the following language: “We have repeatedly said, and we once more insist, that the great principle embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration of American Independence, that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, is sound and just; and that if the slave States, the cotton States or the Gulf States only, choose to form an independent nation, THEY HAVE A CLEAR MORAL RIGHT TO DO SO. Whenever it shall be clear that the great body of Southern people have become conclusively alienated from the Union, and anxious to escape from it, WE WILL DO OUR BEST TO FORWARD THEIR VIEWS.”
[105]. Messrs. McQueen, Miles, Bonham, Boyce, and Keitt, members of the House of Representatives from South Carolina, on the 8th of December, 1860.
[106]. See the Index to the Journal of the Senate for this session, pp. 494, 495, 496. One of these memorials, coming from the City Councils of Boston, had the signatures also of over 22,000 citizens, of all shades of political character. Senate Journal of 1860-’61, p. 218.
[107]. The Clark amendment, which smothered Mr. Crittenden’s resolution, prevailed, because six secession Senators refused to vote against it, preferring to play into the hands of the Republicans. They were Messrs. Benjamin and Slidell, of Louisiana; Iverson, of Georgia; Hemphill and Wigfall, of Texas; and Johnson, of Arkansas. Had they voted with the Senators from the border States and the other Democratic members, the Clark amendment would have been defeated, and the Senate would on that day, before the secession of any State excepting South Carolina, have been brought to a direct vote on Mr. Crittenden’s resolution.