The Republicans in caucus appointed a committee to express to him their want of confidence in Harvey, Minister to Portugal. Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward informed the committee that they were aware of the worst dispatch to Governor Pickens before he left the country, but not before he received the appointment, and they did not think from their conversation with Harvey that he had any criminal intent, and requested the committee to report the facts to the caucus, Mr. Lincoln saying that he would like to know whether Senators were as dissatisfied when they came to know all the facts. The caucus will meet to-morrow and I do not believe will be satisfied with the explanation.
The inside history of this telegram was made public long afterward. Shortly before Seward took office as Secretary of State there came to Washington City three commissioners from Montgomery, Alabama, whose purpose was to negotiate terms of peaceful separation of the Confederate States of America from the United States, or to report to their own Government the refusal of the latter to enter into such negotiation. These men were Martin J. Crawford, John Forsyth, and A. B. Roman. They arrived in Washington on the 27th of February, four days after Lincoln's arrival and one week before his inauguration. They did not make their errand known until after the inauguration. They then communicated with Seward, by an intermediary, the nature of their mission, and the latter replied verbally that it was the intention of the new Administration to settle the dispute in an amicable manner. On the 15th of March, Seward assured the Confederate envoys that Sumter would be evacuated before a letter from them could reach Montgomery—that is, within five days. The negotiations were protracted till a decision had been reached, contrary to Seward's desires and promises, to send a fleet with provisions to relieve the garrison at Fort Sumter. Then Seward gave this fact to Harvey, knowing that he would transmit it to Governor Pickens and that the probable effect would be to defeat the scheme of relieving the garrison. This he evidently desired. He had already secretly detached the steamer Powhatan, an indispensable part of the Sumter fleet, and sent it on a useless expedition to Pensacola Harbor.
Gideon Welles's account of the Harvey affair is as follows:
Soon after President Lincoln had formed the resolution to attempt the relief of Sumter, and whilst it was yet a secret, a young man connected with the telegraph office in Washington, with whom I was acquainted, a native of the same town with myself, brought to me successively two telegrams conveying to the rebel authorities information of the purposes and decisions of the Administration. One of these telegrams was from Mr. Harvey, a newspaper correspondent, who was soon after, and with a full knowledge of his having communicated to the rebels the movements of the Government, appointed Minister to Lisbon. I had, on receiving these copies, handed them to the President. Mr. Blair, who had also obtained a copy of one, perhaps both, of these telegrams from another source, likewise informed him of the treachery. The subject was once or twice alluded to in Cabinet without eliciting any action, and when the nomination of Mr. Harvey to the Portuguese Mission was announced—a nomination made without the knowledge of any member of the Cabinet but the Secretary of State and made at his special request—there was general disapprobation except by the President (who avoided the expression of any opinion) and by Mr. Seward. The latter defended and justified the selection, which he admitted was recommended by himself, but the President was silent in regard to it.[51]
Trumbull says in his letter that Lincoln and Seward told the committee that they did not know that Harvey had sent the dispatch before he received the appointment. Welles says that both of them knew it beforehand, and that it was a matter of Cabinet discussion in which Lincoln, however, took no part. How are we to explain this contradiction? It was impossible for Lincoln to utter an untruth, but if we may credit Gideon Welles, passim, it was not impossible for Seward to do so and for Lincoln to remain silent while he did so, as he remained silent while the Cabinet were discussing the appointment of Harvey. If Seward, at the meeting of which Trumbull wrote, in this private letter to his wife, took the lead in the conversation, as was his habit, and said that there was no knowledge of Harvey's telegram to Governor Pickens until after Harvey had been appointed as minister, and Lincoln said nothing to the contrary, he would naturally have assumed that Seward spoke for both.
There is reason to believe that Seward had previously prevailed upon the President to agree to surrender Fort Sumter, as a means of preventing the secession of Virginia. Evidence of this fact is supplied by the following entry in the diary of John Hay, under date October 22, 1861:
At Seward's to-night the President talked about Secession, Compromise, and other such. He spoke of a Committee of Southern pseudo-unionists coming to him before inauguration for guarantees, etc. He promised to evacuate Sumter if they would break up their Convention without any row, or nonsense. They demurred. Subsequently he renewed proposition to Summers, but without any result. The President was most anxious to prevent bloodshed.[52]
Hay here speaks of two offers made by Lincoln to evacuate Sumter, one before his inauguration and one after. Both were made on condition that a certain convention should be adjourned. This was the convention of Virginia, which had been called to consider the question of secession. It had met in Richmond on the 18th of February, while Lincoln was en route for Washington. As Lincoln arrived in Washington on the 23d of February, the first offer must have been made in the interval between that day and the 4th of March.
The History of Nicolay and Hay does not mention the first offer. It speaks of the second one as a matter about which the facts are in dispute, the disputants being John Minor Botts and J. B. Baldwin. Botts was an ex-member of Congress from Virginia and a strong Union man. Baldwin was a member of the Virginia Convention and a Union man. He had come to Washington in response to an invitation which Lincoln had sent, on or about the 20th of March, to George W. Summers, who was likewise a member of the convention. Summers was not able to come at the time when the invitation reached him, and he deputed Baldwin to go in his place.
After the war ended, Botts wrote a book entitled "The Great Rebellion," in which he gave the following account of an interview he had had with President Lincoln on Sunday, April 7, 1861 (two days after Baldwin had had his interview):