Two days preceding the attack on Sumter, I met Senator Douglas in front of the Treasury Building. He was in a carriage with Mrs. Douglas, driving rapidly up the street. When he saw me he checked his driver, jumped from the carriage, and came to me on the sidewalk, and in a very earnest and emphatic manner said the rebels were determined on war and were about to make an assault on Sumter. He thought immediate and decisive measures should be taken; considered it a mistake that there had not already been more energetic action; said the dilatory proceedings of the Government would bring on a terrible civil war; that the whole South was united and in earnest. Although he had differed with the Administration on important questions and would never be in accord with some of its members on measures and principles that were fundamental, yet he had no fellowship with traitors or disunionists. He was for the Union and would stand by the Administration and all others in its defense, regardless of party. [Welles proposed that they should step into the State Department and consult with Seward.] The look of mingled astonishment and incredulity which came over him I can never forget. "Then you," he said, "have faith in Seward! Have you made yourself acquainted with what has been going on here all winter? Seward has had an understanding with these men. If he has influence with them, why don't he use it?"
Douglas considered it a waste of time and effort to talk to Seward, considered him a dead weight and drag on the Administration; said that Lincoln was honest and meant to do right, but was benumbed by Seward; but finally yielded to Welles's desire that they should go into Seward's office, in front of which they were standing. They went in and Douglas told Seward what he had told Welles, that the rebels were determined on war and were about to make an assault on Sumter, and that the Administration ought not to delay another minute, but should make instant preparations for war. All the reply they got from Seward was that there were many rash and reckless men at Charleston and that if they were determined to assault Sumter he did not know how they were to be prevented from doing so.
Seward's aims were patriotic but futile. He wished to save the Union without bloodshed, but the steps which he took were almost suicidal. What the country then needed was a jettison of compromises, and a resolution of doubts. Providence supplied these. The bombardment of Sumter accomplished the object as nothing else could have done. Nothing could have been contrived so sure to awaken the volcanic forces that ended in the destruction of slavery as the spectacle in Charleston Harbor.
FOOTNOTES:
[51] Diary of Gideon Welles, i, 32.
[52] Letters and Diaries of John Hay, 1, 47.
[53] Nicolay and Hay, iii, 428. Probably the entry in Hay's Diary had been forgotten when the History was written, twenty-five years later.