Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 / From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860

by James Gillespie Blaine

The effect of Major Anderson's surrender of Sumter and of the President's call for troops proved prejudicial to the Union sentiment in the slave States which had not yet seceded. It would be more correct, perhaps, to say that Mr. Lincoln's Proclamation was a test of loyalty which revealed the actual character of public sentiment in those States, till then not known in the North. Mr. Lincoln had done every thing in his power to conciliate them, and to hold them fast in their loyalty to the Union. But the sympathy with the South, engendered by the common danger to the institution of Slavery, was too powerful to be resisted. North Carolina, which had always been moderate, conservative, and Union-loving, threw her fortunes with the Confederacy. Tennessee, distracted by the unforeseen defection of such staunch Union men as John Bell and Baillie Peyton,* went Southward with the general current. Virginia could not be restrained, although she was warned and ought to have seen, that if she joined the Rebellion she would inevitably become the battle-ground, and would consign her territory to devastation and her property to destruction. The Virginia convention which was in session before the firing on Fort Sumter, and which was animated by a strong friendship for the Union, was carried in to the vortex of secession by the surrounding excitement. By a vote of 88 to 55 the State determined to join the Confederacy. The wonder is that in the prevailing excitement and arrogant dictation, there could have been found fifty-five men to resist so powerful a tide of public opinion. The minority was strong enough, however, to command the submission of the ordinance to a vote of the people, —a submission which was in form and not in substance, for in reality no freedom of opinion was conceded.

The ordinance which was passed on the 17th of April, three days after the fall of Sumter, declared that "it should take effect when ratified by a majority of the votes of the people of the State, cast at a poll to be taken thereon on the fourth Thursday in May." The Convention did not submit its work to popular review and decision in a fair and honorable way. Eight days after the act of submission, the Convention passed another ordinance, by which Virginia agreed "to adopt and ratify the Constitution of the Provisional Government of the Confederate States." They provided that this second ordinance should have no effect if the first should be rejected by the people. It is not difficult to see that the action was taken in order to render the rejection of the first ordinance impossible. Under the second ordinance, the Convention at once entered into a formal alliance, offensive and defensive, with the Confederate States. Their Vice-President, Alexander H. Stephens, appeared in Richmond as commissioner of his government, and the Convention appointed Ex- President John Tyler, William Ballard Preston, James P. Holcombe, and other leading citizens, as commissioners for Virginia. These joint commissioners made a formal compact between Virginia and the Confederate States on the 25th of April, the day after the Convention had adopted the Confederate Constitution. By this compact, Virginia, "looking to a speedy union with the Confederate States," placed "the whole military force of the Commonwealth under the control and direction of the Confederate States, upon the same basis and footing as if said Commonwealth were now a member of said Confederacy."

Without waiting for the decision of the people on the question of secession, the national flag was removed from the public buildings, and the Confederate flag was raised. All the property of the General Government was seized and, by an article in the agreement with the Confederate commissioner, was in due time to be turned over to the Montgomery government. In short, the State Government of Virginia proceeded in its mad career of hostility to the Union, without the slightest regard to the future decision of the people on the important issue which in form had been submitted to them. They evidently intended to make a rejection of the Disunion ordinance impossible. For their own honor, the man who contrived and guided these proceedings would better have adopted the bold precedent of those States which refused altogether to submit the ordinance to popular vote.

It ought not to escape notice that General Robert E. Lee is not entitled to the defense so often made for him, that in joining the Disunion movement he followed the voice of his State. General Lee resigned his commission in the army of the Union and assumed command of Confederate troops, long before Virginia had voted upon the ordinance of secession. He gave the influence of his eminent name to the schemes of those who, by every agency, fas aut nefas, were determined to hurl Virginia into secession. The very fact that General Lee had assumed command of the troops in Virginia was a powerful incentive with many to vote against the Union. Jefferson Davis had anticipated and measured the full force of the effect which would be produced upon Virginians by General Lee's identification with the Confederate cause. Whether or not there be ground for making General Lee the subject of exceptional censure, there is surely none for excusing him as one who reluctantly obeyed the voice of his State. If he had remained in the national army until the people of Virginia voted on the ordinance of secession, the strength of the Union cause in his State would have been greater. If he had chosen, as a citizen of Virginia, to stand by the Union until his State decided against him, secession might have been defeated. It is fair that his action should be clearly understood, and that his name should bear the just responsibility.

THE SECESSION OF VIRGINIA.

All pretense of a fair submission of the question to popular vote was finally abandoned, and the abandonment practically proclaimed in a letter of Senator James M. Mason, which was published on the 16th of May, some ten days in advance of the election. "If it be asked," wrote Mr. Mason, "what those shall do who cannot in conscience vote to separate Virginia from the United States, the answer is simple and plain. Honor and duty alike require that they should not vote on the question, and if they retain such opinions they must leave the State." Mr. Mason thus accurately defined what the South understood by the submission of secession ordinances to popular vote. It meant that a man might vote for an ordinance but not against it; if he desired to vote against it, and persisted in the desire, he should leave the State. It is rather a matter of surprise that of 161,000 votes cast in Virginia on the question, 32,000 were registered against secession. These friends of the Government were, it is true, in large part from the western section of the State where slaves were few and the loyal sentiment was strong. It is an interesting fact that along the mountain range through Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and even as far South as Georgia, the inhabitants generally sympathized with the Union. Though often forced to aid the Rebellion, they were at heart loyal to the government of their fathers, and on many important occasions rendered the most valuable service to the National cause. The devotion of large numbers in East Tennessee to the Federal Government seriously embarrassed the new Confederacy. The remaining slave States, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, gave trouble to the administration, but did not succeed in separating themselves from the Union. Large numbers of their people joined the Southern army, but the political power of those States was wielded in favor of the loyal cause. They desired to enact the part of neutrals; but the National Government, from the first, took strong ground against a policy so dishonorable in the States, so injurious to the Union.

The responses made by the Southern governors to the President's call for troops are so characteristic, and afford so true a picture of the times, as to merit notice. Nearly every one returned a scornful and defiant message. Governor Magoffin replied that Kentucky "would furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister States of the South." Governor Letcher declared that "the militia of Virginia would not be furnished to the powers at Washington for any such use or purpose as they had in view, which was the subjugation of the Southern States," and that "the civil war which the powers at Washington had chosen to inaugurate would be met by the South in a spirit as determined." Governor Jackson considered "the call to be illegal, unconstitutional, and revolutionary; its objects to be inhuman and diabolical," and it "would not be complied with by Missouri." Governor Harris said that Tennessee "would not furnish a single man for coercion, but would raise fifty thousand men for the defense of her rights, and those of her Southern brethren." Governor Ellis of North Carolina answered that he "could be no party to the wicked violation of the laws of the country and to the war upon the liberties of a free people." Governor Rector declared that the President's call for troops was only "adding insult to injury, and that the people of Arkansas would defend, to the last extremity, their honor and their property against Northern mendacity and usurpation." Governor Hicks for prudential reasons excused Maryland at the time from responding to the President's call, and when a month afterwards he notified the War Department of his readiness to comply with the request of the Government, he was informed that three-months' men were not needed, and that arrangements had been made for accepting three-years' volunteers from Maryland. Governor Burton of Delaware replied that "there was no organized militia in the State, and no law authorizing such organization." Indisposition to respond to the President was therefore in different degrees manifest in every part of the Union where Slavery had wrought its demoralizing influence. Mr. Lincoln was disappointed at this proof of the sectional character of the contest, and he realized that if American nationality was to be preserved, it must look for help to the abounding resources and the patriotic loyalty of the free States.

THE GOVERNORS OF LOYAL STATES.

It fortunately happened that the governors of the free States were devoted to the Union in as great degree as the Southern governors were devoted to the Confederacy. It may well be doubted whether at any time in history of the government there had been so large a number of able men occupying the gubernatorial chairs of the Northern States. They were not only eminent in an intellectual point of view, but they had a special fitness for the arduous and patriotic duties so unexpectedly devolved upon them. They became popularly known as the "War Governors," and they exercised a beneficent and decisive influence upon the fortunes of the Union.

The Governor of Massachusetts, John A. Andrew, added fervor to the patriotism of the whole people, and nobly led his State in her generous outpouring of aid and comfort to the loyal cause. The vigor which Massachusetts had imparted to the Revolution against the Crown was surpassed by the ardor with which she now threw herself into the contest for the Union. She had been often reproached for urging forward the anti-slavery agitation, which was the excuse of the South for rebelling against the National authority. A somewhat similar accusation had been lodged against her by the Royal Governors and by the Tories a century before. But the men who found this fault with Massachusetts—a fault wholly on virtue's side—will not deny that when the hour of trial came, when convictions of conscience were to be maintained by the strength of the right arm, and faith in principle was to be attested by a costly sacrifice of blood, her sons added imperishable honor to their ancestral record of heroism in the cause of human Liberty and Constitutional Government.