Superior political wisdom and more thorough information, as well as a finer strategy, a quicker enthusiasm, and a more unremitting industry, must be accorded to the conspirators who now labored night and day in the interest of disunion. They discerned more clearly than their opponents the demoralization of parties at the North, the latent revolutionary discontent at the South, the influence of brilliant and combined leadership, and the social, commercial, and political conditions which might be brought into action. They recognized that they were but a minority, a faction; but they also realized that as such they had a substantial control of from six to eleven States whenever they chose to make that control effective, and that, for present uses at least, the President was, under their influence, but as clay in the hands of the potter.
Better than the Republicans from the North, or even the conservatives from the border States, they knew that in the Cotton States a widespread change of popular sentiment was then being wrought and might very soon be complete. Except upon the extreme alternative of disunion, the people of the border States were eager to espouse their quarrel, and join them in a contest for alleged political rights. Nearly half the people of the North were ready to acknowledge the justness of their complaints. The election of Lincoln was indeed a flimsy pretext for separation, but it had the merit of universal publicity, and of rankling irritation among the unthinking masses of the South. Agriculture was depressed, commerce was in panic, manufacturing populations were in want, the national treasury was empty, the army was dispersed, the navy was scattered. The national prestige was humbled, the national sentiment despondent, the national faith disturbed.
Meanwhile their intrigues had been successful beyond hope. The Government was publicly committed to the fatal doctrine of non-coercion, and was secretly pursuing the equally fatal policy of concession. Reënforeements had been withheld from Charleston, and must, from motives of consistency, be withheld from all other forts and stations. An unofficial stipulation, with the President, and a peremptory order to Anderson, secured beyond chance the safe and early secession of South Carolina, and the easy seizure of the Government property. The representatives of foreign governments were already secretly coquetting for the favor of a free port and an advantageous cotton-market. Friendly voices came to the South from the North, in private correspondence, in the public press, even in the open debates of Congress, promising that cities should go up in flames and the fair country be laid waste before a single Northern bayonet should molest them in their meditated secession.
Upon such a real or assumed state of facts the conspirators based their theory, and risked their chances of success in dismembering the republic,—and it must be admitted that they chose their opportunity with a skill and foresight which for a considerable period of time gave them immense advantages over the friends of the Union. One vital condition of success, however, they strangely overlooked, or rather, perhaps, deliberately crowded out of their problem—the chance of civil war, without foreign intervention. For the present their whole plan depended upon the assumption that they could accomplish their end by means of the single instrumentality of peaceable secession; and with this view they proceeded to put their scheme into prompt execution.
Correspondence New York "Tribune", Dec. 10, 1860.
The House Committee of Thirty-three had been organized by the selection of Thomas Corwin as its chairman, and had entered hopefully upon the task confided to it. A caucus of active conspirators was said to have been held the week previous, to intimidate the members from the Cotton States and induce them to refuse to serve on the committee, but this coercive movement only partly succeeded. The Committee of Thirty-three held a long meeting on December 12, and now, on the morning of the 13th, was once more convened for work. The informal propositions and discussions of the day previous were renewed, but resulted only in calling out views and schemes too vague on the one hand or too extreme on the other. The subject was about to be laid over to the following Saturday, when Albert Rust, of Arkansas, startled the committee with the information that the extremists were obtaining signatures to a paper to announce to the South that no further concession was expected from the North, and that any adjustment of pending difficulties had become impossible. He, therefore, offered a resolution to meet this unexpected crisis, but accepted the following substitute, offered by William McKee Dunn, of Indiana:
Resolved, That in the opinion of this Committee, the existing discontent among the Southern people and the growing hostility among them to the Federal Government are greatly to be regretted, and that whether such discontent and hostility are without just cause or not, any reasonable, proper, and constitutional remedies and effectual guarantees of their peculiar rights and interests, as recognized by the Constitution, necessary to preserve the peace of the country and the perpetuation of the Union, should be promptly and cheerfully granted.
Proceedings of the committee and card of Hon. Reuben Davis, "National Intelligencer," Dec. 14 and 15, 1860.
Gen. Scott, "Autobiography," Vol. II., p. 613.
Other amendments were voted down, and this proposition was adopted by a vote of twenty-two to eight, and thus, in good faith, a tender of reasonable concession and honorable and satisfactory compromise was made by the North to the South. But the peace-offering was a waste of patience and good-will. Caucus after caucus of the secession leaders had only grown more aggressive, and deepened and strengthened their inflexible purpose to push the country into disunion. The presence of General Scott, who after a long illness had come from New York to Washington, on December 12, to give his urgent advice to the work of counteracting secession by vigorous military preparation, did not disconcert or hinder the secession leaders. His patriotic appeal to the Secretary of War on the 13th naturally fell without effect upon the ears of one of their active confederates. Neither the temporizing concession of the President nor the conciliatory and half-apologetic resolution of the Committee of Thirty-three for one instant changed or affected the determination to destroy the Government and dissolve the Union.