Slavery and four years of war

by Joseph Warren Keifer

How was the news of the failure to reinforce Sumter, and of its being fired on and taken possession of by a rebellious people, received in the North? The evacuation of Fort Sumter was known in Washington and throughout the country almost as soon as at Charleston. Hostilities could no longer be averted, save by the ignominious surrender of all the blood-bought rights of the founders of the Republic.

It must not be assumed that the President of the United States had not already calculated on the probabilities of war. The portentous clouds had been long gathering, and the certain signs of the impending battle-storm had been discerned by Lincoln and his advisers. He had prepared, as best he could under the circumstances, to meet it. The long suspense was now broken. This was some relief. There were to be no more temporizing, no more compromises, no more offers of concession to slavery or to disunionists. The doctrine of the assumed right of a State, at will, and for any real or pretended grievance, to secede from and to dissolve its relation with the Union of the States, and to absolve itself from all its constitutional relations and obligations, was now about to be tried before a tribunal that would execute its inexorable decree with a power from which there is no appeal. Mercy is not an attribute of war, either in its methods or decisions. The latter must stand in the end as against the conquered. From war there is no appeal but to war. Time and enlightenment may modify or alter the mandates of war, but in this age of civilization and knowledge, neither nations nor peoples move backward. Ground gained for freedom or humanity, in politics, science, literature, or religion, is held, and from this fresh advances may be made. Needless cruelty may be averted in the conduct of war, but mercy is not an element in the science of destroying life and shedding blood on the battle-field.

Sunday, April 14th (though bearing date the 15th), the same day Sumter was evacuated, President Lincoln issued his proclamation, reciting that the laws of the United States had been and then were opposed and their execution obstructed in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by ordinary judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the marshals by law; he called for seventy-five thousand of the militia of the several States of the Union; appealed to all loyal citizens to maintain the honor, integrity, and existence of the National Union, and "the perpetuity of popular government, and to redress wrongs already long enough endured." "The first service," the proclamation recites, "assigned to the forces called forth will probably be to repossess the forts, places, and property which have been seized from the Union."

It commanded the persons composing the combinations referred to, "to disperse and retire peaceably to their respective abodes within twenty days."

It called Congress to convene Thursday, July 4, 1861, in extraordinary session, "to consider and determine such measures as, in their wisdom, the public safety and interest may seem to demand."

This proclamation was the first announcement by President Lincoln of a deliberate purpose to preserve the integrity of the Republic by a resort to arms. In his recent Inaugural Address he had, almost pathetically, pleaded for peace—for friendship; and there is no doubting that his sincere desire was to avoid bloodshed. He then had no thought of attacking slavery, but rather to protect and grant it more safeguards in the States where it existed. Later, on many occasions, when the war had done much to inflame public sentiment in the North against the South, he publicly declared he would save the "Union as it was." His most pronounced utterance on this point was:

"I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored, the nearer the Union will be 'the Union as it was.' If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that."(22)

But Abraham Lincoln was not understood in 1861, nor even later during the war, and not fully during life, by either his enemies or his personal or party friends. The South, in its leadership, was implacable in the spirit of its hostility, but the masses, even there, in time came to understand his true purposes and sincere character.

Two days after the call for seventy-five thousand troops, President Davis responded to it by proclaiming to the South that President Lincoln had announced the intention of "invading the Confederacy with an armed force for the purpose of capturing its fortresses, subverting its independence, and subjecting the free people thereof to a foreign power." In the same proclamation he invited persons to take service in private armed vessels on the high seas, tendering to such persons as would accept them commissions or letters of marque and reprisal.

At this time a military spirit had been aroused throughout the seceded States, and a large number of well-equipped Southern troops were already in the field, chiefly at Charleston and Pensacola—in all (including about 16,000 on their way to Virginia) about 35,000. The field, staff, and general officers in charge of these troops were mainly graduates of West Point or other military schools; even the captains of companies were many of them educated in the institutions referred to. It is not to be denied that a higher military spirit existed in the South than in the North prior to the war. The young men from plantations were more generally unemployed at active labor, and hence had more time to cultivate a martial spirit than the hard-working young men of the North.