Abraham Lincoln, Volume I

by Jr. John T. Morse

strength." In December the mayor of Philadelphia, though that city had polled a heavy Republican majority, told a mass meeting in Independence Square that denunciations of slavery were inconsistent with national brotherhood, and "must be frowned down by a just and law-abiding people." The Bell and Everett men, generally, desired peace at any price. The business men of the North, alarmed at the prospect of disorder, became loudly solicitous for concession, compromise, even surrender.[^[118]] In Democratic meetings a threatening tone was adopted. One proposal was to reconstruct the Union, leaving out the New England States. So late even as January 21, 1861, before an immense and noteworthy gathering in New York, an orator ventured to say: "If a revolution of force is to begin, it shall be inaugurated at home;" and the words were cheered. The distinguished Chancellor Walworth said that it would be "as brutal to send men to butcher our own brothers of the Southern States as it would be to massacre them in the Northern States." When DeWitt Clinton's son, George, spoke of secession as "rebellion," the multitude hailed the word with cries of dissent. Even at Faneuil Hall, in Boston, "a very large and respectable meeting" was emphatically in favor of compromise. It was impossible

to measure accurately the extent and force of all this demoralization; but the symptoms were that vast numbers were infected with such sentiments, and that they would have been worse than useless as backers of a vigorous policy on the part of the government.

With the North wavering and ready to retreat, and the South aggressive and confident, it was exacting to expect Mr. Buchanan to stand up for a fight. Why should he, with his old-time Democratic principles, now by a firm, defiant attitude precipitate a crisis, possibly a civil war, when Horace Greeley and Wendell Phillips were conspicuously running away from the consequences of their own teachings, and were loudly crying "Peace! peace!" after they themselves had long been doing all in their power to bring the North up to the fighting point? When these leaders faced to the rear, it was hard to say who could be counted upon to fill the front rank. In truth, it was a situation which might have discouraged a more combative patriot than Buchanan. Meanwhile, while the Northerners talked chiefly of yielding, the hot and florid rhetoric of the Southern orators, often laden with contemptuous insult, smote with disturbing menace upon the ears even of the most courageous Unionists. It was said at the South and feared at the North that secession had a "Spartan band in every Northern State," and that blood would flow in Northern cities at least as soon and as freely as on the Southern plantations,

if forcible coercion should be attempted. Was it possible to be sure that this was all rodomontade? To many good citizens there seemed some reason to think that the best hope for avoiding the fulfillment at the North of these sanguinary threats might lie in the probability that the anti-slavery agitators would not stand up to encounter a genuinely mortal peril.

When the Star of the West retired, a little ignominiously, from her task of reinforcing Fort Sumter, Senator Wigfall jeered insolently. "Your flag has been insulted," he said; "redress it if you dare! You have submitted to it for two months, and you will submit forever.... We have dissolved the Union; mend it if you can; cement it with blood; try the experiment!" Mr. Chestnut of South Carolina wished to "unfurl the Palmetto flag, fling it to the breeze ... and ring the clarion notes of defiance in the ears of an insolent foe." Such bombastic but confident language, of which a great quantity was uttered in this winter of 1860-61, may exasperate or intimidate according to the present temper of the opponent whose ear it assaults; for a while the North was more in condition to be awestruck than to be angered. Her spokesmen failed to answer back, and left her to listen not without anxiety to fierce predictions that Southern flags would soon be floating over the dome of the Capitol and even over Faneuil Hall, if she should be so imprudent as to test Southern valor and Southern resources.

Matters looked even worse for the Union cause in Congress than in the country. Occasionally some irritated Northern Republican shot out words of spirit; but the prevalent desire was for conciliation, compromise, and concession, while some actually adopted secession doctrines. For example, Daniel E. Sickles, in the House, threatened that the secession of the Southern States should be followed by that of New York city; and in fact the scheme had been recommended by the Democratic mayor, Fernando Wood, in a message to the Common Council of the city on January 6; and General Dix conceived it to be a possibility. In the Senate Simon Cameron declared himself desirous to preserve the Union "by any sacrifice of feeling, and I may say of principle." A sacrifice of political principle by Cameron was not, perhaps, a serious matter; but he intended the phrase to be emphatic, and he was a leading Republican politician, had been a candidate for the presidential nomination, and was dictator in Pennsylvania. Even Seward, in the better days of the middle of January, felt that he could "afford to meet prejudice with conciliation, exaction with concession which surrenders no principle, and violence with the right hand of peace;" and he was "willing, after the excitement of rebellion and secession should have passed away, to call a convention for amending the Constitution."

This message of Buchanan marked the lowest point to which the temperature of his patriotism

fell. Soon afterward, stimulated by heat applied from outside, it began to rise. The first intimation which impressed upon his anxious mind that he was being too acquiescent towards the South came from General Cass. That steadfast Democrat, of the old Jacksonian school, like many of his party at the North, was fully as good a patriot and Union man as most of the Republicans were approving themselves to be during these winter months of vacillation, alarm, and compromise. In November he was strenuously in favor of forcibly coercing a seceding State, but later assented to the tenor of Mr. Buchanan's message. The frame of mind which induced this assent, however, was transitory; for immediately he began to insist upon the reinforcement of the garrisons of the Southern forts, and on December 13 he resigned because the President refused to accede to his views. A few days earlier Howell Cobb had had the grace to resign from the Treasury, which he left entirely empty. In the reorganization Philip F. Thomas of Maryland, a Secessionist also, succeeded Cobb; Judge Black was moved into the State Department; and Edwin M. Stanton of Pennsylvania followed Black as attorney-general. Mr. Floyd, than whom no Secessionist has left a name in worse odor at the North, had at first advised against any "rash movement" in the way of secession, on the ground that Mr. Lincoln's administration would "fail, and be regarded as impotent for good or evil, within four months after his inauguration."

None the less he had long been using his official position in the War Department to send arms into the Southern States, and to make all possible arrangements for putting them in an advantageous position for hostilities. Fortunately about this time the famous defalcation in the Indian Department, in which he was guiltily involved, destroyed his credit with the President, and at the same time he quarreled with his associates concerning Anderson's removal to Fort Sumter. On December 29 he resigned, and the duties of his place were laid for a while upon Judge Holt, the postmaster-general.

On Sunday morning, December 30, there was what has been properly called a cabinet crisis. The South Carolina commissioners, just arrived in Washington, were demanding recognition, and to treat with the government as if they were representatives of a foreign power. The President declined to receive them in a diplomatic character, but offered to act as go-between betwixt them and Congress. The President's advisers, however, were in a far less amiable frame of mind, for their blood had been stirred wholesomely by the secession of South Carolina and the presence of these emissaries with their insolent demands. Mr. Black, now at the head of the State Department, had gone through much the same phases of feeling as General Cass. In November he had been "emphatic in his advocacy of coercion," but afterward had approved the President's message and even declared forcible