The part of Montgomery in this tangled episode is least understood of the three. With Washington Montgomery had no official communication. Both Lincoln and Seward refused to recognize commissioners of the Confederate government Whether Seward as an individual went behind the back of himself as an official and personally deceived the commissioners is a problem of his personal biography and his private morals that has no place in this discussion. Between Montgomery and Richmond there was intimate and cordial communication from the start. At first Montgomery appears to have taken for granted that the Secessionist party at Richmond was so powerful that there was little need for the new government to do anything but wait But a surprise was in store for it During February and March its agents reported a wide-spread desire in the South to compromise on pretty nearly any terms that would not surrender the central Southern idea of state sovereignty. Thus an illusion of that day—as of this—was exploded, namely the irresistibility of economic solidarity. Sentimental and constitutional forces were proving more powerful than economics. Thereupon Montgomery's problem was transformed. Its purpose was to build a Southern nation and it had believed hitherto that economic forces had put into its hands the necessary tools. Now it must throw them aside and get possession of others. It must evoke those sentimental and constitutional forces that so many rash statesmen have always considered negligible. Consequently, for the South no less than for the North, the issue was speedily shifted from slavery to sovereignty. Just how this was brought about we do not yet know. Whether altogether through foresight and statesmanlike deliberation, or in part at least through what might almost be called accidental influences, is still a little uncertain. The question narrows itself to this: why was Sumter fired upon precisely when it was? There are at least three possible answers.
(1) That the firing was dictated purely by military necessity. A belief that Lincoln intended to reinforce as well as to supply Sumter, that if not taken now it could never be taken, may have been the over-mastering idea in the Confederate Cabinet. The reports of the Commissioners at Washington were tinged throughout by the belief that Seward and Lincoln were both double-dealers. Beauregard, in command at Charleston, reported that pilots had come in from the sea and told him of Federal war-ships sighted off the Carolina coast. O. R. 297, 300, 301, 304, 305.
(2) A political motive which to-day is not so generally intelligible as once it was, had great weight in 1861. This was the sense of honor in politics. Those historians who brush it aside as a figment lack historical psychology. It is possible that both Governor Pickens and the Confederate Cabinet were animated first of all by the belief that the honor of South Carolina required them to withstand the attempt of what they held to be an alien power.
(3) And yet, neither of these explanations, however much either or both may have counted for in many minds, gives a convincing explanation of the agitation of Toornbs in the Cabinet council which decided to fire upon Sumter. Neither of these could well be matters of debate. Everybody had to be either for or against, and that would be an end. The Toombs of that day was a different man from the Toombs of three months earlier. Some radical change had taken place in his thought What could it have been if it was not the perception that the Virginia program had put the whole matter in a new light, that the issue had indeed been changed from slavery to sovereignty, and that to join battle on the latter issue was a far more serious matter than to join battle on the former. And if Toombs reasoned in this fearful way, it is easy to believe that the more buoyant natures in that council may well have reasoned in precisely the opposite way. Virginia had lifted the Southern cause to its highest plane. But there was danger that the Virginia compromise might prevail. If that should happen these enthusiasts for a separate Southern nationality might find all their work undone at the eleventh hour. Virginians who shared Montgomery's enthusiasms had seen this before then. That was why Roger Pryor, for example, had gone to Charleston as a volunteer missionary. In a speech to a Charleston crowd he besought them, as a way of precipitating Virginia into the lists, to strike blow. Charleston Mercury, April 11, 1861.
The only way to get any clue to these diplomatic tangles is by discarding the old notion that there were but two political ideals clashing together in America in 1861. There were three. The Virginians with their devotion to the idea of a league of nations in this country were scarcely further away from Lincoln and his conception of a Federal unit than they were from those Southerners who from one cause or another were possessed with the desire to create a separate Southern nation. The Virginia program was as deadly to one as to the other of these two forces which with the upper South made up the triangle of the day. The real event of March, 1861, was the perception both by Washington and Montgomery that the Virginia program spelled ruin for its own. By the middle of April it would be difficult to say which had the better reason to desire the defeat of that program, Washington or Montgomery.
24. Lincoln, VI, 240, 301, 302; N. R., first series, IV, 109, 235, 239; Welles, I, 16, 22-23, 25; Bancroft, II, 127, 129-130,138,139, 144; N. and H., III, Chap. XI, IV, Chap. I. Enemies of Lincoln have accused him of bad faith with regard to the relief of Fort Pickens. The facts appear to be as follows: In January, 1861, when Fort Pickens was in danger of being seized by the forces of the State of Florida, Buchanan ordered a naval expedition to proceed to its relief. Shortly afterward—January 2—Senator Mallory on behalf of Florida persuaded him to order the relief expedition not to land any troops so long as the Florida forces refrained from attacking the fort. This understanding between Buchanan and Mallory is some-times called "the Pickens truce," sometimes "the Pickens Armistice." N. and H., III, Chap. XI; N. R., first series, 1, 74; Scott, II, 624-625. The new Administration had no definite knowledge of it. Lincoln, VI, 302. Lincoln despatched a messenger to the relief expedition, which was still hovering off the Florida coast, and ordered its troops to be landed. The commander replied that he felt bound by the previous orders which had been issued in the name of the Secretary of the Navy while the new orders issued from the Department of War; he added that relieving Pickens would produce war and wished to be sure that such was the President's intention; he also informed Lincoln's messenger of the terms of Buchanan's agreement with Mallory. The messenger returned to Washington for ampler instructions. N. and H., IV, Chap. I; N. R., first series, I, 109-110, 110-111.
Two days before his arrival at Washington alarming news from Charleston brought Lincoln very nearly, if not quite, to the point of issuing sailing orders to the Sumter expedition. Lincoln, VI, 240. A day later, Welles issued such orders. N. IL, first series, I, 235; Bancroft, II, 138-139. On April sixth, the Pickens messenger returned to Washington. N. and H., IV, 7. Lincoln was now in full possession of all the facts. In his own words, "To now reinforce Fort Pickens before a crisis would be reached at Fort Sumter was impossible, rendered so by the exhaustion of provisions at the latter named fort. . . . The strongest anticipated case for using it (the Sumter expedition) was now presented, and it was resolved to send it forward." Lincoln, VI, 302. He also issued peremptory orders for the Pickens expedition to land its force, which was done April twelfth. N. R., first series, I, 110-111, 115. How he reasoned upon the question of a moral obligation devolving, or not devolving, upon himself as a consequence of the Buchanan-Mallory agreement, he did not make public. The fact of the agreement was published in the first message. But when Congress demanded information on the subject, Lincoln transmitted to it a report from Welles declining to submit the information on account of the state of the country. 10. IL, 440-441.
25. Lincoln, VI, 241.
XVI. ON TO RICHMOND.
1. May MS, I, 23.