In reply to your inquiry, we have hopes that the rights of the South, and of every State and section, may be protected within the Union. Don’t give up the ship. Don’t despair of the Republic.
J. J. CRITTENDEN.
S. A. DOUGLAS.
Congress, amid excitement which the above dispatches indicate, and which was general, remained for several weeks comparatively inactive. Buchanan sent messages, but his suggestions were distrusted by the Republicans, who stood firm in the conviction that when Lincoln took his seat, and the new Congress came in, they could pass measures calculated to restore the property of and protect the integrity of the Union. None of them believed in the right of secession; all had lost faith in compromises, and all of this party repudiated the theory that Congress had no right to coerce a State. The revival of these questions, revived also the logical thoughts of Webster in his great reply to Hayne, and the way in which he then expanded the constitution was now accepted as the proper doctrine of Republicanism on that question. No partisan sophistry could shake the convictions made by Webster, and so apt were his arguments in their application to every new development that they supplied every logical want in the Northern mind. Republican orators and newspapers quoted and endorsed, until nearly every reading mind was imbued with the same sentiments, until in fact the Northern Democrats, and at all times the Douglas Democrats, were ready to stand by the flag of the Union. George W. Curtis, in Harper’s Weekly (a journal which at the time graphically illustrated the best Union thoughts and sentiments), in an issue as late as January 12th, 1872, well described the power of Webster’s grand ability[[11]] over a crisis which he did not live to see, Mr. Curtis says:—
“The war for the Union was a vindication of that theory of its nature which Webster had maintained in a memorably impregnable and conclusive manner. His second speech on Foot’s resolution—the reply to Hayne—was the most famous and effective speech ever delivered in this country. It stated clearly and fixed firmly in the American mind the theory of the government, which was not, indeed, original with Webster, but which is nowhere else presented with such complete and inexorable reason as in this speech. If the poet be the man who is so consummate a master of expression that he only says perfectly what everybody thinks, upon this great occasion the orator was the poet. He spoke the profound but often obscured and dimly conceived conviction of a nation. He made the whole argument of the civil war a generation before the war occurred, and it has remained unanswered and unanswerable. Mr. Everett, in his discourse at the dedication of the statute of Webster, in the State-House grounds in Boston in 1859, described the orator at the delivery of this great speech. The evening before he seemed to be so careless that Mr. Everett feared that he might not be fully aware of the gravity of the occasion. But when the hour came, the man was there. ‘As I saw him in the evening, if I may borrow an illustration from his favorite amusement,’ said Mr. Everett, ‘he was as unconcerned and as free of spirit as some here have often seen him while floating in his fishing-boat along a hazy shore, gently rocking on the tranquil tide, dropping his line here and there with the varying fortune of the sport. The next morning he was like some mighty admiral, dark and terrible, casting the long shadow of his frowning tiers far over the sea, that seemed to sink beneath him; his broad pennant streaming at the main, the Stars and Stripes at the fore, the mizzen, and the peak, and bearing down like a tempest upon his antagonist, with all his canvas strained to the wind, and all his thunders roaring from his broadsides.’ This passage well suggests that indescribable impression of great oratory which Rufus Choate, in his eulogy of Webster at Dartmouth College, conveys by a felicitous citation of what Quintilian says of Hortensius, that there was some spell in the spoken word which the reader misses.”
As we have remarked, the Republicans were awaiting the coming of a near and greater power to themselves, and at the same time jealously watching the movements of the friends of the South in Congress and in the President’s Cabinet. It needed all their watchfulness to prevent advantages which the secessionists thought they had a right to take. Thus Jefferson Davis, on January 9th, 1860, introduced to the senate a bill “to authorize the sale of public arms to the several States and Territories,” and as secession became more probable he sought to press its passage, but failed. Floyd, the Secretary of War, was far more successful, and his conduct was made the subject of the following historic and most remarkable report:-
Transfer of U. S. Arms South In 1859–60.
Report (Abstract of) made by Mr. B. Stanton, from the Committee on Military Affairs, in House of Representatives, Feb. 18th, 1861.
The Committee on Military Affairs, to whom was referred the resolution of the House of Representatives of 31st of December last, instructing said committee to inquire and report to the House, how, to whom, and at what price, the public arms distributed since the first day of January, A. D. 1860, have been disposed of; and also into the condition of the forts, arsenals, dock-yards, etc., etc., submit the following report:
That it appears from the papers herewith submitted, that Mr. Floyd, the late Secretary of War, by the authority or under color of the law of March 3d, 1825, authorizing the Secretary of War to sell any arms, ammunition, or other military stores which should be found unsuitable for the public service, sold to sundry persons and States 31,610 flint-lock muskets, altered to percussion, at $2.50 each, between the 1st day of January, A. D. 1860, and the 1st day of January, A. D., 1861. It will be seen from the testimony of Colonel Craig and Captain Maynadier, that they differ as to whether the arms so sold had been found, “upon proper inspection, to be unsuitable for the public service.”