I had an adventure at a ball in 1859, which, though unimportant in itself, turns a pleasing side-light upon one of the more courteous of our political opponents. A dance had been announced, the music had begun, and the dancers had already taken their places, when my partner was called aside suddenly. Something occurred to detain him longer than he had expected, and the time for us to lead having arrived, there was a call for the missing gallant, who was nowhere to be seen. I looked about helplessly, wondering what I was to do, when Anson Burlingame, who was standing near, seeing my dilemma, stepped promptly forward, and, taking my hand in most courtly manner, he said, “Pardon me, Madam!” and led me, bewildered, through the first steps of the dance!
Lost in amazement at his courtesy, I had no time to demur, and, when we returned to my place, the delinquent had reappeared. Bowing politely, Mr. Burlingame withdrew. The circumstance caused quite a ripple among those who witnessed it. Those who knew me best were amused at my docility in allowing myself thus to be led through the dance by a rank Abolitionist; but many were the comments made upon “Mr. Burlingame’s audacity in daring to speak to Mrs. Clement Clay!”
Such were the scenes, both grave and gay, that preceded what was surely the saddest day of my life—January 21, 1861—when, after years of augmenting dissension between the Sections, I saw my husband take his portfolio under his arm and leave the United States Senate Chamber in company with other no less earnest Southern Senators. For weeks the pretense of amity between parties had ceased, and social formalities no longer concealed the gaping chasm that divided them. When the members of each met, save for a glare of defiance or contempt, each ignored the other, or, if they spoke, it was by way of a taunt or a challenge. Every sentence uttered in Senate or House was full of hot feeling born of many wrongs and long-sustained struggle. For weeks, men would not leave their seats by day or by night, lest they might lose their votes on the vital questions of the times. At the elbows of Senators, drowsy with long vigils, pages stood, ready to waken them at the calling of the roll.
Not a Southern woman but felt, with her husband, the stress of that session, the sting of the wrongs the Southern faction of that great body was struggling to right. For forty years the North and the South had striven for the balance of power, and the admission of each new State was become the subject of bitter contention. There was, on the part of the North, a palpable envy of the hold the South had retained so long upon the Federal City, whether in politics or society, and the resolution to quell us, by physical force, was everywhere obvious. The face of the city was lowering, and some of the North agreed with us of the South that a nation’s suicide was about to be precipitated.
Senator Clay, than whom the South has borne no more self-sacrificing son, nor the Nation a truer patriot, was an ill man as that “winter of national agony and shame” (vide the Northern witness, Judge Hoar) progressed. The incertitude of President Buchanan was alarming; but the courage of our people to enter upon what they knew must be a defense of everything they held dear in State and family institution rose higher and higher to meet each advancing danger. The seizure by South Carolina of United States forts that lay, a menace, within her very doorway, acted like a spur upon the courage of the South.
“We have been hard at work all day,” wrote a defender of our cause from Morris Island, January 17, 1861, “helping to make, with our own hands, a battery, and moving into place some of the biggest guns you ever saw, and all immediately under the guns of old Anderson.[[16]] He fired a shell down the Bay this afternoon to let us know what he could do. But he had a little idea what we can do from his observation of our firing the other morning,[[17]] at the ‘Star of the West,’ all of which he saw, and he thought we had ruined the ship, as Lieutenant Hall represented in the city that morning.... We learn to-day that in Washington they are trying to procrastinate. That does not stop our most earnest preparation, for we are going to work all night to receive from the steamboat three more enormous guns and place them ready to batter down Fort Sumter, and we can do it. We hope the other points are as forward in their preparations as we are. If so, we can smoke him out in a week. We are nearest to him, and he may fire on us to-night, but if he were to kill everybody in the State, and only one woman was left, and she should bear a child, that child would be a secessionist. Our women are even more spirited than we are, though, bless the dear creatures, I have not seen one in a long time.”
Yet, despite these buoyant preparations for defense, there was a lingering sentiment among us that caused us to deplore the necessity that urged our men to arms. My husband was exceedingly depressed at the futility of the Peace Commission, for he foresaw that the impending conflict would be bloody and ruinous. One incident that followed the dissolution of that body impressed itself ineradicably upon my mind. Just after its close ex-President Tyler came to our home. He was now an old man and very attenuated. He was completely undone at the failure of the Peace men, and tears trickled down his cheeks as he said to Senator Clay, with indescribable sadness, “Clay, the end has come!”
In those days men eyed each other warily and spoke guardedly, save to the most tried and proved friend. One evening early in 1861, Commander Semmes, U. S. N., called upon us, and happened to arrive just as another naval officer, whose name I have now forgotten, was announced. The surprise that spread over the faces of our visitors when they beheld each other was great, but Senator Clay’s and my own was greater, as hour after hour was consumed in obvious constraint. Neither of the officers appeared to be at ease, yet for hours neither seemed to desire to relieve the situation by taking his departure. Midnight had arrived ere our now forgotten guest rose and bade us “good night.” Then Commander Semmes hastened to unbosom himself. He had resolved to out-sit the other gentleman if it took all night.
“As my Senator, Mr. Clay,” he said, “I want to report to you my decision on an important matter. I have resolved to hand in my resignation to the United States Government, and tender my services to that of the Confederate States. I don’t know what the intention of my brother officer is, but I could take no risk with him,” he added. Many a scene as secret, as grave, and as “treasonable,” took place in those last lowering weeks.
I have often mused upon the impression held by the younger generation of those who were adverse to the South, viz.: that she “was prepared for the war” into which we were precipitated practically by the admission of Kansas; that our men, with treasonable foresight, had armed themselves individually and collectively for resistance to our guileless and unsuspicious oppressors. Had this been true, the result of that terrible civil strife would surely have been two nations where now we have one. To the last, alas! too few of our people realised that war was inevitable. Even our provisional Secretary of War for the Confederate States,[[18]] early in ’1, publicly prophesied that, should fighting actually begin, it would be over in three months! It must be apparent to thinkers that such gay dreamers do not form deep or “deadly plots.”