THE BEGINNING OF BLOODSHED.
LINCOLN'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS--THE STRUGGLE FOR VIRGINIA--OPPOSING VIEWS
EXPRESSED BY ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS--THE SLAVE-TRADE OF
VIRGINIA--VIRGINIA DRAGOONED--THE FIRST CALL FOR TROOPS--LINCOLN'S
FAITH IN THE PEOPLE--ORIGIN OF THE WORD "COPPERHEAD."
Abraham Lincoln's inaugural address was one of the ablest state papers
recorded in American history. It argued the question of secession in
all its aspects--the constitutional right, the reality of the
grievance, the sufficiency of the remedy--and so far as law and logic
went, it left the secessionists little or nothing to stand on. But
neither law nor logic could change in a single day the pre-determined
purpose of a powerful combination, or allay the passions that had been
roused by years of resentful debate. Some of its sentences read like
maxims for statesmen: "The central idea of secession is the essence of
anarchy." "Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make
laws?" "Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate
justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the
world?" With all its conciliatory messages it expressed a firm and
unalterable purpose to maintain the Union at every hazard. "I
consider," he said, "that, in view of the Constitution and the laws,
the Union is unbroken, and to the extent of my ability I shall take
care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the
laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. Doing this
I deem to be only a simple duty on my part; and I shall perform it, so
far as practicable, unless my rightful masters, the American people,
shall withhold the requisite means, or in some authoritative manner
direct the contrary." And in closing he said: "In your hands, my
dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous
issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have
no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath
registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I have the most
solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.... We are not enemies,
but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained,
it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory,
stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living
heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the
chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the
better angels of our nature."
{30} [Illustration: SHERMAN AND HIS GENERALS. Oliver O. Howard. John
A. Logan. William B. Hazen. William T. Sherman. Jeff. C. Davis. Henry
W. Slocum. J. A. Mower.]
No such address had ever come from the lips of a {31} President
before. Pierce and Buchanan had scolded the abolitionists like
partisans; Lincoln talked to the secessionists like a brother. The
loyal people throughout the country received the address with
satisfaction. The secessionists bitterly denounced it. Overlooking all
its pacific declarations, and keeping out of sight the fact that a
majority of the Congress just chosen was politically opposed to the
President, they appealed to the Southern people to say whether they
would "submit to abolition rule," and whether they were going to look
on and "see gallant little South Carolina crushed under the heel of
despotism."
[Illustration: GENERAL GRANT'S BODYGUARD.]
[Illustration: GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT, WITH GENERALS RAWLINS AND
BOWERS.]
In spite of all such appeals, there was still a strong Union sentiment
at the South. This sentiment was admirably expressed by Hon. Alexander
H. Stephens in a speech delivered on November 14, 1860, in the
following words: "This step of secession, once taken, can never be
recalled; and all the baleful and withering consequences that must
follow will rest on the convention for all time.... What reasons can
you give the nations of the earth to justify it? What right has the
North assailed? What interest of the South has been invaded? What
justice has been denied? And what claim founded in justice and right
has been withheld? Can either of you to-day name one governmental act
of wrong, deliberately and purposely done by the Government of
Washington, of which the South has the right to complain? I challenge
the answer.... I declare here, as I have often done before, and which
has been repeated by the greatest and wisest of statesmen and patriots
in this and other lands, that it is the best and freest
Government--the most equal in its rights, the most just in its
decisions, the most lenient in its measures, and the most inspiring in
its principles to elevate the race of men--that the sun of heaven ever
shone upon. Now, for you to attempt to overthrow such a Government as
this, under which we have lived for more than three-quarters of a
century, in which we have gained our wealth, our standing as a {32}
nation, our domestic safety while the elements of peril are around us,
with peace and tranquillity accompanied with unbounded prosperity and
rights unassailed--is the height of madness, folly and wickedness, to
which I can neither lend my sanction nor my vote." In a speech by Mr.
Stephens delivered in Savannah, March 22, 1861, he expressed entirely
different views; in expounding the new constitution, he said: "The
prevailing idea entertained by him [Thomas Jefferson] and most of the
leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution
was, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws
of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and
politically.... Our new Government is founded upon exactly the
opposite idea. Its foundation was laid, and its corner-stone rests,
upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man,
that slavery, in subordination to the superior race, is his natural
and normal condition." Seven slave States had gone out, but eight
remained, and the anxiety of the secessionists was to secure these at
once, or most of them, before the excitement cooled. The great prize
was Virginia, both because of her own power and resources, and because
her accession to the Confederacy would necessarily bring North
Carolina also. Her governor, John Letcher, professed to be a Unionist;
but his conduct after the ordinance of secession had been passed
appears to prove that this profession was insincere. In electing
delegates to a convention to consider the question of secession, the
Unionists cast a majority of sixty thousand votes; and on the 4th of
April, when President Lincoln had been in office a month, that
convention refused, by a vote of eighty-nine to forty-five, to pass an
ordinance of secession. The leading revolutionists of the cotton
States were becoming uneasy. Said Mr. Gilchrist, of Alabama, to the
Confederate Secretary of War: "You must sprinkle blood in the faces of
the people! If you delay two months, Alabama stays in the Union!"
Hence the attack on Fort Sumter, out of which the garrison were in
peril of being driven by starvation. This certainly had a great
popular effect in the South as well as in the North; but Virginia's
choice appears to have been determined by a measure that was less
spectacular and more coldly significant. The Confederate Constitution
provided that Congress should have the power to "prohibit the
introduction of slaves from any State not a member of, or Territory
not belonging to, this Confederacy," and at the time when Virginia's
fate was in the balance it was reported that such an act had been
passed by the Congress at Montgomery.[1] When Virginia heard this,
like the young man in Scripture, she went away sorrowful; for in that
line of trade she had great possessions. The cultivation of land by
slave labor had long since ceased to be profitable in the border
States--or at least it was far less profitable than raising slaves for
the cotton States--and the acquisition of new territory in Texas had
enormously increased the demand. The {33} greatest part of this
business (sometimes estimated as high as one-half) was Virginia's. It
was called "the vigintal crop," as the blacks were ready for market
and at their highest value about the age of twenty. As it was an
ordinary business of bargain and sale, no statistics were kept; but
the lowest estimate of the annual value of the trade in the Old
Dominion placed it in the tens of millions of dollars. President Dew,
of William and Mary College, in his celebrated pamphlet, wrote:
"Virginia is, in fact, a negro-raising State for other States." The
New York _Journal of Commerce_ of October 12, 1835, contained a letter
from a Virginian (vouched for by the editor) in which it was asserted
that twenty thousand slaves had been driven south from that State that
year. In 1836 the Wheeling (Va.) _Times_ estimated the number of
slaves exported from that State during the preceding year at forty
thousand, valued at twenty-four million dollars. The Baltimore
_Register_ in 1846 said: "Dealing in slaves has become a large
business; establishments are made in several places in Maryland and
Virginia, at which they are sold like cattle." The Richmond
_Examiner_, before the war, said: "Upon an inside estimate, they [the
slaves of Virginia] yield in gross surplus produce, from sales of
negroes to go south, ten million dollars." In the United States
Senate, just before the war, Hon. Alfred Iverson, of Georgia, replying
to Mr. Powell, of Virginia, said Virginia was deeply interested in
secession: for if the cotton States seceded, Virginia would find no
market for her slaves, without which that State would be ruined.
[Footnote 1: It is now impossible to prove positively that such a law
was actually passed; for the officially printed volume of "Statutes at
Large of the Provisional Government of the Confederate States of
America" (Richmond, 1861) was evidently mutilated before being placed
in the hands of the compositor. The Acts are numbered, but here and
there numbers are missing, and in some of the later Acts there are
allusions to previous Acts that cannot be found in the book. It is
known that on the 6th of March, 1861, the Judiciary Committee was
instructed to inquire into the expediency of such prohibition, and it
seems a fair conjecture that one of the missing numbers was an Act of
this character. In a later edition (1864) the numbering is made
consecutive, but the missing matter is not restored.]
[Illustration: THE SIXTH MASSACHUSETTS REGIMENT ATTACKED IN THE
STREETS OF BALTIMORE, APRIL 19, 1861.]
[Illustration: DEPARTURE OF THE SEVENTH REGIMENT FROM NEW YORK CITY,
APRIL 19, 1861.]
[Illustration: COLONEL MARSHALL LEFFERTS, Commanding Seventh
Regiment.]
{34} [Illustration: ON PICKET. (Showing photographer's outfit.)]
After Sumter had been fired on, and the Confederate Congress had
forbidden this traffic to outsiders, the Virginia Convention again
took up the ordinance of secession (April 17) and passed it in secret
session by a vote of eighty-eight to fifty-five. It was not to take
effect till approved by the people; but the day fixed for their voting
upon it was six weeks distant, the last Thursday in May. Long before
that date, Governor Letcher, without waiting for the verdict of the
people, turned over the entire military force and equipment of the
State to the Confederate authorities, and the seat of the Confederate
Government was removed from Montgomery to Richmond. David G. Farragut,
afterwards the famous admiral, who was in Norfolk, Virginia, at the
time, anxiously watching the course of events, {35} declared that the
State "had been dragooned out of the Union," and he refused to be
dragooned with her. But Robert E. Lee and other prominent Virginians
resigned their commissions in the United States service to enter that
of their States or of the Confederacy, and the soil of Virginia was
overrun by soldiers from the cotton States. Any other result than a
vote for secession was therefore impossible. Arkansas followed with a
similar ordinance on the 6th of May, and North Carolina on the 21st,
neither being submitted to a popular vote. Kentucky refused to secede.
For Tennessee and Missouri there was a prolonged struggle.
[Illustration: GENERAL JOSEPH G. TOTTEN, Chief of Engineers.]
[Illustration: GENERAL ABRAM DURYEA.]
[Illustration: GENERAL ALEXANDER SHALER.]
[Illustration: MAJOR THEODORE WINTHROP. Killed at Big Bethel.]
When Fort Sumter was surrendered, the Confederates had already
acquired possession of Castle Pinckney and Fort Moultrie in Charleston
Harbor, Fort Pulaski at Savannah, Fort Morgan at the entrance of
Mobile Bay, Forts Jackson and St. Philip below New Orleans, the
navy-yard and Forts McRae and Barrancas at Pensacola, the arsenals at
Mount Vernon, Ala., and Little Rock, Ark., and the New Orleans Mint.
The largest force of United States regulars was that in Texas, under
command of Gen. David E. Twiggs, who surrendered it in February, and
turned over to the insurgents one million two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars' worth of military property.
On the day when Sumter fell, President Lincoln penned a proclamation,
issued the next day (Monday, April 15), which declared "that the laws
of the United States have been for some time past, and now are,
opposed, and the execution thereof obstructed, in the States of South
Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and
Texas, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary
course of judicial proceedings or by the powers vested in the marshals
by law," and called for militia from the several States of the Union
to the number of seventy-five thousand. It also called a special
session of Congress, to convene on July 4. He appealed "to all loyal
citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid this effort to maintain the
honor, the integrity, and existence of our National Union, and the
perpetuity of popular government, and to redress wrongs already long
enough endured."
With regard to the reception of this celebrated proclamation in the
South, Alexander H. Stephens writes as follows, in his History of the
war: "The effect of this upon the public mind of the Southern States
cannot be described or even estimated. Up to this time, a majority, I
think, of even those who favored the policy of secession had done so
under the belief and conviction that it was the surest way of securing
a redress of grievances, and of bringing the Federal Government back
to Constitutional principles. This proclamation dispelled all such
hopes. It showed that the party in power intended nothing short of
complete centralization. The principles actuating the Washington
authorities were those aiming at consolidated power; while the
principles controlling the action of the Montgomery authorities were
those which enlisted devotion and attachment to the Federative system
as established by the Fathers in 1778 and 1787. In short, the cause of
the Confederates was States Sovereignty, or the sovereign right of
local self-government on the part of the States severally. The cause
of their assailants involved the overthrow of this entire fabric, and
the erection of a centralized empire in its stead."
The effect of this proclamation in the North has already been referred
to. Mr. Lincoln's faith in the people had always been strong; but the
response to this proclamation was probably a surprise even to him, as
it certainly was to the secessionists, who had assured the Southern
people that the Yankees would not fight. The whole North was thrilled
with military ardor, and moved almost as one man. The papers were
lively with great head-lines and double-leaded editorials; and the
local poet filled the spare space--when there was any--with his
glowing patriotic effusions. The closing passage of Longfellow's
"Building of the Ship," written a dozen years before, beginning:
"Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!"
{36} was in constant demand, and was recited effectively by nearly
every orator that addressed a war meeting.
Eminent men of all parties and all professions spoke out for the
Union. Stephen A. Douglas, who had long been Lincoln's rival, and had
opposed the policy of coercion, went to the White House the day before
Sumter fell, had a long interview with the President, and promised a
hearty support of the Administration, which was immediately
telegraphed over the country, and had a powerful effect. Ex-President
Pierce (who had made the direful prediction of blood in Northern
streets), ex-President Buchanan (who had failed to find any authority
for coercion), Gen. Lewis Cass (a Democratic partisan since the war of
1812), Archbishop Hughes (the highest dignitary of the Roman Catholic
Church in America), and numerous others, all "came out for the Union,"
as the phrase went. The greater portion of the Democratic party, which
had opposed Lincoln's election, also, as individuals, sustained the
Administration in its determination not to permit a division of the
country. These were known as "war Democrats," while those that opposed
and reviled the Government were called "Copperheads," in allusion to
the snake of that name. Some of the bolder ones attempted to take the
edge off the sarcasm by cutting the head of Liberty out of a copper
cent and wearing it as a scarf-pin; but all they could say was quickly
drowned in the general clamor.
Town halls, schoolhouses, academies, and even churches were turned
into temporary barracks. Village greens and city squares were occupied
every day by platoons of men, most of them not yet uniformed, marching
and wheeling and countermarching, and being drilled in the manual of
arms by officers that knew just a little more than they did, by virtue
of having bought a handbook of tactics the day before, and sat up all
night to study it. There was great scarcity of arms. One regiment was
looking dubiously at some ancient muskets that had just been placed in
their hands, when the colonel came up and with grim humor assured them
that he had seen those weapons used in the Mexican War, and more men
were killed in front of them than behind them. The boys had great
respect for the colonel, but they wanted to be excused from believing
his story.
[Illustration: BURNING OF GOSPORT NAVY YARD, NORFOLK, VA., APRIL 21,
1861.]
[Illustration: BURNING OF THE UNITED STATES ARSENAL AT HARPER'S FERRY,
VA., APRIL 18, 1861.]