RUMBLINGS OF THE CONFLICT
Far away to the south we now began to hear, like the low growling of
distant thunder, a rumbling of the approaching conflict. Early in 1861,
secession ordinances in quick succession were passed by the Gulf States.
By February 1st all of them, following the lead of South Carolina,
through the action of their respective State conventions, had severed
their relations with the Union. They also forcibly seized United States
forts, arsenals, arms, custom-houses, lighthouses and subtreasuries. In
Texas the United States troops had been treacherously surrendered. The
Federal government offered no resistance to those who thus trampled on
its authority, inaugurated revolution, and resorted to acts of war.
These hostile movements, coming before the inauguration of the
President-elect, made all classes in St. Louis anxiously thoughtful. To
be sure a few extreme pro-slavery men, who were pronounced
secessionists, heartily approved of what the Cotton States had done, and
were secretly rejoicing over it. From prudential motives they refrained
from open and noisy support of the acts of the seceding States; but most
of our fellow-citizens, who had formerly lived in States further south,
regarded these early acts of secession as at least ill-timed and
precipitate, as born of thoughtless, groundless hatred and blind
passion. They were not at all prepared to join this open and violent
revolt against the Federal government, and to engage in the unlawful
seizure of its property. And in this conservative, pro-slavery class lay
the hope of the unconditional Union men of St. Louis and Missouri. If
its undivided influence, through any motives, however diverse, could be
directed firmly against the secession of our State, we might remain in
the Union.
Very few in St. Louis had at all anticipated such early, radical,
revolutionary action on the part of the Gulf States, and perhaps least
of all was it foreseen by those who were unconditionally loyal. They had
fondly hoped that threatened secession would expend itself simply in
violent talk; that a second and sober thought would come to control the
acts of the pro-slavery States; that the ill wind would blow over
without doing any serious damage. They knew, to be sure, that a
messenger from Alabama had, in December, visited our Governor and
Governor-elect, urging them to join in a concerted secession movement of
the slave States; that in that same month South Carolina had passed an
ordinance of secession; but they could not believe that this madness
would continue, that the slave States would generally be infected by it.
To their minds abrupt and violent secession was so palpably foolish that
it seemed to them impossible that it could be approved by any large
number of men in the South. But when in January one State after another
seceded, and these seceded States on the 4th of February assembled by
their delegates at Montgomery, Alabama, formed a confederacy, adopted a
provisional government, and elected a president and vice-president, they
unmistakably heard in the distance the angry growl of the coming bloody
conflict.[6]
The loyal men of St. Louis turned their eyes to Washington, hoping that
they might discern something there which would quiet their baleful
apprehensions. But instead of sunshine and hope, they saw there the same
black war-cloud. The representatives and senators of the seceding States
were shamelessly plotting the overthrow of the very government in whose
legislative councils they still continued to sit. In the Cabinet of the
President were some who were aiding and abetting secession. The
Secretary of War, John Buchanan Floyd of Virginia, had sent large
detachments of the standing army to distant and not easily accessible
parts of the country, and had removed large quantities of arms and
ammunition from Northern to Southern arsenals, that, at the beginning of
the conflict, which he evidently believed to be close at hand, the South
might be better prepared for battle than the North. In the midst of all
this treachery the chief executive sat nerveless. In his last annual
message, he declared that the general government had no power to coerce
a State. He said: “After much serious reflection, I have arrived at the
conclusion that no such power has been delegated to Congress, nor to any
other department of the Federal government.” He again declared: “The
power to make war against a State is at variance with the whole spirit
and intent of the Constitution.” Moreover, he asserted: “Congress
possesses many means of preserving it (the Union) by conciliation; but
the sword was not placed in its hand to preserve it by force.” This
message for a moment quite disheartened the loyal men of our city. The
executive of a great nation, by his own public confession, stood
powerless before those domestic foes that were tearing down the
government bequeathed us by our fathers. In his message he assured them
that with impunity they could complete their work of dismembering the
Republic. So for a time the secessionists seemed to have the upper hand
all around; at Montgomery they ruled over the seceded States; at
Washington they subsidized to their own interests the Federal
government; its President openly proclaiming that, do what they might,
he had no constitutional power to lay upon them punitively even the
weight of a finger.
We had no Andrew Jackson in the presidential chair. In 1832, when South
Carolina arrayed herself against the general government and proceeded to
nullify its legislative acts, he said with an emphasis which showed that
he was conscious of having the whole constitutional power of the nation
behind him to make his words effective, “The Union, it must, and shall
be, preserved;” and nullification in weakness and shame hid itself. If
we had had such a President in December, 1860, when South Carolina
seceded, we might have been saved from the awful conflict that,
unchecked in its beginning, daily gathered to itself power until it was
almost beyond control.
Loyal men throughout the nation utterly repudiated the President’s
interpretation of the Constitution. The unconditional Unionists of St
Louis shared the thoughts that were pervading and agitating the minds of
all true patriots. But they had anxieties which were peculiar to all, in
the border slave States, who were uncompromisingly loyal to the Federal
government. These States, largely on strictly economic grounds,
hesitated to join in the secession movement; still a large majority of
their inhabitants were in profound sympathy with the underlying cause of
secession, the preservation and perpetuation of slavery. So the
absorbing thought of the uncompromisingly loyal men of St. Louis was,
whether, in the sweep of events, they would be drawn with their State,
against their will, into the vortex of secession. What could they do to
avert such a dire calamity? They still hoped, even when hope was
seemingly baseless, that as muttering storms which blacken the horizon
often pass on and away forever, so in some way, hidden from their view,
this rising, growling storm of rebellion and revolution would be finally
dissipated, leaving the southern sky once more clear and serene.
Nevertheless, while they were thoughtful and anxious, they were
undaunted. There never was a band of braver men. The precipitate acts of
the Gulf States, the disintegration of the national Congress, the
unrebuked intrigues in the Cabinet of the subservient President
saddened, but did not terrify them. By these untoward and ominous events
their courage was re-enforced, their vision cleared, their purpose made
definite and robust. They resolved anew to resist with all their heart,
and with all their mind, and with all their strength the secession of
Missouri from the Union. Any that had been timid became suddenly
courageous; any that had been weak became strong in spirit. These
unconditional loyal men, surrounded by a morass of difficulties, beset
on every side by insidious, plotting political foes, often utterly at a
loss in whom to confide, with everything seemingly against them, at
last, fully aroused and braced for the conflict, became the hope, and,
as it proved, the political salvation of St. Louis and Missouri. They
became the leaders who, by wise counsels and sane action, gathered
around them the conservative pro-slavery men of the city and the
commonwealth, and these two classes standing together saved the State
from the disaster of secession.
The fourth of March drew near. Mr. Lincoln, in tender, pathetic speech,
bade adieu to his neighbors at Springfield and hastened on to
Washington. As he journeyed towards the national capital the loyal of
St. Louis followed him with almost breathless interest. They pored over
his short speeches to the crowds that gathered to greet him at railway
stations. They were thrilled with his brave and patriotic utterances at
Independence Hall in Philadelphia. In the malicious plot laid at
Baltimore, they heard once more the rumbling of the approaching
conflict; and when, in his great inaugural address, 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_
shall have the most solemn one ‘to preserve, protect, and defend’ it;”
we knew that, if neither the Federal government nor the secessionists
yielded, the civil war of which the President spoke would inevitably
burst upon us.
But the rumblings of the bloody conflict were not heard alone in the
black war-clouds that hung threateningly over the Gulf States and the
national capital, but at last directly over the streets along which we
daily walked.
Succeeding the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln there was a period of silence
more painful than actual battle. To us who were straining our eyes
toward Washington, to see what the President, of whom we expected so
much, was doing; who, intent, were listening that we might hear from his
lips words of cheer and wisdom, he seemed to be paralyzed. We saw
nothing. We heard nothing. Perhaps he was vainly hoping that those
already in rebellion against the general government would yield to his
eloquent appeal at the close of his famous inaugural. “I am loth to
close. 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 chords 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.” But he
could not, by any appeal however reasonable and urgent, persuade men in
the Cotton States. It was too late. He could not extinguish a
conflagration by pouring oil upon it. Perhaps, however, he himself had
no hope of peace, but was noiselessly preparing for the inevitable
conflict. But whatever was the cause of these days of silence, they were
days of sorest trial to the loyal of our city.
During all this time the secessionists were active; active everywhere
south of Mason and Dixon’s line; active in St. Louis. For the sake of
peace in our city, loyal men still withheld from the public gaze the
Stars and Stripes, but just at this time, when the Unionists were
greatly depressed, when the tension of mind and heart was so great that
it seemed that the addition of another grain would be unendurable, a
rebel flag, attached to a wire, was hung out over Sixth Street near one
of the central avenues of the city. The war-cloud was now right over our
heads. From its black belly a thunderbolt might fall at any moment. I
saw the whole street under that defiant, revolutionary flag packed with
angry men. They had flocked together without collusion, from a
spontaneous and common impulse. They were a unit in their determination
to tear down that symbol of revolt and destroy it. My whole soul was
knit in sympathy with that pulsating, heaving, throbbing throng all
aflame with patriotic passion. But there soon appeared, mounted on a
barrel, at the side of the street, a citizen, southern-born, and highly
respected by all. He spoke from a full heart earnest words to his
friends and neighbors. The din of voices gradually died away. The
speaker was master of the situation. He assured that excited, indignant
multitude that he was in full tide of sympathy with them, that he too
ardently longed to tear down that insulting banner, but in eloquent,
impassioned words he entreated them to bear patiently the stinging
indignity offered to a loyal city, and not needlessly to precipitate
mortal combat between those who had been for years neighbors and
friends. He assured them that the secession flag would soon be taken
down by the authority and arm of the government, the star-spangled
banner would be vindicated and would float in honor and triumph over our
streets. The quieted but resentful crowd by degrees melted away and the
stars and bars, oh, the shame of it! was left there for a few days to
flutter undisturbed in the breeze. It however did a good work. Every
loyal man that saw it, determined as never before to stand for, and, if
need be, to fight for the integrity of the Union. So that over-hanging,
growling, threatening cloud did not hurl its bloody bolt among us. We
were, in spite of it, mercifully still at peace.