1860—October.
GENERAL SCOTT'S “VIEWS.”
While during the month of October (1860) President Buchanan was
anxiously watching the course of public events, he was surprised by
receiving from General Scott, the General-in-chief of the Army, a
very extraordinary paper. It was written on the 29th of October,
from New York, where the General had his headquarters, and was
mailed to the President on the same day. On the 30th the General
sent a corrected copy to the Secretary of War, with a supplement.
These papers became known as General Scott’s “views.” He lent copies
of them to some of his friends, to be read; and although they did
not immediately reach the public press, their contents became pretty
well known in the South through private channels. From them the
following facts were apparent:
FIRST.—That before the Presidential election, General Scott
anticipated that there would be a secession of one or more of the
Southern States, in the event of Mr. Lincoln’s election; and that
from the general rashness of the Southern character, there was
danger of a “preliminary” seizure of certain Southern forts, which
he named.
SECOND.—That the secession which General Scott deprecated was one
that would produce what he called a “gap in the Union;” that he
contemplated, as a choice of evils to be embraced instead of a
civil war, the allowance of a division of the Union into four
separate confederacies, having contiguous territory; and that he
confined the use of force, or a resort to force, on the part of
the Federal Government, to the possible case of the secession of
some “interior” States, to reestablish the continuity of the
Federal territory. This he considered might be regarded as a
“correlative right,” balancing the right of secession, which he
said might be conceded “in order to save time.”
THIRD.—That his provisional remedy, or preliminary caution, viz:
The immediate garrisoning of the Southern forts sufficiently to
prevent a surprise or _coup de main_, was confined to the possible
or probable case of a secession that would make a “gap” in the
Union, or break the continuity of the Federal territory. He
excluded from the scope of his “provisional remedies” the
secession of Texas, or of all the Atlantic States south of the
Potomac, as neither would produce a “gap” in the Union.
FOURTH.—That for the application of his “provisional remedies,” he
had at his command but five companies of regular troops, to
prevent surprises of the nine Southern forts which he named; and
that as to “regular approaches,” nothing could be said or done
without calling for volunteers.
FIFTH.—That in the meantime the Federal Government should collect
its revenue outside of the Southern cities, in forts or on board
ships of war: and that after any State had seceded, there should
be no invasion of it, unless it should happen to be an “interior”
State.
SIXTH.—That the aim of his plan was to gain eight or ten months to
await measures of conciliation on the part of the North, and the
subsidence of angry feelings in the South.
If these “views,” palpably impracticable and dangerous, had remained
unknown in the hands of the President, there would have been no
necessity for commenting on them in this work, especially as
subsequent events rendered them of no importance. But they did not
remain unknown. They became the foundation, at a later period, of a
charge that President Buchanan had been warned by General Scott,
before the election of Mr. Lincoln, of the danger of leaving the
Southern forts without sufficient garrisons to prevent surprises,
and that he had neglected this warning. Moreover, in these “views,”
the General-in-chief of the Army, addressing the President, had
mingled the strangest political suggestions with military movements,
on the eve of a Presidential election which was about to result in a
sectional political division. It is therefore necessary for me to
bestow upon these “views” a degree of attention which would
otherwise be unnecessary.
These papers were addressed by the General-in-chief of the Army of
the United States to a President who utterly repudiated the alleged
right of secession, by any State whatever, whether lying between
other States remaining loyal, or on the extreme boundary of the
Union. Becoming known to the Southern leaders who might be disposed
to carry their States out of the Union in the event of Mr. Lincoln’s
election, they would justify the inference that in one case at
least, that of a secession which did not make a “gap” in the Union,
the General-in-chief of the Federal Army would not draw his sword to
compel the inhabitants of the seceded region to submit to the laws
of the United States. In regard to the “provisional remedies” which
the general advised, let it be observed that if the President had
had at his disposal the whole army of the United States, the
introduction into the Southern forts of a larger or a smaller force,
at such a moment, however officially explained, could have been
regarded in the South only as a proof that President Buchanan
expected secession to be attempted, and that he was preparing for a
civil war, to be waged by him or his successor. The right of the
Federal Government to place its own troops in its own forts, without
giving offence to any one, was perfectly apparent; but it was
equally apparent that on the eve of this election, or during the
election, or at any time before any State had adopted an ordinance
of secession, such a step could not have been taken as anything but
an indication that the Federal Government was preparing to prevent
by force the people of any State from assembling to consider and act
upon their relations to the Government of the United States. Now a
very great part of the popular misapprehension of President
Buchanan’s policy, purposes and acts, which has prevailed to the
present day, has arisen from the total want of discrimination
between what the Federal Government could and what it could not
rightfully do, in anticipation of the secession of a State or
States. It has been a thousand times inconsiderately asked, why Mr.
Buchanan did not nip secession in the bud.
In the first place, the Federal Government, however great might be
the physical force at its command, could at no time have done
anything more than enforce the execution of its own laws and
maintain the possession of its own property. To prevent the people
of a State, by any menace of arms, from assembling in convention to
consider anything whatever, would have been to act on the assumption
that she was about to adopt an ordinance of secession, and on the
farther assumption that such an act must be forestalled, lest it
might have some kind of validity. The Executive of the United States
was not bound, and was not at liberty, to act upon such assumptions.
There were many ways in which a State convention could peacefully
take into consideration the relations of its people to the Federal
Union. They might lawfully appeal to the sobriety and good feeling
of their sister States to redress any grievances of which they
complained. There might be, we know that in point of fact there was,
a strong Union party in most of the Southern States, and the
President of the United States, in the month of October, 1860, would
have been utterly inexcusable, if he had proclaimed to the country
that he expected this party to be overborne, and had helped to
diminish its members and weaken its power, by extraordinary
garrisons placed in the Southern forts, in anticipation of their
seizure by lawless individuals, when such an exhibition must
inevitably lead the whole people of the South to believe that there
was to be no solution of the sectional differences but by a trial of
strength in a sectional civil war. Mr. Buchanan was far too wise and
circumspect a statesman to put into the hands of the secessionists
such a means of “firing the Southern heart,” before it was known
what the result of the Presidential election would be. It was his
plain and imperative duty not to assume, by any official act, at
such a time, that there was to be a secession of any State or
States.
But, in the second place, even if other good reasons did not exist,
there were but five companies of regular troops, or four hundred
men, available for the garrisoning of nine fortifications in six
highly excited Southern States. How were they to be distributed?
Distributed equally, they would have amounted to a reinforcement of
forty-four men and a fraction in each fort. In whatsoever
proportions they might be distributed, according to the conjectured
degree of exposure of the various posts, the movement could have
been nothing but an invitation of attack, which the force would have
been entirely inadequate to repel. The whole army of the United
States then consisted of only eighteen thousand men. They were, with
the exception of the five companies named by General Scott,
scattered on the remote frontiers and over the great Western plains,
engaged in the protection of the settlers and the emigrant trains;
and for this duty their numbers were, and had long been, and have
ever since been, notoriously inadequate. At a later period, after
President Buchanan had retired from office, General Scott, in a
controversy in the public prints which he thought proper to provoke
with the ex-President, referred to six hundred recruits in the
harbor of New York and at Carlisle barracks in Pennsylvania, which,
added to the five companies mentioned in his “views,” would have
made a force of one thousand men; and while he admitted that this
force would not have been sufficient to furnish “war garrisons” for
the nine Southern forts, he maintained that they would have been
quite enough to guard against surprises. But it is to be noted that
in his “views” of October, 1860, he made known to the President that
there were _only_ the five companies, which he named, “within reach,
to garrison the forts mentioned in the views;” and, moreover, he was
mistaken, in November, 1862, in supposing that he had obtained these
recruits when he wrote his “views,” nor did he, in October or
November, 1860, in any manner suggest to the President that there
were any more than the five companies available. Had he made any
military representations to the President before the election, other
than those contained in his “views,” it cannot be doubted that they
would have received all the consideration due to his official
position and his great military reputation.[63]
Footnote 63:
It is a remarkable fact that when President Lincoln was
inaugurated, five months after General Scott sent his “views” to
President Buchanan, and it was feared that the inauguration might
be interrupted by violence of some kind, he was able to assemble
at Washington but six hundred and fifty-three men, of the rank and
file of the army. This number was made up by bringing the sappers
and miners from West Point. Yet, down to that period, no part of
the army, excepting the five companies referred to by General
Scott in his “views,” had been disposed of anywhere but where the
presence of a military force was essential to the protection of
the settlers on the frontiers and the emigrants on the plains. No
one could have known this better than General Scott, for it was
his official duty to know it, and it is plain that his “views”
were written with a full knowledge of the situation of the whole
army.
But General Scott’s “views” produced, and ought to have produced, no
impression upon the mind of the President. That part of them which
suggested a military movement was entirely impracticable. The
political part, which related to the aspects of secession, its
possible admission in one case and its denial in another, was of no
value whatever to anybody but those who believed in the doctrine.
With the exception of such circulation of these “views” as General
Scott permitted by giving copies of them to his friends, they
remained unpublished until the 18th of January, 1861. On that day
they were published, by General Scott’s permission, in the _National
Intelligencer_ at Washington, the editors saying that they had
obtained a copy of them for publication because allusion had been
made to them both in the public prints and in public speeches. This
document, therefore, in an authentic shape, was made public in the
midst of the secession movement, after the States of South Carolina,
Florida, Mississippi and Alabama had adopted their ordinances of
secession, and while the people of Georgia, Louisiana, Texas and
Arkansas were deliberating upon their course.[64] The President at
that time passed over this publication in silence, for reasons which
he afterwards assigned in the public controversy between General
Scott and himself in October and November, 1862.
Footnote 64:
At the time of this publication of General Scott’s “views,” of the
States which seceded before the attack on Fort Sumter, four had
adopted ordinances of secession, and three had not acted. The
eighth State, Arkansas, did not act until after Sumter.
And here it may be appropriate, before proceeding farther with the
narrative, to advert to a suggestion which has been again and again
repeated in a great variety of forms, by those who have criticised
Mr. Buchanan’s course in regard to the reinforcement of the Southern
forts. General Scott himself, after the election of Mr. Lincoln, in
the middle of December, 1860, in a note which he addressed to the
President, referred to the course pursued by President Jackson in
regard to nullification, in 1832-33; and it has long been one of the
current questions, asked as if it were unanswerable,—why did not Mr.
Buchanan imitate the firmness, boldness and decision with which
General Jackson dealt with the “Nullifiers,” and proceed to garrison
the Southern forts before the election of Mr. Lincoln? Having
already shown the impracticability of such a step, from the want of
the necessary forces, and its great political inexpediency even if
the necessary force had been within his reach, it only remains for
me to point out that there was no parallel between the situation of
things under General Jackson in 1832-33, and the state of the
country under President Buchanan in 1860-61. South Carolina stood
alone in her resistance to the collection of the revenue of the
United States, in 1832-33; nor, whatever might be the steps which
she would have the rashness to take in preventing the execution of a
single law of the United States within her borders, there was no
danger that any other State would become infected with her political
heresies, or imitate her example. What General Jackson had to do was
to collect the revenue of the United States in the port of
Charleston. For this purpose, prior to the issue of his
proclamation, and while the so-called ordinance of nullification was
pending in the convention of South Carolina, he took preliminary
steps, by placing in the harbor a sufficient military and naval
force to insure the execution of a single Federal statute, commonly
called the “tariff.” For this purpose he had ample authority of law,
under the Act of March 3, 1807, which authorized the employment of
the land and naval forces, when necessary, to execute the laws of
the United States through the process of the Federal tribunals. He
had, moreover, the necessary forces practically at his disposal. So
far as these forces would consist of troops, their proper
destination was Fort Moultrie in Charleston harbor; but their
presence in that fort was deemed necessary, not to prevent an
anticipated seizure of it by the State authorities, but to aid in
the execution of the revenue law in case it should be resisted. For
this purpose, in March, 1833, he sent a small military force to Fort
Moultrie, and a sloop of war, with two revenue cutters, to
Charleston harbor. General Scott was sent to Charleston to take the
command of these forces, if it should become necessary for them to
act. He arrived there on the day after the passage of the
Nullification ordinance. The proclamation of General Jackson, the
passage of Mr. Clay’s Compromise Tariff Bill, and the passage of the
Force Bill, put an end to any actual collision between the State and
the Federal authorities.
How different was the state of the country in 1860, before the
election of Mr. Lincoln! A generation of men had grown up in the
South, many of whom held the supposed right of State secession
from the Union as a cardinal feature of their political and
constitutional creed. The sole ground for any apprehension of a
practical assertion of this doctrine was the contingent election of
a President nominated upon a “platform” obnoxious to the people of
the slaveholding States. In such a state of affairs, was it for a
President, whose administration was to expire in five months, to
adopt the foregone conclusion that the Republican candidate would be
elected, and to add to this the further conclusion that his election
would be followed by a secession of States, which the people of the
North would take no conciliatory steps to prevent after the
Republican candidate had been elected? Was President Buchanan to
throw a military force into the Southern forts, even if he had had a
sufficient force within his reach, and thus to proclaim to the whole
people of the South, the loyal and the disloyal, that in his
judgment there would be but one issue out of the election of Mr.
Lincoln—an issue of physical force between the two sections of the
country? In what condition would this have placed his successor, and
the great political party which was aiming to obtain for that
successor the control of the Government? Surely Mr. Lincoln and his
political supporters would have had the gravest reason to complain,
if Mr. Buchanan, before the election, had, by any act of his own not
palpably and imperatively necessary, caused it to be believed by the
whole Southern people that there was and could be no alternative but
to put their anticipated dangers, their alleged grievances, and the
doctrine of secession along with them, at once to the arbitrament of
the sword. We have it on Mr. Buchanan’s own solemn assertion, the
sincerity of which there can be no reason to doubt, that he
considered it his highest duty so to shape his official course
during the remainder of his term, as to afford to the secessionists
of the South no excuse for renouncing their allegiance to the
Federal Union, and to hand the government over to his successor,
whoever he might be, without doing a single act that would tend to
close the door of reconciliation between the two sections of the
country, then unfortunately divided by the political circumstances
of the pending election. This was the keynote of his policy, formed
before the election of Mr. Lincoln, and steadily followed through
every vicissitude, and every changing aspect of the great drama
enacting before his eyes. It is easy to reason backward from what
occurred, and to say that he should have garrisoned the Southern
forts, in anticipation of their seizure. History does not, or should
not, pass upon the conduct of statesmen in highly responsible
positions, by pronouncing in this _ex post facto_ manner on what
they ought to have anticipated, when men of equally good
opportunities for looking forward did not anticipate what
subsequently occurred. It was not the belief of the leading public
men in the Republican party, before the election of Mr. Lincoln, the
men who were likely to be associated with him in the Government,
that there would be any secession. If they had believed it, they
would certainly have been guilty of great recklessness if they had
not acted upon that belief, at least so far as to warn the country,
in their respective spheres, to be prepared for such an event. It is
one of the most notorious truths in the whole history of that
election, that the political supporters of Mr. Lincoln scouted the
idea that there was any danger of secession to be apprehended.
General Scott’s suggestion of such danger to Mr. Buchanan, in the
month of October, 1860, and the impracticable advice which he then
gave, if it had been published before the election, would have been
laughed at by every Republican statesman in the country, or would
have been indignantly treated as a work of supererogation,
unnecessarily suggesting that the election of the Republican
candidate was to be followed by an attempted disruption of the
Union. Undoubtedly, as the event proved, the political friends of
Mr. Lincoln were too confident that no secession would be attempted;
and into that extreme confidence they were led by their political
policy, which did not admit of their allowing the people of the
North to believe that there could be any serious danger to the
country in their political triumph. If the people of the North had
believed in that danger, the Republican candidate would not have
been elected. It did not become the Republican leaders, therefore,
after the election, and it never can become any one who has
inherited their political connection, to blame Mr. Buchanan for not
taking extraordinary precautions against an event which the
responsible leaders of the party, prior to the election, treated as
if it were out of all the bounds of probability.[65]
Footnote 65:
It will be seen that I do not regard the election of Mr. Lincoln
as a defiance of the South, nor do I consider that the threats of
secession, so far as such threats were uttered in the South, had
much to do with the success of the Republican candidate.
Multitudes of men voted for that candidate in no spirit of
defiance towards the South, and his popular vote would have been
much smaller than it was, if it had been believed at the North
that his election would be followed by an attempted disruption of
the Union.
And here, too, it is well to advert to a charge which relates to
Mr. Buchanan’s administration of the Government prior to the
election of his successor. This charge, to which a large measure
of popular credence has long been accorded, is, that the Secretary
of War, Mr. Floyd, had for a long time pursued a plan of his own
for distributing the troops and arms of the United States in
anticipation of a disruption of the Union at no distant day. But
such a charge is of course to be tried by a careful examination of
facts, and by a scrupulous attention to dates. One of the most
important facts to be considered is, that Secretary Floyd, who
came in 1857 into Mr. Buchanan’s cabinet from Virginia—a State
that never had, down to that time and for a long period
thereafter, many secessionists among her public men—was not of
that political school until after he left the office of Secretary
of War. He was a Unionist, and a pronounced one, until he chose,
as a mere pretext, to say that he differed with the President in
regard to the policy which the President thought proper to
pursue.[66] But from the fact that he became a secessionist and
denounced the President, after he left the cabinet, and the
foolish boast which he made that he had, while Secretary of War,
defeated General Scott’s plans and solicitations respecting the
forts, the inference has been drawn that he had good reason for
advancing that claim upon the consideration of his new political
allies in the Southern section of the country. Mr. Floyd by no
means appears to me to have been a man of scrupulous honor. The
fact that he had been compelled to resign his place on account of
a transaction in no way connected with the secession of any State,
led him, in a spirit of sheer self-glorification, to give
countenance to a charge which, if it had been true, would not only
have reflected great discredit on the President, but which would
have involved the Secretary himself in the heinous offence of
treachery to the Government whose public servant he was. No man
could have thus overshot his own mark, who had a careful regard
for facts which he must have known: for no one could have known
better than Mr. Floyd that he had no influence whatever in
defeating any plans which General Scott proposed to the President
in his “views” of October, 1860, and no one could have known
better than he that the troops and arms of the United States had
not been distributed with any sinister design. But Mr. Floyd’s
subsequent vaporings, after he left the cabinet, misled General
Scott into the belief that there had been great wrong committed
while he was Secretary of War, and caused the General, in October
and November, 1862, to give his sanction to charges that were
quite unfounded.
Footnote 66:
See _post_, for the history of Secretary Floyd’s resignation.
It is proper to hear Mr. Buchanan himself, in regard to his refusal
to garrison the Southern forts in October or November, 1860,
according to the recommendations in General Scott’s “views.”
This refusal is attributed, without the least cause, to the
influence of Governor Floyd. All my cabinet must bear me witness
that I was the President myself, responsible for all the acts of
the administration; and certain it is that during the last six
months previous to the 29th December, 1860, the day on which he
resigned his office, after my request, he exercised less influence
on the administration than any other member of the cabinet. Mr.
Holt was immediately thereafter transferred from the Post Office
Department to that of War; so that, from this time until the 4th
March, 1861, which was by far the most important period of the
administration, he [Mr. Holt] performed the duties of Secretary of
War to my entire satisfaction.[67]
Footnote 67:
Letter from Mr. Buchanan to the Editors of the _National
Intelligencer_, October 28, 1862.—If the reader chooses to consult
the controversy of 1862 between General Scott and Mr. Buchanan, he
will find there the sources from which General Scott drew his
conclusions. One of them was information given to him while the
controversy was going on, in a telegram from Washington, sent by a
person whose name he did not disclose. A reference to Mr.
Buchanan’s last letter in the controversy will show how he
disposed of this “nameless telegram.” The period when the alleged
improper transfers of arms into the Southern States were said to
have occurred was, as Mr. Buchanan states, long before the
nomination of Mr. Lincoln, and nearly a year before his election.
General Scott’s reply to this shows that in 1862 he had convinced
himself that the revolt of the Southern States had been planned
for a long time before the nomination of Mr. Lincoln, and that it
was to be carried out in the event of the election of any Northern
man to the Presidency. It had become the fashion in 1862, in
certain quarters, to believe, or to profess to believe, in this
long-standing plot. There are several conclusive answers to the
suggestion: 1st. It is not true, as a matter of fact, that at any
time before the nomination of Mr. Lincoln, there were any
transfers of arms to the South which ought to have led even to the
suspicion of the existence of such a plot. 2d. That it is not
true, as a matter of fact, that at any time after Mr. Lincoln’s
nomination, and before his election, there were any transfers of
arms whatever from the Northern arsenals of the United States into
the Southern States. 3d. That after Mr. Lincoln’s election, viz.,
in December, 1860, a transfer of ordnance from Pittsburgh, in
Pennsylvania, to Mississippi and Texas, which had been ordered by
Secretary Floyd a few days before he left office, was immediately
countermanded by his successor, Mr. Holt, by order of the
President, and the guns remained at Pittsburgh. 4th. That the
entire political history of the country, prior to the nomination
of Mr. Lincoln, and prior to the Democratic Convention at
Charleston, does not afford a rational ground of belief that any
considerable section of the Southern people, or any of their
prominent political leaders, were looking forward to a state of
parties which would be likely to result in the election of any
Northern man, under circumstances that would produce a conviction
among the people of the Southern States that it would be unsafe
for them to remain in the Union. Even after the nomination of Mr.
Lincoln, and after the division of the Democratic party into two
factions, resulting in the nomination of two Democratic candidates
(Breckinridge and Douglas), with a fourth candidate in the field
(Bell), nominated by the “Old Line Whigs,” it was not so morally
certain that the Republican candidate would be elected, as to give
rise, before the election, to serious plots or preparations for
dissolving the Union. Mr. Lincoln obtained but a majority of
fifty-seven electoral votes over all his competitors. It was the
sectional character of his 180 electoral votes, out of 303,—the
whole 180 being drawn from the free States—and the sectional
character of the “platform” on which he was nominated and elected,
and not the naked fact that he was a Northern man, that the
secessionists of the cotton States were able to use as the lever
by which to carry their States out of the Union. Undoubtedly the
Southern States committed the great folly of refusing to trust in
the conservative elements of the North to redress any grievances
of which the people of the South could justly complain. But I know
of no tangible proofs that before the nomination of Mr. Lincoln
there was any Southern plot to break up the Union in the event of
the election of any Northern man. The reader must follow the
precipitation of secession through the events occurring after the
election, before he can reach a sound conclusion as to the causes
and methods by which it was brought about. He will find reason to
conclude, if he studies the votes in the seceding conventions of
the cotton States prior to the attack on Fort Sumter, that even in
that region there was a Union party which could not have been
overborne and trampled down, by any other means than by appeals to
unfounded fears, which the secession leaders professed to draw
from the peculiar circumstances of the election. He will find
reason to ask himself why it was, in these secession conventions,
rapidly accomplished between December, 1860, and February, 1861,
the Unionists were at last so few, and he will find the most
important answer to this inquiry in the fact that it was because
the advocates of secession, from the circumstances of the
election, succeeded in producing the conviction that the whole
North was alienated in feeling from the South, and was determined
to trample upon Southern rights. It is a melancholy story of
perversion, misrepresentation and mistake, operating upon a
sensitive and excited people. But it does not justify the belief
that the secession of those States was the accomplishment of a
previous and long-standing plot to destroy the Union; nor, if such
a plot ever existed, is there any reason to believe that any
member of Mr. Buchanan’s cabinet was a party to it. General Scott,
in 1862, adopted and gave currency to charges which had no
foundation in fact, and which were originated for the purpose of
making Mr. Buchanan odious to the country.
The General, however, went further than the adoption of charges
originated by others. He claimed credit for himself for the
discovery and prevention of the “robbery” of the Pittsburgh
ordnance. In his letter of November 8, 1862, he said:
“Accidentally learning, early in March (!), that, under this
_posthumous_ order, the shipment of these guns had commenced, I
communicated the fact to Secretary Holt, acting for Secretary
Cameron, just in time to defeat the robbery.” This was a tissue of
absurd misstatements. Copies of the official papers relating to
this order are before me. The order was given by the Ordnance
Office on the 22d of December, 1860. The shipment of the guns was
never commenced. General Scott had nothing to do with the
countermand of the order. On the 25th of December, certain
citizens of Pittsburgh telegraphed to the President that great
excitement had been caused there by this order, and advising that
it be immediately revoked. Floyd was Secretary of War when the
order was given for the removal of the guns, but at that time he
was not a secessionist, or aiding the secessionists. He tendered
his resignation of the office on the 29th of December, under
circumstances which will be fully related hereafter. It was
promptly accepted, and Mr. Holt was appointed Secretary of War _ad
interim_. By the President’s direction, Mr. Holt countermanded the
order, and the guns remained at Pittsburgh. Judge Black, at the
President’s request, investigated the whole affair, and made the
following brief report to the President on the 27th: “Mr.
President: The enclosed are the two orders of the War Department.
I suppose the forts happened to be in that state of progress which
made those guns necessary just at this time, and they were
directed to be sent without any motive beyond what would have
caused the same act at any other time.
Ever yours,
J. S. BLACK”.
Finally, it only remains for me to quote Mr. Buchanan’s more
elaborate account of his reasons for not acting upon General
Scott’s “views” of October, 1860, which he gave in the account of
his administration, published in 1866.[68]
Footnote 68:
_Mr. Buchanan’s Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion._ New
York: D. Appleton & Co., 1866. This book will hereafter be
referred to as “_Mr. Buchanan’s Defence_.” The history and reasons
for this publication will be found in a future chapter.
Such, since the period of Mr. Lincoln’s election, having been
the condition of the Southern States, the “views” of General
Scott, addressed before that event to the Secretary of War, on
the 29th and 30th October, 1860, were calculated to do much
injury in misleading the South. From the strange inconsistencies
they involve, it would be difficult to estimate whether they did
most harm in encouraging or in provoking secession. So far as
they recommended a military movement, this, in order to secure
success, should have been kept secret until the hour had arrived
for carrying it into execution. The substance of them, however,
soon reached the Southern people. Neither the headquarters of
the army at New York, nor afterwards in Washington, were a very
secure depository for the “views,” even had it been the author’s
intention to regard them as confidential. That such was not the
case may be well inferred from their very nature. Not confined
to the recommendation of a military movement, by far the larger
portion of them consists of a political disquisition on the
existing dangers to the Union; on the horrors of civil war and
the best means of averting so great a calamity; and also on the
course which their author had resolved to pursue, as a citizen,
in the approaching Presidential election. These were themes
entirely foreign to a military report, and equally foreign from
the official duties of the Commanding General. Furthermore, the
“views” were published to the world by the General himself, on
the 18th January, 1861, in the _National Intelligencer_, and
this _without the consent or even previous knowledge of the
President_. This was done at a critical moment in our history,
when the cotton States were seceding one after the other. The
reason assigned by him for this strange violation of official
confidence toward the President, was the necessity for the
correction of misapprehensions which had got abroad, “both in
the public prints and in public speeches,” in relation to the
“views.”
The General commenced his “views” by stating that, “To save time
the right of secession may be conceded, and instantly balanced by
the correlative right on the part of the Federal Government
against an _interior_ State or States to reestablish by force, if
necessary, its former continuity of territory.” He subsequently
explains and qualifies the meaning of this phrase by saying: “It
will be seen that the 'views' only apply to a case of secession
that makes a _gap_ in the present Union.” The falling off (say) of
Texas, or of all the Atlantic States, from the Potomac south [the
very case which has since occurred], was not within the scope of
General Scott’s provisional remedies. As if apprehending that by
possibility it might be inferred he intended to employ force for
any other purpose than to open the way through this _gap_ to a
State beyond, still in the Union, he disclaims any such
construction, and says: “The foregoing views eschew the idea of
invading a seceded State.” This disclaimer is as strong as any
language he could employ for the purpose.
To sustain the limited right to open the way through the _gap_, he
cites, not the Constitution of the United States, but the last
chapter of Paley’s “Moral and Political Philosophy,” which,
however, contains no allusion to the subject.
The General paints the horrors of civil war in the most gloomy
colors, and then proposes his alternative for avoiding them. He
exclaims: “But break this glorious Union by whatever line or lines
that political madness may contrive, and there would be no hope of
reuniting the fragments except by the laceration and despotism of
the sword. To effect such result the intestine wars of our Mexican
neighbors would, in comparison with ours, sink into mere child’s
play.
“A smaller evil” (in the General’s opinion) “would be to allow the
fragments of the great Republic to form themselves into new
Confederacies, probably four.”
Not satisfied with this general proposition, he proceeds not only
to discuss and to delineate the proper boundaries for these new
Confederacies, but even to designate capitals for the three on
this side of the Rocky Mountains. We quote his own language as
follows: “All the lines of demarcation between the new unions
cannot be accurately drawn in advance, but many of them
approximately may. Thus, looking to natural boundaries and
commercial affinities, some of the following frontiers, after many
waverings and conflicts, might perhaps become acknowledged and
fixed;
“1. The Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay to the Atlantic. 2.
From Maryland along the crest of the Alleghany (perhaps the Blue
Ridge) range of mountains to some point on the coast of Florida.
3. The line from, say the head of the Potomac to the West or
Northwest, which it will be most difficult to settle. 4. The crest
of the Rocky Mountains.”
“The Southeast Confederacy would, in all human probability, in
less than five years after the rupture, find itself bounded by the
first and second lines indicated above, the Atlantic and the Gulf
of Mexico, with its capital at, say Columbia, South Carolina. The
country between the second, third, and fourth of those lines
would, beyond a doubt, in about the same time, constitute another
Confederacy, with its capital at probably Alton or Quincy,
Illinois. The boundaries of the Pacific Union are the most
definite of all, and the remaining States would constitute the
Northeast Confederacy, with its capital at Albany. It, at the
first thought, will be considered strange that seven slave-holding
States and part of Virginia and Florida should be placed (above)
in a new Confederacy with Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, etc. But when
the overwhelming weight of the great Northwest is taken in
connection with the laws of trade, contiguity of territory, and
the comparative indifference to free soil doctrines on the part of
Western Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, it is evident
that but little if any coercion, beyond moral force, would be
needed to embrace them; and I have omitted the temptation of the
unwasted public lands which would fall entire to this
Confederacy—an appanage (well husbanded) sufficient for many
generations. As to Missouri, Arkansas, and Mississippi, they would
not stand out a month. Louisiana would coalesce without much
solicitation, and Alabama with West Florida would be conquered the
first winter, from the absolute need of Pensacola for a naval
depot.”
According to this arrangement of General Scott, all that would be
left for “the Northeast Confederacy” would be the New England and
Middle States; and our present proud Capitol at Washington,
hallowed by so many patriotic associations, would be removed to
Albany.[69]
Footnote 69:
It is worthy of special remark that General Scott, in his
autobiography recently published, vol. ii, p. 609, entirely
omits to copy this part of his views on which we have been
commenting; so also his supplementary views of the next day,
though together they constitute but one whole. He merely copies
that which relates to garrisoning the Southern forts.
It is easy to imagine with what power these “views,” presented so
early as October, 1860, may have been employed by the disunion
leaders of the cotton States to convince the people that they
might depart in peace. Proceeding from the Commanding General of
the army, a citizen and a soldier so eminent, and eschewing as
they did the idea of invading a seceded State, as well as favoring
the substitution of new Confederacies for the old Union, what
danger could they apprehend in the formation of a Southern
Confederacy?
This portion of the “views,” being purely political and
prospective, and having no connection with military operations,
was out of time and out of place in a report from the commanding
General of the Army to the Secretary of War. So, also, the
expression of his personal preferences among the candidates then
before the people for the office of President. “From a sense of
propriety as a soldier,” says the General, “I have taken no part
in the pending canvass, and, as always heretofore, mean to stay
away from the polls. My sympathies, however, are with the Bell and
Everett ticket.”
After all these preliminaries, we now proceed to a different side
of the picture presented by the General.
In the same “views” (the 29th October, 1860), he says that, “From
a knowledge of our Southern population, it is my solemn conviction
that there is some danger of an early act of rashness preliminary
to secession, viz., the seizure of some or all of the following
posts: Forts Jackson and St. Philip, in the Mississippi, below New
Orleans, both without garrisons; Fort Morgan, below Mobile,
without a garrison; Forts Pickens and McRea, Pensacola harbor,
with an insufficient garrison for one; Fort Pulaski, below
Savannah, without a garrison; Forts Moultrie and Sumter,
Charleston harbor, the former with an insufficient garrison, and
the latter without any; and Fort Monroe, Hampton Roads, without a
sufficient garrison. In my opinion all these works should be
immediately so garrisoned as to make any attempt to take any one
of them by surprise or _coup de main_ ridiculous.”
It was his duty, as commanding general, to accompany this
recommendation with a practicable plan for garrisoning these
forts, stating the number of troops necessary for the purpose, the
points from which they could be drawn, and the manner in which he
proposed to conduct the enterprise. Finding this to be impossible,
from the total inadequacy of the force within the President’s
power to accomplish a military operation so extensive, instead of
furnishing such a plan, he absolves himself from the task by
simply stating in his supplemental views of the next day (30th
October) that “There is one (regular) company at Boston, one here
(at the Narrows), one at Pittsburg, one at Augusta, Ga., and one
at Baton Rouge—in all five companies, only, within reach, to
garrison or reënforce the forts mentioned in the 'views.'”
_Five companies only, four hundred men, to garrison nine
fortifications scattered over six highly excited Southern States.
This was all the force “within reach” so as to make any attempt to
take any one of them by surprise or coup de main ridiculous._
He even disparages the strength of this small force by applying to
it the diminutive adverb “_only_,” or, in other words, merely,
barely. It will not be pretended that the President had any power,
under the laws, to add to this force by calling forth the militia,
or accepting the services of volunteers to garrison these
fortifications. And the small regular army were beyond reach on
our remote frontiers. Indeed, the whole American army, numbering
at that time not more than sixteen thousand effective men, would
have been scarcely sufficient. To have attempted to distribute
these five companies among the eight forts in the cotton States,
and Fortress Monroe, in Virginia, would have been a confession of
weakness, instead of an exhibition of imposing and overpowering
strength. It could have had no effect in preventing secession, but
must have done much to provoke it. It will be recollected that
these “views,” the substance of which soon reached the Southern
States, were written before Mr. Lincoln’s election, and at a time
when none of the cotton States had made the first movement toward
secession. Even South Carolina was then performing all her
relative duties, though most reluctantly, to the Government,
whilst the border States, with Virginia in the first rank, were
still faithful and true to the Union.
Under these circumstances, surely General Scott ought not to have
informed them in advance that the reason why he had recommended
this expedition was because, from his knowledge of them, he
apprehended they might be guilty of an early act of rashness in
seizing these forts before secession. This would necessarily
provoke the passions of the Southern people. Virginia was deeply
wounded at the imputation against her loyalty from a native though
long estranged son.
Whilst one portion of the “views,” as we have already seen, might
be employed by disunion demagogues in convincing the people of the
cotton States that they might secede without serious opposition
from the North, another portion of them was calculated to excite
their indignation and drive them to extremities. From the
impracticable nature of the “views,” and their strange and
inconsistent character, the President dismissed them from his mind
without further consideration.
It is proper to inform the reader why General Scott had five
companies only within reach for the proposed service. This was
because nearly the whole of our small army was on the remote
frontiers, where it had been continually employed for years in
protecting the inhabitants and the emigrants on their way to the
far west, against the attacks of hostile Indians. At no former
period had its services been more necessary than throughout the
year 1860, from the great number of these Indians continually
threatening or waging war on our distant settlements. To employ
the language of Mr. Benjamin Stanton, of Ohio, in his report of
the 18th February, 1861, from the military committee to the House
of Representatives: “The regular army numbers only 18,000 men,
when recruited to its maximum strength; and the whole of this
force is required upon an extended frontier, for the protection of
the border settlements against Indian depredations.” Indeed, the
whole of it had proved insufficient for this purpose. This is
established by the reports of General Scott himself to the War
Department. In these he urges the necessity of raising more
troops, in a striking and convincing light. In that of 20th
November, 1857,[70] after portraying the intolerable hardships and
sufferings of the army engaged in this service, he says: “To
mitigate these evils, and to enable us to give a reasonable
security to our people on Indian frontiers, measuring thousands of
miles, I respectfully suggest an augmentation of at least one
regiment of horse (dragoons, cavalry, or riflemen) and at least
three regiments of foot (infantry or riflemen). This augmentation
would not more than furnish the reinforcements now greatly needed
in Florida, Texas, New Mexico, California, Oregon, Washington
Territory, Kansas, Nebraska, and Minnesota, leaving not a company
for Utah.”
Footnote 70:
3 Senate Documents, 1857-'58, p. 48.
Again, General Scott, in his report of November 13, 1858,
says:[71] “This want of troops to give reasonable security to our
citizens in distant settlements, including emigrants on the
plains, can scarcely be too strongly stated; but I will only add,
that as often as we have been obliged to withdraw troops from one
frontier in order to reinforce another, the weakened points have
been instantly attacked or threatened with formidable invasion.”
Footnote 71:
Senate Executive Documents, 1858-'59, vol. ii., part 3, p. 761.
The President, feeling the force of such appeals, and urged by the
earnest entreaties of the suffering people on the frontiers,
recommended to Congress, through the War Department, to raise five
additional regiments.[72] This, like all other recommendations to
place the country in a proper state of defence, was disregarded.
From what has been stated it is manifest that it was impossible to
garrison the numerous forts of the United States with regular
troops. This will account for the destitute condition of the nine
forts enumerated by General Scott, as well as of all the rest.
Footnote 72:
Senate Documents, 1857-'58, vol. iii., p. 4.
When our system of fortifications was planned and carried into
execution, it was never contemplated to provide garrisons for them
in time of peace. This would have required a large standing army,
against which the American people have ever evinced a wise and
wholesome jealousy. Every great republic, from the days of Cæsar
to Cromwell, and from Cromwell to Bonaparte, has been destroyed by
armies composed of free citizens, who had been converted by
military discipline into veteran soldiers. Our fortifications,
therefore, when completed, were generally left in the custody of a
sergeant and a few soldiers. No fear was entertained that they
would ever be seized by the States for whose defence against a
foreign enemy they had been erected.
Under these circumstances it became the plain duty of the
President, destitute as he was of military force, not only to
refrain from any act which might provoke or encourage the cotton
States into secession, but to smooth the way for such a
Congressional compromise as had in times past happily averted
danger from the Union. There was good reason to hope this might
still be accomplished. The people of the slaveholding States must
have known there could be no danger of an actual invasion of their
constitutional rights over slave property from any hostile action
of Mr. Lincoln’s administration. For the protection of these, they
could rely both on the judicial and the legislative branches of
the Government. The Supreme Court had already decided the
Territorial question in their favor, and it was also ascertained
that there would be a majority in both Houses of the first
Congress of Mr. Lincoln’s term, sufficient to prevent any
legislation to their injury. Thus protected, it would be madness
for them to rush into secession.
Besides, they were often warned and must have known that by their
separation from the free States, these very rights over slave
property, of which they were so jealous, would be in greater
jeopardy than they had ever been under the Government of the
Union. Theirs would then be the only government in Christendom
which had not abolished, or was not in progress to abolish,
slavery. There would be a strong pressure from abroad against this
institution. To resist this effectually would require the power
and moral influence of the Government of the whole United States.
They ought, also, to have foreseen that, if their secession should
end in civil war, whatever might be the event, slavery would
receive a blow from which it could never recover. The true policy,
even in regard to the safety of their domestic institution, was to
cling to the Union.