November, 1860-March, 1861.
THE ACTION OF CONGRESS ON THE RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE PRESIDENT'S
ANNUAL MESSAGE—THE “CRITTENDEN COMPROMISE”—STRANGE COURSE OF THE
NEW YORK “TRIBUNE”—SPECIAL MESSAGE OF JANUARY 8, 1861.
It is now necessary to turn to what took place in Congress upon the
recommendations of the President’s annual message. There were but
two courses that Congress could pursue in this most extraordinary
emergency. It must either preserve the Union by peaceful measures,
or it must provide the President and his successor with the military
force requisite to secure the execution of the laws and the
supremacy of the Constitution. It was plain that in this, as in all
similar cases of threatened revolt against the authority of a
regular and long established government, mere inaction would be a
fatal policy. After the State of South Carolina should have adopted
an ordinance of secession, it would be too late to accomplish
anything by merely arguing against the constitutional doctrine on
which the asserted right of secession depended. That right was
firmly held by multitudes of men in other States, and unless the
Government of the United States should, by conciliatory measures,
effectually disarm the disposition to exercise it, or effectually
prepare to enforce the authority of the Constitution after secession
had taken place, it was morally certain that the next two or three
months would witness the formation of a Southern Confederacy of
formidable strength. To the Executive Department it appropriately
belonged to suggest the measures of conciliation needful for one of
the alternatives of a sound and safe policy, and to execute the laws
by all the means with which the Executive was then or might
thereafter be clothed by the legislature. But the Executive could
not in the smallest degree increase the means which existing laws
had placed in his hands.
There was all the more reason for prompt action upon the President’s
pacific recommendations, in the fact that the Government of the
United States was wholly unprepared for a civil war. The nature of
such a war, the character of the issue on which it would have to be
waged, and the natural repugnance of the people of both sections to
have such a calamity befall the country, all tended to enhance the
duty of preventing it by timely concessions which would in no way
impair the authority of the Constitution. It is true that
potentially the Government had great resources in its war making
power, its taxing power, and its control over the militia of the
States. But inasmuch as a sudden resort to its ultimate powers, and
to their plenary exercise was at this moment fraught with the
greatest peril, there can be no question that the duty of
conciliation stood first in the rank of moral and patriotic duties
incumbent upon the representatives of the States and the people in
the two houses of Congress. Next in the relative rank of these
duties, to be performed, however, simultaneously with the first of
them, stood the obligation to strengthen the hands of the Executive
for the execution of the laws and the preservation of the public
property in South Carolina, which was manifestly about to assume the
attitude of an independent and foreign State. Whether either of
these great duties was performed by the Congress, to which President
Buchanan addressed his annual message and his subsequent appeals;
what were the causes which produced a failure to meet the exigency;
on whom rests the responsibility for that failure, and what were the
consequences which it entailed, must now be considered. Mr. Buchanan
has said that this Congress, beyond question, had it in its power to
preserve the peace of the country and the integrity of the Union,
and that it failed in this duty.[102] Is this a righteous judgment,
which history ought to affirm?
Footnote 102:
Buchanan’s Defence, chapter vii.
In the Senate, after the reading of the President’s message, so much
as related to the present agitated and distracted condition of the
country and the grievances between the slaveholding and the
non-slaveholding States, was referred to a select committee of
thirteen members. The composition of this committee was most
remarkable. It consisted of five Republicans: Senators Seward,
Collamer, Wade, Doolittle, and Grimes, all of them from
non-slaveholding States, and all prominent adherents of that
“Chicago platform” on which Mr. Lincoln had been elected; five
members from slaveholding States, Senators Powell, Hunter,
Crittenden, Toombs, and Davis, and three “Northern Democrats,”
Senators Douglas, Bigler, and Bright. It was understood that the
three last named Senators were placed upon the committee to act as
mediators between the Northern and the Southern sections which the
ten other members represented. Under ordinary circumstances, a
committee would have shaped its report by the decisions of a
majority of its members, if they could not be unanimous. But at the
first meeting of this committee, on the 21st of December, the day
after that on which South Carolina passed her ordinance of
secession, an extraordinary resolution was adopted, that no
proposition should be reported as the decision of the committee,
unless sustained by a majority of each of the classes comprising the
committee, and it was defined that the Senators of the Republican
party were to constitute one class, and Senators of the other
parties were to constitute the other class. Thus, while there were
eight members of the committee who might, by concurring in any
proposition, ordinarily determine the action of the body, it could
not become the decision of that body unless it was supported by the
votes of a separate majority of the five Republican members. It was
said that the reason for this restriction was that no report would
be adopted by the Senate, unless it had been concurred in by at
least a majority of the five Republican Senators. Valid or invalid
as this reason may have been, the restriction is a remarkable proof
of the sectional attitude of the Northern Senators, of the
responsibility which they assumed, and of the willingness of the
majority of the Southern Senators to have the Republican members of
the committee exercise such a power and bear such a responsibility.
The sequel will show how a committee thus composed and thus tied
down was likely to act.
On the 22d, Mr. Crittenden, of Kentucky, a Senator whose name will
be forever venerated for the patriotic part which he took throughout
the proceedings of this Congress, submitted to the committee a
“Joint Resolution,” which he had already offered in the Senate, and
which became known as “the Crittenden Compromise.” It proposed
certain amendments of the Constitution which would reconcile the
conflicting claims of the North and the South, by yielding to the
South the right to take slaves into the Territories south of the
parallel of 36° 30´, and excluding slavery from all the Territories
north of that line: with the further provision that when any
Territory north or south of that line, within such boundaries as
Congress might prescribe, should contain a population requisite for
a member of Congress, it should be admitted into the Union as a
State with or without slavery, as the State constitution adopted by
the people might provide. When it is considered that the people of
the slaveholding States claimed that the Supreme Court of the United
States had already decided that slaves might be taken as property
into any Territory and be there held as property, under a
constitutional right resulting from the common ownership of the
Territories by the States composing the Union, the “Crittenden
Compromise,” if accepted, would be a sacrifice by the South with
which the North might well be content. Whatever were the technical
reasons which could be alleged to show that the Supreme Court had
not made a determination of this question that was binding as a
judicial decision, it was nevertheless true that a majority of the
judges had affirmed in their several opinions the claim of every
Southern slaveholder to carry his slaves into the Territories of the
United States and to hold them there as property, until the
formation of a State constitution. President Buchanan always
regarded the case of “Dred Scott” as a judicial decision of this
constitutional question. But whether it was so or not, the claim had
long been asserted and was still asserted by the people of the
Southern States; and if it was still open as a judicial question, as
the Republican party contended, and if it could be resisted as a
political claim by one section of the Union, it was equally open to
the other section to treat it as a political controversy, which
required to be disposed of by mutual concession between the
slaveholding and the non-slaveholding States. The Republican party,
confined exclusively to the non-slaveholding States, had, by their
political platform in the late Presidential election, treated the
action of the Supreme Court as a nullity, and had affirmed as a
cardinal doctrine of their political creed that slavery should
forever be excluded, by positive law, from all the Territories of
the United States. The circumstances under which the Democratic
party came into the political field in that election did not show
that this party universally took the opposite side; but the votes of
the Southern States in the election show most clearly that the
people of those States still asserted the claim which they held to
have been affirmed by the highest judicial tribunal in the country.
If, therefore, the Crittenden Compromise should be accepted by the
South, it could not be denied that the South would sacrifice a claim
which her people were practically unanimous in asserting as a right.
On the other hand, what would the North lose by that compromise? It
would lose nothing but an abstraction; for there was no Territory
south of 36° 30´ but New Mexico, and into that Territory slave labor
could never be profitably introduced, on account of the nature of
the country.[103] While, therefore, the North would by this
compromise yield nothing but a useless abstract concession to the
South, and would gain, in fact, all the vast territory north of the
compromise line as free territory forever, the Republican party
would undoubtedly have to sacrifice the dogma of the “Chicago
platform.” Whether that dogma ought to have been held paramount to
every other consideration, is a question on which posterity will
have to pass.
Footnote 103:
All the remaining territory south of the line of 36° 30´ was an
Indian reservation, secured to certain tribes by solemn treaties.
It was not yet too late to make this peace-offering to the South.
Mr. Crittenden’s proposition was offered to the committee before any
of the Government forts in the Southern States had been seized, when
no State excepting South Carolina had “seceded,” and when no
convention of the six other cotton States had assembled. Well might
Mr. Buchanan say that the moment was propitious. Well might the
patriotic Crittenden say, in addressing his colleagues on the
committee: “The sacrifice to be made for its preservation (the
Union) is comparatively worthless. Peace and harmony and union in a
great nation were never purchased at so cheap a rate as we now have
it in our power to do. It is a scruple only, a scruple of as little
value as a barleycorn, that stands between us and peace, and
reconciliation, and union; and we stand here pausing and hesitating
about that little atom which is to be sacrificed.”
But this admirable and unselfish statesman was then to learn that
there are states of men’s minds and characters when, fixed by the
antecedents and committals of party, eloquence does not convince,
facts are powerless; when the “barleycorn” becomes a great and
important object; when mole hills become mountains, and when fear of
constituents dominates over all other fears. Yet it cannot be
doubted that there was really very little reason to fear that the
constituencies of Northern Senators would hold them to a strict
account for voting in favor of the Crittenden Compromise. Public
feeling almost everywhere hailed it as the promise of peace and of
the perpetuity of the Union. Nevertheless, all the five Republican
members of the committee voted against it. This secured its
rejection, under the resolution that had been adopted by the
committee. But the singular fact is to be added that two Senators
from the cotton States, Messrs. Davis, of Mississippi, and Toombs,
of Georgia, also voted in the same way.
Readers will look in vain through Mr. Jefferson Davis’s recent work
for a satisfactory explanation of this vote. But an explanation may
perhaps be found in his whole course from the beginning of the
session to his withdrawal from the Senate in the month of January,
1861, after the State of Mississippi had seceded. No impartial
person can, it seems to me, read Mr. Davis’s own account of his
public conduct at this crisis, without reaching the conclusion that
whatever aid he may at any time have been disposed to render in the
pacification of the country was at all times neutralized by his
attitude in regard to the right of secession. From first to last he
insisted that South Carolina, after she had adopted an ordinance of
secession, should be regarded by the Government of the United States
as an independent power. He was active in promoting the objects for
which her commissioners came to Washington in the last week of
December. He demanded that the troops of the United States should be
withdrawn from the forts in Charleston harbor; that those forts
should be surrendered to the paramount sovereignty of a State now
become a foreign nation; and he scouted and ridiculed the idea that
the Federal Executive could employ a military force in executing the
laws of the United States within the dominion of a State which had
withdrawn the powers that she had formerly deposited with the
General Government. There was something singularly preposterous in
this demand that a great government, which had subsisted for more
than seventy years, and had always executed its laws against all
combinations of an insurrectionary character, whether created by
individuals or by State authority, should now “thaw and resolve
itself into a dew,” before the all-consuming energy of a State
ordinance; should accept the secession theory of the Constitution as
the unquestionable law of the land, at the peril of encountering a
civil war. How could measures of conciliation and concession be of
any value, though tendered by the Federal Government, if that
Government was in the same breath to admit that it had no
constitutional power to enforce its authority if the offer of
conciliation and concession should be rejected? Yet Mr. Davis’s
ground of quarrel with President Buchanan was that he would not
admit the right of secession. He could not either persuade or drive
the President into that admission; and surely there can be no
stronger proof of the integrity, fidelity and firmness of the
President than this one fact affords.
Mr. Davis takes credit to himself and other Southern Senators for
having intervened to prevent the authorities of South Carolina from
making any attack upon the forts, so that a civil war might not be
precipitated while measures for the settlement of the sectional
difficulties were pending. No one need deny that those Senators are
entitled to all the credit that justly belongs to such efforts. But
why were those efforts made, and by what were they all along
accompanied? They were made in order that there might be no
bloodshed brought about, which would cause the other cotton States
to recoil from the support of South Carolina in her assertion of the
right of secession; and they were always accompanied by the demand
that the Federal Government should permit the peaceable secession of
any State, even to the extent of refraining from enforcing its laws
and from holding its property within the dominions of any State that
should choose to secede. This idea of peaceable secession, and all
that it comprehended, was founded on the wild expectation that the
two classes of States, slaveholding and non-slaveholding, after an
experimental trial of separate confederacies, would find some system
of union, some basis of reconstruction, other than the basis of the
Constitution of the United States. Whatever claims of statesmanship
may belong to those who entertained this chimerical project, they
could hardly press it upon others as a reason for treating the
Constitution of the United States as a system of government
confessedly destitute of any authority or power to execute its own
laws or to retain its own existence. But this is just what Mr. Davis
denounced President Buchanan for not admitting; and he therefore, to
the extent of his influence, counteracted the President’s great
object of isolating the State of South Carolina by measures that
would quiet the agitation in other slaveholding States, and at the
same time would prepare the necessary means for executing the laws
of the United States within the limits of that one State, in case
she should adopt an ordinance of secession.
On the other hand, the Republican Senators on the Committee of
Thirteen who voted against the Crittenden Compromise had no such
policy to actuate them as that which governed Mr. Davis. They had no
reason for refusing their aid to the President that could be founded
on any difference of opinion as to the constitutional duty of the
Executive. They knew that he was asking for means to uphold the
authority of the Constitution in South Carolina, at the same time
that he was urging measures which would prevent other States from
joining her in the secession movement. What explanation of their
conduct is possible and will leave to them the acquittal of
patriotic purposes, I am not aware. But the fact is, that at no time
during the session did a single Republican Senator, in any form
whatever, give his vote or his influence for the Crittenden
Compromise, or for any other measure that would strengthen the hands
of the President either in maintaining peace or in executing the
laws of the United States. Whether the spirit of party led them to
refuse all aid to an outgoing President; whether they did not
believe that there would be any necessity for a resort to arms;
whether they did not choose, from sectional animosity, to abate
anything from the “Chicago platform;” whatever was the governing
motive for their inaction, it never can be said that they were not
seasonably warned by the President that a policy of inaction would
be fatal. That policy not only crippled him, but it crippled his
successor. When Mr. Lincoln came into office, seven States had
already seceded, and not a single law had been put upon the statute
book which would enable the Executive to meet such a condition of
the Union.
Not only is it manifest that the Crittenden proposition was
reasonable and proper in itself, but there is high authority for
saying that it ought to have been embraced by every Republican
Senator. While it was pending before the Committee of Thirteen,
General Duff Green, a prominent citizen of Mississippi, visited Mr.
Lincoln, the President-elect, at his home in Springfield, Illinois.
Mr. Green took with him a copy of Mr. Crittenden’s resolutions, and
asked Mr. Lincoln’s opinion of them. The substance of what Mr.
Lincoln said was reported on the 28th of December to President
Buchanan, in the following note:
[GENERAL DUFF GREEN TO PRESIDENT BUCHANAN.]
SPRINGFIELD, ILL., December 28, 1860.
DEAR SIR:—
I have had a long and interesting conversation with Mr. Lincoln. I
brought with me a copy of the resolutions submitted by Mr.
Crittenden, which he read over several times, and said that he
believed that the adoption of the line proposed would quiet, for
the present, the agitation of the slavery question, but believed
it would be renewed by the seizure and attempted annexation of
Mexico. He said that the real question at issue between the North
and the South was slavery “propagandism,” and that upon that issue
the Republican party was opposed to the South, and that he was
with his own party; that he had been elected by that party, and
intended to sustain his party in good faith; but added, that the
question on the amendments to the Constitution and the questions
submitted by Mr. Crittenden belonged to the people and States in
legislatures or conventions, and that he would be inclined not
only to acquiesce, but to give full force and effect to their will
thus expressed. Seeing that he was embarrassed by his sense of
duty to his party, I suggested that he might so frame a letter to
me as to refer the measures for the preservation of the Union to
the action of the people in the several States, and he promised to
prepare a letter, giving me his views, by 9 a.m. to-morrow. If his
letter be satisfactory, its purport will be communicated to you by
telegraph.
Yours truly,
DUFF GREEN.
I know of no evidence that Mr. Lincoln prepared the letter which he
promised. No account of it appears to have reached Mr. Buchanan by
telegraph or otherwise. It is probable that Mr. Lincoln, feeling
more strongly the embarrassment arising from his party relations,
reconsidered his determination, and excused himself to General
Green. But what his opinion was is sufficiently proved by the note
which General Green dispatched from Springfield, and which must have
reached Mr. Buchanan at about the time when the committee of
thirteen made their report to the Senate that they were unable to
agree upon any general plan of adjustment of the sectional
difficulties. This report was made on the 31st of December.
The last ten days of the year were thus suffered to elapse without
anything being done to arrest the rising tide of secession in the
seven cotton States. Most of these States had suspended or delayed
their action until it could be known whether there was to be any
concession made by the Republican party as represented in Congress.
They now rapidly accomplished their secession measures. The
conventions of Florida on the 7th of January, Mississippi on the
9th, Alabama on the 11th, Georgia on the 19th, Louisiana on the
25th, and Texas on the 5th of February, adopted ordinances of
secession by great majorities. These ordinances were followed by a
general seizure of the public property of the United States within
the limits of those States, after the example of South Carolina.
Among the discouraging influences which now operated with a double
mischief to counteract the efforts of those who aimed to confine
secession to the State of South Carolina, must be mentioned the
course of one of the most prominent papers of the North. No journal
had exercised a greater power in promoting the election of Mr.
Lincoln upon the “Chicago platform” than the _New York Tribune_. It
was universally and justly regarded as a representative of a large
section of the Republican party. Its founder and chief editor,
Horace Greeley, was a man of singular mould. Beginning life as a
journeyman printer, he learned in the practice of type-setting the
compass and power of the English language. In the course of a long
experience as a public writer, he acquired a style of much energy,
and of singular directness. But, without a regular education and the
mental discipline which it gives, he never learned to take a
comprehensive and statesmanlike view of public questions. His
impulses, feelings, and sympathies were on the side of humanity and
the progress of mankind. But these generous and noble qualities were
unbalanced by a sense of the restraints which the fundamental
political conditions of the American Union imposed upon
philanthropic action. He was, therefore, almost incapable of
appreciating the moral foundations on which the Union was laid by
the Constitution of the United States. He felt deeply the inherent
wrong of African slavery, but he could not see, or did not care to
see, that the Union of slaveholding and non-slaveholding States
under one system of government for national purposes was caused by
public necessities that justified its original formation, and that
continued to make its preservation the highest of civil obligations.
He did not, like many of the anti-slavery agitators, renounce the
whole of the Constitution. But while he was willing that the North
should enjoy its benefits, he was ever ready to assail those
provisions, however deeply they were embedded in the basis of the
Union, which recognized and to a qualified extent upheld the slavery
existing under the local law of certain States. When, therefore, the
long political conflict between the two sections of the country
culminated in a condition of things which presented the alternatives
of a peaceful separation of the slave and the free States, or a
denial of the doctrine of secession and the consequences claimed for
it, Mr. Greeley threw his personal weight, and the weight of his
widely circulated journal, against the authority of the General
Government to enforce in any way the obligations of the
Constitution. He did not much concern himself with the distinction
between coercing a State by force of arms from adopting an ordinance
of secession, and coercing individuals after secession to obey the
laws of the United States. From the period immediately before the
election of Mr. Lincoln, after his election, and for a time after
his inauguration, Mr. Greeley opposed all coercion of every kind. He
maintained that the right of secession was the same as the right of
revolution; and after the cotton States had formed their confederacy
and adopted a provisional constitution, he tendered the aid of his
journal to forward their views. He thus, on the one hand, joined his
influence to the cry of the professed abolitionists who renounced
the Constitution entirely, and on the other hand, contributed his
powerful pen in encouraging the secessionists to persevere in
separating their States from the Union.
Mr. Greeley’s secession argument, drawn from the Declaration of
Independence and the right of revolution, was a remarkable proof of
the unsoundness of his reasoning powers. Because the right of
self-government is an inherent right of a people, he assumed that
men cannot be required to perform their covenanted obligations. He
could not see, he said, how twenty millions of people could
rightfully hold ten, or even five, other millions in a political
union which those other millions wished to renounce. But if he had
ever been in the habit of reasoning upon the Constitution of the
United States as other men reasoned, who did not accept the doctrine
of State secession, he could have seen that when five millions of
people, exercising freely the right of self-government, have
solemnly covenanted with the twenty millions that they will obey the
laws enacted by a legislative authority which they have voluntarily
established over themselves and over all the inhabitants of the
country, the moralist and the publicist can rest the right to use
compulsion upon a basis which is perfectly consistent with the
principles of the Declaration of Independence, and which those
principles do in truth recognize.
In fact, however, Mr. Greeley, by his public utterances at this
great crisis, bettered the instructions of the secessionists
themselves. He taught them that the Crittenden Compromise, or any
other measure of conciliation, need not be considered. They had only
to will that they would leave the Union, and they were out of it,
and at liberty to care nothing about concessions from the North. And
in the same way, he taught those of the North, on whom rested the
immediate duty of preventing the spread of the secession movement,
that all measures of conciliation were useless, for the right of
secession, as he maintained, was bottomed on the Declaration of
Independence, and neither persuasion nor coercion ought to be used
against the exercise of such a right. Such political philosophy as
this, proclaimed by a leading organ of the Republican party, created
difficulties for a President situated as Mr. Buchanan was after the
election of his successor, which posterity can not overlook.[104]
Footnote 104:
Mr. Greeley’s utterances must be cited, that I may not be supposed
to have in any way misrepresented him. But three days after Mr.
Lincoln’s election, the New York _Tribune_ announced such
sentiments as the following: “If the cotton States shall become
satisfied that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we
insist on letting them go in peace. _The right to secede may be a
revolutionary one_, BUT IT EXISTS NEVERTHELESS...... We must ever
resist the right of any State to remain in the Union and nullify
or defy the laws thereof. TO WITHDRAW FROM THE UNION IS QUITE
ANOTHER MATTER; and whenever a considerable section of our Union
shall deliberately resolve to go out, WE SHALL RESIST ALL COERCIVE
MEASURES DESIGNED TO KEEP IT IN. We hope never to live in a
Republic whereof one section is pinned to another by bayonets.”
And again on the 17th December, three days before the secession of
South Carolina: “If it [the Declaration of Independence] justified
the secession from the British Empire of three millions of
colonists in 1776, _we do not see why it would not justify the
secession of five millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in
1861_. If we are mistaken on this point, why does not some one
attempt to show _wherein_ and why? For our part, while we deny the
right of slaveholders to hold slaves against the will of the
latter, _we cannot see how twenty millions of people can
rightfully hold ten, or even five, in a detested Union with them
by military force_. ...... _If seven or eight contiguous States
shall present themselves authentically at Washington_, saying, ‘We
hate the Federal Union; we have withdrawn from it; we give you the
choice between acquiescing in our secession and arranging amicably
all incidental questions on the one hand, and attempting to subdue
us on the other,’ _we would not stand up for coercion, for
subjugation, for we do not think it would be just_. We hold the
right of self-government, _even when invoked in behalf of those
who deny it to others_. So much for the question of principle.”
In this course the _Tribune_ persisted from the date of Mr.
Lincoln’s election until after his inauguration, employing such
remarks as the following: “Any attempt to compel them by force to
remain would be contrary to the principles enunciated in the
immortal Declaration of Independence, contrary to the fundamental
ideas on which human liberty is based.”
Even after the cotton States had formed their confederacy, and
adopted a provisional constitution at Montgomery, on the 23d
February, 1861, it gave them encouragement to proceed in the
following language: “_We have repeatedly said, and we once more
insist_, that the great principle embodied by Jefferson in the
Declaration of American Independence, that governments derive
their just powers from the consent of the governed, is sound and
just; _and that if the slave States, the cotton States or the Gulf
States only, choose to form an independent nation_, THEY HAVE A
CLEAR MORAL RIGHT TO DO SO. _Whenever it shall be clear that the
great body of Southern people have become conclusively alienated
from the Union, and anxious to escape from it_, WE WILL DO OUR
BEST TO FORWARD THEIR VIEWS.”
Seeing how fatally wrong was the course of this erratic journalist,
and how much depended on the success of the Crittenden Compromise,
the President endeavored to enlist in its behalf another great
journal of the North, which was conducted by a person on whom he
thought he could rely, and whose paper was professedly independent
of party politics. The following private letter to the editor of the
New York _Herald_ attests how earnestly Mr. Buchanan was bent upon
the improvement of every chance by which the spread of secession
might be prevented:
[MR. BUCHANAN TO JAMES GORDON BENNETT.]
(Private and confidential.) WASHINGTON, December 20, 1860.
MY DEAR SIR:—
You wield the most powerful organ in the country for the formation
of public opinion, and I have no doubt you feel a proportionate
responsibility under the present alarming circumstances of the
country. Every person here has his own remedy for existing evils,
and there is no general assent to any proposition. Still, I
believe the tendency is strong, and is becoming stronger every
day, towards the Missouri Compromise, with the same protection to
slaves south of 36° 30´ that is given to other property. The South
can lose no territory north of this line, because no portion of it
is adapted to slave labor, whilst they would gain a substantial
security within the Union by such a constitutional amendment. The
Republicans have for some years manifested indignation at the
repeal of this compromise, and would probably be more willing to
accept it than any other measure to guarantee the rights of the
South. I have stated my favorite plan in the message, but am
willing to abandon it at any moment for one more practicable and
equally efficacious. If your judgment should approve it, you could
do much by concentrating and directing your energies to this
single point. My object, when I commenced to write, was simply to
express my opinion that existing circumstances tended strongly
toward the Missouri Compromise; but, with pen in hand, I shall
make one or two other remarks.
I do not know whether the great commercial and social advantages
of the telegraph are not counterbalanced by its political evils.
No one can judge of this so well as myself. The public mind
throughout the interior is kept in a constant state of excitement
by what are called “telegrams.” They are short and spicy, and can
easily be inserted in the country newspapers. In the city journals
they can be contradicted the next day; but the case is different
throughout the country. Many of them are sheer falsehoods, and
especially those concerning myself......
With my kindest and most cordial regards to Mrs. Bennett, I
remain, very respectfully, your friend,
JAMES BUCHANAN.
Although defeated before the Committee of Thirteen, Mr. Crittenden
did not abandon the cause of peace and Union. His proposed
compromise, it was now apparent, could not be carried as an
amendment of the Constitution by the requisite two-thirds vote of
Congress. But an appeal could be made to the people, if a majority
of both Houses would send the question to them; and if this majority
could be obtained in time, he and others had good reason to believe
that the course of secession in the six remaining cotton States
could be stayed. He therefore postponed by his own motion the
further consideration of his proposed amendment, and on the 3d of
January, 1861, before any State excepting South Carolina had
seceded, he introduced a substitute for it, in the shape of a joint
resolution, by which he proposed to refer his compromise to a direct
vote of the people in the several States, so that they could
instruct their representatives to give it the initiatory shape of a
constitutional amendment. This course of action was not provided for
in the amending clause of the Constitution, and it was, without
doubt, extraordinary. But there was nothing in the Constitution
inconsistent with it; it would not set aside any of the forms by
which amendments of the Constitution must be initiated and adopted;
and the circumstances of the country were so extraordinary that any
means of reaching public opinion would be entirely proper. Moreover,
it was not an unprecedented step, for State legislatures and other
public bodies had frequently recommended various amendments of the
Constitution. Mr. Crittenden’s resolution justified itself by its
own terms. It read as follows:
“Whereas, the Union is in danger, and, owing to the unhappy
divisions existing in Congress, it would be difficult, if not
impossible, for that body to concur in both its branches by the
requisite majority, so as to enable it either to adopt such
measures of legislation, or to recommend to the States such
amendments to the Constitution, as are deemed necessary and proper
to avert that danger; and, whereas, in so great an emergency, the
opinion and judgment of the people ought to be heard, and would be
the best and surest guide to their representatives: Therefore,
_Resolved_, That provision ought to be made by law, without delay,
for taking the sense of the people and submitting to their vote
the following resolution [the same as in his former amendment], as
the basis for the final and permanent settlement of those disputes
that now disturb the peace of the country and threaten the
existence of the Union.”
The President now interposed the weight of his office, by a special
message to Congress, dated on the 8th of January. What had occurred
between him and the South Carolina commissioners has been detailed.
Of this occurrence, and of the position of affairs in Charleston
harbor, Congress was now officially informed by the special message;
the residue of it was devoted to the expediency and necessity of
allowing the people to express their sentiments concerning the
proposition of Mr. Crittenden.
TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:
At the opening of your present session I called your attention to
the dangers which threatened the existence of the Union. I
expressed my opinion freely concerning the original causes of
those dangers, and recommended such measures as I believed would
have the effect of tranquilizing the country and saving it from
the peril in which it had been needlessly and most unfortunately
involved. Those opinions and recommendations I do not propose now
to repeat. My own convictions upon the whole subject remain
unchanged.
The fact that a great calamity was impending over the nation was
even at that time acknowledged by every intelligent citizen. It
had already made itself felt throughout the length and breadth of
the land. The necessary consequences of the alarm thus produced
were most deplorable. The imports fell off with a rapidity never
known before, except in time of war, in the history of our foreign
commerce; the Treasury was unexpectedly left without the means
which it had reasonably counted upon to meet the public
engagements; trade was paralyzed; manufactures were stopped; the
best public securities suddenly sunk in the market; every species
of property depreciated more or less; and thousands of poor men,
who depended upon their daily labor for their daily bread, were
turned out of employment.
I deeply regret that I am not able to give you any information
upon the state of the Union which is more satisfactory than what I
was then obliged to communicate. On the contrary, matters are
still worse at present than they then were. When Congress met, a
strong hope pervaded the whole public mind that some amicable
adjustment of the subject would speedily be made by the
representatives of the States and of the people, which might
restore peace between the conflicting sections of the country.
That hope has been diminished by every hour of delay; and as the
prospect of a bloodless settlement fades away, the public distress
becomes more and more aggravated. As evidence of this, it is only
necessary to say that the Treasury notes authorized by the act of
17th December last were advertised, according to the law, and that
no responsible bidder offered to take any considerable sum at par
at a lower rate of interest than twelve per cent. From these facts
it appears that, in a government organized like ours, domestic
strife, or even a well-grounded fear of civil hostilities, is more
destructive to our public and private interests than the most
formidable foreign war.
In my annual message I expressed the conviction, which I have long
deliberately held, and which recent reflection has only tended to
deepen and confirm, that no State has a right by its own act to
secede from the Union, or throw off its Federal obligations at
pleasure. I also declared my opinion to be that, even if that
right existed and should be exercised by any State of the
Confederacy, the Executive Department of this Government had no
authority under the Constitution to recognize its validity by
acknowledging the independence of such State. This left me no
alternative, as the Chief Executive officer under the Constitution
of the United States, but to collect the public revenues and to
protect the public property so far as this might be practicable
under existing laws. This is still my purpose. My province is to
execute, and not to make the laws. It belongs to Congress,
exclusively, to repeal, to modify, or to enlarge their provisions,
to meet exigencies as they may occur. I possess no dispensing
power.
I certainly had no right to make aggressive war upon any State,
and I am perfectly satisfied that the Constitution has wisely
withheld that power even from Congress. But the right and the duty
to use military force defensively against those who resist the
Federal officers in the execution of their legal functions, and
against those who assail the property of the Federal Government,
is clear and undeniable.
But the dangerous and hostile attitude of the States toward each
other has already far transcended and cast in the shade the
ordinary executive duties already provided for by law, and has
assumed such vast and alarming proportions as to place the subject
entirely above and beyond executive control. The fact cannot be
disguised that we are in the midst of a great revolution. In all
its various bearings, therefore, I commend the question to
Congress, as the only human tribunal, under Providence, possessing
the power to meet the existing emergency. To them, exclusively,
belongs the power to declare war, or to authorize the employment
of military force in all cases contemplated by the Constitution;
and they alone possess the power to remove grievances which might
lead to war, and to secure peace and union to this distracted
country. On them, and on them alone, rests the responsibility.
The Union is a sacred trust left by our revolutionary fathers to
their descendants; and never did any other people inherit so rich
a legacy. It has rendered us prosperous in peace and triumphant in
war. The national flag has floated in glory over every sea. Under
its shadow American citizens have found protection and respect in
all lands beneath the sun. If we descend to considerations of
purely material interest, when, in the history of all time, has a
confederacy been bound together by such strong ties of mutual
interest? Each portion of it is dependent on all, and all upon
each portion, for prosperity and domestic security. Free trade
throughout the whole supplies the wants of one portion from the
productions of another, and scatters wealth everywhere. The great
planting and farming States require the aid of the commercial and
navigating States to send their productions to domestic and
foreign markets, and to furnish the naval power to render their
transportation secure against all hostile attacks.
Should the Union perish in the midst of the present excitement, we
have already had a sad foretaste of the universal suffering which
would result from its destruction. The calamity would be severe in
every portion of the Union, and would be quite as great, to say
the least, in the Southern as in the Northern States. The greatest
aggravation of the evil, and that which would place us in the most
unfavorable light both before the world and posterity, is, as I am
firmly convinced, that the secession movement has been chiefly
based upon a misapprehension at the South of the sentiments of the
majority in several of the Northern States. Let the question be
transferred from political assemblies to the ballot-box, and the
people themselves would speedily redress the serious grievances
which the South have suffered. But, in Heaven’s name, let the
trial be made before we plunge into armed conflict upon the mere
assumption that there is no other alternative. Time is a great
conservative power. Let us pause at this momentous point and
afford the people, both North and South, an opportunity for
reflection. Would that South Carolina had been convinced of this
truth before her precipitate action! I, therefore, appeal through
you to the people of this country to declare in their might that
the Union must and shall be preserved by all constitutional means.
I most earnestly recommend that you devote yourselves exclusively
to the question how this can be accomplished in peace. All other
questions, when compared with this, sink into insignificance. The
present is no time for palliatives; action, prompt action, is
required. A delay in Congress to prescribe or to recommend a
distinct and practical proposition for conciliation may drive us
to a point from which it will be almost impossible to recede.
A common ground on which conciliation and harmony can be produced
is not unattainable. The proposition to compromise by letting the
North have exclusive control of the territory above a certain
line, and to give Southern institutions protection below that
line, ought to receive universal approbation. In itself, indeed,
it may not be entirely satisfactory; but when the alternative is
between a reasonable concession on both sides and a destruction of
the Union, it is an imputation upon the patriotism of Congress to
assert that its members will hesitate for a moment.
Even now the danger is upon us. In several of the States which
have not yet seceded, the forts, arsenals, and magazines of the
United States have been seized. This is by far the most serious
step which has been taken since the commencement of the troubles.
This public property has long been left without garrisons and
troops for its protection, because no person doubted its security
under the flag of the country in any State of the Union. Besides,
our small army has scarcely been sufficient to guard our remote
frontiers against Indian incursions. The seizure of this property,
from all appearances, has been purely aggressive, and not in
resistance to any attempt to coerce a State or States to remain in
the Union.
At the beginning of these unhappy troubles, I determined that no
act of mine should increase the excitement in either section of
the country. If the political conflict were to end in a civil war,
it was my determined purpose not to commence it, nor even to
furnish an excuse for it by an act of this Government. My opinion
remains unchanged, that justice as well as sound policy requires
us still to seek a peaceful solution of the questions at issue
between the North and the South. Entertaining this conviction, I
refrained even from sending reinforcements to Major Anderson, who
commanded the forts in Charleston harbor, until an absolute
necessity for doing so should make itself apparent, lest it might
unjustly be regarded as a menace of military coercion, and thus
furnish, if not a provocation, a pretext for an outbreak on the
part of South Carolina. No necessity for these reinforcements
seemed to exist. I was assured by distinguished and upright
gentlemen of South Carolina[105] that no attack upon Major
Anderson was intended, but that, on the contrary, it was the
desire of the State authorities, as much as it was my own, to
avoid the fatal consequences which must eventually follow a
military collision.
Footnote 105:
Messrs. McQueen, Miles, Bonham, Boyce, and Keitt, members of the
House of Representatives from South Carolina, on the 8th of
December, 1860.
And here I deem it proper to submit, for your information, copies
of a communication, dated December 28, 1860, addressed to me by R.
W. Barnwell, J. H. Adams, and J. L. Orr, “commissioners” from
South Carolina, with the accompanying documents, and copies of my
answer thereto, dated December 31.
In further explanation of Major Anderson’s removal from Fort
Moultrie to Fort Sumter, it is proper to state that, after my
answer to the South Carolina “commissioners,” the War Department
received a letter from that gallant officer, dated December 27,
1860, the day after this movement, from which the following is an
extract:
“I will add, as my opinion, that many things convinced me that the
authorities of the State designed to proceed to a hostile act”
[evidently referring to the orders dated December 11, of the late
Secretary of War]. “Under this impression, I could not hesitate
that it was my solemn duty to move my command from a fort which we
could not probably have held longer than forty-eight or sixty
hours to this one, where my power of resistance is increased to a
very great degree.” It will be recollected that the concluding
part of these orders was in the following terms: “The smallness of
your force will not permit you, perhaps, to occupy more than one
of the three forts; but an attack on, or attempt to take
possession of either one of them, will be regarded as an act of
hostility, and you may then put your command into either of them
which you may deem most proper to increase its power of
resistance. You are also authorized to take similar defensive
steps whenever you have tangible evidence of a design to proceed
to a hostile act.”
It is said that serious apprehensions are, to some extent,
entertained, in which I do not share, that the peace of this
District may be disturbed before the 4th of March next. In any
event, it will be my duty to preserve it, and this duty shall be
performed.
In conclusion, it may be permitted to me to remark that I have
often warned my countrymen of the dangers which now surround us.
This may be the last time I shall refer to the subject officially.
I feel that my duty has been faithfully, though it may be
imperfectly, performed; and whatever the result may be, I shall
carry to my grave the consciousness that I at least meant well for
my country.
JAMES BUCHANAN.
WASHINGTON CITY, Jan. 8, 1861.
It is a painful part of an historian’s duty to reflect upon the
conduct of public men, who had it in their power at least to show a
willingness to save their country from the calamity of civil war,
and who appear to have been indifferent to everything but the dogmas
of a party platform. This special message of President Buchanan, in
the circumstances of the moment, was entitled to the gravest
attention and respect. It ought to have produced immediate assent to
its recommendation, on the part of Republican Senators, whom it
would have relieved from their previous committals to the “Chicago
platform” by a reference of the questions in dispute to the people
of the country. The venerable age of the President, his long
experience in public affairs, his unquestionable patriotism, his
approaching retirement from public life, his manifest desire to
leave the Government to his successor unembarrassed by anything but
the secession of South Carolina, should have conciliated the support
of some at least, if not of all, of the Republican Senators. But, as
it is now my melancholy duty to show from the record, not one
Republican Senator ever voted for Mr. Crittenden’s resolution, the
adoption of which the President so strongly recommended. Memorials
of the most earnest character, coming from all quarters of the
North, even from New England, urging the passage of the Crittenden
Compromise, were heaped upon the table of the Senate.[106] On the
14th of January, Mr. Crittenden made an unsuccessful effort to have
his resolution considered. It was postponed to the following day. On
the 15th, every Republican Senator voted for its further
postponement, to make room for the Pacific Railroad Bill. On the
16th, Mr. Crittenden obtained, by a majority of one vote—all the
Republican Senators voting nay—the consideration of his resolution.
Parliamentary tactics were then resorted to by the Republicans to
defeat it. Mr. Clark, a Republican Senator from New Hampshire, moved
to strike out the whole preamble and body of the resolution, and to
substitute in its place another preamble and resolution of an
entirely opposite character, and affirming the dogma of the Chicago
platform in relation to slavery in the Territories. For this motion
there were 25 yeas to 23 nays; all the Republican Senators voting in
the affirmative.[107] Buried under the Clark amendment, Mr.
Crittenden’s resolution remained for more than six weeks, until the
2d of March, when it was too late for final action upon it. But on
that day a vote was taken upon it, and it was defeated by 19 votes
in the affirmative and 20 in the negative.[108]
Footnote 106:
See the Index to the Journal of the Senate for this session, pp.
494, 495, 496. One of these memorials, coming from the City
Councils of Boston, had the signatures also of over 22,000
citizens, of all shades of political character. Senate Journal of
1860-’61, p. 218.
Footnote 107:
The Clark amendment, which smothered Mr. Crittenden’s resolution,
prevailed, because six secession Senators refused to vote against
it, preferring to play into the hands of the Republicans. They
were Messrs. Benjamin and Slidell, of Louisiana; Iverson, of
Georgia; Hemphill and Wigfall, of Texas; and Johnson, of Arkansas.
Had they voted with the Senators from the border States and the
other Democratic members, the Clark amendment would have been
defeated, and the Senate would on that day, before the secession
of any State excepting South Carolina, have been brought to a
direct vote on Mr. Crittenden’s resolution.
Footnote 108:
“It is proper,” Mr. Buchanan said, “for future reference that the
names of those Senators who constituted the majority on this
momentous question, should be placed upon record. Every vote given
from the six New England States was in opposition to Mr.
Crittenden’s resolution. These consisted of Mr. Clark, of New
Hampshire; Messrs. Sumner and Wilson, of Massachusetts; Mr.
Anthony, of Rhode Island; Messrs. Dixon and Foster, of
Connecticut; Mr. Foot, of Vermont; and Messrs. Fessenden and
Morrill, of Maine. The remaining eleven votes, in order to make up
the 20, were given by Mr. Wade, of Ohio; Mr. Trumbull, of
Illinois; Messrs. Bingham and Chandler, of Michigan; Messrs.
Grimes and Harlan, of Iowa; Messrs. Doolittle and Durkee, of
Wisconsin; Mr. Wilkinson, of Minnesota; Mr. King, of New York; and
Mr. Ten Eyck, of New Jersey. It is also worthy of observation,
that neither Mr. Hale, of New Hampshire, Mr. Simmons, of Rhode
Island, Mr. Collamer, of Vermont, Mr. Seward, of New York, nor Mr.
Cameron, of Pennsylvania, voted on the question, although it
appears from the journal that all these gentlemen were present in
the Senate on the day of the vote. It would be vain to conjecture
the reasons why these five Senators refrained from voting on an
occasion so important.” (Buchanan’s Defence, p. 143.)