1861—February and March.
COMMISSIONERS FROM THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT—MR. JEFFERSON DAVIS’S
STATEMENT THAT THEY WERE INVITED BY PRESIDENT BUCHANAN CALLED IN
QUESTION.
It is now my duty to examine a statement made by Mr. Jefferson Davis
in his recent work, to the effect that Confederate commissioners
were appointed and sent to Washington from Montgomery, partly, at
least, in consequence of a suggestion made to him by President
Buchanan. The statement is in these words: “It may here be
mentioned, in explanation of my desire that the commission, or at
least a part of it, should reach Washington before the close of Mr.
Buchanan’s term, that I had received an intimation from him, through
a distinguished Senator of one of the border States,[157] that he
would be happy to receive a commissioner or commissioners from the
Confederate States, and would refer to the Senate any communication
that might be made through such a commission.”[158]
Footnote 157:
Mr. Hunter, of Virginia.
Footnote 158:
Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, vol. i., p. 264.
This intimation, if it was ever made, was, as Mr. Davis describes
it, that the President would himself receive a diplomatic agent or
agents from the Confederate States, and would, as is the customary
and constitutional course on extraordinary occasions, consult the
Senate, not Congress, upon any communication that such agent or
agents might desire to make. Mr. Davis, although he names Mr.
Hunter, of Virginia, as the person through whom he received this
intimation, quotes no letter or telegram from that gentleman; so
that a judgment cannot be formed upon the character of this alleged
intimation. There is not the least trace among Mr. Buchanan’s
private papers of his ever having made to Mr. Hunter such a
suggestion in writing. If it was made orally—considering his habit
of keeping memoranda of important conversations, especially with the
Southern Senators—it is highly probable that he would not have
omitted to record this one. No such memorandum has been found after
the most diligent search. One is left, therefore, to the
probabilities of the case, which are all against the correctness of
Mr. Davis’ statement. No imputation is here made upon Mr. Davis’
veracity; but it evidently requires something more in the nature of
proof than anything he has given, to justify the belief that
President Buchanan ever expressed his willingness to receive
commissioners from the Confederate States, to negotiate with the
diplomatic department of the Government for a peaceable
acknowledgment of the independence of those States. The mere
reception of such commissioners and a reference of their
communication to the Senate, would have been tantamount to an
admission that the Confederate government could be treated with as
an independent power.
1. In the letter addressed by Mr. Davis to the President, dated on
the 27th of February, 1861, and which he describes in his book as
“of a personal and semi-official character,” introducing Mr.
Crawford, the first commissioner to arrive in Washington, and asking
for him “a favorable reception corresponding to his station,” he did
not in any manner signify that he was sending Mr. Crawford to
Washington in compliance with an intimation which he, Mr. Davis, had
received from Mr. Buchanan. This he would naturally have said, in
such a personal letter, if he at that time was acting upon such an
intimation from Mr. Buchanan, because it would have been an
unanswerable ground on which to ask for a favorable reception of the
commissioner. The appeal _ad hominem_ would not have been left out
of such a letter.
2. Mr. Davis was well aware that President Buchanan had steadily
refused to accord any diplomatic or official character to the South
Carolina commissioners, as representatives of a foreign or
independent power, and that he had conferred with them only as
private and eminent citizens of their State. Mr. Davis was also
aware that the President had never offered to entertain, and had
never entertained, a proposition to refer to any other body than
Congress, the question of the standing of any seceded State. He had
acted in the same way towards Colonel Hayne, when he came from
Governor Pickens to demand the surrender of Fort Sumter; and again,
early in February, when the Hon. Thomas J. Judge presented himself
as a commissioner from the seceded State of Alabama, the President,
as Mr. Davis doubtless knew, refused to receive him in any capacity
but that of a distinguished citizen of Alabama, referring to his
several previous messages to Congress as proof that he could not
recognize Mr. Judge in the character which he claimed. All this had
transpired a good while before Mr. Davis sent Mr. Crawford to
Washington. On the other hand, ex-President Tyler had been received
by the President as a commissioner from the State of Virginia, which
had not seceded, and did not then propose and was not likely to
secede from the Union. Yet, the world is asked to believe that
President Buchanan, through a third person, sent an intimation to
the President of the Confederate States, that he would be happy to
receive a diplomatic agent of that government, and would consult the
Senate upon what that agent had to propose.
3. The date of Mr. Crawford’s departure from Montgomery, “on or
about February 27th,” the date of his arrival in Washington, “two or
three days before the expiration of Mr. Buchanan’s term of office,”
and the fact that Mr. Buchanan declined to receive him or to send
any message to the Senate touching the subject of his mission,
militate strongly against the correctness of the assertion that he
went there in consequence of an intimation from Mr. Buchanan that
such an agent would be received. If such an intimation had been
given, the President could have had no excuse for refusing to hold
any communication with the agent, even if he did not arrive until
the last two or three days of the administration.
4. Mr. Crawford, in a manuscript account which he furnished to Mr.
Davis of his “recollections of events connected with” his mission,
represents Mr. Buchanan as “panic-stricken;” in “a state of most
thorough alarm, not only for his home at Wheatland, but for his
personal safety;” that he was “afraid of a public visit” from the
commissioner whose appointment he had himself suggested, and whom he
had promised to receive.[159] Mr. Crawford is not alone in imputing
“panic” to Mr. Buchanan. It was a common mode, both with Mr.
Buchanan’s Northern and his Southern enemies, to represent him as
bewildered, confused, timorous, not only during the last days, but
during the last months of his administration. This was their way of
accounting for conduct which, for very opposite reasons, they
disliked. It has been my duty, in investigating day by day every act
of his official and private life during this period, to penetrate
into his closet, if I may so express myself, and to form an opinion
respecting the effect upon him of the great and critical events with
which he had to deal. The materials for such an opinion, when one
has access to the written evidence of what such a statesman was
doing from day to day and from hour to hour, are almost as ample as
if one had all the while been at his side and sate at his board. It
seems to me the veriest folly, to speak of a man as panic-stricken
or bewildered, who was daily and hourly answering with his own hand
the most important public despatches, and the most familiar private
letters, in the manner appropriate to each; recording with his own
pen important conversations; holding cabinet councils; giving
directions and transacting with punctuality and order the
multifarious business of a great office; attending to his own
private concerns, and grasping firmly the helm of state amid waves
that rose higher and were more dangerous than any through which the
good ship had ever floated; entertaining friends, enjoying the
delights of social intercourse, writing at one time the gravest and
most important messages to Congress, and then congratulating a young
lady friend on her approaching marriage, in as graceful and charming
a little note as a woman ever received. I cannot give to the reader
an adequate idea of what I have gone through, in the study of these
last four months of Mr. Buchanan’s official life. I can only say
that on me it has produced the impression of great versatility of
powers, immense industry, complete self-command, unshaken firmness,
and undeviating consistency. That a man of nearly seventy years
should have encountered, as he did, what he had to encounter, with
so little sign of fear, is the best proof of an undaunted temper and
a serene self-possession. The gossip of Pennsylvania Avenue, and the
tattle of secession circles, supposed him to be panic-stricken;
while he sate in the White House the most remarkable instance, in
those tumultuous times, of the _mens aequa in arduis_.[160]
Footnote 159:
As Mr. Crawford had no interview with President Buchanan, he could
have had none but hearsay evidence of Mr. Buchanan’s state of
mind.
Footnote 160:
I have had occasion heretofore to speak of the multitudes of
letters received by the President from all quarters of the
country, after the promulgation of his annual message of December
3d. The inundation was scarcely less during the months of January
and February; and as a general rule, when an answer was necessary
or expedient, he made the original draft of it himself. In almost
all cases, he noted on the back of letters or other papers which
he received, the name of the writer, the date, and the date of the
answer. But was he wasting his energies, it may be asked, in the
duties of a mere clerk? Turn to his messages; consider the almost
daily cabinet consultations, and the incessant attention which he
had to give to the state of things in the South, the proceedings
of Congress, the condition of public opinion in the North, and the
deliberations of the Peace Convention, as well as to the ordinary
business of the Government.
It seems to be quite evident from Mr. Tyler’s note of February 24th,
to the President, that so far as any suggestion of a commission to
be sent by Mr. Davis to Washington proceeded from that city, it
proceeded from Mr. Tyler himself, and those gentlemen of his own
State who, acting with him, were endeavoring to ward off any attack
upon Fort Sumter. Mr. Davis became President of the Confederate
States on the 18th of February. But before that date, Mr. Tyler was
actively engaged in efforts to prevent an armed collision at
Charleston; and as it was well known that Mr. Davis would be the
President of the new confederacy whose delegates had assembled at
Montgomery, Mr. Tyler and the other Virginians looked to him to
prevent any outbreak in South Carolina. But I know of nothing that
can connect Mr. Buchanan with the suggestion of a commission, beyond
Mr. Davis’s statement, which is wholly unsupported by proof. The
fair inference from all that occurred is, that the commission was
sent to Washington to take the chances of being received by the
out-going or the incoming administration, as circumstances might
admit. As the first commissioner did not leave Montgomery until the
27th of February, it could not have been expected that Mr. Buchanan
would take the responsibility of binding his successor by
negotiating with a diplomatic agent of the Confederate States during
the last three days of his administration; nor is it probable that
Mr. Davis, whose last words in the Senate of the United States
arraigned Mr. Buchanan severely for his course towards South
Carolina, had, as President of the Confederate States, received from
Mr. Buchanan an intimation that was equivalent to an invitation from
one potentate to another to send a commission for the adjustment of
all differences between their two governments.
“He is advised to send a commission,” said Mr. Tyler to Mr.
Buchanan. Advised by whom? “By me, Mr. Tyler, and those Virginians
who are acting with me,” is plainly to be read between the lines of
Mr. Tyler’s letter of February 24th to the President. No one can
doubt that Mr. Buchanan’s account of his administration, published
in 1866, was written with perfect candor. If he had ever sent to Mr.
Davis the intimation which that gentleman says he received from him
through a third person, inviting commissioners from the Confederate
Government, he would have stated the fact, together with his reasons
for it. He never shrank from assigning reasons for any thing that he
ever did. Yet not only does he make no allusion to the Montgomery
commissioners, but any one who reads his fair and considerate
comments on the peace policy pursued by Mr. Lincoln down to the
attack on Fort Sumter, ought to be convinced that there was no need
for the presence of Confederate commissioners in Washington, coming
there on the suggestion of Mr. Buchanan, to negotiate matters that
would have to be referred to the Senate, although it is highly
probable that Mr. Tyler may have desired that a commissioner be sent
to arrange amicably for an agreement by the Confederates not to
attack Fort Sumter.