XIV. 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.
XV. 1860—November
ELECTION OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN—THE SECESSION OF SOUTH CAROLINA—NATURE OF THE DOCTRINE OF SECESSION—PRESIDENT BUCHANAN PREPARES TO ENCOUNTER THE SECESSION MOVEMENT—DISTINCTION BETWEEN MAKING WAR ON A STATE AND ENFORCING THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES.
On the 6th of November, 1860, one hundred and eighty Republican electors of President were chosen by the people of eighteen of the free states. This determined that Abraham Lincoln was to be President of the United States for four years from the 4th of March, 1861. As soon as the result of the election was known, the legislature of South Carolina passed a law for the assembling of a convention of the people of the State on the 17th of December. The delegates to the convention were promptly chosen; and when they had been elected, it was manifest that the assumed right of secession was about to be exercised by that one of the Southern States in which attachment to the Union had been for more than thirty years confined to a few of the wiser and more considerate of her people. The great man whose political teachings had indoctrinated a generation with views of the Federal Constitution which, when logically carried out, would reduce it to a mere league between independent States dissoluble at the pleasure of its separate members for causes of which they were separately to judge, had passed away. I have already had occasion to observe that, while Mr. Calhoun did not at any time contemplate secession, and while he was strongly attached to the Union as he understood its fundamental principle, his political doctrines, assuming the correctness of his premises, led logically and correctly to the conclusion that the people of any State could absolve themselves from the obligation to obey the laws, and to submit to the authority of the United States. He and those who acted with him in South Carolina during the period of “Nullification” proposed to apply this State dispensing power to a single obnoxious law of the United States, without breaking the whole bond which connected South Carolina with her sister States. But it was the inevitable result of his political principles that, if a State convention could absolve its people from the duty of obeying one law of the United States, by pronouncing it to be unconstitutional, the same authority could withdraw the State wholly from the Union, upon her judgment that to remain in it longer was incompatible with her safety or her interests. The radical vice of this whole theory was that it assumed the cession of political powers of legislation and government, made by the people of a State when they ratified the Constitution of the United States, to be revocable, not by a State power or right expressly contained in the instrument, but by a right resulting from the assumed nature of the Constitution as a compact between sovereign States. The Secession Ordinance of South Carolina, adopted on the 20th of December, 1860, which became the model of all the other similar ordinances, exhibits in a striking manner the character of the theory. It professed to “repeal” the ordinance of the State which in 1788 had ratified the Constitution of the United States, and all the subsequent acts of the legislature which had ratified the amendments of that Constitution, and to dissolve the union then subsisting between South Carolina and other States under the name of the “United States of America.” In other words, the people of South Carolina, assembled in convention, determined that a cession or grant of political sovereignty, which they had made to the Government of the United States in 1788, in an irrevocable form, and without any reservation save of the powers of government which they did not grant, could yet be revoked and annulled, not by the right of revolution, but by a right resulting as a constitutional principle from a compact made between sovereign and independent political communities. This method of regarding the Government of the United States as the depositary of certain powers to be held and exercised so long as the sovereign parties to the agreement should see fit to allow them to remain, and to be withdrawn whenever one of the parties should determine to withdraw them, constituted the whole basis of the doctrine of secession. If the premises were correct, the deduction was sound. If, on the other hand, the cession of certain powers of political sovereignty made by the people of a State when they ratified the Constitution of the United States constituted a Government, with a right to rule over the individual inhabitants of that State in the exercise of the powers conceded, the individuals could no more absolve themselves collectively, than they could separately, from the political duty and obligation to obey the laws and submit to the authority of that Government, especially when that Government contained within itself, by one of the provisions of its Constitution, both the means and the right of determining for the people of every State, whether the laws enacted by Congress were in conformity with the grants of political power embraced in the instrument which created it. The grant of the judicial power of the United States estopped the people of every State from claiming a right to pass upon the constitutional validity of any exercise of its legislative or executive authority. Such are the contrasted theories of the Constitution which were now to come into collision, after the Constitution had long been administered and acted upon as an instrument of government embracing a true and rightful sovereignty over the people of every State in the exercise of certain enumerated powers.
It is important to observe, however, that this claim of rightful sovereignty over the inhabitants of every State was not a denial of the inherent right of revolution, or the right to renounce a political allegiance, and to make that right available by physical force, in case of intolerable oppression or arbitrary assumption of power. The political institutions of this country had their origin in the exercise of the right of revolution, and however shaped or administered, they can never be made to exclude it. It is difficult, in studying the political principles on which individuals or masses of men acted, or on which they supposed themselves to be acting, during the period at which I have now arrived, to discriminate between the right of revolution and the right of secession, as distinct principles governing their personal conduct. In many minds they became blended; in many there was but little attention paid to any such distinction; in many there was nothing more than a state of excitement, worked into an uncontrollable apprehension of danger which was stimulated by the political leaders of a section peculiarly exposed to such apprehensions by what had long been occurring on the dangerous subject of their social and domestic condition. But on the threshold of the secession movement, there are certain things to be carefully noted. The first is, that in the public proceedings of South Carolina, and of the other States which followed her example, it was the alleged constitutional right of secession from the Union, and not the inherent right of revolution, on which the action was professedly based. The second is, that the State of South Carolina led the way, in the hope and belief that she might compel the other cotton States to follow, while it was at least doubtful whether they would do so, and while it was manifest that their course would depend very much upon events that could not be foreseen. This condition of affairs in the months of November and December imposed upon President Buchanan two imperative duties. In the first place, he had to encounter the alleged right of secession asserted, or about to be asserted, by the State of South Carolina; to meet her public proceedings by a denial of any such right, and to exercise all the powers with which he then was, or with which he might thereafter be, clothed by Congress, to prevent any obstruction to the execution of the laws of the United States within her borders. In the next place, he had, so far as the Executive of the United States could so act, to isolate the State of South Carolina from the other States of that region, and to prevent, if possible, the spread of the secession movement. What he might be able to do in this regard would depend, of course, upon future events, and upon a careful adaptation of his means to his ends. If, notwithstanding all he could do, the fury of secession was to rapidly sweep through the cotton States, he could not prevent the formation of some kind of Southern confederacy. But the very first duty which he had to perform he proceeded promptly to execute, as soon as it was apparent that South Carolina was about to adopt an ordinance of secession. This was to encounter publicly and officially the alleged right of secession, to define clearly and explicitly to Congress and to the country the powers which he possessed, or did not possess, for meeting this exigency; and to announce his policy. By so doing, he might prevent the spread of the secession movement, if Congress would aid him by adopting his recommendations. Preparatory to what he was about to say in his annual message to the Congress which was to assemble in the early part of December, he required from the Attorney General (Mr. Black) an official answer to the following questions:[73]
1. In case of a conflict between the authorities of any State and those of the United States, can there be any doubt that the laws of the Federal Government, if constitutionally passed, are supreme?
2. What is the extent of my official power to collect the duties on imports at a port where the revenue laws are resisted by a force which drives the collector from the custom house?
3. What right have I to defend the public property (for instance, a fort, arsenal and navy yard), in case it should be assaulted?
4. What are the legal means at my disposal for executing those laws of the United States which are usually administered through the courts and their officers?
5. Can a military force be used for any purpose whatever under the Acts of 1795 and 1807, within the limits of a State where there are no judges, marshal or other civil officers?
Footnote 73:
The President’s letter to the Attorney General, requiring his opinion on these questions, bears date on the 17th of November, 1860.
[OPINION OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL.]
ATTORNEY GENERAL’S OFFICE, November 20, 1860.
SIR:—
I have had the honor to receive your note of the 17th, and I now reply to the grave questions therein propounded as fully as the time allowed me will permit.
Within their respective spheres of action, the Federal Government and the government of a State, are both of them independent and supreme, but each is utterly powerless beyond the limits assigned to it by the Constitution. If Congress would attempt to change the law of descents, to make a new rule of personal succession, or to dissolve the family relations existing in any State, the act would be simply void; but not more void than would be a State law to prevent the recapture of fugitives from labor, to forbid the carrying of the mails, or to stop the collection of duties on imports. The will of a State, whether expressed in its constitution or laws, cannot, while it remains in the Confederacy, absolve her people from the duty of obeying the just and constitutional requirements of the Central Government. Nor can any act of the Central Government displace the jurisdiction of a State; because the laws of the United States are supreme and binding only so far as they are passed in pursuance of the Constitution. I do not say what might be effected by mere revolutionary force. I am speaking of legal and constitutional right.
This is the view always taken by the judiciary, and so universally adopted that the statement of it may seem commonplace. The Supreme Court of the United States has declared it in many cases. I need only refer you to the United States vs. Booth, where the present Chief Justice, expressing the unanimous opinion of himself and all his brethren, enunciated the doctrine in terms so clear and full that any further demonstration of it can scarcely be required.
The duty which these principles devolve, not only upon every officer, but every citizen, is that which Mr. Jefferson expressed so compendiously in his first inaugural, namely:—“to support the State Governments in all their rights as the most competent administrations for their domestic concerns, and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies,” combined with “the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad.”
To the Chief Executive Magistrate of the Union is confided the solemn duty of seeing the laws faithfully executed. That he may be able to meet this duty with a power equal to its performance, he nominates his own subordinates, and removes them at his pleasure. For the same reason, the land and naval forces are under his orders as their commander-in-chief. But his power is to be used only in the manner prescribed by the legislative department. He cannot accomplish a legal purpose by illegal means, or break the laws himself to prevent them from being violated by others.
The acts of Congress sometimes give the President a broad discretion in the use of the means by which they are to be executed, and sometimes limit his power so that he can exercise it only in a certain prescribed manner. Where the law directs a thing to be done without saying how, that implies the power to use such means as may be necessary and proper to accomplish the end of the legislature. But where the mode of performing a duty is pointed out by statute, that is the exclusive mode, and no other can be followed. The United States have no common law to fall back upon when the written law is defective. If, therefore, an act of Congress declares that a certain thing shall be done by a particular officer, it cannot be done by a different officer. The agency which the law furnishes for its own execution must be used to the exclusion of all others. For instance, the revenues of the United States are to be collected in a certain way, at certain established ports, and by a certain class of officers; the President has no authority, under any circumstances, to collect the same revenues at other places by a different sort of officers, or in ways not provided for. Even if the machinery furnished by Congress for the collection of the duties should by any cause become so deranged or broken up that it could not be used, that would not be a legal reason for substituting a different kind of machinery in its place.
The law requires that all goods imported into the United States within certain collection districts shall be entered at the proper port, and the duty thereon shall be received by the collector appointed for and residing at that port. But the functions of the collector may be exercised anywhere at or within the port. There is no law which confines him to the custom-house, or to any other particular spot. If the custom-house were burnt down, he might remove to another building; if he were driven from the shore, he might go on board a vessel in the harbor. If he keeps within the port, he is within the law.
A port is a place to which merchandise is imported, and from whence it is exported. It is created by law. It is not merely a harbor or haven, for it may be established where there is nothing but an open roadstead, or on the shore of a navigable river, or at any other place where vessels may arrive and discharge, or take in their cargoes. It comprehends the city or town which is occupied by the mariners, merchants, and others who are engaged in the business of importing and exporting goods, navigating the ships and furnishing them with provisions. It includes, also, so much of the water adjacent to the city as is usually occupied by vessels discharging or receiving their cargoes or lying at anchor and waiting for that purpose.
The first section of the act of March 2, 1833, authorized the President in a certain contingency to direct that the custom-house for any collection district be established and kept in any secure place within some port or harbor of such district, either upon land or on board any vessel. But this provision was temporary, and expired at the end of the session of Congress next afterwards. It conferred upon the Executive a right to remove the site of a custom-house not merely to any secure place within the legally established port of entry for the district—that right he had before—but it widened his authority so as to allow the removal of it to any port or harbor within the whole district. The enactment of that law, and the limitation of it to a certain period of time now passed, is not, therefore, an argument against the opinion above expressed, that you can now, if necessary, order the duties to be collected on board a vessel inside of any established port of entry. Whether the first and fifth sections of the act of 1833, both of which were made temporary by the eighth section, should be reënacted, is a question for the legislative department.
Your right to take such measures as may seem to be necessary for the protection of the public property is very clear. It results from the proprietary rights of the Government as owner of the forts, arsenals, magazines, dock-yards, navy-yards, custom-houses, public ships, and other property which the United States have bought, built, and paid for. Besides, the Government of the United States is authorized by the Constitution (Art. 1, Sec. 8) to “exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever ..... over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the State in which the same shall be for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards, and other needful buildings.” It is believed that no important public building has been bought or erected on ground where the legislature of the State in which it is, has not passed a law consenting to the purchase of it, and ceding the exclusive jurisdiction. This Government, then, is not only the owner of those buildings and grounds, but, by virtue of the supreme and paramount law, it regulates the action and punishes the offences of all who are within them. If any one of an owner’s rights is plainer than another it is that of keeping exclusive possession and repelling intrusion. The right of defending the public property includes also the right of recapture after it has been unlawfully taken by another. President Jefferson held the opinion, and acted upon it, that he could order a military force to take possession of any land to which the United States had title, though they had never occupied it before, though a private party claimed and held it, and though it was not then needed nor proposed to be used for any purpose connected with the operations of the Government. This may have been a stretch of Executive power, but the right of retaking public property in which the Government has been carrying on its lawful business, and from which its officers have been unlawfully thrust out, cannot well be doubted, and when it was exercised at Harper’s Ferry, in October, 1859, everyone acknowledged the legal justice of it.
I come now to the point in your letter, which is probably of the greatest practical importance. By the act of 1807, you may employ such parts of the land and naval forces as you may judge necessary for the purpose of causing the laws to be duly executed, in all cases where it is lawful to use the militia for the same purpose. By the act of 1795 the militia may be called forth “whenever the laws of the United States shall be opposed, or the execution thereof obstructed in any State by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the power vested in the marshals.” This imposes upon the President the sole responsibility of deciding whether the exigency has arisen which requires the use of military force; and in proportion to the magnitude of that responsibility will be his care not to overstep the limits of his legal and just authority.
The laws referred to in the act of 1795 are manifestly those which are administered by the judges, and executed by the ministerial officers of the courts for the punishment of crime against the United States, for the protection of rights claimed under the Federal Constitution and laws, and for the enforcement of such obligations as come within the cognizance of the Federal Judiciary. To compel obedience to these laws, the courts have authority to punish all who obstruct their regular administration, and the marshals and their deputies have the same powers as sheriffs and their deputies in the several States in executing the laws of the States. These are the ordinary means provided for the execution of the laws; and the whole spirit of our system is opposed to the employment of any other except in cases of extreme necessity arising out of great and unusual combinations against them. Their agency must continue to be used until their incapacity to cope with the power opposed to them shall be plainly demonstrated. It is only upon clear evidence to that effect that a military force can be called into the field. Even then its operations must be purely defensive. It can suppress only such combinations as are found directly opposing the laws and obstructing the execution thereof. It can do no more than what might and ought to be done by a civil posse, if a civil posse could be raised large enough to meet the same opposition. On such occasions, especially, the military power must be kept in strict subordination to the civil authority, since it is only in aid of the latter that the former can act at all.
But what if the feeling in any State against the United States should become so universal that the Federal officers themselves (including judges, district attorneys and marshals) would be reached by the same influences, and resign their places? Of course, the first step would be to appoint others in their stead, if others could be got to serve. But in such an event, it is more than probable that great difficulty would be found in filling the offices. We can easily conceive how it might become altogether impossible. We are therefore obliged to consider what can be done in case we have no courts to issue judicial process, and no ministerial officers to execute it. In that event, troops would certainly be out of place, and their use wholly illegal. If they are sent to aid the courts and marshals, there must be courts and marshals to be aided. Without the exercise of those functions which belong exclusively to the civil service, the laws cannot be executed in any event, no matter what may be the physical strength which the Government has at its command. Under such circumstances, to send a military force into any State, with orders to act against the people, would be simply making war upon them.
The existing laws put and keep the Federal Government strictly on the defensive. You can use force only to repel an assault on the public property and aid the courts in the performance of their duty. If the means given you to collect the revenue and execute the other laws be insufficient for that purpose, Congress may extend and make them more effectual to those ends.
If one of the States should declare her independence, your action cannot depend upon the rightfulness of the cause upon which such declaration is based. Whether the retirement of the State from the Union be the exercise of a right reserved in the Constitution, or a revolutionary movement, it is certain that you have not in either case the authority to recognize her independence or to absolve her from her Federal obligations. Congress, or the other States in convention assembled, must take such measures as may be necessary and proper. In such an event, I see no course for you but to go straight onward in the path you have hitherto trodden—that is, execute the laws to the extent of the defensive means placed in your hands, and act generally upon the assumption that the present constitutional relations between the States and the Federal Government continue to exist, until a new code of things shall be established either by law or force.
Whether Congress has the constitutional right to make war against one or more States, and require the Executive of the Federal Government to carry it on by means of force to be drawn from the other States, is a question for Congress itself to consider. It must be admitted that no such power is expressly given; nor are there any words in the Constitution which imply it. Among the powers enumerated in Article 1st, Section 8, is that “to declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and to make rules concerning captures on land and water.” This certainly means nothing more than the power to commence and carry on hostilities against the foreign enemies of the nation. Another clause in the same section gives Congress the power “to provide for calling forth the militia,” and to use them within the limits of the State. But this power is so restricted by the words which immediately follow that it can be exercised only for one of the following purposes: 1. To execute the laws of the Union; that is, to aid the Federal officers in the performance of their regular duties. 2. To suppress insurrections against the State; but this is confined by Article IV, Section 4, to cases in which the State herself shall apply for assistance against her own people. 3. To repel the invasion of a State by enemies who come from abroad to assail her in her own territory. All these provisions are made to protect the States, not to authorize an attack by one part of the country upon another; to preserve the peace, and not to plunge them into civil war. Our forefathers do not seem to have thought that war was calculated “to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” There was undoubtedly a strong and universal conviction among the men who framed and ratified the Constitution, that military force would not only be useless, but pernicious, as a means of holding the States together.
If it be true that war cannot be declared, nor a system of general hostilities carried on by the Central Government against a State, then it seems to follow that an attempt to do so would be ipso facto an expulsion of such State from the Union. Being treated as an alien and an enemy, she would be compelled to act accordingly. And if Congress shall break up the present Union by unconstitutionally putting strife and enmity and armed hostility between different sections of the country, instead of the domestic tranquility which the Constitution was meant to insure, will not all the States be absolved from their Federal obligations? Is any portion of the people bound to contribute their money or their blood to carry on a contest like that?
The right of the General Government to preserve itself in its whole constitutional vigor by repelling a direct and positive aggression upon its property or its officers cannot be denied. But this is a totally different thing from an offensive war to punish the people for the political misdeeds of their State government, or to enforce an acknowledgment that the Government of the United States is supreme. The States are colleagues of one another, and if some of them shall conquer the rest, and hold them as subjugated provinces, it would totally destroy the whole theory upon which they are now connected.
If this view of the subject be correct, as I think it is, then the Union must utterly perish at the moment when Congress shall arm one part of the people against another for any purpose beyond that of merely protecting the General Government in the exercise of its proper constitutional functions.
I am, very respectfully, yours, etc.,
J. S. BLACK.
The soundness of Mr. Black’s answers to the questions stated by the President does not admit of a doubt. Those who have assailed him and the President who acted upon his official advice, have done so with very little regard to the supreme law of the land. They have not perceived the path in which the President had to move in the coming emergency, and they have overlooked the imperative obligation which rested upon him not to assume powers with which he had not been clothed by the Constitution and the laws. However certain it was that South Carolina would undertake to place herself out of the pale of the Union, no coercion could have been applied to her in her political capacity as a State, to prevent her from taking that step, without instantly bringing to her side every other State whose sympathies were with her on the subject of slavery, however they might hesitate in regard to secession as a remedy against the apprehensions which were common, more or less, the people of the whole slaveholding section. Even if the President had not been restrained by this consideration, he had no constitutional power to declare, no authority to prosecute, and no right to institute a war against a State. He could do nothing but to execute the laws of the United States within the limits of South Carolina, in case she should secede, by such means as the existing laws had placed in his hands, or such further means as the Congress which was about to assemble might see fit to give him, and to maintain the possession of the public property of the United States within the limits of that State. What the existing means were, for either of those purposes, was clearly pointed out by his official adviser, the Attorney General. For the execution of the laws, these means might wholly fail him, if the Federal civil officers in South Carolina should renounce their offices and others could not be procured to take their places. For maintaining possession of the public property of the United States, he had to act wholly upon the defensive, and at the same time he had no power to call for volunteers for this purpose, and no military force within his reach but the five companies of regular troops referred to by General Scott in his “views” presented on the 30th of October, and the naval forces at his command. No part of the army could be withdrawn from the frontiers without leaving the settlers and the emigrants exposed to the ravages of the Indians, even if the gravest reasons of public policy had not forbidden such movements before Congress could take into consideration the whole of the unprecedented and abnormal state of the Union.
There is one part of Mr. Black’s opinion on which it is proper to make some observations here, because it has a prospective bearing upon the basis on which the civil war is to be considered to have been subsequently prosecuted. It is not of much moment to inquire how individual statesmen, or publicists, or political parties, when the war had begun and was raging, regarded its legal basis; but it is of moment, in reference to the correctness of the doctrine acted upon by President Buchanan during the last four months of his administration, to consider what was the true basis of that subsequent war under the Constitution of the United States. The reader has seen that Mr. Black, in his official opinion, not only rejected the idea that the President could constitutionally make war upon a State of his own volition, but that he did not admit that the power to do so was expressly or implicitly given to Congress by the Constitution. What then did the Attorney General mean by instituting or carrying on war against one or more States? It is obvious, first, that he meant offensive war, waged against a State as if it were a foreign nation, to be carried on to the usual results of conquest and subjugation; second, that he fully admitted and maintained the right of the Federal Government to use a military force to suppress all obstructions to the execution of the laws of the United States throughout the Union, and to maintain the possession of its public property. This distinction was from the first, and always remained, of the utmost importance. It became entirely consistent with the recognition, for the time being, of a condition of territorial civil war, carried on by the lawful Government of the Union to suppress any and all military organizations arrayed against the exercise of its lawful authority; consistent with the concession of the belligerent character to the Confederate government as a de facto power having under its control the resources and the territory of numerous States; consistent also with the denial to that government of any character as a power de jure; and alike consistent with a purpose to suppress and destroy it. So far as the war subsequently waged was carried on upon this basis, it was carried on within the limits of the Constitution, and by the strictest constitutional right. So far as it was carried on upon any other basis, or made to result in anything more than the suppression of all unlawful obstructions to the exercise of the Federal authority throughout the Union, it was a war waged outside of the Constitution, and for objects that were not within the range of the powers bestowed by the Constitution on the Federal Government. In a word, the Federal Government had ample power under the Constitution to suppress and destroy the Confederate government and all its military array, from whatever sources that government or its military means were derived, but it had no constitutional authority to destroy a State, or to make war upon its unarmed population, as it would have under the principles of public law to destroy the political autonomy of a foreign nation with which it might be at war, or to promote hostilities against its people.
Doubtless, as will be seen hereafter when I come to speak of that part of the President’s message which related to this topic of making war upon a State, the language made use of was capable of misconstruction, and certain it is that it was made the subject of abundant cavil, by those who did not wish that the President should be rightly understood; as it was also made a subject of criticism by the Attorney General when the message was submitted to the cabinet. The language chosen by the President to express his opinion on the nature and kind of power which he believed that the Constitution had not delegated to Congress, described it as a “power to coerce a State into submission which is attempting to withdraw, or has actually withdrawn from the Confederacy.” This was in substance a description of the same power which the framers of the Constitution had expressly rejected. It was before the Convention of 1787 in the shape of a clause “authorizing an exertion of the force of the whole against a delinquent State,” which Mr. Madison opposed as “the use of force against a State,” and which he said would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound. On another occasion, Mr. Madison said that “any government for the United States, formed on the supposed practicability of using force against the unconstitutional proceedings of the States, would prove as visionary and fallacious as the government of the [old] Congress.” When, therefore, after the rejection of the idea of using force to restrain a State from adopting an unconstitutional proceeding, the framers of the Constitution proceeded to create a government endowed with legislative, judicial and executive power over the individual inhabitants of a State, and authorized it to use the militia to execute the laws of the Union, they made and left upon our constitutional history and jurisprudence a clear distinction between coercing a State, in its sovereign and political character, to remain in the Union, and coercing individuals to obey the laws of the Union. Mr. Buchanan might then reasonably assume, that a distinction thus clearly graven upon the constitutional records of the country would be known and recognized by all men; and although the expression to “coerce a State by force of arms to remain in the Union,” might, if severed from the accompanying explanation of its meaning, be regarded as ambiguous, it will be found hereafter that it was not so used as to justify the inference that if a State were to undertake to secede from the Union, the President would disclaim or surrender the power to execute the laws of the Union within her borders. It will be found also, by adverting to the Attorney General’s answers to the President’s questions, that there was in truth no real difference of opinion between them on this subject.[74]
Footnote 74:
Mr. Jefferson Davis, who represents, with as much logical consistency as any one, the whole of the doctrine or theory of secession, has always maintained that the distinction between coercing a State, and coercing the individual inhabitants of that State to submit to the laws of the United States, is no distinction at all: that the people of the State are the State; and that to use a military force to execute the laws of the United States upon individuals, within the limits of a State that has seceded from the Union, is to make war upon the State. (See his speech in the Senate, January 10, 1861, and his recent work on the Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. Index, verb. “Secession.”) Let us, for a moment, inquire whether Buchanan’s distinction was answered “by reason of its very absurdity.” 1. The States, in their corporate and political capacity, are not the subjects or objects of Federal legislation. The legislative powers of the Federal Constitution are not intended to be exercised over States, but they are intended to be exercised over individuals. An act of Congress never commands a State to do anything; it commands private individuals to do a great many things. The States are prohibited by the Constitution from doing certain things, but these prohibitions execute themselves through the action of the judicial power upon persons. No State can be acted upon by the judicial power at the instance of the United States. Every inhabitant of a State can be acted upon by the judicial power, in regard to anything that is within the scope of the legislative powers of the Constitution. 2. The coercion of individuals to obey the laws of the United States constitutes the great difference between our present Constitution and the Articles of Confederation. 3. The right to use force to execute the laws of the United States, by removing all obstructions to their execution, not only results from the power to legislate on the particular subject, but it is expressly recognized by the Constitution. The character of that force and the modes in which it may be employed, depend both on direct constitutional provision, and on the legislative authority over all the people of the United States in respect to certain subjects and relations. All this will be conceded to be true, so long as a State remains in the Union. Does it cease to be true, when a State interposes her sovereign will, and says that the laws of the United States shall not be executed within her limits, because she has withdrawn the powers which she deposited with the General Government? What does this make, but a new case of obstruction to the execution of the Federal laws, to be removed by acting on the individuals through whom the obstruction is practically tried? And if, in the removal of the obstruction, the use of military power becomes necessary, is war made upon the State? It is not, unless we go the whole length of saying that the interposition of the sovereign will of the State ipso facto makes her an independent power, erects her into a foreign nation, and makes her capable of being dealt with as one enemy is dealt with by another. To deny the right of the United States to execute its laws, notwithstanding what is called the secession of a State, is to impale one’s self upon the other horn of the dilemma: for if that right does not exist, it must be because the State has become absolutely free and independent of the United States, and may be made a party to an international war. Mr. Buchanan saw and constantly and consistently acted upon the true distinction between making war upon a State, and enforcing the laws of the United States upon the inhabitants of a State.
XVI. 1860—December
THE PRESIDENT'S ANNUAL MESSAGE OF DECEMBER 3, 1860.
The Constitution makes it the duty of the President, from time to time, to give to the Congress information of the state of the Union, and to recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient. Custom has made the commencement of each session of Congress a regular occasion for the discharge of this duty, and has also established the propriety of performing it at other times, whenever the President deems it necessary. It was the purpose of this provision of the Constitution to make the President a special guardian of the interests of the Union, by making him the official witness of its condition to the legislative department, and by giving to his recommendation of measures a high claim upon its consideration. The performance of this duty involves a wide range of observation over the whole condition of the country at a given time, and it imposes upon Congress the correlative duty of giving serious heed and prompt attention to any recommendations which the President may make. No other functionary in the Government is in a position to know so well as the President what the interests of the Union from time to time demand at the hands of Congress, and no other is clothed with this power of making official and therefore weighty recommendations of measures requiring legislative action. No state of parties, no objects of party policy, can excuse the individual members of a Congress from the duty of giving immediate attention to whatever suggestions the President may make in the exercise of this great function as the constitutional adviser of the legislature, and as guardian of the interests of the Union. At the same time, it is to be remembered that this function is only an advisory one; that it in no way enlarges the powers of the Executive; and that the President can at no time exercise any powers but those with which he has been clothed by the Constitution or by the laws which have been passed in pursuance of its provisions.
Never was there an occasion when it was more necessary that this duty should be performed by the President firmly, intelligibly, boldly, conscientiously, than it was in the crisis existing at the commencement of the session of Congress in December, 1860. Never was it more imperatively necessary that Congress should at once take into its “consideration” the measures recommended by the President. The force of that term, as it is used in the Constitution, is not limited to a mere reference of the President’s recommendations to committees. It implies action, prompt and decisive action, one way or the other, in proportion to the gravity of that condition of the Union which the President has brought to the attention of the Legislature. The President is entitled to know, and to know speedily, whether the Congress concurs with or differs from him. The country is entitled to know whether its Chief Magistrate is to be clothed with the further powers for which he may have asked in order to meet a given emergency; whether the Congress accepts, or refuses to accept, his construction of the Constitution in regard to new and difficult questions that have arisen; and whether, if the Congress does not concur with the President, it has any other policy to propose and carry out, adequate to the dangers that may be impending over the Union. An examination of the course of President Buchanan in the crisis to which we have now arrived conducts to the inquiry whether he performed his duty, as he should have done, and whether the Congress performed theirs according to the obligation that rested upon them.
The “state of the Union,” of which the President had to give Congress official information, was entirely unprecedented. That it was alarming, cannot be doubted. It matters little whether the people of the North felt much alarm. Popular opinion, so far as it was not manifested by the depression of business and of the public funds, did not reflect the gravity of the crisis. It was not generally believed that an election of a President, conducted in a regular and orderly manner, although it had resulted in the triumph of a party obnoxious to the feelings of the Southern people, because of its supposed hostility to them, would be or could be made the occasion for a permanent disruption of the Union. And this was about the only aspect in which the popular mind of the North regarded the whole matter for a considerable period after the election. It was not generally perceived that an entirely new question had arisen, which made a peril of a new and formidable nature. The alleged constitutional right of a State to withdraw itself from the Union, on its own judgment that its interests or safety were no longer compatible with its continuing as a member of it, although it had long been theoretically discussed in many ways by individuals of more or less importance, was now about to be asserted and acted upon by the people of South Carolina. How was this crisis to be met? That it was entirely out of all previous experience, that it was a situation full of peril, that it entailed the consideration of questions of Federal power never yet solved, because they had never before arisen, was plain. That the President of the United States, the official sentinel on the great watch-tower of the Union, regarded its condition as one of imminent danger, was enough for the Congress to know. That popular opinion in the North did not fully comprehend the danger affords no excuse for any omission of duty, any lack of wisdom or forethought, any failure to act promptly or patriotically, which history may find reason to impute to those who held the legislative power.
Mr. Buchanan, as the reader has seen, so soon as he had reason to believe that South Carolina was about to put in practice its alleged right of withdrawing from the Union, proceeded to take the opinion of his official adviser in regard to his constitutional powers and duties in such an emergency. Individually, he needed no man’s advice upon such questions, for he was as able and well instructed a constitutional jurist as any one who had ever filled the office of President of the United States; familiar with all the teachings and all the precedents of his predecessors, and abundantly learned in the doctrines of the great judicial expounders of the Constitution. But in his official capacity it was both proper and necessary that he should call to his aid the sound judgment and the copious learning of his Attorney General, before proceeding to discharge his constitutional duty of giving to Congress information of the state of the Union. He began to prepare his annual message immediately after he had received the Attorney General’s answers to his questions. The message was read to the cabinet before it was printed in the usual form for communication to Congress. The members of the cabinet, including General Cass, the Secretary of State, and with the exceptions of Mr. Cobb, Secretary of the Treasury, and Mr. Thompson, Secretary of the Interior, warmly and emphatically approved of it.[75] Messrs. Cobb and Thompson objected to so much of the message as denied the right of secession, and to that part of it which maintained the duty of defending the public property and collecting the revenue in South Carolina. These questions having now become vital, the two dissenting members of the cabinet, soon after the message had been sent to Congress, resigned their places.[76]
Footnote 75:
Judge Black made a criticism, which will be adverted to hereafter.
Footnote 76:
Their resignations will be noted hereafter, as well as that of General Cass, concerning whom see the President’s memorandum, post.
Let it be remembered, then, that this message was prepared to be submitted to Congress before the South Carolina Convention had adopted its ordinance of secession. Surely, therefore, there can be no just ground for imputing to the President any lack of preparation to meet the threatened contingency of a secession of one or more States, according to the measure of his official duty and powers. In examining this message, of which I shall speak in conformity with my most serious convictions, the reader should note that it had to be prospective in its recommendations, in order that Congress might be fully possessed of the methods of action which the President intended to propose as the legitimate, as well as the expedient, course to be pursued. But this was not the whole of the constitutional duty that rested upon the Executive. He had, in discharging his duty of giving to Congress information of the state of the Union, to treat so far of the causes which had brought about that condition as to point out measures of conciliation, as well as measures for the exercise of authority. He had to recognize the palpable fact that the two sections of the Union, the slaveholding and the non-slaveholding States, stood divided from each other upon a question which involved more of feeling than of practical consequence; a feeling that had been aggravated on each side into an undue importance by the circumstances of the late election. This question related to the claim of Southern slaveholders to have their right of property in slaves recognized in Territories of the United States, whenever they should go there with such property. It was a claim which the most considerate of those who asserted it most strongly regarded as essential to the equality of their States as members of the Union, in reference to the right of occupation of the common property of all the States. It was based, to be sure, by many who asserted it, upon a questionable proposition, which was that the right of property in a slave, recognized by the local law of a State, travelled with the person of the owner into a Territory of the United States, without any law of the Territory to uphold it, and even against a prohibition imposed by the legislative authority which governed the Territory. But when has it been known in the history of conflicting popular feelings, that the nature of such a claim has diminished the fervor with which it has been defended, when it has come to be regarded as a great political right, of importance to those who assert it? Practically, it was not a matter of importance to the slaveholding States, because there was no Territory of the United States at that time in which slave labor could become profitable, or in which the negro, in a state of slavery, could thrive. But an exaggerated feeling of the political importance of this supposed right had taken possession of the Southern mind. On the other hand, there had come about in the North an equally exaggerated sense of the importance of asserting in every possible form of public action, that the Territories were dedicated to freedom from slavery, and were to be so regarded forever. It was chiefly upon this, as a fundamental principle of the future legislation of the Union, that the Republican candidate had been elected by the votes of the people of the free States.
Under these circumstances, no President of the United States, in discharging his constitutional duty of giving to Congress information of the state of the Union, could have avoided a reference to this condition of conflicting sectional feelings and determinations, especially at a moment when one of the Southern States was about to act upon the assumption that the election of the Northern candidate evinced a hostile disposition in the North towards the people and the social institutions of the South, too dangerous to be disregarded. If, by fairly holding the balance between the two sections, President Buchanan could suggest any course of conciliation and compromise that could be adopted without impairing the authority of the Federal Government or weakening its rights, it was his duty to point it out. The adoption of such a course by Congress would certainly smooth the way for President Lincoln, because it would leave South Carolina alone in her attitude of secession, would tend with great force to prevent any of the other cotton States from following her example, and would render a civil war extremely improbable, because it would remove one great cause for the spread of secession beyond the borders of that State. When the recommendation of the message is examined with impartiality, it will be found that it proposed an explanatory amendment of the Constitution which was entirely reasonable, and which would have terminated the existing dissensions, so far as they depended upon this particular question.
But those dissensions had other causes, which it was equally the duty of the President to bring before Congress and the country. For a long period of time, the anti-slavery agitation in the North, not confined to the question of slavery in the Territories, had awakened apprehensions in the South for their domestic peace and safety. It was undoubtedly but reasonable to expect the Southern people to rely on the conservative force of Northern public opinion, to guard against interference with slavery in the States by any form of public action through the General Government, by whatever party it might be administered. But who could insure them against the consequences of such lawless acts as John Brown’s “raid” into Virginia, undertaken in 1859, with the avowed purpose of producing a slave insurrection? This occurrence, which was only a little more than a twelvemonth old when Mr. Buchanan prepared his annual message of December 3, 1860, had produced a sadder impression on the Southern people against the Union than any previous event had ever caused.[77] This painful impression was deepened by the popular honors paid in the North to this man’s memory as a martyr in the cause of liberty, for whom the prayers of churches were offered, and who, after he had died the death of a felon, was canonized as a saint, mouldering in the body in the grave, but in spirit marching on to the accomplishment of his mission of liberator of the slaves. Such fanaticism might well be regarded with serious alarm by a people who dwelt surrounded in every relation of life by a slave population of another race, in many communities outnumbering the Whites. Yet this was not all that tended to alienate the people of the South from the Union. A provision of the Constitution which was adopted by its framers as a fundamental condition of the new Union that it aimed to establish, for the execution of which legislation had been provided in 1793,—legislation which bore the name of Washington himself, and which had been amended and strengthened in 1850 by a solemn Congressional agreement,—had been for seven years resisted by combinations of individuals in the North, and by State laws of obstruction that had no less of nullification as their spirit and purpose than the nullifying ordinance of South Carolina, by which she formerly undertook to obstruct another law of the Union. It was impossible for the Southern People not to place this resistance to the extradition of fugitive slaves among their grievances. It was a real grievance, and one that, considering the nature of the Constitutional mandate and stipulation, it was right that they should complain of.
Footnote 77:
John Brown’s seizure of the armory, arsenal, and rifle factory of the United States at Harper’s Ferry occurred October 16, 1859.
Was the President of the United States, standing at the threshold of the secession movement, measuring as he was bound to do with a comprehensive grasp the condition of the Union, to be silent respecting these things? Was he, if he spoke to the South, warning her that the election of Abraham Lincoln was no cause for her attempting to leave the Union, and expounding to her the utter futility of the doctrine of secession as a constitutional right—was he to say nothing to the North of the duty which rested upon her to remove all just causes of complaint, and thus to render secession inexcusable to the Southern people themselves? A supreme ruler, placed as Mr. Buchanan was at the period I am now considering, had a complex duty to perform. It was to prevent, if he could, the formation of any sort of Southern Confederacy among the cotton States, and thereby to relieve his successor from the necessity of having to encounter more than the secession of South Carolina. She could be dealt with easily, standing alone, if Congress would clothe the President with the necessary power to enforce the laws of the Union within her limits. Backed by a new confederacy of her contiguous sisters, containing five millions of people, and controlling the whole cotton production of the country, the problem for the new President would indeed be a formidable one. To prevent this, certain measures of conciliation were deemed by President Buchanan, in as honest and as wise a judgment as any statesman ever formed, to be essential. When the reader has examined his recommendations of constitutional amendments, along with the practical measures for which he applied, and which Congress did not adopt, he will have to ask himself, if Congress had done its duty as the President performed his, is it within the bounds of probability that Mr. Lincoln would have been embarrassed with the question about the forts in Charleston harbor, or that the Montgomery government would have ever existed, or that South Carolina, unaided and undirected by that new confederacy, would ever have fired on Sumter?
As the internal affairs of the country claimed the first attention of the President, and occupied a very large part of his message, I quote the whole of what it said on this very grave topic:
FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:—
Throughout the year since our last meeting, the country has been eminently prosperous in all its material interests. The general health has been excellent, our harvests have been abundant, and plenty smiles throughout the land. Our commerce and manufactures have been prosecuted with energy and industry, and have yielded fair and ample returns. In short, no nation in the tide of time has ever presented a spectacle of greater material prosperity than we have done, until within a very recent period.
Why is it, then, that discontent now so extensively prevails, and the union of the States, which is the source of all these blessings, is threatened with destruction?
The long continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of slavery in the Southern States has at length produced its natural effects. The different sections of the Union are now arrayed against each other, and the time has arrived, so much dreaded by the Father of his Country, when hostile geographical parties have been formed.
I have long foreseen, and often forewarned my countrymen of the now impending danger. This does not proceed solely from the claim on the part of Congress or the Territorial legislatures to exclude slavery from the Territories, nor from the efforts of different States to defeat the execution of the fugitive slave law. All or any of these evils might have been endured by the South, without danger to the Union (as others have been), in the hope that time and reflection might apply the remedy. The immediate peril arises, not so much from these causes, as from the fact that the incessant and violent agitation of the slavery question throughout the North for the last quarter of a century has at length produced its malign influence on the slaves, and inspired them with vague notions of freedom. Hence a sense of security no longer exists around the family altar. This feeling of peace at home has given place to apprehensions of servile insurrections. Many a matron throughout the South retires at night in dread of what may befall herself and her children before the morning. Should this apprehension of domestic danger, whether real or imaginary, extend and intensify itself, until it shall pervade the masses of the Southern people, then disunion will become inevitable. Self-preservation is the first law of nature, and has been implanted in the heart of man by his Creator for the wisest purpose; and no political union, however fraught with blessings and benefits in all other respects, can long continue, if the necessary consequence be to render the homes and the fire-sides of nearly half the parties to it habitually and hopelessly insecure. Sooner or later the bonds of such a Union must be severed. It is my conviction that this fatal period has not yet arrived: and my prayer to God is, that he would preserve the Constitution and the Union throughout all generations.
But let us take warning in time, and remove the cause of danger. It cannot be denied that for five and twenty years the agitation at the North against slavery has been incessant. In 1835, pictorial handbills and inflammatory appeals were circulated extensively throughout the South, of a character to excite the passions of the slaves, and, in the language of General Jackson, “to stimulate them to insurrection and produce all the horrors of a servile war.” This agitation has ever since been continued by the public press, by the proceedings of State and county conventions, and by abolition sermons and lectures. The time of Congress has been occupied in violent speeches on this never ending subject; and appeals, in pamphlet and other forms, indorsed by distinguished names, have been sent forth from this central point and spread broadcast over the Union.
How easy would it be for the American people to settle the slavery question forever, and to restore peace and harmony to this distracted country! They, and they alone, can do it. All that is necessary to accomplish the object, and all for which the slave States have ever contended, is to be let alone and permitted to manage their domestic institutions in their own way. As sovereign States, they, and they alone, are responsible before God and the world for the slavery existing among them. For this the people of the North are not more responsible, and have no more right to interfere, than with similar institutions in Russia or in Brazil.
Upon their good sense and patriotic forbearance, I confess, I still greatly rely. Without their aid it is beyond the power of any President, no matter what may be his own political proclivities, to restore peace and harmony among the States. Wisely limited and restrained as is his power under our Constitution and laws, he alone can accomplish but little for good or for evil on such a momentous question.
And this brings me to observe, that the election of any one of our fellow-citizens to the office of President does not of itself afford just cause for dissolving the Union. This is more especially true if his election has been effected by a mere plurality and not a majority of the people, and has resulted from transient and temporary causes, which may probably never again occur. In order to justify a resort to revolutionary resistance, the Federal Government must be guilty of “a deliberate; palpable, and dangerous exercise” of powers not granted by the Constitution. The late Presidential election, however, has been held in strict conformity with its express provisions. How, then, can the result justify a revolution to destroy this very Constitution? Reason, justice, a regard for the Constitution, all require that we shall wait for some overt and dangerous act on the part of the President elect, before resorting to such a remedy. It is said, however, that the antecedents of the President elect have been sufficient to justify the fears of the South that he will attempt to invade their constitutional rights. But are such apprehensions of contingent danger in the future sufficient to justify the immediate destruction of the noblest system of government ever devised by mortals? From the very nature of his office, and its high responsibilities, he must necessarily be conservative. The stern duty of administering the vast and complicated concerns of this Government affords in itself a guarantee that he will not attempt any violation of a clear constitutional right.
After all, he is no more than the Chief Executive officer of the Government. His province is not to make but to execute the laws; and it is a remarkable fact in our history that, notwithstanding the repeated efforts of the anti-slavery party, no single act has ever passed Congress, unless we may possibly except the Missouri Compromise, impairing in the slightest degree the rights of the South to their property in slaves. And it may also be observed, judging from present indications, that no probability exists of the passage of such an act by a majority of both Houses, either in the present or the next Congress. Surely, under these circumstances, we ought to be restrained from present action by the precept of Him who spake as man never spoke, that “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” The day of evil may never come unless we shall rashly bring it upon ourselves.
It is alleged as one cause for immediate secession, that the Southern States are denied equal rights with the other States in the common Territories. But by what authority are these denied? Not by Congress, which has never passed, and I believe never will pass, any act to exclude slavery from these Territories. And certainly not by the Supreme Court, which has solemnly decided that slaves are property, and like all other property their owners have a right to take them into the common Territories and hold them there under the protection of the Constitution.
So far, then, as Congress is concerned, the objection is not to anything they have already done, but to what they may do hereafter. It will surely be admitted that this apprehension of future danger is no good reason for an immediate dissolution of the Union. It is true that the Territorial legislature of Kansas, on the 23d February, 1860, passed in great haste an act over the veto of the Governor, declaring that slavery “is and shall be forever prohibited in this Territory.” Such an act, however, plainly violating the rights of property secured by the Constitution, will surely be declared void by the judiciary, whenever it shall be presented in a legal form.
Only three days after my inauguration, the Supreme Court of the United States solemnly adjudged that this power did not exist in a Territorial legislature. Yet such has been the factious temper of the times that the correctness of this decision has been extensively impugned before the people, and the question has given rise to angry political conflicts throughout the country. Those who have appealed from this judgment of our highest constitutional tribunal to popular assemblies, would, if they could, invest a Territorial legislature with power to annul the sacred rights of property. This power Congress is expressly forbidden by the Federal Constitution to exercise. Every State legislature in the Union is forbidden by its own constitution to exercise it. It cannot be exercised in any State except by the people in their highest sovereign capacity when framing or amending their State constitution. In like manner it can only be exercised by the people of a Territory, represented in a convention of delegates, for the purpose of framing a constitution preparatory to admission as a State into the Union. Then, and not until then, are they invested with power to decide the question whether slavery shall or shall not exist within their limits. This is an act of sovereign authority and not of subordinate Territorial legislation. Were it otherwise, then indeed would the equality of the States in the Territories be destroyed and the rights of property in slaves would depend not upon the guarantees of the Constitution, but upon the shifting majorities of an irresponsible Territorial legislature. Such a doctrine, from its intrinsic unsoundness, cannot long influence any considerable portion of our people, much less can it afford a good reason for a dissolution of our Union.
The most palpable violations of constitutional duty which have yet been committed consist in the acts of different State legislatures to defeat the execution of the fugitive slave law. It ought to be remembered, however, that for these acts neither Congress nor any President can justly be held responsible. Having been passed in violation of the Federal Constitution, they are therefore null and void. All the courts, both State and national, before whom the question has arisen, have, from the beginning, declared the fugitive slave law to be constitutional. The single exception is that of a State court in Wisconsin; and this has not only been reversed by the proper appellate tribunal, but has met with such universal reprobation, that there can be no danger from it as a precedent. The validity of this law has been established over and over again by the Supreme Court of the United States with unanimity. It is founded upon an express provision of the Constitution, requiring that fugitive slaves who escape from service in one State to another shall be “delivered up” to their masters. Without this provision, it is a well known historical fact that the Constitution itself could never have been adopted by the convention. In one form or other, under the acts of 1793 and 1850, both being substantially the same, the fugitive slave law has been the law of the land from the days of Washington until the present moment. Here, then, a clear case is presented, in which it will be the duty of the next President, as it has been my own, to act with vigor in executing this supreme law against the conflicting enactments of State legislatures. Should he fail in the performance of this high duty, he will then have manifested a disregard of the Constitution and laws, to the great injury of the people of nearly one-half of the States of the Union. But are we to presume in advance that he will thus violate his duty? This would be at war with every principle of justice and of Christian charity. Let us wait for the overt act. The fugitive slave law has been carried into execution in every contested case since the commencement of the present administration; though often, it is to be regretted, with great loss and inconvenience to the master, and with considerable expense to the Government. Let us trust that the State legislatures will repeal their unconstitutional and obnoxious enactments. Unless this shall be done without unnecessary delay, it is impossible for any human power to save the Union.
The Southern States, standing on the basis of the Constitution, have a right to demand this act of justice from the States of the North. Should it be refused, then the Constitution, to which all the States are parties, will have been wilfully violated by one portion of them in a provision essential to the domestic security and happiness of the remainder. In that event, the injured States, after having first used all peaceful and constitutional means to obtain redress, would be justified in revolutionary resistance to the Government of the Union.
I have purposely confined my remarks to revolutionary resistance, because it has been claimed within the last few years that any State, whenever this shall be its sovereign will and pleasure, may secede from the Union in accordance with the Constitution, and without any violation of the constitutional rights of the other members of the Confederacy. That as each became parties to the Union by the vote of its own people assembled in convention, so any one of them may retire from the Union in a similar manner by the vote of such a convention.
In order to justify secession as a constitutional remedy, it must be on the principle that the Federal Government is a mere voluntary association of States, to be dissolved at pleasure by any one of the contracting parties. If this be so, the Confederacy is a rope of sand, to be penetrated and dissolved by the first adverse wave of public opinion in any of the States. In this manner our thirty-three States may resolve themselves into as many petty, jarring, and hostile republics, each one retiring from the Union without responsibility whenever any sudden excitement might impel them to such a course. By this process a Union might be entirely broken into fragments in a few weeks, which cost our forefathers many years of toil, privation, and blood to establish.
Such a principle is wholly inconsistent with the history as well as the character of the Federal Constitution. After it was framed, with the greatest deliberation and care, it was submitted to conventions of the people of the several States for ratification. Its provisions were discussed at length in these bodies, composed of the first men of the country. Its opponents contended that it conferred powers upon the Federal Government dangerous to the rights of the States, whilst its advocates maintained that, under a fair construction of the instrument, there was no foundation for such apprehensions. In that mighty struggle between the first intellects of this or any other country, it never occurred to any individual, either among its opponents or advocates, to assert or even to intimate that their efforts were all vain labor, because the moment that any State felt herself aggrieved she might secede from the Union. What a crushing argument would this have proved against those who dreaded that the rights of the States would be endangered by the Constitution. The truth is, that it was not until many years after the origin of the Federal Government that such a proposition was first advanced. It was then met and refuted by the conclusive arguments of General Jackson, who, in his message of the 16th January, 1833, transmitting the nullifying ordinance of South Carolina to Congress, employs the following language: “The right of the people of a single State to absolve themselves at will, and without the consent of the other States, from their most solemn obligations, and hazard the liberty and happiness of the millions composing this Union, cannot be acknowledged. Such authority is believed to be utterly repugnant both to the principles upon which the General Government is constituted, and to the objects which it was expressly formed to attain.”
It is not pretended that any clause in the Constitution gives countenance to such a theory. It is altogether founded upon inference, not from any language contained in the instrument itself, but from the sovereign character of the several States by which it was ratified. But is it beyond the power of a State, like an individual, to yield a portion of its sovereign rights to secure the remainder? In the language of Mr. Madison, who has been called the father of the Constitution, “It was formed by the States—that is, by the people in each of the States acting in their highest sovereign capacity, and formed, consequently, by the same authority which formed the State constitutions. Nor is the Government of the United States, created by the Constitution, less a government, in the strict sense of the term, within the sphere of its powers, than the governments created by the constitutions of the States are within their several spheres. It is, like them, organized into legislative, executive, and judiciary departments. It operates, like them, directly on persons and things; and, like them, it has at command a physical force for executing the powers committed to it.”
It was intended to be perpetual, and not to be annulled at the pleasure of any one of the contracting parties. The old articles of confederation were entitled “Articles of confederation and perpetual union between the States;” and by the thirteenth article it is expressly declared that “the articles of this confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the union shall be perpetual.” The preamble to the Constitution of the United States, having express reference to the articles of confederation, recites that it was established “in order to form a more perfect union.” And yet it is contended that this “more perfect union” does not include the essential attribute of perpetuity.
But that the Union was designed to be perpetual, appears conclusively from the nature and extent of the powers conferred by the Constitution on the Federal Government. These powers embrace the very highest attributes of national sovereignty. They place both the sword and the purse under its control. Congress has power to make war and to make peace; to raise and support armies and navies, and to conclude treaties with foreign governments. It is invested with the power to coin money, and to regulate the value thereof, and to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States. It is not necessary to enumerate the other high powers which have been conferred upon the Federal Government. In order to carry the enumerated powers into effect, Congress possesses the exclusive right to lay and collect duties on imports, and, in common with the States, to lay and collect all other taxes.
But the Constitution has not only conferred these high powers upon Congress, but it has adopted effectual means to restrain the States from interfering with their exercise. For that purpose it has in strong prohibitory language expressly declared that “no State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts.” Moreover, “without the consent of Congress no State shall lay any imposts or duties on any imports or exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection laws,” and if they exceed this amount, the excess shall belong to the United States. And “no State shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another State, or with a foreign power, or engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay.”
In order still further to secure the uninterrupted exercise of these high powers against State interposition, it is provided “that this Constitution and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made or which shall be made under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.”
The solemn sanction of religion has been superadded to the obligations of official duty, and all Senators and Representatives of the United States, all members of State legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, “both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support this Constitution.”
In order to carry into effect these powers, the Constitution has established a perfect Government in all its forms, legislative, executive, and judicial; and this Government to the extent of its powers acts directly upon the individual citizens of every State, and executes its own decrees by the agency of its own officers. In this respect it differs entirely from the government under the old confederation, which was confined to making requisitions on the States in their sovereign character. This left in the discretion of each whether to obey or to refuse, and they often declined to comply with such requisitions. It thus became necessary for the purpose of removing this barrier, and, “in order to form a more perfect union,” to establish a Government which could act directly upon the people and execute its own laws without the intermediate agency of the States. This has been accomplished by the Constitution of the United States. In short, the Government created by the Constitution, and deriving its authority from the sovereign people of each of the several States, has precisely the same right to exercise its power over the people of all these States in the enumerated cases, that each one of them possesses over subjects not delegated to the United States, but “reserved to the States respectively or to the people.”
To the extent of the delegated powers the Constitution of the United States is as much a part of the constitution of each State, and is as binding upon its people, as though it had been textually inserted therein.
This Government, therefore, is a great and powerful government, invested with all the attributes of sovereignty over the special subjects to which its authority extends. Its framers never intended to implant in its bosom the seeds of its own destruction, nor were they at its creation guilty of the absurdity of providing for its own dissolution. It was not intended by its framers to be the baseless fabric of a vision, which, at the touch of the enchanter, would vanish into thin air, but a substantial and mighty fabric, capable of resisting the slow decay of time, and of defying the storms of ages. Indeed, well may the jealous patriots of that day have indulged fears that a government of such high powers might violate the reserved rights of the States, and wisely did they adopt the rule of a strict construction of these powers to prevent the danger. But they did not fear, nor had they any reason to imagine that the Constitution would ever be so interpreted as to enable any State by her own act, and without the consent of her sister States, to discharge her people from all or any of the federal obligations.
It may be asked, then, are the people of the States without redress against the tyranny and oppression of the Federal Government? By no means. The right of resistance on the part of the governed against the oppression of their governments cannot be denied. It exists independently of all constitutions, and has been exercised at all periods of the world’s history. Under it, old governments have been destroyed and new ones have taken their place. It is embodied in strong and express language in our own Declaration of Independence. But the distinction must ever be observed that this is revolution against an established government, and not a voluntary secession from it by virtue of an inherent constitutional right. In short, let us look the danger fairly in the face; secession is neither more nor less than revolution. It may or it may not be a justifiable revolution; but still it is revolution.
What, in the meantime, is the responsibility and true position of the Executive? He is bound by solemn oath, before God and the country, “to take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” and from this obligation he cannot be absolved by any human power. But what if the performance of this duty, in whole or in part, has been rendered impracticable by events over which he could have exercised no control? Such, at the present moment, is the case throughout the State of South Carolina, so far as the laws of the United States to secure the administration of justice by means of the federal judiciary are concerned. All the federal officers within its limits, through whose agency alone these laws can be carried into execution, have already resigned. We no longer have a district judge, a district attorney, or a marshal in South Carolina. In fact, the whole machinery of the Federal Government necessary for the distribution of remedial justice among the people has been demolished, and it would be difficult, if not impossible, to replace it.
The only acts of Congress on the statute book, bearing upon this subject, are those of the 28th February, 1795, and 3d March, 1807. These authorize the President, after he shall have ascertained that the marshal, with his posse comitatus, is unable to execute civil or criminal process in any particular case, to call forth the militia and employ the army and navy to aid him in performing this service, having first by proclamation commanded the insurgents “to disperse and retire peaceably to their respective abodes within a limited time.” This duty cannot by possibility be performed in a State where no judicial authority exists to issue process, and where there is no marshal to execute it, and where, even if there were such an officer, the entire population would constitute one solid combination to resist him.
The bare enumeration of these provisions proves how inadequate they are, without further legislation, to overcome a united opposition in a single State, not to speak of other States who may place themselves in a similar attitude. Congress alone has power to decide whether the present laws can or cannot be amended so as to carry out more effectually the objects of the Constitution.
The same insuperable obstacles do not lie in the way of executing the laws for the collection of the customs. The revenue still continues to be collected, as heretofore, at the custom-house in Charleston, and should the collector unfortunately resign, a successor may be appointed to perform this duty.
Then, in regard to the property of the United States in South Carolina. This has been purchased, for a fair equivalent, “by the consent of the legislature of the State,” “for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals,” etc., and over these the authority “to exercise exclusive legislation,” has been expressly granted by the Constitution to Congress. It is not believed that any attempt will be made to expel the United States from this property by force; but if in this I should prove to be mistaken, the officer in command of the forts has received orders to act strictly on the defensive. In such a contingency the responsibility for consequences would rightfully rest upon the heads of the assailants.
Apart from the execution of the laws, so far as this may be practicable, the Executive has no authority to decide what shall be the relations between the Federal Government and South Carolina. He has been invested with no such discretion. He possesses no power to change the relations heretofore existing between them, much less to acknowledge the independence of that State. This would be to invest a mere executive officer with the power of recognizing the dissolution of the Confederacy among our thirty-three sovereign States. It bears no resemblance to the recognition of a foreign de facto government, involving no such responsibility. Any attempt to do this would, on his part, be a naked act of usurpation. It is, therefore, my duty to submit to Congress the whole question in all its bearings. The course of events is so rapidly hastening forward that the emergency may soon arise when you may be called upon to decide the momentous question whether you possess the power, by force of arms, to compel a State to remain in the Union. I should feel myself recreant to my duty were I not to express an opinion on this important subject.
The question fairly stated is: Has the Constitution delegated to Congress the power to coerce a State into submission which is attempting to withdraw, or has actually withdrawn, from the Confederacy? If answered in the affirmative, it must be on the principle that the power has been conferred upon Congress to declare and to make war against a State. After much serious reflection, I have arrived at the conclusion that no such power has been delegated to Congress or to any other department of the Federal Government. It is manifest, upon an inspection of the Constitution, that this is not among the specific and enumerated powers granted to Congress; and it is equally apparent that its exercise is not “necessary and proper for carrying into execution” any one of these powers. So far from this power having been delegated to Congress, it was expressly refused by the convention which framed the Constitution.
It appears from the proceedings of that body that on the 31st May, 1787, the clause “authorizing an exertion of the force of the whole against a delinquent State,” came up for consideration. Mr. Madison opposed it in a brief but powerful speech, from which I shall extract but a single sentence. He observed: “The use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.” Upon his motion the clause was unanimously postponed, and was never, I believe, again presented. Soon afterwards, on the 8th June, 1787, when incidentally adverting to the subject, he said: “Any government for the United States, formed on the supposed practicability of using force against the unconstitutional proceedings of the States, would prove as visionary and fallacious as the Government of Congress,” evidently meaning the then existing Congress of the old Confederation.
Without descending to particulars, it may be safely asserted that the power to make war against a State is at variance with the whole spirit and intent of the Constitution. Suppose such a war should result in the conquest of a State, how are we to govern it afterwards? Shall we hold it as a province and govern it by despotic power? In the nature of things we could not, by physical force, control the will of the people and compel them to elect Senators and Representatives to Congress, and to perform all the other duties depending upon their own volition, and required from the free citizens of a free State as a constituent member of the Confederacy.
But, if we possessed this power, would it be wise to exercise it under existing circumstances? The object would doubtless be to preserve the Union. War would not only present the most effectual means of destroying it, but would banish all hope of its peaceful reconstruction. Besides, in the fraternal conflict a vast amount of blood and treasure would be expended, rendering future reconciliation between the States impossible. In the meantime, who can foretell what would be the sufferings and privations of the people during its existence?
The fact is, that our Union rests upon public opinion, and can never be cemented by the blood of its citizens shed in civil war. If it cannot live in the affections of the people, it must one day perish. Congress possesses many means of preserving it by conciliation; but the sword was not placed in their hand to preserve it by force.
But may I be permitted solemnly to invoke my countrymen to pause and deliberate, before they determine to destroy this, the grandest temple which has ever been dedicated to human freedom since the world began. It has been consecrated by the blood of our fathers, by the glories of the past, and by the hopes of the future. The Union has already made us the most prosperous, and ere long will, if preserved, render us the most powerful nation on the face of the earth. In every foreign region of the globe the title of American citizen is held in the highest respect, and when pronounced in a foreign land it causes the hearts of our countrymen to swell with honest pride. Surely, when we reach the brink of the yawning abyss, we shall recoil with horror from the last fatal plunge.
By such a dread catastrophe, the hopes of the friends of freedom throughout the world would be destroyed, and a long night of leaden despotism would enshroud the nations. Our example for more than eighty years would not only be lost, but it would be quoted as conclusive proof that man is unfit for self-government.
It is not every wrong—nay, it is not every grievous wrong—which can justify a resort to such a fearful alternative. This ought to be the last desperate remedy of a despairing people, after every other constitutional means of conciliation had been exhausted. We should reflect that, under this free Government, there is an incessant ebb and flow in public opinion. The slavery question, like everything human, will have its day. I firmly believe that it has reached and passed the culminating point. But if, in the midst of the existing excitement, the Union shall perish, the evil may then become irreparable.
Congress can contribute much to avert it, by proposing and recommending to the legislatures of the several States the remedy for existing evils which the Constitution has itself provided for its own preservation. This has been tried at different critical periods of our history, and always with eminent success. It is to be found in the fifth article, providing for its own amendment. Under this article, amendments have been proposed by two-thirds of both Houses of Congress, and have been “ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States,” and have consequently become parts of the Constitution. To this process the country is indebted for the clause prohibiting Congress from passing any law respecting an establishment of religion, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or of the right of petition. To this we are, also, indebted for the Bill of Rights, which secures the people against any abuse of power by the Federal Government. Such were the apprehensions justly entertained by the friends of State rights at that period as to have rendered it extremely doubtful whether the Constitution could have long survived without those amendments.
Again, the Constitution was amended by the same process, after the election of President Jefferson by the House of Representatives, in February, 1803. This amendment was rendered necessary to prevent a recurrence of the dangers which had seriously threatened the existence of the Government during the pendency of that election. The article for its own amendment was intended to secure the amicable adjustment of conflicting constitutional questions like the present, which might arise between the governments of the States and that of the United States. This appears from contemporaneous history. In this connection, I shall merely call attention to a few sentences in Mr. Madison’s justly celebrated report, in 1799, to the legislature of Virginia. In this, he ably and conclusively defended the resolutions of the preceding legislature, against the strictures of several other State legislatures. These were mainly founded upon the protest of the Virginia legislature against the “alien and sedition acts,” as “palpable and alarming infractions of the Constitution.” In pointing out the peaceful and constitutional remedies—and he referred to none other—to which the States were authorized to resort on such occasions, he concludes by saying, “that the legislatures of the States might have made a direct representation to Congress, with a view to obtain a rescinding of the two offensive acts, or they might have represented to their respective Senators in Congress, their wish that two-thirds thereof would propose an explanatory amendment to the Constitution, or two-thirds of themselves, if such had been their option, might by an application to Congress, have obtained a convention for the same object.” This is the very course which I earnestly recommend, in order to obtain an “explanatory amendment” of the Constitution on the subject of slavery. This might originate with Congress or the State legislatures, as may be deemed most advisable to attain the object.
The explanatory amendment might be confined to the final settlement of the true construction of the Constitution on three special points:
1. An express recognition of the right of property in slaves in the States where it now exists or may hereafter exist.
2. The duty of protecting this right in all the common Territories throughout their Territorial existence, and until they shall be admitted as States into the Union, with or without slavery, as their constitutions may prescribe.
3. A like recognition of the right of the master to have his slave, who has escaped from one State to another, restored and “delivered up” to him, and of the validity of the fugitive slave law enacted for this purpose, together with a declaration that all State laws impairing or defeating this right, are violations of the Constitution, and are consequently null and void. It may be objected that this construction of the Constitution has already been settled by the Supreme Court of the United States, and what more ought to be required? The answer is, that a very large proportion of the people of the United States still contest the correctness of this decision, and never will cease from agitation, and admit its binding force, until clearly established by the people of the several States in their sovereign character. Such an explanatory amendment would, it is believed, forever terminate the existing dissensions, and restore peace and harmony among the States.
It ought not to be doubted that such an appeal to the arbitrament established by the Constitution itself would be received with favor by all the States of the Confederacy. In any event, it ought to be tried in a spirit of conciliation before any of these States shall separate themselves from the Union.
When I entered upon the duties of the Presidential office, the aspect neither of our foreign nor domestic affairs was at all satisfactory. We were involved in dangerous complications with several nations, and two of our Territories were in a state of revolution against the Government. A restoration of the African slave trade had numerous and powerful advocates. Unlawful military expeditions were countenanced by many of our citizens, and were suffered, in defiance of the efforts of the Government, to escape from our shores for the purpose of making war upon the unoffending people of neighboring republics with whom we were at peace. In addition to these and other difficulties, we experienced a revulsion in monetary affairs, soon after my advent to power, of unexampled severity, and of ruinous consequences to all the great interests of the country. When we take a retrospect of what was then our condition, and contrast this with its material prosperity at the time of the late Presidential election, we have abundant reason to return our grateful thanks to that merciful Providence which has never forsaken us as a nation in all our past trials.
With respect to the supposed right of secession as a deduction from the nature of the Union, as established by the Constitution—a theory on which the secessionists from the first desired the whole issue to be based, with all its resulting consequences—I shall close this chapter with the remark that, after a long familiarity with our constitutional literature, I know of no document which, within the same compass, states so clearly and accurately what I regard as the true theory of our Constitution, as this message of President Buchanan. Had I the power to change it, I would not alter a word. The President, after stating a case which might justify revolution under this as under all other governments, after all peaceful and constitutional means to obtain redress had been exhausted, proceeded to discuss the supposed constitutional right of secession, with the power of a statesman and the precision of a jurist.[78]
Footnote 78:
Mr. Buchanan, in constructing this great argument, doubtless had very important sources from which to draw his reasoning, in Mr. Webster’s replies to Mr. Hayne and Mr. Calhoun, in General Jackson’s great proclamation and message in the time of nullification, in the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, in the writings of Hamilton, Madison and others of the early expounders of the Constitution. But who can justly deny to him the merit of concentrating his materials into a powerful statement, of that theory of our Constitution on which the rightfulness of the late civil war must rest in history, or be left without any justification but the power of numbers and the principle that might makes right!
Among all the reproaches that have been cast upon President Buchanan, none has been more persistently repeated than that which has imputed to him a “temporizing policy;” and the doctrine on which he denied that the Federal Government could make aggressive war upon a State for the purpose of preventing her from seceding from the Union, has been represented as the strongest proof of his want of the vigor necessary for the emergency. Little are the objectors aware that the policy of Mr. Lincoln’s administration, until after the attack on Fort Sumter, was identical with that of Mr. Buchanan. Mr. Lincoln’s policy was largely shaped by his Secretary of State, Mr. Seward; and there can be no better authority than Mr. Seward’s for proof of that policy.[79]
Footnote 79:
The following extracts are taken from an official letter addressed by Mr. Seward, as Secretary of State, to Mr. C. F. Adams, who had just gone abroad as United States Minister to England. The letter bears date April 10th, 1861. “You will hardly be asked by responsible statesmen abroad, why has not the new administration already suppressed the revolution. Thirty-five days are a short period in which to repress, chiefly by moral means, a movement which is so active whilst disclosing itself throughout an empire...... He (President Lincoln) believes that the citizens of those States, as well as the citizens of the other States, are too intelligent, considerate, and wise to follow the leaders to that destructive end (anarchy). For these reasons, he would not be disposed to reject a cardinal dogma of theirs, namely, that the Federal Government could not reduce the seceding States to obedience by conquest, even although he were disposed to question that proposition. But, in fact, the President willingly accepts it as true. Only an imperial and despotic government could subjugate thoroughly disaffected and insurrectionary members of the state. This federal, republican country of ours is of all forms of government the very one which is most unfitted for such a labor. Happily, however, this is only an imaginary defect. The system has within itself adequate, peaceful, conservative and recuperative forces. Firmness on the part of the Government in maintaining and preserving the public institutions and property, and in executing the laws where authority can be exercised without waging war, combined with such measures of justice, moderation and forbearance as will disarm reasoning opposition, will be sufficient to secure the public safety, until returning reflection, concurring with the fearful experience of social evils, the inevitable fruits of faction, shall bring the recusant members cheerfully into the family, which, after all, must prove their best and happiest, as it undeniably is their most natural home.” He then goes on to show that the calling of a national convention, by authority of Congress, will remove all real obstacles to a re-union, by revising the Constitution, and he adds: “Keeping that remedy steadily in view, the President on the one hand will not suffer the Federal authority to fall into abeyance, nor will he on the other hand aggravate existing evils by attempts at coercion which must assume the form of direct war against any of the revolutionary States.” It is impossible for human ingenuity to draw a sensible distinction between the policy of President Lincoln, as laid down by Mr. Seward just before the attack on Fort Sumter, and the policy adopted and steadily pursued by President Buchanan; and it is to be hoped that the world will hereafter hear no more reproaches of President Buchanan, because he denied the authority of the Federal Government to make aggressive war upon a State to compel it to remain in the Union, or because he proposed conciliatory measures looking to an amendment of the Constitution.
XVII. 1860—December
RECEPTION OF THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE IN THE CABINET, IN CONGRESS, AND IN THE COUNTRY—THE FIRM ATTITUDE AND WISE POLICY OF MR. BUCHANAN.
Reference has already been made to what took place when this annual message was read to the cabinet, before it was transmitted to Congress. Recent revelations made by Judge Black in the public prints disclose the nature of an objection made by him to the expression “to coerce a State into submission, which is attempting to withdraw, or has actually withdrawn, from the Confederacy.” His criticism did not apply to the legal proposition of the message, in which he entirely concurred; but his apprehension was that the expression would be read superficially, and be misunderstood. The President did not think so, nor did the other members of the cabinet. It is only necessary for me to repeat that the message clearly and unequivocally pointed out that the coercive power of the Federal Government was necessarily confined and must be applied to the execution upon individuals of the laws of the United States; and that it explicitly stated, with proper references to the proceedings of the framers of the Constitution, that a power to coerce a State by force of arms was expressly rejected by them, since it would, if applied, be equivalent to a declaration of war against the State by the Government of the Union. But the apprehension felt by the learned Attorney General was caused, I presume, by his anxiety concerning the reception of the message in the South and among the secessionists. It was their misconstruction that he feared. He could not well have supposed that Northern statesmen, grounded at least in the fundamental principles of the Constitution usually accepted at the North, and with the clear distinction put before them in the message between coercing a State and coercing individuals, would impute to the President an intention to renounce the right to use force in the execution of the laws and the protection of the public property of the Union. In point of fact, as the sequel will show, nearly the whole Republican party, after the message became public, without any rational excuse for such a misconstruction, saw fit to treat the message as a denial by the President of any power to enforce the laws against the citizens of a State after secession, and even after actual rebellion. If this was what the Attorney General anticipated, it would seem that the President, having taken great care to make clear the distinction, was not bound to suppose that a merely partisan spirit of misrepresentation would be applied to such a document as this message, to the extent of utterly perverting its meaning. On the other hand, the disunionists did not misunderstand or misconstrue the message. They saw clearly that it not only denounced secession, but that while it enunciated the doctrine that the Federal Government could not apply force to prevent a State from adopting an ordinance of secession, it could and must use force, if need be, to execute its laws, notwithstanding the secession. This was a doctrine opposed toto cælo, and in all its branches, to the secessionist’s theory of the Constitution. It met them upon their own ground, for it utterly denied that a State ordinance of secession could absolve its people from obeying the laws of the United States. Accordingly they denounced the message; and upon their theory of the Constitution they denounced it rightly. All friendly intercourse between the leading disunionists in Congress and the President ceased after the message became public; and from the multitude of private letters which reached the President from the South, now lying before me, it is apparent that throughout that section he was regarded, alike by the enemies and the friends of the Union, as having made the issue on which the secessionists desired to have the whole controversy turn. They were just as ready to accept the issue of a constitutional power in the Federal Government to enforce its laws after secession, as they were to accept the issue of coercing a State to remain in the Union.
As soon as the message was published, “thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Vallambrosa,” private letters of approbation were showered upon the President from all quarters of the North. The most diverse reasons for praising his policy marked this heterogeneous correspondence. The Democrat, who was afraid to have a civil war begin under a Democratic administration, predicted that it would destroy his party forever. The pious “abolitionist,” who saw the finger of God in everything, and who prayed daily for a separation of the free and the slave States, so that the reproach of tolerating slavery might no longer rest upon the Constitution of his country, hailed the annunciation of a policy which he thought destined, in the course of Providence, to work out the result which he longed to see. The Quaker, who abhorred war and bloodshed, hoped that “thee” would preserve peace at any price. The man of business, looking to his material interests and to the commercial advantages of the Union, deprecated a civil war which would disturb the natural current of affairs, and would end where no man could foresee. Thoughtful citizens, who comprehended more within their range of reflection than was common with their neighbors, recognized the wisdom and the necessity of the conciliatory steps which the President had recommended. The speculative jurist, meditating in his closet upon what he supposed might be a panacea for this disordered condition of the body politic, sent his recommendations. Nearly all of these classes, in their various ways of looking at such a crisis, were on the whole gratified that the President had afforded to the country a breathing spell, had solemnly called upon Congress to reflect, and had at the same time called upon it to act in the manner best adapted to meet the emergency. Very few desired aggressive measures to be taken, which would put the Federal Government in the attitude of making war upon a State.
These numerous private communications, coming from the people, were addressed to one of the most self-reliant of men, who had surveyed the whole field that was before him, who had firmly settled the general policy which it was his duty to follow, and who was as calm and collected in this great trial as he had ever been in any situation of his life, while he was neither insensible to or careless of its weighty responsibilities. It has been one of the fashionable errors concerning Mr. Buchanan to impute to him, from age or some other cause, a lack of firmness and self-possession in this perilous emergency. He has been spoken of as having lost his faculties, or as being bewildered by the perplexities of his situation. There never was a more unfounded imputation. It is an imputation to which no one who was closely in contact with him gave at the time any countenance whatever. It will appear, as I go on, that, of the members of his cabinet who were most concerned in all his official acts during the last months of his administration, not one formed at that time the opinion that he was wanting in firmness, decision, or energy, however any of them may have differed with him from time to time in regard to particular steps or measures. The President who sent to Congress the message on which I commented in the last preceding chapter, was certainly equal to the occasion. How he felt, and what he said of his situation, the reader will be interested to learn by the following extract from a confidential letter which he wrote to a gentleman in New York on the 20th of December:
I have never enjoyed better health or a more tranquil spirit than during the past year. All our troubles have not cost me an hour’s sleep or a single meal, though I trust I have a just sense of my high responsibility. I weigh well and prayerfully what course I ought to adopt, and adhere to it steadily, leaving the result to Providence. This is my nature, and I deserve neither praise nor blame for it. Every person who served with me in the Senate in high party times would avouch the truth of this statement.
Mr. Buchanan may have made mistakes. If I had discovered them I should not have hesitated to point them out. But that his policy was sound; that it was the only policy that could have had any chance of preserving the Union without a civil war; that his motive was eminently patriotic; that with a serene and superb patience he incurred the risk of obloquy and misrepresentation for the sake of his country; all this should be the judgment of any impartial mind. Nay, more: I do not hesitate to say that no man can justly accuse him of vacillation, weakness, or timidity. A statesman who has a great task to perform in a national peril, does not always pursue a rigid line of action, without regard to the varying course of events. He determines, first of all, on the grand object which he wishes to accomplish. If he keeps that object constantly in view, he must necessarily vary his steps as the changing aspects of public affairs require; and one supreme test of his capacity and wisdom as a statesman is to be found in his ability to adapt himself to new situations, and at the same time not to lose sight of the capital object of all his exertions. As a diplomatist, in the highest sense of that term, Mr. Buchanan had few equals in his time, nor have there been many men in our history who were in this respect his superiors. As his course in the inception and progress of the secession movement is developed, it will be seen that the explanation of many of his acts, which have been the most misunderstood or misrepresented, is to be found in the necessity for palliating the danger of an armed collision, at moments when such a collision would have destroyed all hope of a peaceful solution of the sectional difficulties. That at such moments he sacrificed any principle to the management of the immediate question in hand, or imperilled any national interest, or that he ever departed in any essential respect from the great object of his policy, will not be, or ought not to be, the judgment of those who may follow this narrative to the end.
The dis-Unionists of South Carolina, aided by the leading secessionists in Congress from other States of the South, as will be seen hereafter, tried hard to entrap him. They never once succeeded. They meant to draw from him an admission in some form that a State could constitutionally secede from the Union; for they were sorely provoked that he had denied the right of secession in his message, and when South Carolina had actually adopted her ordinance, it became with them a capital point to extort from him a surrender of the forts in Charleston harbor, which would imply that the ordinance had transferred them to the State. They anticipated that if they could once drive him from the position of his message, the Democratic party of the North, looking upon him as its representative, would never encourage or support a war for the recovery of those possessions. They knew that he deprecated and was seeking to avoid a war; and they believed that if he could be compelled to admit that South Carolina was out of the Union, other States would quickly join her in the same movement. But the truth is, that, with all their astuteness, the secessionists were individually and collectively no match for a man who had in former days contended with the most crafty politicians of Russia, who had encountered and encountered successfully the ablest among the British statesmen of that age, and who knew more of public law and of our constitutional jurisprudence than all the dis-Unionist leaders in the South. In addition to all the resources which Mr. Buchanan had in his own person and his experience as a statesman, he had a very important resource in his Attorney General, and in some of the other gentlemen who joined his cabinet after it became necessary to reconstruct it; and if, in the pressure that was made upon him by the secessionists, and in the hurry of encountering their devices, there was any danger that his determinations might be unskillfully shaped, it was abundantly guarded against by the suggestions of his advisers.
By the public press of the North, the message was of course received according to party affinities. There were many leading articles which regarded it as sound and wise; many which treated it as a kind of “treasonable” giving away of the Union. The general tone, however, of the more moderate journals was hopeful, and the papers of this class based their hopes of a peaceful issue out of all the difficulties upon the President’s recommendations. Still, the utterances of the press did not show that even then the public mind of the North fully grasped the extreme gravity of the situation; and if these utterances of the press are to be taken as the best proof of the state of the public mind in the North, without the aid of one’s personal recollections and observation, it might be inferred that the message had not produced the impression that it ought. But the great mass of private letters which reached Mr. Buchanan are a better index of what was passing in men’s minds; and they show unmistakably that if the Congress had vigorously acted as he advised, the public mind of the North was preparing to sanction and to welcome the course which he recommended, however diverse were the reasons or the motives which prevailed with the individual writers.[80]
Footnote 80:
This mass of private letters is so great, and so fully represents various classes of the community, that I have felt entirely warranted in treating it as the best evidence of the currents of public opinion, as they were setting immediately after the publication of the message. The President could do nothing more with such a correspondence than to have each letter carefully read by a competent private secretary, and its contents duly noted for his information. The whole of it gave him the means of knowing the feelings of the people far better than he could know them by reading the public prints.
The letters which reached the President from the South, after the promulgation of his message, were almost as numerous as those which came from the North, but they did not exhibit such a variety in the motives and feelings that animated the writers. They were from men who represented two principal classes of persons, the Unionists and the dis-Unionists. The latter wrote in a bold, defiant and turbulent spirit. They made it quite clear that they cared nothing for the distinction between coercing a State and coercing individuals, and that they held a State ordinance of secession to be perfectly efficacious to absolve its people from obeying the laws of the United States. They declared that any movement of troops or munitions of war into the Southern States would instantly be accepted as proof of a design to prevent peaceable secession, would promote bloodshed and inaugurate civil war. Many of these persons were terribly in earnest; but if any of them wrote in the expectation that they could operate upon the President’s fears, and thus prevent him from carrying out his announced purpose to execute the laws and preserve the public property of the Union, they “reckoned without their host.” While he made it apparent to Congress that at that time he was without the necessary executive powers to enforce the collection of the revenue in South Carolina, in case she should secede, he did not fail to call for the appropriate powers and means. And in regard to the application of all the means that he had for protecting the public property, it will be seen hereafter that he omitted no step that could have been taken with safety, and that when the day for the inauguration of his successor arrived, Major Anderson not only held Fort Sumter, but had held it down to that time in perfect confidence that he could maintain his position.
The letters from Union men in the South evinced that there was in all the cotton States, excepting in South Carolina, a strong body of men who were not disposed to coöperate in a dismemberment of the Union, and in the destruction of the Government under which they and their fathers had always lived and prospered. They therefore, from their positions, were able to tell Mr. Buchanan how important it was that the Federal Government should not become the aggressor; how vital it was that it should act on the defensive; and how necessary it was that the North, acting through Congress, should adopt the conciliatory measures which he had recommended; measures that would, in regard to the Territories, give the South nothing but a barren abstraction, and that would, in regard to the extradition of fugitives, give the South only what it had a perfect right to demand. Although all this was entirely apparent to the President without the information which these letters gave him, these expressions of the feelings, opinions and hopes of the Unionists of that region were a strong confirmation of the wisdom of his policy.
The tone of the Southern press respecting the message was in general violent and inflammatory, but with many noteworthy exceptions. But as in the North, so in the South, the private letters to the President were a better index of the currents of feeling and opinion than anything that could be found in the utterances of the press.
In Congress, when the message was received, there was a singular state of parties. First, there were the Republicans, flushed with their recent political triumph in the election of Mr. Lincoln, and entirely indisposed to make any concessions that would militate, or seem to militate, against the dogmas of the “Chicago Platform.” This party was purely sectional in its composition, tendencies and purposes. Next were the representatives of the Southern States, most of whom held theoretically to the State right of secession. This party was a sectional one, also; but, as will hereafter be shown, there were a few Southern men in Congress who did not believe in the doctrine of secession, who favored no extreme demands of the South, and who acted throughout with a steady purpose to preserve the peace of the country and the integrity of the Union. Thirdly, there were the Northern Democrats, represented by such Senators as Mr. Douglas, Mr. Bigler and Mr. Bright, who could act as mediators between the extreme sectional parties of North and South. It was to such a Congress that the President addressed his message, at a moment when South Carolina was about to secede from the Union, and when the danger was that all the other cotton States would follow her example. He was convinced that an attempt of those seven States to form a confederacy, independent of the United States, could not be overcome without a long and bloody war, into which the other Southern States, commonly called from their geographical situation the border States, would sooner or later be drawn. A great army would be needed to encounter even the cotton States, and no free institutions in the world had ever survived the dangers to which such an army had exposed them. To prosecute a civil war would entail upon the Federal Government a debt which could not be calculated; and although the taxation necessary to uphold that debt might be thrown upon posterity, in part, yet the commercial, manufacturing, agricultural, mechanical and laboring classes must be at once exposed to ruinous burthens. To avert such calamities, by the employment of all the constitutional powers of his office, was his supreme desire.[81] It was the great misfortune of his position, that he had to appeal to a Congress, in which there were two sectional parties breathing mutual defiance; in which a broad and patriotic statesmanship was confined to a small body of men who could not win over to their views a sufficient number from either of the sectional parties to make up a majority upon any proposition whatever.
Footnote 81:
Buchanan’s Defence, pp. 112-113.
The message was unsatisfactory to both of the sectional parties. Mr. Jefferson Davis, in the Senate the ablest and most conspicuous of the secessionist leaders, now committed the grand error of his career as a statesman in this national crisis. He denounced the message because of its earnest argument against secession, and because the President had expressed in it his purpose to collect the revenue in the port of Charleston, by means of a naval force, and to defend the public property. Mr. Davis did not need to make this issue with the President, or to make any issue with him, unless he was determined to encourage South Carolina to leave the Union, and to encourage the other cotton States to follow her. His own State had not then seceded, and whether she would do so depended very much upon his course. However strongly and sincerely he may have believed in the right of secession, the President had afforded to him and to every other Southern statesman an opportunity to forestall any necessity for a practical assertion of that right, by giving his voice and his vote for measures of conciliation that ought to have been satisfactory to every Southern constituency and every Southern representative. It was a capital mistake, for Mr. Davis and the other secessionist leaders, to separate themselves from the President, and afterwards to endeavor to extort from him an admission that South Carolina had gone out of the Union, and that the laws of the United States could not be executed within her limits, or the possession of the forts in her harbor be maintained. Mr. Calhoun would not have thus acted. He would have exerted his whole power to procure concessions fit to be offered by the North, and to be received by the South, before he would have encouraged his State to secede from the Union in advance of the decision that no such concessions would be made.
The spirit of the Republican Senators towards the message may be seen from the very unjust representation of its tenor made by Mr. Hale of New Hampshire, who said that in substance its positions were: 1. That South Carolina has just cause to secede from the Union. 2. That she has no right to secede. 3. That we have no right to prevent her. So far from saying or intimating that South Carolina had just cause to secede from the Union, the President had in the message carefully and explicitly drawn that distinction between the right of revolutionary resistance to intolerable oppression, and the supposed right of State secession from the Union on account of anticipated danger; a distinction which Madison, Jefferson, Jackson and Webster always made when dealing with the subject. That distinction was not more clearly and emphatically made by Mr. Webster in his encounters with Mr. Hayne and Mr. Calhoun, than it was made by Mr. Buchanan in this message. And if Mr. Hale had been disposed to do justice to the message, instead of employing a witticism that might be remembered by persons who would not take the pains to understand such a public document on a subject of such fearful gravity, he would have admitted what all men should then have admitted, and what afterwards became the only justifiable basis of the civil war: that to coerce a State to remain in the Union is not, but that to enforce the execution of the laws upon the individual inhabitants of the States is, a power that the Government of the United States can constitutionally exercise. There was one member of that Senate, who was no disunionist, who understood the President rightly, and who knew well what the Constitution would or would not authorize. This was Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, afterwards President of the United States.
“I do not believe,” said Mr. Johnson, “the Federal Government has the power to coerce a State, for by the eleventh amendment of the Constitution of the United States it is expressly provided that you cannot even put one of the States of this Confederacy before one of the courts of the country as a party. As a State, the Federal Government has no power to coerce it; but it is a member of the compact to which it agreed in common with the other States, and this Government has the right to pass laws, and to enforce those laws upon individuals within the limits of each State. While the one proposition is clear, the other is equally so. This Government can, by the Constitution of the country, and by the laws enacted in conformity with the Constitution, operate upon individuals, and has the right and the power, not to coerce a State, but to enforce and execute the law upon individuals within the limits of a State.”[82]
Footnote 82:
Speech in the Senate, December 18, 1860. Congressional Globe, p. 119.
It was well for the country that at this early period Mr. Buchanan had the wisdom to foresee and the firmness to enunciate the only doctrine that could save the Government of the United States from the consequences of making war upon a State, and at the same time enable it to suppress all insurrectionary resistance to its constitutional authority. It might suit the secessionists to claim that their States would become, by their ordinances of secession, independent nations, capable as such of waging war against the United States, or of having it waged upon them by the United States, if such was the pleasure of the latter. It might suit them to put the alternative of such a war against the consent of the United States to their peaceful renunciation of their connection with the Federal Government. It might suit them to confound all the distinctions between revolutionary resistance to a government because some actual oppression has been suffered from it, and the secession of States from the American Union because future oppression is to be feared. It might suit them to say that to coerce the individual inhabitants of a State to obey the laws of the United States, after the State has absolved them from that obligation by its sovereign will, is the same thing as to coerce a State to remain in the Union. But this was not a dispute about words; it was a controversy about the substantive powers of a constitutional Government; a great question of things, and of things drawing after them the most important consequences. If there was to be a war, it was a matter of supreme importance what that war was to be, in its inception. Mr. Buchanan did not mean that its character, if it must come, should be obscured. He did not mean that it should be a war waged aggressively by the United States to prevent a State from adopting an ordinance of what she might call secession. He did not mean to concede the possibility that the Federal Government could begin or carry on a war against a State, as a power which could by its own act erect itself into a nation to be conquered and subdued and destroyed, as one nation may conquer, subdue and destroy another. Knowing that such a recognition of the potency of an ordinance of secession would be fatal to the future of the whole Union, and knowing from long study of the Constitution how the laws of the United States may be enforced upon individuals notwithstanding that their State has claimed a paramount sovereignty over them, or a paramount dispensing power, he left upon the records of the country the clear line of demarcation which would have to be observed by his successor, and which would make the use of force, if force must be used, a war, not of aggression, but of defence; a war not for the conquest and obliteration of a State, but a war for the assertion of the authority of the Constitution over the individuals subject to its sway. It was only by treating secession as a nullity, and by acting upon the principle that the people of a State would be equally bound to obey the laws of the United States after secession as they had been before, that the President could furnish to Congress any principle on which force could be used. It is not remarkable that the secession leaders should have rejected his doctrine. But it is strange, passing strange, that Northern men should have misrepresented it. Yet there was not a single public man in the whole North, in all the discussion that followed this message, on the Republican side, who saw, or who, if he saw, had the candor to say, that the President had furnished to Congress a principle of action that would alone prevent secession from working the consequences which its advocates claimed for it, or that could prevent the conquest and subjugation of States as foreign nations. And now, when we look back upon the war that ensued, and when we measure the disparity of force that enabled the United States eventually to prevail over the exhausted Southern Confederacy, there are no people in the whole Union who have more cause than the secessionists themselves, to be grateful to President Buchanan for not having admitted the possibility of legitimate war upon the States that seceded; while for the people of the whole Union there remains a debt of gratitude to him, for having laid down the principle that saved them from crushing the political autonomy of those States, in a war that could have had no result but to reduce them to the condition of subjugated provinces.