46

EFFECT IN ENGLAND

[1861 and the blow was the harder to bear, inasmuch as England, from whom sympathy was ardently desired, now regarded the dissolution of the Union as an accomplished fact. Friends of the South saw in this victory a promise of her eventual triumph and to help forward her cause, endeavored to cloud the issue. "It is surprising," wrote Charles Francis Adams, our minister to Great Britain, in a private letter from London, "to see the efforts made here to create the belief that our struggle has nothing to do with slavery, but that it is all about a tariff. . . . I cannot conceal from myself the fact that as a whole the English are pleased with our misfortunes." 1

Fifty-two years after the struggle, this feeling may be accounted for by the remark of Rochefoucauld, "The misfortunes of our best friends are not entirely displeasing to us"; but such an attitude during the war on the part of the kin across the sea was felt bitterly by men who were risking life and fortune in what they deemed a sacred cause.2

1 Aug. 30, Forbes, I, 234.

2 Authorities on Bull Run, III, 437, 443-457; O. R., II; N. & H., IV; W. Sherman, I; Johnston; J. Davis, I; Ropes, I; R. M. Johnston; C. W., Pt. 2; Swinton; Chesnut; B. & L., I; Globe; Hosmer's Appeal; Seward, II; Early; characterizations of Johnston and Jackson, III; 458, 462.

CHAPTER II

On the day after the battle of Bull Run, Congress met at the usual hour and transacted the usual amount of business. Outwardly at least the members were calm. The House, with only four dissenting votes, adopted a resolution of Crittenden's, introduced two days previously, which gave expression to the common sentiment of the country regarding the object of the war. This resolution declared that the war was not waged for conquest or subjugation or in order to overthrow or interfere with the rights or established institutions of the Southern States, but to maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and to preserve the Union: three days later it passed the Senate by a vote of 30: 5.1

Congress had convened July 4, and, in response to the President's request for means to make the war "short and decisive," had authorized him to accept the services of 500,000 volunteers for three years unless sooner discharged, and had empowered the Secretary of the Treasury "to borrow on the credit of the United States" two hundred and fifty million dollars. Although failing to use its power of taxation as effectively as the occasion required, Congress nevertheless did something in that direction, increasing some of the tariff duties, imposing a direct tax of twenty millions on the States and territories and an income tax of three per cent subject to an exemption of eight hundred dollars.

1 For the Confiscation act and the Confederate Sequestration act, see III, 464; Schwab, 111-120.

48

CONSTITUTION VIOLATED

[1861

Congress showed great confidence in the President and went far toward meeting his wishes. As one of its members afterwards wrote, it was during this session only “a giant committee of ways and means." But it hesitated in regard to two of his dictatorial acts: the call for three years' volunteers and the increase of the regular army and navy by proclamation; and his order to Scott, the Commanding General of the Army, authorizing him personally or by deputy, to suspend, if necessary for the public safety, the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus at any point on any military line between Philadelphia and Washington.1 A rider to the bill, raising the pay of private soldiers passed on the last day of the session [August 6], legalized the proclamation increasing the army and navy; but senators differed so widely as to suspension of the writ of habeas corpus that they were unable to agree upon any action. Some senators thought that an act of Congress was necessary to suspend the writ and in this belief were sustained by a decision of Chief Justice Marshall, the opinions of Story and Taney and English precedents for two centuries. Others agreeing that the Constitution vested this power in Congress alone were nevertheless willing to make legal and valid the President's orders for the suspension of the writ. Still other senators did not care to take any action whatever; believing that the President, as commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy, had complete power to suspend the habeas corpus, they did not wish to bring this power in question by an act of confirmation.

Encouraged by the attitude of the President and Congress, the country soon recovered from the dismay caused by the defeat at Bull Run. A second uprising took place. Men

1 There was also another order authorizing the suspension of the writ in Florida. Lincoln, C. W., II, 39, 45; Globe, 393.

CH. II]

SLAVERY THE CAUSE OF THE WAR

49

came forward in great numbers, enlisting for three years. On account of some successes in Western Virginia McClellan was placed in command of the troops at Washington [July 27], which he soon named the Army of the Potomac.1

Lincoln and Davis were both willing to obscure the true reason of the conflict: Lincoln, because he did not wish the border slave States, the Northern Democrats and conservative Republicans to get the idea that the war was waged for the destruction of slavery; Davis, because he knew that the Southerner's devotion to slavery, if allowed to appear in too strong a light, would stand in the way of the recognition of the Confederate States by European powers which he so ardently desired. But as the Union armies advanced southward, they came into contact with the negro who had to be dealt with. On the day after Virginia had ratified by popular vote her ordinance of secession, three negroes, who had come to Fort Monroe, were claimed by an agent of their owner. General Butler, who was in command, refused to deliver them up on the ground that, as they belonged to a citizen of a State offering resistance to the federal government and had been employed in the construction of a battery, they were "contraband of war." application of this phrase, as Butler himself admitted, had no high legal sanction; nevertheless, "technical inaccuracy," as Morse wrote, "does not hurt the force of an epigram which expresses a sound principle"; 2 this one was promptly seized upon by the popular mind as indicating a proper attitude toward the negro. The difficulty, however, could not be solved by an epigram. "Contrabands" or fugitive slaves came continually within the lines of the Union armies, and the question how to dispose of them became a grave one for

1 III; IV, 229; N. & H.; Globe; Taney; Grimes; Dewey.

2 Morse, II, 5.

E

The

50

FREMONT

[1861

the President. Having carefully thought out a policy, he sent the following instructions to Butler to serve as a guide for his and other commands: the general should not interfere with the reclamation of fugitive slaves who had escaped from masters in the Union slave States but, in accordance with the Confiscation act,1 he should respect no claim for negroes who had been employed in the military service of the Confederacy. In spite of the murmurs of the abolitionists and some radical Republicans, a large majority of the Northern people had already acquiesced in this policy as a wise temporary expedient, when General Frémont opened the question afresh by his proclamation in Missouri.2

Frémont, the pet and protégé of the Blairs, as Lincoln afterwards called him, had upon the earnest solicitation of his patrons been made a major-general and been placed in command of the Western department, which included Missouri. A kind of romantic hero was he "the brave pathfinder," who had planted the American flag on presumably the highest peak of the Rocky mountains. Winning the first nomination of the Republican party for president, he had polled a large electoral and popular vote; and Lincoln, undoubtedly impressed by the remembrance of this first campaign, so brilliant in many ways, thought well of him and had entertained the idea of nominating him for minister to France. He was supposed to have military talent, and his appointment to a command was very popular with earnest Republicans who had looked upon him five years earlier as the champion of a sacred cause. Lincoln and the Blairs were to suffer a grievous disappointment. The first month in his headquarters at St. Louis showed Frémont to be utterly unfit for a responsible command. 2 III, 466-468.

1 Approved Aug. 6.

3 Montgomery Blair, Postmaster-General, and F. P. Blair, Jr.