CHAPTER IV.

THE SECESSION MOVEMENT.

Its Growth Traced from the Nullification Days-Breaking Up of Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet-His Own Partial Change of OpinionHow and Why South Carolina Forced Secession-Most of the Slave States Averse to It.

Secession began thirty years before the outbreak of the war, when South Carolina undertook to nullify the revenue laws under the old tariff, and would have resorted to violence had it not have been for Mr. Webster in the Senate, and General Jackson in the presidency. The one carried the nation with him in his argument to prove the unconstitutionality of such a measure, or the safety of any such mode of redressing wrongs, and the other on some great occasion swore his solemn oath that "the Union must and shall be preserved."

now.

But no such man was at the head of the government Mr. Buchanan, after the election of Mr. Lincoln, and of the new members to Congress, had shown that the people had repudiated his pro-slavery schemes, still insisted upon their adoption. When Congress came together in December, 1860, he sent in that "mischievous and deplorable message," as it has been justly termed, which encouraged the South to push on their secession and war measures, until they were compelled to fight the government. Most likely they would have done it in any case, but it is to be regretted that they had such encouragement to think they could do it with impunity. In this message he attributed the threatened dissolution of the Union to the "violent and incessant agitation of the slavery questions throughout the

North for the last quarter of a century," apparently unconscious of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the Fugitive Slave Law, and the attempt to force slavery upon Kansas, or that these measures were a sufficient cause for such agitation and discussion. He held that while the election of a President by one class of citizens, who is objectionable to another class, "does not afford just cause for dissolving the Union," there may be such a cause, and refers as such a cause to "the palpable violations of constitutional duty by different State legislatures to defeat the execution of the Fugitive Slave Law." He denies the right of secession, and makes a good argument against it, but neutralizes it all, and worse than neutralizes it, by telling the South that if they do secede the government has no right to use force to prevent it. "Congress possesses many means for preserving the Union by conciliation, but the sword was not placed in its hands to preserve it by force." He justifies revolution, though not secession, saying: "The right of resistance on the part of the governed against the oppression of their governments cannot be denied." So that the South had only to call their secession, revolution, as they virtually did, to justify it, and feel safe from any serious interference from an administration that conceived it had no right to use force to prevent it. The remedy proposed by the President was an explanatory amendment of the Constitution, which there was no prospect of ever securing, so that this message brought no relief to the North, and only left the South to call their proposed secession a revolution, and prosecute it with vigor as long as this administration should last, knowing that they were to expect no serious hindrance from this quarter, whatever might be feared from the incoming administration.

This position, however, could not long be maintained. Indeed, Mr. Buchanan's message indicated the division in his own cabinet, where the Secessionists had carried their

point, but where the Union sentiment of the country was beginning to be felt and was bound to express itself. General Cass, Mr. Buchanan's Secretary of State, had become satisfied that such a position was abetting treason, and would only end in breaking up the government. He was a life-long Democrat, an able and honored leader of his party, deserving of an honorable place in the history of the government, and now in his old age to be mixed up with treason, and implicated in what threatened to be the dissolution of the Union, was more than he could bear. When he found that the President would not insist upon the collection of the national revenue in South Carolina, or upon strengthening the forts in Charleston harbor, he resigned. Judge Black, a younger and more brilliant man, in the prime of his political manhood and ambition, who was Mr. Buchanan's Attorney-General, and had been in a large degree responsible for the President's pro-slavery positions, succeeded General Cass at the head of the State department. Startled by the retreat of his predecessor, and by the gulf that yawned before him, and satisfied that his position was a wrong one and that he had been misleading the President, he nobly resolved to retrace his steps and save the administration if possible, but at any rate to save the Union and the government. The cabinet was a nest of conspiracy, where such men as Cobb, Floyd, and Thompson were disarming the North and robbing the treasury, and where Davis, Toombs, Benjamin, and Slidell of the Senate, had a controlling influence. But the President, who always had great respect for Judge Black, and had been guided by his counsels, became convinced that he was ruining his administration, if not breaking up the government. So his secretary, together with Mr. Holt, a Southern man, but a loyal one, and Edwin M. Stanton who soon became such a pillar of strength to the government, and who had just become Attorney-General, were allowed to frame an answer

to the mischievous message already sent in to Congress. In this new message of January 8, 1861, the President qualifies the former one as well as he is able, though without much success, but here takes one advanced and just position, where, without any reference to his fatal admission that the government could use no force to prevent secession, he now claims that "as the chief executive under the Constitution of the United States," he has no alternative but "to collect the public revenues, and to protect the public property, so far as this might be practicable under existing laws." And he declares it as his own conviction that "the right and duty to use military force defensively against those who resist the Federal officers in the execution of their legal functions, and against those who assail the property of the Federal government, are clear and undeniable." Even this admission gave hope to the North, and roused the South to deeper indignation than ever. But what did most to inspire such sentiments was the indication it gave that the conspirators had been driven out of the cabinet, and that the chief movers in secession had lost control of the President. It was well received at the North, and in the spirit of conciliation the people were disposed to abstain from all that was needlessly irritating, and to make any reasonable adjustments for the sake of peace. Some of the Legislatures were repealing their personal liberty laws, the most objectionable and perhaps the most illegal of any.

But secession was making rapid progress, and the leaders in the movement, particularly in South Carolina, without waiting to see what would be the disposition of the new administration, and what position Mr. Lincoln would take in regard to the questions at issue, were bent on precipitating a conflict of force between that State and the general government. The governor of the State, in his message to the State Legislature, dated the day before the presidential election took place, says:

In view of the threatened aspect of affairs, and the strong probability of the election to the presidency of a sectional candidate, by a party committed to the support of measures which, if carried out, will inevitably destroy our equality in the Union, and ultimately reduce the Southern States to mere provinces of a consolidated despotism, to be governed by a fixed majority in Congress hostile to our institutions and fatally bent upon our ruin, I would respectfully suggest that the Legislature remain in session, and take such action as will prepare the State for any emergency that may arise. I would earnestly recommend that in the event of Abraham Lincoln's election to the presidency, a convention of the people be immediately called, to consider and determine for themselves the mode and measure of redress. I am constrained to say that the only alternative left, in my judgment, is the secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union. The State has with great unanimity declared that she has the right peaceably to secede, and no power on earth can rightfully prevent it. If in the exercise of arbitrary power and forgetfulness of the lessons of history, the government of the United States should attempt coercion, it will become our solemn duty to meet force by force.-[Governor Gist's Message, November 5, 1860.

So he recommends that "the services of ten thousand volunteers be immediately accepted, that they be organized and drilled by officers chosen by themselves, and hold themselves in readiness to be called on upon the shortest notice." Hon. James Chestnut, Jr., one of their senators in Congress, at the same time gave such counsel as this to the people: "The question was, Should the South submit to a black Republican President and a black Republican Congress? For myself, I would unfurl the palmetto flag, fling it to the breeze, and, with the spirit of a brave man, determine to live and die as became our glorious ancestors." Hon. William W. Boyce, then a leading representative of that State in Congress, thus counsels them: "I think the only policy for us is to arm as soon as we receive authentic intelligence of the election of Lincoln." Such counsel and such measures were proposed, it should be observed, before Mr. Lincoln had been elected, or before the news of it had been received at Charleston. And when the news came, it seems to have been a source of general satisfaction, instead