Chapter VII (1)

ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN--HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE OF THE EVENT--THE
OBJECTS AIMED AT BY HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY IDENTICAL IN THE DISCUSSION
OF EVENTS OF THE LATE WAR--NORTHERN EVASION OF THE REAL QUESTION--THE
SOUTH DID NOT ATTEMPT REVOLUTION--SECESSION A JUSTIFIABLE RIGHT
EXERCISED BY SOVEREIGN STATES--BRIEF REVIEW OF THE QUESTION--WHAT THE
FEDERALIST SAYS--CHIEF-JUSTICE MARSHALL--MR. MADISON--COERCION NOT
JUSTIFIED AT THE NORTH PREVIOUS TO THE LATE WAR--REMARKS OF JOHN
QUINCY ADAMS--OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN--OF HORACE GREELEY--SUCCESSFUL
PERVERSION OF TRUTH BY THE NORTH--PROVOCATIONS TO SECESSION BY THE
SOUTH--AGGRESSIONS BY THE NORTH--ITS PUNIC FAITH--LOSS OF THE BALANCE
OF POWER--PATIENCE OF THE SOUTH--REMARKS OF HON. C. C. CLAY--WHAT THE
ELECTION OF MR. LINCOLN MEANT--HIS ADMINISTRATIVE POLICY--REVELATIONS
OF THE OBJECTS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY--WENDELL PHILLIPS--NO SECURITY
FOR THE SOUTH IN THE UNION--MEETING OF CONGRESS--MR. DAVIS' ASSURANCE
TO PRESIDENT BUCHANAN--CONCILIATORY COURSE OF MR. DAVIS--HIS
CONSISTENT DEVOTION TO THE UNION, AND EFFORTS TO SAVE IT--FORESEES WAR
AS THE RESULT OF SECESSION, AND URGES THE EXHAUSTION OF EVERY
EXPEDIENT TO AVERT IT--THE CRITTENDEN AMENDMENT--HOPES OF ITS
ADOPTION--DAVIS WILLING TO ACCEPT IT IN SPITE OF ITS INJUSTICE TO THE
SOUTH--REPUBLICAN SENATORS DECLINE ALL CONCILIATORY MEASURES--THE
CLARKE AMENDMENT--WHERE RESTS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF DISUNION?--
STATEMENTS OF MESSRS. DOUGLAS AND COX--SECESSION OF THE COTTON
STATES--A LETTER FROM JEFFERSON DAVIS TO R. B. RHETT, JR.--MR. DAVIS'
FAREWELL TO THE SENATE--HIS REASONS FOR WITHDRAWING--RETURNS TO
MISSISSIPPI--MAJOR-GENERAL OF STATE FORCES--ORGANIZATION OF THE
CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT--MR. DAVIS PRESIDENT OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES.

As had been foreseen, and, indeed, as was the inevitable sequence of the disruption of the Democratic party, Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of the Republican party, was, in November, 1860, elected President of the United States. This was the supreme and sufficient incitement to the adoption of the dreaded resort of disunion. As the _occasion_ which finally brought the South to the attitude of resistance, the event acquires vast historical importance.

When it is conceded that Mr. Lincoln was elected in accordance with the _forms_ of the Constitution, having received a majority of electoral votes; that the mere ceremony of election was attended by no unusual circumstances, we concede every possible ground upon which can be based an argument denying its ample justification of the course pursued by the South. Such an argument, however, leads to a wholly untenable conclusion, and may be easily exposed in its hypocritical evasion of the real question. We are here required to note the distinction between _cause_ and _occasion_. As the final consummation of tendencies, long indicating the result of disunion, this event has an appropriate place in the recapitulation of those influences, and can be rightly estimated only in connection with their operation.

Trite observations upon the influence of passion and prejudice, over contemporary judgment, are not necessary to a due conception of the obstacles which, for the present, exclude candor from the discussion of the late movement for Southern independence. In the face of the disastrous overthrow of that movement, the wrecked hopes and fortunes of those who participated in it, discussion is chiefly serviceable, as it throws additional light upon the development of those eternal principles in whose ceaseless struggles men are only temporary agents.

History and biography are here most intimately blended; beginning from the same stand-point, they encounter common difficulties, and aim to explore the same general grounds of observation. So far as a verdict--from whatever tribunal, whether rendered at the bar of justice or in the award of popular opinion, when the embers of recent strife are still fiercely glowing--can affect the dispassionate judgment of History, the Southern people can not be separated, either in fact or in sentiment, from Jefferson Davis. He was the illustrious compatriot of six millions of freemen, who struck for nationality and independence, and lost--as did Greece and Poland before them; or he and they were alike insurgents, equally guilty of the crime of treason.

With an adroitness which does credit to the characteristic charlatanism of the North, an infinite variety of special questions and side issues have been interwoven with the narrative of the late war, for the obvious purpose of confounding the judgment of mankind regarding the great question which really constitutes the gravamen of the controversy. Conspicuous among these efforts, from both audacity and plausibility, are appeals to the sympathies of the world, in consideration of the abolition of slavery, which it is well known was merely an incident, and not the avowed design of the war.

Persistent in its introduction of the _moral_ question of slavery, the North seeks to shield itself from the reproach justly visited upon its perpetration of an atrocious political crime, by an insolent intrusion of a false claim to the championship of humanity. Whatever may be the decision of Time upon the merits of slavery, it is in vain for the North to seek escape from its responsibility for an institution, protected and sustained by a government which was the joint creation of Southern and Northern hands.

The attempted dissolution of the Union by the South was a movement involving moral and political considerations, not unlike those incidental to revolutions in general, yet presenting certain peculiar characteristics, traceable to the inherent and distinctive features of the American political system. These latter considerations constitute a vital part of its justification. The South did not appeal only to the inalienable right of revolution, which is the natural guarantee of resistance to wrong and oppression. Nor did the States, severally, as they assumed to sever their connection with the Union, announce a purpose of constitutional revolution, or adopt a course inviting or justifying violence. Mr. Davis and those who coöperated with him, neither by the acts of secession, nor the subsequent confederation of the States under a new government, could have committed _treason_ against Mr. Lincoln, since they were not his subjects. Nor yet were they traitors to the Government of the United States, since the States of which they were citizens had rescinded the grant of powers voluntarily made by them to that Government, and begun to exercise them in conjunction with other powers which they had withheld by express reservation.

It is impossible to conceive a movement, contemplating such important political changes, more entirely unattended by displays of violence, passion, and disorder. A simple assertion, with due solemnity, by each State, of its sovereignty--a heritage which it had never surrendered, but which had been respected by innumerable forms of recognition in the history of the Union--and the exercise of those attributes of sovereignty, which are too palpable to require that they shall be indicated, was the peaceable method resorted to of terminating a political alliance which had become injurious to the highest interests of one of the parties. Could there have been a more becoming and dignified exercise of the vaunted right of self-government? It is that right to which America is so conspicuously committed, and which has been such an inexhaustible theme for the tawdry rhetoric of Northern eloquence.

Even in the insolence of its triumph, the North feels the necessity of at least a decent pretext for its destruction of the cardinal feature in the American system of government--the sovereignty of the States. With habitual want of candor, Northern writers pretend that the Constitution of the United States does not affirm the sovereignty of the States, and that, therefore, secession was treason against that Constitution to which they had subscribed; in other words, the created does not give authority to the creator--_i. e._, the Constitution, which the States created, does not accredit sovereignty to the States, and, therefore, the States are not sovereign. It is not pretended that the States were not, each of them, originally independent powers, since they were so recognized by Great Britain, in the plainest terms, at the termination of the first revolution. Nor is it asserted that the union of the States, under the title of United States, was the occasion of any surrender of their individual sovereignty, as it was then declared that "each State retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence." A conclusive demonstration of the retention of sovereignty by the States is seen in the entire failure of the Constitution, either by direct assertion or by implication, to claim its surrender to the Union.

If the sovereignty of the States be conceded, the South stands justified as having exercised an unquestionable right. It was never formally denied, even at the North, until Mr. Webster, in his debate with Mr. Calhoun, affirmed the doctrine of the supremacy of the Union, to which conclusion the Northern masses sprung with alacrity, as an available justification for compelling the submission of the South to the outrages which they had already commenced.

Volumes of testimony have been adduced, proving the theory of State sovereignty to have been the overwhelmingly predominant belief among the statesmen most prominent in the establishment of the Union, and in shaping the policy of the Government in its earlier history. Argument proved an unavailing offset to the stern decrees of the sword, and is quite unnecessary so long as the unanswerable logic of Calhoun, Davis, and a score of Southern statesmen remains upon the national records--a perpetual challenge, as yet unaccepted, to the boasted intellect of the North, and a significant warning of the final adjudication of the centuries. We shall intrude no argument of our own in support of State sovereignty, upon which rests the vindication of the South and her leaders. Before us are the apposite and conclusive assumptions of men who have been the revered sources of political inspiration among Americans.

The _Federalist_, that most powerful vindication of the Constitution, and earnest plea for its adoption by the States, assumes that it was a "compact," to which "the States, as distinct and independent sovereigns," were the parties. Yet this doctrine, the basis upon which rests the august handiwork of Madison and Hamilton, the "architects of the Constitution," when applied by Davis and his compatriots, becomes treason! Such is the extremity to which despotism, in its wretched plea of expediency, is driven; and the candid, enlightened American of to-day realizes, in his country, a land in which "truth is treason, and history is rebellion."

Chief-Justice Marshall, the great judicial luminary of America, and an authority not usually summoned to the support of doctrines hostile to the assumptions of Federal power, gave most emphatic testimony to the propriety of the States' Rights view of the relations of State and Federal authority. In the Virginia Convention which ratified the Constitution, he said: "The State governments did not derive their powers from the General Government. But each government derived its powers from the people, and each was to act according to the powers given it. Would any gentleman deny this? He demanded, if powers not given were retained by implication? Could any man say, no? Could any man say that this power was not retained by the States, since it was not given away?" The view so earnestly urged by Marshall, was not only avowed generally, but Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania insisted upon a written declaration, in the Constitution, of the principle that certain attributes of sovereignty, which they did not delegate to the Union, were retained by the States.

Mr. Madison, whose great abilities were taxed to the utmost to secure the ratification of the Constitution by Virginia, vigorously and earnestly defended it against the allegation that it created a consolidated government. With the utmost difficulty, he secured a majority of ten votes, in the Virginia Convention, in favor of the Constitution, which his rival, Patrick Henry, denounced as destructive of State sovereignty.

Defining the expression, "We, the people," Mr. Madison said: "The parties to it were the people, but not the people as composing one great society, but the people as composing '_thirteen sovereignties_.'" To quote Mr. Madison again: "If it were a consolidated government, the assent of a majority of the people would be sufficient to establish it. But it was to be binding on the people of a State only by their own separate consent." Under the influence of these arguments, and others of the same import from Mr. Madison, whom she thought, from his close relations to the Constitution, high authority upon all questions pertaining to its character, Virginia finally acceded to the Union. It is especially noteworthy, however, that Virginia, when becoming a party to the Constitution, expressly affirmed, in the most solemn manner, the right to "resume" her grants of power to the Federal Government.

In deference to the accumulated evidence upon this subject, came the unqualified statement, from eminent Northern authority,[14] that, "This right [of secession] must be considered an ingredient in the original composition of the General Government, which, though not expressed, was mutually understood."

But whatever may be thought of the prescriptive and inherent right of sovereignty, exercised by the South in withdrawing from the Union, as deducible from the peculiar nature of the American system, and as expounded by the founders of that system, there can be no question as to its entire accordance with the _spirit_ of American polity. Authority is abundant in support of the assertion that, not even in the North, previous to the inception of the present revolution, was the idea of a constrained connection with the Union entertained. From every source of Northern opinion has come indignant repudiation of a coerced association of communities, originally united by a common pledge of fealty to the right of self-government.

Upon this subject Mr. John Quincy Adams spoke in language of characteristic fervor: "The indissoluble link of union between the people of the several States of this confederated nation is, after all, not in the _right_, but in the _heart_. If the day should ever come (may heaven avert it!) when the affections of the people of these States shall be alienated from each other--when the fraternal spirit shall give way to cold indifference, or collision of interest shall fester into hatred, the bands of political association will not long hold together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies; and far better will it be for the people of the disunited States to part in friendship from each other than to be held together by constraint."

Even Mr. Lincoln, whose statesmanship is not likely to be commemorated for its profundity or scholarship, fully comprehended the exaggerated reverence of the American mind for the "sacred right of self-government." Now that his homely phrases are dignified by the Northern masses with the sanctity of the utterances of Deity, assuredly there should be no apprehension that his opinions may not be deemed conclusive. In 1848, Mr. Lincoln said: "Any people whatever have the right to abolish the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right."

A brave affirmation was this of the doctrine of the Declaration of Independence, that "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed;" and one which would have commanded the united applause of the North, then and now, had the application concerned Hungary, Poland, Greece, or Mexico. But, with reference to the South, there was a most important modification of this admirable principle of equity and humanity. When asked, "Why not let the South go?" Abraham Lincoln, _the President_, in 1861, said: "_Let the South go! Where, then, shall we get our revenue?_" And the united North reëchoed: "_Let the South go! Where, then, shall we look for the bounties and monopolies which have so enriched us at the expense of those improvident, unsuspecting Southerners? Where shall we find again such patient victims of spoliation?_"

Mr. Horace Greeley frequently and emphatically, previous to the war, affirmed the right of changing its political association asserted by the South. Three days after the election of Mr. Lincoln, in November, 1860, his paper, the New York _Tribune_, said: "If the Cotton States shall become satisfied that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace.... We must ever resist the right of any State to remain in the Union, and nullify or defy the laws thereof. _To withdraw from the Union is quite another matter; and whenever any considerable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep it in._ We hope never to live in a Republic whereof one section is pinned to another by bayonets." On the 17th of December, 1860, the _Tribune_ said: "If it [the Declaration of Independence] justifies the secession of three millions of colonists in 1776, _we do not see why it would not justify the secession of five millions of Southerners from the Federal Union in 1861_."

Such are a few illustrations, to which might be added innumerable quotations, of the same import, from the most prominent sources of Northern opinion. Never has there been a question so capable of positive solution and easy comprehension, when subjected to the test of candid investigation, and never so successful a purpose to exclude the illumination of facts by persistent and ingenious misrepresentation. The North has reason for its extravagant exultation at the skill and audacity with which the brazen front of hypocrisy, for a time, at least, has successfully sustained, in the name of humanity and liberty, the most monstrous imposition and transparent counterfeit of virtue ever designed upon an intelligent age.

To the triumphant historical vindication of the South, there remains only the essential condition of a clear and truthful statement of the provocations which impelled her to adopt that long-deferred remedy, which is the last refuge of a people whose liberties are imperiled. Secession, however strong in its prescriptive or implied justification as a principle, was not to be undertaken from caprice, or trivial causes of dissatisfaction.

Abuses, numerous, serious, and consecutive, were required before disunion became either desirable or acceptable to the South. The native conservatism of the Southern character renders it peculiarly averse to agitation; to this were added social features, the safety of which would be greatly imperiled by civil war, and thus a train of influences tended to make Southern soil, of all others, the least favorable to the growth of revolutionary principles.

In the development of this volume, we have glanced at the progress of those sectional differences, at various periods precipitated by the insolent aggressions of Abolitionism, which steadily depreciated the value of the Union in Southern estimation. Continued aggressions by her enemies; their Punic faith, illustrated in a series of violated pledges, and habitual disregard of the conditions of the covenant which bound South and North together; petty outrages, taunts and insults, emanating from every possible source of public expression at the North, for many years had banished fraternal feeling and precluded those interchanges of comity between the sections which were the indispensable requisites to national harmony. It is undeniable, that for years previous to secession, the sentimental attachment to the Union, which was the distinctive characteristic of Southern patriotism--unlike the coarse, utilitarian estimate of the Union as a source of pecuniary profit, which constituted its value to the North--had been greatly impaired. Since 1850, and to a considerable extent during the preceding decade, the most sagacious statesmen of the South contemplated disunion as an event almost inevitable, unless averted by a contingency of very improbable occurrence. There must be an awakening by the North to a more just appreciation of its constitutional and patriotic obligations, or an unmanly submission by the South, to a condition of degrading inferiority, in a government to whose construction, prosperity, and distinction, she had contributed more than a proportionate share of influence.

Chief among the considerations which admonished the South of the perils which environed her situation in the Union, was the total destruction of that sectional balance, which had been wisely adjusted by its founders, as the safeguard of the weaker against the stronger influence. Having in mind the wise saying of Aristotle, that "the weak always desire what is equal and just, but the powerful pay no regard to it," the statesmen of 1787 designedly shaped the chart of government with a view to the preservation of equality. The struggle between the weaker element, naturally contending in behalf of the equilibrium, and the stronger striving for its overthrow, was, at an early period, distinctly foreshadowed. With characteristic prevision, Alexander Hamilton, probably the foremost statesman of his day, foretold the nature of this contest over the principle of equality. Said that sagacious publicist: "The truth is, it is a contest for power, not for liberty."

This contest, indeed, so long waged, was, many years since, decided overwhelmingly against the South. In 1850, the Northern majority in the House of Representatives, the popular branch of the government, had increased from a majority, in 1790, of five votes, to fifty-four. Years before, the legislation of Congress assumed that sectional bias, which was undeviatingly adhered to for the purpose, and with ample success, of the material depression of the South. Under the baleful influences of hostile legislation, of tariffs aimed directly at her commercial prosperity, of bounties for fostering multifarious Northern interests, her position in the Union was helpless and deplorable in the extreme. Yet, like a rock-bound Prometheus, with the insidious elements of destruction gnawing at her vitals, the South suffered herself to be chained by an influence of sentiment, of association, and reminiscence to the Union, fully conscious of the growing rapacity of her despoiler and of her own hopeless decline. Her infatuation was indeed marvelous, in trusting to the dawning of justice and generosity in a fierce, vindictive, and remorseless sectional majority.

The alarming portents of ultimately complete material prostration, to be consummated by these perversions of the purposes of the Union, were terribly significant, in view of the venom which actuated the enemies of the South. The sectional balance was hopelessly gone; Southern material prosperity destroyed by sectional legislation; not a check, originally provided by the Constitution for the protection of the weaker section, but had been virtually obliterated; Northern perfidy illustrated in the violation of every compact which, in operation, proved favorable to the South, while the latter was held to a rigid fidelity in all agreements favorable to her enemies; the nullification, by the legislatures of half the Northern States, of Federal laws for the protection of Southern property, are a few of those grievances which presented to the South the hard and inexorable alternative of resistance, or abject submission to endless insult and outrage.

A Southern Senator,[15] announcing the secession of his State, and his own consequent withdrawal from the Senate, stated the question in a form, which even then had the authority of history.

"Not a decade, nor scarce a lustrum, has elapsed (since Alabama became
a State) that has not been strongly marked by proofs of the growth and
power of that antislavery spirit of the Northern people, which seeks
the overthrow of that domestic institution of the South, which is not
only the chief source of her prosperity, but the very basis of her
social order and State polity. It is to-day the master-spirit of the
Northern States, and had before the secession of Alabama, of
Mississippi, of Florida, or of South Carolina, severed most of the
bonds of the Union. It denied us Christian communion, because it could
not endure what it calls the moral leprosy of slave-holding; it
refused us permission to sojourn, or even to pass through the North
with our property; it claimed freedom for the slave, if brought by
his master into a Northern State; it violated the Constitution, and
treaties, and laws of Congress, because designed to protect that
property; it refused us any share of lands acquired mainly by our
diplomacy, and blood, and treasure; it refused our property any
shelter or security beneath the flag of a common government; it robbed
us of our property, and refused to restore it; it refused to deliver
criminals against our laws, who fled to the North with our property or
our blood upon their hands; it threatened us by solemn legislative
acts, with ignominious punishment, if we pursued our property into a
Northern State; it murdered Southern men when seeking the recovery of
their property on Northern soil; it invaded the borders of Southern
States, poisoned their wells, burnt their dwellings, and murdered
their people; it denounced us by deliberate resolves of popular
meetings, of party conventions, and of religious, and even legislative
assemblies, as habitual violators of the laws of God and the rights of
humanity; it exerted all the moral and physical agencies that human
ingenuity can devise, or diabolical malice can employ, to heap odium
and infamy upon us, and to make us a by-word of hissing and of scorn
throughout the civilized world."

There was no room for uncertainty as to the significance of the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency, in 1860, by a party exclusively sectional in organization, and upon a platform, which virtually declared the Union, as then constituted, in opposition to justice, humanity, and civilization.

The real danger to the South, involved in this election, was that it was a _sectional_ triumph--a victory of North over South, in a contest where the South risked every thing, the North nothing. From time immemorial sincere patriots of both sections had deprecated the formation of sectional parties, organized upon geographical interests, or upon ideas confined to limited portions of the Union. Washington, in his farewell injunction, admonished his countrymen of the deplorable results which must follow the presentation of such issues.

The Chicago platform was more than a menace to the South; it was a defiance of law, a declaration of war upon the Constitution. The election of Lincoln was both a legal and moral severance of the bonds of Union. While he received the united vote of the North, save New Jersey, he did not receive one electoral vote from the South. His shaping of his administration was consistent with the character of the party which elected him. All his constitutional advisers were Northern men or Southern Abolitionists; social outlaws in their own section, in consequence of their notorious personal depravity, and infidelity to their immediate fellow-citizens. Of like character were the subordinate appointments of the Federal Government in Southern communities.

Nor was there reason to doubt the policy of the Government under its new management. Mr. Lincoln had been sufficiently communicative of his own bitter hostility to Southern institutions. In fact, with much show of justice, his admirers claimed for him the original suggestion of the idea of an "irrepressible conflict," afterwards so elaborately pronounced by William H. Seward. Public announcements, from prominent speakers of the successful party, amply revealed the feast to which the South was invited. Wendell Phillips, the most able, eloquent, and sagacious of the original Abolitionists, thus pointedly defined the situation: "No man has a right to be surprised at this state of things. It is just what we have attempted to bring about. It is the first sectional party ever organized in this country. It does not know its own face, and calls itself national; but it is not national--it is sectional. The Republican party is a party of the North pledged against the South."

Such was the complexion to which political affairs were brought by the election of Abraham Lincoln. There remained hardly a hope, even for future security or domestic tranquillity to the South, except in withdrawal from an association, in which she had become an inferior and an outcast--an object of oppression, outrage, and contumely. From a relentless Abolition majority she could expect no favors; and the Northern Democracy, so long her ally, for common purposes of party, had cowered before the storm of fanaticism, and repudiated the first demand made upon its fidelity to principle.

Congress assembled on the first Monday of December, 1860, a few weeks subsequent to the Presidential election. Never had that body met under circumstances of such gravity. Universal foreboding of peril to the nation was mingled with hope of such action, as would avert the impending calamities of disunion and civil war. There were few indications, at the opening of the session, of conciliatory sentiments; from the representatives of both sections came open defiance, and Northern members of both houses were more than ever bold in the utterance of insult and menace. Before the opening of the session, President Buchanan received from Mr. Davis the most satisfactory assurances of his coöperation with the administration in a pacific policy, having for its object the settlement of the national difficulties upon terms promotive of the peace of the country, and assuring the security of the South.[16] To such a settlement the efforts of Mr. Davis were addressed so long as there was the slightest ground for the indulgence of hope.

This session of Congress, the last which was held previous to the commencement of civil war, is chiefly interesting as the historical record of those patriotic efforts which were made to save the Union, and as furnishing incontestible proof of the guilt of those who, by their persistent refusal of all conciliatory propositions, are justly responsible for the calamities which were to befall the country. Happily for the reputation of Mr. Davis, the proof is authentic and conclusive in his favor upon these important questions. There is no portion of his career in which statesmanship, patriotism, and a noble appreciation of the claims of humanity shine forth more conspicuously. So overwhelming is the evidence that, in these last days of the Union, he was false to none of these high considerations, that the most mendacious assailants of himself and the cause he lately represented have not yet ventured to call it in question.

A disposition is frequently evinced to plead for him immunity from the responsibility of his position, as the leader of the Confederate movement, upon the score of his consistent Unionism, manifested in the prevailing conservatism of his course as a politician. He needs no such palliation. His devotion to the Union of the American fathers was as unquestionable as was that of Washington. His patriotism was illustrated by every mode of exemplification in the service of country. To substantiate his attachment to that association of States, designed by the fathers, sublime in its objects of mutual fidelity, generous sympathies, justice, and equality, no elaborate statement is required, nor could formal vindication strengthen its defenses.[17] He never arrayed himself against such a Union, but, abhorring that perverted instrument of sectional aggression, which the Government had become, he did accompany and lead his fellow-citizens in their exercise of the highest privilege of freemen.

He was always prepared to follow the principles of States' Rights to their logical consequences, and was yet consistent in his attachment to the Union. Thus he was a firm believer in the absolute sovereignty of the States, and of the enjoyment, by the States, of all the attributes of sovereignty, including, necessarily, the right of secession. He had never urged the expediency of secession, though, upon repeated occasions, he had foreshadowed its probable necessity in the future, as the only remedy remaining to the South in certain contingencies. In the Senate, in 1850, he thus alluded to the possibility of a successful organization of a sectional party: "The danger is one of our own times, and it is that sectional division of the people which has created the necessity of looking to the question of the balance of power, and which carries with it, when disturbed, the danger of disunion."

In 1859, again, he proclaimed, in unequivocal terms, his course in the event of the success of a party indorsing the Rochester pronunciamento of Mr. Seward. Yet his course, subsequent to the election of Mr. Lincoln, was directed entirely in the interest of moderation. Having little hope of concession from the enemies of the South, in the moment of their overwhelming victory, he yet anxiously, earnestly entered that last struggle for the Constitution, before it passed into the keeping of iconoclasts, who were pledged to its destruction.

His zeal in behalf of pacification was actuated by considerations of humanity, no less ennobling than his impulse of disinterested patriotism. Regarding a long and bloody war as the certain result of dissolution, he anxiously sought to avert that calamitous result, and stood pledged to the acceptance of any basis of settlement which should guarantee the safety and honor of the South. At no time, however, did he advocate submission. His language in the Senate is explicit. Speaking of the secession of Mississippi, he said: "I, however, may be permitted to say, that I do think she has justifiable cause, and I approve of her act. I conferred with her people before that act was taken, counseled them then that, if the state of things which they apprehended should exist when the convention met, they should take the action which they have now adopted."

During the session, numerous efforts at compromise were made, in every instance emanating from Southern Representatives or Northern Democrats, the dominant party of the North declining all tenders of pacification, and offering no terms of conciliation in return. It is unnecessary to trace the progress of these abortive efforts, which, in the main, received the support of feeble minorities, and had, from their inception, no prospect of adoption.

There was one proposition, and probably only one, which embodied a competent basis of settlement, and was entitled to favor. This was called the "Crittenden Compromise," and originated with the venerable Kentucky Senator, by whose name it is designated. For a time it seemed that the demonstrations of popular sentiment in its favor, especially the well-ascertained readiness of a large majority of the Southern people to accept it, and its exceedingly practical nature, as a _final_ settlement of the slavery question, would eventually secure its adoption by Congress. The result was a disappointment of this patriotic expectation, and a conclusive demonstration of the purpose of the Republican party to consent to no settlement which the South could accept.

An examination of the Crittenden proposition will reveal a most striking illustration of the ever-present spirit of accommodation, in matters affecting the safety of the Union, which, even in its last hours, was characteristic of the leaders and people of the South, and of the narrow, selfish, and exacting sectionalism of the North. In reality, it was little short of a surrender, in its ample concessions, to the encroachments of Abolitionism.

The resolutions introduced by Mr. Crittenden, in the Senate, on the 18th of December, 1860, contemplated amendments to the Constitution having the following objects: The prohibition of slavery in all Territories north of the old Missouri Compromise line, and providing protection for it south of that line; a denial of the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, or in ports, arsenels, dock-yards, or wherever else the Federal Government exercised jurisdiction; remuneration to owners of escaped slaves by communities in which the Federal laws, providing rendition of slaves, might be violently obstructed. Such were the material features of the "Crittenden Compromise."

It will be seen at a glance how absurd was the misnomer of "compromise" applied to so one-sided a settlement. The South was required, by its provisions, to abandon the sacred right of protection to her property, guaranteed by the Constitution and unequivocally re-affirmed by the highest judicial tribunal in the land. The Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott case, had already decided the right to take slaves into all the Territories, while the Crittenden proposition prohibited it entirely in the major portion of the common Territory, and merely tolerated it in the residue. The Constitution, as expounded by the Supreme Court, guaranteed the right of introduction and protection of slavery in all the Territories, in whatever latitude, as the common property of the States. The Crittenden amendment proposed to confine this right to Territory south of 36° 30', prohibiting, in the meanwhile, slavery _forever_ north of that line, and in regions where its legal existence had been emphatically affirmed by that august tribunal, the Supreme Court. If adopted, it would have yielded every thing to Abolition rapacity, save a mere abstraction. Of all the vast territory yet remaining to be hereafter divided into States, only in New Mexico did it propose even to tolerate slavery, and in that locality the laws of nature precluded its permanent establishment.

A few days after its introduction in the Senate, the Crittenden amendment was proposed by its author to a special committee of thirteen, created on motion of Senator Powell, of Kentucky, for the consideration of all questions pertaining to the pending national difficulties. This committee was composed of the most eminent and influential Senators, embracing five leading Republicans, five Southern Senators, and Messrs. Bright, Bigler, and Douglas, on behalf of the Northern Democracy. Mr. Davis, originally appointed, at first declined to serve, but finally consented, in compliance with the urgent requests of other Senators. At the first meeting of the committee, 21st December, it was "resolved that no proposition shall be reported as adopted, unless sustained by a majority of each of the classes of the committee; Senators of the Republican party to constitute one class, and Senators of the other parties to constitute the other class."

This resolution was necessary, in consequence of the obvious futility of any settlement which did not meet the approval of a majority of the Republican Senators. In this Committee the Crittenden proposition was defeated. Not one of the Republican Senators voted for it, and Messrs. Davis and Toombs likewise voted against it when it was ascertained that it would not receive the sanction of a majority of the Republican Senators.

Despite its unfairness as a measure of settlement, and its great injustice to the South, Mr. Davis would have accepted it, as would a large majority of Southern Senators, as a _finality_, if the Republican Senators had tendered it. This, however, the latter were determined not to do, nor did a single Republican Senator, at any time during the session, express even a desire that any action, conciliatory to the South, should be adopted.[18] Insolent, dictatorial, and defiant, they proclaimed their purpose, at all hazards, to assert the authority of the Government, and their acts clearly indicated their stern purpose to refuse every proposition contemplating concession or compromise. In substitution of the Crittenden adjustment, they voted solidly for the amendment of Senator Clarke, of New Hampshire, which denied the necessity of amendments to the Constitution, which ought to be obeyed rather than amended, and declared that the remedy for present difficulties was to be sought in a stern enforcement of the laws, rather than in assurances to peculiar ideas and guarantees to peculiar interests. This palpable defiance, and emphatic avowal of a purpose to concede nothing to Southern demands, was indorsed by the action of Republican caucusses of both houses of Congress, by resolutions of State Legislatures, and by tenders of men and means to compel the submission of the South. The entire Republican party were clearly committed to the purpose, avowed by Mr. Salmon P. Chase, in a letter from the Peace Congress, to Portsmouth, Ohio, to "use the power while they had it, and prevent a settlement."[19]

On the 31st December, 1860, the Committee of Thirteen reported to the Senate their inability to "agree upon any general plan of adjustment," and thus, with the arrival of the new year, had vanished the last hope of preserving the peace of the country. The failure of the Crittenden proposition was decisive of the question of pacification; no other plan of adjustment, that was presented, having either its merits or its practical features.

Southern resistance came none too soon for Northern power, hate, and lust, but far too late for the precious goal of independence. Delay had been fatal, and the golden opportunity long since lost. But there was still time to emulate the glorious examples of the past. With marvelous calmness and dauntless intrepidity, a heroic race prepared an exhibition of noble devotion and willing sacrifice, the contemplation of which revives the memories of Thermopylæ.

Comparatively of little moment, now, is the question, whether the acceptance of this basis of adjustment by the South would have been consistent with discretion. In the end the result, in all likelihood, would have been the same. Had a settlement been reached in 1861, Southern liberties must eventually have perished, through the influences of corruption and the demoralization engendered by continued submission to wrong, no less effectually than by their overthrow in that gallant struggle of arms, which terminated with such fatal results. But there still remains the question of responsibility for those horrors of civil strife, which the failure of the Crittenden amendment soon precipitated upon the country. Those crimson spots which stain the subsequent history of the Republic, are traceable to no parricidal hand raised by the South. No historical question has received more satisfactory decision than this; and the South is acquitted even by the testimony of her enemies. It is unnecessary to give the evidence of Southern men, when there is such ample testimony from those who deprecated and condemned the subsequent course of the South.

Senator Douglas, on the 3d January, 1861, only three days after the report of the Committee of Thirteen had been submitted, and within hearing of its members, thus expressed himself in the course of an address to the Senate:

"If you of the Republican side are not willing to accept this [a
proposition of his own] nor the proposition of the Senator from
Kentucky [Mr. Crittenden,] pray tell us what are you willing to do? I
address the inquiry to the Republicans alone, for the reason, that in
the Committee of Thirteen, a few days ago, every member from the
South, including those from the Cotton States [Messrs. Toombs and
Davis,] expressed their readiness to accept the proposition of my
venerable friend from Kentucky [Mr. Crittenden] as a final settlement
of the controversy, if tendered and sustained by the Republican
members. Hence, the sole responsibility of our disagreement, and the
only difficulty in the way of an amicable adjustment, is with the
Republican party."

Again, on the 2d March, 1861, Mr. Douglas re-affirmed this important statement. Said he:

"The Senator has said that if the Crittenden proposition could have
been passed early in the session, it would have saved all the States
except South Carolina. I firmly believe it would. While the Crittenden
proposition was not in accordance with my cherished views, I avowed my
readiness and eagerness to accept it, in order to save the Union, if
we could unite upon it. No man has labored harder than I have to get
it passed. I can confirm the Senator's declaration that Senator Davis
himself, when on the Committee of Thirteen, was ready at all times to
compromise on the Crittenden proposition. I will go further, and say
that Mr. Toombs was also ready to do so."

Hon. S. S. Cox, for several years an able and eloquent member of Congress from Ohio, has made a most interesting statement upon this subject:

The vote on the Crittenden proposition was well defined, but is not so
well understood. From the frequency of inquiries since the war as to
this latter vote, the people were eager to know upon whom to fix the
responsibility of its failure. It may as well be stated that all other
propositions, whether of the Peace Convention or the Border State
_project_, or the measures of the committees, were comparatively of no
moment; for the Crittenden proposition was the only one which could
have arrested the struggle. It would have received a larger vote than
any other. It would have had more effect in moderating Southern
excitement. Even Davis, Toombs, and others of the Gulf States, would
have accepted it. I have talked with Mr. Crittenden frequently on this
point. Not only has he confirmed the public declarations of Douglas
and Pugh, and the speech of Toombs himself, to this effect, but he
said it was so understood in committee. At one time, while the
committee was in session, he said: "Mr. Toombs, will this compromise,
as a remedy for all wrongs and apprehensions, be acceptable to you?"
Mr. Toombs, with some profanity, replied: "Not by a good deal; but my
State will accept it, and I will follow my State to ----." And he did.

I will not open the question whether it was wise then to offer
accommodations. It may not be profitable now to ask whether the
millions of young men whose bodies are maimed, or whose bones are
decaying under the sod of the South, and the heavy load of public debt
under which we sweat and toil, have their compensation in black
liberty. Nor will I discuss whether the blacks have been bettered by
their precipitate freedom, passing, as so many have, from slavery,
through starvation and suffering, to death. There is no comfort in the
reflection that the negroes will be exterminated with the
extermination of slavery. The real point is, could not this Union have
been made permanent by timely settlement, instead of cemented by
fraternal blood and military rule? By an equitable partition of the
territory this was possible. We had then 1,200,000 square miles. The
Crittenden proposition would have given the North 900,000 of these
square miles, and applied the Chicago doctrines to that quantity. It
would have left the remaining fourth substantially to be carved out
as free or slave States, at the option of the people when the States
were admitted. This proposition the radicals denounced. It has been
stated, to rid the Republicans of the odium of not averting the war
when that was possible, that the Northern members tendered to the
Southern the Crittenden compromise, which the South rejected. This is
untrue. It was tendered by Southern Senators and Northern Democrats to
the Republicans. It was voted upon but once in the House, when it
received eighty votes against one hundred and thirteen. These eighty
votes were exclusively Democrats and Southern Americans, like Gilmer,
Vance, and others. Mr. Briggs, of New York, was the only one not a
Democrat who voted for it. He had been an old Whig, and never a
Republican. The Republican roll, beginning with Adams and ending with
Woodruff, was a unit against it. Intermingled with them was one
Southern extremist (General Hindman) who desired no settlement. There
were many Southern men who did not vote, believing that unless the
Republicans, who were just acceding to power, favored it, its adoption
would be a delusion.

The plan adopted by the Republican Senators to defeat it was by
amendment and postponement. On the 14th and 15th of January they cast
all their votes against its being taken up; and on the 16th, when it
came up, Mr. Clark, of New Hampshire, moved to strike it out, and
insert something which he knew would neither be successful nor
acceptable. The vote on Clark's amendment was 25 to 23; every "aye"
being a Republican, and every "no," except Kennedy and Crittenden
(Americans), being Democrats.

When this result was announced universal gloom prevailed. The people
favored this compromise. Petitions by thousands of citizens were
showered upon Congress for its passage. Had it received a majority
only, they would have rallied and sustained those who desired peace
and union. One more earnest appeal was made to the Republicans.
General Cameron answered it by moving a reconsideration. His motion
came up on the 18th, when he voted against his own motion. It was
carried, however, over the votes of the Republicans, although Wigfall
voted with them. When it was again up on the second of March, 1861,
the Southern States were nearly all gone. Even then it was lost by one
vote only. But on that occasion all the Democrats were for, and all
the Republicans against it. The truth is, there was nothing but sneers
and skepticism from the Republicans at any settlement. They broke down
every proposition. They took the elements of conciliation out of the
Peace Convention before it assembled. Senators Harlan and Chandler
were especially active in preparing that convention for a failure. If
every Southern man and every Northern Democrat had voted for this
proposition, it would have required some nine Republicans for the
requisite two-thirds. Where were they? Dreaming with Mr. Seward of a
sixty days' struggle, or arranging for the division of the patronage
of administration. The only Southern Senators who seemed against any
settlement were Iverson and Wigfall; that no man will challenge if he
will refer to the _Globe_ (1st part, Thirty-fifth Congress, page 270)
for the testimony of Douglas and Pugh, and to Mr. Bigler's Bucks
County speech, September 17, 1863. The latter knew it to be true when
he said that--

"When the struggle was at its height in Georgia, between Robert
Toombs for secession, and A. H. Stephens against it, had those men
in the Committee of Thirteen, who are now so blameless in their
own estimation, given us their votes, or even three of them,
Stephens would have defeated Toombs, and secession would have been
prostrated. I heard Mr. Toombs say to Mr. Douglas that the result
in Georgia was staked on the action of the Committee of Thirteen.
If it accepted the Crittenden proposition, Stephens would defeat
him; if not, he would carry the State out by 40,000 majority. The
three votes from the Republican side would have carried it at any
time; but union and peace in the balance against the Chicago
platform were sure to be found wanting."

If other testimony were wanting, I would ask a suspension of judgment
until those facts, better known to Southern men, transpire. The
intercourse about to be reëstablished between the sections will
cumulate the proof. It will also bring to the light many facts showing
that, while President Buchanan was working for the Peace Conference,
while Virginia had been gained to our side with her ablest men, there
were even then in the Cabinet those who not only encouraged revolt,
but foiled by letter and speech the efforts of the Unionists at
Washington and Richmond. These letters and acts are referred to in the
recent speech of General Blair. They will be, and should be brought
into the sunshine, if only to vindicate the true Union men of that
dark hour, and to condemn those who have since made so much pretension
with so much zealotry, coupled with unexampled cruelty and tyranny.

In the light of subsequent events that policy was developed. It was
the destruction of slavery at the peril of war and disunion; or, as
Senator Douglas expressed it, "a disruption of the Union, believing it
would draw after it, as an inevitable consequence, civil war, servile
insurrections, and finally the utter extermination of slavery in all
the Southern States."

While these fruitless efforts at compromise were in progress at Washington, public sentiment in the South, especially in the Cotton States, was rapidly reaching a point of exasperation, which refused to brook longer delay in the vain hope of justice from the exultant and unyielding North. In several of the States, so excited was popular feeling, that within a few weeks what was originally merely a purpose of resistance, intensified into a determination of absolute national independence and permanent separation. South Carolina, on the 20th December, 1860, adopted her ordinance of secession, and thus bravely gave the example, which other States speedily followed.

The work of secession, so thoroughly started by the opening of the new year, was not accomplished without a severe struggle in several of the Cotton States, in which contest, those who advocated unconditional separation were greatly assisted by the defiant position of the Republican party. The more sagacious Southern leaders foresaw the inevitable failure of the movement of separation, unless it should be sustained by an extensive coöperation among the Southern States. To secure the united action of the Cotton States, at least, was essential to give the movement strength and dignity. Mr. Davis, who advocated secession only in the event of the failure to obtain reasonable guarantees, and had never proposed to abandon the Union without an effort to save it, was a most earnest and influential advocate of the policy of coöperation. Of great historical importance is the fact, that the counsels of himself and those who acted with him, were adopted in preference to a more hasty policy, which, however ample the provocation to immediate action, would have deprived the South of the potent justification of having forborne until "endurance ceased to be a virtue."

In a letter written a few days after the election of Mr. Lincoln, he thus expressed his views:

WARREN COUNTY, MISS., NOV. 10, 1860.

Hon. R. B. RHETT, JR.--_Dear Sir_: I had the honor to receive, last
night, yours of the 27th ult., and hasten to reply to the inquiries
propounded. Reports of the election leave little doubt that the event
you anticipated has occurred, that electors have been chosen, securing
the election of Lincoln, and I will answer on that supposition.

My home is so isolated that I have had no intercourse with those who
might have aided me in forming an opinion as to the effect produced on
the mind of our people by the result of the recent election, and the
impressions which I communicate are founded upon antecedent
expressions.

1. I doubt not that the Governor of Mississippi has convoked the
Legislature to assemble within the present month, to decide upon the
course which the State should adopt in the present emergency. Whether
the Legislature will direct the call of a convention of the State, or
appoint delegates to a convention of such Southern States as may be
willing to consult together for the adoption of a Southern plan of
action, is doubtful.