A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln Part 11

Either the President must do it himself, and be all the while active in it, or

Devolve it on some member of his cabinet. Once adopted, debates on it must end, and all agree and abide.

It is not in my especial province.

But I neither seek to evade nor a.s.sume responsibility.]

A month has elapsed, and the administration has neither a domestic nor a foreign policy. The administration must at once adopt and carry out a novel, radical, and aggressive policy. It must cease saying a word about slavery, and raise a great outcry about Union. It must declare war against France and Spain, and combine and organize all the governments of North and South America in a crusade to enforce the Monroe Doctrine.

This policy once adopted, it must be the business of some one incessantly to pursue it. "It is not in my especial province," wrote Mr.

Seward; "but I neither seek to evade nor a.s.sume responsibility." This phrase, which is a key to the whole memorandum, enables the reader easily to translate its meaning into something like the following:

After a month's trial, you, Mr. Lincoln, are a failure as President. The country is in desperate straits, and must use a desperate remedy. That remedy is to submerge the South Carolina insurrection in a continental war. Some new man must take the executive helm, and wield the undivided presidential authority. I should have been nominated at Chicago, and elected in November, but am willing to take your place and perform your duties.

Why William H. Seward, who is fairly ent.i.tled to rank as a great statesman, should have written this memorandum and presented it to Mr.

Lincoln, has never been explained; nor is it capable of explanation. Its suggestions were so visionary, its reasoning so fallacious, its a.s.sumptions so unwarranted, its conclusions so malapropos, that it falls below critical examination. Had Mr. Lincoln been an envious or a resentful man, he could not have wished for a better occasion to put a rival under his feet.

The President doubtless considered the incident one of phenomenal strangeness, but it did not in the least disturb his unselfish judgment or mental equipoise. There was in his answer no trace of excitement or pa.s.sion. He pointed out in a few sentences of simple, quiet explanation that what the administration had done was exactly a foreign and domestic policy which the Secretary of State himself had concurred in and helped to frame. Only, that Mr. Seward proposed to go further and give up Sumter. Upon the central suggestion that some one mind must direct, Mr.

Lincoln wrote with simple dignity:

"If this must be done, I must do it. When a general line of policy is adopted, I apprehend there is no danger of its being changed without good reason, or continuing to be a subject of unnecessary debate; still, upon points arising in its progress I wish, and suppose I am ent.i.tled to have, the advice of all the cabinet."

Mr. Lincoln's unselfish magnanimity is the central marvel of the whole affair. His reply ended the argument. Mr. Seward doubtless saw at once how completely he had put himself in the President's power. Apparently, neither of the men ever again alluded to the incident. No other persons except Mr. Seward's son and the President's private secretary ever saw the correspondence, or knew of the occurrence. The President put the papers away in an envelop, and no word of the affair came to the public until a quarter of a century later, when the details were published in Mr. Lincoln's biography. In one mind, at least, there was no further doubt that the cabinet had a master, for only some weeks later Mr.

Seward is known to have written: "There is but one vote in the cabinet, and that is cast by the President." This mastery Mr. Lincoln retained with a firm dignity throughout his administration. When, near the close of the war, he sent Mr. Seward to meet the rebel commissioners at the Hampton Roads conference, he finished his short letter of instructions with the imperative sentence: "You will not a.s.sume to definitely consummate anything."

From this strange episode our narrative must return to the question of Fort Sumter. On April 4, official notice was sent to Major Anderson of the coming relief, with the instruction to hold out till the eleventh or twelfth if possible; but authorizing him to capitulate whenever it might become necessary to save himself and command. Two days later the President sent a special messenger with written notice to the governor of South Carolina that an attempt would be made to supply Fort Sumter with provisions only; and that if such attempt were not resisted, no further effort would be made to throw in men, arms, or ammunition, without further notice, or unless in case of an attack on the fort.

The building of batteries around Fort Sumter had been begun, under the orders of Governor Pickens, about the first of January, and continued with industry and energy; and about the first of March General Beauregard, an accomplished engineer officer, was sent by the Confederate government to take charge of and complete the works. On April 1 he telegraphed to Montgomery: "Batteries ready to open Wednesday or Thursday. What instructions?"

At this point, the Confederate authorities at Montgomery found themselves face to face with the fatal alternative either to begin war or to allow their rebellion to collapse. Their claim to independence was denied, their commissioners were refused a hearing; yet not an angry word, provoking threat, nor harmful act had come from President Lincoln.

He had promised them peace, protection, freedom from irritation; had offered them the benefit of the mails. Even now, all he proposed to do was--not to send guns or ammunition or men to Sumter, but only bread and provisions to Anderson and his soldiers. His prudent policy placed them in the exact att.i.tude described a month earlier in his inaugural; they could have no conflict without being themselves the aggressors. But the rebellion was organized by ambitious men with desperate intentions. A member of the Alabama legislature, present at Montgomery, said to Jefferson Davis and three members of his cabinet: "Gentlemen, unless you sprinkle blood in the face of the people of Alabama, they will be back in the old Union in less than ten days." And the sanguinary advice was adopted. In answer to his question, "What instructions?" Beauregard on April 10 was ordered to demand the evacuation of Fort Sumter, and, in case of refusal, to reduce it.

The demand was presented to Anderson, who replied that he would evacuate the fort by noon of April 15, unless a.s.sailed, or unless he received supplies or controlling instructions from his government. This answer being unsatisfactory to Beauregard, he sent Anderson notice that he would open fire on Sumter at 4:20 on the morning of April 12.

Promptly at the hour indicated the bombardment was begun. As has been related, the rebel siege-works were built on the points of the islands forming the harbor, at distances varying from thirteen hundred to twenty-five hundred yards, and numbered nineteen batteries, with an armament of forty-seven guns, supported by a land force of from four to six thousand volunteers. The disproportion between means of attack and defense was enormous. Sumter, though a work three hundred by three hundred and fifty feet in size, with well-constructed walls and casemates of brick, was in very meager preparation for such a conflict.

Of its forty-eight available guns, only twenty-one were in the casemates, twenty-seven being on the rampart _en barbette_. The garrison consisted of nine commissioned officers, sixty-eight non-commissioned officers and privates, eight musicians, and forty-three non-combatant workmen compelled by the besiegers to remain to hasten the consumption of provisions.

Under the fire of the seventeen mortars in the rebel batteries, Anderson could reply only with a vertical fire from the guns of small caliber in his casemates, which was of no effect against the rebel bomb-proofs of sand and roofs of sloping railroad iron; but, refraining from exposing his men to serve his barbette guns, his garrison was also safe in its protecting casemates. It happened, therefore, that although the attack was spirited and the defense resolute, the combat went on for a day and a half without a single casualty. It came to an end on the second day only when the cartridges of the garrison were exhausted, and the red-hot shot from the rebel batteries had set the buildings used as officers'

quarters on fire, creating heat and smoke that rendered further defense impossible.

There was also the further discouragement that the expedition of relief which Anderson had been instructed to look for on the eleventh or twelfth, had failed to appear. Several unforeseen contingencies had prevented the a.s.sembling of the vessels at the appointed rendezvous outside Charleston harbor, though some of them reached it in time to hear the opening guns of the bombardment. But as accident had deranged and thwarted the plan agreed upon, they could do nothing except impatiently await the issue of the fight.

A little after noon of April 13, when the flagstaff of the fort had been shot away and its guns remained silent, an invitation to capitulate with the honors of war came from General Beauregard, which Anderson accepted; and on the following day, Sunday, April 14, he hauled down his flag with impressive ceremonies, and leaving the fort with his faithful garrison, proceeded in a steamer to New York.

XIV

President's Proclamation Calling for Seventy-five Regiments--Responses of the Governors--Maryland and Virginia--The Baltimore Riot--Was.h.i.+ngton Isolated--Lincoln Takes the Responsibility--Robert E. Lee--Arrival of the New York Seventh--Suspension of Habeas Corpus--The Annapolis Route--Butler in Baltimore--Taney on the Merryman Case--Kentucky--Missouri--Lyon Captures Camp Jackson--Boonville Skirmish--The Missouri Convention--Gamble made Governor--The Border States

The bombardment of Fort Sumter changed the political situation as if by magic. There was no longer room for doubt, hesitation, concession, or compromise. Without awaiting the arrival of the s.h.i.+ps that were bringing provisions to Anderson's starving garrison, the hostile Charleston batteries had opened their fire on the fort by the formal order of the Confederate government, and peaceable secession was, without provocation, changed to active war. The rebels gained possession of Charleston harbor; but their mode of obtaining it awakened the patriotism of the American people to a stern determination that the insult to the national authority and flag should be redressed, and the unrighteous experiment of a rival government founded on slavery as its corner-stone should never succeed. Under the conflict thus begun the long-tolerated barbarous inst.i.tution itself was destined ign.o.bly to perish.

On his journey from Springfield to Was.h.i.+ngton Mr. Lincoln had said that, devoted as he was to peace, he might find it necessary "to put the foot down firmly." That time had now come. On the morning of April 15, 1861, the leading newspapers of the country printed the President's proclamation reciting that, whereas the laws of the United States were opposed and the execution thereof obstructed in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, the militia of the several States of the Union, to the aggregate number of seventy-five thousand, was called forth to suppress said combinations and cause the laws to be duly executed. The orders of the War Department specified that the period of service under this call should be for three months; and to further conform to the provisions of the Act of 1795, under which the call was issued, the President's proclamation also convened the Congress in special session on the coming fourth of July.

Public opinion in the free States, which had been sadly demoralized by the long discussions over slavery, and by the existence of four factions in the late presidential campaign, was instantly crystallized and consolidated by the Sumter bombardment and the President's proclamation into a sentiment of united support to the government for the suppression of the rebellion. The several free-State governors sent loyal and enthusiastic responses to the call for militia, and tendered double the numbers asked for. The people of the slave States which had not yet joined the Montgomery Confederacy--namely, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware--remained, however, more or less divided on the issue as it now presented itself. The governors of the first six of these were already so much engaged in the secret intrigues of the secession movement that they sent the Secretary of War contumacious and insulting replies, and distinct refusals to the President's call for troops. The governor of Delaware answered that there was no organized militia in his State which he had legal authority to command, but that the officers of organized volunteer regiments might at their own option offer their services to the United States; while the governor of Maryland, in complying with the requisition, stipulated that the regiments from his State should not be required to serve outside its limits, except to defend the District of Columbia.

A swift, almost bewildering rush of events, however, quickly compelled most of them to take sides. Secession feeling was rampant in Baltimore; and when the first armed and equipped Northern regiment, the Ma.s.sachusetts Sixth, pa.s.sed through that city on the morning of April 19, on its way to Was.h.i.+ngton, the last four of its companies were a.s.sailed by street mobs with missiles and firearms while marching from one depot to the other; and in the running fight which ensued, four of its soldiers were killed and about thirty wounded, while the mob probably lost two or three times as many. This tragedy instantly threw the whole city into a wild frenzy of insurrection. That same afternoon an immense secession meeting in Monument Square listened to a torrent of treasonable protest and denunciation, in which Governor Hicks himself was made momentarily to join. The militia was called out, preparations were made to arm the city, and that night the railroad bridges were burned between Baltimore and the Pennsylvania line to prevent the further transit of Union regiments. The revolutionary furor spread to the country towns, and for a whole week the Union flag practically disappeared from Maryland.

While these events were taking place to the north, equally threatening incidents were occurring to the south of Was.h.i.+ngton. The State of Virginia had been for many weeks balancing uneasily between loyalty and secession. In the new revolutionary stress her weak remnant of conditional Unionism gave way; and on April 17, two days after the President's call, her State convention secretly pa.s.sed a secession ordinance, while Governor Letcher ordered a military seizure of the United States navy-yard at Norfolk and the United States armory at Harper's Ferry. Under orders from Was.h.i.+ngton, both establishments were burned to prevent their falling into insurrectionary hands; but the destruction in each case was only partial, and much valuable war material thus pa.s.sed to rebel uses.

All these hostile occurrences put the national capital in the greatest danger. For three days it was entirely cut off from communication with the North by either telegraph or mail. Under the orders of General Scott, the city was hastily prepared for a possible siege. The flour at the mills, and other stores of provisions were taken possession of. The Capitol and other public buildings were barricaded, and detachments of troops stationed in them. Business was suspended by a common impulse; streets were almost deserted except by squads of military patrol; shutters of stores, and even many residences, remained unopened throughout the day. The signs were none too rea.s.suring. In addition to the public rumors whispered about by serious faces on the streets, General Scott reported in writing to President Lincoln on the evening of April 22:

"Of rumors, the following are probable, viz.: _First_, that from fifteen hundred to two thousand troops are at the White House (four miles below Mount Vernon, a narrow point in the Potomac), engaged in erecting a battery; _Second_, that an equal force is collected or in progress of a.s.semblage on the two sides of the river to attack Fort Was.h.i.+ngton; and _Third_, that extra cars went up yesterday to bring down from Harper's Ferry about two thousand other troops to join in a general attack on this capital--that is, on many of its fronts at once. I feel confident that with our present forces we can defend the Capitol, the a.r.s.enal, and all the executive buildings (seven) against ten thousand troops not better than our District volunteers."

Throughout this crisis President Lincoln not only maintained his composure, but promptly a.s.sumed the high responsibilities the occasion demanded. On Sunday, April 21, he summoned his cabinet to meet at the Navy Department, and with their unanimous concurrence issued a number of emergency orders relating to the purchase of s.h.i.+ps, the transportation of troops and munitions of war, the advance of $2,000,000 of money to a Union Safety Committee in New York, and other military and naval measures, which were despatched in duplicate by private messengers over unusual and circuitous routes. In a message to Congress, in which he afterward explained these extraordinary transactions, he said:

"It became necessary for me to choose whether, using only the existing means, agencies, and processes which Congress had provided, I should let the government fall at once into ruin, or whether, availing myself of the broader powers conferred by the Const.i.tution in cases of insurrection, I would make an effort to save it with all its blessings for the present age and for posterity."

Unwelcome as was the thought of a possible capture of Was.h.i.+ngton city, President Lincoln's mind was much more disturbed by many suspicious indications of disloyalty in public officials, and especially in officers of the army and navy. Hundreds of clerks of Southern birth employed in the various departments suddenly left their desks and went South. The commandant of the Was.h.i.+ngton navy-yard and the quartermaster-general of the army resigned their positions to take service under Jefferson Davis. One morning the captain of a light battery on which General Scott had placed special reliance for the defense of Was.h.i.+ngton came to the President at the White House to a.s.severate and protest his loyalty and fidelity; and that same night secretly left his post and went to Richmond to become a Confederate officer.

The most prominent case, however, was that of Colonel Robert E. Lee, the officer who captured John Brown at Harper's Ferry, and who afterward became the leader of the Confederate armies. As a lieutenant he had served on the staff of General Scott in the war with Mexico. Personally knowing his ability, Scott recommended him to Lincoln as the most suitable officer to command the Union army about to be a.s.sembled under the President's call for seventy-five regiments; and this command was informally tendered him through a friend. Lee, however, declined the offer, explaining that "though opposed to secession, and deprecating war, I could take no part in an invasion of the Southern States." He resigned his commission in a letter written on April 20, and, without waiting for notice of its acceptance, which alone could discharge him from his military obligation, proceeded to Richmond, where he was formally and publicly invested with the command of the Virginia military and naval forces on April 22; while, two days later, the rebel Vice-President, Alexander H. Stephens, and a committee of the Richmond convention signed a formal military league making Virginia an immediate member of the Confederate States, and placing her armies under the command of Jefferson Davis.

The sudden uprising in Maryland and the insurrectionary activity in Virginia had been largely stimulated by the dream of the leading conspirators that their new confederacy would combine all the slave States, and that by the adhesion of both Maryland and Virginia they would fall heir to a ready-made seat of government. While the bombardment of Sumter was in progress, the rebel Secretary of War, announcing the news in a jubilant speech at Montgomery, in the presence of Jefferson Davis and his colleagues, confidently predicted that the rebel flag would before the end of May "float over the dome of the Capitol at Was.h.i.+ngton." The disloyal demonstrations in Maryland and Virginia rendered such a hope so plausible that Jefferson Davis telegraphed to Governor Letcher at Richmond that he was preparing to send him thirteen regiments, and added: "Sustain Baltimore if practicable. We reinforce you"; while Senator Mason hurried to that city personally to furnish advice and military a.s.sistance.

But the flattering expectation was not realized. The requisite preparation and concert of action were both wanting. The Union troops from New York and New England, pouring into Philadelphia, flanked the obstructions of the Baltimore route by devising a new one by way of Chesapeake Bay and Annapolis; and the opportune arrival of the Seventh Regiment of New York in Was.h.i.+ngton, on April 25, rendered that city entirely safe against surprise or attack, relieved the apprehension of officials and citizens, and renewed its business and public activity.

The mob frenzy of Baltimore and the Maryland towns subsided almost as quickly as it had risen. The Union leaders and newspapers a.s.serted themselves, and soon demonstrated their superiority in numbers and activity.

Serious embarra.s.sment had been created by the timidity of Governor Hicks, who, while Baltimore remained under mob terrorism, officially protested against the landing of Union troops at Annapolis; and, still worse, summoned the Maryland legislature to meet on April 26--a step which he had theretofore stubbornly refused to take. This event had become doubly dangerous, because a Baltimore city election held during the same terror week had reinforced the legislature with ten secession members, creating a majority eager to pa.s.s a secession ordinance at the first opportunity. The question of either arresting or dispersing the body by military force was one of the problems which the crisis forced upon President Lincoln. On full reflection he decided against either measure.

"I think it would not be justifiable," he wrote to General Scott, "nor efficient for the desired object. _First_, they have a clearly legal right to a.s.semble; and we cannot know in advance that their action will not be lawful and peaceful. And if we wait until they shall have acted, their arrest or dispersion will not lessen the effect of their action.

_Secondly_, we cannot permanently prevent their action. If we arrest them, we cannot long hold them as prisoners; and, when liberated, they will immediately rea.s.semble and take their action. And precisely the same if we simply disperse them: they will immediately rea.s.semble in some other place. I therefore conclude that it is only left to the commanding general to watch and await their action, which, if it shall be to arm their people against the United States, he is to adopt the most prompt and efficient means to counteract, even if necessary to the bombardment of their cities; and, in the extremest necessity, the suspension of the writ of _habeas corpus_."

Two days later the President formally authorized General Scott to suspend the writ of _habeas corpus_ along his military lines, or in their vicinity, if resistance should render it necessary. Arrivals of additional troops enabled the General to strengthen his military hold on Annapolis and the railroads; and on May 13 General B.F. Butler, with about one thousand men, moved into Baltimore and established a fortified camp on Federal Hill, the bulk of his force being the Sixth Ma.s.sachusetts, which had been mobbed in that city on April 19. Already, on the previous day, the bridges and railroad had been repaired, and the regular transit of troops through the city reestablished.

Under these changing conditions the secession majority of the Maryland legislature did not venture on any official treason. They sent a committee to interview the President, vented their hostility in spiteful reports and remonstrances, and prolonged their session by a recess.

Nevertheless, so inveterate was their disloyalty and plotting against the authority of the Union, that four months later it became necessary to place the leaders under arrest, finally to head off their darling project of a Maryland secession ordinance.

One additional incident of this insurrectionary period remains to be noticed. One John Merryman, claiming to be a Confederate lieutenant, was arrested in Baltimore for enlisting men for the rebellion, and Chief Justice Taney of the United States Supreme Court, the famous author of the Dred Scott decision, issued a writ of _habeas corpus_ to obtain his release from Fort McHenry. Under the President's orders, General Cadwalader of course declined to obey the writ. Upon this, the chief justice ordered the general's arrest for contempt, but the officer sent to serve the writ was refused entrance to the fort. In turn, the indignant chief justice, taking counsel of his pa.s.sion instead of his patriotism, announced dogmatically that "the President, under the Const.i.tution and laws of the United States, cannot suspend the privilege of the writ of _habeas corpus_, nor authorize any military officer to do so"; and some weeks afterward filed a long written opinion in support of this dictum. It is unnecessary here to quote the opinions of several eminent jurists who successfully refuted his labored argument, nor to repeat the vigorous a.n.a.lysis with which, in his special message to Congress of July 4, President Lincoln vindicated his own authority.

While these events were occurring in Maryland and Virginia, the remaining slave States were gradually taking sides, some for, others against rebellion. Under radical and revolutionary leaders.h.i.+p similar to that of the cotton States, the governors and State officials of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas placed their States in an att.i.tude of insurrection, and before the middle of May practically joined them to the Confederate government by the formalities of military leagues and secession ordinances.

But in the border slave States--that is, those contiguous to the free States--the eventual result was different. In these, though secession intrigue and sympathy were strong, and though their governors and State officials favored the rebellion, the underlying loyalty and Unionism of the people thwarted their revolutionary schemes. This happened even in the northwestern part of Virginia itself. The forty-eight counties of that State lying north of the Alleghanies and adjoining Pennsylvania and Ohio repudiated the action at Richmond, seceded from secession, and established a loyal provisional State government. President Lincoln recognized them and sustained them with military aid; and in due time they became organized and admitted to the Union as the State of West Virginia. In Delaware, though some degree of secession feeling existed, it was too insignificant to produce any note-worthy public demonstration.

In Kentucky the political struggle was deep and prolonged. The governor twice called the legislature together to initiate secession proceedings; but that body refused compliance, and warded off his scheme by voting to maintain the State neutrality. Next, the governor sought to utilize the military organization known as the State Guard to effect his object. The Union leaders offset this movement by enlisting several volunteer Union regiments. At the June election nine Union congressmen were chosen, and only one secessionist; while in August a new legislature was elected with a three-fourths Union majority in each branch. Other secession intrigues proved equally abortive; and when, finally, in September, Confederate armies invaded Kentucky at three different points, the Kentucky legislature invited the Union armies of the West into the State to expel them, and voted to place forty thousand Union volunteers at the service of President Lincoln.

In Missouri the struggle was more fierce, but also more brief. As far back as January, the conspirators had perfected a scheme to obtain possession, through the treachery of the officer in charge, of the important Jefferson Barracks a.r.s.enal at St. Louis, with its store of sixty thousand stand of arms and a million and a half cartridges. The project, however, failed. Rumors of the danger came to General Scott, who ordered thither a company of regulars under command of Captain Nathaniel Lyon, an officer not only loyal by nature and habit, but also imbued with strong antislavery convictions. Lyon found valuable support in the watchfulness of a Union Safety Committee composed of leading St.

Louis citizens, who secretly organized a number of Union regiments recruited largely from the heavy German population; and from these sources Lyon was enabled to make such a show of available military force as effectively to deter any mere popular uprising to seize the a.r.s.enal.