Twenty Years of Congress Volume I Part 15

The first effort at secession was made, as might have been expected, by South Carolina. She did not wait for the actual result of the election, but early in October, on the a.s.sumption of Lincoln's success, began a correspondence with the other Cotton States. The general tenor of the responses did not indicate a decided wish or purpose to separate from the Union. North Carolina was positively unwilling to take any hasty step. Louisiana, evidently remembering the importance and value of the Mississippi River and of its numerous tributaries to her commercial prosperity, expressed an utter disinclination to separate from the North-West. Georgia was not ready to make resistance, and at most advocated some form of retaliatory legislation. It was evident that even in the Cotton- belt and the Gulf States there was in the minds of sober people the gravest objection to revolutionary measures.

It happened, most unfortunately, that the South-Carolina Legislature a.s.sembled early in November for the purpose of choosing Presidential electors, who in that State were never submitted to the popular vote. While it might seem extravagant to ascribe the revolution which convulsed the country to an event so disconnected and apparently so inadequate, it is nevertheless true that the sudden _furor_ which seized a large number of the Southern people came directly from that event. Indeed, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the great civil war, which shook a continent, was precipitated by the fact that the South-Carolina Legislature a.s.sembled at the unpropitious moment. Without taking time for reflection, without a review of the situation, without stopping to count the cost, with a boldness born of pa.s.sionate resentment against the North, the rash men of South Carolina fired the train. In a single hour they created in their own State a public sentiment which would not brook delay or contradiction or argument. The leaders of it knew that the sober second thought, even in South Carolina, would be dangerous to the scheme of a Southern confederacy. They knew that the feeling of resentment among the Southern people must be kept at white-heat, and that whoever wished to speak a word of caution or moderation must be held as a public enemy, and subjected to the scorn and the vengeance of the people.

In this temper a convention was ordered by the Legislature. The delegates were to be chosen directly by the people, and when a.s.sembled were to determine the future relation of South Carolina to the Government of the United States. The election was to be held in four weeks, and the convention was to a.s.semble on the 17th of December. The unnatural and unprecedented haste of this action, by which South Carolina proceeded, as she proclaimed, to throw off her national relations, is more easily comprehended by recalling the difficult mode provided in every State for a change in its const.i.tution. In not a single State of the American Union can the organic law be changed in less than a year, or without ample opportunity for serious consideration by the people. At that very moment the people of South Carolina were inhibited from making the slightest alteration in their own const.i.tution except by slow and conservative processes which gave time for deliberation and reflection. In determining a question momentous beyond all calculation to themselves and to their posterity, they were hurried into the election of delegates, and the delegates were hurried into convention, and the convention was hurried into secession by a terror of public opinion that would not endure resistance and would not listen to reason.

The few who were left in possession of coolness and sound judgment among the public men of South Carolina, desired to stay the rush of events by waiting for co-operation with the other slave-holding States. Their request was denied and their argument answered by the declaration that co-operation had been tried in 1850, and had ended in defeating all measures looking to Disunion. One of the members declared that if South Carolina again waited for co-operation, slavery and State-rights would be abandoned, State-sovereignty and the cause of the South would be lost forever. The action of the convention was still further stimulated by the resignation of Mr.

Hammond and Mr. Chestnut, United-States senators from South Carolina, and by the action of Governor Pickens in appointing a cabinet of the same number and of the same division of departments that had been adopted in the National Government.

THE ACTION OF SOUTH CAROLINA.

South Carolina was urged forward in this course by leading Disunionists in other States who needed the force of one bold example of secession to furnish the requisite stimulus to their own communities. The members of the South Carolina convention, recognizing the embarra.s.sment and incongruity of basing their action simply upon the const.i.tutional election of a President, declared that the public opinion of their State "had for a long period been strengthening and ripening for Disunion." Mr. Rhett, eminent in the public service of his State, a.s.serted "that the secession of South Carolina was not produced by Mr. Lincoln's election, or by the non-execution of the Fugitive- slave Law; that it was a matter which had been gathering head for thirty years," and that they were now "determined upon their course at whatever risk."

Among the singular incidents of the South-Carolina secession, followed subsequently by other States, was the solemn import attached to the word _ordinance_. The South gave it a significance which elevated its authority above the Const.i.tution, and above the laws of their own State and of the United States. And yet, neither in legal definition nor in any ordinary use of the word, was there precedent or authority for attaching to it such impressive meaning.

An _ordinance_ of Parliament was but a temporary Act which the Commons might alter at their pleasure. An _Act_ of Parliament could not be changed except by the consent of king, lords, and commons. In this country, aside from the use of the word in declaring the freedom of the North-west Territory in 1787, _ordinance_ has uniformly been applied to Acts of inferior bodies, to the councils of cities, to the authorities of towns, to the directors of corporations,--rarely if ever to the Acts of legislative a.s.semblies which represent the power of the State.

It is still more singular that, in pa.s.sing the ordinance of Secession, the convention worded it so that it should seem to be the repeal of the ordinance of the 23d of May, 1788, whereby the Const.i.tution of the United States was ratified by South Carolina, when, in simple truth, the Act of that State ratifying the Federal Const.i.tution was never called an ordinance. Mirabeau said that words were things; and this word was so used in the proceedings of Secession conventions as to impress the mind of the Southern people with its portentous weight and solemnity. With an amendment to the const.i.tutions of their States they had all been familiar. In the enactment of their laws thousands had partic.i.p.ated. But no one of them had ever before seen or heard or dreamed of any thing of such momentous and decisive character as an Ordinance. Even to this day, when disunion, secession, rebellion have all been destroyed by the shock of arms, and new inst.i.tutions have been built over their common grave, the word "ordinance" has, in the minds of many people both in the North and in the South, a sound which represents the very majesty of popular power.

If the other Southern States would have been left to their own counsels, South Carolina would have stood alone, and her Secession of 1860 would have proved as abortive as her Nullification of 1832.

The Disunion movement in the remaining States of the South originated in Was.h.i.+ngton. Finding that the Cotton States, especially those bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, were moving too slowly, the senators from Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, and Florida held a meeting in Was.h.i.+ngton on the 5th of January, 1861. The South had always contended for the right of States to instruct their senators, but now the Southern senators proceeded to instruct their States. In effect they sent out commands to the governing authorities and to the active political leaders, that South Carolina must be sustained; that the Cotton States must stand by her; and that the secession of each and all of them must be accomplished in season for a general convention to be held at Montgomery, not later than Feb. 15, and, in any event, before the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln. The design was that the new President of the United States should find a Southern Confederacy in actual existence, with the ordinary departments of government in regular operation, with a name and a flag and a great seal, and all the insignia of national sovereignty visible.

It is a suggestive fact that, in carrying out these designs, the political leaders determined, as far as possible, to prevent the submission of the ordinances of Secession to the popular vote. It is not indeed probable that, in the excited condition to which they had by this time brought the Southern mind, Secession would have been defeated; but the withholding of the question from popular decision is at least an indication that there was strong apprehension of such a result, and that care was taken to prevent the divisions and acrimonious contests which such submission might have caused.

In the Georgia convention the resolution declaring it to be her right and her duty to secede was adopted only by a vote of 165 to 130. A division of similar proportion in the popular vote would have stripped the secession of Georgia of all moral force, and hence the people were not allowed to pa.s.s upon the question.

ACTION OF OTHER COTTON STATES.

Georgia was really induced to secede, only upon the delusive suggestion that better terms could be made with the National Government by going out for a season than by remaining steadfastly loyal. The influence of Alexander H. Stephens, while he was still loyal, was almost strong enough to hold the State in the Union; and but for the phantasm of securing better terms outside, the Empire State of the South would have checked and destroyed the Secession movement at the very outset. Mississippi followed Jefferson Davis with a vote amounting almost to unanimity. Florida, Louisiana, and Alabama followed with secession ordained by conventions and no vote allowed to the people. Texas submitted the ordinance, after the other States had seceded, and by the force of their example carried it by a vote of about three to one. These were the original seven States that formed the nucleus of the Confederacy.

They had gone through what they deemed the complete process of separation from the Union, without the slightest obstruction from any quarter and without the interposition of any authority from the National Government against their proceedings.

Long before the Secession movement had been developed to the extent just detailed, Congress was in session. It a.s.sembled one month after the Presidential election, and fifteen days before the Disunionists of South Carolina met in their ill-starred convention.

Up to that time there had been excitement, threats of resistance to the authority of the government in many sections of the South, and an earnest attempt in the Cotton States to promote co-operation in the fatal step which so many were bent on taking. But there had been no overt act against the national authority. Federal officers were still exercising their functions in all the States; the customs were still collected in Southern ports; the United- States mails were still carried without molestation from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. But the critical moment had come. The Disunion conspiracy had reached a point where it must go forward with boldness, or retreat before the displayed power and the uplifted flag of the Nation. The administration could adopt no policy so dangerous as to permit the enemies of the Union to proceed in their conspiracy, and the hostile movement to gain perilous headway. At that juncture Mr. Buchanan confronted a graver responsibility than had ever before been imposed on a President of the United States.

It devolved on him to arrest the mad outbreak of the South by judicious firmness, or by irresolution and timidity to plunge the Nation into dangers and horrors, the extent of which was mercifully veiled from the vision of those who were to witness and share them.

PENNSYLVANIA AND THE UNION.

There could be no doubt in the mind of any one that the destruction of the Union would be deplored by Mr. Buchanan as profoundly as by any living man. His birth and rearing as a Pennsylvanian leave no other presumption possible. In the original Union, Pennsylvania was appropriated denominated the Keystone of the arch, supported by, and in turn supporting, the strength of all. Of the "old thirteen" there were six free States north of her, and six slave States south of her. She was allied as warmly by ties of friends.h.i.+p and of blood with her Maryland and Virginia neighbors on the one side as with those of New Jersey and New York on the other. Her political and social connection on both sides were not more intimate than those of a business and commercial character. As the Union grew in power and increased in members.h.i.+p, Pennsylvania lost nothing of her prestige. She held to the new States as intimate relations as she held to the old. The configuration of the country and the natural channels of communication have bound her closely to all sections. Her northern border touching the great lakes, connected her by sail and steam, before the era of the railway, with the magnificent domain which lies upon the sh.o.r.es of those inland seas.

Her western rivers, whose junction marks the site of a great city, form part of the most extensive system of interior water-communications on the globe, affording a commercial highway twenty thousand miles in length through seventeen States not included in the original Union. Patriotic tradition increased Pennsylvania's attachment to the National Government. It was on her soil that the Declaration of Independence was proclaimed. It was in her Legislative halls that the Const.i.tution was formed and the "more perfect Union" of the States ordained. From geographical position therefore, from material interest, from inherited pride, from every a.s.sociation and sympathy, from every aspiration, and from every hope, Pennsylvania was for the Union, inviolable and indissoluble. No threat of its destruction ever came from her councils, and no stress of circ.u.mstances could ever seduce her into a calculation of its value, or drive her to the contemplation of its end.

With all his attachment to the Union, Mr. Buchanan had been brought under influences which were hostile to it. In originally const.i.tuting his Cabinet, sinister agencies had controlled him, and far-seeing men antic.i.p.ated trouble when the names were announced. From the South he had selected Howell Cobb of Georgia for the Treasury, John B. Floyd of Virginia for Secretary of War, Jacob Thompson of Missouri for the Interior, and Aaron V. Brown of Tennessee for Postmaster- General. From the North he had selected Lewis Ca.s.s of Michigan for the State Department, Isaac Toucey of Connecticut for the Navy, and Jeremiah S. Black of Pennsylvania for Attorney-General. It seemed extraordinary that out of seven Cabinet officers four should be given to the South, when the North had a vast preponderance of population and wealth. It was hardly less than audacious that the four departments a.s.signed to the South should be those which dealt most intimately and most extensively with the finances, the manufactures, and the commerce of the country. The quiet manner in which the North accepted this inequitable distribution of political power added only another proof of the complete ascendency which the South had acquired in the councils of the Democratic party.

Mr. Buchanan had always looked to the statesmen of the South as a superior cla.s.s; and after a political life wholly spent in close a.s.sociation and constant service with them, it could not be expected that, even in a crisis threatening destruction to the Union, he would break away from them in a day. They had fast hold of him, and against the influence of the better men in his Cabinet they used him for a time to carry out their own ends. Secessionists and Abolitionists Mr. Buchanan no doubt regarded as equally the enemies of the Union. But the Secessionists all came from the party that elected him President, and the Abolitionists had all voted against him. The Abolitionists, in which phrase Mr. Buchanan included all men of anti-slavery conviction, had no opportunity, even if they had desired, to confer with the President, while the Secessionists from old and friendly a.s.sociation, were in daily and intimate relations with him. They undoubtedly persuaded the President by the most plausible arguments that they were not in fault; that the whole responsibility lay at the door of the Northern anti-slavery men; and that, if these disturbers of the peace could be suppressed, all would be well. It was under these influences, artfully insinuated and persistently plied, that Mr. Buchanan was induced to write his mischievous and deplorable message of the first Monday of December, 1860,--a message whose evil effect can never be estimated, and whose evil character can hardly be exaggerated.

The President informed Congress that "the long-continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of slavery in the Southern States has at last produced its natural effect. . . . The time has arrived so much dreaded by the Father of his Country, when hostile geographical parties have been formed."

He declared that he had "long foreseen and often forewarned" his countrymen of "the impending danger." Apparently arguing the case for the Southern extremists, the President believed that the danger "does not proceed solely from the attempt to exclude slavery from the Territories, nor from the efforts to defeat the execution of the Fugitive-slave Law." Any or all of these evils, he said, "might have been endured by the South," trusting to time and reflection for a remedy. "The immediate peril," Mr. Buchanan informed the country, "arises from the fact that the long-continued agitation in the free States has at length produced its malign influence on the slaves, and inspired them with vague notions of freedom. Hence a sense of security no longer exists around the family altar. The feeling of peace at home has given place to apprehensions of servile insurrections, and many a matron throughout the South retires at night in dread of what may befall herself and her children before morning." The President was fully persuaded that "if this apprehension of domestic danger should extend and intensify itself, disunion will become inevitable."

PRESIDENT BUCHANAN AND THE SOUTH.

Having thus stated what he believed to be the grievances of the South, Mr. Buchanan proceeded to give certain reasons why the slave- holders should not break up the government. His defensive plea for the North was worse, if worse were possible, than his aggressive statements on behalf of the South. "The election of any one of our fellow-citizens to the office of President," Mr. Buchanan complacently a.s.serted, "does not of itself afford just cause for dissolving the Union." And then he adds an extraordinary qualification: "This is more especially true if his election has been effected by a mere plurality, and not a majority, of the people, and has resulted from transient and temporary causes, which may probably never again occur." Translated into plainer language, this was an a.s.surance to the Southern Disunionists that they need not break up the government at that time, because Mr. Lincoln was a minority President, and was certain to be beaten at the next election. He reminded the Southern leaders moreover that in the whole history of the Federal Government "no single Act had ever pa.s.sed Congress, unless the Missouri Compromise be an exception, impairing in the slightest degree the rights of the South to their property in slaves." The Missouri Compromise had been repealed, so that the entire body of national statutes, from the origin of the government to that hour was, according to President Buchanan, guiltless of transgression against the rights of slave-holders. Coming from such a source, the admission was one of great historic value.

The President found that the chief grievance of the South was in the enactments of the free States known as "personal liberty laws."

When the Fugitive-slave Law subjected the liberty of citizens to the decision of a single commissioner, and denied jury trial to a man upon the question of sending him to lifelong and cruel servitude, the issue throughout the free States was made one of self-preservation.

Without having the legal right to obstruct the return of a fugitive slave to his servitude, they felt not only that they had the right, but that it was their duty, to protect free citizens in their freedom. Very likely these enactments, inspired by an earnest spirit of liberty, went in many cases too far, and tended to produce conflicts between National and State authority. That was a question to be determined finally and exclusively by the Federal Judiciary.

Unfortunately Mr. Buchanan carried his argument beyond that point, coupling it with a declaration and an admission fatal to the perpetuity of the Union. After reciting the statutes which he regarded as objectionable and hostile to the const.i.tutional rights of the South, and after urging their unconditional repeal upon the North, the President said: "The Southern States, standing on the basis of the Const.i.tution, have a right to demand this act of justice from the States of the North. Should it be refused, then the Const.i.tution, to which all the States are parties, will have been willfully violated by one portion of them in a provision essential to the domestic security and happiness of the remainder.

In that event, the injured States, after having used all peaceful and const.i.tutional means to obtain redress, would be justified in revolutionary resistance to the government of the Union."

By this declaration the President justified, and in effect advised, an appeal from the const.i.tutional tribunals of the country to a popular judgment in the aggrieved States, and recognized the right of those States, upon such popular judgment, to destroy the Const.i.tution and Union. The "const.i.tutional means" of redress were the courts of the country, and to these the President must have referred in the paragraph quoted. After an appeal to the courts, and a decision upon the questions presented, it would have been the plain duty of the parties to accept the decision as authoritative and final. By the advice of the President, the States of the South were to accept the decision obtained by const.i.tutional means, in case it was favorable to them, and to disregard it, and to destroy both the Const.i.tution and the Union, if it should prove to be adverse to the popular opinion in those States.

It is not improbable that the President's language conveyed more than his real meaning. He may have intended to affirm that if the free States should refuse to repeal their obnoxious statutes after a final decision against their const.i.tutionality, then the slave States would be justified in revolutionary resistance. But he had no right to make such an argument or suggest such an hypothesis, for never in the history of the Federal Government had the decision of the Supreme judicial tribunal been disobeyed or disregarded by any State or by any individual. The right of "revolutionary resistance" was not so foreign to the conception of the American citizen as to require suggestion and enforcement from Mr. Buchanan.

His argument in support of the right at that crisis was prejudicial to the Union, and afforded a standing-ground for many Southern men who were beginning to feel that the doctrine of Secession was illogical, unsafe, untenable. They now had the argument of a Northern President in justification of "revolutionary resistance."

Throughout the South, the right of Secession was abandoned by a large cla.s.s, and the right of Revolution subst.i.tuted.

FATAL ADMISSION OF THE PRESIDENT.

Having made his argument in favor of the right of "Revolution,"

Mr. Buchanan proceeded to argue ably and earnestly against the a.s.sumption by any State of an inherent right to secede from the government at its own will and pleasure. But he utterly destroyed the force of his reasoning by declaring that "after much serious reflection" he had arrived at "the conclusion that no power has been delegated to Congress, or to any other department of the Federal Government, to coerce a State into submission which is attempting to withdraw, or has actually withdrawn," from the Union.

He emphasized his position by further declaring that, "so far from this power having been delegated to Congress, it was expressly refused by the convention which framed the Const.i.tution." Congress "possesses many means," Mr. Buchanan added, "of preserving the Union by conciliation; but the sword was not placed in their hands to preserve it by force."

The fatal admission was thus evolved from the mind of the President, that any State which thought itself aggrieved and could not secure the concessions demanded, might bring the Government down in ruins.

The power to destroy was in the State. The power to preserve was not in the Nation. The President apparently failed to see that if the Nation could not be preserved by force, its legal capacity for existence was dependent upon the concurring and continuing will of all the individual States. The original bond of union was, therefore, for the day only, and the provision of the Const.i.tution which gave to the Supreme Court jurisdiction in controversies between States was binding no further than the States chose to accept the decisions of the Court.

The difference between the President and the Secessionists of the South was a difference of opinion as to the time for action, and as to the name by which that action should be called. In principle there was concurrence. The President insisted that the injured party should appeal to the aggressor, and then to the courts, with the reserved right of revolution always in view and to be exercised if neither the aggressor nor the courts furnished satisfactory redress. The President recognized the reserved right of revolution in the States, and it was a necessary incident of that right that each State might decide when the right should be exercised. He suggested that, as justification of revolution, the Federal Government must be guilty of "a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise"

of powers not granted by the Const.i.tution, quoting from the text of the State-rights declaration by Virginia in 1798. But in all his arguments he left the State to be the ultimate judge of the const.i.tutionality of the Acts of the Federal Government. Under these doctrines the Government of the United States was shorn of all power to preserve its own existence, and the Union might crumble and fall while its const.i.tuted authorities stood paralyzed and impotent.

This construction was all that the extremists of the South desired.

With so much conceded, they had every thing in their own hands.

They could march out of the Union at their own will and caprice, without resistance from the National Government, and they could come back upon such conditions as, with the President's aid, they might extort from an alarmed and weakening North. a.s.sured by the language of the President that they could with impunity defy the const.i.tutional authority of the government, the Secessionists were immeasurably encouraged. The Southern men had for three generations been cheris.h.i.+ng the belief that they were as a cla.s.s superior to Northern men, and they were more than ever confirmed in this pleasing illusion when they saw a Northern President, with the power of the nation in his hands, deliberately affirming that he could exercise no authority over or against them.

Men who, under the wholesome restraint of executive power, would have refrained from taking aggressive steps against the National Government, were by Mr. Buchanan's action forced into a position of hostility. Men in the South, who were disposed to avoid extreme measures, were by taunt and reproach driven into the ranks of Secession. They were made to believe, after the President's message, that the South would be ruined if she did not a.s.sert a position which the National authority confessed it had no right and no means to contest. The Republicans had been taunting Southern men with the intention of using only bl.u.s.ter and bravado, and if they should now fail to take a decisive step in the direction of Disunion, they felt that it would be a humiliating retraction of all they had said in the long struggle over slavery. It would be an invitation to the Abolitionists and fanatics of the North, to deal hereafter with the South, and with the question of slavery, in whatever manner might seem good in their sight. No weapon of logic could have been more forcible; and, wielded as it was by Southern leaders with skill and courage, they were able to consolidate the public opinion and control the political action of their section.

The evil effects of Mr. Buchanan's message were not confined to the slave States. It did incalculable harm in the free States.

It fixed in the minds of tens of thousands of Northern men who were opposed to the Republican party, the belief that the South was justified in taking steps to break up the government, if what they termed a war on Southern inst.i.tutions should be continued. This feeling had in turn a most injurious influence in the South, and stimulated thousands in that section to a point of rashness which they would never have reached but for the sympathy and support constantly extended to them from the North. Even if a conflict of arms should be the ultimate result of the Secession movement, its authors and its deluded followers were made to believe that, against a South entirely united, there would be opposed a North hopelessly divided. They were confident that the Democratic party in the free States held the views expressed in Mr. Buchanan's message. They had conclusively persuaded themselves that the Democrats, together with a large proportion of the conservative men in the North who had supported Mr. Bell for the Presidency, would oppose an "abolition war," and would prove a distracting and destructive force in the rear of the Union army if it should ever commence its march Southward.

THE SECRETARY OF STATE RESIGNS.

The most alarming feature of the situation to reflecting men in the North was that, so far as known, all the members of Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet approved the destructive doctrines of the message. But as the position of the President was subjected to examination and criticism by the Northern press, uneasiness was manifested in Administration circles. It was seen that if the course foreshadowed by Mr. Buchanan should be followed, the authority of the Union would be compelled to retreat before the usurpations of seceding States, and that a powerful government might be quietly overthrown, without striking one blow of resistance, or uttering one word of protest. General Ca.s.s was the first of the Cabinet to feel the pressure of loyalty from the North. The venerable Secretary of State, whose whole life had been one of patriotic devotion to his country, suddenly realized that he was in a false position. When it became known that the President would not insist upon the collection of the national revenue in South Carolina, or upon the strengthening of the United-States forts in the harbor of Charleston, General Ca.s.s concluded that justice to his own reputation required him to separate from the Administration. He resigned on the twelfth of December,--nine days after Mr. Buchanan had sent his fatal message to Congress.

CHARACTER AND CONDUCT OF JUDGE BLACK.

Judge Black, who had from the beginning of the Administration been Mr. Buchanan's chief adviser, now became so by rank as the successor of General Ca.s.s in the State Department. He was a man of remarkable character. He was endowed by nature with a strong understanding and a strong will. In the profession of the law he had attained great eminence. His learning had been ill.u.s.trated by a prolonged service on the bench before the age at which men, even of exceptional success at the bar, usually attract public observation. He had added to his professional studies, which were laborious and conscientious, a wide acquaintance with our literature, and had found in its walks a delight which is yielded to few. In history, biography, criticism, romance, he had absorbed every thing in our language worthy of attention. Shakspeare, Milton, indeed all the English poets, were his familiar companions. There was not a disputed pa.s.sage or an obscure reading in any one of the great plays upon which he could not off-hand quote the best renderings, and throw original light from his own illumined mind. Upon theology he had apparently bestowed years of investigation and reflection.

A sincere Christian, he had been a devout and constant student of the Bible, and could quote its pa.s.sages and apply its teachings with singular readiness and felicity. To this generous store of knowledge he added fluency of speech, both in public address and private communication, and a style of writing which was at once unique, powerful, and attractive. He had attained unto every excellence of mental discipline described by Lord Byron. Reading had made him a full man, talking a ready man, writing an exact man.

The judicial literature of the English tongue may be sought in vain for finer models than are found in the opinions of Judge Black when he sat, and was worthy to sit, as the a.s.sociate of John Bannister Gibson, on the Supreme Bench of Pennsylvania.

In political opinion he was a Democrat, self-inspired and self- taught, for his father was a Whig who had served his State in Congress. He idolized Jefferson and revered Jackson as embodying in their respective characters all the elements of the soundest political philosophy, and all the requisites of the highest political leaders.h.i.+p. He believed in the principles of Democracy as he did in a demonstration of Euclid,--all that might be said on the other side was necessarily absurd. He applied to his own political creed the literal teachings of the Bible. If Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had held slaves without condemnation or rebuke from the Lord of hosts, he believed that Virginia, Carolina, and Georgia might do the same. He found in the case of Onesiums, St. Paul's explicit approval of the Fugutive-slave Law of 1850, and in the cruel case of Pa.s.smore Williamson he believed himself to be enforcing the doctrines of the New Testament. Personally unwilling to hold even a beast of burden in oppressive bondage, nothing could induce him to condemn slave-holding in those whose conscience permitted them to practice it. In the Abolitionists he found the chief disturbers of the Republic, and he held New England answerable to posterity and to G.o.d for all the heresies which afflicted either Church or State. He had an uncompromising hostility to what are termed New- England ideas, though the tenderest ties of his life were of New- England origin. "The New-Englander individually I greatly affect,"

he often said, "but, in the ma.s.s, I judge them to be stark mad."

"I think, too," he would add, "that if you are going to make much of a New-Englander, he should, like Dr. Johnson's Scotchman, be caught young."

To his native State Judge Black was devotedly attached. He inherited the blood of two strong elements of its population,--the German and the Scotch-Irish,--and he united the best characteristics of both in his own person. He had always looked upon Pennsylvania as the guardian of the Federal Union, almost as the guarantor of its safety and its perpetuity. He spoke of her as the break-water that protected the slave States from the waves of radicalism which were threatening to ingulf Southern inst.i.tutions. The success of the Republican party in 1860 he regarded as a portent of direst evil, --indeed, as a present disaster, immeasurably sorrowful. The excitement in the Southern States over the probability of Mr.

Lincoln's election he considered natural, their serious protest altogether justifiable. He desired the free States to be awakened to the gravity of the situation, to be thoroughly alarmed, and to repent of their sins against the South. He wished it understood from ocean to ocean that the position of the Republican party was inconsistent with loyalty to the Union, and that its permanent success would lead to the destruction of the government. It was not unnatural that with these extreme views he should be carried beyond the bounds of prudence, and that, in his headlong desire to rebuke the Republican party as enemies of the Union, he should aid in precipitating a dissolution of the government before the Republicans could enter upon its administration. He thus became in large degree responsible for the unsound position and the dangerous teachings of Mr. Buchanan. In truth some of the worst doctrines embodied in the President's evil message came directly from an opinion given by Judge Black as Attorney-General, and, made by Mr. Buchanan still more odious and more dangerous by the quotation of a part and not the whole.