Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs Volume I Part 19

"My speech occupies the mind of the South for the present: then the proceedings of the Peace Congress will attract attention, and by and by we shall have the President's inaugural which will probably have a good influence."

He did not a.s.sume the probability of war. Before we left he asked me whether I had seen a certain number of the _Richmond Enquirer._ I said that I had not. He sent for it, and gave it to me with the request that I should return it after reading the leading editorial. The editorial was upon Mr. Seward, and it was written upon the theory that he was engaged in a scheme for delaying definite action in Virginia and the other States of the South, until the inauguration of Mr.

Lincoln, when he would use both whip and spur. From the conversation and the editorial I inferred that he intended to have me understand that such was his purpose. It is possible he may have thought that war could be averted by dilatory proceedings.

When the report of the Committee of Thirteen was made, the border State men had high hopes that the country, both North and South, would accept its recommendations. In truth, there was no ground for believing that the Secessionists or the anti-slavery Republicans, would accept the propositions. The recommendations were more offensive to the North than the original const.i.tution, with all the compromise legislation, considered together.

I think that there were five speeches made in support of the resolutions before a speech was made in opposition, and it fell to me to make that speech. One morning there was a conference between the Ma.s.sachusetts delegation, which was composed of radical men only, and the radical members of the New York delegation, at which it was agreed that a speech should be made in opposition, and that Ma.s.sachusetts should lead. The duty was put upon me, accompanied with the suggestion that I should speak that day. I had not made any preparation, but during the time that I had occupied a seat in the convention, my conviction had been strengthened that it was impossible to adopt a plan that would be acceptable to the contending parties, and consequently that any scheme of compromise that could be framed would result in a renewal of the controversy, under circ.u.mstances less favorable to the North. At that moment the government was in the hands of men who were incapable of decisive action. While we could not count upon active measures against secession on the part of Mr.

Buchanan, on the other hand, the country had ample a.s.surance that he would do nothing in aid of the unlawful proceeding. That he had declared in his message of December, 1860. Beyond that, we had a right to a.s.sume that Mr. Lincoln would maintain the Union by force. Hence, I resolved to say that no scheme would be accepted by us which did not contain an abandonment of the doctrine of secession, an acknowledgment of the legality of Mr. Lincoln's election, and a declaration that it was the duty of the whole body of citizens to render obedience to the Government. I very well knew that these terms would be rejected with scorn, as I well knew that any other terms would be rejected.

Conspirators are never disposed to make terms with the party or person against whom their conspiracy is aimed, until the conspiracy has failed. Hence it was that those who humbled themselves in the dust were treated with contumely, even more offensive than the invectives which the conspirators showered upon the heads of those who neither proffered nor accepted terms of compromise.

Mr. Chittenden's report is accurate in respect to the views that I presented, but it is incomplete, as I spoke about an hour. When I began to speak, I advanced slowly up the aisle until I could look into the faces of the Virginia delegation, who occupied the settee next to the president's desk. Mr. William C. Rives was one of the Virginia delegation, a Union man, who sympathized with the border State men, and hoped by some concession to avert war. When I said that if the South persisted in secession, "the South would march its armies to the Great Lakes, or we should march ours to the Gulf of Mexico," the tears came into his eyes. My remark that the North abhorred the inst.i.tution of slavery, wounded the Southern men sorely. They were not indignant, but grieved rather. At any rate, such was their aspect, and for many days the remark was repeated or referred to with the hope, apparently, of inducing me to retract or qualify it. I allowed it to stand as a truth which they might well accept.

When the day came for the final vote upon the first resolution relating to slavery as reported by the Committee of Thirteen, a meeting of the New York delegation was called in consequence of the engagement of David Dudley Field to argue a case in the Supreme Court. Mr. Field was one of the six Republican members, and a.s.sociated with them were five Democrats and Conservatives.

As each State had one vote, his absence would set New York out of the contest unless the Democrats would agree that Mr. Field's vote should be counted in his absence. This proposition the Democrats refused to accept, and they gave notice that the vote of New York would be lost unless Mr. Field remained and voted. Mr. Field left, and the vote of the State was lost. There were twenty-one States represented, including Kansas, which was in a territorial condition when the convention a.s.sembled, and the Territorial Governor had sent a Conservative, Mr. Thomas Ewing, Jr. His father was a member from Ohio.

When the State government of Kansas was organized, the Governor delegated a Republican. Both were allowed seats, although manifestly, Mr. Ewing should have retired.

When the vote was declared, it appeared that eight States had voted in the affirmative, and eleven States in the negative. The border State men were sorely disappointed, and some of them wept like children. The result they must have antic.i.p.ated, but they had been wrought to a high condition of nervous excitement, due in part to the circ.u.mstance that they were unable to discuss the business of the convention in public.

The disagreeable silence which followed the announcement of the vote, was broken by Mr. Francis Granger, who counseled calmness and deliberation, and finally, he appealed to the States of the majority to move a reconsideration. This was done by the State of Illinois, through Mr. Turner, who made the motion. The next day the resolution was adopted by a vote of nine to eight. Upon this question the Missouri delegation refused to vote, under the lead, it was said, of General Doniphan, who denounced the resolutions as not satisfactory to either side. Doniphan was a large, muscular man, who acquired some fame in the Mexican war as the leader of a cavalry expedition to California, of which nothing was heard for about six months.

The reconsideration was attributed to the interference of Mr. Lincoln or of his recognized friends.

When the convention was about to adjourn, President Tyler made a speech in which he thrice invoked the blessing of Heaven upon the doings of the convention, and from that act he went to Richmond, and in less than three days he was an avowed and recognized leader in secession.

Indeed, it was understood in the convention that Mr. Seddon was his representative on the floor. The doings of the Congress were endorsed by Maryland, but in the National Congress, and in the States North and South they were neglected utterly. The result which Mr. Seward antic.i.p.ated was not realized by the country.

After the arrival of Mr. Lincoln the Ma.s.sachusetts delegation called upon him to recommend the selection of Mr. Chase for the Treasury Department in preference to General Cameron, and to say that the capitalists of the East would have more confidence in the former than in the latter. Mr. Lincoln did not say what his purposes were, but he made this remark:

"From what I hear, I think Mr. Chase is about one hundred and fifty to any other man's hundred."

On the Sat.u.r.day next but one, preceding the 4th of March, we called upon Mr. Buchanan at about eleven o'clock in the morning. He said that he should prefer to see us in the evening. In the evening we found him alone. He at once commenced conversation, which he continued with but slight interruptions on our part. His chief thought seemed to be to avert bloodshed during his administration. Next, he thought he had been wronged by both sections. Said he:

"When I rebuked the North for their personal-liberty bills, the South applauded; but when I condemned the secession movement, then they turned against me."

He referred to the _Charleston Mercury_ as having been very unjust, and then putting his feet together, and with his head on one shoulder, he said:

"I am like a man on a narrow isthmus, without a friend on either side."

Within a few days of this interview, we called upon General Ca.s.s, who was then living in a house that is now annexed to the Arlington Hotel.

He had retired from the Cabinet of Mr. Buchanan, and he had regained something of his standing in the North, but he had been so long the advocate of compromises and the servant of the slave power, that he was unable to place himself in line with the movement that was destined to destroy slavery. The slave power had more vitality than slavery itself; and after a third of a century its poison still disturbs the politics of the country. The call was made in the forenoon. General Ca.s.s sat at a small, plain table, engaged in writing. He was in a large room, from which the furniture, including the carpets, had been removed. He said that he had been kept in Was.h.i.+ngton by the illness of his daughter, and that upon her improvement he should leave for Michigan. He was dressed in a much worn suit of black--his s.h.i.+rt had seen more than one day's service--he had not been shaved recently, and his russet-colored wig was on awry. The room had an aspect of desolation, and General Ca.s.s appeared like a man to whom life had nothing of interest. As soon as the ceremony of introduction was over, he commenced walking and talking, while the tears ran down his wan and worn cheeks. He gave us an account of his early life, of his residence in Virginia, and then he said:

"I crossed the Ohio with only a dollar in my pocket. I went to Michigan. I was four times Governor of the Territory, and on more than one occasion I was confirmed by the Senate without a single dissenting vote. I have been a Senator, and Minister to France; and I am going home to Michigan to die. If I wanted the office of constable, there isn't a town in the State that would elect me."

He reminded me of Cardinal Wolsey, rather than of the Senator, Minister to France, and Secretary of the Department of State that he had been.

He spoke of his course in politics, the substance of which was that he had always opposed secession and nullification, although he had maintained the right of the States to hold slaves if they chose to tolerate the inst.i.tution.

General Ca.s.s was the last of the statesmen of the middle period of our history whom it was my fortune to meet. As a whole, and as individuals their fortunes were unenviable. They struggled against the order of things. They accomplished nothing, unless it may be said of them, that they kept the s.h.i.+p afloat. Their memories deserve commiseration, possibly grat.i.tude. No effort of theirs could have secured the abolition of slavery. Any vigorous movement in that direction would have ended in the destruction of the government. From John Adams to Lincoln, only three important measures remain: The acquisition of Louisiana, the acquisition of California, and the Independent Treasury Bill. The war of 1812 was unwise, and in conduct it was weak. The policy of that middle period in regard to paper money, to internal improvements, in regard to the protection of domestic industry, and in regard to slavery has been set aside or overthrown by the better judgment of recent years. Yet so much are statesmen and parties the servants or victims of events, that our opinions should be tolerant of the men who kept the system in motion. Slavery was an inheritance, and time was required for its destruction.

I returned to Ma.s.sachusetts without waiting for the inauguration.

As I spoke in the convention upon the request of the Republican members of the New York delegation, and as the Representative of the Ma.s.sachusetts delegation; and as my remarks were not criticized adversely by either party, I reproduce the speech as it was reported by Mr. Chittenden:

SPEECH IN PEACE CONVENTION

I have not been at all clear in my own mind as to when, and to what extent, Ma.s.sachusetts should raise her voice in this convention. She has heard the voice of Virginia, expressed through her resolutions, in this crisis of our country's history. Ma.s.sachusetts hesitated, not because she was unwilling to respond to the call of Virginia, but because she thought her honor touched by the manner of that call and the circ.u.mstances attending it. She had taken part in the election of the 6th of November. She knew the result. It accorded well with her wishes. She knew that the government whose political head for the next four years was then chosen was based upon a Const.i.tution which she supposed still had an existence. She saw that State after State had left that government,--seceded is the word used,--had gone out from this great confederacy, and that they were defying the Const.i.tution and the Union.

Charge after charge has been vaguely made against the North. It is attempted here to put the North on trial. I have listened with grave attention to the gentleman from Virginia to-day; but I have heard no specification of these charges. Ma.s.sachusetts hesitated, I say: she has her own opinion of the Government and the Union. I know Ma.s.sachusetts; I have been into every one of her more than three hundred towns; I have seen and conversed with her men and her women; and I know there is not a man within her borders who would not to-day gladly lay down his life for the preservation of the Union.

Ma.s.sachusetts has made war upon slavery wherever she had the right to do it; but, much as she _abhors_ the inst.i.tution, she would sacrifice everything rather than a.s.sail it where she has not the right to a.s.sail it.

Can it be denied, gentlemen, that we have elected a President in a legal and const.i.tutional way? It cannot be denied; and yet you tell us, in tones that cannot be misunderstood, that, as a precedent condition of his inauguration, we must give you these guarantees.

Ma.s.sachusetts hesitated, not because her blood was not stirred, but because she insisted that the government and the inauguration should go in the manner that would have been observed had Mr. Lincoln been defeated. She felt that she was touched in a tender point when invited here under such circ.u.mstances.

It is true, and I confess it frankly, that there are a few men at the North who have not yielded that support to the grand idea upon which this confederated Union stands that they should have yielded; who have been disposed to infringe upon, to attack certain rights which the entire North, with these exceptions, accords to you. But are you of the South free from the like imputations? The John Brown invasion was never justified at the North. If, in the excitement of the time, there were those to be found who did not denounce it as gentlemen think they should, it was because they knew it was a matter wholly outside the Const.i.tution,--that it was a crime to which Virginia would give adequate punishment.

Gentlemen, I believe--yes, I know--that the people of the North are as true to the government and the Union of the States now as our fathers were when they stood shoulder to shoulder upon the field, fighting for the principles upon which that Union rests. If I thought the time had come when it would be fit or proper to consider amendments to the Const.i.tution at all, I believe that we should have no trouble with you, except upon this question of slavery in the Territories. You cannot demand of us at the North anything that we will not grant, unless it involves a sacrifice of our principles. These we shall not sacrifice; these you must not ask us to abandon. I believe, further,--and I speak in all frankness, for I wish to delude no one,--if the Const.i.tution and the Union cannot be preserved and effectually maintained without these new guarantees for slavery, then the Union is not worth preserving.

The people of the North have always submitted to the decisions of the properly const.i.tuted powers. This obedience has been unpleasant enough when they thought those powers were exercised for sectional purposes; but it has always been implicitly yielded. I am ready, even now, to go home and say that, by the decision of the Supreme Court, slavery exists in all the Territories of the United States. We submit to the decision, and accept its consequences. But, in view of all the circ.u.mstances attending that decision, was it quite fair, was it quite generous, for the gentleman from Maryland to say that under it, by the adoption of these propositions, the South was giving up everything, the North giving up nothing? Does he suppose the South is yielding the point in relation to any territory which, by any probability, would become slave territory? Something more than the decision of the Supreme Court is necessary to establish slavery anywhere. The decision may give the _right_ to establish it: other influences must control the question of its actual establishment.

I am opposed, further, to any restrictions on the acquisition of territory. They are unnecessary. The time may come when they would be troublesome. We may want the Canadas. The time may come when the Canadas may wish to unite with us. Shall we tie up our hands so that we cannot receive them, or make it forever your interest to oppose their annexation? Such a restriction would be, by the common consent of the people, disregarded.

There are seven States out of the Union already. They have organized what they claim is an independent government. They are not to be coerced back, you say. Are the prospects very favorable that they will return of their own accord? But _they_ will annex territory. They are already looking to Mexico. If left to themselves, they would annex her and all her neighbors, and we should lose our highway to the Pacific coast. They would acquire it, and to us it would be lost forever.

The North will consider well before she consents to this, before she even permits it. Ever since 1820, we have pursued, in this respect, a uniform policy. The North will hesitate long, before, by accepting the condition you propose, she deprives the nation of the valuable privilege, the unquestionable right, of acquiring new territory in an honorable way.

I have tried to look upon these propositions of the majority of the committee as true measures of pacification. I have listened patiently to all that has been said in their favor. But I am still unconvinced, or, rather, I am convinced that they will do nothing for the Union.

They will prove totally inadequate; may perhaps be positively mischievous. The North, the free States, will not adopt them,--will not consent to these new endors.e.m.e.nts of an inst.i.tution which they do not like, which the believe to the injurious to the interests of the republic; and if they did adopt them, as they could only do by a sacrifice of principles which you should not expect, the South would not be satisfied: the slave States would not fail to find pretexts for a course of action upon which I think they have already determined.

I see in these propositions anything but true measures of pacification.

But the North will never consent to the separation of the States. If the South persist in the course on which she has entered, we shall march our armies to the Gulf of Mexico, or you will march yours to the Great Lakes. There can be no peaceful separation. There is one way by which war may be avoided, and the Union preserved. It is a plain and a const.i.tutional way. If the slave States will abandon the design which we must infer from the remarks of the gentleman from Virginia they have already formed, will faithfully abide by their const.i.tutional obligations, and remain in the union until their rights are in _fact_ invaded, all will be well. But, if they take the responsibility of involving the country in a civil war, of breaking up the government which our fathers founded and our people love, but one course remains to those who are true to that government. They must and will defend it at every sacrifice--if necessary, to the sacrifice of their lives.

At the close of the session, and upon the request of my a.s.sociates upon the commission, I wrote a report to Governor Andrew, which was signed by all the members of the delegation. Governor Andrew submitted the report, with his approval, to the Legislature the 25th day of March.

The character of the convention, and something of the condition of the country may be gathered from the following extracts from the report:

"The resolutions of the State of Virginia were pa.s.sed on the 19th of January; and it was expected that within sixteen days thereafter the representatives of this vast country would a.s.semble for the purpose of devising, maturing, and recommending alterations in the Const.i.tution of the Republic. As a necessary consequence, the people were not consulted in any of the States. In several, the commissioners were appointed by the executive of each without even an opportunity to confer with the Legislature; in others, the consent of the representative body was secured, but in no instance were the people themselves consulted. The measures proposed were comparatively new; the important ones were innovations upon the established principles of the Government, and none of them had ever been submitted to public scrutiny. They related to the inst.i.tution of slavery; and the experience of the country justifies the a.s.sertion that any proposition for additional securities to slavery under the flag of the nation, must be fully discussed and well understood before its adoption, or it will yield a fearful harvest of woe in dissentions and controversies among the people. Nor could the undersigned have justified the act to themselves, if they had concurred in asking Congress to propose amendments to the Const.i.tution unless they were prepared also to advocate the adoption of the amendments by the people.

"It is due to truth to say that the Convention did not possess all the desirable characteristics of a deliberative a.s.sembly. It was in some degree disqualified for the performance of the important task a.s.signed to it, by the circ.u.mstances of its const.i.tution, to which reference has been already made. Moreover, there were members who claimed that certain concessions must be granted that the progress of the secession movement might be arrested; and on the other hand there were men who either doubted or denied the wisdom of such concessions.

"The circ.u.mstances were extraordinary. Within the preceding ninety days the integrity of the Union had been a.s.sailed by the attempt of six States to overthrow its authority; seven other States were disaffected, and some of them had a.s.sumed a menacing and even hostile att.i.tude. The political disturbances had been a.s.sociated with or followed by financial distress.

"The Convention was then a body of men without a recognized and ascertained const.i.tuency, called together in an exigency and without preparation, and invited to initiate measures for the amendment of the Const.i.tution in most important particulars, and all at a moment when the public mind was swayed by fears and alarms such as have never before been experienced by the American people.

"In these circ.u.mstances the undersigned thought it inexpedient to propose amendments to the Const.i.tution, believing that so important an act should not be initiated and accomplished without the greatest deliberation and care. Nor could the undersigned satisfy themselves that any or all of the proposed amendments would even tend, in any considerable degree, to the preservation of the Union. Although inquiries were repeatedly made, no a.s.surance was given that any proposition of amendment would secure the return of the seceded States; and it was admitted that several of the border States would ultimately unite with the Gulf States, either within or without the limits of the Union, as might be dictated by events yet in the future. Indeed, no proposition was in any degree acceptable to the majority of delegates from the border slave States that did not provide for the extension of slavery to the Territories, and its protection and security therein."

XXV THE OPENING OF THE WAR