GENERAL SCOTT AGAIN ADVISES THE PRESIDENT—MAJOR ANDERSON'S REMOVAL FROM FORT MOULTRIE TO FORT SUMTER—ARRIVAL OF COMMISSIONERS FROM SOUTH CAROLINA IN WASHINGTON—THEIR INTERVIEW AND COMMUNICATION WITH THE PRESIDENT—THE SUPPOSED PLEDGE OF THE STATUS QUO—THE “CABINET CRISIS” OF DECEMBER 29TH—REPLY OF THE PRESIDENT TO THE SOUTH CAROLINA COMMISSIONERS—THE ANONYMOUS DIARIST OF THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW CONFUTED.
On the 12th of December General Scott arrived in Washington from New York, where he had been ill for a long time. Since the presentation of his “views” of October 29th-30th, the President had not heard from him on the subject of the Southern forts. On the 11th of December Major Anderson, then at Fort Moultrie, and in no danger of attack or molestation by the authorities of South Carolina, had received his instructions from Major Buell, Assistant Adjutant General of the Army, who had been sent by the President expressly to Fort Moultrie, in order that Anderson might be guided in his course with reference to all probable contingencies.[83] The South Carolina convention had not assembled when Anderson received his instructions. General Scott, on the 15th of December, had an interview with the President, in which he urged that three hundred men be sent to reinforce Anderson at Fort Moultrie. The President declined to give this order, for the following reasons: First, Anderson was fully instructed what to do in case he should at any time see good reason to believe that there was any purpose to dispossess him of any of the forts. Secondly, at this time, December 15th, the President believed—and the event proved the correctness of his belief—that Anderson was in no danger of attack. He and his command were then treated with marked kindness by the authorities and people of Charleston. Thirdly, the President, in his annual message, had urged upon Congress measures of conciliation by the adoption of certain amendments of the Constitution; and Mr. Crittenden’s propositions, of substantially the same character as those of the President, called the “Crittenden Compromise,” were before the Senate. Strong hopes were at this time entertained throughout the country that Congress would adopt these or some other measures to quiet the agitation in the South, so that South Carolina, in case she should “secede,” would be left alone in her course. Under all these circumstances, to have sent additional troops to Fort Moultrie would only have been, as Mr. Buchanan afterward said, “to impair the hope of compromise, to provoke collision and disappoint the country.”[84]
On the same day, General Scott sent a note to the President, reminding him of General Jackson’s measures in regard to the threatened nullification of the tariff in 1833; an occasion, the circumstances of which bore little resemblance to the situation of the country in December, 1860, as I have already had reason to say in commenting on General Scott’s “views” of October 29th-30th.
In the controversy which General Scott had with Mr. Buchanan in 1862, in the National Intelligencer, the General reported the President as saying to him, on the 15th of December, 1860, among other reasons for not reinforcing Anderson at that time, that he should await the action of the South Carolina convention, in the expectation that a commission would be appointed and sent to negotiate with him (the President) and Congress, respecting the secession of the State, and the property of the United States within the borders of that State; and that if Congress should decide against the secession, he would then send a reinforcement, and would telegraph to Anderson to hold the forts against any attack. General Scott made two palpable mistakes in thus representing what the President said to him on the 15th of December, 1860.[85] In the first place, as will presently appear, the President never gave any person or persons claiming to represent South Carolina to understand that he would receive a commission to negotiate with him for an admission of the right of secession, or for a surrender of the forts. In his annual message, he had most distinctly and emphatically declared that, as an executive officer, he had no power whatever to hold such a negotiation, but that it belonged to Congress to deal with the property of the United States as it should see fit; and that it was his duty to maintain the possession of the forts until Congress should authorize and direct him to surrender them. When commissioners were subsequently appointed by the State of South Carolina, they were told by the President that he could not receive them in a diplomatic character, and that he would not himself negotiate with them for a surrender of the forts. In the next place, the President could not have told General Scott that he would send a reinforcement to Anderson in a certain contingency, and would then telegraph him to hold the forts. Anderson had already received instructions to hold them, and had been directed how to act.
Mr. Buchanan has said—and it deserves to be quoted—that “it is scarcely a lack of charity to infer that General Scott knew at the time he made this recommendation (on the 15th of December), that it must be rejected. The President could not have complied with it, the position of affairs remaining unchanged, without at once reversing his entire policy, and without a degree of inconsistency amounting almost to self-stultification.” He adds:
This, the General’s second recommendation, was wholly unexpected. He had remained silent for more than six weeks from the date of his supplemental “views,” convinced, as the President inferred, that he had abandoned the idea of garrisoning all these forts with “the five companies only” within his reach. Had the President never so earnestly desired to reinforce the nine forts in question, at this time, it would have been little short of madness to undertake the task with the small force at his command. Without authority to call forth the militia, or accept the services of volunteers for the purpose, this whole force now consisted of six hundred recruits, obtained by the General since the date of his “views,” in addition to the five regular companies. Our army was still out of reach on the remote frontiers, and could not be withdrawn during midwinter in time for this military operation. Indeed, the General had never suggested such a withdrawal. He knew that had this been possible, the inhabitants on our distant frontiers would have been immediately exposed to the tomahawk and scalping knife of the Indians.
While he was unwilling at this moment to send reinforcements into the harbor of Charleston, and thereby to incur the risk of provoking the secession of other States, the President did not neglect the use of any means that were in his power to prevent the secession of South Carolina. He sent the Hon. Caleb Cushing to Charleston, with a letter to Governor Pickens, in which he said:
From common notoriety I assume the fact that the State of South Carolina is now deliberating on the propriety and necessity of seceding from the Union. Whilst any hope remains that this may be prevented, or even retarded, so long as to enable the people of her sister States to have opportunity to manifest their opinion regarding the matters which may have impelled the State to take this step, it is my duty to exert all the means in my power to avoid so dread a catastrophe. I have, therefore, deemed it advisable to send to you the Hon. Caleb Cushing, to counsel and advise with you, in regard to the premises, and to communicate such information as he may possess concerning the condition of public opinion in the North touching the same. I need scarcely add, that I entertain full confidence in his integrity, ability, and prudence. He will state to you the reasons which exist to prevent, or to delay, the action of the State for the purpose which I have mentioned.
But notwithstanding the efforts of the President to induce the authorities and people of South Carolina to await the action of Congress and the development of public opinion at the North on the recommendations of his message, events were hurrying on in that State with fearful rapidity. The leading spirits in the secession movement did not desire the success of the President’s recommendations. Encouraged, not by anything that they could find in the message, or by anything that they could learn of the President’s intentions, but by what they had learned of the “views” of the General in Chief of the Federal army, and by other indications of the same kind, they determined to try secession, in the belief that the people and Government of the United States would not resort to war. They initiated and conducted their measures with a supreme and lofty disregard of all the consequences, because they believed that they could throw the onus of those consequences upon the Government of the Union. It was in vain that they were warned by the President that their doctrine of secession, pushed to its results, would oblige him to meet their claim, by virtue of a State ordinance, of dispossessing the United States of the property which belonged to the Government, with all the means at his disposal. It is one of the most singular political phenomena recorded in history, that under such a system of Government as ours, men should have believed not only that a State ordinance of secession would dissolve all the relations between the inhabitants of that State and the Government of the United States, but that it would ipso facto transfer to the State property which the State had ceded to that Government by solemn deeds of conveyance. The principle of public law on which this claim was supposed to be based, involved in its application the assumption that South Carolina, becoming by her own declaration a nation foreign to the United States, was entitled to take peaceable possession of all the property which the United States held within her limits, and to forbid the vessels of the United States from entering her waters in order to reach that property. Upon any view of the nature of the Federal Constitution, even upon the theory that it was a mere league between sovereign States, dissoluble in regard to any State at the will of its people, it would not have followed that the ordinance of dissolution would divest the title of the United States to their property. Yet it is an undeniable fact that the people and authorities of South Carolina initiated and carried out their secession, upon the claim that their interpretation of the Federal Constitution must be accepted by the whole country; that their fiat alone made them an independent nation; that it divested the United States of whatever property the Government held within their borders; and that if these claims were not submitted to, the consequence would be that South Carolina must make them good by all the power she could use. The subsequent change of attitude, by which it was proposed to negotiate and pay for the possession of the property, or the theory that the forts were built by the Federal Government for the protection of the State, should not lead any historian to overlook the demand which the authorities of the State first presented at Washington, or the manner in which it was met by President Buchanan.
On the 20th of December, the Convention of South Carolina, without a dissenting voice, adopted an ordinance of secession, which purported to dissolve the connection between the State of South Carolina and the Government of the United States. A copy of the ordinance, with the signatures of all the members, and with the great seal of the State, was formally transmitted to the President. On the 22d, three eminent citizens of the State, Robert W. Barnwell, James H. Adams and James L. Orr, were appointed to proceed to Washington, to treat with the Government of the United States concerning the new relations which the ordinance was supposed to have established between that Government and the people of South Carolina. The commissioners arrived in Washington on the 26th. On the next morning, intelligence reached them that on the night of the 25th, Major Anderson had secretly dismantled Fort Moultrie, spiked his cannon, burnt his gun-carriages, and transferred his troops to Fort Sumter, as if he were about to be attacked. This information they sent to the President.
Before proceeding with an account of what followed this occurrence, in the interview between the President and the commissioners, this movement of Major Anderson must be carefully described. It has been much praised as a bold, skillful and wise act, dictated by a purpose to make the people of South Carolina feel that the Government of the United States was not to be trifled with; and the merit of Major Anderson has been magnified by the suggestion that if he had been promptly reinforced, after the removal, he never would have been driven out of Fort Sumter and out of the harbor of Charleston. The simple truth is, that Anderson was a brave, vigilant and faithful officer, acting under instructions which had been carefully given to him, and which allowed him a considerable latitude of judgment in regard to remaining in Fort Moultrie or removing to any other of the forts within the limits of his command. He was a man of Southern birth, and all his sympathies were with the South on the questions pending between the two sections. This is avowed in a private letter written by him on the 11th of January, 1861, to a friend in Washington, a copy of which is now lying before me. But he was as true as steel to his military duty as an officer of the United States. He had lost, as he says in this letter, all sympathy with the persons then governing South Carolina, and he had now begun to distrust the purposes of the State authorities. Fort Moultrie was the weakest of all the forts in that harbor belonging to the United States. From the erection of batteries on the shore which commanded this fort, and from other indications taking place after the adoption of the secession ordinance, Anderson believed that the State authorities were about to proceed to some hostile act, and therefore thought the contingency contemplated by his instructions had arrived. He may have been mistaken in this; but neither the appearances at the time, nor the subsequent action of South Carolina, show that he was so. At all events, he acted as any prudent and faithful officer would have acted under the same circumstances; and in order to be able to defend himself better than he could in Fort Moultrie, and with no purpose of attacking the city of Charleston or of making any aggression whatever, he transferred his command to Fort Sumter. The people and authorities of South Carolina chose to consider that his occupation of this fort was an aggressive act, and that he must be ordered back again to Fort Moultrie, or be dislodged; a demand which of itself shows that the State of South Carolina, in the event that her secession should not be submitted to by the Federal Government, expected a civil war and meant to be in the best condition to meet it.
The intelligence of Anderson’s removal to Fort Sumter was received by the President with surprise and regret. He was surprised, because all his previous information led him to believe that Anderson was safe at Fort Moultrie. He regretted the removal, because of its tendency to impel the other cotton States and the border States into sympathy with South Carolina, and thus to defeat the measures by which he hoped to confine the secession to that State. But he never for an instant, then or afterwards, doubted that Anderson’s removal was authorized by his instructions; although he did not suppose that the authorities of the State would attack him, while their commissioners were on the way to Washington for the avowed purpose of negotiating. It is scarcely needful to discuss the question whether South Carolina had good reason to regard this movement of Anderson’s as an act of aggression. In such a state of affairs and of men’s feelings, it was to be expected that complaints would be made of hostile intentions, if any plausible reason could be found for them. But any indifferent person, looking back upon the events, and considering that Anderson was acting under a President who was doing everything in his power to prevent a collision of arms, must see that even if the President had specifically ordered the removal, it was nothing more than a defensive act, done in order to secure the forces of the Government in the occupation of its own forts, and that it could not have been an aggressive movement, unless it should be conceded that those forces had no right to be in Charleston harbor at all.
But there is one assertion which it is now necessary to examine, in relation to this removal, because it has been made the foundation of a charge against the personal good faith and the sound judgment of President Buchanan. It is the charge that previous to Anderson’s removal, the President had pledged himself to preserve the status quo in Charleston harbor, until commissioners to be appointed by the convention of South Carolina should arrive in Washington, and some result of a negotiation should be reached. The first and only interview between the President and the commissioners occurred on the 28th of December. What occurred should be related in the President’s own words:
It was under these circumstances that the President, on Friday, the 28th December, held his first and only interview with the commissioners from South Carolina. He determined to listen with patience to what they had to communicate, taking as little part himself in the conversation as civility would permit. On their introduction, he stated that he could recognize them only as private gentlemen and not as commissioners from a sovereign State; that it was to Congress, and to Congress alone, they must appeal. He, nevertheless, expressed his willingness to communicate to that body, as the only competent tribunal, any propositions they might have to offer. They then proceeded, evidently under much excitement, to state their grievances arising out of the removal of Major Anderson to Fort Sumter, and declared that for these they must obtain redress preliminary to entering upon the negotiation with which they had been entrusted; that it was impossible for them to make any proposition until this removal should be satisfactorily explained; and they even insisted upon the immediate withdrawal of the Major and his troops, not only from Fort Sumter, but from the harbor of Charleston, as a sine qua non to any negotiation.
In their letter to the President of the next day, they repeat their demand, saying;[86] “And, in conclusion, we would urge upon you the immediate withdrawal of the troops from the harbor of Charleston. Under present circumstances they are a standing menace which renders negotiation impossible, and, as our recent experience shows, threatens to bring to a bloody issue questions which ought to be settled with temperance and judgment.” This demand, accompanied by an unmistakable threat of attacking Major Anderson if not yielded to, was of the most extravagant character. To comply with it, the commissioners must have known, would be impossible. Had they simply requested that Major Anderson might be restored to his former position at Fort Moultrie, upon a guarantee from the State that neither it nor the other forts or public property should be molested; this, at the moment, might have been worthy of serious consideration. But to abandon all the forts to South Carolina, on the demand of commissioners claiming to represent her as an independent State, would have been a recognition, on the part of the Executive, of her right to secede from the Union. This was not to be thought of for a moment.
The President replied to the letter of the commissioners on Monday, 31st December. In the meantime information had reached him that the State authorities, without waiting to hear from Washington, had, on the day after Major Anderson’s removal, seized Fort Moultrie, Castle Pinckney, the custom house, and post office, and over them all had raised the Palmetto flag; and, moreover, that every officer of the customs, collector, naval officer, surveyor, appraisers, together with the postmaster, had resigned their appointments; and that on Sunday, the 30th December, they had captured from Major Humphreys, the officer in charge, the arsenal of the United States, containing public property estimated to be worth half a million of dollars. The Government was thus expelled from all its property except Fort Sumter, and no Federal officers, whether civil or military, remained in the city or harbor of Charleston. The secession leaders in Congress attempted to justify these violent proceedings of South Carolina as acts of self-defence, on the assumption that Major Anderson had already commenced hostilities. It is certain that their tone instantly changed after his removal; and they urged its secrecy, the hour of the night when it was made, the destruction of his gun-carriages, and other attendant incidents, to inflame the passions of their followers. It was under these circumstances that the President was called upon to reply to the letter of the South Carolina commissioners, demanding the immediate withdrawal of the troops of the United States from the harbor of Charleston. In this reply, he peremptorily rejected the demand in firm but courteous terms, and declared his purpose to defend Fort Sumter by all the means in his power against hostile attacks, from whatever quarter they might proceed. (Vide his letter of the 31st December, 1860, Ex. Doc. No. 26, H. R., 36th Congress, 2d Session, accompanying President’s message of 8th January, 1861.) To this the commissioners sent their answer, dated on the 2d January, 1861. This was so violent, unfounded, and disrespectful, and so regardless of what is due to any individual whom the people have honored with the office of President, that the reading of it in the cabinet excited indignation among all the members. With their unanimous approbation it was immediately, on the day of its date, returned to the commissioners with the following indorsement; “This paper, just presented to the President, is of such a character, that he declines to receive it.” Surely no negotiation was ever conducted in such a manner, unless, indeed, it had been the predetermined purpose of the negotiators to produce an open and immediate rupture.
In the intended reply of the commissioners, dated January 2, 1861, which the President returned to them, it was asserted in a variety of offensive forms that the removal of Major Anderson to Fort Sumter was a violation of a pledge which the President had previously given not to send reinforcements to the forts in Charleston harbor, and not to change their relative military status. The same thing had been asserted in their letter to the President of December 28th, and it was emphatically and distinctly denied in his answer of the 31st. Is it true, then, as a matter of fact, that such a pledge had ever been given?
1. By his annual message of December 3d, the President stood pledged to the country to exercise all his constitutional powers to maintain possession of the public property, in case of the secession of any State or States. 2. There is no possible channel through which the President could have given the supposed pledge of the status quo, excepting at an interview which took place between him and the South Carolina members of Congress on the 10th of December. If the President then gave such a pledge, it follows that at the end of a week from the date of his annual message he tied his own hands, in advance of the secession of that State, in a manner utterly inconsistent with the purpose declared in his message. 3. The circumstances attending Major Anderson’s removal from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter, and the manner in which the President received and acted upon the information after it reached him and down through every succeeding day of his administration, repel the idea that before the removal he had said or done anything to warrant the authorities of South Carolina in assuming that he was bound to order Anderson back to Fort Moultrie, or not to reinforce him at Fort Sumter. Anderson received his instructions on the 11th of December, through Assistant Adjutant General Buell, to whom they were given verbally by the Secretary of War, and by whom they were reduced to writing, at Fort Moultrie, after he (Buell) arrived there. When reduced to writing, they became the President’s orders, by which Anderson was to be guided. The orders were given with reference to the following contingency: The President believed that, under existing circumstances, the State of South Carolina would not attack any of the forts in Charleston harbor, whilst he allowed their status quo to remain. But in this he might be mistaken. In order to be prepared for what might possibly happen after the State should have “seceded,” the Secretary of the Navy had stationed the war steamer Brooklyn, in complete readiness for sea, in Hampton Roads, to take on board for Charleston three hundred disciplined troops, with provisions and munitions of war, from the neighboring garrison of Fortress Monroe. In this attitude of the secret preparations of the Government, Anderson’s instructions were given to him, in the manner above described, and when they had been reduced to writing and delivered to him by Buell, they read textually as follows:
You are aware of the great anxiety of the Secretary of War, that a collision of the troops with the people of the State shall be avoided, and of his studied determination to pursue a course with reference to the military force and forts in this harbor, which shall guard against such a collision. He has, therefore, carefully abstained from increasing the force at this point, or taking any measures which might add to the present excited state of the public mind, or which would throw any doubt on the confidence he feels that South Carolina will not attempt by violence to obtain possession of the public works, or interfere with their occupancy. But as the counsel and acts of rash and impulsive persons may possibly disappoint these expectations of the Government, he deems it proper that you shall be prepared with instructions to meet so unhappy a contingency. He has, therefore, directed me verbally to give you such instructions. You are carefully to avoid every act which would needlessly tend to provoke aggression, and for that reason you are not, without evident and imminent necessity, to take up any position which could be construed into the assumption of a hostile attitude, but you are to hold possession of the forts in this harbor, and if attacked you are to defend yourself to the last extremity. The smallness of your force will not permit you, perhaps, to occupy more than one of the three forts, but an attack on or an attempt to take possession of either one of them will be regarded as an act of hostility, and you may then put your command into either of them which you may deem most proper to increase its power of resistance. You are also authorized to take similar defensive steps whenever you have tangible evidence of a design to proceed to a hostile act.
The President, when the text of the instructions reached him, directed the Secretary of War to modify them in one particular. Instead of requiring Anderson to defend himself to the last extremity—which was not demanded by any principle of honor or any military rule—he was required to defend himself until no reasonable hope should remain of saving the fort in which he might happen to be. This modification was approved by General Scott.
The instructions, therefore, under which Anderson acted, authorized him to remove his force to any other of the three forts whenever either of them should be attacked, or an attempt should be made to take possession of it, or whenever he might have tangible evidence of a design to proceed to a hostile act. In all this, the Government was acting on the defensive, and was empowering its officer to put his force into either of its forts where, in his judgment, his power of resistance would be most increased. To suppose, therefore, that after these instructions had gone to Anderson, the President made an agreement with certain members of Congress from South Carolina, that the status quo in Charleston harbor, in respect to the three forts, should not be changed, is to suppose something in the highest degree incredible.
4th. The communication between the President and the South Carolina members of Congress was both in writing and in two personal interviews. The written communication remains. Of what took place at the last interview there is an account by Mr. Buchanan himself, founded on memoranda which he made immediately after these gentlemen had left his presence. The first personal interview took place on the 8th of December. The conversation related to the best means of avoiding a hostile collision between the Federal Government and the State of South Carolina. The President desired that the verbal communication should be put in writing, and brought to him in that form. Accordingly on the 10th of December, the same gentlemen brought to him the following letter, signed by five members of Congress from South Carolina, and dated on the previous day:
In compliance with our statement to you yesterday, we now express to you our strong convictions that neither the constituted authorities nor any body of the people of the State of South Carolina will either attack or molest the United States forts in the harbor of Charleston previously to the action of the convention, and we hope and believe, not until an offer has been made through an accredited representative to negotiate for an amicable arrangement of all matters between the State and the Federal Government, provided that no reinforcements shall be sent into those forts, and their relative military status remain as at present.
Washington, December 9, 1860.
The following memorandum is indorsed upon the original letter, in the handwriting of the President:
Monday morning, 10th December, 1860, the within paper was presented to me by Messrs. McQueen, Miles and Bonham. I objected to the word “provided,” as this might be construed into an agreement on my part which I never would make. They said nothing was further from their intention. They did not so understand it, and I should not so consider it. Afterwards, Messrs. McQueen and Bonham called, in behalf of the delegation, and gave me the most positive assurance that the forts and public property would not be molested until after commissioners had been appointed to treat with the Federal Government in relation to the public property, and until the decision was known. I informed them that what would be done was a question for Congress and not for the Executive. That if they [the forts] were assailed, this would put them completely in the wrong, and making them the authors of the civil war. They gave the same assurances to Messrs. Floyd, Thompson and others.
Mr. Buchanan’s subsequent account of the interview at which this letter was delivered to him in person, reads as follows:
Both in this and in their previous conversation, they declared that in making this statement, they were acting solely on their own responsibility, and expressly disclaimed any authority to bind their State. They, nevertheless, expressed the confident belief that they would be sustained both by the State authorities and by the convention, after it should assemble. Although the President considered this declaration as nothing more than the act of five highly respectable members of the House from South Carolina, yet he welcomed it as a happy omen, that by means of their influence collision might be prevented, and time afforded to all parties for reflection and for a peaceable adjustment. From abundant caution, however, he objected to the word “provided” in their statement, lest, if he should accept it without remark, this might possibly be construed into an agreement on his part not to reinforce the forts. Such an agreement, he informed them, he would never make. It would be impossible for him, from the nature of his official responsibility, thus to tie his own hands and restrain his own freedom of action. Still, they might have observed from his message, that he had no present design, under existing circumstances, to change the condition of the forts at Charleston. He must, notwithstanding, be left entirely free to exercise his own discretion, according to exigencies as they might arise. They replied that nothing was further from their intention than such a construction of this word; they did not so understand it, and he should not so consider it.[87]
No one, therefore, I presume, will now question that I am fully justified in asserting, as I do, that Mr. Buchanan gave no pledge, express or implied, formal or informal, that no reinforcements should be sent into Charleston harbor, or that the military status, as it existed at the time of this interview, should remain unchanged, or that he in any way fettered himself on the subject.[88] To have done so in advance of the action of the South Carolina convention, or at any other time, would have been an act of inconsistency and folly quite beyond anything that the worst enemy of the President could have ever desired to impute to him.
But the South Carolina commissioners having asserted in their letter of December 28th, that the removal of Major Anderson from Moultrie to Sumter was a violation of a pledge that had been given by the President, it became important that the denial should instantly follow the assertion. The President, relying not only on his recollection, but on his written memoranda of his conversation with the South Carolina members of Congress, which completely refuted the assertion, did not, in the first draft of an answer to the commissioners, which he prepared with his own hand, repel the assertion as flatly and explicitly as he might have done. He evidently did not at once see that unless he expressly and pointedly denied the assertion, he might be construed as giving an implied assent to it. He was considering how he could best carry on this conference with persons whom he could not receive in the official character in which they came, and with whom he could only deal as distinguished citizens of South Carolina; and his first attention was directed to the means of convincing them that the people of South Carolina could have no excuse for breaking the peace, because it was not his purpose to reinforce Major Anderson unless the authorities of the State should make it absolutely necessary to do so. But to three members of his cabinet, Judge Black, Mr. Holt, and Mr. Stanton, the omission of the President to give a pointed and explicit denial to the assertion of a pledge not to change the military status, appeared a fatal defect in the paper which the President had drawn up. They were also apprehensive that the first and the concluding paragraph of his proposed answer would be regarded as acknowledging the right of South Carolina to be represented near the Government of the United States by diplomatic officers, as if she were a foreign nation. As the draft of an answer which the President had prepared is not in existence, and as the paper of objections presented by Judge Black to the President did not quote the paragraphs objected to, although that paper has been preserved, it is impossible to judge how far the criticism was right, or was called for. Certain it is that at the first and only interview which the President had with those commissioners, he told them in the plainest terms that he could only recognize them as private gentlemen, and not as commissioners of an independent State. He also told them that as to any surrender to South Carolina of the forts, within her limits, or any propositions concerning a sale of them, he, as President, had no authority, and that the only tribunal to which they could apply was Congress. I am inclined to believe that it was the repetition of this suggestion of an appeal to Congress, which caused the three members of the cabinet to fear that the paragraphs to which they objected might be considered as implicitly yielding to the commissioners the point of their diplomatic character. But it is not necessary to speculate about this, because the President’s draft of an answer is no longer accessible, and because it is evident from all that occurred that the President, in drawing up that form of his answer, meant to hold open a door to the commissioners which it would be perfectly proper for him to allow them to enter, if they chose. He meant to give them an opportunity to stipulate that if Major Anderson were restored to his former position, their State would not molest either Fort Moultrie or any of the other forts or property of the United States. Instead of this, their demand from first to last was the withdrawal of all the troops of the United States from the harbor of Charleston, and an abandonment of all the forts to South Carolina; which, if acceded to by the Executive, would have been a recognition by him of her right to secede from the Union. “This,” says Mr. Buchanan, “was not to be thought of for a moment;” and I know of no evidence that he thought of it or contemplated it, when he was writing his first draft of an answer to the South Carolina gentlemen. On the contrary, he steadily resisted it to the end of the conference, and ever afterward.
Another point on which the three members of the cabinet differed from the President was in regard to having any negotiation at all with these gentlemen. It would seem from the paper of objections presented to the President by Judge Black, that the President was at first disposed, in the answer which he had prepared, to express his regret that the commissioners were unwilling to proceed further with the negotiation, after they had learned that he would not receive them as diplomatic agents and would not comply with their extreme demands. Here, then, was a ground for a real, but temporary, difference of opinion between the President and three members of his cabinet. On the one side, the President, holding these South Carolina gentlemen firmly in the attitude of private citizens of great weight and influence in their State, but denying to them any diplomatic character which he could recognize, and making them to clearly understand that the Executive would not withdraw the troops or surrender the forts, might well and wisely have considered that if he could draw from them any proposition which it would be fit for him to present to Congress, that body would have to express an authoritative opinion on the asserted right of secession. The great object of preserving the peace of the country, and of gaining time for angry passions to subside, might thus be gained. On the other hand, Judge Black and his two colleagues, considering, as the President considered, that these South Carolina citizens could not be recognized as commissioners of a foreign State, held that there could legally be no negotiation with them, whether they were willing or not. Reduced to the ultimate difference, the question was whether there should be no further conference at all, because it could have no legal force, or whether there might still be useful further communication with them as private citizens, whose propositions, if they chose to make any in that capacity, the President could submit to Congress for such action as that body might think proper.
There was still another objection made to the President’s draft of an answer, which can be better appreciated, because the words which he proposed to use were quoted in Judge Black’s paper of objections. These were the words: “Coercing a State by force of arms to remain in the Confederacy—a power which I do not believe the Constitution has conferred upon Congress.” This was the same criticism which Judge Black had made upon the message of December 3d, in which none of his colleagues had agreed with him. He now renewed the objection, representing to the President that the words were too vague and might have the effect (which he was sure the President did not intend) to mislead the commissioners concerning his sentiments. Judge Black’s criticism was that to coerce the inhabitants of a State to obey the laws of the United States, a power which the President had always asserted, and meant still to assert, was in one sense to coerce the State to remain in the Union.
Another thing which Judge Black and his two colleagues deprecated was that the President’s answer should contain the most remote implication that Major Anderson acted without authority in removing his force to Fort Sumter. But what there was in the President’s draft of an answer to give rise to such an implication does not appear.
I should not have adverted to these objections to the President’s proposed answer to the South Carolina commissioners, if Judge Black’s paper of objections to it had not been given to the world; nor should I have deemed it necessary to consider or describe anything but the official answer that was actually sent. I hold that a supreme ruler, who acts with constitutional advisers, is entitled to be judged in history, not by what he may have written but did not use, nor by the greater or less necessity for a different paper, nor by the advice or the assistance which he received; but that he should be judged by his official act. But as this difference between President Buchanan and three members of his cabinet in regard to this particular paper, led to what has been called a “cabinet crisis,” and as the objections submitted to him have been published, it is my duty to meet the whole occurrence squarely and directly.
It might be an interesting inquiry, how far a “cabinet crisis” had become necessary. But of this, the gentlemen who composed the cabinet were entitled to judge, because their personal honor and patriotism were involved in the question of their remaining in the cabinet, if they believed that the President was about to change his policy. They appear to have at first supposed that the President, after South Carolina had adopted an ordinance of secession, was about to make such a change in his policy as would virtually reverse his position, and would finally lead to an admission of the right of secession, a result which would inevitably destroy him and his administration. In this, it is certain that they were mistaken. The President had not contemplated any such change in his position. I am justified in asserting this strongly.
Only four days before this cabinet crisis culminated, the President wrote a private letter to an editor in Washington whose paper was supposed to be his organ, strongly rebuking him for an editorial article favoring secession, and informing him that he (the President) must take steps to make known in some authentic way that the paper was not an organ of his administration.
Further than this, in every interview which the President had held before the 29th December, with any persons claiming to represent the people of South Carolina, he had uniformly and firmly declared that on the vital point of withdrawing the troops and surrendering the forts, he should make no concession whatever. But between the 17th and the 21st of December, an occurrence took place, which has a most important bearing upon the question whether the President had, before the 29th of December, determined to make any change in his attitude towards the people and authorities of South Carolina.
It will be remembered that the South Carolina ordinance of secession was adopted on the 20th of December. Before that time, however, the Governor of South Carolina, Mr. Pickens, saw fit to send a special messenger to Washington, with a letter from himself to the President, written at Columbia on the 17th of December, demanding that Fort Sumter be delivered into his (the Governor's) hands. This letter was written eight days before Major Anderson’s removal to Sumter.[89] The following memorandum in the President’s handwriting describes what took place when the Governor’s messenger arrived in Washington:
On Thursday morning, December 20th, 1860, Hamilton, late marshal of South Carolina, sent especially for this purpose, presented me a letter from Governor Pickens, in the presence of Mr. Trescot, dated at Columbia, South Carolina, 17th December (Monday). He was to wait until this day (Friday afternoon) for my answer. The character of the letter will appear from the answer to it, which I had prepared. Thursday night, between nine and ten o'clock, Mr. Trescot called upon me. He said that he had seen Messrs. Bonham and McQueen of the South Carolina delegation; that they all agreed that this letter of Governor Pickens was in violation of the pledge which had been given by themselves not to make an assault upon the forts, but leave them in status quo until the result of an application of commissioners to be appointed by the State was known; that Pickens, at Columbia, could not have known of the arrangements. They, to wit, Bonham, McQueen, and Trescot, had telegraphed to Pickens for authority to withdraw his letter.
Friday morning, 10 o'clock, 21st December.—Mr. Trescot called upon me with a telegram, of which the following is a copy from that which he delivered to me:
December 21st, 1860.—You are authorized and requested to withdraw my letter sent by Doctor Hamilton immediately.
Mr. Trescot read to me from the same telegram, that Governor Pickens had seen Mr. Cushing. The letter was accordingly withdrawn.
The following is the draft of the answer to Governor Pickens which the President was writing with his own hand when he was notified that the Governor’s letter was withdrawn. Of course the answer was not concluded or sent; but it shows with the utmost clearness that the President’s position on the subject of secession was taken, and was not to be changed by any menace of “consequences,” coming from those who were disposed to be, as they must be, the aggressors, if any attempt should be made to disturb the Federal Government in the possession of its forts.