81. Buchanan’s Defence, pp. 112-113.

82. Speech in the Senate, December 18, 1860. Congressional Globe, p. 119.

83. The instructions will be quoted hereafter.

84. See the controversy between General Scott and Mr. Buchanan in 1862; Mr. Buchanan’s letter of October 28, 1862.

85. Mr. Buchanan said, in 1862, that he had no recollection of some of the details of the conversation imputed to him by General Scott, and that the General’s memory must be defective. See Mr. Buchanan’s letters of 1862, in the National Intelligencer.

86. Ex. Doc., H. R., vol. vi, No. 26, p 6.

87. This account, although written and published in 1866 (Buchanan’s Defence, p. 167), was founded on and embodied the substance of the private memorandum made by the President on the back of the letter, immediately after the termination of the interview. Two of the gentlemen who signed the letter, Messrs. Miles and Keitt, published at Charleston an account of this interview, in which they did not intimate that anything in the nature of a pledge passed on either side. (See Appleton’s “American Annual Cyclopedia” for 1861, p. 703.)

88. Mr. Jefferson Davis, although not directly asserting that the President gave any pledge not to send reinforcements or not to permit the military status to be changed, says that “the South Carolinians understood Mr. Buchanan as approving of that suggestion, although declining to make any formal pledge;” and he adds, that after Anderson’s removal from Moultrie to Sumter, the authorities and people of South Carolina considered it “as a violation of the implied pledge of a maintenance of the status quo,” and he gives this as a reason why the remaining forts and other public property were at once seized by the State. (Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, I., 212-213.) If the South Carolina members of Congress told Mr. Davis that the President assented to or approved of their proviso, they told him what was not true. He does not say that they ever did tell him so. If they gave their own people and State authorities to understand that there was any implied pledge of a maintenance of the status quo, the fact was exactly the other way. They have never said that they gave their people and authorities so to understand Mr. Buchanan’s language.

89. The remarkable fact that this demand was made before South Carolina had “seceded,” and before Anderson’s removal, although the demand was subsequently withdrawn, shows how early the Executive of South Carolina had formed the determination to treat the presence of the United States troops in Charleston harbor as an offence against the dignity and safety of the State.

90. Mr. Jefferson Davis has erroneously given to this letter the date of December 30th. Its true date was December 31st. (See Mr. Davis’s Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, vol. I., p. 592.)

91. In the North American Review, during the year 1879, certain papers were published under the title of “Diary of a Public Man,” without disclosure of the authorship. These papers purported to be passages from a diary kept by a person in some public, or quasi public, position in Washington, during the autumn and winter of 1860-61. Inquiry by the author of this work has failed to elicit any information of the name of the writer, the editor of the Review declining to disclose it. The statements made in these papers are therefore anonymous, and readers will judge how far they should be regarded as reliable materials of history. There is, however, one of these statements, which it is my duty to notice, because the unknown writer professes to make it on the authority of Senator Douglas. It purports to have been committed to writing on the 28th of February, 1861, and is as follows: “Before going, Senator Douglas had a word to say about President Buchanan and the South Carolina commissioners. He tells me that it has now been ascertained that the President nominated his Pennsylvania collector at Charleston on the very day, almost at the very moment, when he was assuring Colonel Orr, through one of his retainers, that he was disposed to accede to the demands of South Carolina, if they were courteously and with proper respect presented to him. They rewrote their letter accordingly, submitted it to the President’s agents, who approved it and sent it to the White House. This, Senator Douglas says, was on January 3d, in the morning. The commissioners spent the afternoon in various places, and dined out early. On coming in, they found their letter to the President awaiting them. It had been returned to them by a messenger from the White House, about three o'clock P. M., and on the back was an indorsement, not signed by any one, and in a clerkly handwriting, to the effect that the President declined to receive the communication. They ordered their trunks packed at once, and left for home by way of Richmond, on the four o'clock morning train, feeling, not unreasonably, that they had been both duped and insulted.”—(North American Review, vol. cxxix, p. 269.)

There are a very few grains of truth in this story, mixed with a great deal of untruth. Mr. Douglas may have found it floating about Washington, and may have repeated it to the diarist who remains shrouded in mystery. The nomination of a collector for the port of Charleston was made to the Senate on the same day on which the President returned the letter of the commissioners. This was on the 2d of January, not the 3d. But it cannot be true that the President, through any channel, assured Colonel Orr that he was disposed to accede to the demands of South Carolina, if courteously and with proper respect presented to him; or that they had written one letter which was in improper terms, and then wrote another in proper terms, and sent it, after it had been submitted to “the President’s agents,” and been by them received. The actual occurrence was as follows: The sole personal interview which the President had with the commissioners was on the 28th of December. On the 29th they presented to him in writing their demand for the withdrawal of the troops from the harbor of Charleston as a preliminary step to any negotiation. On the 31st the President’s answer, settled in a meeting of the cabinet, was transmitted to them. It was a positive and distinct refusal to withdraw the troops. The reply of the commissioners, dated on the 2d of January, reached the White House at about three o'clock on that day, while the cabinet was in session. “It was,” says Mr. Buchanan, “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 much indignation among all the members.” (Buchanan’s Defence, p. 183.) The President thereupon wrote upon a slip of paper, which is now before me, the following words: “This paper, just presented to the President, is of such a character that he declines to receive it.” This slip he handed immediately to his private secretary, to be indorsed on the commissioners' letter. Of what then happened, I find the following memorandum in the handwriting of the secretary:

The paper which, I am told, came in this envelope, was handed to me by the President at about 3:30 o'clock, with instructions to enclose it in an envelope and direct it to Hon. R. W. Barnwell, James H. Adams and James S. Orr, and to deliver it to them or either of them. I directed it accordingly, and proceeded to the lodgings of the gentlemen addressed in Franklyn Row. I was informed at the door by a servant that neither of the gentlemen were in. Having met Mr. Trescot at the door, I inquired whether he would receive the paper. He declined to do so, on the ground that he had no official connection with the gentlemen to whom it was addressed. At my request he then proceeded with me to the room which these gentlemen occupied for business purposes, and, also at my request, witnessed the deposit of the paper upon a table in that room; the same room in which I found two of the gentlemen—Messrs. Barnwell and Adams—on a previous occasion (Monday last), when I delivered to the first-named gentleman a letter similarly addressed from the President. While I was in the room Hon. Jefferson Davis and Senator Wigfall came in, the first of whom certainly, and the latter probably, did see the paper deposited, as stated. This memorandum made within an hour after the delivery or deposit of the paper. 68

Executive Office.

92. Buchanan’s Defence, p. 184.

93. Buchanan’s Defence, p. 184.

94. A copy of this intended reply may be found in Mr. Jefferson Davis’s work, vol. i., Appendix G.

95. A North American Review, vol. cxxix, pp. 484-485.

96. See the correspondence between General Dix and Major Anderson, post.

97. How Mr. Stanton came to receive this appointment, may be learned by referring to a private letter from Mr. Buchanan, quoted hereafter.

98. General Dix had for some time held the office of Postmaster in the City of New York; a place he consented to fill under the circumstances disclosed in the following letter to President Buchanan:

My Dear Sir:—

I have received your favor of the 12th inst., and am greatly indebted to you for your kind suggestion in regard to the appointment of commissioners under the treaty with Paraguay. I should regret very much to decline any service in which you think I could be useful. I am at this moment very much occupied here with matters which concern the comfort of my family, and I should wish, before giving a final answer, to communicate with my wife, who is in Boston. I had scarcely read your letter before I received a note from Mr. Schell, who desired to see me in regard to the astounding defalcation in the city post office. He said it was deemed important to place some one in the office in whom the administration could confide, and that my name had been suggested among others. Now, my dear sir, you can readily understand that it is a place I do not want, and could not consent to hold for any length of time. But, as I said to Mr. Schell, if you desire it, and think I can be of any service to your administration, in cooperating with the proper department to put matters on a right footing, I should not, under the peculiar circumstances, feel at liberty to disregard your wishes. In other words, I think you have the right, under the exigencies of the case, to command the services of any friend. I am, dear sir, sincerely yours,

For an account of General Dix’s connection with the New York post office, and of his services to Mr. Buchanan’s administration as Secretary of the Treasury, see his Life, by his son, the Rev. Morgan Dix, S. T. D., recently published by Harper & Brothers.

99. General Scott’s letter of November 8, 1862, published in the National Intelligencer.

100. Buchanan’s Defence, p. 228.

101. When this extraordinary blunder was brought to the General’s attention, in his controversy with Mr. Buchanan, in 1862, he said that the only error he had made was in giving March instead of January as the time when the order was countermanded, and that this error was immaterial! He still insisted that he gave the information to Mr. Holt that the shipment had commenced, and that he stopped it. It is certainly most remarkable that he did not see that time was of the essence of his charge against the Buchanan administration, for his charge imputed to that administration a delay from January to March in countermanding the order, and claimed for himself the whole merit of the discovery and the countermand. He would better have consulted his own dignity and character if he had frankly retracted the whole statement. But probably the story of the Pittsburgh ordnance, as he put it, has been believed by thousands, to the prejudice of President Buchanan. (See the letters of General Scott, published in the National Intelligencer.)

102. Buchanan’s Defence, chapter vii.

103. All the remaining territory south of the line of 36° 30´ was an Indian reservation, secured to certain tribes by solemn treaties.

104. Mr. Greeley’s utterances must be cited, that I may not be supposed to have in any way misrepresented him. But three days after Mr. Lincoln’s election, the New York Tribune announced such sentiments as the following: “If the cotton States shall become satisfied that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace. The right to secede may be a revolutionary one, BUT IT EXISTS NEVERTHELESS...... We must ever resist the right of any State to remain in the Union and nullify or defy the laws thereof. To withdraw from the Union is quite another matter; and whenever a considerable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, WE SHALL RESIST ALL COERCIVE MEASURES DESIGNED TO KEEP IT IN. We hope never to live in a Republic whereof one section is pinned to another by bayonets.”

And again on the 17th December, three days before the secession of South Carolina: “If it [the Declaration of Independence] justified the secession from the British Empire of three millions of colonists in 1776, we do not see why it would not justify the secession of five millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861. If we are mistaken on this point, why does not some one attempt to show wherein and why? For our part, while we deny the right of slaveholders to hold slaves against the will of the latter, we cannot see how twenty millions of people can rightfully hold ten, or even five, in a detested Union with them by military force. ...... If seven or eight contiguous States shall present themselves authentically at Washington, saying, ‘We hate the Federal Union; we have withdrawn from it; we give you the choice between acquiescing in our secession and arranging amicably all incidental questions on the one hand, and attempting to subdue us on the other,’ we would not stand up for coercion, for subjugation, for we do not think it would be just. We hold the right of self-government, even when invoked in behalf of those who deny it to others. So much for the question of principle.”

In this course the Tribune persisted from the date of Mr. Lincoln’s election until after his inauguration, employing such remarks as the following: “Any attempt to compel them by force to remain would be contrary to the principles enunciated in the immortal Declaration of Independence, contrary to the fundamental ideas on which human liberty is based.”

Even after the cotton States had formed their confederacy, and adopted a provisional constitution at Montgomery, on the 23d February, 1861, it gave them encouragement to proceed in the following language: “We have repeatedly said, and we once more insist, that the great principle embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration of American Independence, that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, is sound and just; and that if the slave States, the cotton States or the Gulf States only, choose to form an independent nation, THEY HAVE A CLEAR MORAL RIGHT TO DO SO. Whenever it shall be clear that the great body of Southern people have become conclusively alienated from the Union, and anxious to escape from it, WE WILL DO OUR BEST TO FORWARD THEIR VIEWS.”

105. Messrs. McQueen, Miles, Bonham, Boyce, and Keitt, members of the House of Representatives from South Carolina, on the 8th of December, 1860.

106. See the Index to the Journal of the Senate for this session, pp. 494, 495, 496. One of these memorials, coming from the City Councils of Boston, had the signatures also of over 22,000 citizens, of all shades of political character. Senate Journal of 1860-’61, p. 218.

107. The Clark amendment, which smothered Mr. Crittenden’s resolution, prevailed, because six secession Senators refused to vote against it, preferring to play into the hands of the Republicans. They were Messrs. Benjamin and Slidell, of Louisiana; Iverson, of Georgia; Hemphill and Wigfall, of Texas; and Johnson, of Arkansas. Had they voted with the Senators from the border States and the other Democratic members, the Clark amendment would have been defeated, and the Senate would on that day, before the secession of any State excepting South Carolina, have been brought to a direct vote on Mr. Crittenden’s resolution.

108. “It is proper,” Mr. Buchanan said, “for future reference that the names of those Senators who constituted the majority on this momentous question, should be placed upon record. Every vote given from the six New England States was in opposition to Mr. Crittenden’s resolution. These consisted of Mr. Clark, of New Hampshire; Messrs. Sumner and Wilson, of Massachusetts; Mr. Anthony, of Rhode Island; Messrs. Dixon and Foster, of Connecticut; Mr. Foot, of Vermont; and Messrs. Fessenden and Morrill, of Maine. The remaining eleven votes, in order to make up the 20, were given by Mr. Wade, of Ohio; Mr. Trumbull, of Illinois; Messrs. Bingham and Chandler, of Michigan; Messrs. Grimes and Harlan, of Iowa; Messrs. Doolittle and Durkee, of Wisconsin; Mr. Wilkinson, of Minnesota; Mr. King, of New York; and Mr. Ten Eyck, of New Jersey. It is also worthy of observation, that neither Mr. Hale, of New Hampshire, Mr. Simmons, of Rhode Island, Mr. Collamer, of Vermont, Mr. Seward, of New York, nor Mr. Cameron, of Pennsylvania, voted on the question, although it appears from the journal that all these gentlemen were present in the Senate on the day of the vote. It would be vain to conjecture the reasons why these five Senators refrained from voting on an occasion so important.”important.” (Buchanan’s Defence, p. 143.)

109. Cong. Globe, 1860-61, p. 125.

110. Official Journal of the Convention, pp. 9 and 10.

111. Ibid., p. 42.

112. Ibid., p. 21.

113. Ibid., p. 70.

114. Official Journal, pp. 24 and 25.

115. Ibid., p. 63.

116. Official Journal, pp. 26, 27 and 28.

117. Ibid., p. 28.

118. Ibid., p. 70.

119. Senate Journal, pp. 332, 333.

120. Ibid., p. 437.

121. Ibid., p. 384.

122. Cong. Globe, 1860-’61, p. 1404.

123. Senate Journal, p. 386.

124. National Intelligencer, March 14, 1861.

125. Cong. Globe, pp. 1331, 1332, 1333.

126. House Journal, pp. 446, 448, 449.

127. Letter of October 28, 1862, in the controversy with General Scott, published in the National Intelligencer of November 1, 1862. As a specimen of the intercourse between the President and the secession Senators, after the messages of December 3d and January 8th, take the following notes:—

My Dear Sir:—

I have seen in the Star, and heard from other parties, that Major Beauregard, who had been ordered to West Point as Superintendent of the Military Academy, and had entered on the discharge of his duties there, had been relieved from his command. May I take the liberty of asking you if this has been done with your approbation? Very respectfully, yours,

My Dear Sir:—

With every sentiment of personal friendship and regard, I am obliged to say, in answer to your note of Sunday, that I have full confidence in the Secretary of War; and his acts, in the line of his duty, are my own acts, for which I am responsible.

128. Letter from Mr. Buchanan to the National Intelligencer, October 28, 1862.

129. See a statement published by Mr. Holt in the National Intelligencer, dated March 5, 1861.

130. When General Scott wrote and published, in 1862, his criticisms on Mr. Buchanan’s course, he said that the Star of the West, “but for the hesitation of the master, might, as is generally believed, have delivered at the fort the men and subsistence on board.” He had forgotten that he had sent his own order to the commander of the troops on board that vessel, which would inform him that the Brooklyn was coming to aid and succor him, and that in case he could not land at Fort Sumter, he was to turn back and land his troops at Fort Monroe and discharge the ship! With what propriety then could the General blame the master of the ship for not making an attempt which the General knew he could not make without the support of the Brooklyn?

131. Buchanan’s Defence, p. 144.

132. See Ex. Doc., H. R., vol. ix., No. 61. The reader who consults the documents without prejudice cannot fail to be struck with the arrogance of tone and the extreme nature of the demands, that mark all the papers that emanated from the South Carolina authorities at this period. Nor can he fail, I think, to see that President Buchanan, while he exercised great patience, bore himself throughout with the dignity that belonged to his position. When a paper became too outrageous to be tolerated, it was promptly returned.

133. H. R. Ex. Doc., 1860-’61, vol. ix, Doc. No. 61.

134. Writing on the 25th of June, 1861, to Mr. Buchanan, Mr. Toucey says: “The naval force assembled at Pensacola under your administration consisted of the steamship Brooklyn, the frigate Sabine, the sloop of war Macedonian, the steamer Wyandotte, and for a time the sloop of war St. Louis. Without including the troops on board the Brooklyn, this squadron could have thrown a reinforcement of six or seven hundred men into Fort Pickens at any time.”

135. This order, which was given by the Secretary of War to Captain Vogdes, was founded on and embodied a memorandum of instructions drawn up by the President himself, which now lies before me in his handwriting:

“You are instructed, for the purpose of avoiding a hostile collision, not to land your company and stores at Fort Pickens, upon receiving satisfactory assurances from Major Chase and Mr. Mallory that the fort will not be attacked. The Brooklyn and the other vessels of war in the vicinity will remain, and she will land the company and provisions and defend Fort Pickens, should it be attacked, exercising the utmost vigilance. The President yesterday sent a special message to Congress commending the Virginia Resolutions of Compromise. The commissioners of different States are to meet here on Monday next, 4th February. During their session, a collision of arms ought to be avoided, unless an attack should be made on Fort Pickens, and then it must be repelled.”

136. A. J. Glosbrenner, private secretary to the President. The original memorandum in Mr. Glosbrenner’s handwriting is before me.

137. Message of January 28, 1861.

138. Buchanan’s Defence, p. 206.

139. Cong. Globe, pp. 590, 636.

140. H. J., p. 236. Cong. Globe, p. 601.

141. Buchanan’s Defence, pp. 207, 208.

142. Buchanan’s Defence, p. 209.

143. Buchanan’s Defence, p. 210.

144. The reader who desires to examine the provisional constitution will find it in Mr. Jefferson Davis’s work on the Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Appendix.

145. My authority for this statement is a letter written on the 19th of February to President Buchanan from Philadelphia, by an intimate friend of his, giving an extract from a letter from the telegraph operator, dated at Augusta on the 14th, and reciting the substance of the despatch which the operator had that day forwarded. The letter reached Mr. Buchanan on the same day on which it was written.

146. On the 15th of February, the Montgomery Congress provided for the appointment by their President-elect of three commissioners to the Federal Government, for the negotiation and settlement of a peaceful separation.

147. 1 Stat. at Large, p. 424.

148. 12 U. S. Stat. at Large, p. 281.

149. Cong. Globe, p. 316.

150. Ibid., p. 645, bills of H. R., No. 698.

151. Ibid., p. 1001. bill 1003, H. R.

152. Cong. Globe, p. 1232.

153. Cong. Globe, p. 236, bills H. R., No. 910.

154. H. Journal, p. 465.

155. Buchanan’s Defence, p. 153, et seq.

156. In the 1st vol. of Mr. Jefferson Davis’s work, “Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government,” will be found a full statement of the Confederate side of the story relative to the intercourse between the commissioners and Mr. Seward. I refer to it without either assent or dissent, as it is not my province to examine the truth or falsity of the charge made against the Lincoln administration. It will be seen from the letters written by Mr. Stanton to Mr. Buchanan during March and the early part of April (quoted post), what opinion Mr. Stanton formed from all the information that he could obtain, respecting the course of the new administration.

157. Mr. Hunter, of Virginia.

158. Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, vol. i., p. 264.

159. As Mr. Crawford had no interview with President Buchanan, he could have had none but hearsay evidence of Mr. Buchanan’s state of mind.

160. I have had occasion heretofore to speak of the multitudes of letters received by the President from all quarters of the country, after the promulgation of his annual message of December 3d. The inundation was scarcely less during the months of January and February; and as a general rule, when an answer was necessary or expedient, he made the original draft of it himself. In almost all cases, he noted on the back of letters or other papers which he received, the name of the writer, the date, and the date of the answer. But was he wasting his energies, it may be asked, in the duties of a mere clerk? Turn to his messages; consider the almost daily cabinet consultations, and the incessant attention which he had to give to the state of things in the South, the proceedings of Congress, the condition of public opinion in the North, and the deliberations of the Peace Convention, as well as to the ordinary business of the Government.

161. Regular troops present in the City of Washington, February 27, 1861.

162. The War Department having considered the celebration of this national anniversary by the military arm of the Government as a matter of course.

163. A copy of this correspondence was sent by General Dix to Mr. Buchanan, after the latter had retired to Wheatland. See post.

164. President Buchanan kept before him all the while a table of the Southern States, with the dates of their several secessions, their populations, resources, and other facts, noted by himself, discriminating the cotton and the border States in separate groups.

165. Buchanan’s Defence, p. 161.

166. This despatch became public soon after the commencement of the session of Congress which began in December, 1861.

167. MS. letter from Mr. Toucey to Mr. Buchanan, June 5, 1861.

168. See Senate Bill, No. 537, 36th Congress, 2d session; House Bills, Nos. 968, 969, 1003, same Congress, same session.

169. Ordering Anderson back to Fort Moultrie.

170. It will be noted from the date of this letter that it was written before the story of the “cabinet scene” became current, and therefore Mr. Buchanan could not have been led by that story to give to a member of his family this description of Mr. Stanton’s demeanor towards himself. See also the letters of Mr. Stanton to Mr. Buchanan, quoted post.

171. The Patent Office receipts are now before me. The work entitled “Ladies of the White House,” contains a letter from Lord Lyons about the trifling presents made by the Prince of Wales to Miss Lane.

172. As Secretary of War.