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municated to me, but the events which followed proved that the suggestion was not accepted.

Major Anderson, who commanded the garrison, had many ties and associations that bound him to the South. He performed his part like the true soldier and man of the finest sense of honor that he was; but that it was most painful to him to be charged with the duty of holding the fort as a threat to the people of Charleston is a fact known to many others as well as to myself. We had been cadets together. He was my first acquaintance in that corps, and the friendship then formed was never interrupted. We had served together in the summer and autumn of 1860, in a commission of inquiry into the discipline, course of studies, and general condition of the United States Military Academy. At the close of our labors the commission had adjourned, to meet again in Washington about the end of the ensuing November, to examine the report and revise it for transmission to Congress. Major Anderson's duties in Charleston Harbor hindered him from attending this adjourned meeting of the commission, and he wrote to me, its chairman, to explain the cause of his absence. That letter was lost when my library and private papers were "captured" from my home in Mississippi. If any one has preserved it as a trophy of war, its publication would show how bright was the honor, how broad the patriotism of Major Anderson, and how fully he sympathized with me as to the evils which then lowered over the country.

In comparing the past and the present among the mighty changes which passion and sectional hostility have wrought, one is profoundly and painfully impressed by the extent to which public opinion has drifted from the landmarks set up by the sages and patriots who formed the constitutional Union, and observed by those who administered its government down to the time when war between the States was inaugurated. Mr. Buchanan, the last President of the old school, would as soon have thought of aiding in the establishment of a monarchy among us as of accepting the doctrine of coercing the States into submission to the will of a majority, in mass, of the people of the United States. When discussing the question of withdrawing the troops from the port of Charleston, he yielded a ready assent to

1861]

A POINT EASILY CONCEDED.

217

the proposition that the cession of a site for a fort, for purposes of public defense, lapses, whenever that fort should be employed by the grantee against the State by which the cession was made, on the familiar principle that any grant for a specific purpose expires when it ceases to be used for that purpose. Whether on this or any other ground, if the garrison of Fort Sumter had been withdrawn in accordance with the spirit of the Constitution of the United States, from which the power to apply coercion to a State was deliberately and designedly excluded, and if this had been distinctly assigned as a reason for its withdrawal, the honor of the United States Government would have been maintained intact, and nothing could have operated more powerfully to quiet the apprehensions and allay the resentment of the people of South Carolina. The influence which such a measure would have exerted upon the States which had not yet seceded, but were then contemplating the adoption of that extreme remedy, would probably have induced further delay; and the mellowing effect of time, with a realization of the dangers to be incurred, might have wrought mutual forbearance—if, indeed, anything could have checked the madness then prevailing among the people of the Northern States in their thirst for power and forgetfulness of the duties of federation.

It would have been easy to concede this point. The little garrison of Fort Sumter served only as a menace; for it was utterly incapable of holding the fort if attacked, and the poor attempt soon afterward made to reënforce and provision it, by such a vessel as the Star of the West, might by the uncharitable be readily construed as a scheme to provoke hostilities. Yet, from my knowledge of Mr. Buchanan, I do not hesitate to say that he had no such wish or purpose. His abiding hope was to avert a collision, or at least to postpone it to a period beyond the close of his official term. The management of the whole affair was what Talleyrand describes as something worse than a crime a blunder. Whatever treatment the case demanded, should have been prompt; to wait was fatuity.

The ill-advised attempt secretly to throw reënforcements and provisions into Fort Sumter, by means of the steamer Star of the West, resulted in the repulsion of that vessel at the mouth

of the harbor, by the authorities of South Carolina, on the morning of the 9th of January. On her refusal to heave-to, she was fired upon, and put back to sea, with her recruits and supplies. A telegraphic account of this event was handed me, a few hours afterward, when stepping into my carriage to go to the Senate-chamber. Although I had then, for some time, ceased to visit the President, yet, under the impulse of this renewed note of danger to the country, I drove immediately to the Executive mansion, and for the last time appealed to him to take such prompt measures as were evidently necessary to avert the impending calamity. The result was even more unsatisfactory than that of former efforts had been.

On the same day the special message of the President on the state of the Union, dated the day previous (8th of January), was submitted to Congress. This message was accompanied by the first letter of the South Carolina Commissioners to the President, with his answer, but of course not by their rejoinder, which he had declined to receive. Mr. Buchanan, in his memoirs, complains that, immediately after the reading of his message, this rejoinder (which he terms an "insulting letter") was presented by me to the Senate, and by that body received and entered upon its journal. The simple truth is, that, regarding it as essential to a complete understanding of the transaction, and its publication as a mere act of justice to the Commissioners, I presented and had it read in the Senate. But its appearance upon the journal as part of the proceedings, instead of being merely a document introduced as part of my remarks, was the result of a discourteous objection, made by a so-called "Republican" Senator, to the reading of the document by the Clerk of the Senate at my request. This will be made manifest by an examination of the debate and proceedings which ensued. The discourtesy recoiled upon its author and supporters, and gave the letter a vantage-ground in respect of prominence which I could not have foreseen or expected.

The next day (January 10th) the speech was delivered, the

"Buchanan's Administration," chap. x, p. 184.

+ See "Congressional Globe," second session, Thirty-fifth Congress, Part I, p. 284, et seq.

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HISTORY OF FORT SUMTER.

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greater part of which may be found in the Appendix *—the last that I ever made in the Senate of the United States, except in taking leave, and by the sentiments of which I am content that my career, both before and since, should be judged.

The history of Fort Sumter during the remaining period, until the organization of the Confederate Government, may be found in the correspondence given in the Appendix.† From this it will be seen that the authorities of South Carolina still continued to refrain from any act of aggression or retaliation, under the provocation of the secret attempt to reënforce the garrison, as they had previously under that of its nocturnal transfer from one fort to another.

Another Commissioner (the Hon. I. W. Hayne) was sent to Washington by the Governor of South Carolina, to effect, if possible, an amicable and peaceful transfer of the fort, and settlement of all questions relating to property. This Commissioner remained for nearly a month, endeavoring to accomplish the objects of his mission, but was met only by evasive and unsatisfactory answers, and eventually returned without having effected anything.

There is one passage in the last letter of Colonel Hayne to the President which presents the case of the occupancy of Fort Sumter by the United States troops so clearly and forcibly that it may be proper to quote it. He writes as follows:

"You say that the fort was garrisoned for our protection, and is held for the same purposes for which it has been ever held since its construction. Are you not aware, that to hold, in the territory of a foreign power, a fortress against her will, avowedly for the purpose of protecting her citizens, is perhaps the highest insult which one government can offer to another? But Fort Sumter was never garrisoned at all until South Carolina had dissolved her connection with your Government. This garrison entered it in the night, with every circumstance of secrecy, after spiking the guns and burning the gun-carriages and cutting down the flag-staff of an adjacent fort, which was then abandoned. South Carolina had not taken Fort Sumter into her own possession, only because of her misplaced confidence in a Government which deceived her."

* See Appendix I.

+ Ibid.

Thus, during the remainder of Mr. Buchanan's Administration, matters went rapidly from bad to worse. The old statesman, who, with all his defects, had long possessed, and was entitled still to retain, the confidence due to extensive political knowledge and love of his country in all its parts-who had, in his earlier career, looked steadily to the Constitution, as the mariner looks to the compass, for guidance-retired to private life at the expiration of his term of office, having effected nothing to allay the storm which had been steadily gathering during his administration.

Timid vacillation was then succeeded by unscrupulous cunning; and, for futile efforts, without hostile collision, to impose a claim of authority upon people who repudiated it, were substituted measures which could be sustained only by force.

CHAPTER III.

Secession of Mississippi and Other States.—Withdrawal of Senators.—Address of the Author on taking Leave of the Senate.-Answer to Certain Objections.

MISSISSIPPI was the second State to withdraw from the Union, her ordinance of secession being adopted on the 9th of January, 1861. She was quickly followed by Florida on the 10th, Alabama on the 11th, and, in the course of the same month, by Georgia on the 18th, and Louisiana on the 26th. The Conventions of these States (together with that of South Carolina) agreed in designating Montgomery, Alabama, as the place, and the 4th of February as the day, for the assembling of a congress of the seceding States, to which each State Convention, acting as the direct representative of the sovereignty of the people thereof, appointed delegates.

Telegraphic intelligence of the secession of Mississippi had reached Washington some considerable time before the fact was officially communicated to me. This official knowledge I considered it proper to await before taking formal leave of the Senate. My associates from Alabama and Florida concurred

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