Slavery and Four Years of War Part 20

And each of these States had prepared for armed opposition; most, if not all, of their Senators and Representatives in Congress had withdrawn; in most of the States named United States forts, arms, military stores, and other public property had been seized; and many officers of the army and navy had deserted, weakly excusing their action by declaring they must go with their States.

Events were happening in Washington. Ca.s.s resigned as Secretary of State because Buchanan adhered to the doctrine that there was no power to coerce a seceding State. Under this baleful doctrine, secession had secured, apparently, a free and bloodless right of way in its mad rush to dissolve the Union and to establish a slave empire. It was at first thought by Southern leaders wise to postpone the formation of a "Confederacy" until Lincoln was inaugurated.

But about January 1st there came a Cabinet rupture. Floyd was driven from it, and Joseph Holt of Kentucky, a most able and patriotic Union man, succeeded him. Later, Edwin M. Stanton and Jeremiah Black came into the Cabinet, Buchanan yielding to more patriotic influences and adopting more decided Union measures, though not based wholly on a coercive policy.

But, on January 5, 1861, a "Central Cabal," consisting of "Southern Statesmen," who still lingered at Washington, where they could best promote and direct the secession of the States and keep the administration in check, if not control it, met in one of the rooms of the _Capitol_ to devise an ultimate programme for the future.

It agreed on these propositions:

First. Immediate secession of States.

Second. A convention to meet at Montgomery, Alabama, not later than February 15th, to organize a Confederacy.

To prevent hostile legislation under the changed and more loyal impulses of the President and his reconstructed Cabinet, the cotton States Senators should remain awhile in their places, to "keep the hands of Buchanan tied."(107)

This cabal appointed Senators Jefferson Davis, Slidell, and Mallory "to carry out the objects of the meeting."

Thus, beneath the "Dome of the Capitol," treason was plotted by Senators and Representatives who still held their seats and official places, and still received their pay from the United States Treasury, for the sole purpose of enabling them the better to accomplish the end sought. Think of the prospective President of the "Confederate States of America," their future Minister to the Court of France, and their future Secretary of the Navy, plotting secretly in the Capitol at Washington to destroy the Union! But these were treasonable times.

Through resolution of the Mississippi Legislature, the Montgomery Convention was hastened, and it met February 4, instead of February 15, 1861, as suggested by the Washington caucus of Southern Congressmen. The delegates from the six seceded States east of the Mississippi a.s.sembled, and a little later (March 2d) delegates from Texas joined them. On the fourth day of its session the national _slave-child_ was born, and christened "_Confederate States of America_." The next day Jefferson Davis was elected President, and Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, Vice-President. Stephens took the oath of office on the day following his election. Davis arrived from Washington, and was, on the 18th, inaugurated the first (and last) President of this Confederacy.

The next step was a permanent Const.i.tution. With characteristic celerity, this was prepared and adopted March 11, 1861, one week after Lincoln became President of the United States, though the Confederacy had been formed almost a month before his official term commenced.

This instrument was modelled on the Const.i.tution of the United States.

It forbade the importation of negroes of the African race from any foreign country, other than the slaveholding States or Territories of the United States. Then following, for the first time probably in the history of nations, the proposed new Republic dedicated itself to eternal slavery, thus:

"No bill of attainder, _ex post facto_ law, or _law denying or impairing_ the right of property in negro slaves, shall be pa.s.sed."(108)

Singularly enough, the astute friends of the inst.i.tution of slavery, knowing and avowing that it could not survive compet.i.tion with the free, well-paid labor necessary to manufacturing industries, and knowing also that slavery was only adapted to rural pursuits, not to skilled mechanical labor, and desiring to plant human slavery permanently in the new nation, removed from all possibility of compet.i.tion with anything that might, by dignifying labor, build up wealth as witnessed in the great Northern cities and thus endanger slavery, sought to protect it by a clause incorporated in their organic act, prohibiting any form of _tariff_ to protect home industries.

"Nor shall any duties or taxes on importations from foreign nations be laid to promote or foster any branch of industry."(109)

Cotton was ever to be "King" in the Confederacy.

Mississippi's "Declaration of the Immediate Causes" justifying secession with perfect honesty announced:

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the inst.i.tution of slavery--the greatest material interest in the world... . A blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the inst.i.tution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition or a dissolution of the Union."

The best, most candid, conservative, and comprehensive statement in explanation and vindication of the Confederate Const.i.tution, the purposes and objects of the nation and people to be governed by and under it, is found in a speech of Vice-President Stephens at Savannah, Georgia, delivered ten days (March 21, 1861) after its adoption.

Here is a single extract:

"The new Const.i.tution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar inst.i.tution--African slavery as it exists among us--the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. _This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had antic.i.p.ated this as the rock upon which the old Union would split_. He was right. What was conjecture with him is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him, and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Const.i.tution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the inst.i.tution would be evanescent and pa.s.s away.

This idea, though not incorporated in the Const.i.tution, was the prevailing idea at the time. The Const.i.tution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the inst.i.tution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly used against the const.i.tutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the a.s.sumption of the equality of the races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a government built upon it: when the 'storms came and the wind blew, it fell.'

"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, _its corner stone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man_. That slavery-- subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all the other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics."

This is a fair and truthful exposition of the fundamental principles of the Confederacy, fallacious as they were.

North Carolina, after her people had voted down a convention to consider the question of secession at an extra session of her Legislature, called a convention which, on May 21, 1861, when the war had begun, pa.s.sed an Ordinance of Secession without submission to a vote of her people.

Virginia through her Legislature called a convention which, April 17, 1861, pa.s.sed an Ordinance of Secession in secret session, subject to ratification by a vote of her people. This was after Sumter had been fired on.

The vote was taken June 25th, and the Ordinance was ratified.

Arkansas defeated in convention an Ordinance for secession March 18, but pa.s.sed one May 6, 1861, without a vote of her people.

Tennessee, by a vote of her people, February 8, 1861 (67,360 to 54,156) voted against a convention, but her Legislature (May 7, 1861) in secret session adopted a "Declaration of Independence and Ordinance dissolving her Federal relations," subject to a vote of her people on June 8th. The vote being for separation, her Governor, June 24, 1861, declared the State out of the Union.(110)

This was the last State of the eleven to secede. All these four ratified the Confederate Const.i.tution and joined the already-formed Confederacy.

The seceded States early pa.s.sed laws authorizing the organization of their militia, and making appropriations for defence against coercion, and providing for the seizure of United States forts, a.r.s.enals, and other property within their respective limits, and later, that they should be turned over to the Confederate States.

Some of the States by law provided severe penalties against any of their citizens holding office under the Government of the United States. Virginia, in July, 1861, in convention, pa.s.sed an ordinance declaring that any citizen of Virginia holding office under the old Government should be forever banished from that State, and if he undertook to represent the State in the Congress of the United States, he should, in addition, be guilty of treason and his property confiscated.

The other Border States failed to break up their relation to the Union, though in all of them (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri) various irregular expedients were resorted to, to declare them a part of the Confederacy. From their people, however, much material and moral support was given to the Confederate cause.

(101) Jefferson's _Works_, viii., p. 403.--Notes on Virginia.

(102) _Lincoln_ (Nicolay and Hay), vol. ii., pp. 299-314.

(103) _Annual Cyclopaedia_ (Appleton), 1861, p. 123.

(104) For this letter, see _Lincoln_ (N. and H.), vol. ii., p. 306.

(105) The prophecy: "The rebellion, which began where Charleston is, shall end where Charleston _was_," was fulfilled.

For a vivid, though sad description of Charleston at the end of the war, by an eye-witness, see _Civil war in Am._ (Draper), vol.

i, p. 564. Andrew's Hall, where the first Ordinance pa.s.sed, and the Inst.i.tute in which it was signed, were then charred rubbish.

The _Demon_ war had been abroad in Charleston--who respects not life or death.

(106) Sam Houston was the rightful Governor of Texas in 1861, but on the adoption of an Ordinance of Secession (February 24, 1861) he declined to take an oath of allegiance to the new government and was deposed by a convention March 16, 1861. Just previous to the vote of the State on ratifying the ordinance, at Galveston, before an immense, seething, secession audience, with few personal friends to support him, in face of threatened violence, he denounced the impolicy of Secession, and painted a prophetic picture of the consequences that would result to his State from it. He said:

"Let me tell you what is coming on the heels of secession. The time will come when your fathers and husbands, your sons and brothers, will be herded together like sheep and cattle, at the point of the bayonet, and your mothers and wives, your sisters and daughters, will ask: Where are they? You may, after the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds and thousands of precious lives, succeed, if G.o.d is not against you, in winning Southern independence.

But I doubt it. It is a bare possibility at best. I tell you that while I believe, with you, in the doctrine of state rights, the North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people, as you are, for the live in cooler climates.

But when they begin to move in a given direction, where great interests are involved, they move with the steady momentum of a giant avalanche, and what I fear is that they will overwhelm the South with ign.o.ble defeat."

During this speech a horse in a team near by grew restive, and kicked out of harness, but was soon beaten to submission by his driver. Houston seized on the incident for an ill.u.s.tration, saying: "That horse tried a little practical secession--See how speedily he was whipped back into the Union." This quick-witted remark brought him applause from unsympathetic hearers.

Houston refused to recognize any Secession authority, and a few days subsequent to his deposition retired to his home near Huntsville, without friends, full of years, weak in body, suffering from wounds received in his country's service, but strong in soul, and wholly undismayed, though mourning his State's folly. In front of his house on the prairie he mounted a four-pound cannon, saying: "Texas may go to the devil and ruin if she pleases, but she shall not drag me along with her." History does not record another such incident.

To the credit of the Secessionists, they respected the age and valor of the old hero, and did not molest, but permitted him to hold his personal "fortress" until his death, which occurred July 26, 1863 (three weeks after Vicksburg fell), in his seventy-first year.

He died satisfied the Confederacy and secession would soon be overthrown and the Union preserved.

(107) _Lincoln_ (N. and H.), vol. iii, pp. 180-1.

(108) Con., Art. I., Sec. 9, pars. 1, 4.

(109) Confederate Con., Art. I., Sec. 8, par. 1.