CHAPTER 14
It foreshadows such scenes of carnage as the world has not witnessed for a thousand years.
—FRANKLIN PIERCE
Buchanan ~ Lincoln ~ Fillmore ~ Pierce ~ Tyler ~ Van Buren
On November 17, Buchanan presented his attorney general, Jeremiah S. Black, with a list of questions. Is there any doubt that the federal government’s laws are supreme? What are my powers if revenue collection is resisted by force? What right have I to defend public property? Can military force be used under the acts of 1795 and 1807? The response came three days later. According to US v. Booth, the chief executive must take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and Buchanan’s powers were restricted by Congress. Black argued that the government could fight any force arrayed to stop them, but it could not fight against a state. His recommended language asserted the indivisibility of the Union, and a promise to “meet, repel, and subdue all those who rise against it.”
Buchanan thought the language unduly hostile. He saw himself as the national mediator, not the advocate of one region over another. On December 4, 1860, Buchanan delivered his final annual message, which denied the right of secession but declared that he had no right to suppress it. Buchanan believed his speech would be “at first condemned in the north and the south.” But he would “rely upon the sober second thought for justice,” while bristling at accusations of inconsistency. The New York Tribune reported that secessionists were moving quickly: “They evidently calculate that our venerable president will remain perfectly inert, and that beyond a few empty words, rather of lamentation and regret than of admonition or warning, he will oppose no obstacles whatever to the operations which they have in hand.”
On November 27, a message arrived from Major Robert Anderson in South Carolina, asking for two companies of troops to reinforce the forts at Charleston. Buchanan agreed, but then allowed his secretary of war John B. Floyd to talk him into waiting to consult with General Scott. It was a secessionist play for time, and a successful one, as Scott was ill in New York and unable to travel. Buchanan would soon reach a deal with commissioners from South Carolina to refrain from sending reinforcements while negotiations for a peaceful settlement continued.
On December 8, Lincoln wrote to William Seward to offer him the position as secretary of state. Five days later, the president-elect telegraphed to Edward Bates his appointment as attorney general. Salmon Chase would serve at Treasury, where his character would inspire confidence in national credit. His status as a former Democrat from the important state of Ohio also weighed in his favor. Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania was nominated as secretary of war; Gideon Welles of Connecticut would serve as secretary of the navy; Caleb Smith, Lincoln’s old congressional colleague from Indiana, would helm the Interior, while Montgomery Blair of Missouri would oversee the Post Office.
In cabinet making, Lincoln hoped “to combine the experience of Seward, the integrity of Chase, the popularity of Cameron; to hold the west with Bates, attract New England with Welles, please the Whigs through Smith, and convince the Democrats through Blair.” Cabinet making was a delicate balancing act, and Lincoln noted, “I suppose if the twelve apostles were to be chosen nowadays, the shrieks of locality would have to be heeded.”
While Lincoln’s cabinet was coming together, Buchanan’s was coming apart. Cobb resigned, returning to Georgia to lead his state out of the Union; Cass quit over Buchanan’s lack of firmness, replaced by Attorney General Jeremiah Black. Of the cabinet who remained, secretary of war Floyd engaged in the most serious treason at the highest level of government in American history. Floyd ordered the federal commander of Castle Pinckney in Charleston Harbor to return muskets he had acquired in Charleston, in response to complaints from South Carolina. While Floyd was disarming soldiers in Charleston, he issued an order to ship forty-six cannon from Pennsylvania to Mississippi and seventy-nine cannon to Texas. Leaders in Pennsylvania physically prevented the mission from being carried out and were able to convince Buchanan to rescind the order the following day.
As the administration showed weakness, the public increasingly looked to the former presidents as peacemakers. One writer asked Fillmore to use his influence to repeal the personal liberty laws, since “Thousands of men who voted the Republican ticket hold you in the highest respect.” A committee of New Yorkers was planning to head south “and endeavor to conciliate the people,” inviting Fillmore to head the delegation.
“I am ready and willing to do any thing in my power to restore harmony to this distracted country,” Fillmore replied, conceding “this is a contest from which the most humble has no right to shrink.”
“Might not something still be done to preserve the Union?” Congressman Robert Mallory wrote Fillmore. “The expression at this time of your views might, I think would, materially aid those who are endeavoring to bring about such an adjustment.” Stephen Douglas wrote Fillmore a list of constitutional amendments he was proposing. “The prospects of our country are indeed gloomy,” he wrote, “but I do not yet despair of the Union.”
On December 19, Supreme Court justice John Archibald Campbell wrote to Pierce, the man who had appointed him. The night before, Campbell had gone to the White House urging Buchanan to send commissioners to the states contemplating secession. “There is a wild and somewhat hysterical excitement in all the southern states,” especially those from “South Carolina west to the Mississippi,” which has “greatly increased” since “Lincoln’s election has been announced.” The Alabaman believed that nobody could rival Pierce’s influence in his state, and urged him to attend the secession convention in person.
Pierce acknowledged to Campbell that in light of the wrongs “perpetrated against the people and institutions of the Southern States, I doubly honor the devotion with which you cling to the Union.” If the Republicans would not compromise, “then there would seem to be no hope, except in the people, who are stronger than their servants.
“I think our brethren of the south, warmhearted chivalrous men as they are, should remember in their highest exasperation how steady, true, and unfaltering has been the defense of their rights, on the part of hundreds of thousands of the people of the northern states.” If the North does not redress the wrongs against the South, “bowing our heads in shame and sorrow, we will, if we must, bid farewell to the Union—farewell to those who have stood by us on so many fields in face of foreign foes—a final farewell to the dear friends and countrymen with whom we had believed our futures and the hopes of civil liberty were indissolubly linked. The very idea of dismemberment of the Union has always been to me one of terrible significance.” But if we “cannot live together in peace, then in peace and on just terms let us separate—fearful will be the responsibility of those who would cast the last element of human woe—that of arms for fratricidal slaughter into the general chaos—the wisdom of man fails, may God in his mercy guide us.”
Citing a cold and a “heavy and distressing cough,” Pierce believed made it unsafe for him to travel, though “The clouds become more dense and dark” for the country. Pierce was especially disturbed by an editorial in Lincoln’s hometown newspaper, arguing: “South Carolina will not go out of the Union unless she conquers the government.” Pierce wondered, did the Journal “foreshadow the principles of Mr. Lincoln? If the sentence means anything, in the present state of affairs, it means civil war. It foreshadows such scenes of carnage as the world has not witnessed for a thousand years.”
According to Campbell, Buchanan did not seem open to sending commissioners to Alabama. Worse, Campbell told Pierce that Buchanan’s mind had lost the power to analyze “a complicated situation,” describing him as “nervous and hysterical.” Alabama, he wrote, has probably elected a majority of secessionists to their state convention, though “not a decisive one.” If Alabama could be persuaded to stay, perhaps it could stem the tide.
Campbell was not the only southerner looking to an ex-president for assistance. J. E. Preston wrote Fillmore, “Your views . . . might prove so beneficial as to almost settle the minds of the people on present questions.” Fillmore appeared to be better respected in the South than he realized. “I know of no one whose views I would” rather hear, wrote Rufus Pollard of Ringgold, Georgia. From New Orleans came a letter: “In this sad night of our country’s existence, I have looked over the land, to see if I could find someone who had the power to keep our glorious union from being broken into fragments. And sir my eyes have rested upon you, as the man having the power, and to whom belongs the duty of this great work.” Fillmore, he argued, had “a work to do, and a destiny to fill.”
Meanwhile, the only southerner of the ex-presidents weighed in: “Virginia looks on for the present with her arms folded, but she only bides her time. Despondency will be succeeded by action.” Tyler believed that a conference of border states might find a solution.
On December 17, a South Carolina convention met to consider secession. The state legislature had, several weeks earlier, met and appointed a commission to prepare the financing and organization of a military force. Three days later there was the Washington marriage of John Bouligny, congressman from Louisiana, and Mary Parker. Her father, a successful grocer in the capital, filled his house with roses, lilies, fountains, and special light effects. No expense would be spared.
After the ceremony, Buchanan gave the couple his benediction, wishing them “a great deal of happiness.” The congregation remained standing until he returned to his seat. The guests gradually made their way out of the drawing room to examine the gifts to the bride and groom.
Buchanan remained seated, receiving various well-wishers. Hearing a great commotion, Buchanan turned to Sara Pryor, wife of a congressman from Virginia, seated behind him. “Madam,” he said, “do you suppose the house is on fire?”
“I will inquire the cause, Mr. President,” she said. In the entrance hall she found Lawrence Keitt, congressman from South Carolina, jumping up and down and waving a piece of paper over his head and shouting “Thank God! Oh, thank God!”
“Mr. Keitt,” she said, “are you crazy? The President hears you and wants to know what’s the matter.”
“Oh!” he responded. “South Carolina has seceded! Here’s the telegram. I feel like a boy let out from school.”
Returning to Buchanan, Pryor said quietly, “It appears, Mr. President, that South Carolina has seceded from the Union.” Buchanan looked at her, stunned, grabbing the arms of his chair and falling back into it. “Madam,” he said, “might I beg you to have my carriage called?” Pryor remembered “there were no more thoughts of bride, bridegroom, wedding-cake, or wedding breakfast.”
That evening, President Buchanan met with Colonel Hamilton—who carried the message of the South Carolina governor, Francis Pickens, and who was escorted by Assistant Secretary of State William Trescot.
Pickens wrote that his message came “With a sincere desire to prevent a collision of force.” He asked Buchanan to allow him to take Fort Sumter, which then only had a small handful of men, in order to quiet the concerns of the city that some kind of violence would come from those federal soldiers. If Buchanan declined, Pickens wrote, “I cannot answer for the consequences.” Finished reading, Buchanan asked Hamilton when he planned on returning to South Carolina.
“The next morning,” he replied.
Buchanan asked for more time.
“Yes,” Hamilton agreed, “until the next evening.”
Very well, Buchanan answered, he would have his response by then.
“Mr. President,” Hamilton added, “I am aware of the contents of that letter, and think that if you would accept them, it would greatly facilitate the negotiations between my government and the United States.”
Trescot, a South Carolinian who favored secession, was asked to stay behind and advise the president. After doing so, he reported to Louisiana senator John Slidell and Jefferson Davis, who wanted the governor to back down. As historian Allan Nevins points out, they knew the demand could never be satisfied, but that it might relieve Buchanan of his pledge not to reinforce Charleston. By the end of the day, Governor Pickens telegraphed Trescot and gave him permission to withdraw the letter. Trescot went in to see the president the next morning. Greatly relieved, Buchanan reiterated his wishes to avoid violence and his willingness to meet with commissioners from South Carolina, as well as his position not to make any decisions regarding the forts until negotiations were held.
But then on Christmas Eve, South Carolina gave the world its Declaration of Secession. Their theory for dissolution was simple and focused. The Constitution was a contract between states. An essential provision of that agreement was the Fugitive Slave Clause, “so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made.” The convention pointed to the personal liberty laws of fourteen states as violations of that compact and decried the election of a political party hostile to the fugitive slave provision. The breach permitted South Carolina, they argued, to walk away.
The ticking time bomb of secession, which had begun with South Carolina’s challenge to President Jackson in 1832, had been passed from one of his successors to the next—Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, and Pierce. Now it had exploded in the lap of James Buchanan. He now faced the greatest crisis of them all. What could he do? What should he do?
Buchanan would spend much of the Civil War at work on the very first presidential memoir. The Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion served as a defense for what he did, and did not do, during this critical time. “Under these circumstances it became the plain duty of the President, destitute as he was of military force, not only to refrain from any act which might provoke or encourage the cotton states into secession, but to smooth the way for such a Congressional compromise as had in times past happily averted danger from the Union.”
For nearly eighty-five years America had been sustained by compromise. The Constitution itself, including the Fugitive Slave Clause, serves as evidence; one chamber of Congress determined by population, another where states have equality. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton had formed a deal to place the capital on the Potomac in exchange for southern support for Hamilton’s plan to have the national government assume state debt; the famous Missouri Compromise; the Compromise of 1833; the Compromise of 1850, which extinguished so many fires at once.
Even if hopes for compromise were unrealistic, and they were not, President Buchanan had fewer than sixteen thousand troops at his command, most of whom were stationed west of the Mississippi protecting settlers. The remainder were scattered throughout the country. Any attempt to muster these forces or raise more would have closed the door on compromise. In the meantime, despite large harvests and manufactures, “the price of all public securities fell in the market.”
Whether Buchanan can be said to have risen to the challenge or not, no one can disagree with his assertion that “No public man was ever placed in a more trying and responsible position.”
Buchanan believed that his hands were tied, with no legal authority to act against secession, even if he practically could. Bills to further empower the president went nowhere in Congress. A measure to raise troops and accept volunteers to recover stolen federal property attracted little support. “Had the President attempted . . . to exercise these high powers,” Buchanan argued, “whilst Congress were at the very time deliberating whether to grant them to him or not, he would have made himself justly liable to impeachment.” Even Jackson, with his expansive belief in executive power, at the height of the nullification crisis had asked for congressional authorization to use force against South Carolina.
The Boston Courier said it well: “If he does anything, he is a malignant traitor endeavoring to destroy the country: if he does nothing . . . he is an imbecile traitor. He is at the same time the most crafty of political rogues and the most stupid of political fools, an old bully, and an old Betty. . . . ” Buchanan was days from his most decisive action, but as the paper predicted, it would not be well received.
John Tyler applauded Buchanan’s conduct. “I am deeply concerned by the condition of public affairs,” he wrote. “No ray of light yet appears to dispel the gloom which has settled upon the country. In the meantime, the president pursues a wise and statesmanlike course . . . . A blow struck would be the signal for united action with all the slave states.” While Tyler watched, his namesake son had made up his mind. Speaking to a large crowd in Norfolk, he urged “let the Union go to Hell.” He was “received with loud and repeated cheers,” in an incident widely reported throughout the North.
As the crisis worsened, many throughout the country wondered about Buchanan’s successor. Who was Abraham Lincoln? He had last held office twelve years earlier, a single term in the House of Representatives. This question was the subject of conversation at a New York dinner party where one very important guest had an answer. Martin Van Buren regaled the crowd with the story of his encounter with Lincoln in Rochester, Illinois, now eighteen years ago. He was “so forcibly struck by the intelligence and high toned sentiments of the man, his rare and pleasing conversational powers, that he often wondered, when he afterwards mentally reviewed his western tour, what had become of this man whom he remembered as one of the most remarkable he ever met.” The frontier was a dangerous place, and Van Buren assumed the worst. “For years he heard no more from him, but frequently recalled to his mind the marked ability he then displayed.” Coming from Van Buren, whose involvement in politics stretched back to the previous century and included acquaintance with the greatest leaders on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, a more remarkable compliment would be hard to come by.
The day after Christmas, Jefferson Davis and Senator Robert Hunter of Virginia arrived at the White House to see the president.
“Have you received any intelligence from Charleston in the last few hours?” Davis asked.
“None,” Buchanan said.
“Then I have a great calamity to announce to you,” Davis said, reporting that Major Anderson and his men had relocated from Fort Moultrie to the more defensible Fort Sumter. “And now, Mr. President, you are surrounded with blood and dishonor on all sides.”
“My God!” Buchanan said. “Are misfortunes never to come singly? I call God to witness, you gentlemen, better than anybody, know that this is not only without but against my orders. It is against my policy.”
For his part, Anderson would argue, “I abandoned Fort Moultrie because I was certain that if attacked my men must have been sacrificed and the command of the harbor lost.” Davis and Hunter advised the president to order Anderson back to Moultrie. Buchanan was inclined to do so, but waited to convene with his cabinet. Floyd argued that Anderson had disobeyed orders. Black proclaimed his actions not only justifiable but commendable. Floyd had actually shown up to cabinet uninvited. Buchanan, using Vice President Breckinridge as an intermediary, had demanded Floyd’s resignation four days earlier, for improperly using the government’s credit to assist faltering government contractors. Now it was clear he was looking to base his resignation on some higher purpose than personal indiscretions. He would resign two days later.
Black told Floyd that “no English minister who supinely surrendered a fortified place to an enemy would have failed to reach the block.” Edwin Stanton, a prominent lawyer who had replaced Black as attorney general, argued that abandoning Sumter would be a crime on par with Benedict Arnold’s, and any president who issued such an order would be guilty of treason.
“Oh, no!” Buchanan said, raising his hands, “Not so bad as that, my friend—not so bad as that!” But the decision would soon become not whether to surrender the fort, but whether to defend it, as an increasingly bellicose South Carolina seized the customs house, the arsenal, Fort Moultrie, and Castle Pinckney. Federal officials in the state had resigned their appointments, from the customs collector to the postmaster. The arsenal alone held $500,000 in public property.
The next day, Buchanan met with South Carolina’s commissioners, whom he received as private citizens, not as representatives of a sovereign state. They formally protested Anderson’s move, and in a follow-up letter demanded that Fort Sumter be abandoned.
A heated cabinet meeting considered the president’s response. Buchanan showed a draft reply to the commissioners that nobody liked. While he had begun the crisis timidly and relied on secessionists for advice and counsel, he increasingly depended upon the Unionists in his cabinet. Stanton and Black were tasked with revising the response to the commissioners, and furiously went about it.
On the final day of 1860, President Buchanan dispatched a firm response, declaring “It is my duty to defend Fort Sumter, as a portion of the public property of the United States, against hostile attacks from whatever quarter they may come, by such means as I may possess for this purpose,” adding, “I do not perceive how such a defense can be construed into a menace against the city of Charleston.” As for giving up the fort, he wrote, “This I cannot do; this I will not do.”
The commissioners’ reply was so vituperative that Buchanan refused to receive it. The president realized, “It is all now over and reinforcements must be sent.” The reinvigorated president issued the order the following day.