CHAPTER 15
Peace and harmony and union in a great nation were never purchased at so cheap a rate as we now have it in our power to do. It is a scruple only, a scruple of as little value as a barleycorn, that stands between us and peace, and reconciliation, and union; and we stand here pausing and hesitating about that little atom which is to be sacrificed.
—JOHN CRITTENDEN
If I live till the 4th of March I will ride to the Capitol with Old Abe whether I am assassinated or not.
—JAMES BUCHANAN
Buchanan ~ Van Buren ~ Fillmore ~ Tyler ~ Lincoln ~ Pierce
On January 5, the Star of the West sailed from New York, headed to reinforce Fort Sumter. Americans observed a national fast day, with “immense crowds at the churches.” Public offices were closed, as the newspapers covered all kinds of religious services and sermons. Jacob Thompson, secretary of the interior from Mississippi, left the cabinet over the plans to reinforce Sumter. Unionist John Dix came in as secretary of the treasury, replacing a short-term failure who had himself replaced Howell Cobb.
All during Buchanan’s back-and-forth with South Carolina, Congress, as it had successfully done so often in the past, had tried to meet the crisis with compromise. In the Senate, this task devolved upon “The Committee of Thirteen,” including giants from different political stripes and all quarters of the country. There was Jefferson Davis of Mississippi and Robert Toombs of Georgia, John Crittenden of Kentucky, Stephen Douglas of Illinois, and William Seward of New York, among others.
Among the many plans that were put forward was Jefferson Davis’s proposed amendment: to place slaves on equal footing with all other property, preempting the local laws of any state or territory, effectively turning every state into a slave state. Toombs’s plan was to permit slave property in all the territories, abolish due process for fugitive slaves, and prohibit national legislation on slavery without the agreement of most slaveholding states, and ensconcing that amendment firmly in the Constitution by requiring every single slave state to agree in order to change it.
But it was the “Crittenden Compromise” that would form the most popular basis for settlement, a proposal made up of six constitutional amendments.
The most crucial provision would extend the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific, with slaves in territories below 36' 30" but not above. Of particular appeal to the South, which had for years been attempting to annex parts of Mexico, Latin America, and Cuba, was that Crittenden’s plan guaranteed slavery for those potential future acquisitions.
Any state could enter the Union free or slave based on its constitution once it received the requisite population. Congress would also be forbidden to abolish slavery where it had jurisdiction within a slave state (e.g., on federal property). Slavery would be legal in the District of Columbia, so long as Virginia or Maryland had slavery, and in either event no slave would be freed without compensation to the owner. Fourth, interstate transportation of slaves would be guaranteed. Fifth, Congress would pay for fugitive slaves rescued by force from a tax on the county responsible. Finally, Congress would be prevented from tampering with slavery, putting this issue on a constitutional shelf where no future policymakers could reach.
“The sacrifice to be made for its preservation is comparatively worthless,” Crittenden argued. “Peace and harmony and union in a great nation were never purchased at so cheap a rate as we now have it in our power to do. It is a scruple only, a scruple of as little value as a barleycorn, that stands between us and peace, and reconciliation, and union; and we stand here pausing and hesitating about that little atom which is to be sacrificed.”
Buchanan firmly supported Crittenden’s plan, pointing out that slavery could never practically exist in New Mexico, the only present territory that would be impacted by extending the Missouri Compromise line. A “barren abstraction,” he argued, was all the North would have to yield. But would the South have accepted a “barleycorn?” According to Stephen Douglas, the answer was “yes.” Though they ultimately voted “no” on the Crittenden Compromise, Davis and Toombs were prepared to support it, so long as the Republican majority would join them.
Van Buren, like his fellow former presidents, received mail from anxious citizens desperately seeking advice. “We have certainly fallen on evil times,” wrote congressman-elect John Law of Evansville, Indiana. “Can a state under our present form of government secede?” he asked. “If she cannot, what is the remedy?” If Congress ever meets again, Law said, “I shall be called on not only to discuss but to act on this great question.” Van Buren responded optimistically, with hopes that a peaceful solution could still be achieved. To that end, he drafted a series of resolutions for the New York legislature to adopt, namely that the Union was “perpetual and irrevocable,” and always understood to be so, arguing that no state could withdraw without using the Article V amendment process. Van Buren endorsed the Crittenden Compromise, which he believed would satisfactorily adjust the current troubles. Van Buren had spent the winter in New York City, and while there had met with Crittenden for a “free exchange” of “feelings and opinions.” Shortly after, Van Buren wrote him, “I cannot but think that your suggestion,” could not “fail to be acceptable to all who sincerely desire to see friendly relations between the different sections restored.”
In addition to Buchanan and Van Buren, Fillmore agreed, “Mr. Crittenden’s proposal ought to be made the basis of a settlement.” Fillmore had sent a number of friends a copy of the “Causes and Remedies of the Present Convulsions,” a sermon delivered by a minister in Buffalo on the recent day of fasting. This sermon blamed both sides for the current state of affairs, abolitionists in the North and slaveholders in the South, a sentiment very much in keeping with Fillmore’s philosophy.
Tyler wanted something stronger than what Crittenden proposed, believing the only measure that could save the Union was a constitutional amendment codifying the Dred Scott plurality decision.
Van Buren was optimistic that the Republicans would support the Crittenden Compromise. Entering office “under circumstances more difficult and embarrassing than were ever before presented to an incoming administration,” he was confident that they would “rejoice in an opportunity to secure in advance” a resolution. And after all, the president had always been a peacemaker-in-chief, ready to resolve any crisis with compromise, and to give the South what it demanded to stay in the Union. But even before taking office, Lincoln was revealing himself to be a different kind of president. The New York Tribune reported him “utterly opposed to any concession or compromise that shall yield one iota of the position occupied by the Republican Party on the question of slavery in the territories,” adding for emphasis the “Federal Union must be preserved.” Lincoln had read the Crittenden Compromise several times. He believed it would temporarily adjust the country’s problems, but that as it always had, the South would be back for more. After all, it was four years after the Compromise of 1850 that the South successfully repealed the Missouri Compromise. There was persistent talk of new American conquests to spread slavery. Most ominously, there was a proposal gathering steam to reopen the African slave trade, which had been closed since 1808. Lincoln wrote Lyman Trumbull, perhaps his closest friend in the Senate, “Let there be no compromise on the question of extending slavery. If there be, all our labor is lost, and ere long, must be done again . . . Stand firm. The tug has to come, and better now than at any time hereafter.”
But the House would not give up, forming a committee of thirty-three to find a compromise, chaired by Ohio congressman Thomas Corwin. Corwin introduced five measures of his own: a full repeal of the personal liberty laws and enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act; immediate admission of New Mexico as a state; fugitive slaves would be given a jury trial, but in the states from which they were accused of fleeing; a streamlined extradition process for fugitive slaves; and finally, a constitutional amendment guaranteeing that no future amendments could outlaw slavery.
On January 8, Buchanan sent Congress his final annual message. “The right and the duty to use military force defensively against those who resist the Federal officers in the execution of their legal functions, and against those who assail the property of the Federal Government, is clear and undeniable,” he wrote. However, “A common ground on which conciliation and harmony can be produced is not unattainable. The proposition to compromise by letting the north have exclusive control of the territory above a certain line, and to give southern institutions protection below that line, ought to receive universal approbation . . . when the alternative is between a reasonable concession on both sides and a destruction of the Union, it is an imputation upon the patriotism of Congress to assert that its members will hesitate for a moment.”
The following day Mississippi became the second state to leave the Union, declaring “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest in the world . . . There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union.” That night the Star of the West was fired on in Charleston Harbor, hit three times but not seriously damaged. The captain determined it was unsafe to proceed and returned to New York.
Franklin Pierce was mortified by Buchanan’s action. “I cannot conceive of a more idle, foolish, ill motived if not criminal thing, than the sending of the Star of the West to Charleston under exciting circumstances . . . The gathering storm has not taken me by surprise. I have seen its approach and am prepared.” The following two days saw the departure of Florida and Alabama.* As state after state seceded, letters poured in to the ex-presidents, seeking some kind of assurance, entreating them to do something. But at least one of them was as hopeless as anyone.
* The Alabama Convention declared: “Whereas, the election of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin to the offices of President and Vice-President of the United States of America by a sectional party avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions and to the peace and security of the State of Alabama, preceded by many and dangerous infractions of the Constitution of the United States by many of the States and people of the Northern section, is a political wrong of so insulting and menacing a character as to justify the people of the State of Alabama in the adoption of prompt and decided measures for their future peace and security.” Florida did not prepare a declaration.
Millard Fillmore faulted Buchanan for his weakness and Lincoln for his unwillingness to meet southern demands. “My mind has been engrossed . . . by the startling revolutionary events of the south, which have seceded each other so rapidly as to keep the mind in a constant state of anxiety. It was a maxim of the Romans ‘never to despair of the Republic,’ and I have endeavored to feel so in regard to ours, but as state after state secedes, and congress seems paralyzed, my hopes fail me, and I give it all as lost. It seems to me that if the President had acted with becoming vigor in the first instance, and the Republicans had shown a willingness to . . . grant reasonable concessions to the south, that the combined influences would have staid this treasonable torrent that is now sweeping away the pillars of the constitution. But there is no man of the dominant party who has the patriotism or courage to propose any practical form of adjustment.”
As Jefferson Davis prepared to leave the Senate and return to Mississippi, he wrote to Pierce, “I have often and sadly turned my thoughts to you during the troublous times through which we have been passing and now I come to the hard task of announcing to you that the hour is at hand which closes my connection with the United States.” His home state, he continued, “not as a matter of choice but of necessity has resolved to enter on the trial of secession.” Davis believed that “When Lincoln comes in he will have but to continue in the path of his predecessor to inaugurate a civil war” and blame the Democratic administration.
“I leave immediately for Mississippi and know not what may devolve upon me after my return. Civil war has only horror for me, but whatever circumstances demand shall be met as a duty and I trust be so discharged that you will not be ashamed of our former connection or cease to be my friend.” Davis closed with the sad reflection of a modest dream that would not be realized, for he “had hoped this summer to have had an opportunity to see you and Mrs. Pierce and to have shown to you our children.”
It was Franklin Pierce who, years earlier, had helped convince Jefferson Davis that the South could secede without penalty. In a speech before the Mississippi legislature in 1858, Davis revealed that after a tour of the North, “I heard in many places what previously I had only heard from the late President Pierce, the declaration that whenever a northern army should be assembled to march for the subjugation of the south, they would have a battle to fight at home before they passed the limits of their own state, and one in which our friends claim that the victory will at least be doubtful.” Pierce’s prediction was soon to be tested.
Pierce, though prevailed upon from across the country for some kind of action, was in Boston seeking medical treatment as the secession crisis continued, regretting “that I am too seriously ill to take counsel with them in this most critical and alarming condition of our country.”
“There are two people who can save this country and you are one of them,” wrote one Pierce correspondent, omitting his other choice of savior. “Your name is already on the page of history, but if you would render it immortal, if you would place it high above America’s greatest names, you must now act as a man for the good of your country. I want you to volunteer on a holy mission,” asking him to speak to the people of Alabama and Georgia.
Tyler wrote in the Richmond Enquirer, “I will not despair of the good sense of my countrymen. The hope will linger with me to the last, that there is enough wisdom and patriotism among us to adjust these difficulties, although I frankly confess my doubts and fears.” Virginia’s “destiny for good or evil is with the South,” Tyler believed. He argued for a convention of the border states without delay.
The Virginia General Assembly from the earliest hours of its current session had been hard at work. On the day Georgia seceded,* Virginia called for a peace conference in Washington on the fourth day of February. It would not be limited to border states, as Tyler wished, but extended to every state willing to send delegates. This olive branch was tempered by Virginia’s decision, five days earlier, to schedule a conference to consider secession.
* Georgia argued, “For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slaveholding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery . . . Because by their declared principles and policy they have outlawed $3,000,000,000 of our property in the common territories of the Union; put it under the ban of the Republic in the States where it exists and out of the protection of Federal law everywhere; because they give sanctuary to thieves and incendiaries who assail it to the whole extent of their power, in spite of their most solemn obligations and covenants; because their avowed purpose is to subvert our society and subject us not only to the loss of our property but the destruction of ourselves, our wives, and our children, and the desolation of our homes, our altars, and our firesides. To avoid these evils we resume the powers which our fathers delegated to the Government of the United States, and henceforth will seek new safeguards for our liberty, equality, security, and tranquility.”
John Tyler was appointed a commissioner from Virginia to President Buchanan, while a second commissioner was sent to South Carolina and the seceded states. Both were instructed to urge caution pending a conference. The Virginia General Assembly then endorsed the Crittenden Compromise. John Tyler had been marginalized in his presidency, mocked and isolated in retirement. His grand expectations for elder statesmanship, of traveling the world and mediating great conflicts like the Crimean War, had been unmet. But now a grave concern at home called for his immediate attention. Upon hearing of his appointment, Tyler raced to Richmond where he met with Governor John Letcher and Judge John Robertson, the commissioner to the seceded states. Months earlier, Tyler had despaired of ever seeing Washington again. But the current state of affairs rendered old rules obsolete. On the next morning’s train, John Tyler was headed back to the White House.
Upon his arrival in Washington, Tyler settled into the Indian Queen Hotel, where he had quietly taken the oath of office as president after Harrison’s death. He sent a note to President Buchanan asking for an early morning appointment the following day. Buchanan responded quickly, and at 10:00 a.m. the next morning Tyler walked again through the White House doors. Coming in from the cold, Tyler was warmed by Millard Fillmore’s gravity-powered heating system. His old home had changed, in some ways unrecognizable from the splendid prison of his nearly four tumultuous years. The doorman would have led him up the stairs to President Buchanan’s office on the second floor. Due to the importance of his guest and the excitement of the hour, Buchanan would have likely greeted Tyler in the “Reception Room,” before heading to the adjacent presidential office. The office suite was a large room with little headspace, shortened to accommodate the high-ceilinged East Room below. The papers of state were piled high upon “several simple desks,” and the room was warmed by a “wood stove in front of a marble mantelpiece, over which hung a portrait of Andrew Jackson.” Light came in through the windows and from the gas chandelier, illuminating the many maps that adorned the walls. It was here on January 24, 1861, that the two presidents met to try and keep the Union together.
Tyler felt “a warm and cordial reception.” As though the emissary of a foreign country, rather than a neighboring state still within the Union, Tyler presented his credentials to the president, as well as the resolutions of the Virginia General Assembly. Buchanan read them carefully, deeming their contents “very important.” In fact, he promised Tyler that he would make them the subject of a message to Congress.
Tyler was pleased to find Buchanan “frank, and entirely confiding in his language and whole manner.” Virginia was “almost universally inclined toward peace and reconciliation,” Tyler informed the president. He reminded his host of Virginia’s role in the revolution and founding of the country. Tyler believed his state was ready to do its part once again.
Buchanan stood by his annual message, saying that while he must enforce the laws, the power rested with Congress. He complained to Tyler of the actions of South Carolina, seizing the arsenal and the customs house. Tyler admitted that this had been done to inflame, but that it reflected popular sentiment in the state, and that in the end there was no harm. The two presidents met for an hour and a half. Buchanan made no promises, except to send a message to Congress urging the body to avoid any hostile actions. Tyler asked to preview the message, and Buchanan agreed.
The following morning, the 25th, Tyler returned to the White House, where President Buchanan read him the message he intended to send to Congress. Tyler had no suggestions, deeming it “amply sufficient.” In the afternoon, Tyler was called on by Secretary of State Black and Attorney General Stanton. They apologized, letting him know that Congress had adjourned for the weekend before the message could be submitted, but that it would be done on Monday. While discussing the state of affairs, Tyler received a telegram. It was from Judge Robertson, asking about a rumor that the USS Brooklyn had been sent from Norfolk with troops. Tyler read it and handed it over to his guests. Stanton said, “You know sir, that I am attached to the law department and not in the way of knowing anything about it.” Black said “he had heard and believed that the Brooklyn had sailed with some troops,” but knew nothing further.
“I hope that she has not received her orders since my arrival in Washington,” Tyler said. His guests urged him to ask the president directly.
Excusing himself, Tyler withdrew to an adjoining room and composed a letter to Buchanan. Stanton volunteered to deliver it personally. Tyler received his answer a half hour before midnight. The Brooklyn had been sent before his arrival, on a mission of “mercy and relief,” and it was not bound for South Carolina. The next day Tyler wrote Virginia legislator Wyndham Robertson, the brother of commissioner Judge Robertson. “I doubt not [it] is designed for Pensacola, the troops for Fort Pickens.”
As Tyler tried his hand at mediation, many others believed the ex-presidents should join him. Amos Lawrence, a leading abolitionist and relative of Pierce, wrote, “There is a desire here that all the ex-Presidents of the U. States should come to Washington by the 4th of February to exert their influence in favor of the Union. It is said that Mr. Van Buren will come and Mr. Tyler is here. Mr. Fillmore has been written to.”
“The leading active men,” as Lawrence referred to Douglas, Crittenden, Seward, and others who were attempting a compromise, “desire all the outside influence that can be obtained.” Lawrence believed, “There is no one whose opinions would be more favorably received and would be more effective than yours.” While the former presidents had been actively consulted from the first hour of danger, this call by Lawrence may have represented the inaugural attempt to bring them together. It would not be the last. John O’Sullivan, the newspaper editor who coined the phrase “Manifest Destiny,” wrote to Pierce, “Has there even in history been such a dismal and disgraceful failure as that of Buchanan’s presidency . . . Is not this occasion worthy of your direct intervention?” Meanwhile, the crisis worsened as Louisiana departed the Union.*
* Louisiana did not offer a declaration of causes.
The Senate had changed since the days when Tyler had served, moving to its spacious new chambers in the new northern wing of the Capitol. Sitting in the visitors gallery to hear the president’s message, Tyler “listened to its reading with pleasure.” Buchanan explained that these resolutions had been delivered by “ex-President Tyler, who has left his dignified and honored retirement in the hope that he may render service to his country in this its hour of peril.” The invitation was to all states, “slaveholding or non-slaveholding, as are willing to unite with Virginia in an earnest effort to adjust the present unhappy controversies in the spirit in which the Constitution was originally formed,” to appoint commissioners to the meeting on February 4. But Virginia’s resolutions were not even ordered to be printed, which would have been customary, nor were they referred to a committee. Rather they were left to lie on the table.
On his way out of town, Tyler wrote Buchanan to thank him for his reception and for his message to Congress. “I feel but one regret in all that has occurred,” he said, “and that is the sailing of the Brooklyn under orders issued before my arrival in this city . . . There is nothing I more sincerely desire than that your administration may close amidst the rejoicings of a great people at the consummation of the work of a renewed and more harmonious confederacy.” He pledged to return in a few days’ time for the peace conference. The New York Tribune reported regarding “John Tyler of Virginia, whose recent visit to Washington, if it has not saved the Union, has, at least, produced a correspondence enlivened by the united abilities of himself and Mr. James Buchanan.”
As John Tyler returned to Virginia, a nation that was rapidly losing states gained one. The New York Times on January 29 cheerfully announced KANSAS ADMITTED! Six years after the first elections in Kansas, she joined the Union as a free state, reflecting the will of her people.
Back at Sherwood Forest, Tyler learned of an alarming rumor, circulating in the Virginia press. Was Fortress Monroe, at Hampton, Virginia, turning its cannon toward the land, away from the sea? “If this be so, Mr. President,” Tyler wrote, “is such a proceeding either appropriate or well-timed . . . when Virginia is making every possible effort to redeem and save the Union, it is seemingly ungenerous to have cannon leveled at her bosom.” Buchanan responded quickly that evening, promising to inquire into the situation and wishing him safe travels on his return for the peace conference. “I shall then hope to see more of you,” Buchanan said.