CHAPTER 18
Home again, home again,
From a foreign shore;
And O, it fills my soul with joy,
To meet my friends once more.
Here I dropped the parting tear,
To cross the ocean’s foam;
But now I’m once again with those
Who kindly greet me home.
—NINETEENTH-CENTURY SONG
Lincoln ~ Buchanan ~ Tyler ~ Fillmore
As newly installed president Abraham Lincoln assessed his situation, former president James Buchanan headed for Wheatland with Harriet Lane and a delegation of Pennsylvanians who had come to escort him home. Buchanan arrived to the friendliest crowd he had seen for some time. In Columbia, cannon were fired, church bells were rung, and he was paraded through the streets and public square in an open carriage drawn by four gray horses. A band assembled, playing the song “Home Again.”
“Your fathers took me up when a young man,” Buchanan said to the crowd, “fostered and cherished me through many long years. All of them have passed away, and I stand before you today in the midst of a new generation.” A member of the crowd shouted his recollection of Buchanan’s leaving to fight in the War of 1812. Now he had returned, to complete the final act of his life. “I have come to lay my bones among you, and during the brief, intermediate period which Heaven may allot me, I shall endeavor to perform the duties of a good citizen and a kind friend and neighbor. All political aspirations have departed. What I have done . . . has passed into history.” He closed with his final remaining aspiration, that God would preserve the Constitution and the Union, “and in His good providence dispel the shadows, clouds, and darkness which have now cast a gloom over the land!
“May all our troubles end in a peaceful solution, and may the good old times return to bless us and our posterity!”
The audience responded with loud and sustained applause. From there, the carriage conveyed Buchanan along the road to Wheatland. City guards were assembled in front of his house, and a band played “Home, Sweet Home.” Thanking them for the welcome, Buchanan entered his house, a private citizen. A week after leaving office, he wrote to Holt hoping to “hear often” from members of his cabinet. Indeed, the former presidents, though out of Washington, would be kept well informed by their former colleagues in the capital. “Pray enlighten me as to what is going on in Washington.” His first reactions to Lincoln’s administration were positive. “I am glad with all my heart that its policy seems to be pacific; because I believe that no other policy can preserve and restore the Union. Mr. Lincoln may now make an enviable name for himself and perhaps restore the Union.”
To John Dix, his treasury secretary, he wrote, “You might envy me the quiet of Wheatland were my thoughts not constantly disturbed by the unfortunate condition of my country. It is probable an attempt will be made . . . to cast the responsibility on me. But I always refused to surrender the Fort and was ever ready to send reinforcements on the request of Major Anderson.” Buchanan, however, would find little interest in history when the present was so very much alive.
The Virginia Secession Convention, meanwhile, was treated to a debate between Tyler and another delegate regarding the merits of the Peace Conference report. Tyler criticized the restraints on acquiring new land and the hardship faced by a slaveholder transporting his property to the west. One participant recalled, “He had the entire trust and confidence of every member of the Virginia convention, and exercised and wielded more influence and control over its deliberations and acts than any man in it. He won its confidence . . . His influence, and I may say, control, over the convention, during its whole term, was irresistible.” Jefferson Davis would remember his great esteem and admiration for Tyler, and, “As an extemporaneous speaker, I regard him as the most felicitous among the orators I have known.” It is a compounded tragedy, then, that Tyler had determined to tear Virginia from the Union. With his outsized authority and the solid Unionist presence in the convention, his concerted efforts may well have prevented secession and so much of the misery that followed.
On March 13, 1861, Tyler described himself “an old man wearied overmuch with a long course of public service.” He asked the convention, “Whither are you going? You have to choose your association. Will you find it among the icebergs of the North or the cotton fields of the South?”
An article in the Richmond Examiner described Tyler as “An old Eagle, from Charles City,” who “had lately flown over the enemy’s camp, and had done his best to avert the calamity of war, but it was of no avail—they would listen to no compromise . . . Our only hope is stern resistance. He was old, but ready to fight, and if necessary, to lead the van.”
Like Buchanan, Fillmore stayed on top of events through members of his cabinet. “I am gratified to hear that your state will stand by the union,” Fillmore wrote his former secretary of the navy, John Pendleton Kennedy of Maryland. “It would indeed be most mortifying to me to hear the only state which cast its vote for me in 1856 turn traitor to the government.” But not everyone shared Kennedy’s optimism for the Old Line State. Stanton wrote to Buchanan on March 12 that Forts Sumter and Pickens would have to be surrendered. “It would not surprise me to see Virginia out in less than 90 days,” he said, “and Maryland will be close at her heels.” Stanton was bullish about Buchanan’s future rehabilitation, writing two days later that “You will not have to live long to witness the entombment of the last of the falsehoods by which your patriotic career has been assailed. If you are not spared until then, you need have no fear but that history will do you justice.” Dix agreed, writing the same day that the disappointment in losing Sumter “will be very great, and it will go far to turn the current against the new administration. Your record will brighten in proportion.”
But Lincoln was not prepared to lose Sumter without a fight. Gustavus Fox, a former navy captain with a plan to reinforce the fort, was invited to make his case to the cabinet. He envisioned troops on a steamer with several tugboats loaded with provisions. The batteries of Charleston, he argued, could not “hit a small object moving rapidly at right angles to their line of fire at a distance of thirteen hundred yards, especially at night.”
Lincoln asked his advisers in writing whether the attempt should be made to reinforce Fort Sumter. Chase and Blair agreed, but the rest said “no.” The decided opinion of the cabinet was that Fort Sumter could not and should not be provisioned, that so doing would involve the unnecessary loss of human life. Seward was concerned about provoking war. Cameron argued that Fox’s plan delayed the inevitable for perhaps one or two months. Multiple officers pointed out that Sumter was not valuable, that other military assets outranked it, and that a failed mission would deflate the already demoralized North.
Blair threatened to resign, but held off at the urging of his father, Francis Blair, who had been a Washington insider since the days of Jackson. The younger Blair met with the president and argued that giving up Sumter “would be justly considered by the people, by the world, by history, as treason to the country.” He believed that abandoning Sumter would convince the rebels of what they already suspected; that the national government was weak. According to Welles, Lincoln “decided from that moment to convey supplies to Major Anderson, and that he would reinforce Sumter.”
Fox arrived at Fort Sumter on a fact-finding mission for the president on the evening of March 21. He had traveled to Charleston, connecting with a former navy shipmate, a Captain Hartstene who had gone over to the Confederates. After meeting with Governor Pickens, he was permitted to travel with Hartstene to the fort. Speaking with Major Anderson, he learned the commander’s opinion that it was impossible to reinforce the fort without an army landing at Morris Island. But looking out at the water from the parapet, Fox became more convinced than ever that his plan would work. He agreed to report back that April 15 was the ultimate deadline, after which Anderson would be forced to abandon the fort.
Gideon Welles was at dinner at the Willard on April 1 when John Nicolay brought him a package from the president. It concerned orders sending the reinforcements to Fort Pickens in Pensacola, not Sumter. Welles ran to the Executive Mansion “without delay” and found Lincoln in his office, writing at his desk. Looking up at his secretary, the president said, “What have I done wrong?” Welles explained. Lincoln was just as surprised as Welles. He had entrusted the drafting of the orders to Seward and his clerks and signed the papers without reading them for the sake of time. If he could not trust his secretary of state, Lincoln mused, who could he trust? Lincoln cancelled the order.
“The preparations for the Sumter expedition were carried forward with all the energy which the Department could command,” Welles wrote. The plan was to rendezvous on April 11 ten miles east of the Charleston lighthouse, with Captain Samuel Mercer of thePowhatan in command. ThePowhatan, Pawnee, Pocahontas, and the Harriet Lane would comprise the mission. If South Carolina resisted, Mercer was ordered to repel “by force if necessary all obstructions toward provisioning the fort and reinforcing it.”
Feeling good about the situation, Welles returned to his rooms, assuming the ships were even then on their way to the rendezvous point. Late at night, Seward and his son, who was serving as assistant secretary of state, came to Welles’s room with a telegram suggesting that the mission had been delayed due to his own conflicting orders. The group headed to the Executive Mansion in the dead of night to find the president.
Lincoln was awake, surprised at the late-night call and even more so at the news the men brought with them. Lincoln ordered that “on no account must the Sumter expedition fail or be interfered with.” Seward made the case for intervention at Fort Pickens, Pensacola, pointing out that detaching the Powhatan would cause that mission to fail, one he regarded as at least equally important. Lincoln ordered Seward to return the Powhatan to Mercer immediately, then explained to Welles that he and Seward had, at his urging, simultaneously planned to reinforce Pickens, but in no way sought to interfere with the mission to Sumter. Lincoln took the blame. Welles remembered that his commander-in-chief “never shunned any responsibility and often declared that he, and not his Cabinet, was in fault for errors imputed to them, when I sometimes thought otherwise.” Seward sent the telegram, but the Powhatan had already left for Pensacola. Another boat was hurriedly put out to sea to catch up with the Florida-bound vessel. When the message was successfully delivered, the Powhatan’s captain declined to obey, noting that this dispatch had come from Seward, whereas his previous orders had come directly from the president. Seward remarked to Welles that the lesson he had learned from this was to “attend to his own business and confine his labors to his own Department.” To this, Welles wrote, “I cordially assented.”
There would be many battles fought for Virginia, though the first of these was a political one, with Union forces led by Abraham Lincoln, and those of the secessionists led by John Tyler. Gideon Welles remembered, “For more than a month after his inauguration President Lincoln indulged the hope, I may say felt a strong confidence, that Virginia would not, when the decisive stand finally to be taken, secede, but adhere to the Union.” Tyler had declared an end to compromise months earlier, and was now leveraging his high standing to push his state out of the Union. The stakes for these two presidents could not have been higher. Virginia was the most populous state in the South. Her border with Washington ensured that Virginia would offer a protective barrier or pose an imminent threat to the capital, depending on her decision. The secession movement had been arrested since February 1; Virginia’s departure could bring with it the secession of Kentucky, Maryland, Tennessee, North Carolina, Missouri, and Arkansas.
On April 4 came the initial engagement, as the Virginia Convention cast its first votes on the question of leaving the Union. Under consideration was a resolution to pursue reconciliation efforts with the federal government. An amendment was offered by one member to strike that language, and instead adopt an ordinance of secession. Only 45 members voted “yes,” to more than 90 opposed, a testament to the strong Union sentiment existing in Virginia. Among the 45 secessionists, however, was the former president of the United States, John Tyler.
Lincoln had sent a messenger to Richmond to retrieve George Summers, a Unionist leader in the Virginia Convention, who had sparred with Tyler earlier in the session, and with whom Lincoln had served in Congress. In his place, regrettably, Summers sent John Baldwin, who did not arrive until April 5, some seven to ten days after Lincoln’s invitation.
“Ah! Mr. Baldwin,” Lincoln said, “why did you not come sooner? I have been expecting you gentlemen to come to me for more than a week past. I had a most important proposition to make to you. I am afraid that you have come too late. However, I will make the proposition now.” Lincoln wanted the Virginia Convention to know that he had written Governor Pickens, offering that if Major Anderson could obtain provisions in Charleston, or if the governor would send them himself, that he would make no effort to resupply the fort. But now Lincoln was prepared to go even further. “Your convention in Richmond, Mr. Baldwin, has been sitting now nearly two months, and all it has done has been to shake the rod over my head.” Lincoln took note that two-thirds of the convention had just voted down the secession ordinance. “If you will go back to Richmond and get that Union majority to adjourn and go home without passing the ordinance of secession, so anxious am I for the preservation of the peace of this country, and to save Virginia and the other border states from going out, that I will take the responsibility of evacuating Fort Sumter, and take the chance of negotiating with the cotton states which have already gone out.”
Baldwin refused to listen, barely treating Lincoln with civility. Lincoln ordered the Sumter expedition that day, resolved to “send bread to Anderson.” Lincoln telegraphed his message to Governor Pickens. “An attempt will be made to supply Fort Sumter with provisions only, and that, if such attempt be not resisted, no effort to throw in men, arms or supplies will be made, without further notice, or in case of an attack upon the Fort.” As his secretaries noted, “If the rebels fired on that, they would not be able to convince the world that he had begun civil war.” The Confederates could allow the fort to be resupplied, or fire the first shots of war against an unarmed humanitarian mission. Lincoln may have been a novice commander-in-chief. But he was a veteran politician.
Two days later, Lincoln sent for John Minor Botts, a Virginian and former congressional colleague who was in Washington. They sat together for four hours, and Lincoln told him of his conversation with Baldwin. Botts was horrified that the discussion had not become known in Virginia, and offered to take the message back personally. “I will guarantee, with my head,” Botts said, “that they will adopt your proposition, and adopt it willingly and cheerfully.”
Lincoln surely felt deflated. The fleet was on its way to Sumter. He had no means of stopping them, only a well-placed assurance that a better-timed offer to a more honorable party than Baldwin might have prevented all that was about to happen. Lincoln’s gambit to save Virginia, willingness to suffer the public fallout, and desire for peace, remained a secret for years, coming out publicly in congressional testimony in 1866.
The Confederate government was in serious danger. Lincoln’s election had been five months earlier and his inauguration a month past. No state had left the Union since Texas on February 1. Tempers had calmed, and people throughout the South were second-guessing what had been done. A delegation from Alabama told Jefferson Davis and his cabinet, “Unless you sprinkle blood in the face of the people of Alabama, they will be back in the old Union in less than ten days.”
On April 10, Confederate general P. G. T. Beauregard, commanding the batteries at Charleston, received his orders. “You will at once demand its evacuation, and, if this is refused, proceed in such manner as you may determine to reduce it.”