CHAPTER 19
The Confederate states have deliberately commenced the civil war, and God knows where it may end.
—JAMES BUCHANAN
Buchanan ~ Tyler ~ Lincoln ~ Fillmore ~ Pierce
On April 11, 1861, at 2:00 p.m., General P. G. T. Beauregard demanded that Major Robert Anderson, his former professor at West Point, surrender Fort Sumter. Anderson would decline this and another such demand made that day.
While the two commanders debated control of Charleston Harbor, Stanton wrote Buchanan of the dire situation in Washington. “The feeling of loyalty to the government has greatly diminished in this city,” he said. There was trouble filling militia spots to guard the capital. No members of the cabinet had yet purchased homes or relocated their families. They were ready to “cut and run,” he observed, “their tenure is like that of a Bedouin on the sands of the desert.”
Hours after this letter was written, at 4:30 a.m. on April 12, the batteries of Charleston opened fire on Fort Sumter. Major Anderson raised the American flag, and settled in as the moment he had been anticipating for months was finally here. Sumter was operating at low capacity of men and munitions, and so Anderson would wait before returning fire. At 6:30 a.m.the men at Fort Sumter had a relaxed breakfast, as though the batteries were not raining hell itself upon them. Four thousand shots and shells were fired on Sumter over the next thirty-three hours.
As Sumter was being shelled, Stanton wrote Buchanan, “We have the war upon us. The impression here is held by many 1st that the effort to reinforce will be a failure. 2nd that in less than 24 hours from this time Anderson will have surrendered. 3rd. that in less than 30 days Davis will be in possession of Washington.”
Stanton’s first two predictions were correct. When his men could no longer offer any opposition, Anderson yielded to the inevitable and surrendered. Determined to leave with dignity, he ordered his men to formation for a one-hundred-gun salute, where a cartridge explosion took the life of the only person to die at Fort Sumter.
Buchanan wrote his nephew, “The Confederate states have deliberately commenced the civil war, and God knows where it may end.” To General Dix, who was chairing the Union meeting in New York City to be held on April 24, he wrote, “Nobody seems to understand the course pursued by the late administration.” He believed that South Carolina had been warned against attacking Fort Sumter. If the world knew this, he argued that it would help Lincoln. It would certainly help Buchanan. “The present administration had no alternative but to accept the war initiated by South Carolina or the Southern Confederacy. The north will sustain the administration almost to a man; and it ought to be sustained at all hazards.”
The commencement of war would make Virginia’s alliance with the Union, as it proved, nearly impossible. Tyler felt that Lincoln had made a serious mistake, “having weighed in the scales the value of a mere local fort against the value of the Union itself.” Tyler questioned Lincoln’s motives, arguing that his position on Sumter was taken to consolidate Republicans. “If the Confederate states have their own flag is anyone so stupid as to suppose that they will suffer the flag of England or France or of the northern states to float over their ramparts in place of their own?”
On April 15, 1861, Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand volunteers who would commit for ninety days. Two weeks later he would supplement this with a request for forty-two thousand three-year volunteers, twenty-three thousand additional regulars, and eighteen thousand sailors. Nicolay, who was charged with copying the initial call, wrote, “All these things will make stirring times, and I hardly realize that they are so, even as I write them.”
And so a generation of Americans would trade their plans and hopes for the future for the opportunity to discover what they were made of. Young men left farms and factories and families in response to calls from the North and South for the great coming conflict. Men who in an earlier or later generation would have passed their lives anonymously teaching at a university or tending a general store would find their countenances enshrined in marble, their deeds studied, celebrated, and reviled by millions yet unborn.
Historian James McPherson detailed the shocking state of ill-preparedness: “Most of the tiny 16,000-man army was scattered in seventy-nine frontier outposts west of the Mississippi. Near a third of its officers were resigning to go with the South . . . All but one of the heads of the eight army bureaus had been in service since the War of 1812 . . . Only two officers had commanded as much as a brigade in combat, and both were over seventy.” Lincoln’s administration would complete one of the greatest logistical feats in history, as their small and scattered forces increased to seven hundred thousand soldiers by the early days of 1862. But the Confederates had a significant head start. Nearly a month before Lincoln’s initial request for volunteers, the Confederacy had called for one hundred thousand volunteers for twelve months. By mid-April 1861, they had achieved 60 percent of their goal.
In a matter of months, the administration would build an army greater than that which ever served Napoleon. Lincoln took great care to appoint generals from different political factions, ethnic groups, and regions. As a member of Congress, he had watched President Polk go to war with two prominent Whig generals, with whom he constantly fought, undermined, and tried to embarrass, which in turn helped cost him the support of the Whigs in Congress and throughout the country. Lincoln believed, “the Democrats must vote to hold the Union now, without bothering whether we or the Southern men got things where they are; and we must make it easy for them to do this, for we cannot live through the case without them.” If Lincoln could hold the border states and maintain the unity of the North, he had a chance of winning the war. Similarly, he knew that if the support for the war collapsed, the Union itself would be over. Appointing generals from different constituency groups would help solidify their support for his administration.
Benjamin Butler never expected to be in a position of calling on a Republican president to give thanks for his appointment as a major-general in the army.
“I do not know whether I ought to accept this,” Butler said. The Massachusetts lawyer pointed out that when the commission arrived, he was in trial, which was continued so that he might come to Washington.
“I guess we both wish we were back trying cases,” Lincoln said.
“Besides, Mr. President, you may not be aware that I was the Breckinridge candidate for governor of my state in the last campaign, and did all I could to prevent your election.”
“All the better,” Lincoln said. “I hope your example will bring many of the same sort with you.”
Butler was astonished. “But, I do not think that I can support the measures of your administration, Mr. President.”
“I do not care whether you do or not, if you will fight for the country.”
While assembling his army, Lincoln ordered a naval blockade to squeeze the South, preventing their lucrative exports or badly needed industrial imports from assisting the rebellion.
To accomplish this task Lincoln began with forty-two ships, a majority of which were “thousands of miles from the United States.” Fewer than twelve warships were presently available on the eastern seaboard. McPherson calculated that five of every six Confederate blockade runners succeeded, a number he reaches by noting that nine out of ten attempts were successful in 1861 but by 1865 it was reduced to one out of every two. He further points out the deterrent effect of the blockade; eight thousand ships traveled to southern harbors during four years of Civil War, but twenty thousand had done the same in the previous four years. This reduction in trade, he argues, to less than a third of normal, coincided with a dramatic increase in the South’s need for consumption.
While John Tyler was exhausting himself to undermine Lincoln, the president was receiving support from another of his predecessors. In response to Lincoln’s call for volunteers, the Unionists of Buffalo gathered on the evening of April 16 at the Metropolitan Theater, selecting Millard Fillmore as chairman. In addressing them, Fillmore publicly made clear not only to the audience in the seats, but also to the nation where he stood. It had been his first political event in some time, he noted, and he had never planned on another. But, “We have reached a crisis in the history of this country when no man, however humble his rank or limited his influence, has a right to stand neutral. Civil War has been inaugurated, and we must meet it. Our Government calls for aid, and we must give it. Our Constitution is in danger, and we must defend it. It is no time now to inquire by whose fault or folly this state of things has been produced. The ship of state is in the breakers, the muttering thunder and darkened sky indicate the coming storm, and if she sinks we must go down with her. We have a common lot and must meet a common fate. Let every man therefore stand to his post, and like the Roman sentinel at the gate of Pompeii, let posterity, when the storm is over, find our skeleton and armor on the spot where duty required us to stand.”
Fillmore had hoped for compromise, or for a voluntary division of the Union, but in the face of “aggressive warfare, we have no alternative but to rally around the constituted authorities and defend the government.” Buffalo applied its characteristic energy to the task of raising funds for the war, putting together $50,000 in private donations to secure enlistments. States and towns throughout the country had, even before Lincoln’s call, begun putting together the resources necessary for war. Buffalo’s figure was impressive, dwarfing that of much larger cities.
Fillmore was attacked following his speech, with critics dredging up the now infamous 1856 Albany address in which he warned against the election of the Republican Party, and argued that as the North would never accept an all-southern ticket, nor should the South accept a president and vice president from the North. “The position now taken by Mr. Fillmore has greatly wounded the feelings, destroyed the confidence, and outraged the high appreciation entertained for him by that majority of conservative Union men of our country who so zealously supported him,” read one anonymous editorial.
One former southern supporter wrote him with “pain and sorrow . . . I expected when you spoke, it would be for peace, that your voice would be heard calling upon your fellow citizens everywhere to put forth their efforts in favor of peace.” He continued, “The southern people do not want war. They have been trying all the time to avoid it. The entire south (excepting, perhaps, South Carolina) would have gladly accepted Mr. Crittenden’s proposition at one time as a basis of adjustment. My dear sir, I have for these many years loved you, as I have scarcely ever loved any other man, residing north of Mason’s and Dixon’s line, because I believed you to be a pure and genuine patriot—a true man in every sense of the word. It is to such men that we must look in times like these, to save us from the evils and horrors of civil war . . . So make an effort and then become the second Washington (Father) to your country.”
Fillmore’s speech also disappointed “A friend of peace” in Virginia, who wrote of his surprise to “find you in sympathy with the prevailing sentiment at the North that Mr. Lincoln must be sustained in his wicked war upon the South.” Why not let the South go in peace? The South “inaugurated the Peace Conference, the results of which were rejected by the North.”
“Mr. Lincoln’s policy,” he continued, “is coercion, under the guise of retaking the fort.” If “you insist on prosecuting this wicked course, you will find the south just as ready to meet it as you are, and being in the right and fighting for their homes and families, they will not” be conquered.
“The prospects are that we shall have war, and a trying one,” John Tyler wrote to his wife. “The battle at Charleston has aroused the whole north. I fear that division no longer exists in their ranks, and that they will break upon the south with an immense force.” Meanwhile the Virginia Secession Convention was lurching toward a vote, meeting in closed session. “Another day may decide our course.”
On April 17, Virginia seceded from the Union, passing “An ordinance to repeal the ratification of the Constitution of the United States.” The initial balloting was 88–55, nearly a total reversal of the vote against secession less than two weeks earlier. Once secession was accomplished, some delegates changed their votes and those who were absent (or hiding) appeared, changing the total to 103–46.
A shadow convention of secessionists had been meeting nearby, attempting to put pressure on the sanctioned convention. After the vote, a party visited the shadow convention to break the news. “Ex-President Tyler and [former] Governor Wise were conducted arm-in-arm,” one witness remembered, “and bareheaded, down the center aisle amid a din of cheers, while every member rose to his feet. They were led to the platform, and called upon to address the convention. The venerable ex-President of the United States first rose responsive to the call, but remarked that the exhaustion incident to his recent incessant labors, and the nature of his emotions at such a momentous crisis, superadded to the feebleness of age, rendered him physically unable to utter what he felt and thought on such an occasion. Nevertheless, he seemed to acquire supernatural strength as he proceeded, and he spoke most effectively for the space of fifteen minutes.
“He gave a brief history of all the struggles of our race for freedom, from Magna Carta to the present day; and he concluded with a solemn declaration that at no period of our history were we engaged in a more just and holy effort for the maintenance of liberty and independence than at that present moment . . . He said that he might not survive to witness the consummation of the work begun that day; but generations yet unborn would bless those who had the high privilege of being participators in it.”
To Julia, Tyler wrote, “Virginia has severed her connection with the north hive of abolitionists, and takes her stand as a sovereign and independent state . . . the die is thus cast, and her future is in the hands of the God of Battle . . . Do, dearest, live as frugally as possible in the household—trying times are before us.” Writing to his concerned mother-in-law in New York, who had requested he send the kids to her, “The vaunts and terrible boasts of the north are one thing, the execution of them another. All are well at Sherwood Forest.” Not only would he defend Virginia, but Tyler planned on taking the fight north, and “urged that a strong body of cavalry should be immediately sent to Washington to seize the capital.”
The North was certainly not the safest place for at least one of Tyler’s children. Robert Tyler, a prominent Philadelphian and prothonotary [clerk] of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, had grand designs for his political future. Instead, he barely escaped being lynched by his neighbors, resigned his position, and fled south. After his hasty retreat, his neighbors “cut his carpets, defaced the pictures, broke the statues, and made kindling wood of the piano, sofas, etc.” Robert Tyler was burned in effigy in his former home, and dummies representing him were hung from trees.
John Tyler, having overcome Lincoln’s best efforts in Virginia, was now appointed by the convention to meet with Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy, to work out an alliance between their two governments. On April 25, Virginia formally joined the Provisional Confederate States of America. Tyler gleefully telegraphed Governor Pickens of South Carolina, “We are fellow citizens once more by an ordinance passed this day.”
The abolitionist newspaper the Liberator declared that “John Tyler has put the finishing touch to the peculiar reputation he acquired while in the Presidential chair” by sending the telegraph to Pickens. The Philadelphia Inquirer, beneath the headline TYLER ALWAYS A TRAITOR, opined that he was “born to be a traitor, and this is by no means his first exhibition of the cloven foot,” while the New Hampshire Sentinel pointed out “All of our ex-Presidents, except John Tyler, sustain the Union and oppose secession.”
Within four days of Lincoln’s call, The 6th Massachusetts Regiment was “the first fully equipped unit to respond.” Arriving by rail in Baltimore, they had to cross town on foot to a different depot on their way to Washington. They had not left the train before an angry mob confronted them. “Taunts clothed in the most outrageous language were hurled at them by the panting crowd, who, almost breathless with running, pressed up to the car windows, presenting knives and revolvers, and cursed up into the faces of the soldiers.” As police attempted to restore order, the troops began switching trains, “many of them cocking their muskets as they stepped on the platform.” There were “loose paving stones which they hurled at the car, smashing in the windows and blinds, and adding to this method of assault an occasional shot from a pistol or gun.” Four young soldiers, who left their homes expecting danger at a more southerly latitude, instead lost their lives in Baltimore.
Stanton wrote to Buchanan that “no description could convey to you the panic that prevailed” in the days after the riot. The situation was made worse by Baltimore’s response, destroying railroad bridges to keep northern troops out of the city, and tearing down telegraph lines, leaving Washington unable to communicate with the outside world. “Almost every family [in Washington] packed up their effects,” Stanton noted. “Women and children were sent away in great numbers; provisions advanced to famine prices . . . there is still a deep apprehension that before long this city is doomed to the scene of battle and carnage.”
Hay recorded that “The White House is turned into barracks.” To protect the capital only two thousand people could be counted on, with three thousand District Militia who were unreliable or even traitors. “But with the city perfectly demoralized with secession feeling, no man could know whom of the residents to trust . . . We were not only surrounded by the enemy, but in the midst of traitors.” One reporter remembered, “At night the campfires of the Confederates, who were assembling in force, could be seen on the southern bank of the Potomac, and it was not uncommon to meet on Pennsylvania Avenue a defiant Southerner openly wearing a large Virginia or South Carolina secession badge.” Various government clerks who quit their posts refused to say “goodbye,” insisting on “au revoir,” expecting to be in possession of the capital within a month. One Washington preacher left his favorite cat behind with three weeks food and water.
Lincoln, in less than two months as president, was seriously threatened with losing the capital. Casting a forlorn look out the White House window, he desperately waited for troops. “Why don’t they come?”
“What is to become of us as a people?” asked one correspondent of Franklin Pierce. “What is the duty of the citizen who cannot see any civil necessity for the impending fraternal war? What is your duty and mine?”
Millard Fillmore and John Tyler had both been outspoken on opposite sides of the conflict. Franklin Pierce, back in New Hampshire and sufficiently restored to health, was now prepared to break his silence. Pierce would answer the letter writer’s question in a Concord address to a Union rally, whose members asked him for remarks. Speaking from the balcony of the Eagle Hotel, he said, “You call for me, my friends, as lovers of our country and of the blessed Union which our forefathers transmitted to us, on an occasion more grave, more momentous, and more deeply fraught with painful emotion than any under which I have ever addressed you. But I rejoice that that flag,” he said, motioning to the Stars and Stripes above the hotel, “floats there,” he said to cheering. He referenced his father’s service in the Revolutionary War, at the Battle of Bunker Hill, and that of his brothers in the War of 1812, and his own in Mexico. “Never can we forget the gallant men of the North and South moved together like a band of brothers and mingled their blood on many a field in the common cause. Can I, if I would, feel other than the proudest sadness when I see that those who so often stood shoulder to shoulder in the face of foreign foes, and now in imminent danger of standing face to face as the foes of each other.
“I do not believe aggression by arms is a suitable or possible remedy for the existing evils . . . [if] a war of aggression is to be waged against the National Capital and the north, then there is no way for us, as citizens of the old Thirteen States, but to stand together and uphold the flag to the last, with all the rights which pertain to it, and with the fidelity and endurance of brave men, I would counsel you to stand together with one mind and one heart, calm, faithful, and determined. But give no countenance to passion and violence, which are really unjust, and often in periods like these are the harbingers of domestic strife. Be just to yourselves, just to others, true to your country, and may God, who has so greatly blessed our fathers, graciously interpose in this hour of clouds and darkness, and save both extremities of the country, and to cause the old flag to be upheld by all hands and all hearts.”
In response, Carlton Chase wrote, “How I wish I could take you by the hand and thank you for your noble and truly patriotic address delivered the other day at Concord!”
A soldier stationed in Missouri loved the speech, as well. “It is not easy to say if we will lift our hand against those whom we have so long here been enabled to call brothers. I can entertain no deep feeling of hostility to the South as taken at large, but I must feel that the time has come to punish without abatement those of the spirits who have struck at our institutions and made efforts to dissolve the Union . . . While officers of the army are quitting by the score the flag they have so long followed . . . I hold it to be my duty, to the best of my ability, to stand by, and if it be so willed by Providence, to see the noble old ship of our Union, safely through the peril.”
And so another of Lincoln’s predecessors opposed his plans for a military response. Pierce would not support the president, unless the North itself were invaded. If the South would not return willingly, they must be permitted to depart peacefully. Pierce responded to a supporter of his Eagle Hotel speech, condemning the “moral aggression of the north” as well as “the arrogant rashness of the south,” noting, “We cannot subjugate the Southern states, if we would.” His wife Jane sent him a speech by General Robert Patterson supporting the war, indicating that the Pierces may have been a house divided. Pierce replied, “I know him, and know that he can do, what I cannot do—bow to the storm. My purpose, dearest, is irrevocably taken. I will never justify, sustain, or in any way or to any extent uphold this cruel, heartless, aimless, unnecessary war. Madness and imbecility are in the ascendant, I shall not succumb to them. Come what may, I have no opinion to retract—no line of action to change.”