NO ESCAPE FROM DISUNION.

593

Constitution." The President, therefore, saw no escape for the Union from dissolution, unless, perhaps, the Constitution was amended in three particulars: First, by expressly recognizing the right of property in slaves, wherever it might exist; secondly, by protecting slave property in all the Territories as long as they remained Territories, and until they became States, in the Union, with or without slavery as their constitution provided; and thirdly, a like recognition of the right of the master to have his fugitive slave delivered up to him; the Constitution thus being made to declare all laws violating the fugitive slave act, "null and void." Such an amendment I would save the Union.1

Buchanan's proposed amendments have a familiar sound. Did they originate in that caucus attended in early May by Jefferson Davis, Robert Toombs, Benjamin Slidell, Judah P. Benjamin, Alfred Iverson and James M. Mason, with fourteen others, who drew up the address which, after discussion in the Senate, in the form of resolutions, was adopted by the Senators,-resolutions of proslavery sentiments abounding, and at last became the platform on which Breckinridge and Bell were nominated by the seceding convention at Baltimore? The tone, the doctrine, the consequences were alike. Again, they were like the amendments proposed by the minority, in the secession conventions of Alabama, Georgia,3 and Louisiana, and had the same purpose, the pacification of the country by making slavery the chief corner-stone.

2

Nor was this the end. The President's cabinet was not free from complicity in the secession movement. The 1 Richardson's Messages and Papers of the Presidents, V, 627639.

2 Journal, 77-80.

3 Journal, 15-20.

4 Journal, 10, 11, 12.

594

THE PROCEDURE IN SECESSION.

Secretary of the Treasury, Howell Cobb, of Georgia; the Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, of Virginia; and the Secretary of the Interior, Jacob Thompson, of Mississippi, were in full sympathy with their States and in constant touch with the progress of the secession movement in them and elsewhere. Moreover, they palsied the arm of the feeble President, and, by their official acts, strengthened the disunionists. So open was this official sympathy, that Cobb and Floyd resigned in December, 1860, loudly boasting of their services to the cause of secession.1

The conventions that passed ordinances of secession proclaimed them as the will of the people, save in Texas, where the governor, the famous Samuel Houston, vigorously opposing secession, delayed it as long as he could and kept the secessionists at bay. But they met in a convention, not legally called by the legislature and passed a secession ordinance on the first of February, 1861, which, on the twenty-third, was submitted to a popular vote. The returns showed its adoption, though the majority was meager.2 From some districts there was no return. It is doubtful that the ordinance would have been adopted had the entire vote been cast. The "co-operation" secessionists were strongest in Alabama and Georgia. But "secession first; confederation afterwards" was the cry of the majority. Opposition to the secession ordinance, in each State, was to its form rather than to its substance, and those who hesitated to sign were among the loudest to pledge their support to whatever the State should decide to do. Thus when suddenly, amidst the heat of a revolution, citizens of a slaveholding State were compelled by public opinion to choose between

1 For an account of The Cabinet Cabal see Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln, II, Chapter XVIII and Chapter XXV.

2 See p. 590.

THE MONTGOMERY CONVENTION.

595

their State and the Union, with a reputed abolitionist as President, their decision was quickly made. The action of the States became also the immediate excuse for their representatives in Congress to retire and to join the secession movement openly.

On the fourth of February, 1861, delegates from seceding States met in Montgomery, Alabama, to carry out the program in the appeal of South Carolina, and to organize a Confederacy of the Slaveholding States. Though South Carolina in its convention (which remained in session, usurping the place of the legislature, till September seventeenth, 1862, when the State fell into the possession of the national forces), had advised a general convention, it was the Mississippi legislature, on the twenty-ninth of January, that, by formal resolutions, initiated the movement culminating in the Montgomery Convention. In less than a week, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Mississippi met together; Texas soon after came, and in four days a provisional constitution was adopted and a government was planned with the title of "The Confederate States of America." The very word confederate illuminated the meaning of the new movement; it stood, as it had ever stood, the antithetic of national; and the government now formed, for one year, its officers being chosen on the ninth of February, for that period, was to measure strength with the national government.1

The conventions of the seceding States had taken care to revise the State constitutions and, as in Mississippi, to annul all parts conflicting with the convention ordinances.2 The Montgomery Convention modelled its work

1 The proceedings of the Montgomery Convention were secret and never published.

2 Amendment to the Constitution, adopted January 26, 1861. See Convention Journal, 117. This action is typical of that by the Conventions of 1860 and 1861, in other seceding States.

596

THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY.

after the federal pattern. The provisional constitution was ordained and established by "the deputies of the Sovereign and Independent States of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.” It closely followed the national instrument, but not in the exact order. The importation of African slaves from any foreign country other than the slaveholding States of the United States was forbidden.2 Congress should appropriate no money from the treasury unless it was asked for by the President or some one of the heads of the departments, except to meet running expenses or contingencies.3 The Provisional President and Vice-President should be elected by ballot by the States represented in Congress, each State casting one vote, a majority being requisite to elect. The Congress could amend the constitution at any time by a two-thirds vote. The somewhat incongruous provision that no State, without the consent of Congress, should enter into any agreement (“or enter into any treaty, alliance or confederation,") or compact with another State was taken, as also the definition of treason, from the national Constitution." Under this compact, Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, and Alexander Hamilton Stephens, of Georgia, were elected President and Vice-President. Thus there sprang into existence a Confederate Congress, consisting of the delegates sent to Montgomery by the conventions; a President and a VicePresident, chosen by them, and, by adoption, a body of administrative officials taken over from the United States, for nearly all the federal officials in the seceding States joined the secession movement.

1 This was before N. C. and Virginia and Arkansas seceded. 2 Art. I, Sec. VII, 1.

8 Art. I, Sec. VII, 6.

4 As in the Confederation of 1781.

Art. I, Sec. VIII; Art. III, Sec. III, 1.

FAILURE OF SLAVOCRACY IN CONGRESS.

597

This brief outline of the events following the Dred Scott decision suggests how irreconcilable were its opposing opinions; how profoundly they shook the country, and, taking political form in the election of 1860, disclosed the impending dissolution of the Union. From this outline only one conclusion will be drawn, that the destruction of the Union was the chief Southern activity of the times.

With Buchanan and Breckinridge a new Congress had been chosen, the Thirty-fifth, in both of whose sessions the Democratic party had the majority in both Houses. Not until the Thirty-sixth Congress, which met on the fifth of December, 1859, was there a change in the party majority: the House of Representatives then for the first time passing into the control of the Republicans.1 The new party displaced the old, as the old one, in its youth, sixty years before had displaced the Federalists. It seems hard to reconcile the charge of South Carolina against the North with the facts of these sixty years' control of the government by the Democratic party, and that party, during most of this period, wholly controlled by Southern statesmen. It might seem that during this long period, the South, in possession of the government, would have arranged all things in its own way. If in so long a period it had not done it, the question might be ventured, -Could it be done? Slavery had controlled Congress, the Executive, and, lately, had secured the Supreme Court itself: after that,―secession, and a slaveholding empire.

A stronger man that Buchanan might have confessed himself unable to solve the problem of 1860,-How shall the Union be preserved? The message which he sent to the Thirty-sixth Congress bemoaned "the long continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with

1101 Democrats; 113 Republicans; 23 Independents. From free States, 144; from slave, 90.