Page images
PDF
EPUB

"I repeat, the South has got all they ever claimed in all the Territories. * * * Then, sir, according to law, the Slaveholding States have got equality in the Territories. How is it in fact. * Now, I propose to show that they have got the actual equitable partition, giving them more than they were disposed to demand.

*

*

* *

"The Senator from Kentucky, * * * Mr. Crittenden, introduced a proposition for an equitable partition. That proposition was, that north of 36° 30′ Slavery should be prohibited, and South of it should be protected, by Territorial law. * What is now the case? It is true the Crittenden proposition has not yet become part of the Constitution; but it is also true that an equitable partition has been made by the vote of the people themselves, establishing, maintaining, and protecting Slavery in every inch of territory South of the thirty-seventh parallel, giving the South half a degree more than the Crittenden Proposition.

"There stands your Slave-code in New Mexico protecting Slavery up to the thirty-seventh degree as effectually as laws can be made to protect it. There it stands the Law of the Land. Therefore the South has all below the thirtyseventh parallel, while Congress has not prohibited Slavery even North of it.

[blocks in formation]

"What more, then, is demanded? Simply that a Constitutional Amendment shall be adopted, affirming-what? Precisely what every Republican in both Houses of Congress has voted for within a month. Just do, by Constitutional Amendment, what you have voted in the Senate and House of Representatives, that is all. You are not even required to do that, but merely to vote for a proposition submitting the question to the People of the States whether they will make a Constitutional Amendment affirming the equitable partition of the Territories which the People have already made.

*

*

*

"You may ask, why does the South want us to do it by Constitutional Amendment, when we have just done it voluntarily by Law? The President of the United States, in his Inaugural, has told you the reason. He has informed

*

* *

you that all of these troubles grow out of the absence of a Constitutional provision defining the power of Congress over the subject of Slavery. He thinks that the trouble has arisen from the absence of such a Constitutional Provision, and suggests a National Convention to enable the People to supply the defect, leaving the People to say what it is, instead of dictating to them what it shall be."

It may here be remarked that while Mr. Douglas held that "So far as the doctrine of Popular Sovereignty and Nonintervention is concerned, the Colorado Bill, the Nevada Bill, and the Dakota Bill, are identically the same with the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and in its precise language”—these former Bills having been passed at the last Session of the 36th Congress-the Republicans, on the contrary, held that neither in these nor other measures had they abandoned any distinctive Republican principle; while Breckinridge declared that they had passed those Territorial Bills, without the Wilmot proviso, because they felt perfectly secure in those Territories, with all the Federal patronage in Republican hands.

However that may be, we have here, brought out in strong contrast, the conciliatory feeling which inspired such Union men as Douglas, and the strong and persistent efforts they made in behalf of Concession and Peace up to a period only a few weeks before the bombardment of Sumter; and the almost total revulsion in their sentiments after that event, as to the only proper means to preserve the Union. For it was only then that the truth, as it fell from Douglas's lips at Springfield, was fully recognized, to wit: that there was no half-way ground betwixt Patriotism and Treason; that War was an existing fact; and that Patriots must arm to defend and preserve the Union against the armed Traitors assailing it.

At last, July 4, 1861, the Congress met, and proceeded at once with commendable alacrity and patriotism, to the consideration and enactment of measures sufficient to meet the extraordinary exigency, whether as regards the raising and equipment of the vast bodies of Union volunteers needed to put down Rebellion, or in the raising of those enormous

amounts of money which the Government was now, or might thereafter be, called upon to spend like water in preserving the Union.

It was at this memorable Session, of little over one month, that the chief of the great" War Measures" as they were termed, were enacted.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE STORM OF BATTLE.

THE MILITARY SITUATION-THE GREAT UPRISING-POSITIONS AND
NUMBERS OF THE UNION AND REBEL ARMIES-JOHNSTON EVAC-
UATES HARPER'S FERRY, AND RETREATS UPON WINCHESTER—
PATTERSON'S EXTRAORDINARY CONDUCT HE DISOBEYS GEN-
ERAL SCOTT'S ORDERS TO "ATTACK AND WHIP THE ENEMY "—
JOHNSTON CONSEQUENTLY FREE TO REINFORCE BEAUREGARD AT
MANASSAS-FITZ JOHN PORTER'S ACCOUNTABILITY FOR THE DIS-
ASTROUS CONSEQUENCES MC DOWELL'S ADVANCE UPON BEAU-
REGARD--PRELIMINARY BATTLE AT BLACKBURN'S FORD-JUNC-
TION OF JOHNSTON WITH BEAUREGARD REBEL PLANS OF
ADVANCE AND ATTACK CHANGE IN MCDOWELL'S PLANS-
GREAT PITCHED-BATTLE OF BULL RUN, OR MANASSAS, (INCLUD-
ING THE SECOND BATTLE AT BLACKBURN'S FORD)—VICTORY, at
FIRST, WITH MC DOWELL-THE CHECK THE LEISURELY RE-
TREAT THE PANIC AT, AND NEAR, THE NATIONAL CAPITAL-
THE WAR FULLY INAUGURATED...
Pages 276 to 341.

WR

E have seen how Fort Sumter fell; how the patriotic North responded to President Lincoln's Call, for 75,000 three-months volunteers, with such enthusiasm that, had there been a sufficiency of arms and accoutrements, he might have had, within three months of that Call, an Army of 500,000 men in the field; how he had called for 42,000 three-years volunteers early in May, besides swelling what little there was of a regular Army by ten full regiments; and how a strict blockade of the entire Southern Coast-line had not only been declared, but was now enforced and respected.

General Butler, promoted Major-General for his Military successes at Annapolis and Baltimore, was now in command of Fortress Monroe and vicinity, with some 12,000 volunteers under him, confronted, on the Peninsula, by a nearly equal number of Rebel troops, under Generals Huger and

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][ocr errors][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][merged small]
« PreviousContinue »