Washington, December 29th, 1860.

In reply to your inquiry, we have hopes that the rights of the South, and of every State and section, may be protected within the Union. Don't give up the ship. Don't despair of the Republic.

J. J. CRITTENDEN.

S. A. DOUGLAS.

He

fectly what everybody thinks, upon this great occasion the orator was the poet. spoke the profound but often obscured and dimly conceived conviction of a nation. He made the whole argument of the civil war a generation before the war occurred, and it has remained unanswered and unanswerable. Mr. Everett, in his discourse at the dedication of the statute of Webster, in the State-House grounds in Boston in 1859, described the orator at the delivery of this great speech. The evening before he seemed to be so careless that Mr. Everett feared that he might not be fully aware of the gravity of the occasion. But when the hour came, the man was there. As I saw him in the evening, if I may borrow an illustration from his favorite amusement,' said Mr. Everett, 'he was as unconcerned and as free of spirit as some here have often seen him while floating in his fishing-boat along a hazy shore, gently rocking on the tranquil tide, dropping his line here and there with the varying fortune of the sport. The next morning he was like some mighty admiral, dark and terrible, casting the long shadow of his frowning tiers far over the sea, that seemed to sink beneath him; his broad pennant streaming at the main, the Stars and Stripes at the fore, the mizzen, and the peak, and bearing down like a tempest upon his antagonist, with all his canvas strained to the wind, and all his thunders roaring from his broadsides.' This passage well suggests that indescribable impression of great oratory which Rufus Choate, in his eulogy of Webster at Dartmouth College, conveys by a felicitous citation of what Quintilian says of Hortensius, that there was some spell in the spoken word which the reader misses."

Congress, amid excitement which the above dispatches indicate, and which was general, remained for several weeks comparatively inactive. Buchanan sent messages, but his suggestions were distrusted by the Republicans, who stood firm in the conviction that when Lincoln took his seat, and the new Congress came in, they could pass measures calculated to restore the property of and protect the integrity of the Union. None of them believed in the right of secession; all had lost faith in compromises, and all of this party repudiated the theory that Congress had no right to coerce a State. The revival of these questions, revived also the logical thoughts of Webster in his great reply to Hayne, and the way in which he then expanded the constitution was now accepted as the proper doctrine of Republicanism on that question. No partisan sophistry could shake the convictions made by Webster, and so apt were his arguments in their application to every new development that they supplied every logical want in the Northern mind. Republican orators and newspapers quoted and endorsed, until nearly every reading mind was imbued with the same sentiments, until in fact the Northern Democrats, and at all times the Douglas Democrats, were ready to stand by the flag of the Union. George W. Curtis, in Harper's Weekly (a journal which at the time graphically illustrated the best As we have remarked, the Republicans Union thoughts and sentiments), in an were awaiting the coming of a near and issue as late as January 12th, 1872, well greater power to themselves, and at the described the power of Webster's grand same time jealously watching the moveability over a crisis which he did not live ments of the friends of the South in Conto see, Mr. Curtis says:gress and in the President's Cabinet. It "The war for the Union was a vindica-needed all their watchfulness to prevent tion of that theory of its nature which advantages which the secessionists thought Webster had maintained in a memorably they had a right to take. Thus Jefferson impregnable and conclusive manner. His Davis, on January 9th, 1860, introduced second speech on Foot's resolution - the reply to Hayne-was the most famous and effective speech ever delivered in this country. It stated clearly and fixed firmly in the American mind the theory of the government, which was not, indeed, original with Webster, but which is nowhere else presented with such complete and inexorable reason as in this speech. If the poet be the man who is so consummate a master of expression that he only says per

*

* The text of Webster's speech in reply to Hayne, now ccepted as the greatest constitutional exposition ever made by any American orator, will be found in our book devoted to Great Speeches on Great Issues.

to the senate a bill " to authorize the sale of public arms to the several States and Territories," and as secession became more probable he sought to press its passage, but failed. Floyd, the Secretary of War, was far more successful, and his conduct was made the subject of the following historic and most remarkable report:

Transfer of U. S. Arms South in 1859-60.

Report (Abstract of) made by Mr. B. Stanton, from the Committee on Military

Affairs, in House of Representatives, Feb. 18th, 1861.

To North Carolina Arsenal,
To Charleston Arsenal,
To Augusta Arsenal,
Mount Vernon Arsenal,
To Baton Rouge Arsenal,

The Committee on Military Affairs, to whom was referred the resolution of the House of Representatives of 31st of De-To cember last, instructing said committee to inquire and report to the House, how, to whom, and at what price, the public arms distributed since the first day of January, A. D. 1860, have been disposed of; and also into the condition of the forts, arsenals, dock-yards, etc., etc., submit the following report:

That it appears from the papers herewith submitted, that Mr. Floyd, the late Secretary of War, by the authority or under color of the law of March 3d, 1825, authorizing the Secretary of War to sell any arms, ammunition, or other military stores which should be found unsuitable for the public service, sold to sundry persons and States 31,610 flint-lock muskets, altered to percussion, at $2.50 each, between the 1st day of January, A. D. 1860, and the 1st day of January, A.D., 1861. It will be seen from the testimony of Colonel Craig and Captain Maynadier, that they differ as to whether the arms so sold had been found, "upon proper inspection, to be unsuitable for the public service."

Whilst the Committtee do not deem it

important to decide this question, they say, that in their judgment it would require a very liberal construction of the law to bring these sales within its provisions.

It also appears that on the 21st day of November last, Mr. Belknap made application to the Secretary of War for the purchase of from one to two hundred and fifty thousand United States muskets, flint-locks and altered to percussion, at $2.15 each; but the Secretary alleges that the acceptance was made under a misapprehension of the price bid, he supposing it was $2.50 each.

instead of $2.15.

Mr. Belknap denies all knowledge of any mistake or misapprehension, and insists upon the performance of his contract.

Percussion Altered

muskets. muskets. Rifle

the North Carolina Arsenal,* have been All of these arms, except those sent to seized by the authorities of the several States of South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia, and are no longer in' possession of the United States.

It will appear by the testimony herewith presented, that on the 20th of October last the Secretary of War ordered forty columbiads and four thirty-two pounders to be sent from the Arsenal at Pittsburg to the fort on Ship Island, on the coast of Mississippi, then in an unfinished condition, and seventy columbiads and seven thirty-two pounders to be sent from the same Arsenal to the fort at Galveston, in Texas, the building of which had scarcely been commenced.

This order was given to the Secretary of War, without any report from the Engineer department showing that said works were ready for their armament, or that the guns were needed at either of said points.

It will be seen by the testimony of Capthat the fort at Galveston cannot be ready tain Wright, of the Engineer department, for its entire armament in less than about five years, nor for any part of it in less than two; and that the fort at Ship Island will require an appropriation of $85,000 and any part of its armament. This last named one year's time before it can be ready for fort has been taken possession of by the State authorities of Mississippi.

The order of the late Secretary of War (Floyd) was countermanded by the present Secretary (Holt) before it had been fully executed by the shipment of said guns from Pittsburg.

It will be seen by a communication from the Ordnance office of the 21st of January last, that by the last returns there were rerecog-maining in the United States arsenals and armories the following small arms, viz: Percussion muskets and muskets altered to percussion of calibre 69........

The present Secretary refuses to nize the contract, and the muskets have not been delivered to Mr. Belknap.

Mr. Belknap testifies that the muskets were intended for the Sardinian government.

499,554

Percussion rifles, calibre 54.......... 42,011
Total..............

These were afterwards seized.

541,565

The attempted removal of these heavy guns from Al

It will appear by the papers herewith submitted, that on the 29th of December, 1859, the Secretary of War ordered the transfer of 65,000 percussion muskets, 40000 muskets altered to percussion, and 10000 percussion rifles, from the Springfield legheny Arsenai, late in December, 1860, created intense excitement. A monster mass meeting assembled at the Armory and the Watertown and Water- call of the Mayor of the city, and citizens of all parties vliet Arsenals, to the Arsenals at Fayette-aided in the effort to prevent the shipment. Through ville, N. C., Charleston, S. C., Augusta, Ga., Mount Vernon, Ala., and Baton Rouge, La., and that these arms were distributed during the spring of 1860 as follows:

Knight, Judge Shaler, Judge Wilkins, Judge Shannon, and others inquiry was instituted, and a revocation of the order obtained. The Secessionists in Congress bitterly

the interposition of Hon. J. K. Moorhead, Hon. R. Mc

complained of the mob law" which thus interfered with the routine of governmental affairs.-McPherson's History.

Of these 60,878 were deposited in the arsenals of South Carolina, Alabama, and Louisiana, and are in the possession of the authorities of those States, reducing the number in possession of the United States to 480,687.

Since the date of said communication, the following additional forts and military posts have been taken possession of by parties acting under the authority of the States in which they are respectively situated, viz:

Fort Moultrie, South Carolina.
Fort Morgan, Alabama.

Baton Rouge Barracks, Louisiana.
Fort Jackson, Louisiana.
Fort St. Philip,

66

Fort Pike, Louisiana.
Oglethorpe Barracks, Georgia.

And the department has been unofficially advised that the arsenal at Chattahoochee, Forts MeRea and Barrancas, and Barracks, have been seized by the authorities of

Florida.

To what further extent the small arms in possession of the United States may have been reduced by these figures, your committee have not been advised.

The whole number of the sea-board forts in the United States is fifty-seven; their appropriate garrison in war would require 26,420 men; their actual garrison at this time is 1,334 men, 1,308 of whom are in the forts at Governor's Island, New York; Fort McHenry, Maryland; Fort Monroe, Virginia, and at Alcatraz Island, California,

in the harbor of San Francisco.

The arms were all flint-lock muskets altered to percussion, and were all sold at $2.50 each, except those purchased by Captain G. Barry and by the Phillips county volunteers, for which $2 each were paid.

The Mobile Advertiser says: "During the past year 135,430 muskets have been quietly transferred from the Northern Arsenal at Springfield alone, to those in the Southern States. We are much obliged to Secretary Floyd for the foresight he has thus displayed in disarming the North and There is no telling the quantity of arms equipping the South for this emergency. and munitions which were sent South from other Northern arsenals. There is no doubt but that every man in the South who can carry a gun can now be supplied from pricontribution alone would arm all the milivate or public sources. The Springfield tiamen of Alabama and Mississippi."

General Scott, in his letter of December 2d, 1862, on the early history of the Rebeland Texas had not drawn, at the end of lion, states that "Rhode Island, Delaware 1860, their annual quotas of arms for that year, and Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Kentucky only in part; Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Kansas were, by order of the Secretary of War, supplied with their quotas for 1861 in advance, and Pennsylvania and Maryland in part.'

From the facts elicited, it is certain that the regular military force of the United States, is wholly inadequate to the protection of the forts, arsenals, dockyards, and other property of the United States in the present disturbed condition of the country. The regular army numbers only 18,000 men when recruited to its maximum strength, and the whole of this force is required for the protection of the border settlements against Indian depredations. Unless it is the intention of Con-ern arsenals, as per Mr. Stanton's report. gress that the forts, arsenals, dock-yards and other public property, shall be exposed to capture and spoliation, the President must be armed with additional force for their protection.

In the opinion of the Committee the law of February 28th, 1795, confers upon the President ample power to call out the militia, to execute the laws and protect the public property. But as the late Attorney-General has given a different opinion, the Committee to remove all doubt upon the subject, report the accompanying bill, etc.

This advance of arms to eight Southern States is in addition to the transfer, about the same time, of 115,000 muskets to South

Governor Letcher of Virginia, in his Message of December, 1861, says, that for some time prior to secession, he had been engaged in purchasing arms, ammunition, etc.; among which were 13 Parrott rifled cannon, and 5,000 muskets. He desired to buy from the United States Government 10,000 more, when buying the 5,000, but them to us, although five times the number he says " "the authorities declined to sell were then in the arsenal at Washington.

purchase of arms become a law, the result might have been different.

Had Jefferson Davis' bill relative to the

This and similar action on the part of the South, especially the attempted seizure and occupation of forts, convinced many

of the Republicans that no compromise | longer than the interests, honor and fracould endure, however earnest its advo- ternity of the people of the several States cates from the Border States, and this are satisfied. Being a Government created earnestness was unquestioned. Besides by opinion, its continuance is dependent their attachment to the Union, they knew upon the continuance of the sentiment that in the threatened war they would be which formed it. It cannot be preserved the greatest sufferers, with their people di- by coercion or held together by force. A vided neighbor against neighbor, their resort to this last dreadful alternative lands laid waste, and their houses destroy- would of itself destroy not only the Goved. They had every motive for earnest- ernment, but the lives and property of the ness in the effort to conciliate the disagree- people. ing sections.

If these forebodings shall be realized, The oddest partisan feature in the en- and a separation of the States shall occur, tire preliminary and political struggle was momentous considerations will be prethe attempt, in the parlance of the day, of sented to the corporate authorities of this "New York to secede from New York". city. We must provide for the new rean oddity verified by Mayor Wood's recom-lations which will necessarily grow out of mendation in favor of the secession of New the new condition of public affairs. York city, made January 6th, 1861. The document deserves a place in this history, as it shows the views of a portion of the citizens then, and an exposition of their interests as presented by a citizen before and since named by repeated elections to Congress.

It will not only be necessary for us to settle the relations which we shall hold to other cities and States, but to establish, if we can, new ones with a portion of our own State. Being the child of the Union, having drawn our sustenance from its bosom, and arisen to our present power and strength through the vigor of our mother-when deprived of her maternal advantages, we must rely upon our own resources and assume a position predicated upon the new phase which public affairs will present, and upon the inherent strength which our geographical, commercial, political, and financial pre-eminence imparts to us.

Mayor Wood's Secession Message. To the Honorable the Common Council: GENTLEMEN:-We are entering upon the public duties of the year under circumstances as unprecedented as they are gloomy and painful to contemplate. The great trading and producing interests of With our aggrieved brethren of the not only the city of New York, but of the Slave States, we have friendly relations entire country, are prostrated by a mone- and a common sympathy. We have not tary crisis; and although similar calami- participated in the warfare upon their conties have before befallen us, it is the first stitutional rights or their domestic institime that they have emanated from causes tutions. While other portions of our State having no other origin than that which have unfortunately been imbued with the may be traced to political disturbances. fanatical spirit which actuates a portion Truly, may it now be said, "We are in the of the people of New England, the city of midst of a revolution bloodless AS YET." New York has unfalteringly preserved the Whether the dreadful alternative implied integrity of its principles in adherence to as probable in the conclusion of this pro- the compromises of the Constitution and phetic quotation may be averted, no hu- the equal rights of the people of all the man ken can divine." It is quite certain States. We have respected the local inthat the severity of the storm is unexam-terests of every section, at no time oppresspled in our history, and if the disintegra-ing, but all the while aiding in the develtion of the Federal Government, with the opment of the resources of the whole consequent destruction of all the material country. Our ships have penetrated to interests of the people shall not follow, it will be owing more to the interposition of Divine Providence, than to the inherent preventive power of our institutions, or the intervention of any other human agency.

It would seem that a dissolution of the Federal Union is inevitable. Having been formed originally on a basis of general and mutual protection, but separate local independence-each State reserving the entire and absolute control of its own domestic affairs, it is evidently impossible to keep them together longer than they deem themselves fairly treated by each other, or

every clime, and so have New York capital, energy and enterprise found their way to every State, and, indeed, to almost every county and town of the American Union. If we have derived sustenance from the Union, so have we in return disseminated blessings for the common benefit of all. Therefore, New York has a right to expect, and should endeavor to preserve a continuance of uninterrupted intercourse with every section.

It is, however, folly to disguise the fact that, judging from the past, New York may have more cause of apprehension from the aggressive legislation of our own State

live free from taxes, and have cheap goods nearly duty free. In this she would have the whole and united support of the Southern States, as well as all the other States to whose interests and rights under the Constitution she has always been true.

than from external dangers. We have city, instead of supporting by her contrialready largely suffered from this cause. butions in revenue two-thirds of the exFor the past five years, our interests and penses of the United States, become also corporate rights have been repeatedly equally independent? As a free city, with trampled upon. Being an integral portion but nominal duty on imports, her local of the State, it has been assumed, and in Government could be supported without effect tacitly admitted on our part by non-taxation upon her people. Thus we could resistance, that all political and governmental power over us rested in the State Legislature. Even the common right of taxing ourselves for our own government, has been yielded, and we are not permitted to do so without this authority. *** Thus it will be seen that the political kconnection between the people of the city and the State has been used by the latter to our injury. The Legislature, in which the present partizan majority has the power, has become the instrument by which we are plundered to enrich their speculators, lobby agents, and Abolition politicians. Laws are passed through their malign influence by which, under forms of legal enactment, our burdens have been increased, our substance eaten out, and our municipal liberties destroyed. Selfgovernment, though guaranteed by the State Constitution, and left to every other county and city, has been taken from us by this foreign power, whose dependents have been sent among us to destroy our liberties by subverting our political sys

tem.

How we shall rid ourselves of this odious and oppressive connection, it is not for me to determine. It is certain that a dissolution cannot be peacefully accomplished, except by the consent of the Legislature itself. Whether this can be obtained or not, is, in my judgment, doubtful. Deriving so much advantage from its power over the city, it is not probable that a partizan majority will consent to a separation-and the resort to force by violence and revolution must not be thought of for an instant. We have been distinguished as an orderly and law-abiding people. Let us do nothing to forfeit this character, or to add to the present distracted condition of public affairs.

Much, no doubt, can be said in favor of the justice and policy of a separation. It may be said that secession or revolution in any of the United States would be subversive of all Federal authority, and, so far as the Central Government is concerned, the resolving of the community into its original elements-that, if part of the States form new combinations and Governments, other States may do the same. California and her sisters of the Pacific will no doubt set up an independent Republic and husband their own rich mineral resources. The Western States, equally rich in cereals and other agriculturaf products, will probably do the same. Then it may be said, why should not New York

It is well for individuals or communities to look every danger square in the face, and to meet it calmly and bravely. As dreadful as the severing of the bonds that have hitherto united the States has been in contemplation, it is now apparently a stern and inevitable fact. We have now to meet it with all the consequences, whatever they may be. If the Confederacy is broken up the Government is dissolved, and it behooves every distinct community, as well as every individual, to take care of themselves.

When Disunion has become a fixed and certain fact, why may not New York disrupt the bands which bind her to a venal and corrupt master-to a people and a party that have plundered her revenues, attempted to ruin her commerce, taken away the power of self-government, and destroyed the Confederacy of which she was the proud Empire City? Amid the gloom which the present and prospective condition of things must cast over the country, New York, as a Free City, may shed the only light and hope of a future reconstruction of our once blessed Confederacy.

But I am not prepared to recommend the violence implied in these views. In stating this argument in favor of freedom, "peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must,' let me not be misunderstood. The redress can be found only in appeals to the magnanimity of the people of the whole State. The events of the past two months have no doubt effected a change in the popular sentiment of the State and National politics. This change may bring us the desired relief, and we may be able to obtain a repeal of the law to which I have referred, and a consequent restoration of our corporate rights.

FERNANDO WOOD, Mayor January 6th, 1861.

Congress on the Eve of the Rebellion,

It should be borne in mind that all of the propositions, whether for compromise, authority to suppress insurrection, or new laws to collect duties, had to be considered by the Second Session of the 36th Congress, which was then, with the exception