William Wirt, the most genial and in- British, in 1813 threatened an invasion of the State. He served in the army during that year, and in the ensuing spring followed his brother, the Secretary of the Territory of Missouri, to St. Louis, where he engaged in the study of the law and was admitted to the bar. When the State Government was put in action in 1820 he was appointed the first AttorneyGeneral. He held other offices in the State and was sent to the national House of Representatives in 1826. He was afterward again in office in Missouri in the legislature and in 1833 and the two following years as Judge of the Land Court of St. Louis County. His leading position in his State and in the councils of the Whig party induced President Fillmore to appoint him to a seat in the Cabinet as Secretary of War, which he was impelled from personal and domestic reasons to decline. No one took a profounder interest in the formation and advancement of the Republican party, or was more relied on in its councils for his solidity and intelligence. His support of Mr. Lincoln had greatly aided him in his election to the Presidency. spiring of legal preceptors. At the capital he gained the means of supporting himself while pursuing his studies by giving instruction to a select school of boys, the sons of Henry Clay, Wirt and other celebrities. He was admitted to the bar in the District of Columbia, in 1829, and immediately after took up his residence in Cincinnati, Ohio. He soon became known in his profession, especially by his engagement in various cases involving the position of the general government in reference to slavery. In all of these his powers were exerted in behalf of freedom. He was prominent in the early free soil political organization in the West, which prepared the way of the Republican party, giving his support in 1848 to the nomination for the Presidency of Mr. Van Buren. He was sent by Ohio, the following year, to the United States Senate, and in 1855 was elected Governor of his State, in which capacity he rendered eminent service at a critical period by his financial skill and integrity. He had just been reëlected to the United States Senate when he was called by President Lincoln to the cabinet. The Attorney-General, Mr. Bates, was one of the most honored citizens of Missouri, having been identified with its political history since its formation as a State. A native of Virginia, of Quaker descent, he had early shown an impatience of the quiet traditions of his family by seeking a midshipman's warrant in the navy, which he was compelled to relinquish by the solicitations of his mother, who could not endure the trade of war. The youth, however, he was nineteen at the time,-managed to get off to Norfolk as a volunteer when the Simon Cameron, the Secretary of War, was a native of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. By the death of his father he was thrown in his youth upon his own resources. In 1817 he bound himself as apprentice to the printing business at Harrisburg, whence, on coming of age, he made his way to Washington, where he was employed as a journeyman. He soon became engaged in political life and rose rapidly in influence, becoming Adjutant-General of Pennsylvania in 1828. In 1832 he was elected Cashier of the Middletown Bank and held the position for twenty-seven years. During this period he became widely known by his devotion to some of the most im- he had joined the liberals, and in the reportant railway and other industrial cent Presidential canvass had taken an improvements of the State which he was active part in the election of Lincoln. instrumental in carrying forward to a successful completion. He was chosen as a United States Senator in 1857, and in the late Congress had proved an active and efficient member of his party. Mr. Welles of Connecticut, the Secretary of the Navy, was a member of the old Democratic party, had exercised considerable influence as editor of the Hartford Times, and held office under the administrations of Van Buren and Polk. On the new territorial questions coming up Montgomery Blair was a son of Francis P. Blair, the well known editor and politician in Gen. Jackson's administration. He was a graduate of West Point, went to Missouri, there pursued the profession of the law, and was appointed by President Pierce Judge of the Court of Claims. Mr. Smith, the Secretary of the Interior, was versed in public affairs, and had formerly been a member of Congress from Indiana. CHAPTER VII. FORT SUMTER. NOTHING is more remarkable in the progress of this struggle than the longcontinued forbearance of the government at Washington--a forbearance in an anxiety to conciliate, carried even to the verge of imbecility-to assert its lawful authority in the face of open, stoutly-proclaimed rebellion. While it was a series of plottings, threats, and defiance on one side, it was all delicacy and consideration on the other. The country waited with impatience for the action of the Administration. It is impossible to read the newspapers of those weary weeks continuing beyond the term of Mr. Buchanan's culpable neglect, a full month after the inauguration of his successor, without vividly recalling the painful emotions which loyal citizens experienced as the proud pillars and lofty fabric of the national greatness seemed to be tottering to their fall. Have we a country, a government and laws? Do we live as a nation? Is treason a crime known to the Constitution? Do this much vaunted flag, these foreign treaties which we have made these laws which we have hitherto obeyed, this President and these Houses of Congress so solemnly established at Washington, these Judges of the Supreme Court, this bond and pledge of States from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico-do these institutions which we have so long reverenced, which our fathers bequeathed to us, for which they bled and died, do they mean nothing? In this pause of inaction, when fortunes were crumbling on all sides in the dread uncertainty, aird men's hearts were failing them for fear, the country was at length roused from its despondency by undoubted intimations from Washington that the hour of action was at hand. The conduct of the leaders of the Re-ton was much exercised, in advance of bellion at the city of Charleston gave the the regular operations of war, as to the occasion for this display for resolution. best method of capturing the fort. "A After the attempted relief of Fort Sum- variety of plans," says a chronicler of ter, in January, by the Star of the West, the day, early in January, "have been the demand of the insurgents for its re-devised, but, as yet, none have been put duction became still more pressing. In in practice. One man thought it might vain had the State pronounced itself sov- be taken by floating down to the fort ereign and independent if a foreign pow-rafts piled with burning tar-barrels, thus er, for so the people affected to regard attempting to smoke the American troops the United States, were to be allowed to out as you would smoke a rabbit out of a hold possession of the most important de- hollow. Another was for filling bombs fence in its chief harbor, threaten the with prussic acid and giving each of the city and control its foreign commerce. United States soldiers a smell. Still anThe reduction of Sumter became in fact other supposed that the fort might be a necessity of the Rebellion, indispensa- taken without bloodshed, by offering to ble to South Carolina, and essential to each soldier ten dollars and a speaking her influence with the neighboring States to. And still another thought that by whose fortunes she desired to involve in erecting a barricade of cotton bales, and the same evil destiny with her own. "No arming it with cannon, a floating battery longer hoping for concessions," was the might be made, which, with the aid of language of an insolent appeal which ap- Forts Moultrie and Johnson, and Castle peared towards the end of January in the Pinckney, together with redoubts thrown Charleston Mercury, "let us be ready for up on Morris' and Jones' Islands, and war, and when we have driven every with further assistance of an armed fleet, foreign soldier from our shores, then let an attack might be made on the fort, and us take our place in the glorious Repub- at some convenient point a party of lic the future promises us. Border South-sharp-shooters might be stationed, who ern States will never join us until we would pick off the garrison, man by man, have indicated our power to free our- thus giving an opportunity to a party of selves—until we have proven that a gar- infantry to scale the walls of the fort. rison of seventy men cannot hold the Such a storming, however, could only be portal of our commerce. The fate of the accomplished by an immense sacrifice of Southern Confederacy hangs by the en- life; and the only practicable mode of sign halliards of Fort Sumter." Active taking the fort would seem to be by a preparations of defence and attack were protracted siege, and by the unchristian going on in the harbor against which Gen- mode of starving them.”* eral Anderson, in concert with his Government, hoping for a peaceful settlement of the existing difficulties or hesitating to strike the first blow to begin a war of which no man could see the consequences, offered no resistance. The month of February was passed in this uncertain condition of hostilities, both parties making eager efforts, though with very unequal opportunities, to strengthen their respective works. Early in March, *The South Carolinian, January 7. Moore's Rebellion The ingenuity of the people of Charles-Record, vol. 1, Diary, p. 11. GENERAL BEAUREGARD. 97 He my at West Point, as the successor of Major Delafield, but had hardly time to think of the office before he was precipitated with his State in the Revolt. resigned his commission in the Corps of Engineers of the United States Army on the 20th of February, 1861, two days after the inauguration of Jefferson Davis as President of the Confederate States. His exact professional knowledge, united with his energy of character, immediately on his arrival at Charleston, gave increased efficiency to the military preparations for the reduction of Sumter, which now awaited the conclusion of the negotiation at Washington. the State of South Carolina having re-sissippi. On the eve of the Rebellion signed its boasted military prerogative he was appointed in Mr. Buchanan's Adinto the supreme hands of the Confeder-ministration to the important duty of ate Government at Montgomery, a new Superintendent of the Military Acadeactor appeared upon the scene in the person of a military officer, pars belli haud temnenda, sent by President Jefferson Davis to take command of the forces at Charleston. This was General Peter Gustav Toutant Beauregard, late a Major in the United States Service. A native of the State of Louisiana, of Canadian descent, he had entered the Military Academy at West Point at an early age, and after a career of distinguished credit, graduated in 1838, the second of a class of forty-five, with the appointment of Second Lieutenant in the First regiment of Artillery. He was then immediately transferred to the Corps of Engineers, in which he was promoted the following year to be First Lieutenant. He served with great distinction in that capacity with the army of General Scott during the Mexican War, from Vera Cruz to the capital, being brevetted Captain for his gallant conduct at Contreras and Churubusco, and Major for like honorable service at Chapultepec. General Scott handsomely acknowledged his merits in the Official Reports, making particular mention of his share in the brilliant achievements at entering the city of Mexico, where he was wounded at the assault on the Belen Gate. Among his honored companions on that occasion were Lieutenants G. W. Smith and George B. McClellan, both destined to be prominent with him in the Rebellion, one his associate in arms, the other his antagonist. After the war Major Beauregard was employed by the Government in the construction of the fortifications at the entrance to the Mis One of the first acts of the Confederate Government at Montgomery was to send three distinguished citizens of the South. Messrs. A. B. Roman of Louisiana, formerly Governor of the State; John Forsyth of Alabama, Minister to Mexico in President Buchanan's administration; Martin J. Crawford of Georgia, one of the seceding members of the recent Congress, as commissioners to open negotiations with the Government at Washington concerning all questions growing out of the separation, with a view to their peaceable solution. They arrived at the capital the day after President Lincoln's inauguration, and a week later, on the twelfth, Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford addressed a formal communication to the Secretary of State, setting forth the motive of their visit, and asking the appointment of an early day to present their credentials and the objects of the mission, to the President. To this Mr. Seward wrote an answer, that he was unable to comply with the request, and of the United States, and such extra that he had no authority, nor was he at liberty to recognize them as diplomatic agents, or hold correspondence or other communication with them. The refusal thus decided was courteously expressed, and was accompanied by this explanation of the writer's view of the position of affairs "The Secretary of State frankly confesses that he understands the events which have recently occurred, and the condition of political affairs which actually exists in the part of the Union to which his attention has thus been directed, very differently from the aspect in which they are presented by Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford. He sees in them, not a rightful and accomplished revolution and an independent nation, with an established government, but rather a perversion of a temporary and partisan excitement to the inconsiderate purposes of an unjustifiable and unconstitutional aggression apon the rights and the authority vested in the federal government, and hitherto benignly exercised, as from their very nature they always must so be exercised, for the maintenance of the Union, the preservation of liberty, and the security, peace, welfare, happiness, and aggrandizement of the American people. The Secretary of State, therefore, avows to Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford that he looks patiently, but confidently, to the cure of evils which have resulted from proceedings so unnecessary, so unwise, so unusual, and so unnatural, not to irregular negotiations, having in view new and untried relations with agencies unknown to and acting in derogation of the Constitution and laws, but to regular and considerate action of the people of those States, in coöperation with their brethren in the other States, through the Congress ordinary conventions, if there shall be need thereof, as the federal Constitution contemplates and authorizes to be assembled." This reply of Mr. Seward was dated March 15th but, by agreement was not called for or delivered till the 8th of April; a delay for which the Commissioners, in the letter which they wrote on its receipt, thus accounted. They were assured at the outset, they said, “by a person occupying a high official position in the Government, and who, as they believed, was speaking by authority, that Fort Sumter would be evacuated within a very few days, and that no measure changing the existing status prejudicially to the Confederate States, as respects Fort Pickens, was then contemplated, and these assurances were subsequently repeated, with the addition that any contemplated change as respects Pickens, would be notified to them. On the 1st of April they were again informed that there might be an attempt to supply Fort Sumter with provisions, but that Gov. Pickens should have previous notice of this attempt. There was no suggestion of any reinforcements. They did not hesitate to believe that these assurances expressed the intentions of the Administration at the time, or at all events of prominent members of that Administration. This delay was assented to, for the express purpose of attaining the great end of their mission, to wit: A pacific solution of existing complications. It was only when all these anxious efforts for peace had been exhausted, and it .became clear that Mr. Lincoln had determined to appeal to the sword to reduce the people of the Confederate States to the will of the section . |