for Sumter, had been withdrawn from the service to which she was especially ordered, and sent, without naval orders or record, under a different and junior commander, on a secret and useless mission to Pensacola, by the Secretary of State. None of these orders emanated from, passed through, or were known to the Navy or War Departments. The whole proceeding, in all its parts, was irregular, disorganizing, bad administration, and deficient in executive ability. The President, who, without giving the subject much considera-, ; tion, had assented to the scheme of the Secretary of State to reinforce Pickens, was not aware that the flagship of the squadron to Charleston had been detached, and its commander superseded, until the evening of the 6th of April, on which day the Powhatan sailed under a different officer for a distant destination, carrying off supplies, munitions, and boats which the Navy Department had ordered for Sumter. I was not made acquainted with this secret proceeding until the Powhatan sailed, when I immediately informed the President. So soon as aware of the fact, he directed Mr. Seward, although it was then midnight, to telegraph forthwith and countermand the orders which detached that vessel; to reinstate Mercer, and in no way to interfere with the arrangements of the Secretary of the Navy. Mr. Seward remonstrated, claimed that the Powhatan was essential to reinforce Pickens, but the President was decided. A brief and curious telegram was sent by Mr. Seward in his own name to New York, and a fast boat despatched from the Navy Yard which overtook the Powhatan at Staten Island, but nothing was accomplished. The Sumter expedition

sailed without a naval commander, the squadron had no head, and the Powhatan, one of the three naval vessels on the Atlantic coast on which the government relied in that "perilous emergency," with her large crew and armament, was sent to the Gulf, where she was not wanted, and where almost the whole home squadron was concentrated, while the whole maritime. frontier north of Cape Florida was left destitute. It was on the night of the 6th of April that the Powhatan sailed for Pickens. On the next day Mr. Seward sent to Judge Campbell, a leading secessionist on the Supreme bench: "Faith as to Sumter fully kept. Wait and see."

In these proceedings the administration and executive management of the President and Secretary of State, respectively, may be seen. The merits, sincerity, acts, and policy of each are disclosed, and from them a more correct estimate may be formed of their ability, respective fitness, and peculiar qualities to discharge the duties of chief magistrate, than from the partial and prejudiced assertions of interested partisans.

I have made mention of only certain general measures of administration in regard to the relief of Sumter, but it may be said in passing that there is an unwritten. history of the transaction-of vacillating changes on the part of General Scott; of the singular notice of Major Anderson to Mr. Buchanan on the morning of the 4th of March, an hour or two before the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln and of the stirring tidings to Mr. Lincoln on his taking the inaugural oath, of the preparations and non-preparations for defence, and other

planning-which is yet to be analyzed and developed, but would be inappropriate in this place.

THE following letter from ex-Postmaster-General Blair, one of the surviving members of the first Cabinet of Mr. Lincoln, corroborative of the foregoing statement, and illustrative of the character and course. of the late Secretary of State in other respects will be read with interest:

"WASHINGTON, May 17, 1873.

"MY DEAR MR. WELLES: I duly received yours of the 14th. You will have seen ere this that I have anticipated your advice and made a statement in reply to Mr. Adams on the relations of Messrs. Lincoln and Seward. I know that a fuller stateinent would be read with interest, but I prefer to leave that to you. I am tempted, however, to contribute a short chapter to your exposition, and to illustrate Mr. Seward's character by giving an account of his intrigue to surrender the forts and allow secession to take its course, and his sudden change of policy when he found that Mr. Lincoln would resist secession.

General Scott was his great card at the outset. Lincoln, having been a Whig and a supporter of Scott for the Presidency, had persuaded himself in the canvass that the old general was a great military man; and the general being really patriotic, and having learned from General Jackson how to deal with secession, would have given good advice, if, unfortunately, he had not fallen into Mr. Adams' error in regarding Mr. Seward as the head of the government, and for this reason surrendered

his own better judgment to that of Mr. Seward. This As shown by the fact that he had advised Mr. Buchanan to reinforce the forts. But in deference to Mr. Seward the changed all this, gave up his own opinions, and said, "Let the wayward sisters go in peace ;" and actually advised the surrender of Fort Pickens at Pensacola as well as Fort Sumter at Charleston!

I never shall forget the President's excitement when, after a Cabinet dinner at the White House, he called the Cabinet into a separate room, and informed us that General Scott had told him it would be necessary to evacuate Fort Pickens as well as Fort Sumter. It was while the question of the surrender of Fort Sumter was undecided; but at a time when it was believed the fort would be surrendered, and after the way had been prepared for it by statements in the Press that the fort was untenable. A very oppressive silence succeeded the President's statement of what General Scott had said. At length it was said this advice of the general's was enough of itself to show that he was playing politician and not general as respects Fort Sumter, as well as with respect to Fort Pickens, for there was no reason to believe that Fort Pickens could be taken from us."

"Mr. Seward had overshot the mark this time. The Cabinet generally had been convinced that Fort Sumter was untenable, and acquiesced in its surrender, submitting to the inevitable. But there was no apprehension felt about Fort Pickens. The fort was well supplied, and was actually impregnable while we commanded the sea, and we then had a large naval force there. Hence, when the general said we must give up this fort too, the President's confidence in him was staggered, and from that moment. I have always thought his power with the President waned.

"When Mr. Seward saw that his policy of meeting "exaction with concession" and "violence with peace," announced in his speech of January 12, 1861, had failed, and that the President would not agree to surrender the forts, as Mr. Seward had induced General Scott to recommend him to do, he immediately telegraphed Governor Pickens, by the hands of Mr. Harvey, his Portuguese minister, that an attempt was to be made to reinforce Sumter. General Anderson had made no preparations to defend it, but left his barracks standing, to be fired at the first shot, instead of pulling them down and taking to his casemates, as he certainly would have done if he had not been authoritatively told that the fort was to be evacuated as soon as the small supply of provisions on hand had been consumed. But for this negligence for which he was never chided, the fort was impregnable, as events proved, for we could never take it from the Confederates. To make sure of defeating the relief, however, the Powhatan, on whose seamen and guns the success of this expedition wholly depended, was secretly detached, by an order surreptitiously obtained from the President, on the pretext of relieving Fort Pickens, which was in no danger, for the defence of which ample provision had already been made, and to whose relief the Powhatan was wholly unnecessary and in no way contributed.

"Mr. Seward had two objects in detaching this vessel: 1st, It defeated the relief of Fort Sumter, which he was pledged to surrender, and the failure to relieve it would vindicate his judgment in advising against the attempt. 2d, Fort Pickens could be claimed as having been saved by an expedition conceived and carried into execution under his orders, and so, though he would by this movement abandon his method of meeting exac

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