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Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States on the 7th day of November, 1860, but would not enter upon the duties of that office until his inauguration on the 4th day of March, 1861. In the mean time, James Buchanan, who had been elected to his office, openly pledged to pursue the general policy of the slaveholders, adminis tered the affairs of the nation. The government was virtually in the hands of the conspirators, and they had yet four months in which to mature their nefarious schemes. Never was time more industriously employed. The members of the President's Cabinet were among the boldest of the conspirators, and unscrupulous and dictatorial, they enthralled him by superior councils, and involved him in a policy which, though he knew was disastrous to the Nation, he had not power to change. His advisers watched him keenly as do beasts of prey their victim, and, with commendations or threats, moulded him to execute their will. Howell Cobb, a slaveholder and leading conspirator in Georgia, was Secre tary of the Treasury; he employed the powers of his official position to destroy the credit of the Nation and leave an exhausted treasury to the new Administration. Jacob Thompson, of Mississippi, was Secretary of the Interior, and, though a weak man, he served as spy and informer to the conspirators, and in Cabinet meetings. voted with his associates in treason. John B. Floyd, of Virginia, Secretary of War, having greater power for evil, outstripped all others in crime against the government he had sworn to defend. He scattered the standing army of the United States in remote fortresses, in the far west, and left the forts in the Southern States ungarrisoned. He disarmed the Northern States by emptying their arsenals and sending the arms into the Southern States, where they could be seized and used by the insurgents. One hundred and fifteen thousand stand of arms were taken from Springfield, Mass., and Watervliet, N. Y., and distributed throughout the slave States. A vast amount of heavy ordnance and ordnance stores were transferred to the disaffected States; cannons, mortars, balls,

shells, powder, and all the materials of war, were shipped in large quantities to rebel storehouses. Having thus depleted the War Department, over which he presided, Floyd re signed his office as Secretary, and at once joined the rebel army, in which he received a high commission. Isaac Toucy, of Connecticut, a pliant tool in the hands of the conspirators, was Secretary of the Navy. Including vessels of every class, the United States Navy consisted of ninety vessels carrying about two thousand four hundred guns.

It was of the utmost importance to the conspirators, that this arm of the Nation's defence, should be rendered powerless at the hour it would be most needed by the government. The gallantry and high-sense of honor, that obtained among the officers of the fleet, and the pride with which each com. mander regarded his vessel and the flag it bore on the high seas, rendered hopeless the traitors' schemes of corruption, so successfully plied against the officers at Washington. If the fleet commanders could not be converted to plots of treason, it was essential to the purposes of the conspirators, that the fleet should be dispersed in a manner that would render it unavailable for defence. Accordingly, it was dispersed. In the report of the new Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, made July 4th, 1861, it is stated that five war vessels were sent to the East Indies, three to Brazil, seven to the Pacific Ocean, three to the Mediterreanean, seven to the coast of Africa and others to other distant waters, so that of the whole squadron, but two vessels, carrying twenty-seven guns and two hundred and eighty men, were left at home in Northern ports, and available to the government at the time of the attack made by the rebels on Fort Sumter. Earnest men in the North regarded this unprecedented dispersion of the fleet of the Nation, with suspicion and alarm, even before the facts were published in the official report of Secretary Welles. The House of Representatives appointed a select committee of five, to examine into the condition of the navy, and to inquire into the conduct of Secretary Toucy. This committee reported to the House on the 21st of Febru.

ary, 1861, and after stating in what manner the fleet was dispersed, made use of the following language: "From this statement it will appear, that the entire naval force available for the defence of the whole Atlantic coast, at the time of the appointment of this committee, consisted of the steamer Brooklyn, twenty-five guns, and the store-ship Relief, two guns. While the former was of too great draft to permit her to enter Charleston harbor with safety, except at spring tide, the latter was under orders to the coast of Africa with stores for the African squadron. Thus the whole Atlantic seaboard has been, to all intents and purposes, without defences during all the period of civil commotion, and lawless violence to which the President has called our attention, as 'of such vast and alarming proportions as to be beyond his power to check or control.'

"The committee cannot fail to call attention to this extraordinary disposition of the entire naval force of the country, and especially in connection with the present no less extraordinary and critical juncture of political affairs. They cannot call to mind any period in the past history of the country, of such profound peace and internal repose, as would justify so entire an abandonment of the coast of the country to the chance of fortune. Certainly, since the nation possessed a navy, it has never before sent its entire available force into distant seas, and exposed the numerous interests at home, of which it is the special guardian, to the dangers from which, even in times of the utmost quiet, prudence and forecast do always shelter them. To the committee this disposition of the naval force at this most critical period, seems extraordinary. The permitting of vessels to depart for distant seas, after these unhappy difficulties had broken out at home; the omission to put in repair and commission, ready for orders, a single one of the twenty-eight ships dismantled and unfit for service, in our own ports, and that, too, while six hundred and forty-six thousand six hundred and thirtynine dollars and seventy-nine cents of the appropriation for repairs in the navy, the present year, remained unexpended,

were, in the opinion of your committee, grave errors-without justification or excuse."

Thus was the government despoiled by its sworn officers; the most sacred trusts were betrayed; the property of the government was delivered to its enemies by the men whose sworn duty it was to defend and preserve it, and the government itself was on the very point of being unconditionally surrendered into the hands of the conspirators. It is dif ficult to find any where in the annals of history, so great weakness surrounded by arrogance so unscrupulous, and controlled by treachery so infamous. The Executive, aroused to a sense of the dangers that surrounded him, in a delirium of terror and alarm, recommended the unconditional surrender of the government to the demands of those who plotted for its destruction. The North was called on to surrender every thing. The South was only to consent to accept the surrender. A "Peace Congress" was convened at Washington to arrange the catalogue of concessions the North was required to make to Slavery. Seven States were unrepresented. Their leaders had resolved on a dismemberment of the Union, and the establishment of a confederacy, whose foundation should be slavery. They refused to take part in the Peace Convention, and regarded with scorn any measures that interfered with their mad designs. The convention adjourned on the 27th of February, 1861, and their deliberations and plans of adjustment were soon forgotten. Compromises and resolutions of pacification, were offered in the Senate of the United States, and discussed at great length; but over and above all schemes of politicians and compromises offered by statesmen, stood the one great fact, that the State of South Carolina, through the represen tatives of her people in convention assembled, as far as it was possible for them so to do, proceeded formally to secede from the United States, and to break up the government of the American Union, by passing the following resolution: "We, the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby de

clared and ordained, that the ordinance adopted by us in Convention, on the 23d of May, in the year of our Lord 1788, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and also all acts and parts of acts of the General Assembly of this State, ratifying the amend ments of said Constitution, are hereby repealed, and that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of the United States of America is hereby dissolved."

In the face of this official declaration on the part of the conspirators in South Carolina, it was impossible for loyal sovereigns in the North to consent to, much less to offer, any terms of compromise. The new Administration acted on this principle, and demanded that the conspirators should retract their acts of hostility against the United States, as preliminary to compromise and terms of pardon. It was, however, not the purpose of the rebels to retract, not even to suspend hostilities. Many believed that a peaceful separation might be effected; but the leaders prepared for war and were resolved on enforcing their resolutions of secession by arms in open war.

Throughout the Southern States, the slaveholding secessionists brought into requisition every instrument of terror within their grasp to crush out the last vestige of loyalty to the Union. "Vigilance Committees" and "Minute Men" were organized in the cities and large towns, to execute the commands of the chief conspirators, and it is a notable fact, that wherever these organizations were established, treason was most successful. Those who could not be controlled by persuasion and coaxing, were dragooned and bullied, by threats and jeers. By this means, when the question of secession was nominally submitted to a popular vote, thous ands of well-disposed citizens voted for immediate secession through timidity, and many more, who at heart were too loyal to be guilty of the slightest overt act of treason against the government, quietly remained at home, in order to escape violence. "To be candid," says a Southern journalist, speak

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