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ing of the election, "there never has been so much lying and bullying practised, in the same length of time, since the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, as has been in the recent campaign."

"The big heart of the people is still in the Union, and we hope to see it yet assert its supremacy. It is now subjugated temporarily to the will of the politicians. Less than a hundred thousand politicians are endeavoring to destroy the liberties and usurp the rights of more than thirty millions of people. If the people permit it, they deserve the horrors of the civil war which will ensue; they deserve the despotism under which they will be brought, and the hard fate which will be their lot."

The stout heart gave utterance to these sounds of warning, in the midst of traitors; they fell not unheard on the ears of men not yet wholly mad, but through fear, were unheeded.

Forts Creswell and Johnson, on the coast of North Carolina, were seized by the rebels on the 8th of January, 1861. On the 9th, a convention in the State of Mississippi passed an ordinance of secession. On the 11th, an armed force from New Orleans seized the United States Marine Hospital, two miles below the city, expelled the patients and converted the buildings into barracks for rebel troops. On the same day, the secessionists of Florida and Alabama declared those States out of the Union. They seized the navy yard and Fort Barancas at Pensacola. The rebels in Mississippi blockaded the Mississippi river at Vicksburg, by placing a battery of field pieces on the bluff, and compelled every vessel passing to heave to and be searched. On the Arkansas river a vessel, with government supplies for the garrison at Fort Smith, was seized and confiscated to the use of the rebels. On the 15th, the rebels in Florida surprised and captured the United States Coast Survey Schooner Dana. On the 19th, a convention in Georgia, by a vote of two hundred and eighty-eight against eighty-nine, voted that State out of the Union. On the 21st, Jefferson Davis, United States Senator from the State of Mississippi, who continued to

occupy his seat after the secession of the State he represented, withdrew from the Senate to place himself at the head of the rebels. On the 26th, the convention in Louisiana passed an ordinance of secession. This convention was an usurpation. No returns have ever been made of the vote by which the members claimed to have been elected. It is believed, that in defiance of the threatened reign of terror, the people of that State voted against secession. The convention was nevertheless packed to the pleasement of the leaders, and the ordinance was adopted with only seventeen dissenting voices in a convention of one hundred and thirty delegates. On the 31st, the rebels in New Orleans, silencing, by threats of Lynch law, every honest patriot who would offer a remonstrance, seized the custom-house and the United States Mint, containing government deposits to the amount of five hundred and eleven thousand dollars.

On the 4th of February, forty-two of the leading conspirators met in Montgomery, Alabama, representing the States of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina. The object of the convention was the organization of a new nation,-the Southern Confederacy,―to consist of the seven States above named, and such other States as might subsequently secede from the Union and be added to the Confederacy. Without the slightest misgivings, these men undertook to revolutionize a nation whose territory spans a zone of the continent, and the number of whose people exceeds thirty millions. They deemed themselves sovereign umpires, and arrogated to their convention the power to frame a Constitution, adopt Articles of Confederation, and establish a permanent government. The people were ignored and had no voice in the revolution. History affords no parallel to such audacious. usurpation; and yet, so sagaciously was the affair managed, that the ignorant masses at the South were led as obediently as plantation slaves to unrewarded labor. After performing the grave ceremonies of creating a nation, these same fortytwo delegates chose Jefferson Davis President, and Alexan

der H. Stevens Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy. On the 18th, Jefferson Davis and Alexander H. Stevens were inaugurated at Montgomery in the offices to which they had been elected by the convention.

Everything thus seemed to go prosperously for the Confederacy, and the conspirators were loud in their declarations that God favored their enterprize and would give it success. All this time the government was apparently powerless. The slaveholding States bounding the free States on the south, called the "border States," did not secede, but threatened to do so if the government attempted to coerce the seceded States back into the Union. This policy of "No Coercion," which governed the action of the leaders in the border States, was a device of traitors to enthral these States into the new doctrine of constitutional secession. No action of these non-seceded States could have been more embarrassing to the authorities at Washington. They thus formed a bulwark, behind which the seceded States deliberately and securely prepared for war; and from and through which they drew supplies of arms and men.

Soon after the inauguration at Montgomery, a member of the Military Committee declared, "We have arms, and in abundance, though no armories. Every State has amply provided itself to meet any emergency that may arise, and is daily purchasing and receiving cannon, mortars, shells, and other engines of destruction with which to overwhelm the dastard adversary. Organized armies now exist in all the States, commanded by officers, brave, accomplished, and experienced; and even should war occur in twenty days, I feel confident that they have both the valor and the arms successfully to resist any force whatever."

The people of the free States regarded the progress of the rebellion with composure; and quietly, but with intense latent emotion, awaited the inauguration of President Lincoln. Relief was not hoped for during Buchanan's administration. This the conspirators well knew, and hence were prepared to resist the inauguration of an administration

pledged to resist the usurpation of the slave power. The attempt to assassinate President Lincoln on his passage to the Capital failed, and his administration was duly inaugu rated on the 4th of March, 1861.

In his inaugural address, Mr. Lincoln said:

"I therefore consider that, in view of the Constitution and laws, the Union is unbroken; and to the extent of my ability I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins on me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States; doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part, and I shall perform it, so far as practicable, unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite means, or, in some other authoritative manner, direct the contrary.

"I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose that as to the Union, I will constitutionally defend and maintain it. In doing this there need be no bloodshed or violence; and there shall be none, unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties on imports; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere.

"Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face, and an intercourse either amicable or hostile must continue between them. Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory after separating than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws among friends? Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always, and when, after much

loss on both sides and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon you.

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.

"The Chief Magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and they have conferred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the States. The people themselves can do this also, if they choose, but the Executive, as such, has nothing to do with it. His duty is to administer the present government as it came to his hands, and to transmit it, unimpaired by him, to his successor."

When Abraham Lincoln, by virtue of his constitutional election, assumed the administration of the government of the United States, he found all the offices at Washington administered by appointees of the preceding administration, which was notoriously under the control of the conspirators. The heads of Departments, the chiefs of Bureaus, clerks and messengers, with few exceptions, were unreliable, and could not, with safety to the government, be retained in office. The city of Washington was threatened with attack from the rebels in the South, when at the same time it was literally swarming with spies and assassins who would inform, and co-operate with, the enemy without.

On the 18th of February, Joseph Holt, a distinguished and patriotic citizen of Kentucky, into whose hands the portfolio of the War Department was entrusted on the retirement of the traitor Floyd, addressed a letter to President Buchanan, in reply to a resolution of the House, inquiring into the state of the defences of the city of Washington. The following extract from that letter describes the condition of affairs at the time of Mr. Lincoln's inauguration:

"The overthrow of the Federal authority has not only been sudden and widespread, but has been marked by ex

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