UNION SENTIMENTS.

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property and enforce the laws, rather than in new guarantees for particular interests, compromises for particular difficulties or concessions to unreasonable demands.

"That all attempts to dissolve the present Union, or overthrow or abandon the present Constitution, with the hope or expectation of constructing a new one, are dangerous, illusory and destructive; that in the opinion of the Senate of the United States no such reconstruction is practicable, and, therefore, to the maintenance of the existing Union and Constitution should be directed all the energies of all the departments of the government, and the efforts of all good citizens." 1

This accorded fully with the Union sentiments in Wade's speech and was heartily supported by all the Republican Senators. When, on the sixteenth the Crittenden resolutions were up, Clark's resolutions were agreed to by a vote of twenty-five to twenty-three. Six Southern Democrats had abstained from voting. Knowing the end of the political game, why should they vote? Their hearts were with the new government to be formed in a few days at Montgomery, and their refusal now to vote against the Clark substitute for Crittenden's resolutions simply meant hostility to compromise and a declaration of secession principles.

On the day when the Clark resolutions were proposed, the President sent a special message to Congress urging "action, prompt action," but declaring that while he believed that "no State has a right by its own act to secede from the Union," and that he had no authority to recognize such independence, neither had he authority to prevent it. The message was another confession of impotency, than which nothing else was now expected

1 These resolutions, and those offered in the House, are given at the close of the chapter.

THE SOUTH CAROLINA COMMISSIONERS.

628 from Buchanan. The President accompanied the message with the correspondence of Barnwell, Adams and Orr, the three South Carolina commissioners appointed by the Convention in that State to settle terms between it and the United States,1 a transaction which the President had declined to enter into. He refused to meet the commissioners or to receive their communications.2 His decision was promptly translated into an insult and an act of war by the secessionists, and interpreted as a sign of future attempts at coercing the seceding States.3 To the leaders in disunion it was gratifying because it widened the breach and hardened the pride of slavocracy. It was another Southern grievance and injury. In a brief speech, Jefferson Davis, who had succeeded in having the communication from the commissioners to the President read in the Senate, treated the President's action as the rejection of the olive branch and expressed his pity for him and for the country. It was the pity which the conspirator feels for him who resists his schemes. Davis was far too astute a man not to detect the advantage to the cause of secession which Buchanan's negative conduct afforded. On the following day, in an elaborate and powerful speech, Davis attempted to refute the doctrine stated in the message in the words: "I certainly have no right to make aggressive war upon any State, and

1 For the correspondence, see Journal of South Carolina Convention, 1860, 484-502.

2 For a history of the transaction, see Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln, II, Chapters XXIII, XXIV.

3 See the "Statement" of Miles and Keitt, S. C. Convention Journal, 498-499. Also Jefferson Davis's speech in the Senate, January 9, 1861. Globe, p. 289, and January 10. Id., 306-312. See Smith's Alabama Convention, p. 168.

In his speech of January 9, he had succeeded in having the letter of Barnwell, Adams and Orr read in the Senate. (See Globe, for January 9, 1860, pp. 288-9.)

LYMAN TRUMBULL.

629

I am perfectly satisfied that the Constitution has wisely withheld that power even from Congress," which Davis pronounced "very good;" "but the right and the duty to use military force defensively against those who resist the Federal officers in the execution of their legal functions, and against those who assail the power of the Federal Government, is clear and undeniable." Davis summed his comments on this in the words: The general government has "no power to coerce a State." To retain United States troops in the forts at Charleston against the wishes of South Carolina was coercion and a violation of the Constitution. The clear purpose of the secessionists was to put the national Government, as it had put the free States, in the wrong; thus the South, to escape tyranny and aggression had seceded. The reply to all this was made by Trumbull, of Illinois. "We have listened to the Senator from Mississippi, and one would suppose, in listening to him here, that he was a friend of this Union, that he desired the perpetuity of this government. He has a most singular way of preserving it, and a most singular way of maintaining the Constitution. What is it? Why, he proposes that the government should abdicate. If it will simply withdraw its forces from Charleston we will have peace. He dreads civil war, and he will avoid it by a surrender. He talks as if we Republicans were responsible for civil war, if it ensues. If civil war comes, it comes from those with whom he is acting. Who proposes to make civil war but South Carolina? Who proposes to make civil war but Mississippi and Alabama, and Georgia, seizing, by force of arms, upon the public property of the United States? Talk to us of making civil war. You inaugurate it, and then talk of it as if it came from the friends of the Constitution and the Union. Here stands this great govern

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THE NATIONAL IDEA EXPRESSED.

ment; here stands the Union-a pillar, so to speak, already erected. Do we propose to pull it down? Do we propose undermining the foundations of the Constitution or disturbing the Union? Not at all, but the proposition comes from the other side. They are making war, and modestly ask us to have peace by submitting to what they ask. It is nothing but rebellion; it is nothing but insurrection." 1

The nominal difficulty in working out a new compromise was the territories and the unorganized public domain. These were the bone of contention. If Congress could get rid of the territories the question of slavery would be settled. On the sixteenth of January, when Clark's resolutions were substituted for those so long and so earnestly advocated by Crittenden, Senator Rice suggested a scheme for obliterating the Territories. Kansas and New Mexico should be admitted, the boundaries of Minnesota, California and Oregon be readjusted, and thus, all the land be occupied as States. But this unique treatment of the disease may be said to have commended itself neither to the doctors nor to the patient. Slavocracy did not want the question settled, and the United States was a slaveholding Republic. When remedies become whimsical there is little hope for the patient.2

Secession was the inevitable consequence of slavocratic policy and ideas, and was itself the flower and fruit of the institution of slavery. The South Carolina declaration contained much history as well as much sophistry. Any one who will give a moment's thought to the subject must admit the truth of the saying that "A house divided against itself cannot stand." The balance of power 1 Globe, January 10, 1861, pp. 312-313.

For the resolutions see Senate Journal, 103, 104.

"INEXORABLE LOGIC."

631

between slave States and free was forever broken with the admission of California in 1850. When, eight years later, in his Springfield speech, Lincoln declared his belief that "this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free," that he did not expect the Union to be dissolved, did not expect the house to fall, but did expect it would cease to be divided; that it would become all one thing or all the other; that "Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new; North as well as South;" ;" he used homely language that everybody could understand and advanced a philosophy which everybody believed. He spoke for the South as truthfully as for the North. He, and the party which elected him President, opposed the existence of slavery in the territories. But the South Carolina declaration promptly expressed the deduction: "If it is right to preclude or abolish slavery in a territory, why should it be allowed to remain in the States?" 2 The "requisitions of an inexorable logic" led slavocracy to believe that there was but one conclusion of the whole matter, if the Union continued, and that conclusion was emancipation. Thus the fate of the slave would be the fate of the Union. While secession was strengthening and the dissolution of the Union seemed speedy and inevitable, a final effort was made to compromise all differences by amending the Constitution, and make slavery national and perpetual.

1 Political Debates between Lincoln and Douglas, p. 1.

2 See the address of the Georgia Convention of 1861, Journal, pp. 109-111.