THE PRESIDENT SPEAKS. all matters between the State and the Federal Government, provided that no reinforcements shall be sent into those forts, and their relative military status shall remain as at present."* 41 tions. This would only have been done The signers of the memorandum, in fact, could hardly have asked the President of the United States to bind the Government to inaction while the uncer-military force went over last night (the tain forbearance of the other side might be terminated at any moment by a hostile act of the Convention. "It is well known," says the President "that it was my determination, and this I freely expressed, not to reinforce the forts in the harbor and thus produce a collision, until they had been actually attacked, or until I had certain evidence that they were about to be attacked." He then recited the instructions of the War Department to Major Anderson, which required him to hold possession of the forts in the harbor, and if attacked defend himself to the last extremity, while it was left to his discretion, in case of an attack or "tangible evidence of a design to proceed to a hostile act," to put his command into any one of the forts which he might think best adapted to increase its power of resistance. Under these circumstances, said the President, Major Anderson, as "a brave and honorable officer should not be condemned without a fair hear-that, as an executive officer, I felt myself 27th) to Fort Moultrie.' Thus the authorities of South Carolina, without waiting or asking for any explanations, and doubtless believing, as you have expressed it, that the officer had acted not only without but against my orders, on the very next day after the night when the removal was made, seized by a military force two of the Federal forts in the harbor of Charleston, and have covered them under their own flag instead of that of the United States. At this gloomy period of our history, startling events succeed each other rapidly. On the very day, the 27th instant, that possession of these two forts was taken, the Palmetto flag was raised over the Federal Customhouse and Post-office in Charleston ; and on the same day every officer of the Customs-Collector, Naval Officer, Surveyor and Appraiser-resigned their offices. And this, although it was well known from the language of my Message bound to collect the revenue at the port of Charleston, under the existing laws. In the harbor of Charleston we now find three forts confronting each other, over all of which the Federal flag floated only four days ago; but now, over two of them, this flag has been supplanted, and the Palmetto flag has been substituted in its stead." The President was touched to the quick, and would be trifled with no "Some weeks ago," wrote these longer. "It is under all these circum- thing. circum-thing. stances," said he, "that I am urged im- unfeeling and insatiate remonstrants, mediately to withdraw the troops from the harbor of Charleston, and am informed, that without this negotiation is impossible. This I cannot do this I will not do. Such an idea was never thought of by me in any possible contingency. At this point of writing," he adds, in a concluding paragraph, "I have received information by telegraph from Captain Humphreys, in command of the arsenal at Charleston, that 'it has to-day (Sunday, the 30th) been taken by force of arms.' It is estimated that the munitions of war belonging to this arsenal are worth half a million of dollars. Comment is needless. After this information, I have only to add, that whilst it is my duty to defend Fort Sumter, as a portion of the public property of the United States, against hostile attacks, from whatever quarter they may come, by such means as I may possess for this purpose, I do not pereive how such a defence can be construed into a menace against the city of Charleston."* "the State of South Carolina declared her intention, in the existing condition of public affairs, to secede from the United States. She called a Convention of her people to put her declaration in force. The Convention met and passed the Ordinance of Secession. All this you anticipated, and your course of action was thoroughly considered in your Annual Message. You declared you had no right, and would not attempt, to coerce a seceding State, but that you were bound by your constitutional oath, and would defend the property of the United States within the borders of South Carolina, if an attempt was made to take it by force. Seeing very early that this question of property was a difficult and delicate one, you manifested a desire to settle it without collision. You did not reinforce the garrison in the harbor of Charleston. You removed a distinguished and veteran officer from the command of Fort Moultrie because he attempted to increase his supply of ammunition. You refused to send additional troops to the same garrison when applied for by the officer appointed to succeed him. You accepted the resignation of the oldest and most eminent member of your Cabinet, rather than allow the garrison to be strengthened. You compelled an officer stationed at Fort Sumter to return immediately to the This spirited reply, which certainly appears the most moderate which could have been presented under the circumstances, was met by a second letter from the commissioners, dwelling in no friendly mood upon various concessions already made by the President in reference to the forts, and seeking to entangle him in a breach of good faith in his present dec-arsenal forty muskets which he had talarations. As a specimen of its temper, we present a few sentences where the President is most ungratefully upbraided with an enumeration of the favors he had already yielded as if, because he had given so much, he was to yield every-converted his violation of orders into a ken to arm his men. You have decided, you have resolved to hold by force what you have obtained through our misplaced confidence; and by refusing to disavow the act of Major Anderson have legitimate act of your executive authority. Be the issue what it may, of this THE RETIREMENT OF FLOYD. 43 sity of tendering his resignation as Secretary of War, "because I can no longer hold it under my convictions of patriotism, nor with honor, subjected as I am to a violation of solemn pledges and plighted faith." To this, President Buchanan replied briefly and coolly on the 31st:"My dear Sir, I have received and accepted your resignation of the office of Secretary of War; and not wishing to impose upon you the task of performing its mere routine duties, which you have we are assured, that, if Fort Moultrie has been recorded in history as a memorial of Carolina gallantry, Fort Sumter will live upon the succeeding page as an imperishable testimony of Carolina faith. By your course, you have probably rendered civil war inevitable. Be it SO. If you choose to force this issue upon us, the State of South Carolina will accept it, and relying upon Him who is the God of Justice as well as the God of Hosts, will endeavor to perform the great duty which lies before her hopefully, so kindly offered to do, I have authorbravely, and thoroughly."* The let-ized Postmaster-General Holt to adminter was returned with the endorsement, ister the affairs of the Department until "This paper just presented to the President is of such a character that he declines to receive it." The President of the United States had spoken at last. The mission of the South Carolina Commissioners was at an end. your successor shall be appointed." Ir The change was accepted by the public with the profoundest satisfaction. In was, indeed, high time for Mr. Floyd to depart, and a citizen of unquestioned loyalty and honor to be put in his place. His fidelity to the Government was doubted, and there were various unpleasant suspicions afloat of his participation in certain transactions, recently brought to light, of enormous army acceptances, connected with which an immense sum of government securities in State Stocks had been feloniously withdrawn from the Department of the Interior. So strong ran the current against him, that a presentment was shortly after made by the Grand Jury of the city of Washington, charging him with maladministration in office, complicity in the abstraction of the Simultaneously with this correspondence, the Hon. John B. Floyd, Secretary of War, on the 27th of December, in the presence of the Cabinet, read to the President a paper denouncing the removal from Moultrie by Major Anderson, as a violation of "the solemn pledges of the Government," which had left "but one remedy to vindicate our honor and prevent civil war, and that is, to withdraw the garrison from the harbor of Charleston." Two days after, he followed this up by another communication to the President, in which he stated, that the refusal or even the delay of the Gov-bonds, and conspiracy against the Government "to place affairs back as they stood under our agreement, invites a collision, and must inevitably inaugurate civil war;" that he could not "consent to be the agent of such a calamity," and that he was, therefore, under the neces * Messrs. Barnwell, Adams and Orr to President Buchar an, Washington January 1, 1861. ernment. A few days before his departure from the War Department, he addressed a communication to the House of Representatives, offering an explanation of his course in reference to the acceptances. The letter was referred to a committee, which, after a careful investigation of the circumstances, pointed out the recklessness of his official conduct, his inattention, and the ignorance of the details of his affairs," and characterized his conduct as "not to be reconciled with purity of private motives and faithfulness to public trusts."* Under these circumstances, Secretary Floyd immediately left for Virginia, to re-appear in due time upon the public stage as a brigadier-general of the army of the so-called Confederate States of America. It was then mentioned with peculiar satisfaction in Richmond that, by a single order, made in his last year of office as Secretary of War, he had transferred one hundred and fifteen thousand improved muskets and rifles from the Springfield armory and Watervleit arsenal, to five depositories at the South.+ All of them were, as a matter of course, seized by the State authorities at the opening of the Rebellion. The departure of Floyd was not the first important change in President Buchanan's Cabinet. Howell Cobb, the Secretary of the Treasury, a politician of the Southern school, took leave of the President shortly after the opening of Congress. He had accomplished his work at Washington, though he had failed in his department. An empty treasury and depreciated public funds were his legacy to his successor. He turned from his seat in the government to agitate rebellion in his native State of Georgia. He was succeeded for a time by the Commissioner of Patents, Mr. Philip F. Thomas, of Maryland. General Cass, as we have seen, moved to sadness at the prospects of the times, left the Cabinet a few days * Report of the Select Committee appointed to investigate the frauds in the Department of the Interior, to the House of Representatives, February 12, 1861. + Richmond Examiner, cited in the New York Evening Post, May 15, 1861. after Mr. Cobb, from very different mo tives, when his place was taken by the Attorney-General, Mr. Jeremiah S. Black, of Pennsylvania. The vacant AttorneyGeneralship was then conferred on another citizen of that State, Mr. Edwin M. Stanton, a man of energy in his profession of the law, and a zealous patriot of whom we shall hear much hereafter under another dispensation. In a special Message, on the 8th of January, a day to recall the memory of a previous Executive who scented treason from afar, and who never hesitated in the performance of duty,President Buchanan briefly reviewed the condition of affairs, and urged upon Congress the necessity of prompt interposition to avert the threatened calamities. He pictured the state of the country, its gloom and despondency, the paralysis which had fallen upon trade and commerce, the universal depreciation of property, and the rapid decline of the credit of the public securities. These evils he justly attributed to the susceptibility or exposure of the State to the threatened danger from within. government organized like ours," said he, "domestic strife, or even a wellgrounded fear of civil hostilities, is more destructive to our public and private interests than the most formidable foreign war." Recurring to his late Annual Message, he reiterated his convictions of the inadequate pretensions made for secession, and again declared his inability to acknowledge the independence claimed for any State under its assumptions. Of the war-making power, he said, "I certainly had no right to make aggressive war upon any State; and I am perfectly satisfied that the Constitution has wisely withheld that power even from Congress. "In a |