CHAPTER III.

THE BEGINNING OF BLOODSHED.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN's inaugural address was one of the ablest state papers recorded in American history. It argued the question of secession in all its aspects the Constitutional right, the reality of the grievance, the sufficiency of the remedy- and so far as law and logic went it left the secessionists little or nothing to stand on. But neither law nor logic could change in a single day the pre-determined purpose of a powerful combination, or allay the passions that had been roused by years of resentful debate. Some of its sentences read like maxims for statesmen. "The

central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy." "Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws?" "Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world?" With all its conciliatory messages it expressed a firm and unalterable purpose to maintain the Union at every hazard. "I consider," he said, "that, in view of the Constitution and the laws, the Union is unbroken, and to the extent of my ability I shall take care, as the Constitution. itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States.

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LINCOLN'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS.

[1861.

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 authoritative manner direct the contrary." And in closing he said: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I have the most solemn one to preserve, protect, and defend it. . . . . We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

The

No such address had ever come from the lips of a President before. Pierce and Buchanan had scolded the abolitionists like partisans; Lincoln talked to the secessionists like a brother. loyal people throughout the country received the address with satisfaction. The secessionists bitterly denounced it. Overlooking all its pacific declarations, and keeping out of sight the fact that a majority of the Congress just chosen was politically opposed to the President, they appealed to the Southern people to say whether they would "sub

1861.]

THE STRUGGLE FOR VIRGINIA.

43

mit to abolition rule," and whether they were going to look on and "see gallant little South Carolina crushed under the heel of despotism."

In spite of all such appeals, there was still a strong Union sentiment at the South. Seven slave States had gone out, but eight remained, and the anxiety of the secessionists was to secure these at once, or most of them, before the excitement cooled. The great prize was Virginia, both because of her own power and resources, and because her accession to the Confederacy would necessarily bring North Carolina also. Her Governor, John Letcher, professed to be a Unionist; but his conduct after the ordinance of secession had been passed appears to prove that this profession was insincere. In electing delegates to a convention to consider the question of secession, the Unionists cast a majority of sixty thousand votes; and on the 4th of April, when President Lincoln. had been in office a month, that convention refused, by a vote of 89 to 45, to pass an ordinance of secession. The leading revolutionists of the cotton States were becoming uneasy. Said Mr. Gilchrist, of Alabama, to the Confederate Secretary of War, "You must sprinkle blood in the faces of the people! If you delay two months, Alabama stays in the Union!" Hence the attack on Fort Sumter, out of which the garrison were in peril of being driven by starvation. This certainly had a great popular effect in the South as well as in the North; but Virginia's choice appears to have been determined by a measure that was less

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THE STRUGGLE FOR VIRGINIA.

[1861.

spectacular and more coldly significant. The Confederate Constitution provided that Congress should have the power to "prohibit the introduction of slaves from any State not a member of, or Territory not belonging to, this Confederacy," and at the time when Virginia's fate was in the balance it was reported that such an act had been passed by the Congress at Montgomery.* When Virginia heard this, like the young man in Scripture, she went away sorrowful; for in that line of trade she had great possessions. The cultivation of land by slave labor had long since ceased to be profitable in the border States-or at least it was far less profitable than raising slaves for the cotton States, and the acquisition of new territory in Texas had enormously increased the demand. The greatest part of this business (sometimes. estimated as high as one half) was Virginia's. was called "the vigintal crop," as the blacks were ready for market and at their highest value about the age of twenty. As it was an ordinary business of bargain and sale, no statistics were kept; but the lowest estimate of the annual value

It

*It is now impossible to prove positively that such a law was actually passed; for the officially printed volume of "Statutes at Large of the Provisional Government of the Confederate States of America" (Richmond, 1861) was evidently mutilated before being placed in the hands of the compositor. The Acts are numbered, but here and there numbers are missing, and in some of the later Acts there are allusions to previous Acts that cannot be found in the book. It is known that on the 6th of March, 1861, the Judiciary Committee was instructed to inquire into the expediency of such prohibition, and it seems a fair conjecture that one of the missing numbers was an Act of this character. In a later edition (1864) thenumbering is made consecutive, but the missing matter is not restored.

1861.]

HER SLAVE TRADE.

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of the trade in the Old Dominion placed it in the tens of millions of dollars. President Dew, of William and Mary College, in his celebrated pamphlet, wrote: "Virginia is, in fact, a negroraising State for other States." The New York "Journal of Commerce" of October 12, 1835, contained a letter from a Virginian (vouched for by the editor) in which it was asserted that 20,000 slaves had been driven south from that State that year. In 1836 the Wheeling (Va.) "Times" estimated the number of slaves exported from that State during the preceding year at 40,000, valued at $24,000,000. The Baltimore " The Baltimore "Register" in 1846 said: "Dealing in slaves has become a large business; establishments are made in several places in Maryland and Virginia, at which they are sold like cattle." The Richmond "Examiner " before the war said: "Upon an inside estimate, they [the slaves of Virginia] yield in gross surplus produce, from sales of negroes to go south, $10,000,000." In the United States Senate, just before the war, Hon. Alfred Iverson, of Georgia, replying to Mr. Powell, of Virginia, said Virginia was deeply interested in secession; for if the cotton States seceded, Virginia would find no market for her slaves, without which that State would be ruined.

After Sumter had been fired on, and the Confederate Congress had forbidden this traffic to outsiders, the Virginia Convention again took up the ordinance of secession (April 17) and passed it in secret session by a vote of 88 to 55. It was not