CH. XXII. and intent of the Constitution. . . But if we possessed this power, would it be wise to exercise it under existing circumstances? . . . Our Union rests upon public opinion, and can never be cemented by the blood of its citizens shed in civil war. . . Congress possesses many means of preserving it by Globe," conciliation; but the sword was not placed in their hand to preserve it by force." Appendix, Dec. 3, 1860, p. 3. Why did the message thus leap at one bound without necessary connection or coherence from the discussion of executive to those of legislative powers? Why waste words over doubtful theories when there was pressing need to suggest practical amendments to the statute whose real or imaginary defects Mr. Buchanan had pointed out? Why indulge in lamentations over the remote possibility that Congress might violate the Constitution, when the occasion demanded only prompt preventive orders from the Executive to arrest the actual threatened violation of law by Charleston mobs? Why talk of war against States when the duty of the hour was the exercise of acknowledged authority against insurrectionary citizens? The issue and argument were wholly false and irrelevant. No State had yet seceded. Execute such laws of the United States as were in acknowledged vigor, and disunion would be impossible. Buchanan needed only to do what he afterwards so truthfully asserted Lincoln had done.1 But 1"Happily our civil war was undertaken and prosecuted in self-defense, not to coerce а State, but to enforce the execution of the laws within the States against individuals, and to sup press an unjust rebellion raised Administra through his inaction, and still more through his CH. XXII. declared want of either power or right to act, disunion gained two important advantages—the influence of the Executive voice upon public opinion, and especially upon Congress; and the substantial pledge of the Administration that it would lay no straw in the path of peaceful, organized measures to bring about State secession. Correspondence, N. Y. "Evening Post." The central dogma of the message, that while a State has no right to secede, the Union has no right to coerce, has been universally condemned as a paradox. The popular estimate of Mr. Buchanan's proposition and arguments was forcibly presented at the time by a jesting criticism attributed to Mr. Seward. "I think," said the New York Senator, "the President has conclusively proved two things: (1) That no State has the right to secede unless it wishes to; and (2) that it is the President's duty to enforce the laws unless somebody opposes him." No less damaging was the explanation put upon his language by his political friends. The recognized organ of the Administration said: "Mr. Buchanan has increased the displeasure of the Lincoln party by his repudiation of the coercion theory, and his firm refusal to permit a resort to force as a means of preventing the secession of a sovereign State." Nor were intelligent lookers-on in foreign lands less severe in their judgment: "Mr. Buchanan's message," said the London "Times," a month later, “has been a greater blow to the American people than all the rant of the Georgian Governor or the ordinances' of the Charleston Convention. The President has dissipated the idea that the States which elected him constitute one people." Jan. 9, 1861. Washington "Con stitution" ber 19, 1860. of Decem London "Times," CHAPTER XXIII THE CHARLESTON CONSPIRATORS CH. XXIII. S President Buchanan might have foreseen, As his side but message his inconsistent message proved satisfactory to neither friend nor foe. The nation was on the eve of rebellion and had urgent need of remedial acts, not of temporizing theories, least of all theories which at the late Presidential election had been rejected as errors and dangers. The message served as a topic to initiate debate in Congress; but this debate, resting only on the main subject long enough to cover the Chief Magistrate's views and recommendations as a whole, with almost unanimous expressions of dissent, and even of contempt, passed on to words of mutual defiance and open declarations of revolutionary purpose. The conspirators in the Cabinet had done their work. By the official declarations of the President of the United States, the Government had tied its own hands — had resolved and proclaimed the duty and policy of non-resistance to organized rebellion. Henceforth disunionists, secessionists, nullifiers, and conspirators of every kind had but to combine under alleged State action, and through the instrumentalities of State Legislatures and State conventions cast off without let or hinder ance their Federal obligations by resolves and ordi- CH. XXIII. The semblance of a vote, a few scratches nances. of the pen, a proclamation, and a new flag, and at once without the existence of a corporal's squad, or the smell of burnt powder, there would appear on the horizon of American politics, if not a de jure at least a de facto State! If there had hitherto been any doubt or hesitation in the minds of the principal secession leaders of the South, it vanished under the declared policy of inaction of the Federal Administration. The President's message was a practical assurance of immunity from arrest and prosecution for treason. It magnified their grievances, specifically pointed out a contingent right and duty of revolution, acknowledged that mere public sentiment might override and nullify Federal laws, and pointedly bound up Federal authority in narrow legal and Constitutional restrictions. It was blind as a mole to find Federal power, but keen-eyed as a lynx to discover Federal impotence. The leaders of secession were not slow to avail themselves of the favorable situation. Between the date of the message and the incoming of the new and possibly hostile Administration there intervened three full months. It was the season of political activity - the period during which legislatures meet, messages are written, and laws enacted. It afforded ample time to authorize, elect, and hold State conventions. Excitement was at fever heat in the South, and public sentiment paralyzed, despondent, and divided at the North. Accordingly, as if by a common impulse, the secession movement sprang into quick activity and CH. XXIII. united effort. Within two months the States of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, in the order named, by formal ordinances of conventions, declared themselves separated from the Union. The recommendation of Yancey's "scarlet letter" had been literally carried out; the Cotton States were precipitated into revolution. In this movement of secession the State of South Carolina was the enthusiastic pioneer. At the date of the President's message she had already provided by law for the machinery of a convention, though no delegates had been elected. Nevertheless, her Legislature at once plunged pell-mell into the task of making laws for the new condition of independent sovereignty which by common consent the convention was in a few days to declare. Questions of army and navy, postal communication, and foreign diplomacy, for the moment eclipsed the baser topics of estray laws or wolf-scalp bounties, and the little would-be Congress fully justified the reported sarcasm of one of her leading citizens that "the Palmetto State was too small for a republic and too large for a lunatic asylum." But, with all their outward fire and zeal for nationality, her politicians were restrained by an under-current of prudence. A revolution even under exceptional advantages is a serious thing. Therefore the agitators of South Carolina scanned the President's message with unconcealed eagerness. In that paradox of assertions and denials, of purposes to act and promises to refrain, they found much to assure them, but also something to cause doubt. "As I understand the |