thereupon some of my own constituents went into the forts of the Government and took possession of them. They were very soon informed however, that this was erroneous information, and they were evacuated; they were evacuated by order of the Governor, and the people have remained quiet ever since. If we are to have a state of peace, the Government, and you and I, all know, that those forts are in no danger of occupation; but if war measures are to be inaugurated, then it is very natural that the Government should send troops down to take possession of them; and I say, frankly, that I think the country is entitled to know from the Administration, and to know from Senators who are in a position to understand, what we are to expect; for if there be a policy to occupy the forts in the Confederate States, and to collect the revenue, we all know that is war. It is idle for gentlemen to talk about words, to speak of what is war, and what is peace; you and I and all of us know, as was well and ably argued by the Senator from Illinois, that if that be attempted, we have war. I wish to know it.

Mr. Clark. The honorable Senator will permit me. Allusion has been made several times to the Senators on this side, to their being mute; and it has been said that they could state the policy of the Administration if they would. Now, let me say to the honorable Senator, that I know of no person on this side who has any information on the subject. I have no reason to believe that any person knows any more than has been stated in the inaugural; and the honorable Senator and other Senators on that side can put their interpretation on that just as we can. We have no authority, and I think no knowledge, from which we can state to Senators on the other side.

Mr. Clingman. It is a little extraordinary that Senators, occupying the relation they do towards the Administration should not know what are its purposes. They know that, while I interpreted the inaugural one way, the Senator from Illinois interpreted it very differently. They know that the country is divided on the subject. It was said by the Senator from Massachusetts that they had only been eight or ten days in power, and had not had time, perhaps, to determine their policy. Now I say the country has a right to know what it is to expect. The present state of things cannot continue long without collision. If this Government threatens, the Confederate States will not wait until it has organized powerful armaments, and pounced down upon them. If the Government's policy be to provoke collision, and say it is not responsible, it seems to me it is taking proper course to do it. If I should continue to threaten a man, and decline to give him any explanations, it would not be surprising if he should anticipate me, and begin the contest. Mr. Clark. Will the Senator pardon me for again interrupting him? I do not do it in any factious spirit.

Mr. Clingman. I do not suppose any such thing. I am happy to

hear the Senator.

Mr. Clark. He speaks of the threats of this Administration. If he will look at the inaugural, he will see that the President says there can be no assault on his part; the President will assail nobody. Instead of being a threat, I think it should be received as he intended-the Government will assail nobody.

Mr. Clingman. But the President said this Government would possess and occupy its forts in the Confederate States. The Senator nods his assent. The Government says: "we intend to take possession of Fort Moultrie and Fort Pulaski, and the other forts of which the State authorities have got possession; they are our property; we are going to take possession of them; there will be no war, no bloodshed, if you submit." That is the amount of it. Am I to enter into an argument with the honorable Senator to prove what I know-and he must know, too, I take it, so that I cannot enlighten him on that point-that that necessarily provokes collision? Mr. Lincoln says: "I intend to make you pay taxes to the Government, which you say you do not owe; you say you are independent; I deny it; you are as much a part of the Union as you ever were; you are bound to pay the taxes; you must let us occupy the forts we have in your territory; it depends on you whether there shall be bloodshed; if you submit, there will be none at all." In other words, "if you obey, I will not strike you; if you disobey my commands, if you decline to give up those forts, if you refuse to pay the revenue which I intend to collect of you, your blood will be on your own heads." That is the result to which we are brought. True, Mr. Lincoln says it is not a threat. Oh, no! no threat! I go to a man and say, "I intend to do as I please with your property, or what you consider your property; and if you resort to force, you must thank yourself only for your suffering, if it falls on you."

I am very glad to get even this explanation from the Senator from New Hampshire. It shows an evidence on his part of a willingness cour teously to give me all the information he can. And what is it? "That if you submit to the policy of the Government-if you surrender back the forts or allow the Government to take them, and pay duties to it, there is peace; otherwise, you have war." And, as was well argued by the honorable Senator from Illinois, that is necessarily war. There is no Senator here who would pretend that you could collect revenue or occupy the forts without a collision of arms; and honorable Senators do not mislead anybody by us different terms. If any other Senator could go further than the Senator from New Hampshire, I should be gratified.

I have made these remarks, Mr. President, with no view of producing irritation; but seeing the condition of the country, and the apprehension that now prevails, I was very much in hopes that something might come out from the other side indicative of a peaceful disposition on the part of the Administration. I wish no war. No one can wish it, I take it. I hope the Senator from New Hampshire, (Mr. Hale,) who has heard what his colleague has said, if he can say anything further to relieve us, will. He concluded his speech with some sentiments that were very patriotic. He declared, if I understood him aright, that if States were discontented, if they were thoroughly dissatisfied with the Union, rather than use force to compel them to remain in, he would let two other discontented States go with them, or words to that effect. That is a policy which I understand. It is frank and manly, and I think patriotic; and if the Administrator adopts that policy, there will be no collision.

But, Mr. President, there is another difficulty in the way, and we might as well talk frankly. I know it is present to the minds of Senators on the other side, and they must see the difficulty. The honorable

Senator from Rhode Island, (Mr. Simmons,) particularly, who engineered the tariff bill through, of course sees the difficulty. Well, why should we not talk together frankly as Senators about it? The revenues under that tariff bill cannot be collected anywhere, I think, if the declarations which gentlemen make are to be acted out. If they are to hold that all the Confederate States are in the Union, and that you are to have no custom houses on the line between them and the other States, what will be the result? Goods will come into New Orleans, Charleston, Mobile, and other places; they will come in paying a low tariff, and merchants from Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, and Ohio, if they choose to go down there and buy goods, will take them home and pay no duties. No man from the Northwest will go to New York, and pay a duty of fifty per cent. on goods that he can get at fifteen or twenty per cent. duty at New Orleans. That will be the course of trade, of course. Senators must see that you cannot have two tariffs, one high and one low, in operation in the country at once, with any effect produced by the high tariff. If you go to a man and say: "You may pay me a high price or a low price for an article," you will never get the high price. When, therefore, you attempt to carry out the new tariff, which contains rates, I think, of fifty per cent., and some of one hundred per cent., and some even above one hundred per cent., you cannot collect those rates at Boston and New York and Philadelphia, while the men who want to consume the goods can get them by paying a duty of only one-third as much. That is impossible. I take it, therefore, that all gentlemen must see that, in the present condition of things, matters cannot stand. If the independence of those States be recognized, and you establish a line of custom houses along them, you may make us in North Carolina, for example, pay as high duties as you please. I do not like to pay them, and I do not think my people will; but I tell Senators that, if matters stand as they now are, the merchants from my region will go down to Charleston, as they often do, and buy goods under a low tariff. They would rather do that than go north and buy them under a high tariff. That will be the effect. You will get no revenue, therefore, under your high tariff, in a little time, if this discrepancy is to continue.

Then, I presume, it is not intended to be so. I presume the Senator from Rhode Island, and those who acted with him, did not intend the tariff, which has been lately passed, to be a mere farce, a mere thing on paper, not to be acted out. Of course, the mean to get duties under it in some way or other. If you do not mean to have your line of custom houses along the border of the Confederate States, you must expect to stop importations there. How will you do it? I know you cannot do it legally without new legislation; you cannot do it without calling Congress together, and having laws passed to enable you to do it. How far the limits of the Constitution will restrain it, is a question which may be argued hereafter; but it impossible that things shall stand in this way. and therefore I regard that as furnishing a pregnant circumstance also, to show that the policy of the Administration is necessarily a hostile one. I should be glad to believe otherwise. I should be very much gratified indeed, as a Senator and an individual, if the Senator from New Hamp

shire, or the Senator from Rhode Island, or anybody else, could give me such assurances as I should like to have.

My purpose, Mr. President, was not to discuss the general question, but to state why it is that I cannot adopt the view of the Senator from Illinois; why I think all the tracks now point in one direction, and that is towards collision and war.

Mr. Hale. The Senator from North Carolina spoke to me once last evening, and once this morning. I will answer him as far as I can, and I will do it frankly; and let me say, when I do so, I answer as I do because it is the truth, and not because I have any fault to find with anybody. I know no more what the Administration intend than that Senator does. I have no more means of knowing what they intend, than that Senator has. I presume he has been consulted just as frequently and as intimately as I have been; and I know he has given as much advice to the President, and to each and every head of a Department, as I have, and has heard as much from them.

Mr. Clingman. I can only say to the honorable Senator that I have not communicated with one of them, either verbally or in writing; so that, if his relations are like my own, he is certainly very distant from them.

Mr. Hale. Well, sir, that is just the case with me. (Laughter.) I have neither corresponded nor consulted with the President or any head of a Department, verbally or in writing, in reference to any single subject of public policy, nor in regard to a single appointment that they have made-not one.

Mr. Clingman. Will the honorable Senator allow me to add one other word?

Mr. Hale.

Yes.

Mr. Clingman. I think-and I say this in good faith and in all sincerity it indicates a very great want of intelligence on the part of the Administration that the Senator has not been consulted, both on account. of his position in the party, which would give him great weight, and also on account of that ability and acquaintance with the affairs of the Government which he possesses. I say this rather with regret, as evincing a want of that statesmanship on the part of the Administration that I think it ought to possess.

INCREDULITY ABOUT WAR.

It may seem strange now that such a delusion should have existed, but so little apprehension then prevailed in the public mind that war was imminent, that occasionally such remarks as these were made to me, derisively: "Well, Clingman, when is your war to begin? Where are your fighting men? I do not see any of them in the streets." Now and then a Northern man would say, "I wish some of your people would commit an overt act, so that we might hang two or three, and make them quit their boasting and behave better." A Senator from the extreme Southwest said to me one day, "Clingman, there will be no war; but if it does begin, we will end it by marching

up to Massachusetts, and blowing up Plymouth rock and throwing it into the sea."

When Mr. Lincoln did come in, his policy was evidently unsettled. Though not perhaps averse to a small war, to be finished by blockading a few ports, yet he did not wish to undertake "a big job," as he afterwards called it, against the majority of the Southern States. Such was his hesitation that at the close of the extra session, towards the end of March, I began to think he would let matters rest as they were, and call a session of Congress to consider the condition of the country. On my return to Washington, after two or three days absence in New York, I met Mr. Crawford, one of the Southern Commissioners, and asked him the news. "Very bad," he answered, "it now looks as if we were to have war." In answer to my enquiring as to what had produced the change of policy, he said that it was in part due to the action of the Virginia Convention in voting, by a large majority, againt secession. This action, after the failure of the peace conference, he said had encouraged the administration to believe that they would have only the cotton States to fight, and they felt confident that the government would be able without difficulty to put them down. It has since been made public that up to about this period the administration was rather disinclined to resort to war. A member of Mr. Lincoln's cabinet told me in the summer of 1866, that at this time Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Seward, and every member of the cabinet, except my informant, were in favor of letting Anderson retire from Fort Sumter, as soon as his provisions were exhausted. This gentleman told me that he individually remonstrated against such a course, saying that if it were taken, in six weeks every foreign government would recognize the Confederacy. This argument failing, he threatened to resign as a member of the cabinet, and at length thus induced them to resolve to assist Anderson, and therefore they sent a notice to Governor Pickens that the armistice was ended. Mr. Secretary Wells confirms this statement, for he said in his controversy with Mr. Adams, that the President, and every member of the cabinet except one, were in favor of this policy. He even charges that Mr. Seward purposely, with artful strategy, caused the ships of the government to be sent out of the way, so as to render it impossible to attempt to reinforce Anderson. There can be no doubt, I think, that Mr. Seward was sincere, at least, in his assurances to many persons that Sumter and Pickens would be abandoned by the government. In fact, Mr. Seward's demeanor in the Senate after the States had begun to secede, satisfied me that he had been greatly surprised by the action of the States. Such was his mental constitution that he could not understand that any one would attempt an enterprise of hazard and difficulty, unless there seemed to be a prospect of material advantage. He was, therefore, evidently amazed with the developments, and when we occasionally met and conversed, his manner reminded me of a man who had suddenly and most unexpectedly seen a ghost. He evidently at this time desired peace, and doubtless acted as represented by his colleagues in the cabinet.

These facts tend to show how near we were of escaping war at that time. Had either North Carolina, or Tennessee, or Virginia, shown a purpose to act with the Confederacy before the fight at Sumter, instead of war there would have been an appeal to Congress, to ascertain if an accommodation could not be made; and, in the event of failure, it is not unlikely that the "erring sisters" would have been allowed to "go in peace," and Lincoln would have "run the machine as he found it," to use his homely but striking phrase. Persons may find interesting reading on this subject in some of the editorials of New York Tribune after Virginia did take action.