of. Later he offered a fourth proposition: that Congress should pass a law to punish invasions of one state from another, and conspiracies to effect such invasions.' Of the other propositions Seward wrote to Lincoln: "With the unanimous consent of our section [of the committee -Seward, Collamer, Doolittle, Grimes, and Wade], I offered three propositions which seemed to me to cover the ground of the suggestion made by you, through Mr. Weed, as I understand it." Hence there was nothing peculiar about Seward's position as indicated at this time.

2

1 1 2 Seward, 484; Senate Reports, 2d Sess. 36th Con., No. 288, pp. 10, 11, 13.

22 Seward, 484. Heretofore it has been supposed that Lincoln's memorandum, prepared for the consideration of the Republican members" of the Senate committee of thirteen had been lost, and his biographers seem never to have known its precise wording. A separate sheet in the Seward MSS. contains these sentences (and nothing else) in Lincoln's handwriting:

"Resolved:

That the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution ought to be enforced by a law of Congress, with efficient provisions for that object, not obliging private persons to assist in its execution, but punishing all who resist it, and with the usual safeguards to liberty, securing free men against being surrendered as slaves

"That all state laws, if there be such, really, or apparently, in conflict with such law of Congress, ought to be repealed; and no opposition to the execution of such law of Congress ought to be made"That the Federal Union must be preserved."

That this is the original “suggestion” is indicated by the following sentences from Seward's letter already referred to: "This evening, the Republican members of the committee, with Judge Trumbull and Mr. Fessenden, met at my house, to consider your written suggestion, and determine whether it shall be offered. While we think the ground has been already covered, we find that, in the form you give it, it would divide our friends, not only in the committee, but in Congress, a portion being unwilling to give up their old opinion, that the duty of executing the constitutional provisions, concerning fugitives from service, belongs to the states, and not at all to Congress.". 2 Seward, 484. The first of Seward's formal propositions, made about a fortnight later, as a means of preserving peace gave the gist of Lincoln's first point. Sec post, p. 14.

During the holidays the excitement in Washington greatly increased. The President's communications with the commissioners from South Carolina precipitated an angry outbreak between the two factions in the Cabinet. It was rumored, and widely believed, that the city was to be seized by the secessionists. Seward's intimate relations with loyal Democrats in the Cabinet, in the Senate, and in the South, enabled him to keep himself informed of all that was occurring, and he made long reports to Lincoln. So rapidly did the secession frenzy seem to have spread that on the last day of December he thought the country to be in an "emergency of probable civil war and dissolution of the Union." By January 3, 1861, the secessionists had gained such strength at the White House and in some of the departments that Seward considered it necessary, as he wrote, to "assume a sort of dictatorship for defence," and to work night and day against the contemplated revolution. And he added: "My hope, rather my confidence, is unabated." 2

The question of separation was hotly discussed in all the slave states, and it was everywhere alleged that the Republicans intended to put their antislavery ideas into practice after the inauguration. However, in North Carolina, Arkansas, Tennessee, and the border states, the majority deprecated the dissolution of the Union. Fortunately, Virginia believed that both slavery and state rights could be preserved within the Union. The very fact that the leaders of the cotton states were riding with whip and spur aroused a considerable feeling of opposition.' But

12 Seward, 489.

22 Seward, 491.

3 Early in January, 1861, Governor Letcher sent a message to the extra session of the Virginia legislature, in which he indignantly protested against the efforts that South Carolina and Mississippi were making to compel the border slave states to join the secession movement by threatening to cut off the market for their slaves. He would,

unless this opposition should be encouraged, it was sure to disappear; for there was a wide-spread and genuine fear, which in most instances amounted to a conviction, that Republican rule would inevitably undermine slavery, and, therefore, that its safety demanded a slaveholding confederacy.

For the Republicans there was but one of two courses to pursue. Charles Sumner saw the difficulty as plainly as Seward, and stated the problem a few days later by writing: "People are anxious to save our forts. . .; but I am more anxious far to save our principles. Talking of force and of saving principles served a good purpose in keeping up the flagging spirit of many persons at the North, but it also helped to fuse, rather than to separate, the different elements at the South.

During the debates in Congress it was the Southerners that had kindled enthusiasm and applause. The angry logic of the Northerners was no match for the picturesque and defiant declamation of their opponents. By January 11th, Mississippi, Florida, and Alabama had followed South Carolina's example. Time and the discussion of constitutional grievances had deepened southern convictions and exhibited the helplessness of the Republicans. It was announced that Seward would speak on January 12th. This aroused intense curiosity, because there were such conflicting rumors about his plans. Accordingly, on the day of his speech the audience was larger than had ever before assembled in the Senate-chamber."

Seward declared his purpose to be to seek a truce from

he said, resist southern coercion as readily as northern.-Richmond Semi-Weekly Enquirer, January 8, 1861.

1 1 4 Pierce, 17. Before the end of January, he thought it not unlikely that all the slave states, except possibly Maryland (and Delaware, doubtless) would be out of the Union very soon.-Ibid., 16.

2 N. Y. Tribune, January 14, 1861; 2 Seward, 493, 494.

dogmatic battles, and to appeal to the country-to the seceding South no less than to the acceding North-on the question of union: Lest his mildness might be interpreted to mean acquiescence in secession, he said: "I

avow my adherence to the Union in its integrity and with all its parts, with my friends, with my party, with my state, with my country, or without either, as they may determine; in every event, whether of peace or of war; with every consequence of honor or dishonor, of life or death." The only way to dissolve the Union, he maintained, was by constitutional amendment; but Congress should, if it could, redress any real grievances, and then supply the President with all the means necessary to defend the Union.

For thirty years Seward had believed and frequently declared that the Union was natural and necessary, as well as politically and economically expedient. Our people were homogeneous and our government beneficent. Disunion would bring us humiliation abroad and war and ruin at home. It would endanger rather than preserve slavery; for it would forfeit all but a small fraction of the territory of the United States, and remove every constitutional barrier against a direct attack upon slavery. Dissolution would not only arrest but it would extinguish the greatness of our country; it would drop the curtain before all our national heroes; public prosperity would give place to retrogression, for standing armies would consume our substance; and our liberty, now as wide as our grand territorial dimensions, would be succeeded by the hateful and intolerable espionage of military despotism. The issue, then, was really between those who cherished the Union and those who desired its dissolution by force."

1 4 Works, 651.

2 This is the merest outline of several grand passages.-4 Works, 654-65.

It was as much Seward's duty to avoid saying anything that could be turned to the advantage of secession as to urge considerations that would directly strengthen national sentiment. Jefferson Davis had said, two days before, that if the doctrine of coercion were accepted as the theory of the government, its only effect would be to precipitate men of his opinion into an assertion of their ideas. Seward now averred that there was no political good that he would seek by revolutionary action. Then, in sentences that were designed to soothe the South, he announced:

"If others shall invoke that form of action to oppose and overthrow government, they shall not, so far as it depends on me, have the excuse that I obstinately left myself to be misunderstood. In such a case I can afford to meet prejudice with conciliation, exaction with concession which surrenders no principle, and violence with the right hand of peace.”

As evidence of what he was willing to do for the sake of peace and harmony, he formulated his views under five heads:

First, he acknowledged the full force of the fugitiveslave clause of the Constitution, but thought that the special provisions for its execution should be so modified as not to endanger the liberty of free blacks, or to compel private citizens to assist in the capture of slaves. He also favored the repeal both of the personal-liberty laws of the free states and of the laws of the slave states that contravened the Constitution by restricting the liberties of citizens from the other states.

Second, slavery in the states was free from congressional control, and he was willing to make it so permanently by constitutional amendment.

Third, after the admission of Kansas as a free state,

1 Globe, 1860–61, 310.