1860, when it was perceived that the states could no longer hold together on the old basis, the sole attempt to preserve the Union was the endeavor to fan the embers of the Missouri Compromise into new flame by the futile Crittenden Compromise. The only hope of "saving the Union was by a recurrence to compromise, and with its failure expired the last appearance in our history of compromise as a groundwork of Union.

From 1820 to 1861, the Union rested not upon the compromises of the Constitution, but upon those of legislation, and these legislative compromises were mere bargains between the two great sections of the United States.

CHAPTER XI.

COERCION, OR NON-COERCION?

Condition of affairs at the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln Coercion, or non-coercion ? - Inaugural Address and answer to the Virginia Commissioners Coercion - The President's Message of July, 1861 — “No state, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union."

WHEN Abraham Lincoln took the presidential oath of office, the whole country was in the direst agitation. The secession of South Carolina had been followed by that of six other states, and the national flag was flying over four forts only on the coast that stretched from Cape Henlopen to the Rio Grande. The eyes of the world were at that moment concentrated upon one of these forts, Sumter, for it had been regularly invested by secession forces, and with each recurring day might come the news that its flag had been lowered in subjection. Allegiance to the United States had been cast off, and the federal government was powerless to execute a single one of its orders1 throughout the vast region known as the Cotton or Gulf States; Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas were arming, ostensibly against all comers, but it was feared that they had the intention of joining the seceded states. In the border states

1 The United States' postal service was maintained in the seceded states until June 1, 1861; but this was suffered by the Confederate government for motives of convenience and self-interest only.

COERCION UNCONSTITUTIONAL.

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of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, the population was divided against itself, and the most that the government could hope for was to hold its own within these disputed limits. The Congress that had just terminated 1 had done nothing to effect harmony, so torn and rent had it been by the conflicting parties and factions; it had been inefficacious for conciliation or cure, and the great Peace Convention, called at the instance of Virginia, had proved to be of so little avail that its disheartened members had separated, leaving their beneficent object farther from attainment than ever. Among the last things which the Convention had done was this significant act it had permitted a resolution to be placed upon its journal expressing the "conviction that the Union, being formed by the assent of the people of the respective states, and being compatible only with freedom and the republican institutions guaranteed to each, cannot and ought not to be maintained by force." The Convention, therefore, deprecated "any effort by the federal government to coerce in any form the said states to reunion or submission, as tending to irreparable breach, and leading to incalculable ills," and it earnestly invoked “the abstinence from all counsels or measures of compulsion towards them.” 2

1 The 36th Congress.

2 Ann. Cycl., 1861, 568. The power to coerce a state is not among the powers granted in the Constitution. On the 31st of May, 1787, a clause “authorizing an exertion of the force of the whole against a delinquent state was considered. Madison vigorously opposed it, and made use of this language: "The use of force against a state would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment; and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound." Whereupon the Convention dropped the subject and never recurred to

This deprecation of coercion was in accordance with the doctrine of "strict construction of the Constitution," and also with an elaborate opinion by Jeremiah S. Black, late Attorney-General, submitted to President Buchanan, to the effect that there was no constitutional power in the federal government to coerce a refractory state. This opinion of the Attorney-General, and the consequent line of conduct pursued by President Buchanan, had brought down upon these officials unmeasured obloquy at the hands of the dominant party in the North: but the opinion was a logical conclusion of the principle of construction maintained by the Democratic party by whom the President had been chosen. In fact, this legal opinion laid bare to the people the real, underlying cause of the existing trouble the different and conflicting principles of constitutional construction upheld by the North and by the South, and the obloquy heaped upon the unlucky officials was merely heated denunciation of the doctrine adhered to by the administration.

Nevertheless, the incoming President, Lincoln, was confronted at the outset by the fact that this doctrine had been acted upon by the executive branch of the government down to the very moment in which he had taken the oath of office; that the legislative branch had not denied the principle in word or deed; that the judicial branch had not yet met the question of coercion decisively, and that, scarcely three weeks before, a national convention, composed in greater part of northit. Madison afterward said of it: "Any government for the United States formed on the supposed practicability of using force against the unconstitutional proceedings of the states, would prove as visionary and fallacious as the government of Congress,” referring to the Congress of the Confederation of 1781.

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ern states, had declared that the Union ought not to be maintained by force, and had deprecated any effort by the federal government to coerce the states to reunion or submission. Adherence to the doctrine of strict construction would leave the seceded states undisturbed; would permit the unobstructed secession of states that might desire to secede thereafter, and would relegate reunion to an uncertain but peaceful future : but a construction of the Constitution which would evolve power in the federal government to compel and maintain union by force would unquestionably precipitate civil war. It is not surprising that, with such a choice before it, the whole country was plunged into the direst perplexity: peace or war, Union or Disunion, were the issues of a game upon which its fortune was staked.

a

If the President were to reflect the doctrines of those who had chosen him, there could be little doubt of his future course; for the victorious Republicans comprised those who were even then shouting for “ strong government," those who doubted that the Constitution which had been suitable enough for a few millions of people and for times of peace would be so for a great population and for times of civil conflict, and those who, like the Abolitionists, looked upon the Constitution as a compact with hell, and welcomed the secession of the states with the joyful exclamation of "All hail, disunion!"1 This new party embraced the mass of liberal constructionists in the Union, and such had become the antipathy between the northern and southern sections that the triumphant Republicans had taken no greater pains to con

1 Wendell Phillips, Boston, January 20, 1861.