CHAPTER XXII

THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

Less than a month intervened between the November election at which Lincoln had been chosen and the annual session of Congress, which would meet on the first Monday of December, and it was necessary at once to begin the preparation of the annual message. A golden opportunity presented itself to President Buchanan. The suffrages of his fellow-citizens had covered his political theories, his party measures, and his official administration with condemnation, in an avalanche of ballots.[1] But the Charleston conspirators had within a very few days created for him a new issue overshadowing all the questions on which he had suffered political wreck. Since the 6th of November the campaign of the Border Ruffians for the conquest of Kansas, and the wider Congressional struggle for the possession of the Territories, might be treated as things of the past. Even had they still been pending issues, they paled into insignificance before the paramount question of disunion. Face to face with, this danger, the adherents of Lincoln, of Douglas, of Bell, and the fraction of the President's own partisans in the free-States would be compelled to postpone their discords and as one man follow the constitutional ruler in a constitutional defense of the laws, the flag, and the territory of the Union.

Without change of position, without recantation of principle, without abatement even of declared party doctrine, honestly executing only the high mandate of the Constitution, he could turn from the old issues and take up the new. A single stride, and from the flying leader of a discomfited rout he might become the mailed hero of an overpowering host. Tradition, patriotism, duty, the sleepless monition of a solemn official oath, all summoned him to take this step, and the brilliant example set by President Jackson--an incident forever luminous in American history--assured him of the plaudits of posterity.

Unfortunately for himself and for his country, President Buchanan had neither the intellectual independence nor the courage required for such an act of moral heroism. Of sincere patriotism and of blameless personal rectitude, he had reached political eminence by slow promotion through seniority, not by brilliancy of achievement. He was a politician, not a statesman. Of fair ability, and great industry in his earlier life, the irresolution and passiveness of advancing age and physical infirmity were now upon him. Though from the free-State of Pennsylvania, he saw with Southern eyes and heard with Southern ears, and had convinced himself that the South was acting under the impulse of resentment arising from deliberate and persistent injuries from the North.

The fragment of an autograph diary of John B. Floyd, Secretary of War,[2] affords the exact evidence of the temper in which President Buchanan officially confronted the rebellion of the Southern States. The following are extracts from entries, on several days, beginning with November 7, 1860, the day following the Presidential election:

WASHINGTON CITY, November 7, 1860.

... The President wrote me a note this evening, alluding to a rumor which reached the city to the effect that an armed force had attacked and carried the forts in Charleston harbor. He desired me to visit him, which I did, and assured him that the rumor was altogether without foundation, and gave it as my opinion that there was no danger of such an attempt being made. We entered upon a general conversation upon the subject of disunion and discussed the probabilities of it pretty fully. We concurred in the opinion that all indications from the South looked as if disunion was inevitable. He said that whilst his reason told him there was great danger, yet his feelings repelled the conviction of his mind.

Judge Black, the Attorney-General, was present during a part of the conversation, and indicated an opinion, that any attempt at disunion by a State should be put down by all the power of the Government.[3]

November 9 ... A Cabinet meeting was held as usual at I o'clock; all the members were present, and the President said the business of the meeting was the most important ever before the Cabinet since his induction into office. The question, he said, to be considered and discussed, was as to the course the Administration should advise him to pursue in relation to the threatening aspect of affairs in the South, and most particularly in South Carolina. After a considerable amount of desultory conversation, he asked the opinions of each member of the Cabinet as to what should be done or said relative to a suggestion which he threw out. His suggestion was that a proposition should be made for a general convention of the States as provided for under the Constitution, and to propose some plan of compromising the angry disputes between the North and the South. He said if this were done, and the North or non-slaveholding States should refuse it, the South would stand justified before the whole world for refusing longer to remain in a confederacy where her rights were so shamefully violated. He said he was compelled to notice at length the alarming condition of the country, and that he would not shrink from the duty.

General Cass spoke with earnestness and much feeling about the impending crisis--admitted fully all the great wrongs and outrages which had been committed against the South by Northern fanaticism, and deplored it. But he was emphatic in his condemnation of the doctrine of secession by any State from the Union. He doubted the efficacy of the appeal for a convention, but seemed to think it might do well enough to try it. He spoke warmly in favor of using force to coerce a State that attempted to secede.

Judge Black, the Attorney-General, was emphatic in his advocacy of coercion, and advocated earnestly the propriety of sending at once a strong force into the forts in Charleston harbor, enough to deter, if possible, the people from, any attempt at disunion. He seemed to favor the idea of an appeal for a general convention of all the States.

Governor Cobb, the Secretary of the Treasury, declared his very decided approbation of the proposition for two reasons--first, that it afforded the President a great opportunity for a high and statesmanlike treatment of the whole subject of agitation, and the proper remedies to prevent it; secondly, because, in his judgment, the failure to procure that redress which the South would be entitled to and would demand (and that failure he thought certain), would tend to unite the entire South in a decided disunion movement. He thought disunion inevitable, and under present circumstances most desirable.

Mr. Holt, the Postmaster-General, thought the proposition for the convention dangerous, for the reason that if the call should be made and it should fail to procure redress, those States which now are opposed to secession might find themselves inclined, from a feeling of honor, to back the States resolving on disunion. Without this common demand and common failure he thought there would be no such danger of united action, and therefore a stronger prospect of some future plan of reconciliation.

Mr. Thompson, the Secretary of the Interior, thought well of the plan of calling for a general convention--thought his State (Mississippi) about equally divided between the union and disunion men. He deprecated the idea of force, and said any show of it by the Government would instantly make Mississippi a unit in favor of disunion.

Mr. Toucey, Secretary of the Navy, thought well of the appeal for the convention--coincided in an opinion I had expressed, that retaliatory State measures would prove most availing for bringing the Northern fanatics to their senses.

I expressed myself decidedly opposed to any rash movement, and against the idea of secession at this time. I did so because I think that Lincoln's administration will fail, and be regarded as impotent for good or evil within four months after his inauguration. We are to meet to-morrow at 1 o'clock.

[Sidenote] Pollard, "Life and Times of Robert E. Lee," etc., pp. 790-94.

November 10 ... We had a Cabinet meeting to-day, at which the President read a very elaborate document, prepared either as a part of his message or as a proclamation. It was well written in the main, and met with extravagant commendation from General Cass, Governor Toucey, Judge Black, and Mr. Holt. Cobb, Thompson, and myself found much to differ from in it,--Cobb because it inculcated submission to Lincoln's election and intimated the use of force to coerce a submission to his rule, and because it reprehended the policy of the Kansas-Nebraska bill; Thompson because of the doctrine of acquiescence and the hostility to the secession doctrine. I objected to it because I think it misses entirely the temper of the Southern people and attacks the true State-Rights doctrine on the subject of secession. I do not see what good can come of the paper, as prepared, and I do see how much mischief may flow from it.

It is an open question whether we may accept these extracts at their full literal import. Either the words "coerce," "submission," "use of force," and so on, are written down by the diarist in a sense different from that in which they were spoken, or the President and several of his counselors underwent an amazing change of sentiment. But in a general way they show us that on the fourth day after Lincoln's election the Buchanan Cabinet was already divided into hostile camps. Cass of Michigan, Secretary of State, Toucey of Connecticut, Secretary of the Navy, Black of Pennsylvania, Attorney-General, and Holt of Kentucky, Postmaster-General, were emphatic Unionists; while Cobb of Georgia, Secretary of the Treasury, Thompson of Mississippi, Secretary of the Interior, and Floyd of Virginia, Secretary of War, were secessionists--the latter yet professing devotion to the Union, but with such ifs and buts as left sufficiently clear evidence of his inevitable drift to disloyalty.

All impulses of prudence and patriotism ought to have moved the President to reconstruct his Cabinet. But instead of some energetic executive act of this character, he seems to have applied himself to the composition of a political essay to teach the North its duty; as if his single pen had power to change the will of the people of the United States upon a point which they had decided by their votes only four days previously after six years of discussion. In the draft of this document, which he read to his Cabinet on November 10, we have the important record that "it inculcated submission to Lincoln's election, and intimated the use of force to coerce a submission to his rule"--positions which Floyd records were "met with extravagant commendations from General Cass, Governor Toucey, Judge Black, and Mr. Holt." This was a true touchstone; it instantly brought out not only the open secessionism of Cobb and Thompson, but the disguised disloyalty of Floyd.

It is a strange historical phenomenon that, with the President and a majority of the Cabinet in this frame of mind, the South should have been permitted to organize rebellion. The solution seems to lie in the temporizing feebleness of Buchanan and in the superior finesse and daring conspiracy of Cobb, Thompson, and Floyd.

Many indications make it evident that a long factional struggle took place over the preparation of the President's message. The telegraph announced several protracted Cabinet sessions; and as early as the 21st of November the points under discussion and the attitude of the President and his several official advisers were accurately foreshadowed in the newspapers. Nor were these momentous deliberations confined to the Cabinet proper. All the varieties of suggestion and contradictory counsels which were solicited or tendered we may never learn, and yet we know enough to infer the highest extremes and antagonisms of doctrine and policy. Jefferson Davis, the future chief of the rebellion, came on the one hand at the urgent call of his fellow-conspirators; Edwin M. Stanton, afterwards Buchanan's Attorney-General and Lincoln's Secretary of War,[4] was on the other hand called in by Mr. Buchanan himself, to help him through, the intricate maze of his perplexed opinions and inclinations. How many others may have come voluntarily or by summons it is impossible to guess. Many brains and hands, however, must have joined in the work, since the document is such a heterogeneous medley of conflicting theories, irreconcilable doctrines, impracticable and irrelevant suggestions. For at length the hesitating and bewildered President, unable to decide and impotent to construct, seems to have made his message a patchwork from the contributions of his advisers, regular and irregular, with the inevitable effect, not to combine and strengthen, but to weaken and confuse the warring thoughts and alien systems.

Aside from the mere recapitulation of department reports, the message of President Buchanan delivered to Congress on the 4th of December occupied itself mainly with two subjects--slavery and disunion. On the question of slavery it repeated the assertions and arguments of the Buchanan faction of the Democratic party during the late Presidential campaign, charging the present peril entirely upon the North. As a remedy it recommended an amendment to the Federal Constitution expressly[5] recognizing slavery in States which had adopted or might adopt it, and also expressly giving it existence and protection in the Federal Territories. The proposal was simply childish. Precisely this issue had been decided at the Presidential election; to do this would be to reverse the final verdict of the ballot-box.[6]

On the question of disunion or secession, the message raised a vague and unwarrantable distinction between the infractions of law and allegiance by individuals, and the infractions of law and allegiance by the commonwealth, or body politic denominated a State. Under the first head it held: That the Union was designed to be perpetual; that the Federal Government is invested with sovereign powers on special subjects, which can only be opposed or abrogated by revolution; that secession is unconstitutional, and is, therefore, neither more nor less than revolution; that the Executive has no right to recognize the secession of a State; that the Constitution has established a perfect government in all its forms, legislative, executive, and judicial, and this government, to the extent of its powers, acts directly upon the individual citizen of every State and executes its own decrees by the agency of its own officers; and, finally, that the Executive cannot be absolved from his duty to execute the laws.

But, continued the President, the laws can only be executed in certain prescribed methods, through the agency of courts, marshals, _posse comitatus_, aided, if necessary, by the militia or land and naval forces. The means and agencies, therefore, fail, and the performance of this duty becomes impraticable, when, as in South Carolina, universal public sentiment has deprived him of courts, marshals, and _posse_. Present laws being inadequate to overcome a united opposition, even in a single State, Congress alone has the power to decide whether they can be effectually amended.[7]

It will be seen from the above summary, that the whole of the President's rambling discussion of the first head of the disunion question resulted logically in three ultimate conclusions: (1) That South Carolina was in revolt; (2) that the Constitution, the laws, and moral obligation all united gave the Government the right to suppress this revolt by executing the laws upon and against the citizens of that State; (3) that certain defects in the laws paralyzed their practical enforcement.

Up to this point in his argument, his opinions, whatever may be thought of their soundness, were confined to the legitimate field of executive interpretation, and such as in the exercise of his official discretion he might with undoubted propriety communicate to Congress. But he had apparently failed to satisfy his own conscience in thus summarily reasoning the executive and governmental power of a young, compact, vigorous, and thoroughly organized nation of thirty millions of people into sheer nothingness and impotence. How supremely absurd was the whole national panoply of commerce, credit, coinage, treaty power, judiciary, taxation, militia, army and navy, and Federal fag, if, through the mere joint of a defective law, the hollow reed of a secession ordinance could inflict a fatal wound!

[Illustration: JAMES BUCHANAN.]

[Sidenote] Appendix, "Globe," Dec. 3, 1860, p. 3.

The President proceeds, therefore, to discuss the second head of the disunion question, by an attempt to formulate and define the powers and duties of Congress with reference to the threatened rebellion. He would not only roll the burden from his own shoulders upon the National Legislature, but he would by volunteer advice instruct that body how it must be borne and disposed of. Addressing Congress, he says in substance: "You may be called upon to decide the momentous question, whether you possess the power by force of arms to compel a State to remain in the Union.... The question, fairly stated, is: Has the Constitution delegated to Congress the power to coerce a State into submission which is attempting to withdraw, or has actually withdrawn, from the Confederacy! If answered in the affirmative, it must be on the principle that the power has been conferred upon Congress to declare and make war against a State. After much serious reflection I have arrived at the conclusion that no such power has been delegated to Congress, or to any other department of the Federal Government.... It may be safely asserted that the power to make war against a State is at variance with the whole spirit 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 conciliation; but the sword was not placed in their hand to preserve it by force."

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.[8] But through his inaction, and still more through his 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.

[Sidenote] Correspondence, N.Y. "Evening Post".

[Sidenote] Washington "Constitution" of December 19, 1860.

[Sidenote] London "Times," Jan. 9, 1851.

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."

---------- [1] There were 3,832,240 opposition popular votes against 847,953 for Breckinridge and Lane, the Presidential ticket championed by Mr. Buchanan and his adherents.

[2] Printed in "The Early Life, Campaigns, and Public Services of Robert E. Lee, with a record of the campaigns and heroic deeds of his companions in arms, by a distinguished Southern journalist." 8vo. E.B. Treat, publisher, New York, 1871; p. 789; article, Major-General John B. Floyd. It says: "Among his private papers examined after his death the fragment of a diary was found, written in his own hand, and which is here copied entire." The diary also bears internal evidence of genuineness.

[3] The astounding mysteries and eccentricities of politics find illustration in the remarkable contrast between this recorded impulsive and patriotic expression of Attorney-General Black on November 7, and his labored official opinion of an apparently opposite tenor, certified to the President under date of November 20. See "Opinions of the Attorneys-General." Vol. IX., p. 517.

[4] "It was while these plans for a _coup d'état_ before the 4th of March were being matured in the very Cabinet itself and in the presence of a President too feeble to resist them and too blind oven to see them, that Mr. Stanton was sent for by Mr. Buchanan to answer the question, 'Can a State be coerced?' For two hours he battled, and finally scattered for the time being the heresies with which secession had filled the head of that old broken-down man. He was requested to prepare an argument in support of the power, to be inserted in the forthcoming message."--Hon. H.L. Dawes, in the "Boston Congregationalist." See "Atlantic Monthly," October, 1870, p. 468.

[5] Slavery existed by virtue of express enactments in the several constitutions of the slave States, but the Constitution of the United States gave it only implied recognition and toleration.

[6] "It was with some surprise, I confess, that I read the message of the President. The message laid down certain conditions as those upon which alone the great Confederacy of the United States could be preserved from disruption. In so doing the President appeared to be preparing beforehand an apology for the secession. Had the conditions, indeed, been such as the Northern States would be likely to accept, the message might have been considered one of peace. But it seems very improbable that the Northern States should now, at the moment of their triumph, and with large majorities of Republicans in their assemblies, submit to conditions which, during many years of struggle, they have rejected or evaded."--Lord John Russell to Lord Lyons, December 26, 1860. British Blue Book.

[7] The logic of the message breaks down by the palpable omission to state the well-known fact that, though every citizen of South Carolina, or any other State, might refuse to accept or execute the office of United States marshal, or, indeed, any Federal office, the want could be immediately lawfully supplied by appointing any qualified citizen of any other State, who might lawfully and properly lead either a _posse_, or Federal forces, or State militia, to put down obstruction of the Federal laws, insurrection, or rebellion. President Buchanan admitted his own error, and repudiated his own doctrine, when on January 2, following, he nominated a citizen of Pennsylvania for the office of collector of the port of Charleston, South Carolina.

Sections two and three of the Act of February 28, 1795, authorize the President, when the execution of the laws is obstructed by insurrection too powerful for courts and marshals, to call forth the militia of any and all the States, first and primarily to "suppress such combinations," and, secondly, "to cause the laws to be duly executed, and the use of militia so to be called forth may be continued, if necessary, until the expiration of thirty days after the commencement of the then next session of Congress." In performing this duty the act imposes but a single condition or prerequisite on the Executive: he shall "by proclamation command the insurgents to disperse." These sections are complete, harmonious, self-sufficient, and, in their chief provisions, nowise dependent upon or connected with any other section or clause of the act. They place under the President's command the whole militia, and by a subsequent law (March 3, 1807) also the entire army and navy of the Union, against rebellion. The assertion that the army can only follow a marshal and his writ in case of rebellion, is not only unsupported by the language of the act, but utterly refuted by strong implication. The last section repeals a former provision limiting the President's action to cases of insurrection of which United States judges shall have given him notice, and thereby remits him to any and all of his official sources of information. Jackson's famous force bill only provided certain supplementary details; it directly recognized and invoked the great powers of the Act of 1795, and expiring by limitation, left its wholesome plenitude and broad original grant of authority unrepealed and unimpaired.

[8] "Happily our civil war was undertaken and prosecuted in self-defense, not to coerce a State, but to enforce the execution of the laws within the States against individuals, and to suppress an unjust rebellion raised by a conspiracy among them against the Government of the United States."--Buchanan, in "Mr. Buchanan's Administration," p. 129.

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