There immediately followed by the leaders in Charleston,
and their agents and spokesmen in Washington, the
daily repetition of threats and complaints (thus originated
by the latter), which were continued for nearly three
and a half months. The purpose was twofold:
first, by alternately exciting the fears and hopes
of the Government to induce it to withhold reenforcement
as a prudential measure of magnanimity and conciliation;
secondly, to make it a cloak to hide, as far as might
be, their own preparations for war. Had the Federal
Government been in a condition of normal health and
vigor, the farce would not have been effective for
even a single day; but, with capital alarmed, with,
parties divided into factions, with three traitors
in the Cabinet, and a timid and vacillating Executive,
by successive, almost imperceptible, degrees, the
farce produced a policy and the policy led to an opening
drama of civil war.
Leaving out of view anterior political doctrines and
discussions, the first false step had been taken by
the Administration in its doctrine of non-coercion,
announced in the message; the second false step half
logically resulting from the first, in its refusal
on the first day of December to send Major Anderson
the reenforcements he so urgently demanded. The
Charlestonians clung to the concession with a tenacity
which demonstrated their full appreciation of its value.
Immediately there began to flow in upon Mr. Buchanan
and his advisers, on the one hand magnified reports
of the daily clamors of the Charleston mob, on the
other hand encouraging intimations from the Charleston
authorities that they, while adhering to their political
heresies and demands, were yet averse to disorder
and bloodshed, and to this end desired and invoked
the utmost forbearance of the Government. Put
in truthful language, their request would have been,
“Help us keep the peace while we are preparing
to break the law. Let the Government send no ships,
men or supplies to the forts, in order that we may
without danger or collision build batteries to take
them. Armament by the Federal sovereignty is
war, armament by State authority is peace.”
And it will forever remain a marvel that a President
of the United States consented to this certain process
of national suicide.
CHAPTER XXIV
MR. BUCHANAN’S TRUCE
[Sidenote] 1860.
The concession yielded by Mr. Buchanan, instead of
tending to conciliate the conspirators only brought
upon him additional demands. It so happened that
the principal Federal ships of war were absent from
the harbors of the Atlantic coast on service in distant
waters. But now, as a piece of good fortune amid
many untoward occurrences, the steam sloop-of-war
Brooklyn, a new and formidable vessel of twenty-five
guns, which had been engaged in making preliminary
surveys in the Chiriqui Lagoon to test the practicability
of one of the proposed interoceanic ship canals, unexpectedly
returned to the Norfolk navy yard on the 28th of November,
less than a week before the meeting of Congress.
She had until recently been under the command of Captain
Farragut, afterwards famous in the war of the rebellion,
and was, with trifling exceptions, ready for sea.
Copyrights
Abraham Lincoln, a History — Volume 02 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
