CHAPTER II.

CONDITION OF ARMY AT OUTBREAK OF WAR-OF NAVY-DISLOYALTY IN BOTH BRANCHES OF SERVICE-CONFEDERATES

BETTER PREPARED

THAN FEDERALS-STATEMENTS OF SOUTHERN LEADERS ON THE SUBJECT-SENATOR DOUGLAS' GLOWING SENTENCES-THE CAPITAL IN DANGER OF CAPTURE-CIVILIANS ORGANIZE TO DEFEND IT-THE WHITE HOUSE AND PUBLIC BUILDINGS GARRISONED-MARTIAL WEAKNESS HUMILIATING TO NATIONAL PRIDE-PURPOSE OF SECESSIONISTS OPENLY PROCLAIMED-NO PREPARATION ON PART OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT-MR. BUCHANAN'S NON-COERCION VIEWS-ACTION OF SOUTHERN SENATORS-TREASON AN UNKNOWN CRIME-INAUGURATION OF LINCOLN-PACIFIC ADDRESS-THE OPENING CANNON-THE MILITIA OUR SOURCE OF MILITARY STRENGTH-MR. LINCOLN CALLS THEM FORTH-THE RESPONSE-A DRAGON IN THE WAY-PRODIGIOUS ENERGY IN FORWARDING TROOPS-SOUTHRONS SURPRISED-POLITICAL LINES OBLITERATED-SOUTH AS UNANIMOUS AS NORTH-SUNDRY DELUSIONS DISPELLED-EXTENT OF REVOLTED STATES-NEGROES FAITHFUL TO THEIR MASTERS-EFFECT THEREOF.

THE Federal Government could scarcely have been less prepared for war than it was on the day the Confederate batteries opened their fire on Fort Sumter. The army contained but ten thousand seven hundred and fifty-five officers and men; many of the former disloyal. This little force was chiefly distributed in Southern States and the Indian Country. General David E. Twiggs, who commanded that portion of the army stationed in Texas, surrendered his force to that State, together with $12,000,500 worth of public property, and was very indignant because President Buchanan dismissed him from the army, "for treachery to the flag of his country." He addressed a letter to Mr. Buchanan, which reveals a singular state of mind on the part of the writer, as to his duty towards the Govern

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ment which had educated and supported him, and to which he had taken an oath of fidelity. He says: Your usurped right to dismiss me from the army might be acquiesced in, but you had no right to brand me as a traitor. This was personal, and I shall treat it as such-not through the papers, but in person. I shall, most assuredly, pay a visit to Lancaster, for the sole purpose of a personal interview with you. So, sir, prepare yourself. I am well assured public opinion will sanction any course I may take with you." Could insolence further go?

The navy was as weak and unavailable as the army. The report of the Secretary of the Navy, July, 1861, showed that of the 90 vessels belonging to the navy, but two of them, carrying 27 guns and 280 men, were within reach, and likely to obey the orders of the department. Mr. Toucy, Mr. Buchanan's Secretary of the Navy, had sent 5 of our ships to the East Indies, 3 to Brazil, 7 to the Pacific Ocean, 3 to the Mediterranean, 7 to the Coast of Africa, and others to other remote stations, where they were of no use in our great emergency. As early as February, 1861, a Congressional Committee had been directed to investigate the conduct of the Secretary, and this committee reported that the Brooklyn, 25 guns, and the store-ship Relief, 2 guns, were the only vessels available for the defense of the Atlantic Coast; the latter vessel, even then, under orders for Africa. The committee say nothing like it ever occurred before. Such disposition of the navy, at so critical a period, was pronounced extraordinary. The committee also arraign the Secretary for neglecting to put in repair and commission a single one of the 28 ships dismantled in port, although he had $646,639.79 of the appropriation for repairs, unexpended.

Mr. Cameron, Secretary of War under Mr. Lincoln at the outset of his administration, thus speaks of the condition of the War Department, when it was turned

over to him at the end of Buchanan's administration: "I found the department destitute of all means of defence; without guns, and with little prospect of purchasing the material of war. I found the nation without an army, and I found scarcely a man throughout the whole War Department in whom I could put my trust. The adjutant-general deserted, the quarter-mastergeneral ran off, the commissary-general was on his death bed; more than half the clerks were disloyal."

The Richmond Enquirer stated, that under a single order Secretary Floyd sent, during the preceding year, 114,868 improved muskets and rifles from Northern to Southern Arsenals. The Memphis Appeal boasted that by the transfers made by Floyd, and by the seizure of forts and arsenals, and some purchases abroad, the Confederate States had, in the spring of 1861, 707,000 stand of arms, and 200,000 revolvers; a pretty good out-fit.

The seceded States appropriated, without scruple, the government's war material, and there was no arm of the service in which they were not thus very well equipped. The abandonment by the federal forces of the Norfolk Navy Yard, one of the most extensive naval depots in the country, threw into the hands of the rebels nearly 3,000 cannon of the most formidable and efficient kinds- many of them Columbiads and Dahlgrens. They were spiked, of course, by our people, but that is an idle ceremony, except to avoid immediate use of the guns. Shot, shell, revolvers, carbines, and small arms, in vast quantities, were cast into the harbor, to be fished out again, with almost as much ease and certainty as they were thrown in. From these combined sources the Confederates were enabled to confront the Unionists, at the beginning of the war, with a decided superiority, both in quantity and quality of arms.

On the other hand, the South boasted of its readiness for war. On the 18th of February, 1861, a member of the Military Committee of the Confederate Congress,

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SOUTHERN ADMISSION,

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said: "My colleague, however, greatly errs, when he states we are unprepared for war, and have no arms, and I am unwilling to let the assertion go undenied. Sir, we have arms in abundance, though no armories. Every State has amply provided itself to meet any emergency that may arise, and is daily purchasing and receiving cannon, mortars, shell, and other engines of destruction, with which to overwhelm the dastard adversary. Organized armies now exist in all the States, commanded by officers brave, accomplished and experienced; and even should war occur in twenty days, I feel confident that they have both the valor and the arms, successfully to resist any force whatever." But in addition to all this, the South was educated up to the undisturbed contemplation of a state of war between itself and the Federal Government; and victory, to the Southern arms was the unquestioned and undoubted result. The Charleston Courier was disposed to have the Confederacy treat the Northern States as insurgents, and deny them recognition. Still, if the North quietly acquiesced in secession, the South, after transferring its seat of Government to Washington, might possibly condescend to recognize what might be left of the old Confederacy, in order to enable it to maintain a feeble national existence.

The South Carolina leaders but expressed the truth as to the state of the Southern mind on the question of a separation, when Mr. Inglis said to his colleagues in the convention: "Most of us have had this subject under consideration for the last twenty years." Mr. Keitt said: "I have been engaged in this movement ever since I entered political life." Mr. Rhett said: "It (secession) is not produced by Mr. Lincoln's election, or the non-execution of the fugitive slave law. It is a matter which has been gathering head for thirty years."

Senator Douglas, in his great speech before ten thousand people at Chicago, on the first day of May, 1861, said: "There has never been a time from the day that Washington was inaugurated first President of the United States, when the rights of the Southern States stood firmer under the laws of the land than they do now; there never was a time when they had not as good cause for disunion as they have to-day. What good cause have they now that has not existed under every administration?

"The slavery question is a mere excuse. The election of Lincoln is a mere pretext. The present secession movement is the result of an enormous conspiracy, formed more than a year since. Formed by leaders in the Southern Confederacy more than twelve months

ago.

The

"But this is no time for the detail of causes. conspiracy is now known. Armies have been raised, war is levied to accomplish it. There are only two sides of the question. Every man must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war; only patriots or traitors. I know they expect to present a united South against a divided North. They hoped, in the Northern States, party questions would bring civil war between Democrats and Republicans, when the South would step in with her cohorts, aid one party to conquer the other, and then make easy prey of the victors. Their scheme was carnage and civil war in the North."

The Richmond Enquirer of April 23, 1861, urged an attempt to capture Washington, and declared it entirely feasible; why such an attempt was not made in the spring of 1861 is one of the unsolved riddles of Confederate policy. That such an enterprise would have had many chances in favor of its success, cannot be doubted. While it is possible that such a movement would have inflamed the North, and extinguished the