said, "to take possession of the army and navy, and of the archives of the government; not allow the electoral votes to be counted; proclaim Buchanan provisional President if he will do as we wish; if not, choose another; seize the Harper's Ferry arsenal and the Norfolk navy yard simultaneously, and sending armed men down from the former, and armed vessels up from the latter, take possession of Washington city and establish a new government." Many seizures were speedily made; and the value of public property thus appropriated by the conspirators for their use before the close of Buchanan's administration was estimated at $30,000,000. For fully two months before the end of Mr. Buchanan's administration. all friendly intercourse between him and the secessionists ceased, yet his course was so very conciliatory, nay, timid, that the loyal people were greatly disturbed and depressed by positive uncertainty. On the eighth of January he sent a message to congress pleading for a compromise, equivalent in concessions to the conspirators to that of Mr. Crittenden, then before that body. It seemed like a cry of despair or a plea for mercy. He evidently perceived that the golden moment had passed when, by vigorous action, he might have crushed the serpent of secession, and that the reptile, now become a fearful dragon, would only be kept harmless by gorging it with its favorite aliment. While the representation of slave-labor states were uttering their treasonable declarations, and were withdrawing from congress for the avowed purpose of engaging in efforts to destroy the Republic, the President, wearied by the incessant turmoil and mental strain to which he was subjected, and strangely clinging to a belief that anything but force could arrest the mad career of the conspirators, seemed to be spellbound, in passive obedience to some malignant will. He did not ask congress for any increase of official strength wherewith to suppress the roaring rebellion, nor did he raise his arm to exert the power he possessed. He absolutely held in his hand the lightnings of power given him by the Constitution and the people, with which, in a moment as it were, he might have consumed the enemies of the Republic, violators of law and disturbers of social and political order. At that hour of doubt and dread, the loyal heart of the Nation was thrilled and inspirited by a despatch that went out from the secretary of the treasury. The conspirators were defiant everywhere, and seizing and appropriating to their use the property of the Nation at various points in the south. The secretary had sent a faithful agent to secure from seizure revenue cutters in southern waters. The agent had hastened to New Orleans and gave to Captain Breshwood, commander of the cutter Robert McClellan, a note from Secretary Dix directing him to obey any orders concerning the vessel which he might receive from the bearer, W. H. Jones. This note Mr. Jones sent to Captain Breshwood, inclosed in one written by himself, in which he directed that officer to go to New York with the cutter immediately. Breshwood replied, saying: "Yours, with one of the nineteenth of January from the honorable secretary of the treasury, I have duly received, and in reply refuse to obey the order." Mr. Jones advised the secretary of this state of affairs. Knowing the temper of Mr. Buchanan at that time, and the importance of prompt action, the secretary took the responsibility of telegraphing as follows to Mr. Jones without consulting the President: "TREASURY DEPARTMENT, January 29, 1861. "Tell Lieutenant Caldwell to arrest Captain Breshwood, assume command of the cutter, and obey the order I gave through you. If Captain Breshwood, after arrest, undertakes to interfere with the command of the cutter, tell Lieutenant Caldwell to consider him as a mutineer, and treat him accordingly. If any one attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot. "JOHN A. DIx, Secretary of the Treasury." When, three days afterward, at a cabinet meeting, the secretary repeated the words of this dispatch to the President, Mr. Buchanan was a little startled but said nothing. This famous order of Secretary Dix thrilled every loyal heart and mind in the land with hope and joy, for it gave assurance that a temporizing policy on the part of the administration was at an end. It had the ring of true loyalty and patriotism, and the words of the last sentence went from lip to lip, and became like a proverb in the thoughts of every true American. At the middle of January the legislature of Virginia, by a series of resolutions, recommended the holding of a National convention at Washington early in February, for the alleged purpose of effecting a general and permanent pacification, and commending the Crittenden compromise as a just basis of settlement. They appointed two commissioners, one to go to President Buchanan, the other to the governors of "seceding states," to ask them to abstain from all hostile action pending the proceedings of the proposed convention. The Virginians accompanied their proposition with a haughty menace. They resolved that if all efforts to reconcile the unhappy difference between the sections of our country shall prove abortive, then every consideration of honor and interest demands that Virginia shall unite her destinies with her sister slave-holding states." Virginia was made to say to the north, substantially in the words of an epigrammatist of the time: First-Move not a finger; 'tis coercion, The signal for our prompt dispersion. Third-If I declare my ultimatum, Accept my terms as I shall state 'em. Seceding when I have a mind to. The proposition for a peace convention was received by Mr. Buchanan with great satisfaction. He laid it before congress with a commendatory message. It met with favor everywhere, apparently. Twenty-one states, fourteen of them free-labor states and seven of them slave-labor states-appointed delegates. These assembled in Wilard's hall, in Washington, on the fourth of February, 1861, and appointed ex-President John Tyler, chairman. The convention was in session nineteen days, and adjourned on the twenty-seventh of February. The work of the convention seemed fruitless of good. The delegates from the free-labor states were willing to make many concessions to conciliate the slave interest, but the latter demanded changes in the Constitution which would nationalize slavery. They would yield nothing. A plan proposed by Mr. Guthrie of Kentucky was adopted, but when it was submitted to the senate, which was then in session, purified by the withdrawal of its treasonable members, this plan with the Crittenden compromise was rejected. The bearing of the Virginia delegates was supercilious, dictatorial and exacting. They assumed an air of injured innocence when they saw the precautions adopted by the government to preserve the peace and secure the safety of the capital by increasing the military force there. Mr. Tyler went so far as to give the President to understand that the appearance of National troops as participants in the celebration of Washington's birthday would be offensive to the Virginians, and consequently unfavorable to the harmony of the peace convention. They did participate in the celebration, and the President, not unaccustomed to a kindly yielding to the wishes of the slaveholders, thought it proper to write an apologetic letter to ex-President Tyler on the day of the celebration in these words: "MY DEAR SIR: I found it impossible to prevent two or three companies of the Federal troops from joining in the procession to-day, with the volunteers of the district, without giving serious offense to the tens of thousands of people who have assembled to witness the parade. "The day is the anniversary of Washington's birth-a festive occasion throughout the land-and it has been particularly marked by the house of representatives. The troops everywhere else join such processions in honor of the birthday of the father of our country, and it would be hard to assign a reason why they should be excluded from the privilege in the capital founded by himself. They are here simply as a posse comitatus, to aid the civil authorities in case of need. Besides, the programme was published in the National Intelligencer of this morning without my personal knowledge the war department having considered the celebration of the National anniversary by the military arm of the government as a matter of course. "Your friend, very respectfully, "PRESIDENT TYLER." "JAMES BUCHANAN." On the day when the peace convention assembled at Washington, forty-two men, professing to be representatives of the people of six "seceded states," met at Montgomery, Alabama, for the purpose of forming an independent southern Confederacy. They had been chosen by the several secession conventions, and not by the people, for the conspirators would not trust the latter. Howell Cobb, late secretary of the treasury of the United States, presided. The sessions were mostly held in secret. They organized under the title of "Confederate States of America"-a misnomer, for no states, as states, were represented in it. They adopted a provisional constitution, and chose Jefferson Davis of Mississippi provisional president of the Confederacy, and Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia provisional vice-president. They created executive departments and assumed national functions. Such was the confederated power which, for four years, waged war for the destruction of our Republic and the establishment of an empire, the corner stone of which was to be negro slavery. Such was the confederated power rampant and truculent, which threatened the life of the Nation when, on the fourth of March, 1861, James Buchanan retired from the chair of the chief magistrate of the Republic, and Abraham Lincoln of Illinois occupied it. Mr. Buchanan's administration was a most tempestuous one, for it was the period of the intense conflict of opinions among the intellectual giants of the land and the passionate multitude, which immediately preceded the appeal to the arbitrament of arms in a dreadful civil war. For a third of a century he had been engaged in public life, in efforts to smother the agitation of the slavery question, always giving the weight of his influence in favor of the supporters of the system of negro slavery in our country. His mind was so constitutionally practical that he viewed the subject, not from any plane of moral principles or philosophical deductions, but from the material standpoint of an astute politician rather than that of a wise |