CH. XXIV. contumelious interview with the President. My own notion is that the inactive policy is as favorable to you as any that this Administration could adopt for you, and that I would not interrupt it.

Here the learned judge might have stopped, and perhaps would have left posterity to question his method rather than his motives. But inexorable History demanded her tribute of truth: under her master-spell he went on, and in the concluding paragraph of the letter his own hand recorded a confession little to have been expected from an officer whose duty it was to expound and to administer the law of treason as written in the Constitution of the United States and the acts of Congress.

The great want of the Confederate States is peace. shall remain here some ten or fifteen days. My own future course is in some manner depending upon circumstances and the opinions of friends. At present I have access to the Administration I could not have except under my present relations to the Government, and I do not know who could have the same freedom. I have therefore deferred any settlement on the subject until Campbell the chance of being of service at this critical period has terminated. This letter is strictly confidential and private.

to Jefferson

Davis, April 3, 1861. MS.

There is no need of comment on this "aid and comfort" to the enemies of his Government by a member of the highest court of the United States. It only remains to note the acknowledgment and estimate of it by Jefferson Davis, replying from Montgomery under date of April 6:

Accept my thanks for your kind and valuable services to the cause of the Confederacy and of peace between those who, though separated, have many reasons to feel

In

towards each other more than the friendships common
among nations. Our policy is, as you say, peace.
any event I will gratefully remember your zealous labor
in a sacred cause, and hope your fellow-citizens may at
some time give you acceptable recognition of your serv-
ice, and appreciate the heroism with which you have en-
countered a hazard from which most men would have
shrunk.

While this direct correspondence between Davis and Campbell was being carried on, the commissioners, to whom A. B. Roman had been sent as a reënforcement, were, partly as a matter of form, partly for ulterior purposes, kept in Washington by the Montgomery cabinet to "loiter in the ante-chambers of officials." The occupation seems to have grown irksome to them; for, nowise deceived or even encouraged by Campbell's pretended "pledges," they asked, under date of March 26, "whether we shall dally longer with a Government hesitating and doubting as to its own course, or shall we demand our answer at once?" On April 2, Toombs gave them Jefferson Davis's views at length. He thought the policy of Mr. Seward would prevail. He cared nothing for Seward's motives or calculations. So long as the United States neither declare war nor establish peace, "it affords the Confederate States the advantages of both conditions, and enables them to make all the necessary arrangements for the public defense, and the solidifying of their Government, more safely, cheaply, and expeditiously than they could were the attitude of the United States more definite and decided." The commissioners were, therefore, to make no demand for their answer, but maintain their present position. In view of

CH. XXIV. this confident boast of the chief of the rebellion of "the advantages of both conditions," his subsequent accusation of bad faith on the part of the Lincoln Administration is culminating proof of the insincerity and tortuous methods of the rebel game.

CHAPTER XXV

VIRGINIA

CIVIL

1861.

NIVIL war, though possible, did not at the CH. XXV. moment seem imminent or necessary: Lincoln had declared in his inaugural that he would not begin it; Jefferson Davis had written in his instructions to the commissioners that he did not desire it. This threw the immediate contest back upon the secondary question-the control and adhesion of the border slave States; and of these Virginia was the chief subject of solicitude. The condition of Virginia had become anomalous; it was little understood by the North, and still less by her own citizens. She retained all the ideal sentiment growing out of her early devotion to and sacrifices for the Union; but it was warped by her coarser and stronger material interest in slavery. She still deemed she was the mother of presidents; whereas she had degenerated into being, like other border States, the mother of slave-breeders and of an annual crop of black-skinned human chattels to be sold to the cotton, rice, and sugar planters of her neighboring commonwealths. She thought herself the leader of the South; whereas she was only a dependent of the Gulf States. She yet believed herself the teacher of original statesmanship;

CH. XXV. whereas she had become the unreasoning follower of Calhoun's disciples-the Ruffins, the Rhetts, and the Yanceys of the ultra South.

The political demoralization of Virginia was completed by the John Brown raid. From that time she dragged her anchors of state; her faith in both Constitution and liberty was gone. The true lesson of that affair was indeed the very reverse. The overwhelming popular sentiment of the North denounced the outrage; the national arms defended Virginia and suppressed the invasion; the State vindicated her local authority by hanging the captured offenders. Thus public opinion, Federal power, and State right united in a precedent amounting of itself to an absolute guaranty, but which might have been easily crystallized into statute or even constitutional law.

Sagacious statesmanship would have plucked this flower of safety. On the contrary, her blind partisanship spurned the opportunity, distrusted government, and sought refuge in force. Her then Governor confesses that from that period "we began to prepare for the worst. We looked carefully to the State armory; and whilst we had the selection of the State quota of arms we were particular to take field ordnance instead of altered muskets, and when we left the gubernatorial chair there were in the State armory at Richmond 85,000 stands of infantry arms and 130 field-pieces of artillery, besides $30,000 worth of new revolving arms purchased from Colt. Our decided opinion Henry A. was that a preparation of the Southern States in full panoply of arms, and prompt action, would have prevented civil war."

Wise,

"Seven Decades,"

p. 250.