The commander-in-chief, LieutenantGeneral Scott, had already at an early Oct. 29, period urged upon the President 1860. the necessity of prompt measures to thwart the action of threatened secession. "From a knowledge of our Southern population," he wrote in a letter to Mr. Buchanan, "it is my solemn conviction that there is some danger of an early act of rashness preliminary to secession, viz., the seizure of some or all of the following forts: Forts Jackson and St. Philip, in the Mississippi, below New Orleans, both without garrisons; Fort Morgan, below Mobile, without a garrison; forts Pickens and McRae, Pensacola harbor, with an insufficient garrison for one; Fort Pulaski, below Savannah, without a garrison; forts Moultrie and Sumter, Charleston harbor, the former with an insufficient garrison, and the latter without any; and Fort Monroe, Hampton Roads, without a sufficient garrison. In my opinion all these works should be immediately so garrisoned, as to make any attempt to take any one of them by surprise or coup de main ridiculous.

"With the army faithful to its allegiance, and the navy probably equally so, and with a Federal Executive for the next twelve months of firmness and moderation, which the country has a right to expect-moderation being an element of power not less than firmness-there is good reason to hope that the danger of secession may be made to pass away without one conflict of arms, one execution, or one arrest for treason."

This timely advice of the veteran

39

Scott, always vigilant to preserve the Union, was unheeded by the President, whose feeble will was guided by those who were seeking to destroy it. His traitorous associates in the Government threatened to resign, in case he com. plied with the suggestions of Scott, and extorted from him the pledge not to reinforce the forts. While thus promoting their traitorous purposes with the sanction and under the protection of the Federal Executive, these plotters of rebellion clung to the Government, whose authority they were daily weakening while they were strengthening their own power of ill.

There had been, however, already some dissension in the cabinet in regard to the subject of reinforcing the Southern forts; and when the expediency of sending an additional force to Major Anderson, in command of a feeble garrison at Fort Moultrie, in Charleston harbor, became manifest, two Northern members, Cass and Toucey, earnestly pleaded for it. They were, however, overborne, and the President, hampered by his pledges and controlled by his Southern advisers, sent not a single soldier to sustain the insulted and threatened authority of the Government. Cass, with patriotic indig- Dec. nation at this remissness of duty, 14. resigned his seat in the cabinet.

While the President was thus yielding, unresistingly, to the promoters of rebellion, Congress was continuing its futile attempts to check it by resolutions. The debates, however, became only more angry and the discord more

obvious. The secessionists increased in violence and audacity, and the extreme Republicans, provoked to more obstinate resistance, renewed their declarations of opposing all compromises. Wade, the Republican senator for Ohio, said, in a forcible speech:

"We beat you on the plainest and most palpable issue ever presented to the American people, and one which every man understood; and now, when we come to the capital, we tell you that our candidates must and shall be inaugurated must and shall administer this government precisely as the Constitution prescribes. It would not only be humiliating, but highly dishonorable to us, if we listened to any compromise by which we should lay aside the honest verdict of the people. When it comes to that, you have no government, but anarchy intervenes, and civil war may follow, and all the evils that human imagination can raise may be consequent upon such a course as that. The American people would lose the sheet-anchor of Liberty whenever it is denied on this floor that a majority fairly given shall rule. I know not what others may do, but I tell you, that with that verdict of the people in my pocket, and standing on the platform on which these candidates were elected, I would suffer anything before I would compromise in any way. I deem it no case where we have a right to extend courtesy or generosity. The absolute right, the most sacred that a free people can bestow upon any man, is their verdict that gives him a full title to the office he holds. If we can not

stand there we can not stand anywhere, and, my friends, any other verdict would be as fatal to you as to us."

The moderate men of both the North and the South with an amiable persistency still persevered in their endeavors to preserve the national peace by plans of conciliation and compromise. These, however, met with little encouragement from the embittered partisans of extreme opinions, and the hope of "saving the Union" by mutual concessions daily diminished. The resolutions of Mr. Crittenden, of Kentucky, seemed from the high character of the veteran statesman who offered them, to make the greatest impression upon public opinion. These proposed to renew the Missouri Compromise line-prohibiting slavery in the Territory north of 36 deg. 30 min., and protecting it south of that latitude; to admit new States with or without slavery, as their constitutions shall provide; to prohibit the abolition of slavery by Congress in the States; to prohibit its abolition in the District of Columbia so long as it exists either in Virginia or Maryland; to permit the transportation of slaves in any of the States by land or water; to provide for the payment of fugitive slaves, when rescued; to repeal one obnoxious feature of the Fugitive Slave law--the inequality of the fee to the commissioner; to ask the repeal of all the Personal Liberty bills in the Northern States, and effectually to execute the laws for the suppression of the African slave-trade. These were to be submitted to the people as amendments to the Constitu

tion, and to be changed at no subsequent time.

While treason was being uttered in Congress, plotted in the cabinet, and encouraged to overt act in the slave States, unchecked by the national authority, which seemed indisposed, if not incapable of vindicating its supremacy, there was a general feeling of discour agement throughout the country. This was increased by the universal depression in trade and commerce. The great business of the Northern commercial and manufacturing cities with the South had been almost entirely arrested. The Southern merchants made no new, and failed to pay for their old, purchases. The payment of the great debt of three hundred millions of dollars due to the North suddenly stopped, and fears were already entertained that it would never be resumed. The Southern banks having suspended the payment of specie, had so depreciated the value of their currency, that exchange upon the North rose to such a height as almost to preclude remittances from the South whenever there were still found those disposed to make them. Northern merchants, thus suddenly deprived of their Southern resources, were forced into bankruptcy. The banks necessarily sympathized with the ruin of their customers, and although those of New York and Boston were enabled, through the abundance of their resources, to sustain their credit and even to increase their loans, the banks of Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and Richmond suspended specie payment.

41

To add to this financial embarrassment, the national treasury was threatened with bankruptcy. So little faith had the country in the government as controlled by the Southern advisers of the President, that the secretary of the treasury, Howell Cobb, of Georgia, could only obtain a loan at a discount of 25 per cent. of the usual market rates in periods of national prosperity. Cobb was so perplexed by the financial embarrassments of his department, that, under the pretence of a difference of political views with the President, he resigned, and betook himself to the more congenial work of disturbing the loyalty of his native State. His successor, John A. Dix, of New York, a Northern man, was enabled, however, through the confidence inspired by his integrity and patriotism, to restore the public credit and again fill the treasury.

With all these causes, however, tending to depress the public feeling, there was still a strong belief among Northern people, that the civil troubles would, although none pretended to know how, be soon settled. This seemed to be based upon the supposed attachment to the Union among the people even in South Carolina. How far this belief in the loyalty of the Southern slave States prevailed is well illustrated by a speech of Seward, then senator, now secretary of state. He thus jauntily descanted on the grave subject of Southern disaffection:

"Now, gentleman, my belief about all this is, that whether it is Massachu- Dec. setts or South Carolina, or whether 22.