crews of the squadron at Pensacola are seized — the inhabitants we know are prohibited from furnishing the ships with provisions or water; and the time has arrived when it is the duty of the Government to assert and maintain its authority.* By Mr. Smith: Viewing the question whether Fort Sumter shall be evacuated as a political one, I remark that the effect of its evacuation upon the public mind will depend upon the concurrent and subsequent action of the Government. If it shall be understood that by its evacuation we intend to acknowledge our inability to enforce the laws, and our intention to allow treason and rebellion to run its course, the measure will be extremely disastrous and the Administration will become very unpopu lar. If, however, the country can be made to understand that the fort is abandoned from necessity, and at the same time Fort Pickens and other forts in our possession shall be defended, and the power of the Government vindicated, the measure will be popular and the country will sustain the Administration. Believing that Fort Sumter cannot be defended, 1 regard its evacuation as a necessity, and I advise that Major Anderson's command shall be unconditionally withdrawn. At the same time I would adopt the most vigorous measures for the defense of the other forts, and if we have the power I would blockade the Southern ports, and enforce the collection of the revenue with all the power of the Government. t By Mr. Blair: First. As regards General Scott, I have no confidence in his judgment on the questions of the day. His political views control his judgment, and his course as remarked on by the President shows that, whilst no one will question his patriotism, the results are the same as if he was in fact traitorous. Second. It is acknowledged to be possible to relieve Fort Sumter. It ought to be relieved without reference to Pickens or any other possession. South Carolina is the head and front of this rebellion, and when that State is safely delivered from the authority of the United States it will strike a blow against our authority from which it will take years of bloody strife to recover. Third. For my own part, I am unwilling to share in the responsibility of such a policy. By Mr. Bates: It is my decided opinion that Fort Pickens and Key West ought to be reënforced and supplied, so as to look down opposition at all hazards-and this whether Fort Sumter be or be not evacuated. It is also my opinion that there ought to be a naval force kept upon the Southern coast sufficient to command it, and if need be actually close any port that practically ought to be closed, whatever other station is left unoccupied. It is also my opinion that there ought to be imme. diately established a line of light, fast-running vessels, to pass as rapidly as possible between New York or Norfolk at the North and Key West or other point in the Gulf at the South. As to Fort Sumter-I think the time is come either to evacuate or relieve it. § * Welles, memorandum. Unpublished MS. + Smith, memorandum. Unpublished MS. Blair, memorandum. Unpublished MS. Bates, memorandum. Unpublished MS. Fox to Lincoln, March 28, 1861. MS. ¶Fox, memorandum. War Records. The majority opinion of the Cabinet on the 15th of March had been against the expediency of an attempt to provision Fort Sumter; but now, after a lapse of two weeks, the feeling was changed in favor of the proposed measure. Irrespective of this fresh advice, however, the President's own opinion was already made up. On the day previous he had instructed Captain Fox to prepare him a short order for the ships, men, and supplies he would need for his expedition, || and that officer complied with characteristic and promising brevity: Steamers Pocahontas at Norfolk, Pawnee at Washington, Harriet Lane at New York, to be under sailing orders for sea, with stores, etc., for one month. Three hundred men to be kept ready for departure from on board the receiving ships at New York. Two hundred men to be ready to leave Governor's Island in New York. Supplies for twelve months for one hundred men to be put in portable shape, ready for instant shipping. A large steamer and three tugs conditionally engaged. ¶ The Cabinet meeting over, the President wrote at the bottom of this preliminary requisition the following order to the Secretary of War: "Sir: I desire that an expedition, to move by sea, be got ready to sail as early as the 6th of April next, the whole according to memorandum attached, and that you cooperate with the Secretary of the Navy for that object." This order and its duplicate to the Secretary of the Navy H duly signed and transmitted to the two departments, Capfain Fox hurried away to New York to superintend the further details of preparation in person. It will be observed that the President's order is simply to prepare the expedition; "which expedition," in his own language, was "intended to be ultimately used or not, according to circumstances." But he was by this time convinced that the necessity would arise. Nothing had yet been heard from the order to reënforce Fort Pickens sent two weeks previously; on the contrary, there were rumors through the Southern newspapers that the Brooklyn, containing the troops, had left her anchorage off Pensacola and gone to Key West. As a matter of fact, she had first transferred her troops to the Sabine; but this was not and could not be known, and the necessary inference was that the Brooklyn had carried them away with her. The direction to land them would therefore unavoidably fail, and both Sumter and Pickens be thus left ** Lincoln to Secretary of War, March 29, 1861. War Records. tt Lincoln to Secretary of Navy, March 29, 1861. "Galaxy," Nov., 1870. # Lincoln, Message to Congress, July 4, 1861. within the grasp of the secessionists. Such was the contingency which had decided the President to prepare the Sumter expedition.* The logic of daily events had by this time also wrought a change in the mind of Seward. In his written opinion of March 15th he had declared, "I would not provoke war in any way now"; but on the 29th, apparently alarmed, like the rest, at the advice of General Scott to make further concession to the rebels, he wrote, "I would at once, and at every cost, prepare for a war at Pensacola and Texas." That very afternoon, as he had suggested in this same paper, he brought Captain M. C. Meigs, the engineer officer in charge of the work on the new wings of the Capitol building, to the President. One reason for selecting him, in addition to his special training and acknowledged merit, was that he had in January personally accompanied the reënforcements then sent to Key West and Tortugas. On the way to and from the President's, Seward explained to Meigs that he wished the President to see some military man who would not talk politics; that they had Scott and Totten, but no one would think of putting either of those old men on horseback. They were in a difficulty. Scott had advised giving up both Sumter and Pickens. For his part, his policy had been to give up Sumter; but he wished to hold Pickens, making the fight there and in Texas, throwing the burden of the war, which all men of sense saw must come, upon those who, by revolting, had provoked it.t The President talked freely with Captain Meigs, and after some inquiries about Sumter asked him whether Fort Pickens could be held. Meigs replied, "Certainly, if the navy would do its duty." The President then asked him whether he could go down there again and take general command of those three great fortresses, Taylor, Jefferson, and Pickens, and keep them safe. Meigs answered that he was only a captain, and could not command the majors who were there. Here Seward broke in with: "I understand how that is; Captain Meigs must be promoted." "But there is no vacancy," answered the modest captain. Mr. Seward, however, made light of all difficulties, and told the President if he wanted this thing done to put it in Meigs's charge. When Pitt wished to conquer Canada, he said, he sent for a young man whom he had noticed in the society of London, and told him to take Quebec,- to ask for the necessary means and do it,— and it was done. Would the President do this now? Lincoln *Lincoln, Message to Congress, July 4, 1861. † Meigs, diary. Unpublished MS. replied he would consider it, and let him know in a day or two. Two days afterward (Sunday, March 31st) Meigs was about starting for church when Colonel Keyes, General Scott's military secretary, called and took him to Mr. Seward, who requested them to go forthwith and in consultation with General Scott to put upon paper an estimate and project for relieving and holding Fort Pickens, and to bring it to the President before 4 o'clock that afternoon. The two officers went directly to the engineer's bureau to inspect the necessary charts of Pensacola Harbor and drawings of the fortifications, and over these they matured their plans. The rapid lapse of the few hours allowed compelled them to report back to the President before seeing General Scott. Lincoln heard them read their paper, and then directed them to submit it to the general. "Tell him," said he, "that I wish this thing done, and not to let it fail unless he can show that I have refused him something he asked for as necessary.”† The officers obeyed, and on the way encountered Mr. Seward, who went with them. "General Scott," said he, on entering the old soldier's presence, "you have formally reported to the President your advice to evacuate Fort Pickens; notwithstanding this, I now come to bring you his order, as Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy, to reënforce and hold it to the last extremity." The old general had his political crotchets, but he was at heart a soldier and a disciplinarian. "Sir," replied he, drawing himself up to his full height, "the great Frederick used to say, 'When the king commands, all things are possible.' It shall be done." Meigs and Keyes submitted their plan, which he approved in the main, adding a few details they had in their haste overlooked; the project was further discussed and definitely adopted. Fort Pickens stands on the western extremity of Santa Rosa Island, and serves, in connection with its twin fort, McRae, on the mainland opposite, to guard the entrance to Pensacola Harbor. But in this case the two forts intended to render mutual assistance were held by opposing forces, bent not upon protecting but upon destroying each other, and restrained only by the existence of the "Sumter and Pickens truce," described in a previous chapter. So far as a mere cannonade might go, Pickens was perhaps as strong as McRae; but Lieutenant Slemmer in Pickens had only a handful of Union men, forty-six soldiers and thirty ordinary seamen all told, while some thousands of rebels were either encamped or within reach of the secession General Bragg, himself a trained and skillful soldier. The chief danger was that Bragg might organize a large body of men, and by means of boats, crossing the bay at night or in a fog, carry Fort Pickens by a sudden assault long before the reënforcements in the Union fleet could be landed, as they were by the terms of the truce authorized to do in such an emergency. The substance of Meigs's plan was, that while a transport vessel bearing troops and stores landed them at Fort Pickens, outside the harbor, a ship-ofwar, arriving simultaneously, should boldly steam past the hostile batteries of Fort McRae, enter the harbor, and take up such a position within as to be able to prevent any crossing or landing by the rebels. The ship destined to run the batteries would necessarily encounter considerable peril, not only from the guns of McRae, but also from those of Fort Barrancas and supposed batteries at the navy yard-all, like McRae, on the mainland, and forming part of the harbor defenses. For such coöperation Meigs needed a young, talented, and daring naval officer, and accordingly he made choice of Lieutenant David D. Porter, a companion and intimate friend, who, as he believed, combined the requisite qualities. One important characteristic of this Pickens expedition was to be its secrecy. Seward in his argument on Sumter had much insisted that preparation for reënforcement would unavoidably come to the knowledge of the rebels, and enable them to find means to oppose it. This argument applied with even greater force to Fort Pickens; the rebels controlled both the post and the telegraph throughout the South, and it was thought that upon the first notice of hostile design Bragg would assault and overwhelm the fort. Besides, the orders transmitted through regular channels two weeks before had apparently failed. But now that the ships to supply Sumter were being got ready, it was doubtless thought that under this guise the Pickens relief could be prepared without suspicion. On Monday, April 1, 1861, Captain Meigs, Colonel Keyes, and Lieutenant Porter were busy, under the occasional advice of Seward and General Scott, in perfecting the details of their plans and in drawing up the formal orders required. These were in due time signed by the President himself, it being part of the plan that no one but the officers named, not even the Secretaries of War or Navy, should have knowledge of them. This was an error which only the anomalous condition and extreme peril of the Government would have drawn Lincoln into, and it was never repeated. He doubtless supposed they were entirely consistent with the Sumter plans, especially as General Scott's written request for his signature * Meigs, in "National Intelligencer," Sept. 16, 1865. accompanied the papers the general being perfectly cognizant of both expeditions. HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY, WASHINGTON, April 1, 1861. DEAR SIR: The immediate departure of a war steamer, with instructions to enter Pensacola Harbor and use all measures in his power to prevent any attack from the mainland upon Fort Pickens, is of prime importance. If the President, as Commander-in-chief, will issue the order of which I inclose a draft, an important step towards the security of Fort Pickens will dient servant, am, sir, very respectfully, your most obeWINFIELD SCOTT. HON. W. H. SEWARD, Secretary of State, etc. t be taken. But although useful to secrecy, this course was bound to produce confusion and bad That afternoon the commandant of the Brookdiscipline; and such was its immediate result. lyn Navy Yard received two telegrams, in very similar language, directing him to "fit out the Powhatan to go to sea at the earliest possible of the Navy, the other by the President; the moment." One was signed by the Secretary former intending the ship to go to Sumter, the latter to Pickens, and neither being aware of the other's action. Neither had reason to anticipate any such conflict of orders: the Powhatan was not included in Fox's original requisition, and Meigs did not even know that the Sumter expedition was being prepared. On the same afternoon several additional orders, made out under Seward's supervision, were brought to Lincoln. Supposing they all related to this enterprise, he signed them without reading; but it soon turned out that two of them related to a matter altogether different. These orders changed the duty of several ent. These orders changed the duty of several naval officers: Captain Pendergrast was to be sent to Vera Cruz on account of "important complications in our foreign relations"; and Captain Stringham was to go to Pensacola. When these last-mentioned orders reached the hands of the Secretary of the Navy, to whom they were addressed and immediately transmitted, that official was not only greatly He hastened to the President, whom he found mystified but very seriously troubled in mind. alone in the executive office, writing. "What have I done wrong?" Lincoln inquired playfully, as he raised his head, and with his ever accurate intuition read trouble in the countethe anomalous papers and asked what they nance of his Secretary. Mr. Welles presented meant; he had heard of no "foreign complications," and he preferred Stringham in his present duty. The President [says Mr. Welles] expressed as much surprise as I felt, that he had signed and sent me such a document. He said Mr. Seward, with two or three young men, had been there through the day on a matter which Mr. Seward had much at heart; that he had yielded to the project of Mr. Seward, but + Unpublished MS. as it involved considerable detail, and he had his hands Mr. Welles acted upon this verbal assurance, and was highly gratified that the President thus corrected what he felt to be an encroachment upon the duties and powers of the Navy Department. Nevertheless it is apparent that he had his doubts whether Lincoln had fully and unreservedly given him his confidence in this affair. In these surmises he was correct; a circumstance had occurred between the President and Seward which the former could not communicate, and so far as is known never did communicate to any person but his private secretary, and of which the President's private papers have also preserved the interesting record. In order rightly to understand it, a brief glance at contemporary affairs is needful. It will hardly be possible for the readers of history in our day to comprehend the state of public sentiment in the United States during the month of March, 1861. The desire for peace; the hope of compromise; the persistent disbelief in the extreme purposes of the South; and, strongest of all, a certain national lethargy, utterly impossible to account for,-all marked a positive decadence in patriotic feelings. The phenomenon is attested not only in the records of many public men willing to abandon constitutional landmarks and to sacrifice elementary rights of mankind, but also shown in the words and example of military officers like Scott and Anderson in their consenting to shut their eyes to the truths and principles of their own profession,- that it is the right of the Government to repel menaces as well as blows, and that building batteries is as effective and aggressive war as firing cannon-balls. This perversion of public opinion in fact extended back to the meeting of Congress in December. Under the spell of such a political nightmare the revolution had been half accomplished. The Union flag had been fired upon, the Federal laws defied, the secession government organized and inaugurated. The * Welles, in "Galaxy," November, 1870. work of the conspirators was done, but the popular movement had not yet fully ratified it. Ours is preeminently a country of mass meetings and conventions, of high-sounding resolves and speeches of flaming rhetoric. Perhaps their constant recurrence makes us less critical than we ought to be in scanning their real or fictitious value. Because a certain number of delegates assembled at Montgomery and framed a paper government, it did not necessarily follow that the people of the cottonStates stood behind them. In this case it was even so; but the military thrall by which revolution swept away conservatism was not understood by the North. The difficult problem was presented to the Lincoln administration, not alone whether it should endeavor to knock down the revolutionary edifice half built, but also whether such an effort might not excite the whole Southern people to rise en masse to complete it. The disease of rebellion existing in an advanced stage, could the cure be best effected with sedatives or irritants ? From our point of view the answer is easy; but it was not of so ready solution in March, 1861. Lincoln in his hesitation to provision Sumter at all hazards was not executing his own inclinations, but merely submitting to what for the time seemed the military and, more than all, the political necessities of the hour. The Buchanan administration had first refused and then postponed succor to the fort. Congress had neglected to provide measures and means for coercion. The conservative sentiment of the country protested loudly against everything but concession. His own Cabinet was divided in council. The times were "out of joint." Public opinion was awry. Treason was applauded and patriotism rebuked. Laws were held to be offenses, and officials branded as malefactors. In Lincoln's own forcible simile, sinners were "calling the righteous to repentance." It must be remembered too, that during the month of March, 1861, Lincoln did not yet know the men who composed his Cabinet. Neither, on the other hand, did they know him. He recognized them as governors, senators, and statesmen, while they yet looked upon him as a simple frontier lawyer at most, and a rival to whom chance had transferred the honor they felt to be due to themselves. The recognition and establishment of intellectual rank is difficult and slow. Perhaps the first real question of the Lincoln cabinet was, "Who is the greatest man?" It is pretty safe to assert that no one-not even he himself- believed it was Abraham Lincoln. Bearing this in mind, we shall be better able to understand and explain acts done and acts omitted during that memorable month. In this state of affairs the policy of the new Administration was necessarily passive, expectant, cautious, and tentative. Other causes contributed to their embarrassments. The change from a long Democratic to a Republican régime involved a sweeping change of functionaries and subordinates. The impending revolution made both sides suspicious and vindictive; the new appointees could not, as in ordinary times, lean upon the experience and routine knowledge of the old. Passion swayed the minds of men. There was little calm reasoning or prudent counsel. The new party was not yet homogeneous. A certain friction mutually irritated Republicans of Whig, of Democratic, or of Free-soil antecedents against each other. Douglas was artfully leading a Senate debate to foster and strengthen the anti-war feeling of the North. The Cabinet had not become a working unit. Each Cabinet minister was beset by a horde of applicants, by over-officious friends, by pressing and most contradictory advice. Seward naturally took a leading part in the new Cabinet. This was largely warranted by his prominence as a party manager; his experience in the New York governorship and in the United States Senate; the quieting and mediating attitude he had maintained during the winter; the influence he was supposed to wield over the less violent Southerners; the information he had gained from the Buchanan cabinet; his intimacy with General Scott; his acknowledged ability and talent; his optimism, which always breathed hope and imparted confidence. During the whole of March he had been busy with various measures of tentative administration. He had advised appointments, written diplomatic notes and circulars, carried on a running negotiation with the rebel commissioners, sought to establish relations with the Virginia convention, sent Lander to Texas to kindle a "back fire" against secession, elaborated his policy of evacuating Sumter, proposed a change of party name and organization, and set on foot the secret expedition to Fort Pickens. All this activity, however, did not appear to satisfy his desires and ambition. His philosophic vision took a yet wider range. He was eager to enlarge the field of his diplomacy beyond the boundaries of the republic. Regarding mere partisanship as a secondary motive, he was ready to grapple with international politics. He would heal a provincial quarrel in the zeal and fervor of a continental crusade. He would smother a domestic insurrection in the blaze and glory of a war which must logically be a war of conquest. He would supplant the slavery question by the Monroe Doctrine. And who shall say that these im perial dreams did not contemplate the possibility of changing a threatened dismemberment of the Union into the triumphant annexation of Canada, Mexico, and the West Indies? On this same first day of April, while Meigs and Porter were busy with plans and orders about Fort Pickens, Seward submitted to Lincoln the following extraordinary state paper, unlike anything to be found in the political history of the United States: SOME THOUGHTS FOR THE PRESIDENT'S CONSIDerATION, April 1, 1861. First. We are at the end of a month's administra tion, and yet without a policy, either domestic or foreign. Second. This, however, is not culpable, and it has even been unavoidable. The presence of the Senate, with the need to meet applications for patronage, have prevented attention to other and more grave matters. Third. But further delay to adopt and prosecute our policies for both domestic and foreign affairs would not only bring scandal on the Administration, but danger upon the country. Fourth. To do this we must dismiss the applicants for office. But how? I suggest that we make the local appointments forthwith, leaving foreign or general ones for ulterior and occasional action. Fifth. The policy at home. I am aware that my views are singular, and perhaps not sufficiently ex plained. My system is built upon this idea as a ruling one, namely, that we must CHANGE THE QUESTION BEFORE THE PUBLIC FROM ONE UPON SLAVERY, OR ABOUT SLAVERY, for a question upon UNION OR DISUNION. In other words, from what would be regarded as a Party question, to one of Patriotism or Union. The occupation or evacuation of Fort Sumter, although not in fact a slavery or a party question, is so regarded. Witness the temper manifested by the Republicans in the free States, and even by Union men in the South. |