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reclaim slaves and other persons' to service or labor. It did not, as consistency required, provide for the right of secession, or deny the right of coercion; on the contrary, all its implications were against the former and in favor of the latter; for it declared itself to be the supreme law of the land, binding on the judges in every State. It provided for the punishment of treason; and declared that no State should enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation, grant letters of marque and reprisal, coin money, lay duties, keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, make any compact with another State or with a foreign power;-a sweeping practical negation of the whole heretical dogma of State supremacy upon which they had built their revolt."*

Stephens, being a member of the Congress, was sworn into office as Vice-President, February 10th. Davis, with becoming modesty, remained absent during the election; being sent for, he arrived and was formally inaugurated on February 18th. His inaugural address presents few salient points. In later times he has disavowed the fiery and belligerent harangues the newspapers reported him to have made on his way to assume his new duties. Perhaps the most important announcement of his inaugural was the opinion that the new Confederacy might welcome the border slave-States; "but beyond this," he continued, "if I mistake not the judgment and will of the people, a reunion with the States from which we have separated is neither practicable nor desirable." Superficially, it appeared that the new government had been agreed upon among the leaders, with unusual harmony and unanimity; and such is the impression conveyed in the books written long years after by the two principal chiefs. But plausible reports have come down by tradition, that no previous legislative body had ever developed an equal amount of jealousy and bitterness to that which manifested itself in the Provisional Congress; that there were more candidates for President than States in the Confederacy, Georgia alone having furnished four aspirants, and that the rivalry between Toombs and Cobb in fact brought about the selection of Davis, who had openly expressed his preference for the post of General-in-Chief of the future rebel armies. Cobb might indeed dispute the prize of leadership with Davis, and especially with Toombs, who was, of all the candidates, least suited for such a task. It was Cobb who was the master spirit of secession intrigue in Buchanan's Cabinet; it was Cobb who carried the wavering Georgia convention into secession; it was Cobb who reappeared as the dominating power in the Montgomery * Nicolay, "The Outbreak of Rebellion."

Congress. Practically, it was Cobb who by recent secret manipulations had made the Confederacy possible, and erected the Confederate constitution. He might without vanity aspire to become its chief officer; yet with a truer recognition of the fitness of things, the choice of the delegates fell upon Davis, who, for a longer period and with deeper representative characteristics, had been the real embodiment and head of the conspiracy.

Jefferson Davis was born in Christian (afterwards Todd) county, Kentucky, June 3d, 1808. Soon afterwards his father removed to Mississippi; but the boy was sent to complete the education begun by home and academic studies, to Transylvania University, where he remained till the age of sixteen. Appointed in that year a cadet at the Military Academy at West Point, he received the thorough training of that institution, graduating in June, 1828; he was then attached to the army, and served as a lieutenant of infantry in the Black Hawk war and other campaigns against the Indians. He resigned his military commission in 1835, having attained the grade of first lieutenant of dragoons. Returning to Mississippi, he secluded himself in plantation life, devoting his time largely to political studies calculated to qualify him for a public career. In 1843 he launched himself on the tide of Mississippi politics, by a speech in the Democratic State convention, which attracted considerable notice. From the very first he became a central party figure in his State, was made a presidential elector in 1844, and chosen a representative in Congress in 1845. When the Mexican war broke out, Davis's military training and experience naturally carried him into the campaign as colonel of a volunteer regiment called the Mississippi Rifles; and he rendered valuable service and won deserved distinction in the storming of Monterey and the battle of Buena Vista. Returned from the war, the governor of Mississippi appointed him to the United States Senate to fill a vacancy. When the next legislature met, it confirmed the governor's choice by electing him for the remainder of the term; and a subsequent legislature reëlected him for the full term succeeding.

From the beginning to the end of his public career Davis posed as a disciple of Calhoun and an advocate of the extreme doctrine of State-rights. His maiden speech in the Mississippi convention of 1843 was to recommend Calhoun as an alternative presidential candidate; his parting address on leaving the Senate in 1861 drew a contrast between Calhoun as the advocate of nullification, and himself as the advanced defender of secession. So also, when President Polk offered him the commis

sion of brigadier-general of volunteers, to reward his military service in Mexico, the Quixotism which was a marked feature of Davis's character moved him to employ the incident for the ostentatious championship of State-rights. He declined the offer, his biographer says, "on the ground that no such commission could be conferred by Federal authority, either by appointment of the President or by act of Congress."

His next State-rights exploit occurred in 1851. A strong party in Mississippi, violently opposing the compromise measures of 1850, organized a resistance movement in that State, and undertook upon that issue to elect General Quitman governor in 1851. A preliminary election, however, in the month of September, showed them to be some seven thousand votes in the minority; whereupon Quitman withdrew from the contest. Jefferson Davis immediately resigned his full term in the United States Senate and took up the canvass for governor of Mississippi, which Quitman had ingloriously abandoned. Davis's short campaign was brilliant but unsuccessful; he was beaten about one thousand votes by Hon. Henry S. Foote, the Union candidate, who had also resigned the remainder of his senatorship to make the contest.

The defeat appeared to have a salutary influence upon Davis's politics, but it proved transient. In the presidential campaign of 1852 a forlorn-hope of the State-rights fanatics nominated Quitman for President. Davis, with a wiser calculation, forsook his reckless friends and supported Pierce; and for this adhesion Pierce gave him a seat in his Cabinet as Secretary of War. The history of the Kansas trouble shows how faithful he was in this position to pro-slavery interests; and when Buchanan succeeded, he again became a senator for Mississippi, and assumed the leadership of the ultra-Democrats. Years afterwards he explained that in abandoning for a while his extreme course, he was conforming his actions to the decision which Mississippi pronounced in 1851 in favor of the Union. His opinions," he said, "the result of deliberate convictions, he had no power to change." When, therefore, he entered the Cabinet of President Pierce in 1853 as Secretary of War, and when again on the accession of President Buchanan the Legislature of Mississippi returned him to the Senate, he was by his own declaration, and by the evidence of his subsequent words and deeds, only an acting Unionist, who at heart cherished the belief of Federal usurpation, and hoped and labored for the hour of confederated State resistance.

It may not be without interest to call attention at this point to a few coincidences in the

careers of Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln. They were both born in KentuckyDavis in the south-western, Lincoln near the central part of the State. They were both near the same age, Davis being less than nine months the elder. Both were taken in their early years from their birthplaces - Davis's parents emigrating south to Mississippi, Lincoln's north to Indiana and Illinois. Both were soldiers in the Black Hawk war - Davis as lieutenant of Regulars, Lincoln as captain of Volunteers. Both were candidates for presidential elector in 1844. Both were soon elected to Congress - Davis in 1845, Lincoln in 1846. Both were successful politicians and popular orators. Both were instinctively studious, introspective, self-contained. Both rose to distinction through the advocacy of an abstract political idea. Both became the chiefs of rival sections in a great civil war.

These are the only points of resemblance, and the contrasts running through their lives are bold and radical. It is unnecessary to present them in detail; they are comprehended and expressed in their opposing leaderships. If chance or fate had guided their parents to exchange their routes of emigration from Kentucky; if Lincoln had grown up on a Southern cotton plantation, and Davis had split rails to fence a Northern farm; if the tall Illinois pioneer had studied trigonometry at West Point, and the pale Mississippi student had steered a flat-boat to New Orleans, education might have modified but would not have essentially changed either. Lincoln would never have become a political dogmatist, an apostle of slavery, a leader of rebellion; Davis could never have become the champion of a universal humanity, the author of a decree of emancipation, the martyr to liberty. Their natures were antipodal, and it is perhaps by contemplating the contrast that the character of Davis may be best understood.

His dominant mental traits were subtlety and will. His nature was one of reserve and pride. His biographers give us no glimpse of his private life. They show us little sympathy of companionship, or sunshine of genial humor. Houston is reported to have said of him that he was "as ambitious as Lucifer and as cold as a lizard." His fancy lived in a world of masters and slaves. His education taught him nothing but the law of subordination and the authority of command. A Democrat by party name, he was an aristocrat in feeling and practice. He was a type of the highest Southern culture and most exclusive Southern caste. His social ideas were of the past. In political theory he was a sophist, and not a logician. With him," consent of the governed in a State was truth; "consent of the gov

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erned" in a Territory was error. "Rebellion" interest. In his own State, a majority of seven in a State must be obeyed; "rebellion" in a Territory "must be crushed." Constitutional forms in Kansas in the interest of slavery were sacred law; constitutional forms in the Union in the interest of freedom were flagrant usurpation. The majority in a State was enthroned freedom; a majority in the nation was insufferable despotism. But even his central dogma became pliant before considerations of self

thousand against Quitman in September he treated as a dangerous political heresy to be overthrown by his personal championship. A majority of one thousand against himself in November he affected to regard as a command to stultify his own opinions. His beliefs were at war with the most essential principles of American government. He denied the truth of the Declaration of Independence, denied

the right of the majority to rule, denied the supremacy of the national Constitution. His narrowness was of that type which craved the exclusion of Northern teachers and the official censorship of school-books to keep out "Abolition poison." It was in perfect keeping with his character, and in perfect illustration of the paradoxical theories of his followers, that, holding the lash over fifty or a hundred slaves, or exercising an inflexible military dictatorship over nine millions of "his people," he could declaim in fervid oratory against the despotism of a majority. One of his most salient traits was the endeavor to maintain a double position on the question of disunion. His leadership of the "resistance" party in Mississippi in 1850-51 gave him a conspicuous starting-point as an instigator of sedition, and while laboring then and afterwards to unite the South in extreme political demands, and in armed preparation for war against the Union if those demands were not complied with, he as constantly declared that he was no disunionist. Of course he could do this only by setting at defiance the plainest meaning of words and the clearest significance of acts. As the slavery contest drew to its culmination, his recklessness of assertion and antagonism of declaration on these points reached an extreme entitling them to be classed among the curiosities of abnormal mental phenomena. As a blind man may not be held responsible for his description of a painting, or a deaf-mute be expected to repeat accurately the airs of an opera, so we can only explain Jefferson Davis's vehement denial of the charge of hypocrisy and conspiracy through a whole decade, by the supposition that he was incapable of understanding the accepted meaning of such words as "patriotism," "loyalty" "allegiance," "faith," "honor," and "duty." On no other hypothesis can we credit the honesty of convictions and sincerity of expression of sentiments so diametrically opposed as the following which occur in the same speech:

"Neither in that year [1852], nor in any other, have I ever advocated a dissolution of the Union, or a separation of the State of Mississippi from the Union, except as the last alternative, and have not considered the remedies which lie within that extreme as exhausted, or ever been entirely hopeless of their success. I hold now, as announced on former occasions, that whilst occupying a seat in the Senate, I am bound to maintain the Government of the Constitution, and in no manner to work for its destruction; that the obligation of the oath of office, Mississippi's honor and my own, require that, as a Senator of the United States, there should be no want of loyalty to the Constitutional Union.

"Whether by the House [of Representatives] or by the people, if an Abolitionist be chosen President of the United States, you will have presented to you the question of whether you will permit the Government to pass into the hands of your avowed and implacable enemies. Without pausing for your answer, I will state VOL. XXXV.- 10.

my own position to be that such a result would be a species of revolution by which the purposes of the Government would be destroyed, and the observance of its mere forms entitled to no respect. In that event, in such manner as should be most expedient, I should deem it your duty to provide for your safety outside of a Union with those who have already shown the will, your birthright and reduce you to worse than the coloand would have acquired the power, to deprive you of nial dependence of your fathers. As when I had the privilege of addressing the Legislature a year ago, so now do I urge you to the needful preparation tenance of our rights against a hostile power is a physto meet whatever contingency may befall us. The mainical problem and cannot be solved by mere resolutions. Not doubtful of what the heart will prompt, it is not the less proper that due provision should be made for physical necessities. Why should not the State have an armory for the repair of arms, for the alteration of old models so as to make them conform to the improved weapons of the present day, and for the manufacture on a limited scale of new arms, including cannon and aration of fixed ammunition? " * carriages; the casting of shot and shells, and the prep

That man is not to be envied whose reason

can be quieted by a casuistry capable of discovering consistency between these and analogous propositions. From declarations of this quality he could prove his record black or white, as occasion demanded, and, in face of direct threats of secession in Mississippi, deny in the United States Senate, without wincing, that he had avowed disunion sentiments.

It will not be amiss to invite the reader to a pen-picture of the man as he appeared in the Senate (May 8th, 1860) shortly before he led the South, with open eyes, into that drama of disaster, suffering, and blood of which he was the fatal inspiration:

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"The crowd in the galleries give a buzz of relief, and everybody tells his right-hand man, Here he that he proposes to make a speech? You are surcomes; that 's Jeff Davis. And can it be possible prised to see him walking. Why, that is the face of a corpse, the form of a skeleton. Look at the haggard, sunken, weary eye, the thin, white wrinkled lips mouth of a brave but impatient sufferer. See the clasped close upon the teeth in anguish. That is the ghastly white, hollow, bitterly puckered cheek, the high, sharp cheek-bone, the pale brow full of fine wrinkles, the grizzly hair, prematurely gray; and see the thin, bloodless, bony, nervous hands! He deposits his documents upon his desk, and sinks into his chair as if incapable of rising. In a few minutes the Vice-President gives his desk a blow with his ivory hammer, calls for profound order, and states that the senator from Mississippi' has the floor. Davis rises with a smile. His speech was closely reasoned, and his words were well chosen. Once in a while he pleases his hearers by a happy period; but it was painfully evident that he was ill."

Montgomery having witnessed the glories of such an inauguration pageant as could be extemporized, Davis proceeded to the appointment of his Cabinet. Toombs of Georgia was made Secretary of State; Memminger of South Carolina Secretary of the Treasury; Walker

*Jefferson Davis, speech at Jackson, Mississippi, Nov. 11th, 1858. In “Daily Mississippian," Nov. 15th, 1858.

of Alabama Secretary of War; Mallory of Florida Secretary of the Navy; Reagan of Texas Postmaster-General; and Benjamin of Louisiana Attorney-General. Various acts of the Provisional Congress authorized the new Executive to continue the organization of the provisional government of the Confederate States. A regular army of about 10,000 men was ordered to be established; a navy of 10 steam gun-boats authorized to be constructed or purchased; 100,000 volunteers for 12 months authorized to be enlisted, and existing State troops to be received into the provisional army. A loan of $15,000,000 was authorized, and an export duty on cotton of % cent per pound levied, to pay principal and interest. Among the first executive acts, Davis assumed control of military operations in the several seceded States; and his Secretary of War (March 9th) made a requisition for 11,000 volunteers, for contingent service at Charleston, Pensacola, and other points. Agents were dispatched to Europe to purchase material of war; and to obtain if possible a recognition of the Confederate States by foreign powers. As a matter of the greatest immediate necessity, a commission of three persons was appointed to proceed to Washington, to bring about the peaceful acquiescence of the United States in the dismemberment of the Union.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.

THE disunion conspirators had good reason to show symptoms of dismay at the Cabinet régime to which Mr. Buchanan yielded direction and authority in the last days of the year 1860. Hitherto, not alone in shaping a policy of non-coercion and preventing reenforcements, but in numerous minor matters as well, had the complicity of Cobb, Floyd, and Thompson enabled them to turn the varied agencies of the Government against its own life. Under the new dispensation these practices instantly came to an end. For the moment Mr. Buchanan was in a patriotic mood, and at the urgent solicitation of Black, Holt, and Stanton yielded his consent to a number of measures he had for two months persistently neglected. For the first time since his arrival in Washington, General Scott was permitted to notify commanders of forts and garrisons to be on the alert against surprise; and though this admonition came too late to inspirit and reassure many a wavering officer, it had the direct effect of saving one of the most important military posts on the gulf. Reënforcements were resolved upon. The policy of defending the national capital was discussed and adopted. At least one member of the Cabinet placed himself in confidential communi

cation with leading Republicans and unionists in Congress, and counsel and warning in behalf of the Government were freely interchanged and faithfully observed. Preeminent in his opportunities and services at this critical juncture was the new Secretary of War, Joseph Holt, of Kentucky. He had been a life-long Democrat and a stubborn partisan; but above everything else he was a patriot. Under his administration the War Department was no longer a bureau of insurrection.

The Cabinet régime consisted mainly of the combined will and energy of four leading members,-Black, Secretary of State; Dix, Secretary of the Treasury; Holt, Secretary of War; and Stanton, Attorney-General. Neither their relation to the President nor to each other can be very clearly made out. Their loyal activity was still occasionally hampered by Buchanan's stubbornness and timidity. On some points they appear to have had very different views, but the daily stress and danger in which they moved compelled mutual tolerance and tacit cooperation. They had indeed one common bond of union. Now that the conspiracy was so fully revealed they battled against it manfully, not with any proximate hope of crushing it, but to tide over the peril to the end of the presidential term, to be able to lay down their responsibilities with honor. Their services in detail cannot be here recorded, but the principal duty which they successfully performed, the protection of the national capital, needs special mention.

In the early days of January, 1861, Washington city was the natural focus of the secession excitement pervading the South; and the capital seemed to lean towards the prevailing mania. Seditious harangues in Congress were applauded from well-filled galleries, and society feasted and flattered the most daring fire-eaters. So strong was this Southern drift of local sentiment that the Federal city began to be confidently looked upon by the conspirators as the prospective capital of a Southern Confederacy. Nothing seemed wanting to the early consummation of such a scheme but the secession of Virginia and Maryland, of which the signs. were becoming only too abundant. Reasoning from this to plausible consequences, the coolest heads began to fear a popular outbreak to seize upon the buildings and archives of the Government; and as a final result forcibly to prevent the inauguration of the President-elect.

Buchanan affected not to share these apprehensions. Nevertheless he acknowledged his duty and purpose to preserve the peace, and authorized the necessary precautions. On the 9th of January, therefore, Colonel Charles P. Stone, chosen for that duty by General Scott, submitted a memorandum in which he sketched a plan for the defense of

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