Sea to Shining Sea

by Michael Phillips

  Their honor was at stake. They would not, they could not submit to such humiliation. They must save the South, even if they had to create a whole new republic to do it!

  It did not take long for the southern states to act. They had prepared for this moment for more than a year should Lincoln be elected. One month after the vote, on December 6, 1860, South Carolina voted to withdraw from the Union.

  Rapidly the governors of the other southern states called special sessions of their legislatures to vote on similar measures. They wanted to act hurriedly, while a sympathetic and Democratic James Buchanan was still president. What Abraham Lincoln might do once he took office on March 3, no one knew. And the southern states didn’t want to wait to find out!

  I suppose that in the South during these tense months, there was a feeling of excitement, as if they were part of a historic and honorable cause, out of which a new and noble nation was about to be born. But in the rest of the country, news of what South Carolina had done caused only gloom. Why, we all wondered, would they try to tear the country apart?

  We still hoped nothing might come of it. South Carolina had always been the most radical southern state. Back in 1832 when Pa hadn’t been much more than a boy, South Carolina had gotten defiant and had threatened to do the same thing. But President Jackson had answered heatedly and had said he’d send in the army if he had to. South Carolina had backed down.

  Many people held the opinion that they could be forced to back down again if Buchanan would act, and act promptly. But President Buchanan’s party had been defeated. He had only three months more to serve, and he had never been a swift decision maker. The result was that he did nothing, and left events to take their course. He would just wait and let the new president worry about it.

  In the meantime, the South became stronger and stronger in their resolve that they would never back down again.

  As bad as all this was, it wasn’t the worst news to come to Miracle Springs as 1860 came to an end. Two weeks before Christmas, a letter arrived addressed to Pa. The handwriting was a barely legible scrawl, but his name and “Miracle Springs could be made out on the envelope. The letter inside was no easier to read. It was a single sheet of paper.

  HOLISTR,

  I hope this here letter gits to you. I give it to Pony Bob an tol him to give hit to the next feller an to git hit to Sacremeno an that somebudy there’d no how to git it to youe. This aint no good kin of letter to have to writ to nobudy nohow, an I hate to be the one to have to do hit. But I figger youd rather hear hit from a freen than from somebudy you never heerd of. What I got to say jis this, Holistr, an Im sorry as a man kin be, but word came to us las week that yer sons horse come wanderin into the stashun without nary a trace o the kid. The mail was ther but no rider. Thats all we heerd. I sent Pony Bob back out ther an tol him to fin out sumthin mor, on account o youe bein my freen an all. I didnt want to writ you til we cud tell you jist what happen. But Bob he didnt git no more informashun, an nobudys heerd hide or hare o the boy sinse, and its been more na week now, an this time o yere nobudy kin live out in them hills past tu or thre days. Im sorry as kin be, but hit dont look good fer yer boy. Hits been snowin there tu. An the blame Piyutes. Give yer little lady my best, and tell her Im sorry tu.

  Tavish

  The whole rest of the week a spirit of gloom hovered all about the claim. When all the folks in town heard about it, a quiet settled over all of Miracle Springs. Pa was held in mighty high regard by everyone, and so was Almeda. The fact that Zack had been riding for the Pony Express had made people proud in a way. His disappearance affected everyone.

  Rev. Rutledge prayed for Zack in church the next Sunday, and of course everybody came up to us to offer their sympathy and to say they’d be praying for all of us.

  Mr. Royce was among them. “I’m sorry to hear about the boy, Hollister,” he said, shaking Pa’s hand. “I really mean that.”

  “I know you do, Franklin,” replied Pa.

  “The kid had spunk. Almost as much as your girl there,” he added, glancing toward me with as much of a smile as Franklin Royce was ever likely to give anyone. “He was the one who saved my money and your wife’s property back when the Dutch Flat gang was causing so much trouble. No, I’m not likely to forget that. If anybody can take care of himself out there, it’s your Zack.”

  “I’m much obliged to you, Royce,” said Pa.

  As time went on, it was almost worse not knowing. It would have been easier to deal with and get past if we had just heard he was dead. But to not know, and to have to think of him lying somewhere with an arrow in him, or frozen in a snowdrift in some ravine—that was the worst part.

  The only bright spot in the last month and a half of the year was that Pa was elected to the California State Assembly. But nobody felt much like celebrating. Least of all Pa.

  Chapter 40

  Secession!

  Christmas of 1860 was certainly not a very festive day.

  Almeda and Aunt Katie tried to make it as happy as they could. There were presents and we had a nice dinner with the Rutledges at our house. But Pa felt so downcast over Zack, and everyone shared his misery.

  Pa now had two things to feel guilt-ridden about—driving Zack away in the first place, and then turning back when we were there instead of going on to find him—Indian danger or not!

  “If only I hadn’t been such a coward,” Pa said a dozen times. “I might have got to him and talked him into coming back home with me. But that handful of Indians made me hightail it outta there like a scared jackrabbit!”

  “There were more than a few, Pa,” I reminded him. “We both almost got ourselves good and dead.”

  But nothing I or anyone else said could perk up Pa’s spirits. And who was I to blame him? I’d have felt terrible, too. I did feel terrible, but not so bad as if I’d been his father. Maybe Zack was being rebellious and independent by running off as he had. But Pa didn’t have the luxury of the man in the New Testament, knowing he had been a good father and yet not being able to do anything about his son’s foolish youthfulness. Maybe Pa had been a decent father to Zack; maybe he hadn’t. He sure had been to me. But the fact was, he didn’t think so, and he believed the accusations Zack had shouted at him the day he’d left.

  So it was a lot harder on him than the father in the Bible who just had to wait patiently for his prodigal son to come to his senses. Pa had to carry guilt along with everything else, guilt for having caused all the trouble and heartbreak himself. Now thinking that Zack was probably dead, but not knowing, and knowing he might never know for sure—it was just an unbearable load for poor Pa. All the rest of us could do was love him and pray for him. But we couldn’t make it go away.

  As always, news from the East got into our papers about two weeks after it actually happened. During that first week of the new year of 1861, we began to learn of events that did not portend good news for the future. President Buchanan still hadn’t done anything to block or counter South Carolina’s action. Neither had he nor anyone else made any hard attempts to resolve the crisis with a compromise of some kind. These failures led to the most serious news of all: one by one, starting with Mississippi on December 20, the rest of the southern states began to secede from the Union too. Next came Florida, then Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and finally later in January, Texas.

  Still President Buchanan did nothing. Abraham Lincoln remained powerless until he would take office on March 3. Was nothing to be done to save the United States of America from becoming the Disunited States?

  As they seceded, the southern states had taken possession of federal properties inside their borders. South Carolina could not immediately seize Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, however, because it had no navy and because the fort was held by seventy-five Union soldiers.

  But South Carolina wanted the fort. Now that the new independent little country was over a month old, it was beginning to feel itself strong and important. So a committee was sent to Washington to negotiate with t
he United States on behalf of the nation of South Carolina to have the fort transferred to the former state.

  President Buchanan refused to give up the fort. Finally he got angry and sent an unarmed steamer down the coast to Fort Sumter with more troops and supplies. South Carolina military troops fired on the ship and forced it to turn around.

  It had been the first act of war. Yet even though northerners and we in the West were shocked and astonished at what the South was doing, there was still no real sense of the danger and peril yet to come.

  Even if President Buchanan had wanted to force South Carolina and the other states back into the Union, there would probably have been little he could have done. The regular army of the nation was only 15,000 strong, and most of those men were out West protecting settlers and wagon trains and Pony Express riders from Indians. It would have taken months to get the army back to the East—and doing so would have left the West to the Indians!

  Everyone loathed what the South was doing, and said it was illegal and against the Constitution to do it. Yet no one actually wanted to fight to stop them from doing it.

  But tempers and emotions were gradually running hotter and more violent and unpredictable.

  Meanwhile, the southern states were wasting no time. As northern politicians scurried around trying to set up meetings and find compromise plans, the seven states that had seceded were busy forming a new government. From the beginning, they had planned to organize a whole new nation as soon as secession had been accomplished—a new nation based on the principle of states’ rights. And it was important that they do so immediately . . . before Lincoln’s inauguration!

  Therefore, delegates from the seven states met in February in Montgomery, Alabama, and founded a new nation. They called it the Confederate States of America. And they didn’t waste time with an election—the delegates themselves chose Mississippi Senator and former Secretary of War Jefferson Davis as their new president.

  Chapter 41

  A New President Comes to Washington

  The new southern nation was confident, and in early 1861 better organized and more united than the rest of the United States. All was not lost quite yet, however, because eight more slave states of the upper and border regions of the South had remained loyal to the Union and were determined to give Lincoln a chance.

  All this time, President-elect Abraham Lincoln had not revealed to the country what he intended to do about the crisis. Would he attack South Carolina? If so, with what troops? Would he try to find some new compromise nobody had thought of yet? Would he just wait and let events go as Buchanan had? Or would he accept the new nation, and go on as President of just half the former country?

  No one knew. So everyone in both countries anxiously awaited Lincoln’s inaugural speech, scheduled for March 4, to find out what his new policy was going to be.

  In the meantime, out in California, there was a lot of support for the South. The South Carolina fever for secession ran all the way west to the Pacific!

  But for some reason, by the time it reached California, those who felt the state ought to secede didn’t necessarily want to join the Confederacy. They wanted California to pull out of the Union to start a third independent republic. If the North and South couldn’t solve their squabbles, why should California be joined with either of them?

  A year before, former California Senator Weller had proclaimed: “If the wild spirit of fanaticism, which now pervades the land, should destroy this magnificent Union, California will not go with the South or the North, but here upon the shores of the Pacific will found and establish a mighty new republic.”

  “It’s plumb fool ridiculousness, Almeda!” exclaimed Pa, looking up from the newspaper.

  “What is it, Drummond?” she’d asked.

  “I’m just reading here in the Standard that this fellow Butts is calling for a convention to found a Pacific republic. Who is he, anyway—do you know, Corrie?”

  “Judge Butts is the editor of the Sacramento Standard, Pa.”

  “Well, he’s got no business interfering in politics, if you ask me.”

  “You better learn to get along with him when you go to Sacramento,” laughed Almeda, “or you might find yourself tarred and feathered in that paper of his!

  “It was just a month ago that you were laughing about that proposal by John Burch proposing the formation of a Pacific republic.”

  “That’s because I thought it was a joke—California, Oregon, New Mexico, Washington, and Utah forming a new country! But I think Butts is serious!”

  “He is serious, Pa,” I said. “The Herald, the Gazette, the Democrat, the Star—they’ve all come out in favor of western independence.”

  “What about your Alta?”

  “The Alta’s pro-Union all the way,” I said. “You don’t think I’d keep writing for a Democratic paper, do you?”

  “Well, if this one Republican has anything to say about it when I get to Sacramento, California’s gonna stay put right where it is—in the Union, and supporting Mr. Abraham Lincoln when he gets to be president!”

  All through the elections Lincoln’s opponents had made fun of his appearance—tall, thin, and gawky, with rough features and a big beak nose. He was said to sleep in the same shirt he gave speeches in, and from listening to some reports I would have thought he still lived in the backwoods log cabin where he was raised. Even after his election he was not considered “sophisticated” enough for Washington society.

  But people were in for a surprise. Lincoln might not have been handsome or cultured, but he was a strong man, a shrewd politician, and an authoritative leader—just the right man to be president at such a time, and certainly better than James Buchanan. Abraham Lincoln would not do nothing. Whatever he did, it was sure to be decisive.

  Lincoln left his home in Springfield, Illinois, for Washington in late February. He traveled by train and took eleven roundabout days to get there, stopping all throughout the states of the North to visit people and make speeches and let them see their new president. Everybody wanted to know what he was going to do about the Confederacy, but he wouldn’t reveal his policies yet. His speeches were light—some even thought them frivolous. People began to get the idea they had elected a simpleton to the White House. He seemed almost unaware of how serious the crisis was.

  At Westfield, New York, he asked the crowd if a young girl by the name of Grace Bedell was present. She was brought up to the rear of the train where he was speaking. Then he told the listening crowd that she had written him during the campaign to tell him that he would look much handsomer if he grew some whiskers. Then he stooped down with a smile. “You see, Grace,” he said, “I let these whiskers grow just for you.”

  When he attended the opera in New York City, he did the unthinkable by wearing black gloves instead of white. High society was aghast at the thought of having such an oafish man living in the White House and in charge of the country.

  In Philadelphia a private detective named Allan Pinkerton came to the President-elect with the news that he had learned of a plot to assassinate him when he changed trains in Baltimore. Lincoln would have paid no attention, except that a little while later another report came to him of the same thing.

  So Lincoln let Pinkerton take charge of getting him to Washington safely. He was put up in a sleeper that had been reserved by one of Pinkerton’s female detectives for her “invalid brother.” They passed through Baltimore at three in the morning and reached Washington just about daybreak.

  When it was discovered what had happened and that Lincoln had at one point in the journey draped a shawl over his shoulders so as not to be recognized, all kinds of mocking and cruel stories and jokes and cartoons were printed in the newspapers, especially in the South. This was the man, they said, who was going to lead the nation! People were beginning to think he was an incompetent, ignorant clown.

  But Lincoln had just been beating around the bush with his lighthearted speeches. In fact, he knew exactly how serious th
e crisis was. He had been planning for it for four months.

  The Pony Express was gearing up to speed Lincoln’s inaugural address to California the moment it was delivered. I wished Zack had been able to be part of it!

  It took three days for the speech to reach St. Joseph by train from Washington. Then the Express took over at an amazing pace. The speech was brought down the Main Street of Sacramento from St. Joseph in an all-time speed record: seven days and seventeen hours. Two of the riders, trying to make up for delays, actually rode their horses to death.

  The speech, which Pa read to us all from the March 17 edition of the Alta when it arrived in Miracle Springs on the eighteenth, was certainly not the speech of a weakling or a simpleton. It was clear right away what kind of man had been elected President, and I was glad that I’d done my part to help him win California’s four electoral votes. It wasn’t much, out of the 180 he’d received, but I was glad they hadn’t gone to anybody else.

  “The Union is older than the states,” he said in his speech, “and was founded to last forever. Secession is illegal, a revolutionary act.” Then the new President went on to tell what he planned to do.

  He did not intend to be rash, he said, or to do anything sudden or forceful. He would proceed with patience and caution for a time. And that right there, Almeda said as we listened, was the clue that showed he had no intention of putting up with the so-called new country forever—he would be patient for a time.

  But he would, he went on to say, do all in his power to enforce all federal laws in all the states, and he would keep firm hold of federal property. Everyone knew he meant Fort Sumter.

  He was not considering any forceful retribution, and there would be no threat to the constitutional rights of the states that had left the Union. If they wished to return, they could. But the government would act to defend itself.