Reveille in Washington

by Margaret Leech

  From Charleston, waving with palmetto banners instead of the Stars and Stripes, there were echoes of artillery and cheers and calls to arms. Already the Federal courts were suspended in South Carolina. The senators from that State did not come to the Capitol in December. On either side of the splendid new Senate Chamber, the extremists of North and South were drawn in hostile ranks. In the chair sat the ultra-Democrat, Breckinridge. The business of the nation was taken up in the harsh lull of the deadlock in which the sections were implacably joined. Under the leadership of two Democrats who had risen above partisan feuds, the venerable Crittenden of Kentucky, and Douglas of Illinois, moderate-minded men were still hoping to arrange some compromise.

  The senators from the cotton States sat in the Capitol of the Union, dreaming of a new empire which would make the Gulf of Mexico a western Mediterranean. There was no hope of compromise with boisterous, swaggering Toombs of Georgia, or his truculent colleague, Iverson; with insolent Slidell of Louisiana, or Judah P. Benjamin, with his purring, musical voice and his lawyer’s subtleties; with sick, defiant Clay of Georgia, or Wigfall of Texas, with his fierce, scarred face. Most influential among them was a cold, fastidious man, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi. He was a graduate of West Point, who had served with distinction in Mexico, and had been Secretary of War during the Pierce administration. In his military bearing and romantic conceptions of honor, he symbolized the Southern ideal which had produced this revolution. Such men would listen to no appeals to patriotism. “You cannot save this Union by making 4th of July speeches,” sneered Senator Wigfall. “Whipped syllabub is not the remedy for the patient. You have got to come down to your work, and you have got to do something practical.”

  On the other side of the Senate Chamber sat men who were no less unyielding, the men who had grown strong with the rise of the young Republican party; men who denied State sovereignty, hated slavery and loved power. No concessions to the South would come from bluff Ben Wade, or from Zach Chandler, who thought the Union would be the better for a little bloodletting; from Hale of New Hampshire, Fessenden of Maine, Trumbull of Illinois, or Grimes of Iowa; from Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, or the cultured crusader, Sumner, who could be surprisingly vulgar in the passion of controversy. The leader of the Republican party, William H. Seward of New York, was a different person altogether. He was bland and mysterious and equivocating. He had made no public declaration of his views, and the radical Republicans were beginning to draw away from him because he was supposed to be in favor of conciliating the South.

  While the galleries applauded the sentiments of secession, and the mediators worked to save the country, like a bucket brigade at a conflagration, a solitary Southern senator arose to speak on behalf of the Union. Andrew Johnson of Tennessee was no kin of the cavaliers. He was a demagogue, coarse, honest and courageous, and he did not mince his words in condemning secession. The seizure of Federal property in South Carolina was treason, he said, and nothing but treason.

  A few days before Christmas, the President attended a fashionable wedding. As he wearily sat in the parlor, breathing the fragrance of unseasonable roses and lilies, he was startled by a hubbub in the hall. He asked Mrs. Roger Pryor, wife of the disunionist congressman from Virginia, whether the house were on fire. She might imaginatively have answered, yes. The shouts were those of rejoicing over a telegram announcing the secession of South Carolina. The President called for his carriage.

  Congress received the expected news calmly, but there was contention at the War and Navy Departments, where voices angrily resounded long after the offices were closed. As the brief afternoon darkened in a drizzle of rain, the tidings reached the hotels. It was the late dinner hour, and dining-rooms and corridors were shaken with excitement, as men with the blue cockades of the secessionists brushed jubilantly past those who wore the colors of the Union. One man thought that there was as much treason talked in Washington as in Charleston. That evening, Southern leaders, after celebrating in the parlor of Senator Jefferson Davis, went to call at the Executive Mansion. Mrs. Davis preceded them, hastening impetuously ahead to share the good news with the President.

  Across the joyous emblems of Christmas fell the shadow of the palmetto and the rattlesnake. In hopes of stimulating the lagging holiday trade, the small shops dressed their windows, and inserted their notices in the newspapers. Gifts were enticingly suggested for every variety of taste: shaving cases and motto coffee cups and albums; glove boxes, odor stands and tête-à-tête tea sets; backgammon boards and battledores and wax dolls with moving eyes. Gautier was ready to take orders for Christmas cakes, both pound and fruit. Madame Delarue announced a shipment of full-dress bonnets and Jouvin’s gloves, just received from Paris. Some of the advertisements sounded a timely note. “Readers, the Union is in danger, but by buying your holiday presents at Lammond’s, you may save it.” After Christmas, there were new alarms in the capital, and Galt, the jeweler, marked down his watches and silverware to “panic prices.”

  Fears for the security of Washington had sharpened with secessionist agitation in Maryland and Virginia. On the floor of the Senate, Iverson of Georgia had suggested that Washington might be the capital of the Southern confederacy. On Christmas Day, the Richmond Examiner had boldly called for Maryland men to join with Virginians in seizing the Capitol. There were persistent rumors of a secret secessionist organization in Washington, which was plotting to capture the city and the public archives, and assume control of the Government. Senator Seward, who was no alarmist, wrote the President-elect in late December that such a conspiracy was forming, and that it had its accomplices in the public councils. So great was the anxiety for the Capitol building that guards were placed at the main entrances, and the cellar was searched nightly for explosives.

  At the same time, there was a fresh crisis in South Carolina. As though the Union were a precious substance, held in delicate equilibrium, Mr. Buchanan had been fearful of making the slightest movement. Ironically, he was thrown off balance by the act of a Southern sympathizer, committed on behalf of the Federal authority. Major Anderson, who commanded the United States forts in Charleston harbor, was a Kentuckian with a stern sense of duty. Fearing an attack on his untenable position at Fort Moultrie, he dismantled it, and transferred the little garrison to Fort Sumter, which commanded the harbor. South Carolina interpreted Anderson’s move as an act of aggression. It immediately assumed the proportions of a vexing incident, and Mr. Buchanan was aghast at the news of it.

  Three South Carolina commissioners, arrived in Washington to treat with the Government like envoys of a foreign power, pressed Mr. Buchanan hard, telling him that his personal honor was involved. The President dodged and hedged and pleaded for time. Before making any important decision, he told them, he always said his prayers. The interview was succeeded by a demand that United States troops should be entirely withdrawn from Charleston harbor. Buchanan would have yielded to the influence of his Southern friends, had it not been for the recent shift in the sentiment of his Cabinet. Cobb had gone, to lead the secession movement in Georgia, and the Virginia disunionist, Floyd, would soon be forced to resign. As Secretary of War, he would be succeeded by the Postmaster General, Joseph Holt of Kentucky, who had swung to a firm national policy after the secession of South Carolina. Although Jacob Thompson of Mississippi still lingered at his post, men of Union sympathies were in the ascendancy in the President’s council, and they persuaded him to an assertion of authority. At last, he wrote the palmetto commissioners that the United States garrison would remain where it was, and he granted permission to General Scott to reinforce Fort Sumter. The President’s decision cut short the social activities of the commissioners, who had rented a fine house as a suitable ambassadorial background. They had been cordially welcomed by the chivalry, but on the night before their departure the police were called out to prevent a tin-pan serenade which less fashionable elements in Washington were proposing to offer to the gentlemen from South Carolina.

  Durin
g the days of painful suspense, when the attention of the country was fixed on the conclaves at the Executive Mansion, Mr. Buchanan had received a call from Benjamin F. Butler, a Breckinridge Democrat from Massachusetts. In the President’s office, they sat face to face, but not eye to eye, for Butler, too, had a startling squint. He was a stout, crafty-looking, forceful little man, and he had his own plan for solving the country’s predicament. He advised Mr. Buchanan to have the South Carolina commissioners arrested and tried for treason before the Supreme Court, the judgment of which would determine the rights of secession. Mr. Buchanan, blanching at the very mention of such bold action, could only reply that it would lead to great agitation.

  Ben Butler heard from Southern men in Washington that the North would never fight, but he told them that it would, and he would fight with it. He was a brigadier-general of militia in Massachusetts, which had several enthusiastic organizations of citizen soldiers. He was hopeful that the nation might find some remedy, but, after he had taken tea with Senator Davis, he saw that war was inevitable.

  Mr. Buchanan later protested that during this period his mood had been serene, and that he had “not lost an hour’s sleep or a single meal.” Unsympathetic observers, on the other hand, described him as a broken old man, who did nothing but cry and pray. The first picture seems nearly as exaggerated as the second. He had ordered a day of national prayer and humiliation, and was preparing a special message to Congress which reflected his despair at the progress of revolution. At Charleston, the palmetto banner waved over Fort Moultrie and Castle Pinckney, as well as the United States arsenal and other Governmental property. The fever of secession was spreading through the cotton States. There were scandalous irregularities in the disunionist administration of the War and Interior Departments; while the Treasury was in a state that threatened financial ruin to the country. Among the rumors with which the capital was humming was the story of a plot, headed by Senator Wigfall, to kidnap the President, and install Breckinridge in his place. At his New Year reception, Mr. Buchanan’s face was haggard. The calls were fewer than usual. The East Room seemed almost deserted. Many of the visitors, wearers of Union and secession cockades alike, refused to shake the President’s proffered hand.

  The old politician from Pennsylvania was timid, not treacherous. In ordinary times, he might have retired with honor at the close of his term. He had been caught in the glare of a crucial moment of history. Even his Southern friends, to whom he had conceded so much, had turned against him. At a dinner party at Mr. Corcoran’s, General Scott witnessed the passionate outbursts of Senator Toombs and Senator Benjamin, who cursed the President, along with Major Anderson and the Union. In the end, his sundered country was united only in the opinion that Mr. Buchanan was a coward and a fool. Sinking heavily into a chair in Scott’s headquarters, he exclaimed, “The office of President of the United States is not fit for a gentleman to hold!”

  With the New Year, the temper of the North was growing increasingly conciliatory. In answer, the news of secession came, like hammer strokes, from the cotton States. Mississippi was the first to follow the lead of South Carolina. Florida and Alabama hurried close behind; then Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. The seceded States seized United States property within their borders—forts, arsenals, customhouses, revenue cutters. The Government made no effort to reclaim them, and its passivity was matched by that of the free States. Their people were so apathetic that there was no great indignation when South Carolina guns fired on the Union flag, and drove off the Star of the West, carrying reinforcements to Fort Sumter. Late in January, however, there was a sign that Northerners were discouraged and leaderless, rather than indifferent to the fate of their country. John A. Dix, a reactionary Democrat from New York, who had been appointed Secretary of the Treasury, was incensed by the continued seizure of revenue cutters in Southern ports. He telegraphed a revenue official at New Orleans, “If any one attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot.” The words sounded like a trumpet call from the timorous silence of Washington, and the North applauded the Government official who had dared to speak out for the nation.

  In the Senate, Mr. Seward of New York had made his long-awaited speech. He was the idol of the masses of the Republicans. Before the nomination of the Westerner, Lincoln, it had been taken for granted that he would be the Republican candidate for President. In January, it was known that he would head the Cabinet of the new administration; would, in short, be President in all but name. Many looked to him to save the country.

  Governor Seward, as he was usually called, was a complex personality. He was gentlemanly, subtle and smiling, but not quite elegant or effete; there was too much of western New York for that. He was brilliant and cynical, but not quite a polished trifler; he was too much the man of the party machine, the intimate of the astute political manager, Thurlow Weed. In spite of his sixty years, he attracted young men by his warmth and kindness, and by the unassuming simplicity of his manner. Although his doctrine of “the irrepressible conflict” between free labor and slavery had made him hated throughout the South, he was considered a man without convictions, a Jesuit and an opportunist; he was the affectionate friend of Jefferson Davis; and not Mr. Buchanan himself was more earnest in the cause of propitiating the slave States.

  Seward’s policy was one of temporizing and conceding, of delaying hostilities until the Republicans should have time to organize in March. Working outside the Government, he had established a network of secret alliances which extended deep into the slaveholding States. He was informed of the proceedings of Buchanan’s Cabinet by one of its members, who, save for a talent for intrigue and a strong sentiment for the Union, was Mr. Seward’s antithesis. This was Edwin M. Stanton, a domineering, cross-grained Washington lawyer, able but without national reputation, who had been given the office of Attorney General in December. That winter, he was conferring with two other politicians who were peculiar confidants for a Breckinridge Democrat—Zach Chandler and Charles Sumner. To prevent suspicion, Stanton’s reports to Seward were always made through a third man, and, except for one chance encounter in F Street, they did not meet during the Buchanan administration.

  When, on January 12, Seward arose in the crowded Senate Chamber, he seemed the only tranquil person there. As he had already publicly pronounced that all would be right in sixty days, he was believed to have developed some clever, guarded plan; and before this slender, slouching figure in a gray frock coat, Northerners and Southerners sat hushed and tense. No expectation of eloquence moved them, for Seward was an indifferent speaker. He delivered his carefully prepared addresses in a perfunctory way; and his husky voice had been weakened by excessive cigar smoking and the use of snuff. But he represented the new administration and the unknown quantity at Springfield. Optimistic and debonair, he represented hope. In a time of chaos, it was reassuring that a man could know so much and still smile.

  Seward’s affability was impenetrable; it had covered many thoughts. He had smiled when Southern ladies refused to meet him, and when hotheaded young senators from the slave States had ignored his greeting. He had smiled after he had lost the Republican nomination for President, the crowning ambition of his career. Too much had been expected of one adroit politician. His vague and conciliatory phrases antagonized radical Republicans and disunionists alike. Events were moving with an inexorable speed. As States seceded, their delegates withdrew from Senate and House. Representatives, for the most part, left quietly, but in the Senate there were oratorical ebullitions of defiance and farewell. The senators from Florida, Alabama and Mississippi pronounced their valedictories on the same day, while trembling Southern ladies packed the galleries, sitting on the floor and crowding the doorways. As the speeches were delivered, they waved their handkerchiefs and cried out in sympathy with secession. Even Republican ladies wept at the pathetic close of Senator Jefferson Davis’s address. In a voice strained by emotion, he expressed the hope that the relations between North and South would be peace
ful; if, in the heat of debate, he had given offense to any senator, he offered his apologies. The senator from Mississippi spoke without bravado. He cherished the bold dream of a new confederacy; but, more than most of his Southern colleagues, he counted its probable cost. He thought that only fools doubted the courage of Yankees, and that, if war should come, it would not soon be over.

  The dawn of 1861 had cheered General Scott by bringing him into a close relation with the Government. He had promptly been called into consultation by Holt, under whose control the War Department had ceased its favors to the revolutionary senators and representatives. After the unhappy expedition of the Star of the West, the reinforcement of Fort Sumter was held in abeyance. Major Anderson was as solicitous as the administration to avoid any act which might precipitate hostilities; and the secessionist leaders, to gain time for their political and military preparations, exercised a restraining influence on the South Carolina hotheads. An informal truce was arranged, not only in the case of Sumter, but also of Fort Pickens in Pensacola harbor, which by Scott’s orders had been occupied by United States troops. These and two forts at the southern tip of Florida, whose garrisons Scott strengthened, were the only property which the Government held in the then seceded States. Small detachments of soldiers were also sent to a few military points in the border slave States, including Fort Washington, on the Maryland side of the Potomac, across from Mount Vernon. Although the fort, fallen into rust and rot, was useless for defense, it was vulnerable to occupation by a hostile force. Its entire garrison, before a company of marines was sent there from the Washington barracks, consisted of one old Irish pensioner, and General Scott said that it might easily have been taken by a bottle of whisky.