by Bruce Catton
“You can do more,” he told Trescot. “You can pledge your life, Mr. Trescot, that it is not so. It is impossible. It would be not only without orders, but in the face of orders.”
Despite Floyd’s assurances, the conference broke up and Trescot hurried to the Capitol building, where he broke the news to Jefferson Davis and Senator R. M. T. Hunter, of Virginia—two of the most respected of Southern leaders, men who stood firmly for Southern rights but who had never been numbered with the fire-eaters. The three men went to the White House, and presently were in conference with Buchanan himself.
As Trescot remembered it, Davis opened the conversation by asking Buchanan bluntly: “Have you received any intelligence from Charleston in the last few hours?” When Buchanan said that he had not, Davis said: “Then I have a great calamity to announce to you.” He told the President what had happened—how Anderson and his garrison had moved to Fort Sumter, spiking guns and burning gun carriages behind them, even chopping down the Fort Moultrie flag staff as a departing gesture—and he added: “And now, Mr. President, you are surrounded with blood and dishonor on all sides.”
Buchanan stood by the mantelpiece, crushing a cigar in one hand; then he sank into a chair, bursting out at last: “My God, are calamities never to come singly? I call God to witness, you gentlemen better than anybody know that this is not only without but against my orders. It is against my policy.” This was all very well, but it was not enough. The visitors told Buchanan that he must do something, and do it quickly; South Carolina would unquestionably seize Fort Moultrie and Castle Pinckney, and would probably attack Fort Sumter as well, and only a prompt statement from the President that the status quo would be restored at once would insure peace. Buchanan, as Trescot saw it, seemed inclined to agree; then he demurred, said that he must consult with his cabinet, insisted that he could not condemn Major Anderson unheard. The visitors argued, but without avail, and at last they went out, Buchanan saying that his meeting with the South Carolina commissioners must be postponed. Then Buchanan went to talk with the cabinet.6
The cabinet had changed since the argument about the Charleston forts began. It was no longer split down the middle, unable to give solid advice to a President who relied more than most executives on the advice of his cabinet; it was taking a new form, moving rapidly toward a strong Unionist position. Howell Cobb, of Georgia, stout and shaggy and rumpled, one of the ablest and most forceful of all the Southern leaders, had resigned as Secretary of the Treasury on December 8, writing Buchanan manfully that “a sense of duty to the state of Georgia”—which was well on the road toward an act of secession—made it improper for him to remain any longer. “The evil,” Cobb wrote sadly, “has now passed beyond control.” He believed that Buchanan’s administration would certainly be the last one under the old Union, and he added gracefully that history would unquestionably rank it “with the purest and ablest of those that preceded it.” Cobb’s resignation had been followed, within a week, by that of Lewis Cass, of Michigan, who quit as Secretary of State because he felt the administration ought to have sent reinforcements to Charleston. Cass was aging and querulous and he had been rather ineffective, but with the departure of Cobb the cabinet had lost one of its ruling spirits.7
In the general reshuffle that followed, Jeremiah Sullivan Black had become Secretary of State, and Philip F. Thomas, a former governor of Maryland, had been made Secretary of the Treasury. Black was Unionist and Thomas was pro-Southern, but Black had more drive, and Thomas would linger, powerless, for no more than a month before offering his own resignation. Floyd himself was on very shaky ground, for reasons not connected with the Charleston crisis; he had been asked to resign and would do so before the month ended. To replace Black as Attorney General, Buchanan had appointed a fierce little man with bristling whiskers, Edwin M. Stanton, a Washington lawyer, Ohio-born, who had lived for years in Pittsburgh—“the little black terrier,” as Montgomery Blair dubbed him, a man with enough original force for two or three cabinets. Stanton, as it happened, was to attend his first cabinet meeting today.
So the cabinet which President Buchanan was about to consult regarding this latest of calamities was not at all the same cabinet which had been giving him divided counsel during recent weeks. It had not yet had its shakedown cruise, however, and although it would presently speak with a new voice, that voice had not been found. There would be several meetings before the administration’s policy would at last be adjusted to the new situation which Major Anderson had created.
The cabinet, when President Buchanan sat down with it on the afternoon of December 27, was in a dither. Secretary Floyd was outspoken; Major Anderson had disobeyed his orders, a definite agreement had been fractured without good reason, and the Sumter garrison should be withdrawn at once, not merely from the disputed fort, but from Charleston harbor itself; such a move was the only way to prevent bloodshed and civil war.
Stanton believed that Buchanan at first was inclined to go along. Floyd and Jacob Thompson pressed him hard, asserting that the President had given a pledge which now was dishonored. There was “angry debate,” lasting through several sessions, in the course of which Stanton (as Postmaster General Holt remembered it) announced that any President who would issue the kind of order Floyd was talking about would be guilty of treason. Buchanan raised his hands at this and said: “Oh no! Not so bad as that, my friend—not so bad as that.” Buchanan himself wrote that he had received the news of Anderson’s move “with astonishment and regret,” fearing that it would drive the rest of the cotton states into secession and blight the tentative moves for conciliation which were afoot in Congress. He did not believe that South Carolina could have been ready to commit “the base perfidy” of attacking the forts, and he wanted to hear from Anderson before he did anything. At the same time, he felt that he could hardly restore the status quo “in consequence of the violent conduct of South Carolina in seizing all the other forts and public property in the harbor and city of Charleston.”8
On December 28, Buchanan talked with the commissioners from South Carolina. He had made, they said, that agreement, early in December, with the South Carolina Congressional delegation, and Major Anderson had violated the faith of the President and of the United States government. Mr. Barnwell, a zealot whose intensity was as strong as Yancey’s own, told him “at least three times” during the two-hour interview: “But, Mr. President, your personal honor is involved in this matter; the faith you pledged has been violated; and your personal honor requires you to issue the order”—the order, that is, pulling Anderson and the soldiers out of Fort Sumter. Buchanan, as Orr recalled it, fidgeted and wavered, crying out finally: “Mr. Barnwell, you are pressing me too importunately; you don’t give me time to consider; you don’t give me time to say my prayers. I always say my prayers when required to act upon any State affair.”9
The real trouble was that the President and the South Carolina commissioners had different understandings of the agreement Buchanan had made earlier. To Barnwell and the others, the case was as clear as crystal; the President had made a promise which had been broken, and as a man of honor he could do nothing less than give in. To Buchanan, any pledge that had been made was ended when South Carolina seceded, and whether Anderson had done wisely or stupidly made no difference—no promise had been violated. And however the rights and wrongs may have been, the stormy meeting ended with nothing done. Buchanan did not order Major Anderson to get out of Fort Sumter.
Jeremiah Black had a little something to do with it. When the cabinet met to consider the calamity at Charleston, it was Black who remembered that Major Buell had taken certain instructions to Anderson two weeks earlier, and the memorandum which Buell had put on file in the War Department was brought up and examined. It was clear from this that whatever Anderson had done he had not violated his orders. He had been given discretionary powers and he had acted under them; he might have acted foolishly, but he had done nothing which his instructions from Floyd, as transmitted b
y Buell, did not permit him to do. If the government now meant to back down, it could not allege that the soldier in Charleston harbor had disobeyed his orders.10
Winfield Scott, old and infirm, but possessed still of a mind all his own, was beginning to make his voice heard. In all of the dealings between Washington and Fort Moultrie the general-in-chief of the army had been bypassed, and he complained bitterly that none of the orders and reports had come across his desk. His trouble, probably, came because he was aged and in bad health, and until December 12 he had his office in New York instead of in Washington; it had been easy to go around him, and during a crucial five weeks he had been more or less out of the picture. He would stay out of it no longer, however, and on December 28, the day when the South Carolina commissioners were accusing President Buchanan on a point of honor, Scott got off a stilted but perceptive memorandum to the Secretary of War:
“Lieutenant General Scott, who has had a bad night, and can scarcely hold up his head this morning, begs to express the hope to the Secretary of War— 1. That orders may not be given for the evacuation of Fort Sumter. 2. That one hundred and fifty recruits may instantly be sent from Governor’s Island to re-enforce that garrison, with ample supplies of ammunition, subsistence, including fresh vegetables, as potatoes, onions, turnips; and 3. That one or two armed vessels be sent to support the said fort.”11
A copy of this memorandum went to Buchanan. At just about the same time, Buchanan also received an extremely stiff letter from the South Carolina commissioners, who sent him a copy of the ordinance of secession and pointed out that they had been empowered to treat with the government of the United States for the transfer of forts, lighthouses, and other bits of property and to make any other arrangements necessary “for the continuance of peace and amity between this Commonwealth and the Government at Washington.” The commissioners were not able to avoid a touch of arrogance. They remarked that they had been prepared to negotiate in a friendly spirit, in the assurance that all parties wanted “mutual respect, general advantage and a future of good will and harmony,” which was just another way of expressing the bland assumption that the state’s act of secession would of course be accepted at face value by all men of good will. This assurance, to be sure, had vanished in the face of recent developments in Charleston harbor. Therefore: “Until those circumstances are explained in a manner which relieves us of all doubt as to the spirit in which these negotiations shall be conducted, we are forced to suspend all discussions as to any arrangements by which our mutual interests might be amicably adjusted. And, in conclusion, we would urge upon you the immediate withdrawal of the troops from the harbor of Charleston. Under present circumstances they are a standing menace which renders negotiation impossible, and, as our recent experience shows, threatens speedily to bring to a bloody issue questions which ought to be settled with temperance and judgment.”12
Buchanan was beginning to stiffen. Once again, he had been pushed a little too far—he could be pushed too far, and now he had a different cabinet, which was in almost continuous session during the days immediately following the news of Major Anderson’s move. Buchanan remarked that the letter was “of the most extravagant character,” and declared that the whole request “was not to be thought of for a moment.”13 The President had learned, too, that on December 27 the South Carolina authorities had already taken possession of nearly everything in sight except Fort Sumter—Fort Moultrie, Castle Pinckney, the customs house and post office, and soon would seize the Federal arsenal. The palmetto flag had been hoisted over all of these, and every Federal officer in the state, from collector of the port to postmaster, had resigned. The Federal government, in short, now had not one shred of sovereignty in all of South Carolina except for the place Major Anderson and his men were occupying, and beyond these precincts it did not have one civil or military officer in the state. There was perilously little for President and commissioners to negotiate about any longer. Things had begun to happen, and the area in which men might talk their way out of a problem had become very small indeed.
Under these circumstances, what reply could a harassed President make to the letter from the South Carolina commissioners? To compose one was difficult; to get the composition approved by a cabinet that was beginning to be as touchy and as stiff-backed as the secessionists themselves would be even harder. Buchanan tried, and on Saturday, December 29, his cabinet came together to consider what he had written. Apparently Buchanan tried desperately to find some middle course. He would not remove the troops from Charleston, but he seems to have felt that it might still be possible to get Anderson back to Fort Moultrie if the South Carolina people would make a few concessions, and he tried to make it clear that Congress, rather than the President, had final control over title to Federal property in a seceded state. All in all, nobody in the cabinet approved of what he had put on paper except for the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Toucey, who liked the middle of the road even better than President Buchanan liked it. The Southerners thought it too harsh and the Unionists thought it too weak, and the cabinet meeting was filled with discord.14
Attorney General Stanton, abundantly equipped to cut his own trail through a meeting of this kind, presently took the floor and spoke bluntly and with much heat. (Everybody was talking heatedly to Buchanan these days; rarely has a President of the United States been addressed as sharply as Buchanan was being addressed just now.) Stanton poured out scorn on the commissioners from South Carolina.
“These gentlemen claim to be ambassadors,” he said. “It is preposterous! They cannot be ambassadors; they are law-breakers, traitors. They should be arrested. You cannot negotiate with them; and yet it seems by this paper that you have been led into doing that very thing. With all respect to you, Mr. President, I must say that the Attorney General, under his oath of office, dares not to be cognizant of the pending proceedings. Your reply to these so-called ambassadors must not be transmitted as the reply of the President. It is wholly unlawful, and improper; its language is unguarded and to send it as an official document will bring the President to the verge of usurpation.”15 Some years after this, Stanton said that Buchanan was pale as a ghost, tremulously wagging his head and waving his arms like a weak old man, and he added contemptuously: “It was a fight over a corpse.” But although Stanton grew abusive—at one stage he told the President that if he gave up Fort Sumter he would be a greater traitor than Benedict Arnold and would deserve hanging—it apparently was Jeremiah Black who carried the day. That night, after the long argument had ended, Black made up his mind to resign from the cabinet unless Major Anderson were given proper support, and his threat (supported, it is said, by Stanton and Postmaster General Holt) seems to have been decisive. The President finally made up his mind. He would deal no more with the South Carolina commissioners and he would not order the soldiers to leave Fort Sumter. Whatever might come of it, the administration henceforward would resist secession.16
On Sunday, December 30, while Buchanan was at last reaching this conclusion, General Scott sent another of his dignified and melancholy notes:
“Lieutenant-General Scott begs the President of the United States to pardon the irregularity of this communication. It is Sunday; the weather is bad, and General Scott is not well enough to go to church. But matters of the highest national importance seem to forbid a moment’s delay, and if misled by zeal he hopes for the President’s forgiveness. Will the President permit General Scott, without reference to the War Department and otherwise, as secretly as possible, to send two hundred and fifty recruits from New York Harbor to re-enforce Fort Sumter, together with some extra muskets or rifles, ammunition and subsistence stores?”17
Winfield Scott was pathetically decrepit, but he still had an eye, and he could see that if the government was not going to give up Fort Sumter it had better get ready for a fight.
4: Footsteps in a Dark Corridor
The area in which there would be room for quiet second thoughts was getting narrower and narrower; man
y small decisions were beginning to add up to one great decision. If the Mississippi commissioner had put things correctly when he told a Baltimore audience that secession was really a political maneuver designed to force concessions, the game was getting seriously out of control. Outright war could be averted now only if somebody backed down. As the tragic, confused, and dynamic year 1860 came to a close, there was not the slightest indication that anything of the kind was likely to happen.
Viewing the situation with an alert intelligence and from the vantage point of a family closely identified with the South Carolina secession movement, Mrs. Chesnut reflected that Major Anderson had provided a useful if dangerous stimulus. “The row is fast and furious now,” she wrote in her diary. “They say if we had been left out in the cold alone, we might have sulked a while, but back we would have had to go, and would merely have fretted and fumed and quarreled among ourselves. We needed a little wholesome neglect. Anderson had blocked that game, but now our sister States have joined us and we are strong. I give the condensed essence of the table talk: ‘Anderson has united the Cotton States. Now for Virginia!’ Those who want a row are in high glee. Those who dread it are glum and thoughtful enough.”1
No one in America dreaded a row more than President Buchanan, and he was as glum and thoughtful as anyone could have asked. He knew that the row could be much more easily started than stopped, and in his own way he had tried to apply the wholesome neglect Mrs. Chesnut was talking about. Now there could be no more neglect. What to do about secession would be the number-one order of business from now on, and as this became clear, it might also have been discerned that the cotton-state leaders, pressing just a little too hard, were about to lose the initiative. Until Major Anderson made his move, they had been in control, carrying less ardent Southerners along with them, forcing Northern leaders to keep step. Now the response to secession would be decisive. The challenge having been issued, everything would depend on what the challenged party was going to do about it.
