Coming Fury, Volume 1

by Bruce Catton

  4. Auchampaugh, op cit, 132–34.

  5. Attorney General Black’s opinion is from George Ticknor Curtis, Life of James Buchanan, Vol. II, 319–24. (Cited hereafter as Curtis.)

  6. Letters of Thomas L. Drayton, dated Nov. 10 and Nov. 23, 1860, and letter of R. L. Ripley, dated Nov. 7, 1860, all in the Edwin M. Stanton Papers, Library of Congress.

  7. Letter of William Henry Trescot dated Nov. 17, 1860, in the Robert N. Gourdin Papers, Duke University Library; letter of Trescot dated Nov. 19, in the Edwin M. Stanton Papers; Mrs. Chesnut, 28.

  8. James D. Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. VII, 3157–69.

  CHAPTER THREE: The Long Farewell

  1. The Union Is Dissolved

  1. Journal of the Convention of the People of South Carolina, Held in 1860–61 3–5; John Amasa May and Joan Reynolds Faunt, South Carolina Secedes, 5–7.

  2. Journal of the Convention, 18; Frank Moore, The Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events (cited hereafter as Moore’s Rebellion Record), Vol. I, 3; New York Times, Dec. 18, 1860.

  3. New York Times, Dec. 19 and Dec. 20, 1860.

  4. Journal of the Convention, 46–47, 53; Nicolay & Hay, Vol. III, 13.

  5. James Petigru Carson, Life, Letters and Speeches of James Louis Petigru, the Union Man of South Carolina, 361, 364.

  6. Diary of Edmund Ruffin, Vol. IV, 713 ff.

  7. Nicolay & Hay, Vol. III, 11–12.

  8. Samuel Wylie Crawford, The Genesis of the Civil War; the Story of Sumter, 1860–61 (cited hereafter as Crawford) 54–55; New York Times, Dec. 20 and Dec. 22, 1860.

  9. May and Faunt, South Carolina Secedes, 18–19.

  10. Journal of the Convention, 325–31, 332–44.

  11. Letter of William Porcher Miles dated Dec. 20, 1860, in the Robert N. Gourdin Papers.

  12. New York Times, Dec. 22, Dec. 24, 1860.

  13. Moore’s Rebellion Record, Vol. I; Diary, 3; Documents, 1.

  14. Mrs. Roger Pryor, Reminiscences of Peace and War, 110–12; Buchanan’s letter of Dec. 20 to James Gordon Bennett, in the James Buchanan Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

  2. A Delegation of Authority

  1. The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. I, 68–69. (This invaluable compilation is hereafter cited as O.R. Unless otherwise noted in the citation, the volumes are from Series I.)

  2. O.R., Vol. I, 70–72.

  3. There is a good brief sketch of Anderson in D.A.B., Vol. I, 274–75. His orders are in O.R., Vol. I, 73.

  4. Anderson’s first report from Fort Moultrie, Nov. 23, 1860, O.R., Vol. I, 74; Crawford, 6–7; Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (hereafter cited as B. & L.) Vol. I, 40.

  5. O.R., Vol. I, 74–77.

  6. Ibid, 78–79.

  7. Ibid, 81–82.

  8. Crawford, 37–40. The letter from the South Carolina delegation to President Buchanan is in the William Porcher Miles Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina. On the back of this document is a note apparently in Buchanan’s handwriting, containing the statement: “I objected to the word ‘Provided’ as this might be construed into an agreement on my part which I never would make. They said nothing was further from their intentions. They did not so understand & I should not so consider it.”

  9. O.R., Vol. I, 82–83.

  10. Crawford, 71–74; O.R., Vol. I, 89–90.

  11. Buchanan, 106; O.R., Vol. I, 103.

  12. Letter of Major Anderson to Dr. G. T. Metcalfe, Dec. 15, 1860, in the A. Conger Goodyear Collection, Historical Manuscripts Division, Yale University Library.

  13. Letter of Major Anderson to the Rev. Mr. R. B. Duane, Dec. 19, 1860, in the Goodyear Collection.

  14. Letter of Major Anderson, Dec. 12, 1860, to a friend whose name is not decipherable, in the Robert Anderson Papers, Library of Congress.

  15. Crawford, 77–78.

  16. Ibid, 81–84.

  17. Unfinished draft of letter dated Dec. 20, in the James Buchanan Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

  18. Crawford, 88.

  3. An Action and a Decision

  1. Crawford, 95; O.R., Vol. I, 106–7; Abner Doubleday, Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860–61, 40–50.

  2. Doubleday, op cit, 60–64; also in B. & L., Vol. I, 44–45.

  3. Captain James Chester, Inside Sumter in ’61, in B. & L., Vol. I, 51–52; Diary of Edmund Ruffin, Vol. IV, 718.

  4. Eba Anderson Lawton, Major Robert Anderson and Fort Sumter 1861, 8.

  5. O.R., Vol. I, 2.

  6. Crawford, 142–44; quoting liberally from Trescot’s diary, to which Crawford apparently had access but which is no longer available. Buchanan’s own account of his meeting with the South Carolina commissioners is in his book, The Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion, 181–82.

  7. Auchampaugh, 66–67; Crawford, 37. A copy of Cass’s letter of resignation, and a memorandum thereon by Buchanan, both in Buchanan’s handwriting, are in the Buchanan Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

  8. Crawford, 146; Chadwick, Causes of the Civil War, 213; George C. Gorham, Life and Public Services of Edwin M. Stanton, Vol. I, 158; Buchanan, 180–81.

  9. Crawford, 148, giving the text of a letter he received in 1871 from James L. Orr with details of the meeting.

  10. Crawford, 146.

  11. Winfield Scott, Memoirs, Vol. II, 613; O.R., Vol. I, 112.

  12. O.R., Vol. I, 109–10.

  13. Buchanan, 182.

  14. Nicolay & Hay, Vol. III, 74.

  15. Frank A. Flower, Edwin McMasters Stanton, 88.

  16. Document of John Codman Ropes dated 1870, setting forth an interview he had had with Stanton in 1869, in the Horatio Woodman Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society; Rhodes, Vol. III, 231; Crawford, 151.

  17. O.R., Vol. I, 114.

  4. Footsteps in a Dark Corridor

  1. Mrs. Chesnut, 4–5.

  2. Basler, Vol. IV, 149–51.

  3. Letter of John A. Gilmer dated Dec. 10, 1860, in the Robert Todd Lincoln Papers; Basler, Vol. IV, 151–52.

  4. Basler, Vol. IV, 154, 156.

  5. Ibid, 157, 159.

  6. Ibid, 162.

  7. Ibid, 164–65.

  8. For a brief discussion of Floyd’s odd course, see D.A.B., Vol. VI, 482–83; also Nevins, Vol. II, 372.

  9. Telegram, Trescot to Miles, marked showing receipt at Charleston Dec. 31, 1860, in the William Porcher Miles Papers.

  10. Gov. Pickens to Lieut. Col. De Saussure, dated Dec. 31, 1860, in the Wilmot Gibbs De Saussure Order Book, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina.

  11. O.R., Vol. I, 120.

  12. Ibid, 120–25; Curtis, 446.

  13. Letters of H. Pollock dated Dec. 30; of Charles A. Hamilton, dated Dec. 28, and of Edward Hinks, dated Dec. 26, from the Robert Anderson Papers, Library of Congress.

  14. Rhodes, Vol. III, 230–241; Meneely, The War Department, 1861, 43–45; note from Buchanan to Floyd dated “Christmas Evening,” enclosing a telegram from citizens of Pittsburgh, in the James Buchanan Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

  5. The Strategy of Delay

  1. Mrs. Roger Pryor, Reminiscences of Peace and War, 115; Nichols, Disruption of American Democracy, 438, quoting a letter from the wife of Senator W. M. Gwin of California.

  2. Brig. Gen. Charles P. Stone, describing a New Year’s Eve conversation with Gen. Scott, in B. & L., Vol. I, 9; O.R., Vol. I, 119.

  3. Buchanan’s account of the sequence of orders relative to the dispatch of the Brooklyn is contained in his letter of Jan. 9, 1861, to Jacob Thompson, copy in the James Buchanan Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The change of plans which led to use of the Star of the West is set forth in Buchanan’s The Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion, 189–91. A somewhat different version is in Winfield Scott’s Memoirs, Vol. II, 620–21.

  4. O.R., Vol. I, 132, 133.

  5. Of
ficial Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (cited hereafter as N.O.R.) Vol. I, 220.

  6. O.R., Vol. I, 130–31, 252; Crawford, 133, 139.

  7. O.R., Vol. I, 9–10, containing the report of Lieut. Charles R. Wood, 9th U. S. Infantry.

  8. Doubleday, Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie, 102.

  9. Crawford, 184–85; B. & L., Vol. I, 61; Miss A. Fletcher, Within Fort Sumter, or, A View of Major Anderson’s Garrison Family for One Hundred and Ten Days, 14.

  10. Crawford, 187; copy of Major Anderson’s letter to W. A. Gordon, dated January 11, 1861, in the James Buchanan Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

  11. The letters exchanged by Major Anderson and Governor Pickens are in O.R., Vol. I, 134–36.

  12. Crawford, 189.

  13. O.R., Vol. I, 137–38, 143–44; Crawford, 191–94, 209; Doubleday, op cit, 117.

  14. Nicolay & Hay, Vol. III, 118–21.

  15. Letter of Jefferson Davis to Governor Pickens, dated Jan. 20, 1861, in the Miscellaneous Papers, Huntington Library.

  16. Letter of Governor Pickens to Jefferson Davis, dated Jan. 23, 1861, in the Goodyear Collection.

  17. Curtis, Vol. II, 451; Buchanan, 194–96; O.R., Vol. I, 166–68.

  18. Crawford, 231–33.

  19. O.R., Vol. I, 326–27.

  20. Ibid, 474–76, 484–85.

  21. Dumond, The Secession Movement, 204; Dunbar Rowland, History of Mississippi, the Heart of the South, Vol. I, 781.

  22. Appleton’s American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 10–11; O.R., Series Four, Vol. I, 46–47; Rowland, History of Mississippi, Vol. I, 783–84, 790.

  23. On Jan. 19, 1861, the Springfield (Mass.) Republican remarked that the Buchanan cabinet had become about as sectional as that of Abraham Lincoln could ever be, and predicted that “the policy of the outgoing administration by the 1st of March will have become precisely that of the incoming one”—a very fair appraisal. Two weeks earlier the politically observant Edward McPherson, clerk of the House of Representatives, wrote that “the Prest is under better influences … he more clearly sees his duty. The mutterings of the mighty North have reached him.” (Letter of McPherson to Francis Lieber, dated Jan. 2 and 3, 1861, in the Francis Lieber Collection at the Huntington Library.)

  24. Appleton’s Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 428–29.

  6. Everything, Even Life Itself

  1. Varina Howell Davis, Jefferson Davis: A Memoir, by His Wife, Vol. I, 696–98; Congressional Globe, 36th Congress, Second Session, Part I, 487.

  2. Varina Howell Davis, Vol. I, 699; copy of a letter from Jefferson Davis to Anna Ella Carroll, dated March 1, 1861, in the Anna Ella Carroll Papers, Maryland Historical Society; letter of Davis to Clement C. Clay, dated Jan. 19, 1861, in the Clement C. Clay Papers, Duke University Library; Dunbar Rowland, Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist, Vol. V, 37–38.

  3. Moore’s Rebellion Record, Vol. I, Diary, 9, Documents, 17–18.

  4. Appleton’s Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 395, 538, 677; Dumond, The Secession Movement, 220–22, 223.

  5. Appleton’s Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 477; Pulaski County Historical Review, Vol. V, Number One; Arkansas Gazette, Feb. 16, 1861; the J. M. Keller Papers, in the files of the Arkansas History Commission; Jack B. Scroggs, “Arkansas in the Secession Crisis,” in the Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. XII, Number Three.

  6. Nevins, Vol. II, 425–27. In a lengthy letter to J. M. Calhoun, Commissioner from Alabama, Houston acidly remarked that “we have to recollect that our conservative Northern friends cast over a quarter of a million more votes against the Black Republicans than we of the entire South.” (O.R., Series Four, Vol. I, 77.)

  7. Appleton’s Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 728–29; O.R., Series Four, Vol. I, 77.

  8. Letter of Douglas to A. Belmont, dated Dec. 25, 1860, in the Douglas Papers, Chicago Historical Society. See also a very similar letter of his in the Lanphier Papers, Illinois State Historical Library.

  9. Gilbert G. Glover, Immediate Pre-Civil War Compromise Efforts, 112–13; Edward McPherson, The Political History of the United States of America During the Great Rebellion, 57; David C. Mearns, The Lincoln Papers, Vol. II, 406.

  10. Congressional Globe, 36th Congress, Second Session, Part One, 237–38, 267.

  11. Ibid, 341–44; New York Herald, Jan. 8 and Jan. 12, 1861; Moore’s Rebellion Record, Vol. I, Diary, 15; Carlos Martyn, Wendell Phillips: the Agitator, 306.

  12. New York Herald, Jan. 28, 1861; Henry Villard, Lincoln on the Eve of 1861, 58–59; letter of Charles Sumner, dated Jan. 21, 1861, from the Papers of John A. Andrew, Massachusetts Historical Society.

  13. Villard, op cit; also Memoirs of Henry Villard, Vol. I, 145; W. H. L. Wallace, letter to “Dear Ann” dated Jan. 11, 1861, in the Wallace-Dickey Papers, Illinois State Historical Library; letter of C. H. Ray, dated Jan. 17, 1861, in the John A. Andrew Papers.

  14. McMaster, Vol. VIII, 510–11.

  15. O.R., Vol. XVIII, 772–73.

  16. Letter of Lee to Mrs. Lee, dated Jan. 23, 1861, and Lee’s letter to “My Precious Agnes,” dated Jan. 29, 1861, in the Robert E. Lee Papers, Library of Congress.

  CHAPTER FOUR: Two Presidents

  1. The Man and the Hour

  1. T. C. De Leon, Four Years in the Rebel Capitals: an Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy, from Birth to Death, 23–24; New Orleans Delta, Feb. 22, 1861.

  2. De Leon, op cit, 24, 33; Burton J. Hendrick, Statesmen of the Lost Cause, 89–90.

  3. “Correspondence of Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb, 1860–1862,” in Publications of the Southern History Association, Vol. XI, 160–63; Alexander H. Stephens, A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States, Vol. II, 325.

  4. J. L. M. Curry, Civil History of the Government of the Confederate States, with Some Personal Reminiscences, 42–44, 50; E. Merton Coulter, The Confederate States of America, 20–21; Hendrick, op cit, 85.

  5. For a detailed comparison of the United States and Confederate Constitutions, see Jefferson Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Vol. I, 648–73. Howell Cobb believed at the time that the Confederate Constitution was “the ablest instrument ever prepared for the government of a free people.” Taking the United States Constitution as the basis for action, he said, “we have written down in the language of truth and simplicity the principles which an honest construction of that instrument has long pronounced its true meaning.” (Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States of America, Vol. I, 153.)

  6. Southern Literary Messenger for February 1861, 152.

  7. R. Barnwell Rhett, The Confederate Government at Montgomery, in B. & L., Vol. I, 99 ff; Alexander Stephens, Vol. II, 328–333.

  8. “Correspondence of Robert Toombs, Alexander H. Stephens and Howell Cobb”: annual report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1911, Vol. II 536–37.

  9. Johnston and Browne, Life of Alexander H. Stephens, 385–86.

  10. “Correspondence of Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb,” 171–78.

  11. Davis, Rise and Fall, Vol. I, 230, 236–37; Johnston and Browne, 387.

  12. Varina Howell Davis, Jefferson Davis, Vol. II, 18; postwar letter of Jefferson Davis, dated June 4, 1878, in the Franklin Stringfellow Papers, Virginia State Historical Society.

  13. Montgomery Post, Feb. 20, 1861; New York Herald, Feb. 23, 1861.

  14. Appleton’s Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 127; Montgomery Weekly Advertiser, Feb. 16, 1861; New York Herald, Feb. 23.

  2. The Long Road to Washington

  1. Paul Angle, Here Have I Lived, 260; Basler, Vol. IV, 190; New York Herald, Feb. 12, 1861; James G. Randall, Lincoln the President, Vol. I, 274–75.

  2. New York Herald, Feb. 12, 1861; Basler, Vol. IV, 193–96.

  3. Basler, Vol. IV, 197, 204, 208, 210–11. Southern newspapers made hay with some of these remarks. The Montgomery Post Feb. 20, 1861 asked sharply: “What means this civil commotion, these war-like preparations, this tearing down and building up of
government? is it all imaginary—all a mere phantom fleeing before our distorted visions? The results of the future will develop how much of reality there is contained in this ‘artificial crisis.’ ” The Natchez Courier Feb. 13, 1861, was moved to lament: “Alas! for our country’s welfare! We have no Washington; no Clay; no Webster! The eagles have fled; the serpents crawl to eminence where eagles hardly dare to fly.”

  4. Basler, Vol. IV, 226, 230–33, 238, 240–41.

  5. Villard, Memoirs, Vol. I, 151; New York Herald, Feb. 20, 1861; Montgomery Post, Feb. 22, 1861.

  6. Letter of David Davis to Mrs. Davis, dated Feb. 17, 1861, from the David Davis Papers, Illinois State Historical Library.

  7. The fantastic story of the assassination plot is excellently summerized in Randall, Vol. I, 286–89, and in Benjamin Thomas, 242–44.

  8. L. E. Chittenden, Recollections of President Lincoln and His Administration, 37–39.

  9. The furore raised by the soft hat and the cloak, transformed by rumor into plaid wrapper and tam o’shanter, could have been even worse if an idea which Secretary John G. Nicolay apparently toyed with had come to anything. In the Nicolay Papers at the Library of Congress there is a letter to Nicolay from one A. H. Flanders of New York, dated Jan. 27, 1861, reading as follows: “I wrote you a line yesterday from Philada. stating that I had ascertained that I could certainly get the coat of mail made in that city.… I shall be very happy to get this done for Mr. Lincoln if he will accept of it, and really hope he will not go to Washington without it. I am confident I can get it done without anyone knowing it is for him.” A picture of Lincoln in a coat of mail would be worthy to stand beside the one which shows the mountain man, Jim Bridger, in a suit of armor.

  10. Letter of C. F. Adams to R. H. Dana, dated Feb. 18, 1861, in the Dana Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

  3. Colonel Lee Leaves Texas

  1. B. &. L., Vol. I, 36, n; Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee, Vol. I, 421.