CHAPTER III.

THE MEXICAN WAR

[1836]

Attracted by fertility of soil and advantages for cattle-raising, large
numbers of Americans had long been emigrating to Texas. By 1830 they
probably comprised a majority of its inhabitants. March 2, 1836, Texas
declared its independence of Mexico, and on April 10th of that year
fought in defence of the same the decisive battle of San Jacinto. Here
Houston gained a complete victory over Santa Anna, the Mexican
President, captured him, and extorted his signature to a treaty
acknowledging Texan independence. This, however, as having been forced,
the Mexican Government would not ratify.

[1845]

Not only did the Texans almost to a man wish annexation to our Union,
but, as we have seen, the dominant wing of the democratic party in the
Union itself was bent upon the same, forcing a demand for this into
their national platform in 1840. Van Buren did not favor it, which was
the sole reason why he forfeited to Polk the democratic nomination in
1844. Polk was elected by free-soil votes cast for Birney, which, had
Clay received them, would have carried New York and Michigan for him and
thus elected him; but the result was hailed as indorsing annexation.
Calhoun, Tyler's Secretary of State, more influential than any other one
man in bringing it about, therefore now advocated it more zealously than
ever. Calhoun's purpose in this was to balance the immense growth of the
North by adding to southern territory Texas, which would of course
become a slave State, and perhaps in time make several States. As the
war progressed he grew moderate, out of fear that the South's show of
territorial greed would give the North just excuse for sectional
measures.



General Sam. Houston.


Henry Clay, with nearly the entire Whig Party, from the first opposed
the Tyler-Calhoun programme. Clay's own reason for this, as his
memorable Lexington speech in 1847 disclosed, was that the United States
would be looked upon "as actuated by a spirit of rapacity and an
inordinate desire for territorial aggrandizement." His party as a whole
dreaded more the increment which would come to the slave power. After
much discussion in Congress, Texas was annexed to the Union on January
25, 1845, just previous to Polk's accession. June 18th, the Texan
Congress unanimously assented, its act being ratified July 4th by a
popular convention. Thus were added to the United States 376,133 square
miles of territory.



General Santa Anna.


The all-absorbing question now was where Texas ended: at the Nueces, as
Mexico declared, or at the Rio Grande, as Texas itself had maintained,
insisting upon that stream as of old the bourne between Spanish America
and the French Louisiana. Mexico, proud, had recognized neither the
independence of Texas nor its annexation by the United States, yet would
probably have agreed to both as preferable to war, had the alternative
been allowed. To be sure, she was dilatory in settling admitted claims
for certain depredations upon our commerce, threatened to take the
annexation as a casus belli, withdrew her envoy and declined to accept
Slidell as ours, and precipitated the first actual bloodshed. Yet war
might have been averted, and our Government, not Mexico's, was to blame
for the contrary result. Slidell played the bully, the navy threatened
the coast, our wholly deficient title, through Texas, to the
Nueces-Rio-Grande tract was assumed without the slightest ado to be
good, and when General Arista, having crossed the river in Taylor's
vicinity, repelled the latter's attack upon him, the President, followed
by Congress, falsely alleged war to exist "by act of the Republic of
Mexico."

[1846]

During most of 1845, General Zachary Taylor was at Corpus Christi on the
west bank of the Nueces, in command of 3,600 men. The first aggressive
movement occurred in March of the following year, when Taylor, invading
the disputed territory by command from Washington, advanced to the Rio
Grande, opposite Matamoras. April 26th, a Mexican force crossed the
river and captured a party of American dragoons which attacked them.
Taylor drew back to establish communication with Point Isabel, and on
advancing again toward the Rio Grande, May 8th, found before him a
Mexican force of nearly twice his numbers, commanded by Arista. The
battle of Palo Alto ensued, and next day that of Resaca de la Palma,
Taylor completely victorious in both. May 13th, before knowledge of
these actions had reached Washington, warranted merely by news of the
cavalry skirmish on April 26th, Congress declared war, and the President
immediately called for 50,000 volunteers. In July Taylor was re-enforced
by Worth, and proceeded to organize a campaign against Monterey, a
strongly fortified town some ninety miles toward the City of Mexico.
This place was reached September 19th, and captured on the 22d, after
hard fighting and severe losses on both sides. An armistice of eight
weeks followed.



James K. Polk, after a photograph by Brady.



PLAN OF THE BATTLE OF BUENA VISTA MORNING 23 OF FEB 1847.


[1847]

Meantime a revolution had occurred in Mexico. The banished Santa Anna
was recalled, and as President of the Republic assumed command of the
Mexican armies. On February 23, 1847, occurred one of the most
sanguinary but brilliant battles of the war, that of Buena Vista.
Taylor, learning that a Mexican force was advancing under Santa Anna, at
least double the 5,200 left him after the requisition upon him which
General Scott had just made, drew back to the strong position of Buena
Vista, south of Saltillo. Here Santa Anna, having through an intercepted
despatch learned of Taylor's weakness, ferociously fell upon him with a
force 12,000 strong. On right and centre, by dint of good tactics and
bull-dog fighting, Taylor held his own and more, but the foe succeeded
at first in partly turning and pushing back his left. The Mexican
commander bade Taylor surrender, but was refused, whence the saying that
"Old Rough and Ready," as they called Taylor, "was whipped but didn't
know it."

To check the flanking movement he sent forward two regiments of
infantry, well supported by dragoons and artillery, who charged the
advancing mass, broke the Mexicans' column, and sent them fleeing in
confusion. This saved the day. The American loss was 746, including
several officers, among them Lieutenant-Colonel Clay, son of the
Kentucky statesman. Colonel Jefferson Davis, one day to be President of
the Southern Confederacy, caused during this conflict great havoc in the
enemy's ranks with his Mississippi riflemen. Santa Anna's loss was
2,000.



General Winfield Scott.


General Winfield Scott had meantime been ordered to Mexico as chief in
command. Taylor was a Whig, and the Whigs whispered that his martial
deeds were making the democratic cabinet dread him as a presidential
candidate. But Scott was a Whig, too, and if there was anything in the
surmise, his victorious march must have given Polk's political household
additional food for reflection. Scott's plan was to reduce Vera Cruz,
and thence march to the Mexican capital, two hundred miles away, by the
quickest route. Vera Cruz capitulated March 27, 1847.

Scott straightway struck out for the interior. He was bloodily opposed
at Cerro Gordo, April 18th, and at Jalapa, but he made quick work of the
enemy at both these places. In the latter city, after his victory, he
awaited promised re-enforcements. When the last of these had arrived,
August 6th, under General Franklin Pierce, so that he could muster about
14,000 men, he advanced again. August 10th the Americans were in sight
of the City of Mexico. This was a natural stronghold, and art had added
to its strength in every possible way. Except on the south and west it
was nearly inaccessible if defended with any spirit. Scott of course
directed his attack toward the west and south sides of the city. The
first battle in the environs of the capital was fiercely fought near the
village of Contreras, and proved an overwhelming defeat for the
Mexicans. Two thousand were killed or wounded, while nearly 1,000,
including four generals, were captured, together with a large quantity
of stores and ammunition. The American loss was only 60 killed and
wounded.

The survivors fled to Churubusco, farther toward the city, where, with
every advantage of position, Santa Anna had united his forces for a
final stand. An old stone convent, which our artillery could not reach
till late in the action, was utilized as a barricade, and from this the
Mexicans poured a most deadly fire upon their assailants. The Americans
were victorious, as usual, but their loss was fearful, 1,000 being
killed or wounded, including 76 officers. A truce to last a fortnight
was now agreed upon, but Scott, seeing that the Mexicans were taking
advantage of it to strengthen their fortifications, did not wait so
long. He now had about 8,500 men fit for duty, and sixty-eight guns.
Hostilities were renewed September 7th, by the storm and capture,
costing nearly 800 men, of Molino del Rey, or "King's Mill," a mile and
a half from the city.

Possession of the Molino opened the way to Chapultepec, the Gibraltar of
Mexico, 1,100 yards nearer the goal. As it was built upon a rock 150
feet high, impregnable on the north and well-nigh so on the eastern and
most of the southern face, only the western and part of the southern
sides could be scaled. But the stronghold was the key to the city, and
after surveying the situation, a council of war decided that it must be
taken. Two picked American detachments, one from the west, one from the
south, pushed up the rugged steeps in face of a withering fire. The
rock-walls to the base of the castle had to be mounted by ladders. This
was successfully accomplished; the enemy were driven from the building
back into the city, and the castle and grounds occupied by our troops. A
large number of fugitives were cut off by a force sent around to the
north.



The Plaza of the City of Mexico.


[1848]

To pierce the city was even now by no means easy. The approach was by
two roads, one entering the Belen gate, the other the San Cosme. General
Quitman advanced toward the Belen, but at the entrance was stopped by a
destructive cannonade from the citadel itself. Those fighting their way
toward the San Cosme succeeded in entering the city, Lieutenant U. S.
Grant making his mark in the gallant work of this day. The city was
evacuated that night, and on the 15th of September, 1847, was fully in
the hands of Scott.

The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed on February 2, 1848. It
established the Rio Grande as the boundary between the two countries,
and New Mexico, of course including what is now Arizona and also
California, was ceded to the United States for $15,000,000. The United
States also assumed, to the sum of $3,250,000, the claims of American
citizens upon Mexico. For Gadsden's Purchase, in 1853, between the Gila
River and the Mexican State of Chihuahua, we paid $10,000,000 more. Our
territory thus received in all, as a consequence of the Mexican War, an
increment of 591,398 square miles.

Inseparable from the politics of the Mexican War is the Oregon question,
since Oregon's re-occupation and "fifty-four forty or fight" had been
democratic cries for securing to Polk west-northern votes in 1844. We
had, however, no valid claim so far north, except against Russia--by the
treaty of 1824. The Louisiana purchase, indeed, had vested us with
whatever--very dubious--rights France had upon the Pacific, and the
Florida treaty of 1819 gave us the far better title of Spain to the
coast north of 42 degrees. This treaty, with Gray's discovery of the
Columbia in 1792, Lewis and Clarke's official explorations of the
Columbia valley in 1804-05-06, England's retrocession, in 1818, of
Astoria, captured during the War of 1812, and extensive actual
settlements upon the river by American citizens from 1832 on, made our
claim perfect up to 49 degrees at least. This parallel the convention
with Great Britain in 1818 had already fixed as our northern line from
the Lake of Woods to the Rocky Mountains. Between this and 54 degrees 40
minutes, England's title, from exploration and settlement, was superior
to ours, which was based upon alleged old Spanish discovery. The same
convention of 1818, renewed in 1827, opened the Oregon country to
occupation by settlers from both nations. Increase of immigration
rendering a fixing of jurisdictions imperative, England pressed for the
line of the Columbia below its intersection of the forty-ninth parallel.
We had twice offered to settle upon 49 degrees, which limit the rapid
growth of our population in the region induced England in 1836 to
accept. Whether Polk's blustering demand for "all Oregon," which came
near bringing on war with England, and his much condemned recession
later, were mere opportunist acts, is still a question. Many consider
them pieces of a deep-laid policy by Polk to tole Mexico to war in hope
of England's aid, then, suddenly pacifying England, to devour Mexico at
his leisure.



CHAPTER IV.

CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISE OF 1850

[1846]

One of the campaigns at the beginning of the Mexican War was that of
General Stephen W. Kearney, from Fort Leavenworth, against New Mexico.
It was opened in May, 1846. He invaded the country without much
opposition, arrived at Santa Fe August 18th, having marched 873 miles,
declared the inhabitants free from all allegiance to Mexico, and formed
a territorial government over them as United States subjects.

Captain John C. Fremont had previously, but in the same year, 1846, been
sent to California at the head of an exploring expedition, and in May he
was notified to remain in the country in anticipation of hostilities. On
June 15th he captured Samona. Meanwhile, Commodore Sloat was erecting
our flag over the towns on the coast. In July Sloat was superseded by
Commodore Stockton, who routed the Mexican commander, De Castro, at Los
Angeles, joined Fremont, and on August 13th seized Monterey, the then
capital. The two commanders now placed themselves at the head of a
provisional government for California.



Zachary Taylor. After a photograph by Brady.



The Site of San Francisco in 1848.


[1848-1849]

In 1848, on the same day and almost at the same hour when the peace of
Guadalupe Hidalgo was concluded, gold was discovered in California. It
was on the land of one Sutter, a Swiss settler in the Sacramento Valley,
as some workmen were opening a flume for a mill. In three months over
4,000 persons were there, digging for gold with great success. By July,
1849, it is thought, 15,000 had arrived. Nearly all were forced to live
in booths, tents, log huts, and under the open sky. The sparse
population previously on the ground left off farming and grazing and
opened mines. People became insane for gold. Immigrants soon came in
immense hordes. In 1846, aside from roving Indians, California had
numbered not much over 15,000 inhabitants. By 1850, it seems certain
that the territory contained no fewer than 92,597. The new-comers were
from almost every land and clime--Mexico, South America, the Sandwich
Islands, China--though, of course, most were Americans. The bulk of
these hailed from the Northwest and the Northeast. To this land of
promise the sturdy pioneers from the Mississippi Valley found their way
on foot, on horseback, or in wagons, over the Rocky Mountains and the
Sierras, following trails previously untrodden by civilized man. Those
from the East made long detours around Cape Horn or across the Isthmus
of Panama.


Sutter's Mill, California, where Gold was First Discovered.


The yield of gold from the virgin placers was enormous, a laborer's
average the first season being perhaps an ounce a day, though many made
much more. During the first two years about $40,000,000 worth of gold
was extracted. According to careful estimates the gold yield of the
United States, mostly from California, which had been only $890,000 in
1847, increased to $10,000,000 in 1848, to $40,000,000 in 1849, to
$50,000,000 in 1850, to $55,000,000 in 1851, to $60,000,000 in 1852, and
in 1853 to $65,000,000.

Most interesting were the spontaneous governmental and legal
institutions which arose in these motley communities, some of them
finding their originals in the English mining districts, others in
Mexico and Spain, and still others recalling the mining customs of
medieval Germany. For a time many camps had each its independent
government, disconnected from all human authority around or above. Some
of these were modelled after the Mexican Alcaldeship, others after the
New England town. Over those who rushed to the vicinity of Sutter's mill
that gentleman became virtual Alcalde, though he was not recognized by
all. The men first opening a placer would seek to pre-empt all the
adjoining land, giving up only when others came in numbers too strong
for them. Officers were elected and new customs sanctioned as they were
needed. Partnerships were sacredly maintained, yet by no other law than
that of the camp. Crimes against property and life seem to have been
infrequent at first, but the unparalleled wealth toled in and developed
a criminal class, which the rudimentary government could not control.
San Francisco formed in 1851 a vigilance committee of citizens, by which
crimes could be more summarily and surely punished. The pioneer banking
house in California began business at San Francisco in January, 1849.
The same month saw the first frame house on the Sacramento, near
Sutter's Fort.

The vast acquisition of territory by the Mexican War seemed destined to
be a great victory for slavery, because nearly all of it lay south of 36
degrees 30 minutes and hence by the Missouri Compromise could become
slave soil. But there was the complication that under Mexico all this
wide realm had been free. To exist there legally slavery must therefore
be established by Congress, making the case very different from the
cases of Louisiana, Florida, and Texas, which came under United States
authority already burdened. This predisposed many who were not in
general opposed to slavery, against extending the institution hither.
Early in the war a bill had passed the House, failing almost by accident
in the Senate, which contained the famous Wilmot Proviso, so named from
its mover in the House, that, except for crime, neither slavery nor
involuntary servitude should ever exist in any of the territories to be
annexed. Wilmot was a Democrat, and at this time a decided majority of
his party favored the proviso. But the pro-slavery wing rallied, while
the Whigs, disbelieving in the war and in annexation both, offered the
proviso Democrats no hearty aid. In consequence it was defeated both
then and after the annexation.

The election of 1848 went for the Whigs, and the next March 4th, General
Taylor became President. Though a southerner and a slave-holder, he was
moderate and a true patriot. So rapid had been the influx into
California that the Territory needed a stable government. Accordingly,
one of Taylor's first acts as President was to urge California to apply
for admission to statehood. General Riley, military governor, at once
called a convention, which, sitting from September 1st to October 13th,
framed a constitution and made request that California be taken into the
Union. This constitution prohibited slavery, and thus a new firebrand
was tossed into the combustible material with which the political
situation abounded. By this time nearly all the friends of freedom were
for the proviso, but its enemies as well had greatly increased. The
immense growth, actual and prospective, of northern population, greatly
inspired one side and angered the other.

[1850]

Resort was now had again to the old, illusive device of compromise, Clay
being the leader as usual. He brought forward his "Omnibus Bill," so
called because it threw a sop to everybody. It failed to pass as a
single measure, but was broken up and enacted piecemeal. Stubborn was
the fight. Radicals of the one part would consent to nothing short of
extending the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific; those of the
other stood solidly for the unmodified proviso.

In this crisis occurred President Taylor's death, July 9, 1850, which
was most unfortunate. He was known not to favor the pro-slavery
aggression which, in spite of Clay's personal leaning in the opposite
direction, the omnibus bill embodied. Mr. Fillmore, as also Webster,
whom he made his Secretary of State, nervous with fear of an
anti-slavery reputation, went fully Clay's length. The debate on this
compromise of 1850 was the occasion when Webster deserted the free-soil
principles which were now dominant in New England. His celebrated speech
of March. 7th marked the crisis of his life. He argued that the proviso
was not needed to prevent slavery in the newly gotten district, while
its passage would be a wanton provocation to the South From this moment
Massachusetts dropped him. When she next elected a senator for a full
term, it was Charles Sumner, candidate of the united Democrats and
Free-soilers, who went to Congress pledged to fight slavery to the
death.

But the omnibus compromises were passed. California was, indeed,
admitted free, September 9, 1850--the thirty-first State in order--and
slave-trade in the District of Columbia slightly alleviated. On the
other hand, Texas was stretched to include a huge piece of New Mexico
that was free before, and paid $10,000,000 to relinquish further claims.
This was virtually a bonus to holders of her scrip, which from seventeen
cents the dollar instantly rose to par. New Mexico and Utah were to be
organized as Territories without the proviso, and were made powerless to
legislate on slavery till they should become States. Least sufferable, a
fugitive slave law was passed, so Draconian that that of 1793, hitherto
in force, was benign in comparison. It placed the entire power of the
general Government at the slave-hunter's disposal, and ordered rendition
without trial or grant of habeas corpus, on a certificate to be had by
simple affidavit. Bystanders, if bidden, were obliged to help marshals,
and tremendous penalties imposed for aid to fugitives.

This act facilitated the recovery of fugitives at first, but not
permanently. Many who had labored for its passage soon saw that it was a
mistake. It powerfully fanned the abolition flame all over the North.
New personal liberty laws were enacted. A daily increasing number
adopted the view that the new act was unconstitutional, on the ground
that the Constitution places the rendition of slaves as of criminals in
the hands of States, and guarantees jury trial, even upon title to
property, if over twenty dollars in value. After the act had been
justified in the courts, multitudes of moderate northern men urged to a
dangerous degree the doctrine of state rights in defence of the liberty
laws. Others adopted the cry of the "higher law," and without joining
Garrison in denouncing the Government, did not hesitate to oppose in
every possible way the operation of this drastic legislation for
slave-catching.



Millard Fillmore.
From a painting by Carpenter in 1853, at the City Hall, New York.


The country's growth made escape from bondage continually easier and
easier. Once across the border a runaway was sure to find many friends
and few enemies. Openly, or, if this was required, by stealth, he was
passed quickly along to the Canada line. Between 1830 and 1860 over
30,000 slaves are estimated to have taken refuge in Canada. By 1850,
probably no less than 20,000 had found homes in the free States. The new
law moved many of these across into the British dominions. It was hence
increasingly difficult for the slave-owner to recover stray property.
All possible legal obstructions were placed in his way, and when these
failed he was likely still to be opposed by a mob which might prove too
powerful for the marshal and any posse which he could gather.



The Rendition of Anthony Burns in Boston.


In Boston, when a slave named Shadrach was arrested, his friends made a
sudden dash, rescued him from the officers and freed him. With Simms the
same was attempted, but in vain.  The removal of Anthony Burns from that
city in 1855 was possible only by escorting him down State Street to the
revenue cutter in waiting, inside a dense hollow square of United States
artillerymen and marines, with the whole city's militia under arms and
at hand. Business houses as well as residences were closed and draped in
mourning. It was an indignity which Massachusetts never forgot. At
Alton, Ill., slave-hunters seized a respectable colored woman, long
resident there, who fully believed herself free. She was surrounded by
an infuriated company of citizens, and would have been wrenched from her
captors' clutch had not they, in their terror, offered to sell her back
into freedom. The needed $1,200 was raised in a few minutes, and the
agonized creature restored to her family. Judge Davis, whom the evidence
had compelled to deliver the woman, on rendering the sentence resigned
his commission, declaring: "The law gives you your victim. Thank it and
not me, and may God have mercy on your sinful souls."



CHAPTER V.

THE FIGHT FOR KANSAS

[1850-1854]

The measures of 1850 proved anything but the "finality" upon slavery
discussion which both parties, the Whigs as loudly as the Democrats,
promised and insisted that they should be. Elated by its victory in
1850, and also by that of 1852, when the anti-slavery sentiment of
northern Whigs drove so many of their old southern allies to vote for
Pierce, giving him his triumphant election, the slavocracy in 1854
proceeded in its work of suicide to undo the sacred Missouri Compromise
of 1820. Douglas, the ablest northern Democrat, led in this, succeeding,
as official pacificator between North and South, somewhat to the office
of Clay, who had died June 29, 1852. The aim of most who were with him
was to make Kansas-Nebraska slave soil, but we may believe that Douglas
himself cherished the hope and conviction that freedom was its destiny.

This rich country west and northwest of Missouri, consecrated to freedom
by the Missouri Compromise, had been slowly filling with civilized men.
It did not promise to be a profitable field for slavery, nor would
economic considerations ever have originated a slavery question
concerning it. But politically its character as slave or free was of the
utmost consequence to the South, where the resolution gradually arose
either to secure it for the peculiar institution or else prevent its
organization even as a Territory. A motion for such organization had
been unsuccessfully made about 1843, and it was repeated, equally
without effect, each session for ten years. None of these motions had
contained any hint that slavery could possibly find place in the
proposed Territory. The bill of December 15, 1853, like its
predecessors, had as first drawn no reference whatever to slavery, but
when it returned from the committee on Territories, of which Douglas was
chairman, the report, not explicitly, indeed, made the assumption,
unheard of before, that Kansas-Nebraska stood in the same relation to
slavery in which Utah and New Mexico had stood in 1850; and that the
compromise of that year, in leaving the question of slavery to the
States to be formed from these Territories, had already set aside the
agreement of 1820. These assumptions were totally false. The act of 1850
gave Utah and New Mexico no power as Territories over the debatable
institution, and contained not the slightest suggestion of any rule in
the matter for territories in general.

But the hint was taken, and on January 16th notice given of intention to
move an out-and-out abrogation of the Missouri Compromise. Such
abrogation was at once incorporated in the Kansas-Nebraska bill reported
by Douglas, January 23, 1854. This separated Kansas from Nebraska, and
the subsequent struggle raged in reference to Kansas alone. The bill
erroneously declared it established by the acts of 1850 that "all
questions as to slavery in the Territories," no less than in the States
which should grow out of them, were to be left to the residents, subject
to appeal to the United States courts. It passed both houses by good
majorities and was signed by President Pierce May 30th. Its animus
appeared from the loss in the Senate of an amendment, moved by S. P.
Chase, of Ohio, allowing the Territory to prohibit slavery.



Franklin Pierce.
From a painting by Healy, in 1852, at the Corcoran Art Gallery.


Thus was first voiced by a public authority Judge Douglas's new and
taking heresy of "squatter sovereignty," that Congress, though
possessing by Article IV., Section iii., Clause 2 of the Constitution,
general authority over the Territories, is not permitted to touch
slavery there, but must leave it for each territorial populace "to vote
up or vote down." At the South this doctrine of Douglas's was dubbed
"nonintervention," and its real aim to secure Kansas a pro-slavery
character avowed. It was consequently popular there as useful toward the
repeal, although repudiated the instant its working bade fair to render
Kansas free.



Stephen A. Douglas.


[1855]

This was soon the prospect. Organizations had been formed to aid
anti-slavery emigrants from the northern States to Kansas. The first was
the Kansas Aid Society, another a Massachusetts corporation entitled the
New England Emigrant Aid Society. There were others still. Kansas began
to fill up with settlers of strong northern sympathies. They were in
real minority at the congressional election of November, 1854, and in
apparent minority at the territorial election the next March. The vote
against them on the last occasion, however, was largely deposited by
Missourians who came across the border on election day, voted, and
returned. This was demonstrated by the fact that there were but 2,905
legal voters in the Territory at the time, while 5,427 votes were cast
for the pro-slavery candidates alone. These early successes gave the
pro-slavery party and government in Kansas great vantage in the
subsequent congressional contest. The first Legislature convened at
Pawnee, July 2, 1855, enacted the slave laws of Missouri, and ordered
that for two years all state officers should be appointed by legislative
authority, and no man vote in the Territory who would not swear to
support the fugitive slave law.

The free-state settlers, now a majority, ignored this Legislature and
its acts, and at once set to work to secure Kansas admission to the
Union as a State without slavery. The Topeka convention, October 23,
1855, formed the Topeka constitution, which was adopted December 14th,
only forty-six votes being polled against it. This showed that
pro-slavery men abstained from voting. January 15, 1856, an election was
held under this constitution for state officers, a state legislature,
and a representative in Congress. The House agreed, July 3d, by one
majority, to admit Kansas with the Topeka constitution, but the Senate
refused. The Topeka Legislature assembled July 4th, but was dispersed by
United States troops.

[1856-1857]

This was done under command from Washington. President Pierce, backed by
the Senate with its steady pro-slavery majority, was resolved at all
hazards to recognize the pro-slavery authorities of Kansas and no other,
and, as it seemed, to force it to become a slave State; but fortunately
the House had an anti-slavery majority which prevented this. The friends
of freedom in Kansas had also on their side the history that was all
this time making in Kansas itself. During the summer of 1856 that
Territory was a theatre of constant war. Men were murdered, towns
sacked. Both sides were guilty of violence, but the free-state party
confessedly much the less so, having far the better cause. Nearly all
admitted that this party was in the majority. Even the governors, all
Democrats, appointed by Pierce, acknowledged this, some of them, to all
appearance, being removed as a punishment for the admission. Governor
Geary, in office from September, 1856, to March, 1857, and Governor
Walker, in office from May, 1857, were just and able men, and their
decisions, in most things favorable to the free-state cause, had much
weight with the country.

Walker's influence in the Territory led the free-state men to take part
in the territorial election of October, 1857, where they were entirely
triumphant. But the old, pro-slavery Legislature had called a
constitutional convention, which met at Lecompton, September, 1857, and
passed the Lecompton constitution. This constitution sanctioned slavery
and provided against its own submission to popular vote. It ordained
that only its provision in favor of slavery should be so submitted. This
pro-slavery clause was adopted, but only because the free-state men
would not vote. The Topeka Legislature submitted the whole constitution
to popular vote, when it was overwhelmingly rejected. The President and
Senate, however, urged statehood under the Lecompton constitution,
although popular votes in Kansas twice more, April, 1858, and March,
1859, had adopted constitutions prohibiting slavery, the latter being
that of Wyandotte. But the House still stood firm. Kansas was not
admitted to the Union till January 29, 1861, when her chief foes in the
United States Senate had seceded from the Union. She came in with the
Wyandotte constitution and hence as a free State.

It was during the debate upon Kansas affairs in 1856 that Preston S.
Brooks, a member of the House from South Carolina, made his cowardly
attack upon Charles Sumner. Sumner had delivered a powerful speech upon
the crime against Kansas, worded and delivered, naturally but
unfortunately, with some asperity. In this speech he animadverted
severely upon South Carolina and upon Senator Butler from that State.
This gave offence to Brooks, a relative of Butler, and coming into the
Senate Chamber while Sumner was busy writing at his desk, he fell upon
him with a heavy cane, inflicting injuries from which Sumner never
recovered, and which for four years unfitted him for his senatorial
duties. Sumner's colleague, Henry Wilson, in an address to the Senate,
characterized the assault as it deserved. He was challenged by Brooks,
but refused to fight on the ground that duelling was part of the
barbarism which Brooks had shown in caning Sumner. Anson Burlingame,
representative from Massachusetts, who had publicly denounced the
caning, was challenged by Brooks and accepted the challenge, but, as he
named Canada for the place of meeting, Brooks declined to fight him for
the ostensible reason that the state of feeling in the North would
endanger his life upon the journey. A vote to expel Brooks had a
majority in the House, though not the necessary two-thirds. He resigned,
but was at once re-elected by his South Carolina constituency.



Charles Sumner.


While the fierce Kansas controversy had been raging, the South had grown
cold toward the Douglas doctrine of popular sovereignty, and had
gradually adopted another view based upon Calhoun's teachings. This was
to the effect that Congress, not under Article IV., section iii., clause
2, but merely as the agent of national sovereignty, rightfully
legislates for the Territories in all things, yet, in order to carry out
the constitutional equality of the States in the Territories, is obliged
to treat slaves found there precisely like any other property. If one
citizen wishes to hold slaves, all the rest opposing, the general
Government must support him. It is obvious how antagonistic this thought
was to that of Douglas, since, according to the latter, a majority of
the inhabitants in a Territory could elect to exclude slavery as well as
to establish it.

The new southern or Calhoun theory assumed startling significance for
the Nation when, in 1857, it was proclaimed in the Dred Scott decision
of the United States Supreme Court as part of the innermost life of our
Constitution. Dred Scott was a slave of an army officer, who had taken
him from Missouri first into Illinois, a free State, then into
Wisconsin, covered by the Missouri Compromise, then back into Missouri.
Here the slave learned that by decisions of the Missouri courts his life
outside of Missouri constituted him free, and in 1848, having been
whipped by his master, he prosecuted him for assault. The decision was
in his favor, but was reversed when appeal was taken to the Missouri
Supreme Court. Dred Scott was now sold to one Sandford, of New York. Him
also he prosecuted for assault, but as he and Sandford belonged to
different States this suit went to the United States Circuit Court.
Sandford pleaded that this lacked jurisdiction, as the plaintiff was not
a citizen of Missouri but a slave.

It was this last issue which made the case immortal. The Circuit Court
having decided in the defendant's favor, the plaintiff took an appeal to
the Supreme Court. Here the verdict was against the citizenship of the
negro, and therefore against the jurisdiction of the court below. The
upper court did not stop with this simple dictum, hard and dubious as it
was, but proceeded to lay down as law an astounding course of
pro-slavery reasoning. In this it confined the ordinance of 1787 to the
old northwestern territory, declared the Missouri Compromise and all
other legislation against slavery in Territories unconstitutional, and
the slave character portable not only into all the Territories but into
all the States as well, slavery having everywhere all presupposition in
its favor and freedom being on the defensive. The denial of Scott's
citizenship was based solely upon his African descent, the inevitable
implication being that no man of African blood could be an American
citizen.

This decision rendered jubilant all friends of slavery, as also the
ultra Abolitionists, but correspondingly disheartened the sober friends
of human liberty. How, it was asked, is the cause of freedom to be
advanced when the supreme law of the land, as interpreted by the highest
tribunal existing for that purpose, virtually establishes slavery in New
England itself, provided any slave-master wishes to come there with his
troop? But anti-slavery men did not despair. Patriots had of course to
obey the court till its opinion should be reversed, yet its opinion was
at once repudiated as bad law. Men like Sumner, Wilson, Chase, Giddings,
Seward, and Lincoln, appealing to both the history and the letter of the
Constitution, and to the course of legislation and of judicial decisions
on slavery even in the slave States, had been elaborating and
demonstrating the counter theory, under which our fundamental law
appeared as anything but a "covenant with hell."

The pith of this counter theory was that slaves were property not by
moral, natural, or common law, but only by state law, that hence
freedom, not slavery, was the heart and universal presupposition of our
government, and that slavery, not freedom, was bound to show reasons for
its existence anywhere. This being so, while Calhoun and Taney were
right as against Douglas in ascribing to Congress all power over the
Territories, it was as impossible to find slaves in any United States
Territory as to find a king there. Slaves taken into Territories
therefore became free. Slaves taken into any free State became free.
Slaves carried from a slave State on to the high seas became free. Even
the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution must be applied in the way
least favorable to slavery.

On the other hand Douglas was right in his view that citizens and not
States were the partners in the Territories. As to the assertion of
incompatibility between citizenship and African blood, it would not
stand historical examination a moment. If it was true that the framers
of the Constitution did not consciously include colored persons in the
"ourselves and our posterity" for whom they purposed the "Blessings of
Liberty," neither did they consciously exclude, as is clear from the
fact that nearly everyone of them expected blacks some time to be free.



CHAPTER VI.

SLAVERY AND THE OLD PARTIES

[1841]

The Democratic Party was predominantly southern, the Whig northern. Both
sought to be of national breadth, but the democratic with much the
better success. Democracy would not give up its northern vote nor the
Whigs their southern; but a better party fealty, due to a longer and
prouder party history, rendered the Democrats far the more independent
and bold in the treatment of their out-lying wing. The consequence was
that while its rank and file at the North never loved slavery, they
tolerated it and became its apologists in a way to make the party as a
whole not only in appearance but in effect the pliant organ of the
slavocracy. This status became more pronounced with the progress of the
controversy and of the South's self-assertion. It was real under
Jackson, rigid under Van Buren, manifest and almost avowed under Polk,
Pierce, and Buchanan.

Whig temper toward slavery was throughout the North much better, but
whig party action was little better. Fear of losing southern supporters
permanently forbade all frank enlistment by the Whig Party for freedom.
The mighty leaders, Adams, Webster, even Clay, were well inclined, and
the party, as such, was at the South persistently accused of alliance
with the Abolitionists. This was untrue. Abolitionists, Liberal Party
men, and Free-soilers oftener voted with Democrats than with Whigs. Clay
complained once that Abolitionists denounced him as a slave-holder,
slave-holders as an Abolitionist, while both voted for Van Buren.
Compromise was the bane of this party as of the other; and each of the
resplendent chieftains named at one time or another seemed so reverent
to Belial that the record is painful reading.

When in 1841 the ship Creole sailed from Richmond with one hundred and
thirty-five slaves on board bound for the southern market, and one
Madison Washington, a recovered runaway on board, headed a dash upon
captain and crew, got possession of the vessel and took her into New
Providence, Clay was as loud as Calhoun or any southern senator in
demanding of the English Government the return of these slaves to
bondage or, at least, that of "the mutineers," as they were called.
Webster, Secretary of State at the time, instructed Edward Everett, our
English minister, to insist upon this, his arguments being sound and his
tone emphatic enough to please Mr. Calhoun. This was the time when
Giddings, of Ohio, brought into the House his resolutions to the effect
that slavery was a state institution only, and that hence any slave
carried on to the open ocean or to any other locality where only
national law prevailed, was free. He was censured in the House by a
large majority and resigned, but his Ohio constituency immediately
re-elected him.

[1836-1844]

Up to this time Giddings and Adams were the only pronounced anti-slavery
men in that body. Adams had acquiesced in the Missouri Compromise, but
all his subsequent career, especially his course in the House of
Representatives after 1830, is not only creditable to him so far as the
slavery question is concerned, but registers him as one of the most
influential opponents of slavery in our history. Refusing to be classed
with the Abolitionists, he was, in effect, the most efficient
Abolitionist of them all.

Previous to 1835, though petitions against slavery reached Congress in
great numbers and nettled many members, they had been received and
referred in the usual manner. But in February, 1836, the House created a
special committee to consider these petitions. It reported a resolution,
which passed under the previous question, that thereafter all papers of
the kind should be tabled without printing or reference. Adams declared
to the House: "I hold the resolution to be a direct violation of the
Constitution of the United States, the rules of this House, and the
rights of my constituents." In this rencounter Adams advanced the view
on which the Emancipation Proclamation by and by proceeded, that
slavery, even in States, was not beyond reach of the national arm, but
would be at the mercy of Congress the instant slave-masters should
rebel. This, the first of the gag laws, was, however, enacted. The
second, or Patton gag, was passed on December 21, 1837, and the third,
or Atherton gag, a year later. The principle of these, practically
cutting off all petitions to Congress respecting slavery, was taken up
in the twenty-first rule of the House in 1840.

Mr. Adams was from the first the resolute and uncompromising foe of the
gag policy. Wagon-loads of petitions came to him to offer, among them
one for his own expulsion from the House and one to dissolve the Union,
and he presented all.

February 6, 1837, he inquired of Mr. Speaker whether or not it would be
appropriate to offer a petition in his hand from slaves, whereupon the
pro-slavery members flew at him like vampires. After much uproar, in
which Adams gave as good as was sent him, he sarcastically reminded his
already infuriated assailants that the petition was in favor of slavery,
not against, and that he had emphatically not offered it, but only made
an innocent inquiry of the Speaker about doing so, the proper answer to
which was so far from obvious that the Speaker himself had signified his
intention to take the sense of the House upon it. Regularly, year after
year, Adams moved the abolition of the gag rule, was beaten as
regularly, long as a matter of course, sometimes after heated debate in
which he was always victor. But little by little the majority vote
against him lessened. In 1842 the gag passed by but four votes, in 1843
it had a majority of three only, in 1844 his motion to strike it out was
carried by a vote of one hundred and eight to eighty. Adams wrote that
day in his diary: "Blessed, forever blessed be the name of God."

[1850]

But a plenitude of Whigs, not all southern, voted for each of these
gags. The worst one of all was moved by a Whig. The XXVIIth Congress,
strongly whig, voted to retain the gag, which it was left for the
XXVIIIth, strongly democratic, finally to repeal. At the South, slavery
more and more overbore party feeling. Said Dixon, a Kentucky Whig, in
1854, "Upon the question of slavery I know no Whiggery, no Democracy--I
am a pro-slavery man." It should be added, however, that as the
conflict progressed, pro-slavery Whigs became few save in the South, and
that these nearly all soon turned Democrats.

Most humiliating was the vassalage to the slave power displayed by
northern congressmen of both parties, though forming a majority in the
House during all the great days of the slavery battle. The gag history
is one example. Resolutions against unquestionably unconstitutional laws
imprisoning northern seamen at southern ports simply because they were
colored, were tabled in the House by a large majority. Slavery in the
District of Columbia, where Congress had the right of "exclusive
legislation in all cases whatsoever," so that the entire nation was
responsible, defied every effort to abolish it till 1862, after the
Civil War began. Nor was the trade there in aught alleviated till 1850,
when some modification of it was possible as an element of the
compromise described in the preceding chapter. An enlargement of
Missouri, adding to the northwest corner of that State, as slave
territory, a vast tract which the Missouri Compromise had forever
devoted to freedom, being in truth a preliminary repeal of that pact,
was carried without opposition.

The brutal and murderous lawlessness practised against Abolitionists was
praised by northern congressmen often as slavery came up in debate. Even
Senator Silas Wright, of New York, subsequently famous as a foe of
slavery, in remarks upon the reference of anti-slavery petitions,
boasted of the atrocities at Utica in 1835 and of others similar, as
proof that "resistance to these dangerous and wicked agitators in the
North had reached a point beyond law and above law." A bill, in 1836,
for closing the mails to abolitionist literature, another defiance of
the Constitution, Amendment I., secured engrossment in the Senate by the
casting vote of Vice-President Van Buren; Wright, Tallmadge, and
Buchanan also favoring; but failed to pass, nineteen to twenty-five,
because Benton, Clay, and Crittenden had the patriotism to vote nay.

Discussion hereon laid bare the vital contradiction in our governmental
system. Calhoun showed that the Constitution permits each State for
itself to define, in order to inhibit, incendiary literature.
Characteristically, he would have forced mail agents to obey state laws
upon this matter. Yet for Congress to have so directed would plainly
have been abridging freedom of the press.



Thomas H. Benton.


Had the Whig Party, while in power from 1849 to 1853, been brave enough
boldly to assume a rational anti-slavery attitude, though it might have
been defeated, as it was in 1852, it would have had a future. The chance
passed unimproved. The temporizing attitude of the party's then leaders
and the known pro-slavery feeling of most of its southern
members--twelve Whigs voting in the House for the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise--proved deadly to the organization, its faithful old
battalions going over in the South to the Democrats, in the North to the
Republicans.

Many Whigs took the latter course by a circuitous route. Ever since the
alien and sedition laws, cry had been raised at intervals against the
too easy attainment of citizenship by the unnumbered immigrants
thronging to our shores, and agitation raised, more or less successful,
to thrust forward "Nativism" or Americanism, with opposition to the
Roman Catholic Church, as an issue in our politics. To such movements
Whigs, as legatees of Federalism, were always more friendly than
Democrats, which was partly a cause and partly a consequence of the
affinity that naturalized citizens all along showed for the Democratic
Party.

Americanism had its greatest run after 1850, when the Whigs saw their
organization going to pieces, and, mistakenly in part, attributed
democratic success to the immigrant vote. A secret fraternity arose,
called the "Know-nothings," from "I don't know," the ever-repeated reply
of its members to inquiry about its nature and doings. "America for
Americans" was their cry, and they proposed to "put none but Americans
on guard." At first pursuing their aims through silent manipulation of
the old parties, by 1854 the Know-nothings swung out as a third party.
From this date they lustily competed with the Republicans for the hosts
of whig and democratic stragglers jostled from their old ranks by the
omnibus bill legislation, the Kansas-Nebraska act, and the "Crime
against Kansas" committed by Pierce and his slavocratic Senate. In 1855
this party assumed national proportions, and worried seasoned
politicians not a little; but having crystallized around no living
issue, like that which nerved Republicanism, it fell like a
rocket-stick, its sparks going over to make redder still republican
fires. Henry Wilson became a Republican from the status of a
Know-nothing; so did Banks, Colfax, and a score of others subsequently
eminent among their new associates. Some had of old been Democrats,
though most had been Whigs.

Notwithstanding many appearances to the contrary, the Democracy had
begun to lose its hold upon the North from the moment of Polk's
nomination in 1844. In that act it showed preference, on the score of
availability, for a small man as presidential candidate. Harrison's
election and Van Buren's defeat in 1840 doubtless had something to do
with this. The same disposition was revealed in 1852, when Pierce was
made candidate. What harmed the party still more was swerving from
strict construction in declaring for the annexation of Texas, which in
this case did not imply enlargement of view in reading the Constitution,
but simply subserviency to the slave power. In this way Van Buren was
alienated and the vote of New York lost in 1848, insuring defeat that
year.

[1856-1860]

This particular breach was pretty well healed, but the evil survived.
Then came the compromise repeal, wherein the Democracy stood by the
South in casting to the winds, the moment it promised to be of service
to the North, a solemn bargain which had yielded the South Florida,
Arkansas, and Missouri as slave States. Northern Democrats, especially
in the rural parts, unwilling longer to serve slavery, drew off from the
party in increasing numbers. Northern States one by one passed to the
opposition. The whole of New England had gone over in 1856, also New
York, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa--Buchanan having six votes
outside those of Pennsylvania, where he won, as many believed, by unfair
means. In 1860, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Illinois, Indiana,
Minnesota, and Oregon crossed to the same side.



CHAPTER VII.

THE CRISIS

[1850]

The repeal of the Missouri Compromise was politically a remarkable
epoch. It not only consolidated old anti-slavery men, but cooled, to say
the least, many "silvergray," or conservative Whigs, as well as many
"hards" and "hunkers" among the Democrats. But the slavocrats were blind
to the risk they were running, and grew bolder than ever. There were now
propositions for renewing the foreign slave-trade. Worse black laws were
enacted. There was increased ferocity toward all who did not pronounce
slavery a blessing, prouder domineering in politics, especially in
Congress, and perpetual threat of secession in case the slave power
should fail to have its way.



Abraham Lincoln. After a rare photograph in the possession of Noah
Brooks. (Only five copies of this photograph were printed.)


There were also plans for foreign conquest in slavery's behalf, which
received countenance from public and even from national authorities. The
idea seemed to be that the victory and territorial enlargement
consequent upon the Mexican War might be repeated in Central America and
Cuba. The efforts of Lopez in 1850 and 1851 to conquer Cuba with aid
from the United States had indeed been brought to an end through this
adventurer's execution in the latter year by the Cuban authorities.
Pierce put forth a proclamation in 1854, warning American citizens
against like attempts in future. Defying this, the next year William
Walker headed a filibustering expedition to the Pacific coast of
Nicaragua, conquering the capital of that state and setting up a
government which proceeded to re-establish slavery and invite
immigration from the United States. Driven out by a coalition of other
Central American states against him, Walker at once organized a new
raid, and landed at Punta Arenas, Nicaragua, November 25, 1857; but he
was seized by Commodore Paulding of our navy and brought to New York. He
made a similar effort the next year, and another in 1860, when he
captured Truxillo in Honduras, only to be soon overwhelmed, tried and
shot.

[1852]

If the Government at Washington was not openly implicated in any of
these movements, no more, surely, did it heartily deprecate them.
Fillmore's administration had in 1852 declined to enter into an alliance
with Great Britain and France disclaiming intention to secure Cuba. In
1854, inspired by Pierce, our ministers at London, Paris, and Madrid,
met at Ostend and put forth the "Ostend Manifesto." The tenor of this
was that Spain would be better off without Cuba and we with it, and
further, that, if Spain refused to sell, the United States ought as a
means of self-preservation to take that island by force, lest it should
become a second San Domingo. This proposition, like everything else
relating to the great Repeal, was under umbrage in 1856; but in 1858 the
southern Democrats in Congress brought in a bill to purchase Cuba for
$30,000,000, and the democratic platform of 1860 spoke for the
acquisition thereof at the earliest practicable moment, by all
"honorable and just means."

[1854]

Thus an institution, barbarous, anti-democratic, sectional, an
unmitigated curse even to its section, not so much as named in the
Constitution, beginning with apology from all, by the zeal and
unscrupulousness of advocates, the consolidation of political power at
the South, and apathy, sycophancy, divided counsels, and commercial
greed in the North, gradually amassed might, till, at the middle of Mr.
Buchanan's term, every branch of the national Government was its tool,
the Supreme Court included, enabling it authoritatively to mis-read the
Constitution, declare the Union a pro-slavery compact, and act
accordingly. But justice would not be mocked, and, though advancing upon
halting foot, dealt the death-blow like lightning at last.

We have seen the feeble efforts of the old Liberty Party to make head
against slavery, Birney and Earle being its candidates in 1840, Birney
and Morris in 1844. In 1848 these "conscience Free-soilers" were
re-enforced by what have been called the "political Free-soilers" of the
State of New York, led by ex-President Van Buren. This astute organizer,
aware that his defeat in the democratic convention of 1844 had resulted
from southern and pro-slavery influences, led a bolt in the New York
Democracy. His partisans in this were known as the "Barn-burners," while
the administration Democrats were called the "Hunkers." In the
democratic convention of 1848 at Baltimore appeared representatives of
both factions, and both sets were admitted, each with half the state
vote. This satisfied neither side. The Barn-burners called a convention
at Utica in June, and put Van Buren in nomination for the presidency.
The Liberty Party men had the preceding year nominated Hale for this
office, but now, seeing their opportunity, they called a new convention
at Buffalo for August 9, 1848, to which all Free-soilers were invited;
and this convention made Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams its
candidates for President and Vice-President. The platform declared
against any further extension of slavery. The party was henceforth known
as the "Free-soilers," the name coming from its insistence that the
territory conquered from Mexico should forever remain free. Its platform
denounced slavery as a sin against God and a crime against man, and
repudiated the compromise of 1850. It also laid special emphasis upon
the wickedness of the new fugitive slave law, of which it demanded the
repeal. By 1852 the regular Democracy in New York had won back a large
proportion of the Barn-burners or free-soil revolters, so that the
free-soil prospect in this year was not encouraging. Only 146,149
free-soil votes were polled in all the northern states.

[1856]

What quickened this drooping movement into new and triumphant life was
the revocation of the Missouri Compromise. This rallied to the free-soil
standard nearly all the northern Whigs, many old Barn-burners who since
1848 had returned to the democratic fold, and vast numbers of other
anti-Lecompton Democrats. Most of the Know-nothings throughout the North
also joined it, while of course it had in all its anti-slavery measures
the hearty co-operation, directly political or other, of the
Abolitionists. The first national convention of this new party,
fortunately styling itself "Republican," was in 1856. Whig doctrine
early appeared in the party by the demand for protection, internal
improvements, and a national banking system; in fact, Republicanism may
be said to have received nearly entire the whig mantle, as the Whigs did
that of Federalism.

But the living soul and integrating idea of the party was new, the rigid
confinement of slavery and the slave power to their narrowest
constitutional limits. It denounced the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise. In the election of this year, 1856, eleven States chose
Republican electors, viz.: all New England, also New York, Ohio,
Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Evidently the Democracy had at last found
a foe at which it were best not to sneer. The Dred Scott decision
immensely aided the growth of this new political power, as it was now
quite generally believed in the North that the whole policy of the South
was a greedy, selfish grasping for the extension of slavery.

[1858]

Out of this conviction, apparently, grew the John Brown raid into
Virginia in 1858. John Brown was an enthusiast, whom sufferings from the
Border Ruffians in Kansas, where one of his sons had been atrociously
murdered and another driven to insanity by cruel treatment as a
prisoner, had frenzied in his opposition to slavery. He had dedicated
himself to its extirpation. The intrepid old man formed the purpose of
invading Virginia, and of placing himself with a few white allies at the
head of a slave insurrection that should sweep the State.  Friends in
the North had contributed money for the purchase of arms, and on October
16th, Brown, with fourteen white men and four negroes, seized the United
States Armory at Harper's Ferry. He stopped the railway trains, freed
some slaves, and assumed to rule the town. United States troops were at
once despatched to the scene, when the misguided hero, with his devoted
band, fortified themselves in the engine house, surrendering only after
thirteen of them, including two of Brown's sons, were killed or mortally
wounded. Brown and the other survivors were soon tried, convicted, and
hung. This insane attempt was deprecated by nearly all of all parties;
but the fate of Brown, with his resolute bravery, begot him large
sympathy, and the false assumption of the South that he really
represented northern feeling made his deed helpful to the anti-slavery
movement, of which the Republican Party was now the centre.



John Brown.


[1860]

Notwithstanding all this the Democracy might still have elected a
president in 1860 had it been united. But it was now desperately at feud
with itself, the cause of this, beautifully enough, lying back in that
very device of Repeal which was intended to make Kansas a slave State
and so to perpetuate the democratic sway. Judge Douglas, and most of the
northern Democrats with him, had insisted so long and earnestly upon the
doctrine of squatter sovereignty that they could not now possibly recede
from it even had they desired to do so. The great majority of them did
not so desire, but sincerely believed in that doctrine as part and
parcel of the true democratic faith. But it was now obvious that the
working out of the Douglas theory was absolutely sure to make free all
the western States henceforth to be formed. This would, of course,
remove the Senate from the domination of slavery. Hence the South was
irrevocably opposed to it, and insisted with all its might upon the
Calhoun-Taney contention that the national Government must protect
slavery in all the Territories to which it pleased to go. In a passage
at arms with Douglas as they were stumping Illinois for the senatorship
in 1858, Lincoln keenly forced upon him the question whether under the
Dred Scott decision any Territory could possibly be kept free from
slavery. "If," said he, "Douglas answers yes, he can never be President;
if no, Illinois will not again elect him senator." Douglas replied in
the affirmative, and, as his antagonist prophesied, became in the South
a doomed man.

The schism was fully apparent when, on April 23d, the democratic
convention of 1860 began its session in Charleston. A majority of the
delegates were for Douglas, voting down the Calhoun-Taney view, though
willing that the party should bind itself to obey the Dred Scott
decision. When the Douglas platform was adopted the delegations from
Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and Texas, with parts of those from
Louisiana, North and South Carolina, Arkansas, and Delaware, seceded.
Douglas had a majority vote as presidential candidate, but not
two-thirds. The convention adjourned to meet at Baltimore June 18th, and
when it met there Douglas was nominated by the requisite two-thirds
vote. The seceders met at Richmond, June 11th, where, imitating some new
seceders at Baltimore they nominated Breckenridge and Lane. The
so-called Constitutional Union Party also had in the field its ticket,
Bell and Everett, which secured votes from a few persistent Whigs and
Know-nothings still foolish enough to suppose that further clash between
the powers of slavery and freedom could somehow be averted.

The Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, and Hannibal
Hamlin, of Maine. Lincoln was already a marked man in his party,
especially in the West, his brilliant joint debate with Judge Douglas
during some months in 1858 having brought out his matchless good sense
and good nature, his rare knowledge of our history and law, and his high
quality as thinker and speaker. Born in Kentucky in 1809, removing to
Indiana in 1816, to Illinois in 1830, reared in extreme poverty and
wholly self-educated, this man had risen by his wits, his sturdy
perseverance and industry, his extraordinary ability, and his proverbial
honesty, to be the acknowledged peer of the "Little Giant" himself. He
began political life a Whig and ably represented that party in the
national Congress from 1847 to 1849, making his voice heard against the
high-handed procedure of the Administration in the Mexican War. But as
with Seward, Greeley, Fessenden, Thaddeus Stevens, Sherman, Dayton,
Corwin, and Collamer, subsequent events had intensified his anti-slavery
feeling, convincing him, as he avowed, that the Union could not
"permanently continue half slave and half free." He was thus drawn to
unite his fortunes with the Republicans. His nomination was received
coolly in the East, where Seward had been preferred; but as men studied
Lincoln's record they were convinced of the wisdom which had made him
the party's leader. He swept New England, New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin,
California, Minnesota, and Oregon, having 180 electoral votes to
Breckenridge's 72, Bell's 39, and Douglas's 12.



William H. Seward.
From a photograph by Brady.



CHAPTER VIII.

MATERIAL PROGRESS

[1860]

The population of the United States in 1860 was 31,443,321. In spite of
the threatening political complications between 1840 and 1860, these
years were characterized by astonishing economic prosperity. The decade
after 1848 was, indeed, in point of advance in material weal, the golden
age of our history. Between 1850 and 1860, the wealth of the nation
swelled 120 per cent., the value of its farms 103 per cent., its total
manufacturing product 87 per cent., its manufactured export 171 per
cent., its railroad mileage 220 per cent. Making all due allowance for
the rise of prices during the period, this is still a remarkable
exhibit.

The great West continued to come under the hand of civilization. Between
1850 and 1860 our centre of population made a longer stride westward
than during any other decade--from east of the meridian of Parkersburg,
W. Va., to the meridian of Chillicothe, O. Florida and Texas having been
admitted to statehood in 1845, Iowa followed next year, Wisconsin in
1848, California in 1850, Minnesota, which had been an organized
Territory since 1849, in 1858, and Oregon in 1859. Kansas, Nebraska,
Utah, and Washington Territories were organized before 1860. By this
date there were settlements far up the Rio Grande. The Pacific coast was
sought for lands and homes as well as for gold. Fremont's expeditions in
1842, 1844, and 1848 had done much to show people the way thither. In
1853 the Government sent out four different parties to survey suitable
routes for a Pacific railway, a work followed up by three other parties
the next summer. The settlements in Oregon had, by 1845, in places
become dense.



Elias Howe.


Immigration hither was unfortunately checked a little later by Indian
hostilities, the gravest attacks being in 1847 and 1855. In the latter
year Major Haller, leading an exploring party, was surrounded by the
savages and cut off from food and water, only making his escape by a
fight of two days against overwhelming odds. He and his party at last
hewed their desperate way through, losing their entire outfit, besides
one-fifth of their number. The whole territory was harassed by Indians
on the war path, and General Wool had to be sent up from San Francisco
to restore peace. This done, immigration was renewed. A thousand new
inhabitants came to Oregon in 1852, and its northern half was organized
as Washington Territory the following year. The Pacific Mail Steamship
Company had been chartered in 1848, and four years earlier a newspaper
started, the first in English on that coast. Its seat was Oregon City,
its name the Flumgudgeon Gazette.



The Vandalia. The Pioneer Propeller On the Lakes.



Old Stone Towers of the Niagara Suspension Bridge.


The old West prospered, notwithstanding the drain which it, in common
with the East, experienced in favor of parts farther toward the setting
sun. The first lake propeller was launched at Cleveland in 1847. The
same year the Tribune was started in Chicago. In 1850 the city had its
theatre and its board of trade. The Chicago streets began this year to
be lighted with gas. The first bridge across the Mississippi was built
in 1855 at Minneapolis; that at Rock Island, 1,582 feet long, in 1856.
The Niagara suspension bridge was finished in 1855.

The increase of railways did not at once end the opening of canals. The
Miami Canal, between Cincinnati and Toledo, 215 miles, begun in 1825,
was finished in 1843, and the Wabash and Erie, between Evansville and
Toledo, opened in 1851; but the Middlesex Canal in Massachusetts was, in
1853, abandoned and filled up from the loss of its business to
railroads. In 1857 the Pennsylvania Railroad Company purchased from the
State the canal and railway line from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, and
soon after extended the railway portion to cover the whole. A traveller
from Boston to the West could get to Rochester by rail in 1841. Next
year he could go on to Buffalo by the same means. In 1842, Augusta, Ga.,
was connected by rail with Atlanta, Savannah with Macon, and the Boston
& Maine Railway finished to Berwick.



The New Iron Towers of the Niagara Bridge.


The first railway out of Chicago--it was the first in Illinois--was
built in 1850, to Elgin. Chicago had no railway connection with the East
till two years later, when the Michigan Southern was opened. The
Michigan Central was finished soon after the Southern, and the Rock
Island before the end of the year. The Michigan Central had direct
connection east across Canada to Niagara Falls by 1854. In 1856 the
Burlington route reached the Mississippi and the Rock Island went on to
Iowa City. This year witnessed the opening of the first railroad in
California--from Sacramento to Folsom. In 1857 Chicago and St. Louis
were joined by rails, as also the latter city with Baltimore, over the
Parkersburg branch of the Baltimore & Ohio.



Birthplace of S. F. B. Morse, at Charlestown, Mass. Built 1775.



S. F. B. Morse.

We now come to an improvement of which the preceding period knew
nothing, the magnetic telegraph, introduced by Professor Morse in 1844.
In this year Morse secured a congressional appropriation of $30,000 for
a line from Washington to Baltimore. The wires were at first encased in
tubes underground. In spite of the success of the project, further
governmental patronage was refused, the Postmaster-General advising
against it under the conviction that the invention could not become
practically valuable. Morse appealed for aid from private capitalists.
Ezra Cornell, of New York, soon opened a short line in Boston for
exhibition, following this with a similar enterprise in New York City.
The admission fee was twelve and a half cents. Few cared to pay even
this trifle, so that the undertaking was hardly a success in either
city.

Amos Kendall then engaged as Morse's agent, and by dint of great effort
secured subscriptions for a line from New York to Philadelphia, being
obliged to sell the shares for one-half their face value. Incorporation
was secured from the Maryland Legislature, under the first American
charter, for the telegraph business. The line was completed in 1845 to
the Hudson opposite the upper end of Manhattan Island, and an effort
made to insulate the wire and connect with the city along the bottom of
the river. This failed, and for some time messages had to be taken over
in boats. In 1846 the wire was carried on to Baltimore. In the same year
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh were connected by telegraph, New York and
Albany, New York and Boston, Boston and Buffalo. The first line in
California was erected in 1853.



The First Telegraphic Instrument, as exhibited in 1837 by Morse.


In 1850 Hiram Sibley embarked in the telegraph business. He bought the
House patent, and next year organized the New York and Mississippi
Valley Telegraph Company. By 1853 or 1854, some twenty companies had
started, with a capital of  $7,000,000--too many for good management or
high profits. Accordingly, Sibley and Cornell united in buying them up,
and thus formed, in 1856, the Western Union, which Sibley's energy
extended all over the country east of the Rocky Mountains. In 1860 he
went to Washington with a scheme for a transcontinental telegraph line,
and secured from Congress a subsidy of $40,000 for ten years. Just then
the Overland Telegraph Company was started in San Francisco. It and
Sibley united, breaking ground July 1, 1861, and proceeding at the rate
of nearly ten miles of wire per day. On October 25th, telegraph wire
stretched all the way between the two oceans. In 1864 this line was
amalgamated with the Western Union.



Calenders heated internally by Steam, for spreading India Rubber into
Sheets or upon Cloth, called the "Chaffee Machine."


Still more wonderful, ocean telegraphy was broached and made successful
during these years. Tentative efforts to operate the current under water
were made between Governor's Island and New York City so early as 1842.
A copper wire was used, insulated with hemp string coated with India
rubber and pitch. In 1846 a similar arrangement was encased in lead
pipe. This device failed, and sub-aqueous telegraphy seems to have been
for the time given up.

In 1854 Mr. Cyrus W. Field, of New York, with Peter Cooper and other
capitalists of that city, organized the New York, Newfoundland, and
London Telegraph Company, stock a million and a half dollars, and began
plans to connect New York with St. Johns, Newfoundland, by a cable under
the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Little progress was made, however, till 1857,
when it was attempted to lay a cable across the Atlantic from
Newfoundland. The paying out was begun at Queenstown and proceeded
successfully until three hundred and thirty-five miles had been laid,
when the cable parted. Nothing more was done till the next year in June.
Then, in 1858, after several more unsuccessful efforts, the two
continents were successfully joined. The two ships containing the cable
met in mid-ocean, where it was spliced and the paying out begun in each
direction. The one reached Newfoundland the same day, August 5th, on
which the other reached Valencia, Ireland. No break had occurred, and
after the necessary arrangements had been effected, the first message
was transmitted on August 16th. It was from the Queen of Great Britain
to the President of the United States, and read, "Glory to God in the
highest, peace on earth and good will to men." A monster celebration of
the event was had in New York next day.



The Great Eastern Laying the Atlantic Cable.


Although inter-continental communication had been actually opened, the
cable did not work, nor did ocean cabling become a successful and
regular business till 1866, when a new cable was laid. This event
attracted the more attention from the fact that the largest ship ever
built was used in paying out the cable. It was the Great Eastern, 680
feet long and 83 broad, with 25,000 tons displacement.



Sounding Machine used by a Cable Expedition.


Street railways became common in our largest cities before 1860, the
first in New England, that between Boston and Cambridge, dating from
1856. Sleeping-cars began to be used in 1858. The express business went
on developing, being opened westward from Buffalo first in 1845. A steam
fire-engine was tried in New York in 1841, but the invention was
successful only in 1853. Baltimore used one in 1858. Goodyear
triumphantly vulcanized rubber in 1844, making serviceable a gum which
had been used in various forms already but without ability to stand
heat. Elias Howe took out his first patent for a sewing machine in 1846,
being kept in vigorous fight against infringements for the next eight
years. The anaesthetic power of ether was discovered in 1844.
Gutta-percha was first imported hither in 1847. The first application of
the Bessemer steel process in this country was made in New Jersey in
1856, the manufacture of watches by machinery begun in 1857,
photo-lithography in 1859. New York had a clearing house in 1853, Boston
in 1855. The petroleum business may with propriety be dated from 1860,
although the existence of oil in Northwestern Pennsylvania had been long
known, and some use made of it since 1826. For several years experiments
had been making in refining the oil. The excellence of the light from it
now drew attention to the value of the product, wells began to be bored
and oil land sold for fabulous prices.



Cyrus W. Field.



Paying out Cable Gear. From Chart House.


We close this chapter with a word about the painful financial crisis
that swept over the country in the autumn of 1857. Its causes are
somewhat occult, but two appear to have been the chief, viz., the
over-rapid building of railroads and the speculation induced by the
prosperity and the rise of prices incident to the new output of gold.
Interest on the best securities rose to three, four, and five per cent.
a month. On ordinary securities no money at all could be had. Commercial
houses of the highest repute went down. The climax was in September and
October. The three leading banks in Philadelphia suspended specie
payments, at once followed in this by all the banks of the Middle
States, and upon the 13th of the next month by the New York banks.
Manufacturing was very largely abandoned for the time, at least thirty
thousand operatives being thrown out of work in New York City alone.
Prices even of agricultural produce fell enormously. Tramps were to be
met on every road. Easier times fortunately returned by spring, when
business resumed pretty nearly its former prosperous march.




Shore End of Cable-exact size. [About 3.5 inches in diameter.]



Barnacles on Cable.



PERIOD IV.

CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION

1860-1868

CHAPTER I.

CAUSES OF THE WAR

[1861]

It were a mistake to refer the great Rebellion, for ultimate source, to
ambiguity in the Constitution or to the wickedness of politicians or of
the people. It was simply the last resort in an "irrepressible conflict"
of principle--in the struggle for and against the genius of the world's
advance. Economic, social, and moral evolution, resulting in two
radically different civilizations, had enforced upon each section
unfaithfulness to the spirit and even to the letter of its
constitutional covenant. The South was not to blame that slavery was at
first profitable; and if it deemed it so too long and even thought of it
as a good morally, these convictions, however big with ill consequences
to the nation, were but errors of view, not strange considering the then
status of slavery in the world.

The South's pride, holding it to the course once chosen, was also no
indictable offence. Nor could the North on its part be taxed with crime
for its "higher law fanaticism," which was simply the spirit of the age;
or for seeing early what all believe now, that slavery was a blight upon
the land. Much as was "nominated in the bond" of the Constitution,
neither law nor equity forbade free States to increase the more rapidly
in numbers, wealth, and other elements of prosperity; and northern
congressmen must have been other than human, if, seeing this increase
and being in the majority, they had gone on punctiliously heeding formal
obligation against manifest national weal. And when, in 1854, the great
sacred compact of 1820 was set aside by the authority of the South
itself, the North felt free even from formal fetters. All talk of
extra-legal negotiations and understandings touching slavery was now at
an end. The northern majority was at last united to legislate upon
slavery as it would, subject only to the Constitution. The South too
late saw this, and fearing that the peculiar institution, shut up to its
old home, would die, sought separation, with such chance of expansion as
this might yield.

The South had come to love slavery too well, the Constitution too
little. Upon conserving slavery all parties there, however dissident as
to modes, however hostile in other matters, were unconditionally bent.
The chief argument even of those opposing disunion was that it
endangered slavery. Our new government, said Alexander H. Stephens, soon
to be vice-president of the Southern Confederacy, is founded, its
cornerstone rests, upon the great physical, philosophical, and moral
truth, to which Jefferson and the men of his day were blind, that the
negro, by nature or the curse of Canaan, is not equal to the white man;
that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is, by ordination of
Providence, whose wisdom it is not for us to inquire into or question,
his natural and normal condition. As the apostle of such a principle the
South could not but abjure the old establishment, whose genius and
working were inevitably in the contrary direction. Many confessed it to
be the essential nature of our Government, and not unfair treatment
under it, against which they rebelled.

Slavery had also bred hatred of the Union indirectly, by fostering
anti-democratic habits of thought, feeling, and action. "The form of
liberty existed, the press seemed to be free, the deliberations of
legislative bodies were tumultuous, and every man boasted of his
independence. But the spirit of true liberty, tolerance of the minority
and respect for individual opinion, had departed, and those deceitful
appearances concealed the despotism of an inexorable master, slavery,
before whom the most powerful of slave-holders was himself but a slave,
as abject as the meanest." Over wide sections, untitled manorial lords,
"more intelligent than educated, brave but irascible, proud but
overbearing," controlled all voting and office-holding. Congressional
districts were their pocket-boroughs, and they ignored the common man
save to use him. The system grew, instead of statesmen, sectionalists,
whom love for the "peculiar institution" rendered callous to national
interests.

The vigorous secession movements in the South at once after Lincoln's
election, raised a question of the first magnitude, which few people at
the North had reflected upon since 1833, viz., whether or not
non-revolutionary secession was possible. Almost unanimously the North
denied such possibility, the South affirmed it. This was at bottom
manifestly nothing but the old question of state sovereignty over again.
The South held the Union to be a state compact, which the northern
parties thereto had broken. To prove the compact theory no new proof was
now adduced. Rather did the southern people take the assertion of it as
an axiom, with a simplicity which spoke volumes for the influence of
Calhoun and for the indoctrination which the South had received in 1832.

Not alone Calhoun but nearly every other southerner of great influence,
at least from the day of the Missouri Compromise, had been inculcating
the supreme authority of the State as compared with the Union. The
southern States were all large, and, as travelling in or between them
was difficult and little common, they retained far more than those at
the North each its original separateness and peculiarities. Southern
population was more fixed than northern; southern state traditions were
held in far the deeper reverence. In a word, the colonial condition of
things to a great extent persisted in the South down to the very days of
the war. There was every reason why Alabama or North Carolina should,
more than Connecticut, feel like a separate nation.

This intense state consciousness might gradually have subsided but for
the deep prejudices and passions begotten of slavery and of the
opposition it encountered from the North. Their resolution, against
emancipation led Southerners to cherish a view which made it seem
possible for them as a last resort to sever their alliance with the
North. It was this conjunction of influences, linking the slave-holder's
jealousy and pride to a false but natural conception of state
sovereignty, which created in southern men that love of State, intense
and sincere as real patriotism, causing them to look upon northern men,
with their different theory, as foes and foreigners.

A very imposing historical argument could of course have been built up
for the Calhoun theory of the Union. The Union emerged from the
preceding Confederacy without a shock. Most who voted for it were
unaware how radical a change it embodied. The Constitution, one may even
admit, could not have been adopted had it then been understood to
preclude the possibility of secession. Doubtless, too, the gradual
change of view concerning it all over the North, sprung from the
multiplication of social and economic ties between sections and States,
rather than from study of constitutional law. We believe that the
untruth of the central-sovereignty theory in no wise follows from these
admissions, and that its correctness might be made apparent from a
plenitude of considerations.

Champions of the northern side deemed it the less necessary to expatiate
upon this question, since, admitting the South's basal contention, the
right in question depended upon sufficiency of grievance. As, in the
South's view, the case was one of sovereigns one party of whom, without
referee, was about to break a compact without the other's consent, the
adequacy of the grievance should, to excuse the step, have been
absolutely beyond question. On the contrary it was subject to the
gravest question.

The South's only significant indictment against the North was the one
concerning the personal liberty laws. Moderates like Stephens, indeed,
stoutly condemned this plea for secession as insufficient; but,
believing in the State as sovereign, they had perforce to yield, and
they became as enthusiastic as any when once this "paramount authority"
had spoken. "Fire-eaters," at first a small minority, saw this advantage
and worked it to the utmost. On its complaint touching the personal
liberty legislation the South's case utterly broke down, theorizing the
Union into a rope of sand, not "more perfect" but far less so than the
old, which itself was to be "perpetual." According to the Calhoun
contention States were the parties to a pact, and it was a good way from
clear that any northern State as such, even by personal liberty
legislation, had broken the alleged pact. The liberty laws were innocent
at least in form, and at worst had never been endorsed in any state
convention. Buchanan himself testified that the fugitive slave law had
been faithfully executed, and its operation is well known never to have
been resisted by any public authority.

It was suspicious that no State ventured upon secession alone. It was
equally remarkable that the Gulf States were the readiest to go, and
made most of the personal liberty laws as their pretext, accounting this
cry, as was ingenuously confessed, a necessary means for holding the
border States solidly to the southern cause. Weak enough, indeed, was
the complaint of  "consolidationist" aggression, of which certainly no
party to the so-called pact was or could have been guilty. But the deeps
of folly were sounded when northern "persecution" of the South was
mentioned, or Lincoln's election as threat of such. This was simply the
election as President, in a perfectly constitutional way, of a citizen,
honest and unambitious, who was pledged against touching slavery in
States. Having become President, he was unable to procure minister, law,
treaty, or even adequate guard for his own person save by the consent of
the party hitherto in power. Lincoln had failed of a popular majority by
a million. Both Houses of Congress were against him at the time of his
election, and, but for the absence of southern members, they would, it
is likely, have continued so through his entire term. It was the South's
bad logic on these points which gave the war Democrats their excellent
plea for drawing sword on the northern side.

But even supposing secession technically justifiable, how strange that
it should have been judged rational, prudent, or in the long run best
for the South itself. Could aught but frenzy have so drowned in
Americans the memories of our great past; or launched them upon a course
that must have ended by Mexicanizing this nation, wresting from it the
lead in freedom's march, and crushing out, in the breast of struggling
patriotism the world over, all hope of government by and for the people!
The South ought at least to have spared itself. Either its alleged
horror at the advance of central-sovereignty sentiment at the North was
sheer pretence, or it should have been certain that this section would
not hesitate, as Buchanan so illogically did, to coerce "rebellious"
state-bodies. If the North believed the totality of the nation to be the
"paramount authority," Lincoln would surely imitate Jackson instead of
Buchanan, and in doing so he would not seek military support in vain.



James Buchanan. From a photograph by Brady.


Quite as sure, too, must the final result have appeared from the census
of 1850, had people been calm enough to read this. By that census the
free States had a population fifty per cent. above the population of the
slave states, slaves included, and the disparity was rapidly increasing.
Their wealth was even more preponderant, being, slaves apart, nearly one
hundred per cent. the larger. Their merchant tonnage was five times the
greater--even young inland Ohio out-doing old South Carolina in this,
and the one district of New York City the whole South. The North had
three or four times the South's miles of railway, all the sinews of war
without importation, and mechanics unnumbered and of every sort. And
while champions of the Union would fight with all the prestige of law,
national history and the status quo on their side, Europe's aid to the
South, or even that of the border slave States, was more than
problematical, as was a successful career for the Confederacy in case
its independence should chance to be won. Events proved that the very
defence of slavery had best prospect in the Union, and it seems as if
this might have been foreseen by all, as it actually was by some.



CHAPTER II.

SECESSION

[1861]

Secession was no new thought at the South. It lurked darkly behind the
Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798-99. It was brought out into
broad daylight by South Carolina in the nullification troubles of 1832.
"Texas or disunion!" was the cry at the South in 1843-44. In 1850 South
Carolina declared herself ready to secede in the event of legislation
hostile to slavery. Two years later the same State solemnly affirmed
that it had a right to secede, but that, out of deference to the wishes
of the other slave States, it forbore to exercise such right.

It must be admitted that in early years the North had helped to make the
thought of secession familiar. In 1803, in view of the great increase of
southern territory by the Louisiana Purchase, and again in 1813, when
New England opposition to the war with England culminated in the
Hartford Convention, there had been talk of a separate northern
confederacy. But from that time on the thought of disunion died out at
the North, while the South dallied with it more and more boldly. During
the presidential campaign of 1856, threats were made that if Fremont,
the republican candidate, should be elected, the South would leave the
Union. In October of that year a secret convention of southern governors
was held at Raleigh, N. C., supposed to have been for the purpose of
considering such a contingency. Governor Wise, of Virginia, who called
the convention, afterward proclaimed that had Fremont been chosen he
would have marched to Washington at the head of 20,000 troops, seized
the Capitol, and prevented the inauguration. This threatening attitude
in 1856 may have been chiefly an electioneering device; but during the
next four years the gulf between North and South widened rapidly, and
the southern leaders turned more and more resolutely toward secession as
the remedy for their alleged wrongs.

No sooner had the presidential campaign of 1860 begun than deep
mutterings foretold the coming storm. "Elect Lincoln, and the South will
secede!" cried the campaign orators of the South, while the halls of
Congress rang with threats similar in tenor. As the campaign went on and
republican success became probable, the southern leaders began to nerve
up their hosts for the conflict. In October the governor and congressmen
of South Carolina, with other prominent politicians, met and unanimously
resolved that if Lincoln should win, the Palmetto State ought to
renounce the Union. Similar meetings were held in Georgia, Alabama,
Mississippi, and Florida. Governor Gist sent a confidential circular to
the governors of all the cotton States declaring that South Carolina
would secede with any other State, or would make the plunge alone if
others would promise to follow. The governors of Florida, Alabama, and
Mississippi replied that their States would certainly do this. Georgia
proposed to wait for some overt act by the National Government. North
Carolina and Louisiana, it was learned, would probably not go out at
all.

But the enthusiasts in South Carolina had got all the encouragement they
wanted, and bided their time. Their time was at hand. The presidential
election fell on November 6th. Next day the tidings flashed over the
land that Abraham Lincoln had been elected President by the vote of a
solid North against a solid South. The wires had scarcely ceased to
thrill with this message of death to slavery-extension, when South
Carolina sounded a trumpet-call to the South. Her Legislature ordered a
secession state convention to meet in December, issued a call for 10,000
volunteers, and voted money for the purchase of arms. Federal
office-holders resigned. Judge Magrath, of the United States District
Court, laid aside his robes, declaring, "So far as I am concerned, the
temple of Justice raised under the Constitution of the United States is
now closed." Militia organized throughout the State. The streets of
Charleston echoed nightly with the tramp of drilling minute-men.
Secession orators harangued enthusiastic crowds. Hardly a coat but bore
a secession cockade. November 17th, the Palmetto flag was unfurled in
Charleston. It was a gala day. Cannon roared, bands played the
Marseillaise, and processions paraded the streets bearing such mottoes
as "Let's Bury the Union's Dead Carcass!" "Death to All Abolitionists!"
The whole South was beside itself with excitement. One State after
another assembled its convention to decide the question of secession.
Even the Georgia Legislature, within a week after the election of
Lincoln, voted $1,000,000 to arm the State.

The South Carolina convention met at Charleston, and on December 20th
unanimously adopted an ordinance declaring:

"The union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under
the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved."

This action was hailed with wildest enthusiasm. Huge placards--"The
Union is Dissolved!"--were posted throughout the city, while the clang
of bells and the boom of cannon notified the country round. The
sidewalks were thronged with ladies wearing secession bonnets made of
cotton with palmetto decorations. A party of gentlemen visited the tomb
of Calhoun, and there registered their vows to defend the southern cause
with their fortunes and lives. In the evening the convention marched to
the hall in procession, and formally signed the revolutionary ordinance.
The chairman then solemnly proclaimed South Carolina an "independent
commonwealth." The little State, whose white population was less than
300,000, began to play at being a nation. The governor was authorized to
appoint a cabinet and receive foreign ambassadors, and the papers put
information from other parts of the country under the head of "foreign
news."



Street Banner in Charleston.
"One voice and millions of strong arms to uphold the honor of South
Carolina 1776-1860"


The secession of South Carolina was greeted with joy in most of the
other slave States. Montgomery and Mobile, Ala., each fired one hundred
guns. At Richmond, Va., a palmetto banner was unfurled, while bells,
bonfires, and processions celebrated the event all over the South. The
other cotton States, spurred on by the bold deed of South Carolina,
rapidly followed her lead. Mississippi seceded January 9th, Florida the
10th, Alabama the 11th, Georgia the 19th, Louisiana the 26th, Texas
February 1st.

It is probable that only in South Carolina, Mississippi, and Florida
were the majority of whites in favor of secession. The South was after
all full of Union sentiment. The ordinance of secession proceeded in
each State from a convention, and the election of delegates to this
witnessed the earnest work. The noble efforts of those Union men in
their fierce struggle have never yet been appreciated. But they fought
against great odds, and were inevitably overborne. The opposition was
organized, ably led, and white-hot with zeal. The political power and
the wealth of the South lay in the hands of the secessionists. The
clergy threw their weight on that side, preaching that slavery, God's
ordinance, was in danger. Union proclivities were crushed out by force.
Vigilance committees were everywhere on the alert. In the rougher States
of the Southwest abolitionists were tarred and feathered. Some were
shot. In all the States Union men were warned to keep quiet or leave the
South. One of the most powerful agents of intimidation was the Knights
of the Golden Circle, a vast secret society which extended throughout
the southern States.

Yet, in spite of all, the vote was close even in several of the cotton
States. The Georgia people wanted new safeguards for slavery, but did
not at first desire secession. Alexander H. Stephens, who headed the
anti-secession movement, declared that Georgia was won over to take the
fatal step at last only by the cry, "Better terms can be made out of the
Union than in it." Even then the first vote for secession stood only 165
to 130. In Louisiana the popular vote for convention delegates was
20,000 for secession and 17,000 against.

The border States held aloof. Kentucky and Tennessee refused to call
conventions. So, for long, did North Carolina. The convention of
Virginia and of Missouri each had a majority of Union delegates. When
the Confederate Government was organized in February, only seven of the
fifteen slave States had seceded. Their white population was about
2,600,000, or less than half that of the entire slave region. But
Arkansas and North Carolina were soon swept along by the current, and
seceded in May. Virginia and Tennessee were finally carried (the former
in May, the latter in June) by the aid of troops, who swarmed in from
the seceded States, and turned the elections into a farce. Unionists in
the Virginia Convention were given the choice to vote secession, leave,
or be hanged. Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland resisted all
attempts to drag them into the Confederacy, though the first two, after
the United States began to apply force, appeared neutral rather than
loyal.

The seizure of United States property went hand in hand with secession.
Most of the government works were feebly garrisoned, and made no
resistance. By January 15th the secessionists had possession of arsenals
at Augusta, Ga., Mount Vernon, Ala., Fayetteville, N. C, Chattahoochee,
Fla., and Baton Rouge, La., of forts in Alabama and Georgia, of a
navy-yard at Pensacola, Fla., and of Forts Jackson and St. Philip,
commanding the mouth of the Mississippi. At one arsenal they found
150,000 pounds of powder, at another 22,000 muskets and rifles, besides
ammunition and cannon, at another 50,000 small arms and 20 heavy guns.
The whole South had been well supplied with military stores by the
enterprising foresight of J. B. Floyd, of Virginia, Buchanan's Secretary
of War, who had sent thither 115,000 muskets from the Springfield
arsenal alone.



Major Robert Anderson.


Fort Moultrie, in Charleston harbor, was held by Major Robert Anderson,
of Kentucky, with a garrison of some seventy men. On December 27th the
whole country was thrilled, and the South enraged, by the news that on
the previous night Anderson had secretly transferred his whole force to
Fort Sumter, a new and stronger work in the centre of the harbor,
leaving spiked cannon and burning gun-carriages behind him at Moultrie.
The South Carolina militia at once occupied the deserted fortress with
the other harbor fortifications, and began to put them into a state of
defence. At Pensacola, Fla., Lieutenant Slemmer, by a movement similar
to Anderson's, held Fort Pickens.



Major Anderson removing his Forces from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter,
December 26, 1861.


The seizure of government property went on through January and February.
In Louisiana all the commissary stores were confiscated, and the revenue
cutter McClelland surrendered. The mint at New Orleans, containing over
half a million in gold and silver, was seized. More than half of the
regular army were stationed in Texas, under General Twiggs. In February,
at the demand of a secessionist committee of public safety, he
surrendered his entire force, together with eighteen military posts. The
troops were sent to a Gulf port and there detained.

This wholesale seizure of government property, worth some $20,000,000,
has brought down upon the South much scathing rebuke. The conduct of
Floyd, stabbing his country under the cloak of a cabinet office, cannot
be too strongly condemned; but with the seceding States the case was
different. Having (so they thought) established themselves as
independent republics, they could not allow the military works within
their borders to remain in the hands of a foreign power. As to the
Government's property right, they recognized it, and proposed to pay
damages. The provisional constitution of the Confederacy, adopted in
February, provided for negotiations to settle the claim of the United
States.

The southern leaders were not more anxious to get the slave States out
of the Union than to get them into a grand Southern Confederacy. Early
in January a caucus of secession congressmen was held at Washington, and
arrangements made for a constitutional convention.

February 4, 1861, delegates from the States which had left the Union met
at Montgomery, Ala., and formed themselves into a provisional Congress.
A temporary government, styled "The Confederate States of America," was
soon organized. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, was chosen President by
the Congress, and Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, Vice-President.
Davis was born in Kentucky in 1808. He graduated at West Point, fought
as colonel in the Mexican war, served three terms as congressman from
Mississippi, the last two in the Senate, and was Secretary of War under
Pierce. After Calhoun's death, in 1850, he became the most prominent of
the ultra southern leaders. The new President was brought from Jackson,
Miss., to Montgomery by a special train, his progress a continual
ovation. Cheering crowds gathered at every station to see and hear him.
February 18th Davis was inaugurated. In his address, which was calm and
moderate in tone, he declared that reunion was now "neither practicable
nor desirable;" he hoped for peace, but said that if the North refused
this, the South must appeal to arms, secure in the blessing of God on a
just cause.



Jefferson Davis.


The Confederate President was intrusted with very large powers,
including supreme control of military affairs. He was authorized to
muster into the service of the central government the regiments which
had been forming in the various States. A call was issued for 100,000
volunteers, and provision made for organizing a regular army. President
Davis appointed a cabinet, with state, treasury, war, navy, and
post-office departments. Robert Toombs, of Georgia, a rabid
secessionist, became Secretary of State.

March 11th the Confederate Congress adopted a permanent constitution. It
reproduced that of the United States, with some important changes. State
sovereignty was recognized in the preamble, which read, "We, the people
of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and
independent character," etc. Slavery was called by name, and elaborate
safeguards fixed for it in the States and Territories. Slave-trade from
beyond the sea, or with states not in the Confederacy, was, however,
prohibited. Protective tariffs were absolutely forbidden. The president
and vice-president were to serve six years, and the former could not be
re-elected. Some valuable features were inserted. Members of the cabinet
might discuss matters pertaining to their departments in either house of
congress. The president could veto one part of an appropriation bill
without killing the whole, and was required to lay before the senate his
reasons for the removal of any officers from the civil service.



Alexander H. Stephens.


By the last of April all the seceded States had ratified this
constitution. The other slave States were taken in as fast as they
withdrew from the Union. The Southern Confederacy, now fairly launched,
set sail over strange seas upon its short but eventful voyage. At the
start the hopes of those it bore rose high. Few believed that the North
would dare draw sword. Even if it should, the southern heart, proud and
brave, felt sure of victory. King Cotton would win Europe to their side.
Peace would come soon. Visions of a glorious future dazzled the
imaginative mind of the South. A vast slave empire, founded on the
"great physical, philosophical, and moral truth" that slavery is the
"natural condition," of the inferior black race, would spread encircling
arms around the Great Gulf, swallowing up the feeble states of Mexico,
and rise to a wealth and glory unparalleled in the history of nations.



CHAPTER III.

THE NORTH IN THE WINTER OF 1860-61

[1860-1861]

At the beginning of the secession movement the North slumbered and
slept. Even South Carolina's withdrawal from the Union caused little
alarm. "She will be glad enough to come back before long," prophesied
many. As the revolution progressed there was a gradual awakening, but
division of opinion paralyzed action. Ultra Abolitionists, with a few
others, urged that the South be let go in peace. Most Republicans
favored the preservation of the Union by force of arms if necessary; but
nearly all Democrats, with many Republicans, wished for compromise. Of
the latter class a few prayed the prodigals to return on their own
terms. More proposed a rigid enforcement of the fugitive slave law, the
repeal of personal liberty legislation, and acquiescence in the Dred
Scott decision, with all future like decrees of the Supreme Court.  This
may be called the northern-democratic position. The most pronounced
Republicans, as Seward and Stanton, would gladly have voted to
re-enforce the Constitution's guarantee to slavery in the slave States.

Throughout the North the feeling was strong against all efforts at
coercion. Most democratic papers and many republican ones insisted
loudly that use of arms was not to be mentioned, and that the South must
be conciliated. A democratic convention met at Albany in January, to
protest against forcible measures. The sentiment that if force were to
be used it should be "inaugurated at home," here evoked hearty response.
There were signs of even a deeper disaffection. An ex-governor of New
Jersey declared that his State would join the Confederacy. Mayor Wood,
of New York, proposed that if the Union were broken up, his city should
announce herself an independent republic.

At Washington matters were still worse. President Buchanan, loyal but
weak, feared to lift a finger. In his December message to Congress, he
insisted that a State had no right to secede, but that the United States
had no power to coerce a State which should secede. A majority of his
cabinet were southern men, three of them zealous secessionists. His most
intimate friends in Congress were southerners. These surrounded the
vacillating Chief Magistrate, and paralyzed what little energy was in
him, meanwhile taking advantage of his inaction to launch the
Confederacy. Now and then, spurred on by loyal old General Scott and by
the Union members of his cabinet, the President tried to break away from
the toils which the conspirators had spun around him. The Star of the
West was secretly sent with supplies and recruits to re-enforce Fort
Sumter. But Secretary Thompson warned South Carolina, and when the
vessel arrived off Charleston, January 9th, hostile batteries fired upon
her and forced her out to sea again. Another plan to relieve the fort
was half formed, but came to nothing. Buchanan's term was on the point
of expiring, and he sat supinely looking on while the disruption of the
Union proceeded apace.

The northern side in Congress showed little wisdom or spirit. Most
northern congressmen truckled to the South or wasted their energies in
fruitless attempts at compromise. Both houses, each by more than a
two-thirds majority, recommended a constitutional amendment depriving
Congress forever of the power to touch slavery in any State without the
consent of all the States. In December the venerable Crittenden, of
Kentucky, laid before the Senate his famous Suggestions for Compromise.
These, besides embodying the above amendment, restored the Missouri
Compromise, let each new State decide for itself whether it would be
slave or free, and forbade Congress to abolish slavery in the District
of Columbia or interfere with the inter-state transportation of slaves.
The United States was to pay for all fugitives whose capture should be
successfully prevented, and slaves as slaves could be carried through
free States. This measure, before Congress all winter, was finally lost
only for lack of southern votes.

A peace congress, called by Virginia, met at Washington in February.
Most of the northern States were represented and all the southern which
had not seceded. It sat for three weeks, and adopted resolutions
identical in substance with the Crittenden Compromise. These dangerously
large offers of concession, mainly well meant, happily proved useless.
The South had gone too far. She did not want compromise, but was bent
upon setting up a slave empire.

Mr. Lincoln arrived safely in Washington on February 23d, having eluded
a rumored plot to assassinate him in Baltimore. He accomplished this by
assuming a slight disguise and taking an earlier train than the one in
which he had been announced to go. He was duly inaugurated on March 4th.
In his inaugural he disclaimed all purpose to interfere with slavery in
the slave States, yet denied the right of secession, and proposed to
regain and hold the property and places belonging to the United States
in all parts thereof. There would be no bloodshed, he said, unless it
were forced upon the Government. "In your hands, my dissatisfied
fellow-countrymen," so ran his memorable words, "in your hands, not in
mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. You can have no conflict
without being yourselves the aggressors. We are not enemies, but
friends." This message, held out as an olive branch, the South denounced
as a menace. Some northern papers condemned it as the "knell and requiem
of the Union." But the general feeling it evoked at the North was one of
rejoicing. People believed that a hand both moderate and firm had at
length seized the helm.

The new President stood faced by an herculean task. Congress was not yet
fully purged of traitors, while Washington still swarmed with their
friends and agents. Floyd's treachery had tied Lincoln's hands. All the
best munitions of war had been sent south. Of the rifled cannon
belonging to the United States not one was left. Only a handful of
regular troops were within call, and the resignations of their officers
came in daily. The plight of the navy and treasury was no better.
Amazing coolness and the absurd prejudice against coercing States
largely possessed even the loyal masses. The attack on Sumter was thus a
god-send.

April 8th, Governor Pickens received notice from President Lincoln that
an attempt would be made to provision that fort. Thereupon General
Beauregard, who had left the United States army to take charge of the
fortifications at Charleston, was ordered by President Davis to demand
its evacuation. Major Anderson replied that they should be starved out
by the 15th, and would leave the fort then unless his Government sent
supplies. This answer was held unsatisfactory, and at 3.20 on the
morning of April 12th Beauregard notified Anderson that his batteries
would open fire in one hour.

Fort Sumter stood on an artificial island at the entrance of the harbor.
It was pentagonal in shape, the walls of brick, eight feet thick and
forty feet high. The parapet was pierced for 140 guns, but only 48 were
in condition for use. The garrison, including some 40 workmen and a
band, numbered 128. Surrounding the fort on all sides except toward the
sea, and distant from 1,300 to 2,500 yards, 19 Confederate batteries
were in position, mounting 47 cannon and mortars, and manned by 3,000 or
4,000 volunteers. These works were provided with bomb-proofs made of
railroad iron or of palmetto logs and sand.

The wharves, roofs, and steeples of Charleston were black with expectant
crowds, straining their eyes down the harbor where the silent castle
loomed up through the dim morning light. Boom! From a mortar battery to
the south a bombshell rises high into the air, describes its graceful
trajectory and falls within Sumter's enclosure. It is the signal gun.
One battery after another responds, until in less than an hour the
stronghold is girt by an almost continuous circle of flashing artillery.
Shells scream through the air and explode above the doomed work, and
great cannon-balls bury themselves in the brick walls. Still Sumter
speaks not. Anderson is waiting for daylight. About six o'clock he
breakfasts his garrison on pork and water, the only provisions left. An
hour later the embrasures are opened, the black guns run out, and Sumter
hurls back her answer to the voice of rebellion. The bombs making it
unsafe to use the barbette cannons of the open rampart, Anderson was
confined to his twenty-one casemate pieces, mostly of light calibre. The
fire was kept up briskly all the morning. Sumter stood it well, but did
little damage to the opposing batteries. At sunset the guns of both
sides became silent, but the mortars maintained a slow fire through the
night.

Early next morning the cannonade opened afresh, and in the course of the
forenoon hot shot set fire to Sumter's wooden barracks. The flames soon
got beyond control; the powder magazine had to be closed; and the heat
and smoke became so stifling that the garrison was forced, in order to
avoid suffocation, to lie face downward upon the floor, each man with a
wet cloth at his mouth. Powder was at last exhausted. About one o'clock
the flag was shot away. It was immediately raised again upon a low
jury-mast, but could not be seen for the smoke, and Beauregard sent to
ask if Anderson had surrendered. The latter offered to evacuate upon the
terms named before the bombardment, to which Beauregard agreed, and all
firing ceased. The next day at noon, after a salute of fifty guns to
their flag, Major Anderson and his men evacuated the scene of their
heroism, and soon after took passage for New York.

The disunion leaders had rightly calculated that an open blow would
bring the border slave States into the Confederacy; but they had not
anticipated the effect of such a deed beyond Mason and Dixon's line.
When it was known that the old flag had been fired upon, a thrill of
passionate rage electrified the North from Maine to Oregon. Then was
witnessed an uprising unparalleled in our history if not in that of
mankind. From every city, town, and hamlet, loud and earnest came the
call, "The Union must be preserved! Away with compromise! Away with
further attempts to conciliate traitors! To arms!" Slavery might do all
else, so little did most northerners yet feel its evil, but it could not
rend the Union. Pulpit, platform, and press echoed with patriotic cries.
Everywhere were Union meetings, speeches, and parades. Union badges
decked everyone's clothing, and the Stars and Stripes were kept unfurled
as only on national holidays before. In New York City a mass-meeting of
two hundred thousand declared for war. The New York Herald changed its
sneer to a war-blast. Party lines were thrown down. Democrats like
Butler, Cass, and Dickinson were in the Union van. Senator Douglas,
lately Lincoln's antagonist, and at first strongly opposed to coercion,
went through the West arousing the people by his patriotic eloquence.
"There can be no neutrals now," were his words, "only patriots and
traitors."



Route of the Sixth Massachusetts Troops through Baltimore.]


April 15th, President Lincoln issued a call for seventy-five thousand
volunteers, and each free State responded with twice its quota.
Enlisting offices were opened in every town and hamlet, and the roll of
the drum and the tramp of armed men with faces set southward were heard
all over the North. First to march was the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment.
Forming on Boston Common it took cars for Washington on April 17th,
reaching Baltimore on the morning of the 19th.

Maryland was trembling in the balance between Union and disunion. A
determined disunionist minority was working with might and main to drag
the State into secession. Baltimore was white-hot with southern zeal,
determined that the Bay State troops should never reach Washington
through that metropolis. Eight of the cars containing the soldiers were
drawn safely across the city. The next was assailed by a hooting mob,
and the windows smashed in by bricks and paving stones. Some of the
soldiers were wounded by pistol shots, and a scattering fire was
returned. Sand, stones, anchors, and other obstructions were heaped upon
the track. The remaining four companies therefore left the cars and
started to march. They soon met the mob, flying a secession flag. A
melee ensued. The troops moved double-quick toward the Washington depot,
surrounded by a seething mass of infuriated secessionists filling the
air with their brick-bats and stones, while bullets whizzed from
sidewalks and windows. The troops returned the fire, and several in the
crowd fell. The chief of police with fifty officers appeared on the
scene, who, by presenting cocked revolvers, held the rioters in check
for a while, till the distressed troops could join their comrades.
Baltimore was in the hands of this secessionist band for the rest of the
day. The bridges north of that city were also burned, so that no more
troops could reach Washington by this route.



Scene of the First Bloodshed, at Baltimore.


Meanwhile the capital city was in great peril, devotees of the South
being each moment expected to make an attack upon it. Only fifteen
companies of local militia and six of regulars were present at
inauguration time, stationed by General Scott at critical points in the
city. Pickets were posted continually on roads and bridges outside. Four
hundred Pennsylvania troops happily arrived on April 18th, and the next
day came the Sixth Massachusetts. But the city was not yet secure. There
were reports that large bodies of men were gathering in Maryland and
Virginia for a descent upon it. Washington was put in a state of siege,
the public buildings barricaded and provided with sentinels. The
Government seized the Potomac steamers and also all the flour within
reach. Business ceased. Alarmed by rumors of a military impressment,
hundreds of government clerks, besides officers in the army and navy,
came out in their true colors and fled south. Enemies at Baltimore had
cut off telegraphic communication between Washington and the North.
Reports came that re-enforcements were on the way, but day followed day
without witnessing their arrival. The President and all Unionists were
in an agony of suspense.



The Routes of Approach to Washington.
Russell & Struthers, Eng's, N. York.


On April 22d the Eighth Massachusetts, under General B. F. Butler, and
the famous Seventh Regiment from New York City, met at Annapolis. Here
they were delayed several days. Governor Hicks had warned them not to
land on Maryland soil. The railroad to Washington had been torn up for
many miles and the engines damaged. Among his troops Butler found the
very machinists who had made the engines. Repairs were promptly
effected, the track re-laid, and about noon of the 25th the gallant New
Yorkers landed in Washington amid the joyful shouts of the loyal
populace. Up Pennsylvania Avenue swept the solid ranks, bands playing
and colors flying, to gladden the heart of the careworn President as he
welcomed them at the White House. A sudden change came over the city.
Secessionists slunk away, the faces of the loyal beamed with joy. The
national capital was safe.