CHAPTER X
THE GAUGE OF BATTLE
Socola found the little town of Montgomery, Alabama, breathing under a suppression of emotion that was little short of uncanny on the day Jefferson Davis was inaugurated President.
The streets were crowded to suffocation and tents were necessary to accommodate the people who could not be housed.
He was surprised at the strange quiet which the spirit of the new President had communicated to the people. There was no loud talk, no braggadocio, no threats, no clamor for war. On the contrary there had suddenly developed an overwhelming desire for a peaceful solution of the crisis.
The Convention which had unanimously elected Jefferson Davis, President, and Alexander H. Stephens, Vice President, had relegated the hot heads and fire eaters to the rear.
Three great agitators had really created the new nation, William L. Yancey of Alabama, Robert Toombs of Georgia and Barnwell Rhett of South Carolina. And they were consumed with ambition for the Presidency.
Toombs was the most commanding figure among the uncompromising advocates of secession in the South--an orator of consummate power, a man of wide learning and magnetic personality. William L. Yancey was as powerful an agitator as ever stirred the souls of an American audience since the foundation of our Republic. Barnwell Rhett of the Charleston _Mercury_ was the most influential editor the country had ever produced.
Yet the suddenness with which these fiery leaders were dropped in the hour of crisis was so amazing to the men themselves they had not yet recovered sufficient breath to begin complaints.
Toombs destroyed what chance he ever had by getting drunk at a banquet the night before the Convention met. William L. Yancey's turbulent history ruled him out of consideration. He had killed his father-in-law in a street brawl. Rhett's extreme views had been the bugle call to battle but something more than sound was needed now.
Toombs was dropped even for Vice-President for Alexander H. Stephens, the man who had pleaded in tears with his State not to secede.
The highest honor had been forced on the one man in all the South who most passionately wished to avoid it.
So acute was the consciousness of tragedy there was scarcely a ripple of applause at public functions where Socola had looked for mad enthusiasm.
The old Constitution had been reënacted with no essential change. The new President had even insisted that the Provisional Congress retain the old flag as their emblem of nationality with only a new battle flag for use in case of war. The Congress over-ruled him at this point with an emphasis which they meant as a rebuke to his tendency to cling to the hope of reconciliation.
It was exactly one o'clock on Monday, February 18, 1861, that Jefferson Davis rose between the towering pillars of the State Capitol in Montgomery and began his inaugural address. It was careful, moderate, statesmanlike, and a model of classic English. The closing sentence swept the crowd.
"It is joyous in the midst of perilous times to look thus upon a people united in heart, whose one purpose of high resolve animates and actuates the whole; where the sacrifices to be made are not weighed in the balance against honor, and right, and liberty and equality."
The cheer that greeted his appeal rose and fell again and again the third time with redoubled power and enthusiasm.
The President-elect stepped forward, placed his hand on the open Bible, and took the oath of office. As the last word fell from his white lips cannon thundered a salute from the hill crest and the great silk ensign of the South was slowly lifted by the hand of the granddaughter of President Tyler.
As the breeze unrolled its huge red, white and blue folds against the shining Southern skies the crowd burst into hysterical applause.
A Nation had been born whose history might be brief, but the people who created it and the leader who guided its destiny were the pledge of its immortality.
Socola found no difficulty in possessing himself of every secret of the new Government. What was not proclaimed from the street corners and shouted from the housetops, the newspapers printed in double leads. The new Government had yet to organize its secret service.
The President addressed himself with energy to the task which confronted him. But seven States had yet enrolled in the Confederacy. Of four more he felt sure. The first attempt to coerce a Southern State by force of arms would close the ranks with Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas by his side. Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri were peopled by the South and the institution of Slavery bound them in a common cause. And yet the defense of these eleven Southern States with their five million white population and four million blacks was a task to stagger the imagination of the greatest statesman of any age. This vast territory would present an open front on land of more than a thousand miles without a single natural barrier. Its sea coast presented three thousand miles of water front--open to the attack of the navy. This enormous coast of undefended shore was pierced by river after river whose broad, deep waters would carry the gunboats of an enemy into the heart of the South.
The audacity of our fathers in challenging the power of Great Britain was reasonable in comparison with the madness of the South's challenge to the North. Three thousand miles of storm-tossed ocean defended our Revolutionary ancestors from the base of the enemy supplies. Three thousand miles of undefended coast invited the attack of the U. S. Navy, while twenty million Northerners stood with their feet on the borders of the South ready to advance without the possibility of hindrance save the bare breasts of the men who might oppose them.
The difference between the sections in material resources was absurd. The North was rich and powerful Her engines of war were exhaustless and under perfect control. The railroads of the South were few and poorly equipped, with no work shops from which to renew their equipment when exhausted. The railroad system of the entire country was absolutely dependent on the North for supplies. The Missouri River was connected with the Northern seaboard by the finest system of railways in the world, with a total mileage of over thirty thousand. Its annual tonnage was thirty-six million and its revenue valued at four thousand millions of dollars. The annual value of the manufactures of the North was over two thousand millions, and their machinery was complete for the production of all the material of war. Her ships sailed every sea and she could draw upon the resources of the known world. Her manufacturing power compared to the South was five hundred to one.
No leader in the history of his race was ever confronted by such insuperable difficulties as faced Jefferson Davis.
He had been called to direct the government of a proud, sensitive, jealous people thrown without preparation into a position which threatened their existence, without an army, without arms, or the means to manufacture them, without even powder, or the means to make it, or the material out of which it must be made, without a navy or a single ship-yard in which to build one, and three thousand miles of coast to be defended against a navy which had whipped the greatest maritime nation of the world. His genius must meet every difficulty and supply every want or his Confederacy would fall at the first shock of war.
The one tremendous and apparently insuperable difficulty in case of war was the lack of a navy. A navy could not be built in a day, or a year or two years, were the resources of the Confederacy boundless. The ships of war now in the possession of the United States were of incalculable power in such a crisis. The South was cut in every quarter by navigable rivers. Many of their waters opened on Northern interiors accessible to great workshops from which new gunboats could be built with rapidity and launched against the South. The Mississippi River, navigable for a thousand miles, flowed through the entire breadth of the Confederacy with its approaches and its mouth in the hands of the North. Both the Tennessee and the Cumberland rivers had their mouths open to Northern frontiers and were navigable in midwinter for transports and gunboats which could pierce the heart of Tennessee and Alabama.
It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that the first purpose of the President of the Confederacy was to secure peace by all means consistent with public honor and the trust imposed on him by the people.
His first official act was the dispatch of Confederate Commissioners to Washington to treat for peace.
The hope that they would be received with courtesy and consideration was a reasonable one. The greatest newspapers of the North were outspoken in their opposition to the use of arms against any State of the Union.
The New York _Tribune_, the creator of Lincoln's party, led in this opposition to the use of force. The Albany _Argus_ and the New York _Herald_ were equally emphatic. Governor Seymour of New York boldly declared in a great mass meeting his unalterable opposition to coercion. The Detroit _Free Press_ suggested that a fire would be poured into the rear of any troops raised to coerce a State. It was already known that Mr. Lincoln would not advocate coercion in his inaugural.
Stephen A. Douglas, leader of the millions of the Northern Democracy, offered a resolution in the Senate of the United States recommending the immediate withdrawal of the garrisons from all forts within the limits of the States which had seceded except those at Key West and Dry Tortugas needful for coaling stations.
"I proclaim boldly," declared the Senator from Illinois, "the policy of those with whom I act. We are for peace!"
Socola reported to his Chief in Washington that nothing was more certain than that Jefferson Davis hoped for reunion, with guarantees against aggression by the stronger section of the Union.
Buchanan had agreed to receive the Southern Commissioners, and sent a message to Congress announcing their presence and their overtures.
The Commissioners found Washington seething with passion and trembling with excitement. Buchanan had collapsed in terror, fearing each hour to hear that his home had been sacked and burned at Wheatland. But the Southern leaders' hope of peaceful settlement was based on a surer foundation than the shattered nerves of the feeble old man in the White House. Joseph Holt, the Secretary of War, was a Southern Democrat born in Kentucky, and from the State of Mississippi. Holt had called on Davis in Washington and assured him of his loyalty to the South and her people. The President of the Confederacy knew of his consuming personal ambitions and had assured him of his influence to secure generous treatment.
But the Secretary of War had received information from the South. He had studied the situation carefully. He believed his chances of advancement in the North a better risk. The new Government had ignored him in the selection of a Cabinet--and with quick decision he cast his fortunes with the Union. That he had deceived Davis and Clay, to whom he had given his pledge of Southern loyalty, was a matter of no importance, save that these two men, who alone knew his treachery, were marked for his vengeance.
Little could they dream in this hour the strange end toward which Fate was even now hurrying them through the machinations of this sullen, envious Southern renegade.
The Secretary of War placed his big fist on the throat of the trembling President, and the Peace Commissioners could not reach the White House or its councils.
They were forced to await the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln.
Jefferson Davis gave himself body and soul to the task of preparing his over-sanguine, credulous people for the possible tragedy of war.
General Beauregard was ordered to command the forces in South Carolina, and erect batteries for the defense of Charleston and the reduction of Fort Sumter in case of an attempt to reënforce it. This grim fort, in the center of the harbor of the chief Southern Atlantic city, commanded the gateway of the Confederacy. If it should be reënforced, the Confederate Government might be strangled by the fall of Charleston, and the landing of an army even before a blow could be struck.
Captain Raphael Semmes was sent North to buy every gun in the market. He was directed to secure machinery, and skilled workingmen to man it, for the establishment of arsenals and shops, and above all to buy any vessel afloat suitable for offensive or defensive work. Not a single ship of any description could be had, and the intervention of the authorities finally prevented the delivery of a single piece of machinery or the arms he had purchased.
Major Huse was sent to Europe on the third day after the inauguration at Montgomery on a similar mission.
General G. W. Rains was appointed to establish a manufactory for ammunition. His work was an achievement of genius. He created artificial niter beds, from which sufficient saltpeter was obtained, and within a year was furnishing the finest powder.
General Gorgas was appointed Chief of Ordnance. There was but one iron mill in the South which could cast a cannon, and that was the little Tredegar works at Richmond, Virginia. The State of Virginia had voted against secession and it would require the first act of war against her Southern sisters to bring her to their defense.
The widespread belief in the North that the South had secretly prepared for war, was utterly false, and yet the impression was of the utmost importance to the President of the Confederacy. It gave his weak government a fictitious strength, and gave him a brief time in which to prepare his raw recruits for their first battle.
Day and night he prayed for peace at any sacrifice save that of honor. The first bloodshed would be the match in the powder magazine. He pressed his Commissioners in Washington for haste.
The inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln had been so carefully worded, its utterances so conservative and guarded, his expressions of good will toward the South so surprisingly emphatic, that Davis could not believe an act of aggression which would bring bloodshed could be committed by his order.
And yet day dragged after day with no opportunity afforded his Commissioners to treat with the new Administration save through the undignified course of an intermediary. The Southern President ordered that all questions of form or ceremony be waived.
Seward, the Secretary of State, gave to these Commissioners repeated assurances of the peaceful intention of the Government at Washington, and the most positive promise that Fort Sumter would be evacuated. He also declared that no measure would be instituted either by the Executive or Congress changing the situation except on due notice given the Commissioners.
These assurances were accepted by the Confederate President in absolute good faith. And yet early in April the news was flashed to Montgomery that extraordinary preparations were being made in the Northern ports for a military and naval expedition against the South. On April the fifth, sixth and seventh, a fleet of transports and warships with shotted guns, munitions and military supplies sailed for Charleston.
The Commissioners in alarm requested an answer to their proposals. To their amazement they were informed that the President of the United States had already determined to hold no communication with them whatever in any capacity or listen to any proposals they had to make. On Beauregard's report to them that Anderson was endeavoring to strengthen his position instead of evacuating the Fort the Commissioners again communicated with Mr. Seward.
The wily Secretary of State assured them that the Government had not receded from his promise. On April seventh Mr. Seward sent them this message:
"Faith as to Sumter fully kept: wait and see."
His war fleet was already on the high seas, their black prows pointed southward, their one hundred and twenty guns shotted, their battle flags streaming in the sky!
Lincoln's sense of personal honor was too keen to permit this crooked piece of diplomacy to stain the opening of his administration. He dispatched a special messenger to the Governor of South Carolina and gave notice of his purpose to use force if opposed in his intention of supplying Fort Sumter.
On the eve of the day the fleet was scheduled to arrive this notice was delivered. But a storm at sea had delayed the expedition and Beauregard asked the President of the Confederacy for instructions.
His Cabinet was called, and its opinion was unanimous that Fort Sumter must be reduced or the Confederacy dissolved. There was no choice.
Their President rose, his drawn face deadly pale:
"I agree with you, gentlemen. The order of the sailing of the fleet was a declaration of war. The responsibility is on their shoulders, not ours. To juggle for position as to who shall fire the first gun in such an hour is unworthy of a great people and their cause. A deadly weapon has been aimed at our heart. Only a fool would wait until the shot has been fired. The assault has already been made. It is of no importance who shall strike the first blow or fire the first gun."
With quick decision he seized his pen and wrote the order for the reduction of Fort Sumter.