Category: Pleading for Peace

Seward Insists Upon Servile War

Lincoln’s Secretary of State William Seward promised the cotton-dependent British an early end to war with “Northern victories releasing the raw cotton” of the South to England. Seward’s claim that New Orleans would soon be under his control was quickly dashed, and all were aware that Southern plantation owners would sooner burn their cotton bales than allow them to fall into enemy hands.  A desperate Seward then followed Virginia’s Royal Governor’s (Lord Dunmore) November 1775 edict to incite race war in the South, threatening both Britain and France that any aid to the American Confederacy would unleash a bloody slave uprising there. This would not only destroy Europe’s cotton source but also repeat the Haitian massacres of the early 1790’s which saw the slaughter of 4,000 white men, women and children. In retaliation, some 15,000 Africans were killed by the French.

Seward Insists Upon Servile War

“Fearing the growth in England, especially, of an intention to intervene, Seward threatened a Northern appeal to the slaves, thinking of the threat not so much in terms of an uncivilized and horrible war as in terms of the material interests of England. In brief, considering foreign attitude and action in relation to Northern advantage – to the winning of the war – he would use emancipation as a threat of servile insurrection, but he did not desire emancipation itself for fear it would cause that very intervention which it was his object to prevent.

On May 28, 1862, Seward wrote to US diplomat Charles Francis Adams, emphasizing two points: first, US diplomats abroad were now authorized to state that the war was, in part at least, intended for the suppression of slavery, and secondly, that the North if interfered with by foreign nations would be forced to unleash servile war in the South.

Such a war, Seward argued, would be “completely destructive of all European interests” and a copy of this was given to Britain’s Lord Russell on June 20th . . . and that any attempts a European mediation of the conflict would result in servile war unleashed upon the South. On July 13, Lincoln told Seward and [Gideon] Welles of the planned [gradual and compensated] emancipation proclamation and that this was his first mention of it to anyone.

On July 28, after Lord Russell reviewed Seward’s arguments, commented on the fast- increasing bitterness of the American conflict which was disturbing and unsettling to European governments, and wrote: “The approach of servile war, so much insisted upon by Mr. Seward in his dispatch, only forewarns us that another element of destruction may be added to the slaughter, loss of property, and waste of industry, which already afflict a country so lately prosperous and tranquil.”

(Great Britain and the American Civil War. Ephraim Douglas Adams. Alpha Editions, 2018 (original manuscript 1924), pg. 388-390)

War Was Not the Only Path

War between North and South was not a foregone conclusion in early 1861 as President James Buchanan encouraged and awaited peaceful legislative settlements of the existing sectional issues. Buchanan, a seasoned diplomat and negotiator with previous service as US Minister to England under President Pierce, Secretary of State under President Polk, and Minister to Russia for President Jackson. In contrast, Lincoln served in the Illinois House 1835-1842 and served a mere 2 years as US Representative from Illinois.

War Was Not the Only Path   

In the eighty-three years since the election of Lincoln, there has been a compression of events which places the firing upon Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861, hard upon the heels of the Republican victory on November 6, 1860. The magnitude of the Civil War itself has tended to telescope the important 150 days of possible compromise which intervened. Yet there is good reason to believe that President James Buchanan, as well as many other leaders, expected to avoid open conflict. The mood of the country had sobered at the realization that a sectional party had elected a president. Public opinion, in general, was entirely remote from the thought of war.

In the Ohio Valley, for example, the hour of decision was still half a year away. South of the Ohio the tier of border states which had voted for John Bell was ready to work desperately for compromise and Union. It is, of course, now well known that no complete consolidation of opinion ever occurred either in the North or the South.

The mass of opinion in the country found expression, therefore, on December 3, 1860, when Buchanan clearly enunciated his position as chief executive and, in constitutional terms, called upon the legislative branch of government to assume its responsibility for effecting a peaceful solution of the crisis. Forty years of public service, in both houses of Congress, in the cabinet and the courts of Europe, suggested arbitration to Buchanan. Schooled in constitutional debate, the technique of conciliation, and the adjustment of minority rights, as had occurred notably in 1820, 1832, and 1850, this Scotch-Irish Presbyterian president had carefully examined his own soul and the Constitution of the United States, and found that Congress, and Congress alone, had the power to arbitrate or to act. War, he believed, “ought to be the last desperate remedy of a despairing people, after every other constitutional means of conciliation had been exhausted.”

A month later, when South Carolina had, on December 20, voted to secede, and Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas were on the point of secession, Buchanan remained firm in his conviction that “justice as well as sound policy requires us still to seek a peaceful solution.” The prevailing sentiment of the country for adjustment, which found expression in such bodies as the Virginia-led Washington Peace Convention of February 1861, and the Crittenden Compromise, was strong and unchanged, though less articulate than the extremists on both sides. If the tall shadow of the president-elect lay across every discussion, then it will be remembered that Lincoln remained, during this period, a shadow indeed, without voice of assurance or warning.

Buchanan’s conciliatory stand has, until recently, been buried under the avalanche of post-war attitudes which show him only as the inept and weak man who stepped down for Lincoln’s administration. Not until the early decades of this century has a critical use of prejudiced sources and a body of new evidence indicated a revision. Was the Civil War necessary to save the Union, historians have now begun to ask. An able scholar of the new school, James G. Randall, comments succinctly:

“If . . . preservation of the Union by peaceable adjustment was possible, then unionists were not faced with a choice of war or disunion, but rather a choice between a Union policy of war and a Union policy in the Virginia sense of adjustment and concession.”

Especially suggestive to students of the period is Randall’s recent statement that “the wars that have not happened” should be studied. Judged in the light of “historical relativity” rather than in the concept of the “irrepressible conflict,” Buchanan’s policy, particularly as outlined in his December 3rd address to the nation, is subject to fresh interpretation. For its revelation of the gradually evolving picture of James Buchanan, as it has been influenced by changing methods of historical scholarship, and as a chronological picture of a state of public opinion which only gradually has permitted objectivity, a roll call of representative historians is of value.

The Southerner who foresaw that “to the South’s overflowing cup would be added the bitter taste of having the history of the war written by Northerners,” for at least fifty years, was not far wrong. A literary historical method which “saw history as primarily the achievements of great men, engaged in the grand manner, in sublime episodes, of political and military strife,” and made to order for the New England, or nationalist, school of historical writers who, until well past the turn of the century, dominated the field. American historical scholarship was, for that matter, still in its infancy. By 1880 there were still only eleven professors of history in the United States. The German seminar and the scientific methods of objective appraisal, which began to be felt in this country during the 1870’s, only gradually influenced these “prosecuting historians.”

Centering their attack on Buchanan’s December 3rd address, and the four eventful months of a “lame-duck” period, they have often contented themselves with easy, if theoretical, post-judgments. The shades of Jackson and Clay have been called to witness that forceful action would have saved the day. At the same time, accepting Seward’s thesis of the “irrepressible conflict,” Buchanan’s critics have clouded the hopes for peaceful settlement and the continuous efforts and proposals toward this end. The fact that these hopes were shared by such contemporary leaders as John Tyler, John Bell, John Floyd, John C. Breckinridge, Stephen A. Douglas, William H. Seward, Thurlow Weed, and many others, as well as by the average citizen, has not always been indicated.

On the basis of a careful study of manuscript and periodical sources which reflect the mood of the times, historian David M. Potter concludes that Lincoln and his party were unaware of the real threat of secession. His discussion of “Lincoln’s Perilous Silence” (pp. 134-55) is based on the fact that from the Cooper Institute speech in February 1860, to the date of his First Inaugural in March 1861, Lincoln made no definitive speeches.”

(James Buchanan and the Crisis of the Union. Frank W. Klingberg. Journal of Southern History, Vol. 9, No. 4, Nov. 1943, pp. 455-474).

Secessionist Abolitionists

Any serious historical review of the war’s cause in early 1861 cannot overlook President James Buchanan’s realization, undergirded by his Attorney General Jeremiah Black, that to wage war against a State was the very definition of treason against the United States (Article III, Section 3). Lincoln would not be constrained by this.

Secessionist Abolitionists

“From the 1830s on, abolitionists argued for the secession of the North from the Union and the American Anti-Slavery Society passed the following resolution:

“That the Abolitionists of this country should make it one of the primary objects of this agitation to dissolve the American Union.”

This was also the view of the Douglass Monthly, printed by Frederick Douglass. Fellow abolitionist Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune wrote on February 23, 1861, the day after Jefferson Davis was inaugurated President of the Confederate States of America:

“We have repeatedly said . . . that the great principle embodied by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, that governments derive their powers from the consent of the people, is sound and just; and that, if the Cotton States or the Gulf States, choose to form an independent nation, they have a clear moral right to do so. Whenever it shall be clear that the great body of Southern people have become conclusively alienated from the Union, and anxious to escape from it, we will do our best to forward their views.”

(Was Davis a Traitor, or Was Secession a Constitutional Right Previous to the War of 1861, Albert Taylor Bledsoe, Fletcher & Fletcher, 1995 (original 1866), p. 149)

 

“We Are for Peace”

Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois urged the maintenance of peace as a motive for evacuating forts in Southern States which had withdrawn ratification of the US Constitution, and in doing so was no doubt aware of the full force of his words. He knew that their continued occupation was virtually a declaration of war.

“We Are for Peace”

“On March 15, 1861, Stephen Douglas of Illinois offered a resolution recommending the withdrawal of the US garrisons within the limits of States which had withdrawn from the United States, except Key West and the Dry Tortugas. In support of this resolution, he said:

‘We certainly cannot justify the holding of forts there, much less the recapturing of those already taken, unless we intend to reduce those States themselves into subjection. I take it for granted, no man may deny the proposition, that whoever permanently holds Charleston and South Carolina is entitled to the possession of Fort Sumter.

It is true that Forts Taylor and Jefferson, at Key West and Tortugas, are so situated as to be essentially national, and therefore important to us without reference to our relations with the seceded States. Not so with Moultrie, Johnson, Castle Pinckney and Sumter, in Charleston Harbor; not so with Pulaski, on the Savannah River; not so with Morgan and other forts in Alabama; not so with those other forts that were intended to guard the entrance of a particular harbor for local defense.

We cannot deny that there is a Southern Confederacy, de facto, in existence, with its capital at Montgomery. We may regret it. I regret it most profoundly; but I cannot deny the truth of the fact, painful and mortifying as it is . . . I proclaim boldly the policy of those with whom I act. We are for peace.’”

(Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Jefferson Davis, Vol I. DaCapo Press, 1990, (original 1889), pp. 242-243)

The Inhuman Struggle

The British officer below had little knowledge of the American South prior to arriving in Virginia for a month’s visit in 1862 – but soon became a staunch advocate of the Confederacy. After returning to England, he penned an article for Blackwood’s Magazine entitled “A Month’s Visit to the Confederate Headquarters” which the following is drawn from. His closing words in the article urged the British Parliament to recognize the Confederate States of America, writing that it was time to put an end “to the most inhuman struggle that ever disgraced a great nation.”

The Inhuman Struggle

“The first British soldier to visit the Confederacy had at one time expected to be fighting against the North. Lieutenant-Colonel Garnet J. Wolseley, a veteran of several of Queen Victoria’s wars, was part of a British force ordered to Canada during the Trent affair of late 1861. After the threat of war soon receded, he traveled to New York City in September 1862 to join London Times correspondent Frank Lawley for a visit to the American Confederacy. By the time the two men crossed the Potomac, General Robert E. Lee’s army was withdrawing from Maryland after the Sharpsburg campaign.

Even as he entered Virginia, Wolseley was favorably disposed toward the Confederacy, ostensibly out of concern for civil liberties in the wartime North. He described residents of Maryland as “stricken . . . with terror” by arrests ordered from Washington. Traveling by train from Fredericksburg to Richmond, Wolseley and Lawley shared accommodations with the wounded from Lee’s Maryland campaign. Their plight impressed even Wolseley, the professional soldier:

“Men with legs and arms amputated, and whose pale, haggard faces assumed an expression of anguish at even the slightest jolting of the railway carriages, lay stretched across the seats – some accompanied by civilian friends who had gone from Richmond to fetch them back, and others by wives or sisters, whose careworn features told a tale of sleepless nights passed in painful uncertainty regarding the fate of those they loved.”

When Wolseley reached Lee’s headquarters, he and Lawley were taken to meet the general. The British officer was impressed: “[Lee] is a strongly built man . . . He is slightly reserved; but he is a person that, whenever seen, whether in a castle or a hovel, alone or in a crowd, must at once attract attention as being a splendid specimen of an English gentleman.”

Wolseley found an appealing lack of pomp and ostentation at Lee’s headquarters, which, he noted, consisted of seven or eight pole tents, pitched on ground so rocky as to be uncomfortable to ride over. Lee’s staff lived two or three to a tent, a nearby stream being the only amenity.

Everywhere he was impressed with the tough, dedicated Confederate soldiers. Could such men be defeated, he would ask, “by mobs of Irish and German mercenaries hired at $15 a month to fight in a cause they know little and care less about?”

(British Observers in Wartime Dixie. John M. Taylor. Military History Quarterly, Winter 2002, pp. 68-69)

Congress Alone Has the Power

Below, Alexander Stephens reviews the constitutional dilemma Abraham Lincoln faced when formulating his plan to resist the American South’s decision for political independence from the industrialized north.

Congress Alone Has the Power

“[Mr. Lincoln had] sworn to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution” and “faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States.” This oath imposed a solemn obligation on him not to violate the Constitution, or to exercise, under color of his office, any power not conferred upon him by that instrument. He was required to see to the faithful execution of the laws of the United States, as passed by the Congress of States, and as construed by the Judiciary.

He said in the first of these proclamations that he made a call for the militia “in virtue of the power vested in him by the Constitution and the laws.”

But no such power was vested in him by the Constitution, nor was there any law authorizing him “to set on foot” the naval blockade as he did in the second of these proclamations. He said he did this in pursuance of law, but there was no such law.

In reference to the first proclamation, Congress alone has power, under the Constitution, to declare war and raise armies. Congress alone has the power to provide by law, for calling out the militia of the several States.

The President under the Constitution has no power to call out [State] militia to suppress an insurrection in a State, except “on application of the Legislature or the Governor, when the Legislature cannot be convened.” This was one of the provisions of the United States Constitution which Mr. Lincoln swore to “preserve, protect and defend.”

That clause of the Constitution is amongst the mutual covenants between the States guaranteeing to each a “Republican Form of Government” and protection against invasion and domestic violence.” This contemplated and authorized no interference whatsoever on the part of the Federal authorities with the internal affairs of the several States, unless called upon for that purpose, unless specifically requested by a State.

On this point, Mr. Stephen Douglas, in his speech of March 15th, in the U.S. Senate, in the policy of withdrawing Federal troops from the forts in seceded States, was so clear, conclusive and unanswerable. Mr. Douglas said:

“But we are told that the President is going to enforce the laws in the seceded States. How? By calling out the militia and using the army and navy!? These terms are used as freely and flippantly as if we were in a military government where martial law was the only rule of action, and the rule of the Monarch was the only law to the subject.

Sir, the President cannot use the Army or the Navy, or the militia, for any purpose not authorized by law; and then he must do it in the manner, and only in the manner, prescribed by law. It must be requested by the State’s legislature, or Governor.”

(A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States, Vol. II. Alexander H. Stephens Sprinkle Publications, 1994 (original 1870), pp. 397-402)

 

 

The Horrors of Andersonville

It became clear in the postwar that both Grant and Lincoln were responsible for the excessive mortality in the South’s prison camps, especially Camp Sumter – aka-Andersonville. But northern politicians still “waved the bloody shirt” in 1876 with James Blaine of Maine claiming Jefferson Davis “was the author, knowingly, deliberately, guiltily, and willfully, of the gigantic murders and crimes at Andersonville.” Benjamin Hill of Georgia replied to him: “If nine percent of the [northern] men in Southern prisons were starved to death by Mr. Jefferson Davis, who tortured to death the twelve percent of the Southern men in Northern prisons?”

Prior to his release from postwar captivity, former Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia was asked himself about the conditions at Camp Sumter, also known as the Andersonville prisoner of war camp.

The Horrors of Andersonville

“Regarding treatment of prisoners at Andersonville and other places, which was brought up, I said that the matter had caused me deep mortification and pain. From all I had heard, the sufferings of prisoners were terrible. I had no idea, however, that these sufferings were by design or system on the part of Mr. Davis and other authorities at Richmond. Something akin to what might be styled indifference or neglect toward our own soldiers on the wounded and sick lists I have witnessed with distress. To this subject I have given a great deal of attention.

I had never seen in Mr. Davis any disposition to be vindictive toward prisoners of war. I had no idea that there was any settled policy of cruelty on his part to prisoners.

In all my conversations with him on the subject of prisoners, he put the blame of non-exchange on the authorities at Washington: he always expressed earnest desire to send home all we held upon getting in exchange our men equally suffering in northern prisons. Our prisoners, it was said, were treated as well as they could be under the circumstances; those at Andersonville were crowded into such a miserable pen because we had no other place in which to secure them. They had the same rations as our soldiers, who, to my own knowledge, suffered greatly themselves from food shortages, not only in our hospitals, but also in the field.

The advice I had given was to release all our prisoners on parole of honor, whether the authorities at Washington exchanged theirs or not. I had advised such a course as one of humanity and good policy.

Against it was urged that if we were to release all our prisoners, our men would be held and treated not as prisoners of war but as traitors and would be tried and executed as such; our authorities must hold northern soldiers as hostages for ours.  And I could not, after looking over the whole matter, come to any other conclusion than that some blame rested on the authorities at Washington.

War is at best a savage business; it never had been and never would, perhaps, be waged without atrocities on all sides. Hence, my earnest desire during the late conflict to bring about pacification by peaceful negotiations at the earliest possible moment.”

(Recollections of Alexander H. Stephens: His Diary While Imprisoned. Myrta Lockett Avary, ed., LSU Press, 1998 (original 1910), pp. 444-446)

American Citizens Targeted

The following is noted as “a summary of the report made by Tyler to Virginia Gov. Letcher on his return from Washington. The text of this report, with the letters passing between Tyler & Buchanan, was published in the Richmond Daily Dispatch, February 1861.”     The fortress was built to protect Virginia, not wage war upon it.

American Citizens Targeted

“Tyler left Washington on January 29 with the expectation of returning to the Washington Peace Convention, which was to assemble on February 4. On the day before leaving, he sent another letter to President James Buchanan, in lieu of a call which other engagements prevented. In this letter he expressed appreciation of the courtesies that had been shown him and pleasure at hearing the President’s message read in the Senate.

Tyler’s letter also spoke of a rumor that at Fortress Monroe the cannon had been put on the landward side and pointed inland. His comment of this report was “that when Virginia is making every possible effort to redeem and save the Union, it is seemingly ungenerous to cannon leveled at here bosom.”

To this letter Buchanan sent a very courteous reply, stating that he would inquire into the rumors with reference to Fortress Monroe’s cannon.”

(John Tyler, Champion of the Old South. Oliver Perry Chitwood. American Political Biography Press, 1939 – pg. 438)

Party Above Union

The Washington Peace Conference was urged on by Southern States as a last-ditch effort to salvage political union with the north through compromise – and they could rightly be referred to as the true “Unionists.” Working against Southern efforts for peace was Lincoln, who feared any compromise would weaken his minority party and limit his power.

Party Above Union

Early in the session (February 7th) the Washington Peace Conference paid its respects to the outgoing President James Buchanan as a body. The members were received in the East Room of the White House and presented to the Buchanan by former-President John Tyler.

A similar courtesy was extended to Lincoln when he arrived in Washington on February 23rd. As Tyler presented several distinguished delegates to him, Lincoln made brief comments, some of which were of a jocular character. His humor, however, was not particularly happy and hardly in keeping with the occasion. It may be said that Lincoln was using this method to ward off any embarrassing questions that might be asked. If this were his object, he was successful, as no commitments were made.

The strained amenities and the simulated courtesies exchanged between the ex-President and the President-elect were in the nature of a little drama typifying the end of one era and the beginning of another. Or, it might be regarded as a pleasing, trivial curtain raiser to that awful tragedy that marked the transition from the Second to the Third Republic. For the Second Republic was soon to undergo the pangs of death and the Third Republic to experience the painful throes of birth.

There was also the striking contrast in the personalities of the two men. In the case of Lincoln, tradition has so exaggerated his virtues and covered up his faults that one of the most human characters in history has been idealized into a demigod. With Tyler, on the other hand, his virtues have been so minimized and defects so magnified that the reputation of a refined and well-meaning gentleman has been handed down to us as that of a wicked renegade.”

(John Tyler: Champion of the Old South. Oliver Perry Chitwood. American Political Biography Press. 1939, pp. 448-449)

 

Washington the Arch-Rebel

Vallandigham (below) had the support of many in the north’s Democratic party such as editor Thomas Beer of Ohio’s Crawford County Forum of 30 January 1863. He wrote: “every dollar spent for the prosecution of this infamous war is uselessly wasted – and every life lost in it is an abominable sacrifice, a murder, the responsibility of which will rest upon Abraham Lincoln and his advisors. Support of this war and hostility to it, show the dividing line between the enemies and friends of the Union. He who supports the war is against the Union.”

Washington the Arch-Rebel

“Ohio Congressman Clement Vallandigham excoriated Lincoln and his followers on January 14, 1863, in the US House of Representatives by stating: “Yet after nearly two years of more vigorous prosecution of war than ever recorded in history . . . you have utterly, signally, disastrously failed to subjugate ten millions of “rebels”, whom you had taught the people of the North and . . . West not only to hate, but to despise.

Rebels did I say?  Yes, your fathers were rebels, or your grandfathers.  He [Washington] who now before me on canvas looks down so sadly upon us, the false, degenerate and imbecile guardians of the great Republic which he founded, was a rebel.  And yet we, cradled ourselves in rebellion and who have fostered and fraternized with every insurrection in the nineteenth century everywhere throughout the globe, would now . . . make the word “rebel” a reproach.”

(The Limits of Dissent: Clement L. Vallandigham & the Civil War. Frank L. Klement. Fordham University Press, 1998, pg 136)