No Compromise – Circa1865

Guns Threaten an American City

During the Nullification Crisis of 1832-33, South Carolina was threatened with Federal invasion for refusing to abide by a new, protective tariff which surpassed a traditional tariff which raised funds to operate the federal government – not to protect Northern commercial interests. This was claimed to be “rebellion.”

In December 1860 and after the election of a purely sectional president and party openly hostile to South Carolina’s interests as a State within the federal union, the Governor notified Washington that his State was to resume its original powers of separate independent sovereignty. He rightly pointed out that this act was not “rebellion,” but an act of an independent State as South Carolina had been prior to consenting to the 1789 Constitution, and whose 10th Amendment stipulated that all powers not expressly delegated, were retained by each State.

Nonetheless, Article III, Section 3 of the US Constitution clearly identifies “treason” as waging war against or aiding the enemies of a constituent State.

Governor Francis W. Pickens Letter to President James Buchanan

Columbia, December 17, 1860. [strictly Confidential.] *

My Dear Sir: With a sincere desire to prevent a collision of force, I have thought proper to address you directly and truthfully on points of deep and immediate interest.

I am authentically informed that the forts in Charleston harbor are now being thoroughly prepared to turn, with effect, their guns upon the interior and the city. Jurisdiction was ceded by this State expressly for the purpose of external defense from foreign invasion, and not with any view they should be turned upon the State.

In an ordinary case of mob rebellion, perhaps it might be proper to prepare them for sudden outbreak. But when the people of the State, in sovereign convention assembled, determine to resume their original powers of separate and independent sovereignty, the whole question is changed, and it is no longer an act of rebellion.

I, therefore, most respectfully urge that all work on the forts be put a stop to for the present, and that no more force may be ordered there.

The regular Convention of the people of the State of South Carolina, legally and properly called, under our constitution, is now in session, deliberating upon the gravest and most momentous questions, and the excitement of the great masses of the people is great, under a sense of deep wrongs and a profound necessity of doing something to preserve the peace and safety of the State.

To spare the effusion of blood, which no human power may be able to prevent, I earnestly beg your immediate consideration of all the points I call your attention to. It is not improbable that, under orders from the commandant, or, perhaps, from the commander-in-chief of the army, the alteration and defenses of those posts are progressing without the knowledge of yourself or the Secretary of War.

The arsenal in the city of Charleston, with the public arms, I am informed, was turned over, very properly, to the keeping and defense of the State force at the urgent request of the Governor of South Carolina. I would most respectfully, and from a sincere devotion to the public peace, request that you would allow me to send a small force, not exceeding twenty-five men and an officer, to take possession of Fort Sumter immediately, in order to give a feeling of safety to the community. There are no United States troops in that fort whatever, or perhaps only four or five at present, besides some additional workmen or laborers, lately employed to put the guns in order.

If Fort Sumter could be given to me as Governor, under a permission similar to that by which the Governor was permitted to keep the arsenal, with the United States arms, in the city of Charleston, then I think the public mind would be quieted under a feeling of safety, and as the Convention is now in full authority, it strikes me that it could be done with perfect propriety. I need not go into particulars, for urgent reasons will force themselves readily upon your consideration. If something of the kind be not done, I cannot answer for the consequences.

I send this by a private and confidential gentleman, who is authorized to confer with Mr. Trescott fully, and receive through him any answer you may think proper to give to this.

I have the honor to be, most respectfully,

Yours truly,

(Signed.)

W. Pickens.

To the President of the United States.

* Correspondence No. 1. Governor Pickens to President Buchanan. The Record of Fort Sumter. Columbia, S. C, 1862.

SOURCE: Samuel Wylie Crawford, The Genesis of the Civil War: The Story of Sumter, 1860-1861, p. 81-3

Lincoln Chooses War

“The interval of eighty days between [Sumter] and the assembling of Congress gave Lincoln a virtual monopoly on emergency powers. Between his attempt to reinforce and resupply Fort Sumter – the latter odd since its garrison obtained food from Charleston markets – and the meeting of Congress in July, Lincoln had a virtual monopoly on assuming claimed “emergency powers.” After several States solemnly withdrew from the 1789 Constitution, Lincoln declared an “insurrection” to exist in seven States and called forth 75,000 militia to suppress this claim. On April 19, 1861, Lincoln proclaimed a naval blockade – an act of war – of all States bordering the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, including North Carolina which remained within the Union at that time. In his July 1861 message to Congress, Lincoln explained his clearly unconstitutional actions while asserting that “this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man the question whether a constitutional republic or democracy . . . can . . . maintain its territory against its own domestic foes.” It is clear that he was not familiar with Article III, Section 3 of the United States Constitution, for “waging war against Them [the States] or aiding and abetting their enemies.”

Lincoln Chooses War

“. . . the South considered secession a peaceable act, while according to the [Northern] point of view such secession was null and required a defensive attitude on the part of the federal government with a readiness to strike in retaliation for any act of resistance to the national authority. This drifting policy, accompanied by conditions in the social mind which can only be described as pathological, had led to the Sumter crisis; and war was upon the country with each side protesting that its actions were purely defensive, and that the opponent was the aggressor.

Lincoln took many other war measures. He issued two proclamations of blockade . . . He decreed an expansion of the regular army on his own authority [with] a further call on May 3^rd for recruits to the regular army beyond the total authorized by law. Increasing the regular army is a congressional function, with Sen. John Sherman stating that “I never met anyone who claimed that the President could, by proclamation, increase the regular army.”

Lincoln’s message to Congress on July 4^th, 1861, stated: “These measures, whether strictly legal or not, were ventured upon, under what appeared to be a popular demand and public necessity; trusting . . . that Congress would readily ratify them.” In a word, the whole machinery of war was set in motion by Lincoln, with all that this meant in terms of federal effort, departmental activity, State action and private enterprise.”

(The Civil War and Reconstruction. James G. Randall. D.C. Heath & Company. 1937, pp. 360-366)

Father of the Revolution – Samuel Adams

As described below, New England political agitation brought about the avoidable secession from England and war; the same occurred some 80 years later “as Massachusetts agitators and men of letters had done their best to see that there should be thousands, and tens of thousands” joining them in denouncing their union with the South. The uncompromising Puritan moral crusade against the very African slavery which ironically enriched their own section, would now be put to work to destroy the 1789 union. The agitation pushed the hand of Lincoln in April 1861 to confront now-independent South Carolina over the question of tariff revenue – which predictably resulted in gunfire and war. Those defending their State were denounced in the north as “rebels” intent upon destroying the union.

Father of the Revolution – Samuel Adams

“It is a great mistake to think of public opinion as united in the colonies and as gradually rising against British tyranny. Public opinion was never wholly united and seldom rises to a pitch of passion without being influenced – in other words, without the use of propaganda. The Great War [of 1914-1918] taught that to those who did not know it already.

From the first, [John] Adams and those working with him had realized the necessity of democratic slogans in the creation of a state of mind. [He] at once struck out boldly to inflame the passions of the crowd by threatening that it was to be reduced to the “miserable state of tributary slaves,” contrasting its freedom and moral virtue with the tyranny and moral degradation of England. He proclaimed that the mother country was bent on bringing her colonies to a condition of “slavery, poverty and misery,” and on causing their utter ruin, and dinned into the ears of the people the words “slavery and tyranny” until they assumed a reality from mere reiteration.

His political philosophy was eagerly lapped up by a populace smarting under hard times and resentful of colonial even more than imperial conditions of the moment. The establishment of government by free consent of all had become imbedded in the mind of the average man, as an essential part of the American dream. Adams himself had seen the vision but had glimpsed it with the narrowness and bitterness with which the more bigoted Puritans had seen the vision of an unloving and revengeful Hebrew Jehovah.

Such talk as this could only make England fearful of how far the people might try to put such precepts into practice. The upper classes of the colonies also began to be uneasy. Up to 1770, when their own grievances were redressed, they might allow such ideas to be disseminated, considering themselves in control of the situation, but after that it became clear that they were losing control . . . [as] Sam Adams and the lesser radicals worked harder than ever to keep public opinion inflamed.

With the upper classes [becoming] lukewarm or hostile to his continued propaganda [despite] the obnoxious legislation repealed or modified, [Sam Adams] had to trust to generalizations and emotional appeal.

A good example of his use of the latter was the affair called the “Boston Massacre.” As part of the general imperial policy following the [French and Indian] war, the British government had stationed some regiments in Boston. They were under good officers and good discipline, and there was no more reason why they should have made trouble there, than in any provincial garrison town of England. Sam Adams, however, was continually stirring up the public mind against them; John Adams reported finding Sam one Sunday night ‘preparing for the next day’s newspaper – a curious employment, cooking up paragraphs, articles and [incidents], working the political engine.’

Finally, one March evening, as a result of more than usual provocation given by taunting boys to soldiers on duty, an unfortunate clash occurred. There was confusion, a rioter’s shout to fire” was mistaken for an officer’s command, and several citizens were killed. The officer surrendered to civilian authorities, was tried, defended by John Adams and Josiah Quincy, Jr., and acquitted.

But Samuel Adams at once saw the value of the incident. Every emotion of the mob was played upon. The affair was termed a “massacre,” and in the annual speeches given for a number of years to commemorate its anniversary the boys and men who had taken part in the mobbing were described as martyrs to liberty and the soldiers as “bloody butchers.”

(The Epic of America. James Truslow Adams. Little, Brown and Company. 1932, pp. 83-84).

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 20^th . . . 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)

An Important Sectional Irritant

One of American history’s greatest ironies is that the Southern colonies, and later States were populated with Africans who were transported in the holds of English and New England ships, both growing prosperous and wealthy through this iniquitous maritime trade. The result was a million American dead by mid-1865.

An Important Sectional Irritant

Antebellum anti-slavery Republicans, in criticizing Southern anti-abolitionist literature policies, linked the laws making the education of Negroes a crime with other violations of freedom of speech. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, the egalitarian radical, early in his career attacked the Southern States for rifling the mails to destroy anti-slavery publications emanating from the North. A Republican colleague of Sumner criticized the restrictions “as being uncivilized.” In 1860, Sen. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi responded in the United States Congress:

“When men employ their time in writing tracts, in publishing newspapers, to indoctrinate crime into the Negroes – to teach them to commit arson, theft and murder – then there is reason growing out of the crimes of our neighbors which it imposes it upon us, as a duty of self-protection, to prevent the Negroes from reading, as the means of shutting out your unholy work . . . that, I imagine, is the foundation of all the objection which has existed to their being taught to read.” (Congressional Globe, 1687, 1860).

“In Georgia the circulation of any newspaper, pamphlet, or circular inciting insurrection, revolt, conspiracy or resistance by slaves, free Negroes or colored persons, was made punishable by death. Louisiana punished any writings designed to produce discontent or insubordination among Negroes, slave or free, with death or life imprisonment.

Not only did Virginia punish the making of abolitionist speeches or writings, but the State required every postmaster to notify a local justice of any mail with abolitionist literature and then burn this mail. And, if the addressee of the abolitionist material had subscribed to it, knowing its character, he was guilty of a crime.

These laws were constantly the subject of discussion in Congress and constituted an important sectional irritant. Northern members of Congress attacked them as violating freedom of speech, while the South defended them as essential to forestall slave revolts and bloody massacre of white Southerners. The specter of the early 1790’s massacre of Haiti’s white population was an ever-present fear in the American South.”

(School Segregation and History Revisited. Alfred Avins, PhD, Cambridge University. The Catholic Lawyer, Vol. 15, No. 4, Autumn 1969, pp. 311-312)

That Was the Problem We Inherited

Below, John Randolph Tucker reviews the constitutional issues which brought war 1861-1865, and poses the question:

“Was slavery so bad that the Constitution which shielded it, was violated in order to destroy it? That is the question which has been answered by the roar of artillery in the affirmative. But can that answer by force be justified in the forum of morals? If a solemn compact can be violated in order to destroy that which the compact guaranteed, what value is there in a written Constitution? It only awaits a new fanatical sentiment to justify a new crusade upon its integrity.”

That Was the Problem We Inherited

“The [North’s] crusade not only destroyed slavery but entailed upon the South a social condition for which the crusaders suggest no relief, and a condition which seems to be without the hope of peaceful solution. Those who had no interest in the relation [of black and white] have inoculated the South with a social and political disease for which their statesmen have provide no remedy and can find no panacea. These were the issues upon which the Southern States seceded, and defended their imperiled rights with a valor, constancy and fortitude which has made them immortal.

We cannot be placed in the false position of having fought to hold men in slavery. The American South never made a free man a slave and never took from Africa one human being to shackle him with servitude. The South inherited the institution which had been put upon us by the cupidity of European and New England slave traders against the protests of our colonial fathers. That was the problem we inherited.

Shall they remain slaves and how long? Or be at once emancipated and then be put into possession of equal power with the white man to direct a common destiny?

Shall our constitutional power, our inherent natural right to regulate this special interest, be wrested from us and vested in aliens to that interest, to be exercised by them to create social and political relations never known in the history of civilized man, and for the right regulation of which no prophecy could forecast a law, and our sad experience has been unable to devise a remedy? To put it forensically, the South did not plead to the issue of slavery or no slavery, but to the proper jurisdiction. To create the jurisdiction was to, by force, give up self-government.

Let no censorious criticism suggest a doubt of our faithful devotion to the Constitution and Union of today because we honor and revere the patriotism of those who died for the lost cause of political independence. The heroic purpose failed; our Confederacy sank beneath the political horizon in clouds which could not blacken history. The sun of the Confederacy illuminated them of its own transcendent glory. The fame of its American heroes, of their genius for leadership, of their fortitude, marital prowess and devotion to duty, all Americans will one day claim to be the common heritage of the Union.”

(Address of John Randolph Tucker, Vanderbilt University, June 1893, (excerpt). Confederate Veteran, August 1893, pg. 238)

“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)

To More Effectively Kill Americans

Early Spencer carbine-investor, Maine congressman (later Senator) James G. Blaine was an avid Lincoln supporter and determined to find more advanced weaponry with which to subdue the South’s drive for political independence. The incessant drive for more destructive death machines did much to develop the North’s burgeoning arms industry.

Postwar, Blaine was implicated in the Credit Mobilier scandal during the Grant administration, whereby railroad companies bribed federal officials to turn a blind eye to fraudulent contracts which overcharged the federal government by millions of dollars.

To More Effectively Kill Americans

“Christopher M. Spencer, inventor of the Spencer Carbine, after much difficulty in getting his product before [Northern] officials, finally got a hearing from Lincoln himself. An amusing incident occurred typical of both arms merchant and the famous rail-splitter. Spencer set up a shingle against a tree, fired a few shots at it, then handed the gun to the President who took aim and got results less satisfactory than did the inventor. Lincoln handed the gun back to the inventor with the remark: “When I was your age I could do better.”

But Spencer had won the President, and he left with an order for all the guns he could furnish.

Spencer at once proceeded to organize a company of which James G. Blaine was a stockholder, who was a then-congressman from Maine, later a Senator from the same State, Secretary of State in two cabinets, and 1880 presidential candidate of his party.

As stockholder in the Spencer Arms Company, he was apparently not very comfortable, since he inscribed on the letters which he wrote to the company secretary a note reading: “Burn these letters.” This little-known side of Blaine’s life harmonizes very well with his other shady dealings with western railroads and schemes, for which even his own partisans bitterly denounced him.”

(Merchants of Death: A Study of the International Armament Industry. H.C. Englebrecht, F.C. Hanighen. Dodd, Meade & Company. 1934, pp. 67-68)