Southern Unionists – 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

Andrew Jackson Provokes Civil War

Opponents of Andrew Jackson’s warlike threats after South Carolina’s fierce opposition to the protective tariff labeled it the “Force Bill” or the “Bloody Bill,” which authorized using military force to collect the government revenue. He warned that he would march to South Carolina with 200,000 men to quell any and all insurrection and should the Governor of Virginia attempt to prevent the passage of regiments bound for South Carolina, “I would arrest him at the head of his troops.”

Jackson awaited congressional sanction for his war upon a State; Lincoln’s actions were his own and taken while Congress was in recess.

Andrew Jackson Provokes Civil War

Senator John Tyler of Virginia called Charleston a “beleaguered city.” Suppose, he said, this bill were to pass and “the proud spirit of South Carolina” should refuse to submit. Would we then “make war upon her, hang her Governor . . . and reduce her to the condition of a conquered province?” Mr. Tyler saw South Carolina’s towns leveled, her daughters in mourning, her men driven “into the morasses where Francis Marion found refuge.” But he did not see them conquered. Rome had her Curtis, Sparta her Leonidas – and South Carolina had John C. Calhoun. Mr. Calhoun did not repudiate the heroic part. “I proclaim it,” said he, “that should this bill pass . . . it will be resisted at every hazard – even that of death.”

Oblivious to threat and to political entreaty, Andrew Jackson refused to give an inch. He insisted on the passage of the Force Bill. Henry Clay of Kentucky, a practiced dispenser of parliamentary miracles, could not uphold nullification and he would not uphold Jackson. Clay introduced a bill which in ten years would lower tariffs by twenty percent and South Carolina accepted peace from the hands of Mr. Clay rather than those of General Jackson.

But the late crisis had ended more tamely than Jackson had reckoned on. “I thought I would have to hang some of them & I would have done it.”

(The Life of Andrew Jackson. Chapter XXX, Marquis James. Bobbs Merrill Company, 1938, pg. 619-621)

A Toast to Our Federal Union

Some twenty-nine years before Abraham Lincoln threatened a State with invasion, the militaristic President Andrew Jackson flatly denied that a State within the federation could challenge laws it considered unconstitutional. Jackson believed all States to be permanently under the 1789 constitution with no right to withdraw, which surprised Rhode Island, New York and Virginia as all three had explicitly reserved this in their ratifications. All other States considered the 10^th Amendment as a clear warning to the federal agent.

Though Jackson was not the first military man elected president, his experience as a field commander with little if any civilian supervision gave him wide latitude in his decisions. His April 1818 capture and hanging of two British envoys in Florida brought him severe condemnation from Congress, which chose not to censure the popular general.

A Toast to Our Federal Union

“Toastmaster Roane introduced the President of the United States. Old Hickory stood, waiting for the cheers to subside. The President fixed his glance upon Vice President John C. Calhoun, toasting to, “Our Union: it must be Preserved.” He raised his glass, a signal that the toast was to be drunk standing.

Hayne rushed up to Jackson. Would the President consent to the insertion of one word in his toast before the text was given to the newspapers? What was the word? Asked Jackson. It was “Federal,” making the toast read, “our Federal Union.” Jackson agreed and, like many another historic epigram, the toast went forth amended to the world.

The Vice President arose slowly. “May we all remember that [the Union] can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the States and by distributing equally the benefits and burdens of the Union.”

(The Life of Andrew Jackson. Chapter XXX, Marquis James. Bobbs Merrill Company, 1938, pg. 539-540)

Opposing Slave Imports to Virginia

Robert E. Lee’s father “Light-Horse” Harry was a first-cousin to Richard Henry Lee, a prominent Virginian elected to the House of Burgesses in 1758, an office he held virtually the rest of his life. His first speech assailed the transportation of slaves into Virginia, stating “the importation of slaves into this Colony . . . has been and will be attended with effects dangerous both to our political and moral interests.” “Lay so heavy a tax upon the importation of slaves as effectually to put an end to that iniquitous and disgraceful traffic within the Colony,” he told the Burgesses.” North Carolina proposed the same.

Opposing Slave Imports to Virginia

“Massachusetts invalidated the British commercial system, which Virginia resisted from abhorrence of the slave-trade. Never before had England pursued the traffic in Negroes with such eager avarice.

The remonstrances of philanthropy and of the colonies were unheeded, and categorical instructions from the Board of Trade kept every American [colonial] port open as markets for [African slaves]. The legislature of Virginia had repeatedly showed a disposition to obstruct the commerce; a deeply seated public opinion began more and more to avow the evils and injustice of slavery itself; and in 1761, it was proposed to suppress the importation of Africans by a prohibitory duty.

Among those who took part in the long and violent debate was Richard Henry Lee (1732-1794), the representative from Westmoreland. Descended from one of the oldest families in Virginia, he had been educated in England and had returned to his native land familiar with the spirit of Grotius and Cudworth, of Locke and Montesquieu; his first recorded speech was against Negro slavery and in behalf of human freedom.

In the continued importation of slaves, Lee foreboded danger to the Old Dominion; an increase of the free Anglo-Saxons, he argued, would foster arts and varied agriculture, while a race doomed to abject bondage was of necessity an enemy to social happiness. He painted from ancient history the horrors of servile insurrections. He deprecated the barbarous atrocity of [England’s and New England’s] trade with Africa, and its violation of equal rights of men created like ourselves in the image of God.

The [slave importation] tax for which Lee raised his voice was carried through the Assembly of Virginia by a majority of one; but from England a negative followed with certainty every colonial act tending to diminish the slave-trade.”

(History of the United States, From the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. IV. George Bancroft. Little, Brown & Company. 1856. pp. 421-422)

The Tenth Amendment

Christopher Gustav Memminger was born in 1803 in the Dukedom of Wurtemberg, the son of a Prince-Elector’s Foot Jaegers. His mother fled Napoleon’s ravaging of the German States after the death of her soldier-husband, finding refuge at Charleston, South Carolina. She then succumbed to fevers soon after their arrival and left him an orphan. The future American statesman was then admitted to Charleston’s Asylum for Orphans, entered South Carolina College at the age of 12, and graduated second in his class at age 16. Memminger passed the bar in 1825, became a successful lawyer, and served in the South Carolina Legislature from 1836 to 1860. From 1861 to 1864 he was a presidential cabinet member.

An esteemed Charleston lawyer by the 1840s, he was retained by a local synagogue to represent them in an internal quarrel, and did so very successfully and without a fee, that he received “an elegant and richly chased silver pitcher of the Rebecca pattern, nearly two feet in height, and a massive silver waiter, eighteen inches in diameter.”

This valuable memento, with other personal property, was plundered from his residence by invading soldiers of the Federal army. Notwithstanding its well-marked and unmistakable evidence of ownership, it is still held somewhere at the North as a “trophy,” or has been converted into bullion and sold by some remorseless thief.”

In opposing an offensive Massachusetts-originated House of Representatives resolution, in 1835, Mr. C. G. Memminger of South Carolina reminded his colleagues of the limitations the States placed upon the United States Constitution of 1789.

The Tenth Amendment

“The Union of these States was formed for the purpose, among other things, of ensuring domestic tranquility and providing for the common defense; and in consideration thereof, this State yielded the right to keep troops or ships of war in time of peace without the consent of Congress; but while thus consenting to be disarmed, she has, in no part of the constitutional compact, surrendered her right of internal and police; and, on the contrary thereof, has expressly reserved all powers not delegated to the United States, nor prohibited by it to the States.”

(Life and Times of C.G. Memminger, Henry D. Capers, A.M. Everett Waddey Co., Publishers 1893, pg. 190)

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)

Correcting the Record

Correcting the Record

“The Jackson (Mississippi) Clarion prints the following letter:

Beauvoir, Mississippi

June 20, 1885

Dear Sir, – Among the less-informed persons at the North there exists an opinion that the negro slave at the South was a mere chattel, having neither rights nor immunities protected by law or public opinion. Southern men knew such was not the case, and others desiring to know could readily learn the fact.

On that error the lauded story of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was founded, but it is strange that a utilitarian and shrewd people did not ask why a slave, especially valuable, was the object of privation and abuse? Had it been a horse they would have been better able to judge and would most probably have rejected the story for its improbability. Many attempts have been made to evade and misrepresent the exhaustive opinion of Chief Justice Taney in the ‘Dred Scott’ case, but it remains unanswered.

From the statement in regard to Fort Sumter, a child might suppose that a foreign army had attacked the United States – [and] certainly could not learn that the State of South Carolina was merely seeking possession of a fort on her own soil and claiming that her grant of the site had become void.

The tyrant’s plea of necessity to excuse despotic usurpation is offered for the unconstitutional act of emancipation, and the poor resort to prejudice is invoked in the use of the epithet ’rebellion,’ a word inapplicable to the States generally, and most especially so to the sovereign members of a voluntary union. But alas for their former ancient prestige, the States have even lost the plural reference they had in the Constitution . . . such language would be appropriate to an imperial government, which in absorbing territories required the subject inhabitants to swear allegiance to it.”

(Letter from President Davis on States’ Rights. Southern Historical Society Papers. Vol. XIV, January – December 1886, Rev. J. William Jones, D.D., pp. 408-409)

Citizenship as Intended

Below, Alexander Stephens explains the original intent of citizenship of the United States being first State citizenship. Stephens wrote the following from a Fort Warren jail cell after his arrest in 1865 for an unknown crime.

Citizenship as Intended

“Eight weeks today [July 6, 1865] I have been a prisoner; six weeks in this place; all without the slightest intimation of the cause. Seized by an armed force, sent here by an armed force, kept in close confinement, guarded by an armed force, deprived of all means of appealing to judicial power for redress; and yet Eagle-orators and reverend rhetoricians scream and shout about the glorious freedom we Americans enjoy.

PM – [A newspaper] article on naturalization in the cyclopedia attracted my attention. It is strange what errors have crept into vogue and pass without scrutiny or question, especially on naturalization and its sequence, citizenship of the United States. The subject is treated as if Congress were empowered by the Constitution to confer upon aliens’ citizenship of the United States distinct from citizenship of particular States and Territories.

The truth is, Congress has no power to naturalize or to confer citizenship of the United States. Its only power is to establish a uniform rule to be pursued by the respective States and Territories on admitting aliens to their own citizenship.

Before the Constitution was adopted, each State possessed the right as an Independent Sovereign Power to admit to citizenship whom she pleased, and on such terms as she pleased. All that the States did on this point in accepting the Constitution was to delegate to Congress the power to establish a uniform rule so that an alien might not be permitted to become a citizen of one State on different terms from what might be required in another; especially, as in one part of the Constitution it is stipulated that the citizens of each State shall be entitled in all the rest to the rights and privileges of their citizens.

But no clause of the Constitution provides for or contemplates citizenship of the United States as distinct from citizenship of some particular State or Territory. When any person is a citizen of one of the States united, he thereby, and thereby only, becomes and can be considered a citizen of the United States.

Errors in the public mind on this question are radical and fundamental and have the same source as many others equally striking.

I was first struck with these on the annexation of Texas. How could her representatives, it was asked, take their seats in Congress, not having been citizens of the United States for the term of years required by the Constitution? The answer, upon the true principles of the Constitution and the only citizenship it contemplates, was plain: members and senators could not present themselves until the State was itself one of the United States; then, whoever might present himself as a member, having been seven years a citizen of Texas, would, in the terms and meaning of the Constitution, have been seven years a citizen of the United States, so constituted.”

(Recollections of Alexander H. Stephens: His Diary While Imprisoned. Myra Lockett Avary, ed., LSU Press, 1998 (original 1910), pp. 312-313)

States Above Federal Authority

Both Thomas Jefferson and John Madison feared the Adam’s administration’s “Alien and Sedition Acts” and agreed that these should be attacked on the grounds of their unconstitutionality. A stern response should emanate from State legislatures, and those opposing the “Acts” had to do so anonymously to avoid arrest. To Jefferson especially, it was federal power that represented a clear and present danger as would be the case some 63 years later.

States Above Federal Authority

“John Breckinridge, who would later become Thomas Jefferson’s Attorney General, authored resolutions in 1798 which opened with ‘the American States were not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their government.’ And there was nothing startling about at that time in his reference to the Constitution as a compact between States, for this view of it was widely held.

Jefferson, remaining in the background, did not say, as Calhoun did later, that sovereignty was indivisible and remained with the States. The abstract question of sovereignty probably did not greatly interest him. He took the position which Madison well-described a few months later: “The authority of constitutions over governments, and of the sovereignty of the people over constitutions, are truths which are at all times necessary to be kept in mind, and at no time, perhaps, more necessary than the present.” At this moment Jefferson would not have used the word “perhaps” . . . with him the essential truth was the sovereignty of the people, and the reality as he saw it was that the people lived in the several States and could express themselves more readily through State action.

Regarding constitutions as shields against arbitrary power, he was disposed to interpret all of them strictly. In construing the federal constitution strictly, however, he was pursuing no solitary course: he was quite in line with the Republican spokesmen in Congress.”

(Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty; Volume III. Dumas Malone. Little, Brown and Company, 1962, pp. 402-403)

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)