1861. SECESSION OF THE GULF STATES. 489 Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, each in turn passed its ordinance, based upon that of South Carolina. In all of these States the sentiment to take immediate advantage, without waiting for a new administration or its overtures, was strong and irresistible, and a proposal made in the Georgia convention for delay until the third of March was voted down.* Following so nearly unanimous an expression in these first six States to dissolve the bonds of the old Federal Union, was the impulse to seize and appropriate the public property of the United States undefended and within easy reach. Forts, arsenals, the new custom-houses January at Charleston and New Orleans upon which lavish February. sums had been so lately expended, the mint, too, at the Crescent city, with its large treasure of public money, all these were occupied one after another, as within jurisdiction of the seceding State, and held without resistance. By February 1st the Mississippi was closed at its entrance essentially to the great tier of flourishing Northwestern States, and the general government maintained its authority along the seceding coast only at Forts Sumter and Pickens. Except for this latter stronghold, Pensacola was basely stripped of its defences by the men who should have guarded them. Some Southern officers of the navy mailed their resignations to Washington, and sim- January ultaneously led an attack of Florida troops upon the navy yard of that place. Commodore Armstrong basely surrendered at their demand; and, more basely still, Secretary Toucey, after receiving news of this surrender, accepted the resignations which had been forwarded to him, instead of dishonoring the officers who had thrown up the service with all the insult and parade they could muster. 13-15. The Florida convention met January 3; those respectively of Alabama and Mississippi, January 7; that of Georgia, January 16; and that of Louisiana, January 23. Mississippi passed the ordinance of secession on the 9th, by 84 to 15; Florida, on the 10th, by 62 to 7; Alabama, on the 11th, by 61 to 11; Georgia, on the 19th, by 208 to 89; Louisiana, on the 26th, by 113 to 17. The War Department was managed differently. Texas, on the 1st of February, passed a secession ordinance, subject to a vote of the people; and Major-General Twiggs, who commanded the United States troops in that department, soon proceeded to turn over the military property to the State authorities. Twiggs was one of the oldest and most trusted officers of the service; and March 1. when the intelligence of this misconduct came to hand, his name was struck in disgrace from the army rolls.† A crowning motive, no doubt, for the status quo arrangement was, on Buchanan's side, to stave off the shock of civil war until he was fairly out of office; while Davis and his associates were equally anxious that the new Southern Confederacy should take the military direction, and the delicate question of transferring the forts into its own keeping. As a makeweight might be thrown in the efforts, headed by Virginia, of which we shall presently speak, to make such terms for slavery as would preserve the Union longer. South Carolina had led off, at the time of her secession, in the effort to form a confederate government of slaveholding States; and to this consummation events speedily tended. Delegates from the six seceding States met on the 4th of February at Montgomery, AlaFebruary. bama, in a "Southern Congress," over which Howell Cobb was chosen to preside. A constitution for the "provisional government of the Confederate States of America” was on the 8th of the month adopted, to continue for one year from the inauguration of a President, unless superseded sooner by the adoption of a permanent charter. The framework of this Confederacy, like the flag and other *By 166 to 7. This ordinance provided that secession should not take effect until March. † Secretary Toucey was censured by the House at this session for accepting the resignations of naval officers whose conduct was known to be traitorous. But Toucey followed the example of his chief, whose feeble politics for this emergency were his own. 1861. CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA. 491 emblems designed later, was patterned after that of the old Union, thus showing that the attachment of American citizens was deeper rooted than they dared to own, and originality found scarce a positive expression beyond making negro slavery the corner-stone of the new system. Slave States refusing this alliance were threatened with a loss of slave traffic. The new Congress was empowered to collect all taxes, duties, imports, and excises needful for revenue, all duties to be uniform throughout the Confederacy. And all matters, in fine, relating to public property and the public debt were to be adjusted "upon principles of right, justice, equity, and good faith" between the States leagued into this new membership "and their late confederates of the United States." Peaceable secession was the experiment proposed by the new Confederacy, against the precipitate zeal of South Carolina; and among its earliest acts of legislation was one which took into its own charge all questions with the United States relating to the occupation of forts and other public establishments. On the same day that this provisional government was adopted, Jefferson Davis, whose brain had shaped out the new concert of States, was elected President, and Alexander H. Stephens Vice-President of the new Confederacy. Both were elected by a unanimous vote of the Congress; and on the 18th of February the Vice-President having taken the oath a week earlier-Davis was inaugurated Chief Executive at Montgomery, delivering a calm address which flattered the idea that a confederacy of planters. should stand disconnected from communities engaged in commerce and manufactures. His Cabinet was organized immediately after. This provisional government, as it styled itself, was in reality an oligarchy or military despotism. For the delegates to the Montgomery Congress derived their authority from conventions rather than the people of the seceding States; and, adopting a provisional framework and choosing a provisional Executive, these delegates took the leadership and actual incorporation of the Confederacy into their own hands in a monopolizing spirit. The Continental Congress of 1775 had used less liberties with the people of the several States that they represented.* Stephens, the Vice-President, assumed the responsibilities of confederate station in a very different temper from his high-spirited chieftain, having been chosen the more readily for his very reluctance. He stood for a type of Southern statesmen whose lingering love was for the Union, but who, against their clearest convictions of policy, were drawn into the vortex of secession by a certain fatalism and a sense of fidelity to Southern institutions. Out of politics from his own choice, and philosophizing at his "Liberty Hall" in a small and dilapidated Georgia town, with dogs and the young men he befriended to bear him company, this bachelor read the political signs with remarkable accuracy. He had regretted the Democratic schism at Charleston, and augured its evil consequences. South Carolina's secession and "declaration of causes " he looked upon as showing that no redress of grievances would pacify her. Poisoned, like most of his section, with the Calhoun heresy that a State had the right to secede, Stephens nevertheless believed that the only cause of complaint which the South had against the North was the personal liberty bills, all other complaints being founded. in threatened dangers which might never come. If there were abolitionists who would use a Republican victory against slave institutions, yet by wise counsels they could. be kept back, as they had been in former years, and sound, constitutional men of the North would always be found to unite with the South to keep them in a minority. "The truth is," he wrote, "the South, almost to a man, has voted, I think, for every measure of general legislation that has passed both Houses and become law for the last ten years. Indeed, with but few exceptions, the South has controlled. * Stephens relates in 1862 that the provisional government had thought of him (but he refused) and of Toombs for President of the Confederate States, and that neither the Mississippi delegates nor Davis himself wished the honor as Congress assigned it; for Davis's ambition was, instead, to be commander-in-chief. Johuston's Life of A. H. Stephens, 390. 1861. LINCOLN AND STEPHENS. 493 the government in its every important action from the beginning." ”将 Abraham Lincoln, who scanned well the situation from his distant home, was not unmindful of his old Whig friendships with Southern statesmen. Stephens, on the 14th of November, had made a remarkable speech at Milledgeville, which argued with great force that Lincoln's election was no sufficient cause for secession. Northern men, all too sanguine, thought for a time that this speech had given the quietus to secession in that quarter; though Stephens, with fatal inconsistency, approved in it the call for State convention, and stood for a candidate. Procuring a revised copy of this speech, which was courteously transmitted, Lincoln inquired in a private letter,† “Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would, directly or indirectly, interfere with the slaves, or with them about the slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and still, I hope, not an enemy, that there is no cause for such fears. . . . I suppose, however, that does not meet the case. You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be abolished." To this frank assurance and equally frank statement of the point of dif ference between the sections, Stephens replied ‡ with equal candor and personal friendliness. The South, he did not think, was apprehensive of actual interference, but its pride was touched at being placed under the ban of moral agitation. It is, indeed, in vain that we plan with confidence that they who opposed will yield from motives of prudence and clear self-interest; forgetting that pride and passionate ambition force their way, when the blood is up, heedless of all intelligent restraint. Nothing was surer, as * Johnston's A. H. Stephens, 375, 376. This letter was dated December 22, 1860, and Stephens never disclosed its existence until after President Lincoln's death. Johnston's Stephens, 371. December 30, 1860. Ibid. |