266 



CONGRESS, U. S. 



of the apostles of that doctrine to force a col- 

 lision between the North and the South, either 

 to bring about a separation or to find a vain 

 hut bloody pretext for abolishing slavery in 

 the States. In any event, I knew, or thought 

 I knew that the end was certain collision, and 

 death tb the Union. 



"Believing thus, I have for years past de- 

 nounced those who taught that doctrine with 

 all the vehemence, the bitterness, if you choose 

 I thought it a righteous, a patriotic bitter- 

 ness of an earnest and impassioned nature. 

 Thinking thus, I forewarned all who believed 

 the doctrine, or followed the party which 

 taught it, with a sincerity and depth of convic- 

 tion as profound as ever penetrated the heart 

 of man. And when, for eight years past, over 

 and over again, I have proclaimed to the peo- 

 ple that the success of a sectional anti-slavery 

 party would be the beginning of disunion and 

 civil war in America, I believed it. I did. I 

 had read history, and studied human nature, 

 meditated for years upon the character of our 

 institutions and form of government, and of 

 the people South as well as North; and I 

 could not doubt the event. But the people did 

 not believe me, nor those older and wiser and 

 greater than I. They rejected the prophecy, 

 and stoned the prophets. The candidate of the 

 Republican party was chosen President. Seces- 

 sion began. Civil war was imminent. It was 

 no petty insurrection ; no temporary combina- 

 tion to obstruct the execution of the laws in 

 certain States; but a revolution, systematic, 

 deliberate, determined, and with the consent 

 of a majority of the people of each State which 

 seceded. Causeless it may have been ; wicked 

 it may have been ; but there it was ; not to be 

 railed at, still less to be laughed at, but to. be 

 dealt with by statesmen as a fact. No display 

 of vigor or force alone, however sudden or 

 great, could have arrested it even at the outset. 

 It was disunion at last. The wolf had come. 

 But civil war had not yet followed. In my de- 

 liberate and solemn judgment, there was but one 

 wise and masterly mode of dealing with it. Non- 

 coercion would avert civil war, and compro- 

 mise crush out both abolitionism and secession. 

 The parent and the child would thus both per- 

 ish. But a resort to force would at once pre- 

 cipitate war, hasten secession, extend disunion, 

 and, while it lasted, utterly cut off all hope 

 of compromise. I believed that war, if long 

 enough continued, would be final, eternal dis- 

 nnion. I said it ; I meant it ; and, accordingly, 

 to the utmost of my ability and influence, I ex- 

 erted myself in behalf of the policy of non- 

 coercion. It was adopted by Mr. Buchanan's 

 Administration, with the almost unanimous 

 consent of the Democratic and Constitutional 

 Union parties in and out of Congress ; and, in 

 February, with the concurrence of a majority 

 of the Republican party in the Senate and this 

 House. But that party, most disastously for 

 the country, refused all compromise. How, 

 indeed, could they accept any? That which 



the Sonth demanded, and the Democratic and 

 Conservative parties of the North and "West 

 were willing to grant, and which alone could 

 avail to keep the peace and save the Union, 

 implied a surrender of the sole vital element 

 of the party and its platform of the very prin- 

 ciple, in fact, upon which it had just won the 

 contest for the Presidency ; not, indeed, by a 

 majority of the popular vote the majority was 

 nearly a million against it but under the 

 forms of the Constitution. Sir, the crime, the 

 " high crime " of the Republican party was not 

 so much its refusal to compromise, as its origi- 

 nal organization upon a basis and doctrine 

 wholly inconsistent with the stability of the 

 Constitution and the peace of the Union. 



" But to resume : the session of Congress ex- 

 pired. The President elect was inaugurated; 

 and now, if only the policy of non-coercion 

 could be maintained, and war thus averted, 

 time would do its work in the North and the 

 South, and final peaceable adjustment and re- 

 union be secured. Some time in March it was 

 announced that the President had resolved to 

 continue the policy of his predecessor, and even 

 go a step farther, and evacuate Sumter and the 

 other Federal forts and arsenals in the seceded 

 States. His own party acquiesced ; the whole 

 country .rejoiced. The policy of non-coercion 

 had triumphed, and for once, sir, in my life, I 

 found myself in an immense majority. No man 

 then pretended that a Union founded in con- 

 'sent could be cemented by force. Nay, more, 

 the President and the Secretary of State went 

 farther. Said Mr. Be ward, in an official diplo- 

 matic letter to Mr. Adams : 



For these reasons he [the President] would not be 

 disposed to reject a cardinal dogma of theirs [the 

 secessionists], namely, that the Federal Government 

 could not reduce the seceding States to obedience by 

 conquest, although he were disposed to question that 

 proposition. But in fact the President willingly ac- 

 cepts it as true. Only an imperial or despotic Govern- 

 ment could subjugate thoroughly disaffected and insur- 

 rectionary members of the state. 



" Pardon me, sir, but I beg to know whether 

 this conviction of the President and his Secre- 

 tary is not the philosophy of the persistent and 

 most vigorous efforts made by this Administra- 

 tion, and first of all through this same Secre- 

 tary, the moment war broke out and ever since 

 till the late elections, to convert the United 

 States into an imperial or despotic Govern- 

 ment ? But Mr. Seward adds, and I agree with 

 him: 



This Federal Republican system of ours is, of all 

 forms of government, the very one which is most un- 

 fitted for such a labor. 



" This, sir, was on the 10th of April, and yet 

 that very day the fleet was under sail for 

 Charleston. The policy of peace had been 

 abandoned. Collision followed; the militia 

 were ordered out; civil war began. 



" Now, sir, on the 14th of April, I believed 

 that coercion would bring on war, and war 

 disunion. More than that, I believed, what 

 you all in your hearts believe to-day, that the 



