CHAPTER XIV.

1860—October.

GENERAL SCOTT'S “VIEWS.”

While during the month of October (1860) President Buchanan was anxiously watching the course of public events, he was surprised by receiving from General Scott, the General-in-chief of the Army, a very extraordinary paper. It was written on the 29th of October, from New York, where the General had his headquarters, and was mailed to the President on the same day. On the 30th the General sent a corrected copy to the Secretary of War, with a supplement. These papers became known as General Scott’s “views.” He lent copies of them to some of his friends, to be read; and although they did not immediately reach the public press, their contents became pretty well known in the South through private channels. From them the following facts were apparent:

FIRST.—That before the Presidential election, General Scott anticipated that there would be a secession of one or more of the Southern States, in the event of Mr. Lincoln’s election; and that from the general rashness of the Southern character, there was danger of a “preliminary” seizure of certain Southern forts, which he named.

SECOND.—That the secession which General Scott deprecated was one that would produce what he called a “gap in the Union;” that he contemplated, as a choice of evils to be embraced instead of a civil war, the allowance of a division of the Union into four separate confederacies, having contiguous territory; and that he confined the use of force, or a resort to force, on the part of the Federal Government, to the possible case of the secession of some “interior” States, to reestablish the continuity of the Federal territory. This he considered might be regarded as a “correlative right,” balancing the right of secession, which he said might be conceded “in order to save time.”

THIRD.—That his provisional remedy, or preliminary caution, viz: The immediate garrisoning of the Southern forts sufficiently to prevent a surprise or _coup de main_, was confined to the possible or probable case of a secession that would make a “gap” in the Union, or break the continuity of the Federal territory. He excluded from the scope of his “provisional remedies” the secession of Texas, or of all the Atlantic States south of the Potomac, as neither would produce a “gap” in the Union.

FOURTH.—That for the application of his “provisional remedies,” he had at his command but five companies of regular troops, to prevent surprises of the nine Southern forts which he named; and that as to “regular approaches,” nothing could be said or done without calling for volunteers.

FIFTH.—That in the meantime the Federal Government should collect its revenue outside of the Southern cities, in forts or on board ships of war: and that after any State had seceded, there should be no invasion of it, unless it should happen to be an “interior” State.

SIXTH.—That the aim of his plan was to gain eight or ten months to await measures of conciliation on the part of the North, and the subsidence of angry feelings in the South.

If these “views,” palpably impracticable and dangerous, had remained unknown in the hands of the President, there would have been no necessity for commenting on them in this work, especially as subsequent events rendered them of no importance. But they did not remain unknown. They became the foundation, at a later period, of a charge that President Buchanan had been warned by General Scott, before the election of Mr. Lincoln, of the danger of leaving the Southern forts without sufficient garrisons to prevent surprises, and that he had neglected this warning. Moreover, in these “views,” the General-in-chief of the Army, addressing the President, had mingled the strangest political suggestions with military movements, on the eve of a Presidential election which was about to result in a sectional political division. It is therefore necessary for me to bestow upon these “views” a degree of attention which would otherwise be unnecessary.

These papers were addressed by the General-in-chief of the Army of the United States to a President who utterly repudiated the alleged right of secession, by any State whatever, whether lying between other States remaining loyal, or on the extreme boundary of the Union. Becoming known to the Southern leaders who might be disposed to carry their States out of the Union in the event of Mr. Lincoln’s election, they would justify the inference that in one case at least, that of a secession which did not make a “gap” in the Union, the General-in-chief of the Federal Army would not draw his sword to compel the inhabitants of the seceded region to submit to the laws of the United States. In regard to the “provisional remedies” which the general advised, let it be observed that if the President had had at his disposal the whole army of the United States, the introduction into the Southern forts of a larger or a smaller force, at such a moment, however officially explained, could have been regarded in the South only as a proof that President Buchanan expected secession to be attempted, and that he was preparing for a civil war, to be waged by him or his successor. The right of the Federal Government to place its own troops in its own forts, without giving offence to any one, was perfectly apparent; but it was equally apparent that on the eve of this election, or during the election, or at any time before any State had adopted an ordinance of secession, such a step could not have been taken as anything but an indication that the Federal Government was preparing to prevent by force the people of any State from assembling to consider and act upon their relations to the Government of the United States. Now a very great part of the popular misapprehension of President Buchanan’s policy, purposes and acts, which has prevailed to the present day, has arisen from the total want of discrimination between what the Federal Government could and what it could not rightfully do, in anticipation of the secession of a State or States. It has been a thousand times inconsiderately asked, why Mr. Buchanan did not nip secession in the bud.

In the first place, the Federal Government, however great might be the physical force at its command, could at no time have done anything more than enforce the execution of its own laws and maintain the possession of its own property. To prevent the people of a State, by any menace of arms, from assembling in convention to consider anything whatever, would have been to act on the assumption that she was about to adopt an ordinance of secession, and on the farther assumption that such an act must be forestalled, lest it might have some kind of validity. The Executive of the United States was not bound, and was not at liberty, to act upon such assumptions. There were many ways in which a State convention could peacefully take into consideration the relations of its people to the Federal Union. They might lawfully appeal to the sobriety and good feeling of their sister States to redress any grievances of which they complained. There might be, we know that in point of fact there was, a strong Union party in most of the Southern States, and the President of the United States, in the month of October, 1860, would have been utterly inexcusable, if he had proclaimed to the country that he expected this party to be overborne, and had helped to diminish its members and weaken its power, by extraordinary garrisons placed in the Southern forts, in anticipation of their seizure by lawless individuals, when such an exhibition must inevitably lead the whole people of the South to believe that there was to be no solution of the sectional differences but by a trial of strength in a sectional civil war. Mr. Buchanan was far too wise and circumspect a statesman to put into the hands of the secessionists such a means of “firing the Southern heart,” before it was known what the result of the Presidential election would be. It was his plain and imperative duty not to assume, by any official act, at such a time, that there was to be a secession of any State or States.

But, in the second place, even if other good reasons did not exist, there were but five companies of regular troops, or four hundred men, available for the garrisoning of nine fortifications in six highly excited Southern States. How were they to be distributed? Distributed equally, they would have amounted to a reinforcement of forty-four men and a fraction in each fort. In whatsoever proportions they might be distributed, according to the conjectured degree of exposure of the various posts, the movement could have been nothing but an invitation of attack, which the force would have been entirely inadequate to repel. The whole army of the United States then consisted of only eighteen thousand men. They were, with the exception of the five companies named by General Scott, scattered on the remote frontiers and over the great Western plains, engaged in the protection of the settlers and the emigrant trains; and for this duty their numbers were, and had long been, and have ever since been, notoriously inadequate. At a later period, after President Buchanan had retired from office, General Scott, in a controversy in the public prints which he thought proper to provoke with the ex-President, referred to six hundred recruits in the harbor of New York and at Carlisle barracks in Pennsylvania, which, added to the five companies mentioned in his “views,” would have made a force of one thousand men; and while he admitted that this force would not have been sufficient to furnish “war garrisons” for the nine Southern forts, he maintained that they would have been quite enough to guard against surprises. But it is to be noted that in his “views” of October, 1860, he made known to the President that there were _only_ the five companies, which he named, “within reach, to garrison the forts mentioned in the views;” and, moreover, he was mistaken, in November, 1862, in supposing that he had obtained these recruits when he wrote his “views,” nor did he, in October or November, 1860, in any manner suggest to the President that there were any more than the five companies available. Had he made any military representations to the President before the election, other than those contained in his “views,” it cannot be doubted that they would have received all the consideration due to his official position and his great military reputation.[63]

Footnote 63:

It is a remarkable fact that when President Lincoln was inaugurated, five months after General Scott sent his “views” to President Buchanan, and it was feared that the inauguration might be interrupted by violence of some kind, he was able to assemble at Washington but six hundred and fifty-three men, of the rank and file of the army. This number was made up by bringing the sappers and miners from West Point. Yet, down to that period, no part of the army, excepting the five companies referred to by General Scott in his “views,” had been disposed of anywhere but where the presence of a military force was essential to the protection of the settlers on the frontiers and the emigrants on the plains. No one could have known this better than General Scott, for it was his official duty to know it, and it is plain that his “views” were written with a full knowledge of the situation of the whole army.

But General Scott’s “views” produced, and ought to have produced, no impression upon the mind of the President. That part of them which suggested a military movement was entirely impracticable. The political part, which related to the aspects of secession, its possible admission in one case and its denial in another, was of no value whatever to anybody but those who believed in the doctrine. With the exception of such circulation of these “views” as General Scott permitted by giving copies of them to his friends, they remained unpublished until the 18th of January, 1861. On that day they were published, by General Scott’s permission, in the _National Intelligencer_ at Washington, the editors saying that they had obtained a copy of them for publication because allusion had been made to them both in the public prints and in public speeches. This document, therefore, in an authentic shape, was made public in the midst of the secession movement, after the States of South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi and Alabama had adopted their ordinances of secession, and while the people of Georgia, Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas were deliberating upon their course.[64] The President at that time passed over this publication in silence, for reasons which he afterwards assigned in the public controversy between General Scott and himself in October and November, 1862.

Footnote 64:

At the time of this publication of General Scott’s “views,” of the States which seceded before the attack on Fort Sumter, four had adopted ordinances of secession, and three had not acted. The eighth State, Arkansas, did not act until after Sumter.

And here it may be appropriate, before proceeding farther with the narrative, to advert to a suggestion which has been again and again repeated in a great variety of forms, by those who have criticised Mr. Buchanan’s course in regard to the reinforcement of the Southern forts. General Scott himself, after the election of Mr. Lincoln, in the middle of December, 1860, in a note which he addressed to the President, referred to the course pursued by President Jackson in regard to nullification, in 1832-33; and it has long been one of the current questions, asked as if it were unanswerable,—why did not Mr. Buchanan imitate the firmness, boldness and decision with which General Jackson dealt with the “Nullifiers,” and proceed to garrison the Southern forts before the election of Mr. Lincoln? Having already shown the impracticability of such a step, from the want of the necessary forces, and its great political inexpediency even if the necessary force had been within his reach, it only remains for me to point out that there was no parallel between the situation of things under General Jackson in 1832-33, and the state of the country under President Buchanan in 1860-61. South Carolina stood alone in her resistance to the collection of the revenue of the United States, in 1832-33; nor, whatever might be the steps which she would have the rashness to take in preventing the execution of a single law of the United States within her borders, there was no danger that any other State would become infected with her political heresies, or imitate her example. What General Jackson had to do was to collect the revenue of the United States in the port of Charleston. For this purpose, prior to the issue of his proclamation, and while the so-called ordinance of nullification was pending in the convention of South Carolina, he took preliminary steps, by placing in the harbor a sufficient military and naval force to insure the execution of a single Federal statute, commonly called the “tariff.” For this purpose he had ample authority of law, under the Act of March 3, 1807, which authorized the employment of the land and naval forces, when necessary, to execute the laws of the United States through the process of the Federal tribunals. He had, moreover, the necessary forces practically at his disposal. So far as these forces would consist of troops, their proper destination was Fort Moultrie in Charleston harbor; but their presence in that fort was deemed necessary, not to prevent an anticipated seizure of it by the State authorities, but to aid in the execution of the revenue law in case it should be resisted. For this purpose, in March, 1833, he sent a small military force to Fort Moultrie, and a sloop of war, with two revenue cutters, to Charleston harbor. General Scott was sent to Charleston to take the command of these forces, if it should become necessary for them to act. He arrived there on the day after the passage of the Nullification ordinance. The proclamation of General Jackson, the passage of Mr. Clay’s Compromise Tariff Bill, and the passage of the Force Bill, put an end to any actual collision between the State and the Federal authorities.

How different was the state of the country in 1860, before the election of Mr. Lincoln! A generation of men had grown up in the South, many of whom held the supposed right of State secession from the Union as a cardinal feature of their political and constitutional creed. The sole ground for any apprehension of a practical assertion of this doctrine was the contingent election of a President nominated upon a “platform” obnoxious to the people of the slaveholding States. In such a state of affairs, was it for a President, whose administration was to expire in five months, to adopt the foregone conclusion that the Republican candidate would be elected, and to add to this the further conclusion that his election would be followed by a secession of States, which the people of the North would take no conciliatory steps to prevent after the Republican candidate had been elected? Was President Buchanan to throw a military force into the Southern forts, even if he had had a sufficient force within his reach, and thus to proclaim to the whole people of the South, the loyal and the disloyal, that in his judgment there would be but one issue out of the election of Mr. Lincoln—an issue of physical force between the two sections of the country? In what condition would this have placed his successor, and the great political party which was aiming to obtain for that successor the control of the Government? Surely Mr. Lincoln and his political supporters would have had the gravest reason to complain, if Mr. Buchanan, before the election, had, by any act of his own not palpably and imperatively necessary, caused it to be believed by the whole Southern people that there was and could be no alternative but to put their anticipated dangers, their alleged grievances, and the doctrine of secession along with them, at once to the arbitrament of the sword. We have it on Mr. Buchanan’s own solemn assertion, the sincerity of which there can be no reason to doubt, that he considered it his highest duty so to shape his official course during the remainder of his term, as to afford to the secessionists of the South no excuse for renouncing their allegiance to the Federal Union, and to hand the government over to his successor, whoever he might be, without doing a single act that would tend to close the door of reconciliation between the two sections of the country, then unfortunately divided by the political circumstances of the pending election. This was the keynote of his policy, formed before the election of Mr. Lincoln, and steadily followed through every vicissitude, and every changing aspect of the great drama enacting before his eyes. It is easy to reason backward from what occurred, and to say that he should have garrisoned the Southern forts, in anticipation of their seizure. History does not, or should not, pass upon the conduct of statesmen in highly responsible positions, by pronouncing in this _ex post facto_ manner on what they ought to have anticipated, when men of equally good opportunities for looking forward did not anticipate what subsequently occurred. It was not the belief of the leading public men in the Republican party, before the election of Mr. Lincoln, the men who were likely to be associated with him in the Government, that there would be any secession. If they had believed it, they would certainly have been guilty of great recklessness if they had not acted upon that belief, at least so far as to warn the country, in their respective spheres, to be prepared for such an event. It is one of the most notorious truths in the whole history of that election, that the political supporters of Mr. Lincoln scouted the idea that there was any danger of secession to be apprehended.

General Scott’s suggestion of such danger to Mr. Buchanan, in the month of October, 1860, and the impracticable advice which he then gave, if it had been published before the election, would have been laughed at by every Republican statesman in the country, or would have been indignantly treated as a work of supererogation, unnecessarily suggesting that the election of the Republican candidate was to be followed by an attempted disruption of the Union. Undoubtedly, as the event proved, the political friends of Mr. Lincoln were too confident that no secession would be attempted; and into that extreme confidence they were led by their political policy, which did not admit of their allowing the people of the North to believe that there could be any serious danger to the country in their political triumph. If the people of the North had believed in that danger, the Republican candidate would not have been elected. It did not become the Republican leaders, therefore, after the election, and it never can become any one who has inherited their political connection, to blame Mr. Buchanan for not taking extraordinary precautions against an event which the responsible leaders of the party, prior to the election, treated as if it were out of all the bounds of probability.[65]

Footnote 65:

It will be seen that I do not regard the election of Mr. Lincoln as a defiance of the South, nor do I consider that the threats of secession, so far as such threats were uttered in the South, had much to do with the success of the Republican candidate. Multitudes of men voted for that candidate in no spirit of defiance towards the South, and his popular vote would have been much smaller than it was, if it had been believed at the North that his election would be followed by an attempted disruption of the Union.

And here, too, it is well to advert to a charge which relates to Mr. Buchanan’s administration of the Government prior to the election of his successor. This charge, to which a large measure of popular credence has long been accorded, is, that the Secretary of War, Mr. Floyd, had for a long time pursued a plan of his own for distributing the troops and arms of the United States in anticipation of a disruption of the Union at no distant day. But such a charge is of course to be tried by a careful examination of facts, and by a scrupulous attention to dates. One of the most important facts to be considered is, that Secretary Floyd, who came in 1857 into Mr. Buchanan’s cabinet from Virginia—a State that never had, down to that time and for a long period thereafter, many secessionists among her public men—was not of that political school until after he left the office of Secretary of War. He was a Unionist, and a pronounced one, until he chose, as a mere pretext, to say that he differed with the President in regard to the policy which the President thought proper to pursue.[66] But from the fact that he became a secessionist and denounced the President, after he left the cabinet, and the foolish boast which he made that he had, while Secretary of War, defeated General Scott’s plans and solicitations respecting the forts, the inference has been drawn that he had good reason for advancing that claim upon the consideration of his new political allies in the Southern section of the country. Mr. Floyd by no means appears to me to have been a man of scrupulous honor. The fact that he had been compelled to resign his place on account of a transaction in no way connected with the secession of any State, led him, in a spirit of sheer self-glorification, to give countenance to a charge which, if it had been true, would not only have reflected great discredit on the President, but which would have involved the Secretary himself in the heinous offence of treachery to the Government whose public servant he was. No man could have thus overshot his own mark, who had a careful regard for facts which he must have known: for no one could have known better than Mr. Floyd that he had no influence whatever in defeating any plans which General Scott proposed to the President in his “views” of October, 1860, and no one could have known better than he that the troops and arms of the United States had not been distributed with any sinister design. But Mr. Floyd’s subsequent vaporings, after he left the cabinet, misled General Scott into the belief that there had been great wrong committed while he was Secretary of War, and caused the General, in October and November, 1862, to give his sanction to charges that were quite unfounded.

Footnote 66:

See _post_, for the history of Secretary Floyd’s resignation.

It is proper to hear Mr. Buchanan himself, in regard to his refusal to garrison the Southern forts in October or November, 1860, according to the recommendations in General Scott’s “views.”

This refusal is attributed, without the least cause, to the influence of Governor Floyd. All my cabinet must bear me witness that I was the President myself, responsible for all the acts of the administration; and certain it is that during the last six months previous to the 29th December, 1860, the day on which he resigned his office, after my request, he exercised less influence on the administration than any other member of the cabinet. Mr. Holt was immediately thereafter transferred from the Post Office Department to that of War; so that, from this time until the 4th March, 1861, which was by far the most important period of the administration, he [Mr. Holt] performed the duties of Secretary of War to my entire satisfaction.[67]

Footnote 67:

Letter from Mr. Buchanan to the Editors of the _National Intelligencer_, October 28, 1862.—If the reader chooses to consult the controversy of 1862 between General Scott and Mr. Buchanan, he will find there the sources from which General Scott drew his conclusions. One of them was information given to him while the controversy was going on, in a telegram from Washington, sent by a person whose name he did not disclose. A reference to Mr. Buchanan’s last letter in the controversy will show how he disposed of this “nameless telegram.” The period when the alleged improper transfers of arms into the Southern States were said to have occurred was, as Mr. Buchanan states, long before the nomination of Mr. Lincoln, and nearly a year before his election. General Scott’s reply to this shows that in 1862 he had convinced himself that the revolt of the Southern States had been planned for a long time before the nomination of Mr. Lincoln, and that it was to be carried out in the event of the election of any Northern man to the Presidency. It had become the fashion in 1862, in certain quarters, to believe, or to profess to believe, in this long-standing plot. There are several conclusive answers to the suggestion: 1st. It is not true, as a matter of fact, that at any time before the nomination of Mr. Lincoln, there were any transfers of arms to the South which ought to have led even to the suspicion of the existence of such a plot. 2d. That it is not true, as a matter of fact, that at any time after Mr. Lincoln’s nomination, and before his election, there were any transfers of arms whatever from the Northern arsenals of the United States into the Southern States. 3d. That after Mr. Lincoln’s election, viz., in December, 1860, a transfer of ordnance from Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania, to Mississippi and Texas, which had been ordered by Secretary Floyd a few days before he left office, was immediately countermanded by his successor, Mr. Holt, by order of the President, and the guns remained at Pittsburgh. 4th. That the entire political history of the country, prior to the nomination of Mr. Lincoln, and prior to the Democratic Convention at Charleston, does not afford a rational ground of belief that any considerable section of the Southern people, or any of their prominent political leaders, were looking forward to a state of parties which would be likely to result in the election of any Northern man, under circumstances that would produce a conviction among the people of the Southern States that it would be unsafe for them to remain in the Union. Even after the nomination of Mr. Lincoln, and after the division of the Democratic party into two factions, resulting in the nomination of two Democratic candidates (Breckinridge and Douglas), with a fourth candidate in the field (Bell), nominated by the “Old Line Whigs,” it was not so morally certain that the Republican candidate would be elected, as to give rise, before the election, to serious plots or preparations for dissolving the Union. Mr. Lincoln obtained but a majority of fifty-seven electoral votes over all his competitors. It was the sectional character of his 180 electoral votes, out of 303,—the whole 180 being drawn from the free States—and the sectional character of the “platform” on which he was nominated and elected, and not the naked fact that he was a Northern man, that the secessionists of the cotton States were able to use as the lever by which to carry their States out of the Union. Undoubtedly the Southern States committed the great folly of refusing to trust in the conservative elements of the North to redress any grievances of which the people of the South could justly complain. But I know of no tangible proofs that before the nomination of Mr. Lincoln there was any Southern plot to break up the Union in the event of the election of any Northern man. The reader must follow the precipitation of secession through the events occurring after the election, before he can reach a sound conclusion as to the causes and methods by which it was brought about. He will find reason to conclude, if he studies the votes in the seceding conventions of the cotton States prior to the attack on Fort Sumter, that even in that region there was a Union party which could not have been overborne and trampled down, by any other means than by appeals to unfounded fears, which the secession leaders professed to draw from the peculiar circumstances of the election. He will find reason to ask himself why it was, in these secession conventions, rapidly accomplished between December, 1860, and February, 1861, the Unionists were at last so few, and he will find the most important answer to this inquiry in the fact that it was because the advocates of secession, from the circumstances of the election, succeeded in producing the conviction that the whole North was alienated in feeling from the South, and was determined to trample upon Southern rights. It is a melancholy story of perversion, misrepresentation and mistake, operating upon a sensitive and excited people. But it does not justify the belief that the secession of those States was the accomplishment of a previous and long-standing plot to destroy the Union; nor, if such a plot ever existed, is there any reason to believe that any member of Mr. Buchanan’s cabinet was a party to it. General Scott, in 1862, adopted and gave currency to charges which had no foundation in fact, and which were originated for the purpose of making Mr. Buchanan odious to the country.

The General, however, went further than the adoption of charges originated by others. He claimed credit for himself for the discovery and prevention of the “robbery” of the Pittsburgh ordnance. In his letter of November 8, 1862, he said: “Accidentally learning, early in March (!), that, under this _posthumous_ order, the shipment of these guns had commenced, I communicated the fact to Secretary Holt, acting for Secretary Cameron, just in time to defeat the robbery.” This was a tissue of absurd misstatements. Copies of the official papers relating to this order are before me. The order was given by the Ordnance Office on the 22d of December, 1860. The shipment of the guns was never commenced. General Scott had nothing to do with the countermand of the order. On the 25th of December, certain citizens of Pittsburgh telegraphed to the President that great excitement had been caused there by this order, and advising that it be immediately revoked. Floyd was Secretary of War when the order was given for the removal of the guns, but at that time he was not a secessionist, or aiding the secessionists. He tendered his resignation of the office on the 29th of December, under circumstances which will be fully related hereafter. It was promptly accepted, and Mr. Holt was appointed Secretary of War _ad interim_. By the President’s direction, Mr. Holt countermanded the order, and the guns remained at Pittsburgh. Judge Black, at the President’s request, investigated the whole affair, and made the following brief report to the President on the 27th: “Mr. President: The enclosed are the two orders of the War Department. I suppose the forts happened to be in that state of progress which made those guns necessary just at this time, and they were directed to be sent without any motive beyond what would have caused the same act at any other time.

Ever yours, J. S. BLACK”.

Finally, it only remains for me to quote Mr. Buchanan’s more elaborate account of his reasons for not acting upon General

Scott’s “views” of October, 1860, which he gave in the account of his administration, published in 1866.[68]

Footnote 68:

_Mr. Buchanan’s Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion._ New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1866. This book will hereafter be referred to as “_Mr. Buchanan’s Defence_.” The history and reasons for this publication will be found in a future chapter.

Such, since the period of Mr. Lincoln’s election, having been the condition of the Southern States, the “views” of General Scott, addressed before that event to the Secretary of War, on the 29th and 30th October, 1860, were calculated to do much injury in misleading the South. From the strange inconsistencies they involve, it would be difficult to estimate whether they did most harm in encouraging or in provoking secession. So far as they recommended a military movement, this, in order to secure success, should have been kept secret until the hour had arrived for carrying it into execution. The substance of them, however, soon reached the Southern people. Neither the headquarters of the army at New York, nor afterwards in Washington, were a very secure depository for the “views,” even had it been the author’s intention to regard them as confidential. That such was not the case may be well inferred from their very nature. Not confined to the recommendation of a military movement, by far the larger portion of them consists of a political disquisition on the existing dangers to the Union; on the horrors of civil war and the best means of averting so great a calamity; and also on the course which their author had resolved to pursue, as a citizen, in the approaching Presidential election. These were themes entirely foreign to a military report, and equally foreign from the official duties of the Commanding General. Furthermore, the “views” were published to the world by the General himself, on the 18th January, 1861, in the _National Intelligencer_, and this _without the consent or even previous knowledge of the President_. This was done at a critical moment in our history, when the cotton States were seceding one after the other. The reason assigned by him for this strange violation of official confidence toward the President, was the necessity for the correction of misapprehensions which had got abroad, “both in the public prints and in public speeches,” in relation to the “views.”

The General commenced his “views” by stating that, “To save time the right of secession may be conceded, and instantly balanced by the correlative right on the part of the Federal Government against an _interior_ State or States to reestablish by force, if necessary, its former continuity of territory.” He subsequently explains and qualifies the meaning of this phrase by saying: “It will be seen that the 'views' only apply to a case of secession that makes a _gap_ in the present Union.” The falling off (say) of Texas, or of all the Atlantic States, from the Potomac south [the very case which has since occurred], was not within the scope of General Scott’s provisional remedies. As if apprehending that by possibility it might be inferred he intended to employ force for any other purpose than to open the way through this _gap_ to a State beyond, still in the Union, he disclaims any such construction, and says: “The foregoing views eschew the idea of invading a seceded State.” This disclaimer is as strong as any language he could employ for the purpose.

To sustain the limited right to open the way through the _gap_, he cites, not the Constitution of the United States, but the last chapter of Paley’s “Moral and Political Philosophy,” which, however, contains no allusion to the subject.

The General paints the horrors of civil war in the most gloomy colors, and then proposes his alternative for avoiding them. He exclaims: “But break this glorious Union by whatever line or lines that political madness may contrive, and there would be no hope of reuniting the fragments except by the laceration and despotism of the sword. To effect such result the intestine wars of our Mexican neighbors would, in comparison with ours, sink into mere child’s play.

“A smaller evil” (in the General’s opinion) “would be to allow the fragments of the great Republic to form themselves into new Confederacies, probably four.”

Not satisfied with this general proposition, he proceeds not only to discuss and to delineate the proper boundaries for these new Confederacies, but even to designate capitals for the three on this side of the Rocky Mountains. We quote his own language as follows: “All the lines of demarcation between the new unions cannot be accurately drawn in advance, but many of them approximately may. Thus, looking to natural boundaries and commercial affinities, some of the following frontiers, after many waverings and conflicts, might perhaps become acknowledged and fixed;

“1. The Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay to the Atlantic. 2. From Maryland along the crest of the Alleghany (perhaps the Blue Ridge) range of mountains to some point on the coast of Florida. 3. The line from, say the head of the Potomac to the West or Northwest, which it will be most difficult to settle. 4. The crest of the Rocky Mountains.”

“The Southeast Confederacy would, in all human probability, in less than five years after the rupture, find itself bounded by the first and second lines indicated above, the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, with its capital at, say Columbia, South Carolina. The country between the second, third, and fourth of those lines would, beyond a doubt, in about the same time, constitute another Confederacy, with its capital at probably Alton or Quincy, Illinois. The boundaries of the Pacific Union are the most definite of all, and the remaining States would constitute the Northeast Confederacy, with its capital at Albany. It, at the first thought, will be considered strange that seven slave-holding States and part of Virginia and Florida should be placed (above) in a new Confederacy with Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, etc. But when the overwhelming weight of the great Northwest is taken in connection with the laws of trade, contiguity of territory, and the comparative indifference to free soil doctrines on the part of Western Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, it is evident that but little if any coercion, beyond moral force, would be needed to embrace them; and I have omitted the temptation of the unwasted public lands which would fall entire to this Confederacy—an appanage (well husbanded) sufficient for many generations. As to Missouri, Arkansas, and Mississippi, they would not stand out a month. Louisiana would coalesce without much solicitation, and Alabama with West Florida would be conquered the first winter, from the absolute need of Pensacola for a naval depot.”

According to this arrangement of General Scott, all that would be left for “the Northeast Confederacy” would be the New England and Middle States; and our present proud Capitol at Washington, hallowed by so many patriotic associations, would be removed to Albany.[69]

Footnote 69:

It is worthy of special remark that General Scott, in his autobiography recently published, vol. ii, p. 609, entirely omits to copy this part of his views on which we have been commenting; so also his supplementary views of the next day, though together they constitute but one whole. He merely copies that which relates to garrisoning the Southern forts.

It is easy to imagine with what power these “views,” presented so early as October, 1860, may have been employed by the disunion leaders of the cotton States to convince the people that they might depart in peace. Proceeding from the Commanding General of the army, a citizen and a soldier so eminent, and eschewing as they did the idea of invading a seceded State, as well as favoring the substitution of new Confederacies for the old Union, what danger could they apprehend in the formation of a Southern Confederacy?

This portion of the “views,” being purely political and prospective, and having no connection with military operations, was out of time and out of place in a report from the commanding General of the Army to the Secretary of War. So, also, the expression of his personal preferences among the candidates then before the people for the office of President. “From a sense of propriety as a soldier,” says the General, “I have taken no part in the pending canvass, and, as always heretofore, mean to stay away from the polls. My sympathies, however, are with the Bell and Everett ticket.”

After all these preliminaries, we now proceed to a different side of the picture presented by the General.

In the same “views” (the 29th October, 1860), he says that, “From a knowledge of our Southern population, it is my solemn conviction that there is some danger of an early act of rashness preliminary to secession, viz., the seizure of some or all of the following posts: Forts Jackson and St. Philip, in the Mississippi, below New Orleans, both without garrisons; Fort Morgan, below Mobile, without a garrison; Forts Pickens and McRea, Pensacola harbor, with an insufficient garrison for one; Fort Pulaski, below Savannah, without a garrison; Forts Moultrie and Sumter, Charleston harbor, the former with an insufficient garrison, and the latter without any; and Fort Monroe, Hampton Roads, without a sufficient garrison. In my opinion all these works should be immediately so garrisoned as to make any attempt to take any one of them by surprise or _coup de main_ ridiculous.”

It was his duty, as commanding general, to accompany this recommendation with a practicable plan for garrisoning these forts, stating the number of troops necessary for the purpose, the points from which they could be drawn, and the manner in which he proposed to conduct the enterprise. Finding this to be impossible, from the total inadequacy of the force within the President’s power to accomplish a military operation so extensive, instead of furnishing such a plan, he absolves himself from the task by simply stating in his supplemental views of the next day (30th October) that “There is one (regular) company at Boston, one here (at the Narrows), one at Pittsburg, one at Augusta, Ga., and one at Baton Rouge—in all five companies, only, within reach, to garrison or reënforce the forts mentioned in the 'views.'”

_Five companies only, four hundred men, to garrison nine fortifications scattered over six highly excited Southern States. This was all the force “within reach” so as to make any attempt to take any one of them by surprise or coup de main ridiculous._

He even disparages the strength of this small force by applying to it the diminutive adverb “_only_,” or, in other words, merely, barely. It will not be pretended that the President had any power, under the laws, to add to this force by calling forth the militia, or accepting the services of volunteers to garrison these fortifications. And the small regular army were beyond reach on our remote frontiers. Indeed, the whole American army, numbering at that time not more than sixteen thousand effective men, would have been scarcely sufficient. To have attempted to distribute these five companies among the eight forts in the cotton States, and Fortress Monroe, in Virginia, would have been a confession of weakness, instead of an exhibition of imposing and overpowering strength. It could have had no effect in preventing secession, but must have done much to provoke it. It will be recollected that these “views,” the substance of which soon reached the Southern States, were written before Mr. Lincoln’s election, and at a time when none of the cotton States had made the first movement toward secession. Even South Carolina was then performing all her relative duties, though most reluctantly, to the Government, whilst the border States, with Virginia in the first rank, were still faithful and true to the Union.

Under these circumstances, surely General Scott ought not to have informed them in advance that the reason why he had recommended this expedition was because, from his knowledge of them, he apprehended they might be guilty of an early act of rashness in seizing these forts before secession. This would necessarily provoke the passions of the Southern people. Virginia was deeply wounded at the imputation against her loyalty from a native though long estranged son.

Whilst one portion of the “views,” as we have already seen, might be employed by disunion demagogues in convincing the people of the cotton States that they might secede without serious opposition from the North, another portion of them was calculated to excite their indignation and drive them to extremities. From the impracticable nature of the “views,” and their strange and inconsistent character, the President dismissed them from his mind without further consideration.

It is proper to inform the reader why General Scott had five companies only within reach for the proposed service. This was because nearly the whole of our small army was on the remote frontiers, where it had been continually employed for years in protecting the inhabitants and the emigrants on their way to the far west, against the attacks of hostile Indians. At no former period had its services been more necessary than throughout the year 1860, from the great number of these Indians continually threatening or waging war on our distant settlements. To employ the language of Mr. Benjamin Stanton, of Ohio, in his report of the 18th February, 1861, from the military committee to the House of Representatives: “The regular army numbers only 18,000 men, when recruited to its maximum strength; and the whole of this force is required upon an extended frontier, for the protection of the border settlements against Indian depredations.” Indeed, the whole of it had proved insufficient for this purpose. This is established by the reports of General Scott himself to the War Department. In these he urges the necessity of raising more troops, in a striking and convincing light. In that of 20th November, 1857,[70] after portraying the intolerable hardships and sufferings of the army engaged in this service, he says: “To mitigate these evils, and to enable us to give a reasonable security to our people on Indian frontiers, measuring thousands of miles, I respectfully suggest an augmentation of at least one regiment of horse (dragoons, cavalry, or riflemen) and at least three regiments of foot (infantry or riflemen). This augmentation would not more than furnish the reinforcements now greatly needed in Florida, Texas, New Mexico, California, Oregon, Washington Territory, Kansas, Nebraska, and Minnesota, leaving not a company for Utah.”

Footnote 70:

3 Senate Documents, 1857-'58, p. 48.

Again, General Scott, in his report of November 13, 1858, says:[71] “This want of troops to give reasonable security to our citizens in distant settlements, including emigrants on the plains, can scarcely be too strongly stated; but I will only add, that as often as we have been obliged to withdraw troops from one frontier in order to reinforce another, the weakened points have been instantly attacked or threatened with formidable invasion.”

Footnote 71:

Senate Executive Documents, 1858-'59, vol. ii., part 3, p. 761.

The President, feeling the force of such appeals, and urged by the earnest entreaties of the suffering people on the frontiers, recommended to Congress, through the War Department, to raise five additional regiments.[72] This, like all other recommendations to place the country in a proper state of defence, was disregarded. From what has been stated it is manifest that it was impossible to garrison the numerous forts of the United States with regular

troops. This will account for the destitute condition of the nine forts enumerated by General Scott, as well as of all the rest.

Footnote 72:

Senate Documents, 1857-'58, vol. iii., p. 4.

When our system of fortifications was planned and carried into execution, it was never contemplated to provide garrisons for them in time of peace. This would have required a large standing army, against which the American people have ever evinced a wise and wholesome jealousy. Every great republic, from the days of Cæsar to Cromwell, and from Cromwell to Bonaparte, has been destroyed by armies composed of free citizens, who had been converted by military discipline into veteran soldiers. Our fortifications, therefore, when completed, were generally left in the custody of a sergeant and a few soldiers. No fear was entertained that they would ever be seized by the States for whose defence against a foreign enemy they had been erected.

Under these circumstances it became the plain duty of the President, destitute as he was of military force, not only to refrain from any act which might provoke or encourage the cotton States into secession, but to smooth the way for such a Congressional compromise as had in times past happily averted danger from the Union. There was good reason to hope this might still be accomplished. The people of the slaveholding States must have known there could be no danger of an actual invasion of their constitutional rights over slave property from any hostile action of Mr. Lincoln’s administration. For the protection of these, they could rely both on the judicial and the legislative branches of the Government. The Supreme Court had already decided the Territorial question in their favor, and it was also ascertained that there would be a majority in both Houses of the first Congress of Mr. Lincoln’s term, sufficient to prevent any legislation to their injury. Thus protected, it would be madness for them to rush into secession.

Besides, they were often warned and must have known that by their separation from the free States, these very rights over slave property, of which they were so jealous, would be in greater jeopardy than they had ever been under the Government of the Union. Theirs would then be the only government in Christendom which had not abolished, or was not in progress to abolish, slavery. There would be a strong pressure from abroad against this institution. To resist this effectually would require the power and moral influence of the Government of the whole United States. They ought, also, to have foreseen that, if their secession should end in civil war, whatever might be the event, slavery would receive a blow from which it could never recover. The true policy, even in regard to the safety of their domestic institution, was to cling to the Union.