CHAPTER XXIV.

1861—February and March.

COMMISSIONERS FROM THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT—MR. JEFFERSON DAVIS’S STATEMENT THAT THEY WERE INVITED BY PRESIDENT BUCHANAN CALLED IN QUESTION.

It is now my duty to examine a statement made by Mr. Jefferson Davis in his recent work, to the effect that Confederate commissioners were appointed and sent to Washington from Montgomery, partly, at least, in consequence of a suggestion made to him by President Buchanan. The statement is in these words: “It may here be mentioned, in explanation of my desire that the commission, or at least a part of it, should reach Washington before the close of Mr. Buchanan’s term, that I had received an intimation from him, through a distinguished Senator of one of the border States,[157] that he would be happy to receive a commissioner or commissioners from the Confederate States, and would refer to the Senate any communication that might be made through such a commission.”[158]

Footnote 157:

Mr. Hunter, of Virginia.

Footnote 158:

Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, vol. i., p. 264.

This intimation, if it was ever made, was, as Mr. Davis describes it, that the President would himself receive a diplomatic agent or agents from the Confederate States, and would, as is the customary and constitutional course on extraordinary occasions, consult the Senate, not Congress, upon any communication that such agent or agents might desire to make. Mr. Davis, although he names Mr. Hunter, of Virginia, as the person through whom he received this intimation, quotes no letter or telegram from that gentleman; so that a judgment cannot be formed upon the character of this alleged intimation. There is not the least trace among Mr. Buchanan’s private papers of his ever having made to Mr. Hunter such a suggestion in writing. If it was made orally—considering his habit of keeping memoranda of important conversations, especially with the Southern Senators—it is highly probable that he would not have omitted to record this one. No such memorandum has been found after the most diligent search. One is left, therefore, to the probabilities of the case, which are all against the correctness of Mr. Davis’ statement. No imputation is here made upon Mr. Davis’ veracity; but it evidently requires something more in the nature of proof than anything he has given, to justify the belief that President Buchanan ever expressed his willingness to receive commissioners from the Confederate States, to negotiate with the diplomatic department of the Government for a peaceable acknowledgment of the independence of those States. The mere reception of such commissioners and a reference of their communication to the Senate, would have been tantamount to an admission that the Confederate government could be treated with as an independent power.

1. In the letter addressed by Mr. Davis to the President, dated on the 27th of February, 1861, and which he describes in his book as “of a personal and semi-official character,” introducing Mr. Crawford, the first commissioner to arrive in Washington, and asking for him “a favorable reception corresponding to his station,” he did not in any manner signify that he was sending Mr. Crawford to Washington in compliance with an intimation which he, Mr. Davis, had received from Mr. Buchanan. This he would naturally have said, in such a personal letter, if he at that time was acting upon such an intimation from Mr. Buchanan, because it would have been an unanswerable ground on which to ask for a favorable reception of the commissioner. The appeal _ad hominem_ would not have been left out of such a letter.

2. Mr. Davis was well aware that President Buchanan had steadily refused to accord any diplomatic or official character to the South Carolina commissioners, as representatives of a foreign or independent power, and that he had conferred with them only as private and eminent citizens of their State. Mr. Davis was also aware that the President had never offered to entertain, and had never entertained, a proposition to refer to any other body than Congress, the question of the standing of any seceded State. He had acted in the same way towards Colonel Hayne, when he came from Governor Pickens to demand the surrender of Fort Sumter; and again, early in February, when the Hon. Thomas J. Judge presented himself as a commissioner from the seceded State of Alabama, the President, as Mr. Davis doubtless knew, refused to receive him in any capacity but that of a distinguished citizen of Alabama, referring to his several previous messages to Congress as proof that he could not recognize Mr. Judge in the character which he claimed. All this had transpired a good while before Mr. Davis sent Mr. Crawford to Washington. On the other hand, ex-President Tyler had been received by the President as a commissioner from the State of Virginia, which had not seceded, and did not then propose and was not likely to secede from the Union. Yet, the world is asked to believe that President Buchanan, through a third person, sent an intimation to the President of the Confederate States, that he would be happy to receive a diplomatic agent of that government, and would consult the Senate upon what that agent had to propose.

3. The date of Mr. Crawford’s departure from Montgomery, “on or about February 27th,” the date of his arrival in Washington, “two or three days before the expiration of Mr. Buchanan’s term of office,” and the fact that Mr. Buchanan declined to receive him or to send any message to the Senate touching the subject of his mission, militate strongly against the correctness of the assertion that he went there in consequence of an intimation from Mr. Buchanan that such an agent would be received. If such an intimation had been given, the President could have had no excuse for refusing to hold any communication with the agent, even if he did not arrive until the last two or three days of the administration.

4. Mr. Crawford, in a manuscript account which he furnished to Mr. Davis of his “recollections of events connected with” his mission, represents Mr. Buchanan as “panic-stricken;” in “a state of most thorough alarm, not only for his home at Wheatland, but for his personal safety;” that he was “afraid of a public visit” from the commissioner whose appointment he had himself suggested, and whom he had promised to receive.[159] Mr. Crawford is not alone in imputing “panic” to Mr. Buchanan. It was a common mode, both with Mr. Buchanan’s Northern and his Southern enemies, to represent him as bewildered, confused, timorous, not only during the last days, but during the last months of his administration. This was their way of accounting for conduct which, for very opposite reasons, they disliked. It has been my duty, in investigating day by day every act of his official and private life during this period, to penetrate into his closet, if I may so express myself, and to form an opinion respecting the effect upon him of the great and critical events with which he had to deal. The materials for such an opinion, when one has access to the written evidence of what such a statesman was doing from day to day and from hour to hour, are almost as ample as if one had all the while been at his side and sate at his board. It seems to me the veriest folly, to speak of a man as panic-stricken or bewildered, who was daily and hourly answering with his own hand the most important public despatches, and the most familiar private letters, in the manner appropriate to each; recording with his own pen important conversations; holding cabinet councils; giving directions and transacting with punctuality and order the multifarious business of a great office; attending to his own private concerns, and grasping firmly the helm of state amid waves that rose higher and were more dangerous than any through which the good ship had ever floated; entertaining friends, enjoying the delights of social intercourse, writing at one time the gravest and most important messages to Congress, and then congratulating a young lady friend on her approaching marriage, in as graceful and charming a little note as a woman ever received. I cannot give to the reader an adequate idea of what I have gone through, in the study of these last four months of Mr. Buchanan’s official life. I can only say that on me it has produced the impression of great versatility of powers, immense industry, complete self-command, unshaken firmness, and undeviating consistency. That a man of nearly seventy years should have encountered, as he did, what he had to encounter, with so little sign of fear, is the best proof of an undaunted temper and a serene self-possession. The gossip of Pennsylvania Avenue, and the tattle of secession circles, supposed him to be panic-stricken; while he sate in the White House the most remarkable instance, in those tumultuous times, of the _mens aequa in arduis_.[160]

Footnote 159:

As Mr. Crawford had no interview with President Buchanan, he could have had none but hearsay evidence of Mr. Buchanan’s state of mind.

Footnote 160:

I have had occasion heretofore to speak of the multitudes of letters received by the President from all quarters of the country, after the promulgation of his annual message of December 3d. The inundation was scarcely less during the months of January and February; and as a general rule, when an answer was necessary or expedient, he made the original draft of it himself. In almost all cases, he noted on the back of letters or other papers which he received, the name of the writer, the date, and the date of the answer. But was he wasting his energies, it may be asked, in the duties of a mere clerk? Turn to his messages; consider the almost daily cabinet consultations, and the incessant attention which he had to give to the state of things in the South, the proceedings of Congress, the condition of public opinion in the North, and the deliberations of the Peace Convention, as well as to the ordinary business of the Government.

It seems to be quite evident from Mr. Tyler’s note of February 24th, to the President, that so far as any suggestion of a commission to be sent by Mr. Davis to Washington proceeded from that city, it proceeded from Mr. Tyler himself, and those gentlemen of his own State who, acting with him, were endeavoring to ward off any attack upon Fort Sumter. Mr. Davis became President of the Confederate States on the 18th of February. But before that date, Mr. Tyler was actively engaged in efforts to prevent an armed collision at Charleston; and as it was well known that Mr. Davis would be the President of the new confederacy whose delegates had assembled at Montgomery, Mr. Tyler and the other Virginians looked to him to prevent any outbreak in South Carolina. But I know of nothing that can connect Mr. Buchanan with the suggestion of a commission, beyond Mr. Davis’s statement, which is wholly unsupported by proof. The fair inference from all that occurred is, that the commission was sent to Washington to take the chances of being received by the out-going or the incoming administration, as circumstances might admit. As the first commissioner did not leave Montgomery until the 27th of February, it could not have been expected that Mr. Buchanan would take the responsibility of binding his successor by negotiating with a diplomatic agent of the Confederate States during the last three days of his administration; nor is it probable that Mr. Davis, whose last words in the Senate of the United States arraigned Mr. Buchanan severely for his course towards South Carolina, had, as President of the Confederate States, received from Mr. Buchanan an intimation that was equivalent to an invitation from one potentate to another to send a commission for the adjustment of all differences between their two governments.

“He is advised to send a commission,” said Mr. Tyler to Mr. Buchanan. Advised by whom? “By me, Mr. Tyler, and those Virginians who are acting with me,” is plainly to be read between the lines of Mr. Tyler’s letter of February 24th to the President. No one can doubt that Mr. Buchanan’s account of his administration, published in 1866, was written with perfect candor. If he had ever sent to Mr. Davis the intimation which that gentleman says he received from him through a third person, inviting commissioners from the Confederate Government, he would have stated the fact, together with his reasons for it. He never shrank from assigning reasons for any thing that he ever did. Yet not only does he make no allusion to the Montgomery commissioners, but any one who reads his fair and considerate comments on the peace policy pursued by Mr. Lincoln down to the attack on Fort Sumter, ought to be convinced that there was no need for the presence of Confederate commissioners in Washington, coming there on the suggestion of Mr. Buchanan, to negotiate matters that would have to be referred to the Senate, although it is highly probable that Mr. Tyler may have desired that a commissioner be sent to arrange amicably for an agreement by the Confederates not to attack Fort Sumter.