Twenty Years of Congress Volume I Part 16

It was soon manifest however to Judge Black, that he was playing with fire, and that, while he was himself desirous only of arousing the country to the dangers of anti-slavery agitation, Mr. Buchanan's administration was every day effectually aiding the Southern conspiracy for the destruction of the Union. This light dawned on Judge Black suddenly and irresistibly. He was personally intimate with General Ca.s.s, and when that venerable statesman retired from the Cabinet to preserve his record of loyalty to the Union, Judge Black realized that he was himself confronted by an issue which threatened his political destruction. Could he afford, as Secretary of State, to follow a policy which General Ca.s.s believed would destroy his own fame? General Ca.s.s was nearly fourscore years of age, with his public career ended, his work done. Judge Black was but fifty, and he had before him possibly the most valuable and most ambitious period of his life. He saw at a glance that if General Ca.s.s could not be sustained in the North-West, he could not be sustained in Pennsylvania. He possessed the moral courage to stand firm to the end, in defiance of opposition and regardless of obloquy, if he could be sure he was right. But he had begun to doubt, and doubt led him to review with care the position of Mr.

Buchanan, and to examine its inevitable tendencies. He did it with conscience and courage. He had none of that subserviency to Southern men which had injured so many Northern Democrats. Until he entered the Cabinet in 1857, he had never come into personal a.s.sociation with men from the slave-holding States, and his keen observation could not fail to discern the inferiority to himself of the four Southern members of the Cabinet.

Judge Black entered upon his duties as Secretary of State on the 17th of December,--the day on which the Disunion convention of South Carolina a.s.sembled. He found the malign influence of Mr.

Buchanan's message fully at work throughout the South. Under its encouragement only three days were required by the convention at Charleston to pa.s.s the Ordinance of Secession, and four days later Governor Pickens issued a proclamation declaring "South Carolina a separate, sovereign, free, and independent State, with the right to levy war, conclude peace, and negotiate treaties." From that moment Judge Black's position towards the Southern leaders was radically changed. They were no longer fellow-Democrats. They were the enemies of the Union to which he was devoted: they were conspirators against the government to which he had taken a solemn oath of fidelity and loyalty.

Judge Black's change, however important to his own fame, would prove comparatively fruitless unless he could influence Mr. Buchanan to break with the men who had been artfully using the power of his administration to destroy the Union. The opportunity and the test came promptly. The new "sovereign, free, and independent" government of South Carolina sent commissioners to Was.h.i.+ngton to negotiate for the surrender of the national forts, and the transfer of the national property within her limits. Mr. Buchanan prepared an answer to their request which was compromising to the honor of the Executive and perilous to the integrity of the Union. Judge Black took a decided and irrevocable stand against the President's position. He advised Mr. Buchanan that upon the basis of that fatal concession to the Disunion leaders he could not remain in his Cabinet. It was a sharp issue, but was soon adjusted. Mr.

Buchanan gave way, and permitted Judge Black, and his a.s.sociates Holt and Stanton, to frame a reply for the administration.

THE PRESIDENT AND THE SOUTHERN LEADERS.

Jefferson Davis, Mr. Toombs, Mr. Benjamin, Mr. Slidell, who had been Mr. Buchanan's intimate and confidential advisers, and who had led him to the brink of ruin, found themselves suddenly supplanted, and a new power installed at the White House. Foiled, and no longer able to use the National Administration as an instrumentality to destroy the National life, the Secession leaders in Congress turned upon the President with angry reproaches. In their rage they lost all sense of the respect due to the Chief Magistrate of the Nation, and a.s.saulted Mr. Buchanan with coa.r.s.eness as well as violence. Senator Benjamin spoke of him as "a senile Executive under the sinister influence of insane counsels." This exhibition of malignity towards the misguided President afforded to the North the most convincing and satisfactory proof that there had been a change for the better in the plans and purposes of the Administration. They realized that it must be a deep sense of impending danger which could separate Mr. Buchanan from his political a.s.sociations with the South, and they recognized in his position a significant proof of the desperate determination to which the enemies of the Union had come.

The stand taken by Judge Black and his loyal a.s.sociates was in the last days of December, 1860. The re-organization of the Cabinet came as a matter of necessity. Mr. John B. Floyd resigned from the War Department, making loud proclamation that his action was based on the President's refusal to surrender the national forts in Charleston Harbor to the Secession government of South Carolina.

This manifesto was not necessary to establish Floyd's treasonable intentions toward the government; but, in point of truth, the plea was undoubtedly a pretense, to cover reasons of a more personal character which would at once deprive him of Mr. Buchanan's confidence. There had been irregularities in the War Department tending to compromise Mr. Floyd, for which he was afterwards indicted in the District of Columbia. Mr. Floyd well knew that the first knowledge of these shortcomings would lead to his dismissal from the Cabinet. Whatever Mr. Buchanan's faults as an Executive may have been, his honor in all transactions, both personal and public, was unquestionable, and he was the last man to tolerate the slightest deviation from the path of rigid integrity.

Mr. Thompson, the Secretary of the Interior, followed Mr. Floyd after a short interval. Mr. Cobb had left the Treasury a few days before General Ca.s.s resigned from the Cabinet, and had gone to Georgia to stimulate her laggard movements in the scheme of destroying the government. His successor was Philip Francis Thomas of Maryland, who entered the Cabinet as a representative of the principles whose announcement had forced General Ca.s.s to resign. The change of policy to which the President was now fully committed, forced Mr.

Thomas to retire, after a month's service. He frankly stated that he was unable to agree with the President and his chief advisers "in reference to the condition of things in South Carolina," and therefore tendered his resignation. Mr. Thomas adhered to the Union, and always maintained an upright and honorable character, but his course at that crisis deprived him subsequently of a seat in the United-States Senate, though at a later period he served in the House as representative from Maryland.

Mr. Cobb, Mr. Floyd, and Mr. Thompson had all remained in the Cabinet after the Presidential election in November, in full sympathy, and so far as was possible in full co-operation, with the men in the South who were organizing resistance to the authority of the Federal Government. Neither those gentlemen, nor any friend in their behalf, ever ventured to explain how, as sworn officers of the United States, they could remain at their posts consistently with the laws of honor,--laws obligatory upon them not only as public officials who had taken a solemn oath of fidelity to the Const.i.tution, but also as private gentlemen whose good faith was pledged anew every hour they remained in control of the departments with whose administration they had been intrusted. Their course is unfavorably contrasted with that of many Southern men (of whom General Lee and the two Johnstons were conspicuous examples), who refused to hold official positions under the National Government a single day after they had determined to take part in the scheme of Disunion.

BUCHANAN'S RECONSTRUCTED CABINET.

By the re-organization of the Cabinet, the tone of Mr. Buchanan's administration was radically changed. Judge Black had used his influence with the President to secure trustworthy friends of the Union in every department. Edwin M. Stanton, little known at the time to the public, but of high standing in his profession, was appointed Attorney-General soon after Judge Black took charge of the State Department. Judge Black had been a.s.sociated with Stanton personally and professionally, and was desirous of his aid in the dangerous period through which he was called to serve.

Joseph Holt, who, since the death of Aaron V. Brown in 1859, had been Postmaster-General, was now appointed Secretary of War, and Horatio King of Maine, for many years the upright first a.s.sistant, was justly promoted to the head of the Post-office Department.

Mr. Holt was the only Southern man left in the Cabinet. He was a native of Kentucky, long a resident of Mississippi, always identified with the Democratic party, and affiliated with its extreme Southern wing. Without a moment's hesitation he now broke all the a.s.sociations of a lifetime, and stood by the Union without qualification or condition. His learning, his firmness, and his ability, were invaluable to Mr. Buchanan in the closing days of his administration.

General John A. Dix of New York was called to the head of the Treasury. He was a man of excellent ability, of wide experience in affairs, of spotless character, and a most zealous friend of the Union. He found the Treasury bankrupt, the discipline of its officers in the South gone, its orders disregarded in the States which were preparing for secession. He at once imparted spirit and energy into the service,--giving to the administration of this department a policy of p.r.o.nounced loyalty to the government. No act of his useful and honorable life has been so widely known or will be so long remembered as his dispatch to the Treasury agent at New Orleans to take possession of a revenue cutter whose commander was suspected of disloyalty and of a design to transfer his vessel to the Confederate service. Lord Nelson's memorable order at Trafalgar was not more inspiring to the British navy than was the order of General Dix to the American people, when, in the gloom of that depressing winter, he telegraphed South his peremptory words, "If any man attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot."

Thus reconstructed, the Cabinet as a whole was one of recognized power,--marked by high personal character, by intellectual training, by experience in affairs, and by apt.i.tude for the public service.

There have been Cabinets perhaps more widely known for the possession of great qualities; but, if the history of successive administrations from the origin of the government be closely studied, it will be found that the re-organized Cabinet of President Buchanan must take rank as one of exceptional ability.

For the remaining two months of Mr. Buchanan's administration the destinies of the country were in the keeping of these const.i.tutional advisers. If in any respect they failed to come to the standard of a loyalty that was quickened by subsequent developments, they no doubt fairly represented the demand of the Northern States at the time. There was everywhere the most earnest desire to avert a conflict, and an unwillingness to recognize the possibility of actual war. The majority of the Republican party in both branches of Congress was not advocating a more decided or more aggressive course with the South, during the months of January and February, than the Cabinet, with Judge Black at its head, was pursuing. The time for executive acts of a more p.r.o.nounced character was directly after the Presidential election, when the first symptoms of resistance to national authority were visible in the South. If the new Cabinet had been then in power, the history of the civil revolt might have been different. But the force that will arrest the first slow revolution of a wheel cannot stand before it when, by unchecked velocity, it has acquired a destructive momentum. The measures which might have secured repression in November would only have produced explosion in January.

THE PRESIDENT'S NEW POSITION.

The change of position on the part of Mr. Buchanan was not left to inference, or to the personal a.s.surance of the loyal men who composed his re-organized Cabinet. He announced it himself in a special message to Congress on the 8th of January, 1861. The tone was so different from the message of December, that it did not seem possible that the two could have been written by the same man. It was evident from many pa.s.sages in the second message that he was trying to reconcile it with the first. This was the natural course suggested by the pride of one who overrated the virtue of consistency.

The attempt was useless. The North with unaffected satisfaction, the South with unconcealed indignation, realized that the President had entirely escaped from the influences which dictated the first message. He now a.s.serted that, "as the Chief Executive under the Const.i.tution of the United States," he had no alternative but "to collect the public revenues, and to protect the public property, so far as this might be practicable under existing laws." Remarking that his province "was to execute, and not to make, the laws," he threw upon Congress the duty "of enlarging their provisions to meet exigencies as they may occur." He declared it as his own conviction that "the right and the duty to use military force defensively against those who resist the federal officers in the execution of their legal functions, and against those who a.s.sail the property of the Federal Government, are clear and undeniable." Conceding so much, the mild denial which the President re-a.s.serted, of "the right to make aggressive war upon any State," may be charitably tolerated; for, under the defensive power which he so broadly approved, the whole force of national authority could be used against a State aggressively bent upon Secession.

The President did not fail to fortify his own position at every point with great force. The situation had become so serious, and had "a.s.sumed such vast and alarming proportions, as to place the subject entirely above and beyond Executive control." He therefore commended "the question, in all its various bearings, to Congress, as the only tribunal possessing the power to meet the existing exigency." He reminded Congress that "to them belongs exclusively the power to declare war, or to authorize the employment of military force in all cases contemplated by the Const.i.tution." Not abandoning the hope of an amicable adjustment, the President pertinently informed Congress that "they alone possess the power to remove grievances which might lead to war, and to secure peace and union."

As a basis of settlement, he recommended a formal compromise by which "the North shall have exclusive control of the territory above a certain line, and Southern inst.i.tutions shall have protection below that line." This plan, he believed, "ought to receive universal approbation." He maintained that on Congress, and "on Congress alone, rests the responsibility." As Congress would certainly in a few days be under the control of the Republicans in both branches,--by the withdrawal of senators and representatives from the seceding States,--Mr. Buchanan's argument had a double force. Not only was he vindicating the position of the Executive and throwing the weight of responsibility on the Legislative Department of the government, but he was protecting the position of the Democratic party by saying, in effect, that the President chosen by that party stood ready to approve and to execute any laws for the protection of the government and the safety of the Union which a Republican Congress might enact.

A certain significance attached to the date which the President had selected for communicating his message to Congress. It was the eighth day of January, the anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans, celebrated that year with enthusiastic demonstrations in honor of the memory of Andrew Jackson, who had, on a memorable occasion not unlike the present, sworn an emphatic oath that "the Federal Union must and shall be preserved." There was also marked satisfaction throughout the loyal States with Mr. Buchanan's a.s.surance of the peace of the District of Columbia on the ensuing 4th of March, on the occasion of Mr. Lincoln's inauguration. He did not himself "share in the serious apprehensions that were entertained of disturbance" on that occasion, but he made this declaration, which was received in the North with hearty applause: "In any event, it will be my duty to preserve the peace, and this duty shall be performed."

The change of sentiment towards Mr. Buchanan after the delivery of the special message, was as marked in the North as it was in the South, though in the opposite direction. It would not be true to say that any thing like popularity attended the President in his new position; but the change of feeling was so great that the Legislature of Ma.s.sachusetts, on the 23d of January, 1861, adopted resolutions in which they declared that they regarded "with unmingled satisfaction the determination evinced in the recent firm and patriotic special message of the President of the United States to amply and faithfully discharge his const.i.tutional duty of enforcing the laws, and preserving the integrity of the Union." The Legislature "proffered to the President, through the Governor of the Commonwealth, such aid in men and money as he may require to maintain the authority of the National Government." These resolutions were forwarded to Mr. Buchanan by Governor Andrew. They were only one of many manifestations which the President received of approval of his course.

The Ma.s.sachusetts Legislature was radically Republican in both branches, and even in making a reference to "men and money" as requisite to maintain the Union, they had gone farther than the public sentiment at that time approved. Coercive measures were generally condemned. A few days after the action of the Legislature, a large meeting of the people of Boston, held in Faneuil Hall, declared that they "depended for the return of the seceding States, and the permanent preservation of the Union, on conciliatory counsels, and a sense of the benefits which the Const.i.tution confers on all the States, and not on military coercion." They declared that they shrunk "with horror from the thought of civil war between the North and the South."

It must always be remembered that the disbelief in ultimate secession was nearly universal throughout the free States. The people of the North could not persuade themselves that the proceedings in the Southern States would lead to any thing more serious than hostile demonstrations, which would end, after coaxing and compromise, in a return to the Union. But with this hope of final security there was, on the part of the great ma.s.s of the people in the free States, the gravest solicitude throughout the winter of 1860-61, and a restless waiting and watching for a solution of the troubles.

Partisan leaders were busy on both sides seeking for an advantage that might survive the pending trials. Northern Democrats in many instances sought to turn the occasion to one of political advantage by pointing out the lamentable condition to which anti-slavery agitation had brought the country. This was naturally answered by Republicans with defiance, and with an affected contempt and carelessness of what the South might do. Much that was written and much that was spoken throughout the North during that winter, both by Democrats and Republicans, would have remained unwritten and unspoken if they had realized the seriousness and magnitude of the impending calamity.

FINAL ESTIMATE OF MR. BUCHANAN.

In a final a.n.a.lysis and true estimate of Mr. Buchanan's conduct in the first stages of the revolt, the condition of the popular mind as just described must be taken into account. The same influences and expectations that wrought upon the people were working also upon him. There were indeed two Mr. Buchanans in the closing months of the administration. The first was Mr. Buchanan of November and December, angered by the decision of the Presidential election and more than willing that the North, including his own State, should be disciplined by fright to more conservative views and to a stricter observance of what he considered solemn obligations imposed by the Const.i.tution. If the Southern threat of resistance to the authority of the Union had gone no farther than this, Mr. Buchanan would have been readily reconciled to its temporary violence, and would probably have considered it a national blessing in disguise.--The second was Mr. Buchanan of January and February, appalled by surrounding and increasing perils, grieved by the conduct of Southern men whom he had implicitly trusted, overwhelmed by the realization of the evils which had obviously followed his official declarations, hoping earnestly for the safety of the Union, and yet more disturbed and harrowed in his mind than the ma.s.s of loyal people who did not stand so near the danger as he, or so accurately measure its alarming growth. The President of December with Cobb and Floyd and Thompson in his Cabinet, and the President of January with Dix and Stanton and Holt for his councilors, were radically different men. No true estimate of Mr. Buchanan in the crisis of his public career can ever be reached if this vital distinction be overlooked.

It was Mr. Buchanan's misfortune to be called to act in an emergency which demanded will, fort.i.tude, and moral courage. In these qualities he was deficient. He did not possess the executive faculty. His life had been princ.i.p.ally devoted to the practice of law in the most peaceful of communities, and to service in legislative bodies where he was borne along by the force of a.s.sociation. He had not been trained to prompt decision, had not been accustomed to exercise command. He was cautious and conservative to the point of timidity. He possessed ability of a high order, and, though he thought slowly, he could master the most difficult subject with comprehensive power. His service of ten years in the House and an equal period in the Senate was marked by a conscientious devotion to duty. He did not rank with the ablest members of either body, but always bore a prominent part in important discussions and maintained himself with credit.

PERSONAL CHARACTER OF MR. BUCHANAN.

It was said of Mr. Buchanan that he instinctively dreaded to a.s.sume responsibility of any kind. His keenest critic remarked that in the tentative period of political issues a.s.sumed by his party, Mr.

Buchanan could always be found two paces to the rear, but in the hour of triumph he marched proudly in the front rank. He was not gifted with independence or self-a.s.sertion. His bearing towards Southern statesmen was derogatory to him as a man of spirit. His tone towards administrations of his own party was so deferential as almost to imply a lack of self-respect. He was not a leader among men. He was always led. He was led by Mason and Soule into the imprudence of signing the Ostend Manifesto; he was led by the Southern members of his Cabinet into the inexplicable folly and blunder of indorsing the Lecompton iniquity; he was led by Disunion senators into the deplorable mistake contained in his last annual message. Fortunately for him he was led a month later by Black and Holt and Stanton to a radical change of his compromising position.

If Mr. Buchanan had possessed the unconquerable will of Jackson or the stubborn courage of Taylor, he could have changed the history of the revolt against the Union. A great opportunity came to him but he was not equal to it. Always an admirable adviser where prudence and caution were the virtues required, he was fatally wanting in a situation which demanded prompt action and strong nerve. As representative in Congress, as senator, as minister abroad, as Secretary of State, his career was honorable and successful. His life was singularly free from personal fault or short-coming. He was honest and pure-minded. His fame would have been more enviable if he had never been elevated to the Presidency.

CHAPTER XI.

Congress during the Winter of 1860-61.--Leave-taking of Senators and Representatives.--South Carolina the First to secede.--Her Delegation in the House publish a Card withdrawing.--Other States follow.--Mr. Lamar of Mississippi.--Speeches of Seceding Senators.

--Mr. Yulee and Mr. Mallory of Florida.--Mr. Clay and Mr. Fitzpatrick of Alabama.--Jefferson Davis.--His Distinction between Secession and Nullification.--Important Speech by Mr. Toombs.--He defines Conditions on which the Union might be allowed to survive.--Mr.

Iverson's Speech.--Georgia Senators withdraw.--Insolent Speech of Mr. Slidell of Louisiana.--Mr. Judah P. Benjamin's Special Plea for his State.--His Doctrine of "A Sovereignty held in Trust."-- Same Argument of Mr. Yulee for his State.--Principle of State Sovereignty.--Disproved by the Treaty of 1783.--Notable Omission by Secession Senators.--Grievances not stated.--Secession Conventions in States.--Failure to state Justifying Grounds of Action.-- Confederate Government fail likewise to do it.--Contrast with the Course of the Colonies.--Congress had given no Cause.--Had not disturbed Slavery by Adverse Legislation.--List of Measures Favorable to Slavery.--Policy of Federal Government steadily in that Direction.

--Mr. Davis quoted Menaces, not Acts.--Governing Cla.s.s in the South.

--Division of Society there.--Republic ruled by an Oligarchy.-- Overthrown by Election of Lincoln.--South refuses to acquiesce.

No feature of the extraordinary winter of 1860-61 is more singular in retrospect than the formal leave-taking of the Southern senators and representatives in their respective Houses. Members of the House from the seceding States, with few exceptions, refrained from individual addresses, either of farewell or defiance, but adopted a less demonstrative and more becoming mode. The South-Carolina representatives withdrew on the 24th of December (1860), in a brief card laid before the House by Speaker Pennington. They announced that, as the people of their State had "in their sovereign capacity resumed the powers delegated by them to the Federal Government of the United States," their "connection with the House of Representatives was thereby dissolved." They "desired to take leave of those with whom they had been a.s.sociated in a common agency, with mutual regard and respect for the rights of each other." They "cherished the hope" that in future relations they might "better enjoy the peace and harmony essential to the happiness of a free and enlightened people."

SOUTHERN REPRESENTATIVES WITHDRAW.

Other delegations retired from the House in the order in which their States seceded. The leave-taking, in the main, was not undignified. There was no defiance, no indulgence of bravado.

The members from Mississippi "regretted the necessity" which impelled their State to the course adopted, but declared that it met "their unqualified approval." The card was no doubt written by Mr. L. Q.

C. Lamar, and accurately described his emotions. He stood firmly by his State in accordance with the political creed in which he had been reared, but looked back with tender regret to the Union whose destiny he had wished to share and under the protection of whose broader nationality he had hoped to live and die. A few Southern representatives marked their retirement by speeches bitterly reproaching the Federal Government, and bitterly accusing the Republican party; but the large majority confined themselves to the simpler form of the card.

Whether the ease and confidence as to the future which these Southern representatives manifested was really felt or only a.s.sumed, can never be known. They were all men of intelligence, some of them conspicuously able; and it seems incredible that they could have persuaded themselves that a great government could be dissolved without shock and without resistance. They took leave with no more formality than that with which a private gentleman, aggrieved by discourteous treatment, withdraws from a company in which he feels that he can no longer find enjoyment. Their confidence was based on the declarations and admissions of Mr. Buchanan's message; but they had, in effect, constructed that doc.u.ment themselves, and the slightest reflection should have warned them that, with the change of administration to occur in a few weeks, there would be a different understanding of Executive duty, and a different appeal to the reason of the South.

The senators from the seceding States were more outspoken than the representatives. They took the opportunity of their retirement to say many things which, even for their own personal fame, should have been left unsaid. A clear a.n.a.lysis of these harangues is impossible. They lacked the unity and directness of the simple notifications with which the seceding representatives had withdrawn from the House. The valedictories in the Senate were a singular compound of defiance and pity, of justification and recrimination.

Some of the speeches have an insincere and mock-heroic tone to the reader twenty years after the event. They appear to be the expressions of men who talked for effect, and who professed themselves ready for a shock of arms which they believed would never come.

But the majority of the utterances were by men who meant all they said; who, if they did not antic.i.p.ate a b.l.o.o.d.y conflict, were yet prepared for it, and who were too deeply stirred by resentment and pa.s.sion to give due heed to consequences.

On the 21st of January the senators from Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi formally withdrew from the Senate. Their speeches showed little variety of thought, consisting chiefly of indictments against the free States for placing the government under the control of an anti-slavery administration. Mr. Yulee was the first to speak. He solemnly announced to the Senate that "the State of Florida, though a convention of her people, had decided to recall the powers which she had delegated to the Federal Government, and to a.s.sume the full exercise of all her sovereign rights as an independent and separate community." At what particular period in the history of the American continent Florida had enjoyed "sovereign rights," by what process she had ever "delegated powers to the Federal Government," or at what time she had ever been "an independent and separate community," Mr. Yulee evidently preferred not to inform the Senate. His colleague, Mr. Mallory, implored the people of the North not to repeat the fatal folly of the Bourbons by imagining that "the South would submit to the degradation of a constrained existence under a violated Const.i.tution." Mr. Mallory regarded the subjugation of the South by war as impossible. He warned the North that they were dealing with "a nation, and not with a faction."

Mr. Clement C. Clay, Jr., of Alabama, boasted that in the convention which adopted the Ordinance of Secession in his State there was not one friend of the Union; and he resented with indignation what he termed the offensive calumny of the Republicans in denouncing slavery and polygamy as twin relics of barbarism. The action of Alabama, he said, was not from "sudden, spasmodic, and violent pa.s.sion." It was the conclusion her people had reached "after years of enmity, injustice, and injury at the hands of their Northern brethren." Instead of causing surprise, "it is rather matter of reproach that they have endured so much and so long, and have deferred this act of self-defense until to-day." Mr. Clay's speech was insulting and exasperating to the last degree. His colleague, Mr. Fitzpatrick, a man of better tempter, showed reserve and an indisposition to discuss the situation. He contented himself with the expression of a general concurrence in the views of Mr. Clay, adding no word of bitterness himself. He said that he "acknowledged loyalty to no other power than to the sovereign State of Alabama."

But for the pressure brought upon him, Mr. Fitzpatrick would have been glad to retain his seat in the Senate and wait the course of events. He was not in his heart a Disunionist, as his colleague was. He would have accepted the nomination for the Vice-Presidency on the ticket with Douglas the preceding year, if the whole political power of the Cotton States had not opposed his wishes and forced him into the support of Breckinridge.

VALEDICTORY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS.

Jefferson Davis expressed his concurrence in the action of the people of Mississippi. He believed that action was necessary and proper, but would "have felt himself equally bound if his belief had been otherwise." He presented an a.n.a.lysis of the difference between the remedies of nullification and secession. Nullification was a remedy inside of the Union; secession a remedy outside. He expressed himself as against the theory of nullification, and explained that, so far from being identified with secession, the two are antagonistic principles. Mr. Calhoun's mistake, according to Mr. Davis, was in trying to "nullify" the laws of the Union while continuing a member of it. He intimated that President Jackson would never have attempted to "execute the laws" in South Carolina as he did against the nullifiers in 1832, if the State had seceded, and that therefore his great example could not be quoted in favor of "coercion." It is not believed that Mr. Davis had the slightest authority for this aspersion upon the memory of Jackson. It seems rather to have been a disingenuous and unwarranted statement of the kind so plentifully used at the time for the purpose of "firing the Southern heart."

There had been an impression in the country that Mr. Davis was among the most reluctant of those who engaged in the secession movement; but in his speech he declared that he had conferred with the people of Mississippi before the step was taken, and counseled them to the course which they had adopted. This declaration was a great surprise to Northern Democrats, among whom Mr. Davis had many friends. For several years he had been growing in favor with a powerful element in the Democracy of the free States, and, but for the exasperating quarrel of 1860, he might have been selected as the Presidential candidate of his party. No man gave up more than Mr. Davis in joining the revolt against the Union. In his farewell words to the Senate, there was a tone of moderation and dignity not unmixed with regretful and tender emotions. There was also apparent a spirit of confidence and defiance. He evidently had full faith that he was going forth to victory and to power.