Twenty Years of Congress Volume I Part 19

Meetings to save the Union upon the basis of surrender of principle were held throughout the free States, while a word of manly resistance to the aggressive disposition of the South, or in re-affirmation of principles so long contended for, met no popular response. Even in Boston, Wendell Phillips needed the protection of the police in returning to his home after one of his eloquent and defiant harangues, and George William Curtis was advised by the Republican mayor of Philadelphia that his appearance as a lecturer in that city would be extremely unwise. He had been engaged to speak on "The Policy of Honesty." But so great had been the change in popular feeling in a city which Mr. Lincoln had carried by a vast majority, that the owner of the hall in which Mr. Curtis was to appear, warned him that a riot was antic.i.p.ated if he should speak. Its doors were closed against him. This was less than five weeks after Mr. Lincoln was elected, and the change of sentiment in Philadelphia was but an index to the change elsewhere in the North.

The South, meanwhile, had been encouraged in the work of secession by thousands of Democrats who did not desire or look for the dissolution of the Union, but wished to plot of secession to go far enough, and the danger to the Union to become just imminent enough, to destroy their political opponents. Men who afterwards attested their loyalty to the Union by their lives, took part in this dangerous scheme of encouraging a revolt which they could not repress. They apparently did not comprehend that lighted torches cannot be carried with safety through a magazine of powder; and, though they were innocent of intentional harm, they did much to increase an evil which was rapidly growing beyond all power of control. As already indicated, the position of President Buchanan and the doctrines of his message had aided in the development of this feeling in the North. It was further stimulated by the commercial correspondence between the two sections. The merchants and factors in the South did not as a cla.s.s desire Disunion, and they were made to believe that the suppression of Abolitionism in the North would restore harmony and good feeling. Abolitionism was but another name for the Republican party, and in business circles in the free State that party had come to represent the source of all our trouble. These men did not yet measure the full scope of the combination against the Union, and persisted in believing that its worst enemies were in the North. The main result of these misconceptions was a steady and rapid growth of strength throughout the slave States in the movement for Secession.

ENACTMENT OF THE MORRILL TARIFF.

Fruitless and disappointing as were the proceedings of this session of Congress on the subjects which engrossed so large a share of public attention, a most important change was accomplished in the revenue laws,--a change equivalent to a revolution in the economic and financial system of the government. The withdrawal of the Southern senators and representatives left both branches of Congress under the control of the North, and by a considerable majority under the direction of the Republican party. In the preceding session of Congress the House, having a small Republican majority, had pa.s.sed a bill advancing the rate of duties upon foreign importations. This action was not taken as an avowed movement for protection, but merely as a measure to increase the revenue.

During Mr. Buchanan's entire term the receipts of the Treasury had been inadequate to the payment of the annual appropriations by Congress, and as a result the government had been steadily incurring debt at a rate which was afterwards found to affect the public credit at a critical juncture in our history. To check this increasing deficit the House insisted on a scale of duties that would yield a larger revenue, and on the 10th of May, 1860, pa.s.sed the bill. In the Senate, then under the control of the Democratic party, with the South in the lead, the bill encountered opposition.

Senators from the Cotton States thought they saw in it the hated principle of protection, and protection meant in their view, strength and prestige for the manufacturing States of the North. The bill had been prepared in committee and reported in the House by a New- England member, Mr. Morrill of Vermont, which of itself was sufficient in the eyes of many Southern men to determine its character and its fate.

Mr. Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia was at the time Chairman of the Senate Committee of Finance. He was a man of st.u.r.dy common sense, slow in his methods, but strong and honest in his processes of reasoning. He advanced rapidly in public esteem, and in 1839, at thirty years of age, was chosen Speaker of the House of Representatives. He was a sympathizer with the South-Carolina extremists, and coalesced with the Whigs to defeat the regular Democrats who were sustaining the Administration of Mr. Van Buren.

In 1847 Mr. Hunter was chosen senator from Virginia, and served continuously till the outbreak of the war. He was a conservative example of that cla.s.s of border State Democrats who were blinded to all interests except those of slavery.

The true wealth of Virginia, in addition to her agriculture and in aid of it, lay in her vast deposits of coal and iron, in her extensive forests, in her unsurpa.s.sed water power. Her natural resources were beyond computation, and suggested for her a great career as a commercial and manufacturing State. Her rivers on the eastern slope connected her interior with the largest and finest harbor on the Atlantic coast of North America, and her jurisdiction extended over an empire beyond the Alleghanies. Her climate was salubrious, and so temperate as to forbid the plea always used in justification of negro slavery in the Cotton States, that the white man could not perform agricultural labor. A recognition of Virginia's true destiny would point to Northern alliances and Northern sympathies. Mr. Hunter's sympathies were by birth and rearing with the South. The alliances he sought looked towards the Gulf and not towards the Lakes. Any measure which was displeasing to South Carolina or Alabama was displeasing to Mr. Hunter, and he gave no heed to what might be the relations of Virginia with the New England, Middle, and Western States. He measured the policy of Virginia by the policy of States whose geographical position, whose soil, climate, products, and capacities were totally different from hers.

By Mr. Hunter's policy, Virginia could sell only slaves to the South. A more enlightened view would have enabled Virginia to furnish a large proportion of the fabrics which the Southern States were compelled to purchase in communities far to the north of her.

Mr. Hunter was no doubt entirely honest in this course. He was upright in all his personal and political relations, but he could not forget that he was born a Southern man and a slave-holder. He had a full measure of that pride in his State so deeply cherished by Virginians. At the outset of his public career he became a.s.sociated with Mr. Calhoun, and early imbibed the doctrines of that ill.u.s.trious senator, who seldom failed to fascinate the young men who fell within the sphere of his personal influence.

Mr. Hunter therefore naturally opposed the new tariff, and under his lead all action upon it was defeated for the session. This conclusion was undoubtedly brought about by considerations outside of the legitimate scope of the real question at issue. The struggle for the Presidency was in progress, and any concession by the slave States on the tariff question would weaken the Democratic party in the section where its chief strength lay, and would correspondingly increase the prestige of Lincoln's supporters in the North and of Mr. Fillmore's followers in the South. Mr. Hunter had himself just received a strong support in the Charleston convention for the Presidency, securing a vote almost equal to that given to Douglas.

This was an additional tie binding him to the South, and he responded to the wishes of that section by preventing all action on the tariff bill of the House pending the Presidential struggle of 1860.

SENATE VOTES ON THE MORRILL TARIFF.

But the whole aspect of the question was changed when at the ensuing session of Congress the senators and representatives from the Cotton States withdrew, and betook themselves to the business of establis.h.i.+ng a Southern Confederacy. Mr. Hunter's opposition was not relaxed, but his supporters were gone. Opposition was thus rendered powerless, and the first important step towards changing the tariff system from low duties to high duties, from free-trade to protection, was taken by the pa.s.sage of the Morrill Bill on the second day of March, 1861. Mr. Buchanan was within forty-eight hours of the close of his term and he promptly and cheerfully signed the bill. He had by this time become not only emanc.i.p.ated from Southern thraldom but in some degree embittered against Southern men, and could therefore readily disregard objections from that source. His early instincts and declarations in favor of a protective policy doubtless aided him in a conclusion which a year before he could not have reached without a conflict in his Cabinet that would probably have ended in its disruption.

The pa.s.sage of the Morrill Tariff was an event which would almost have marked an era in the history of the government if public attention had not been at once absorbed in struggles which were far more engrossing than those of legislative halls. It was however the beginning of a series of enactments which deeply affected the interests of the country, and which exerted no small influence upon the financial ability of the government to endure the heavy expenditure entailed by the war which immediately followed. Theories were put aside in the presence of a great necessity, and the belief became general that in the impending strain on the resources of the country, protection to home industry would be a constant and increasing strength to the government.

On the pa.s.sage of the bill in the Senate, on the 20th of February, the yeas were 25 and the nays 14. No Democratic senator voted in the affirmative and no Republican senator in the negative. It was not only a sharp division on the party line but almost equally so on the sectional line. Mr. Douglas, Mr. Rice of Minnesota, Mr.

Latham of California, and Mr. Lane of Oregon were the only Northern senators who united with the compact South against the bill.

Senators from Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas were still taking part in the proceedings. Mr. Crittenden of Kentucky and Mr. Kennedy of Maryland were favorable to the policy of protection, but on this bill they withheld their votes. They had not abandoned all hope of an adjustment of the Disunion troubles, and deemed the pending measure too radical a change of policy to be adopted in the absence of the senators and representatives from seven States so deeply interested. Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, sympathizing warmly with the Republicans on all questions relating to the preservation of the Union, was too firmly wedded to the theory of free-trade to appreciate the influence which this measure would exert in aid of the national finances.

The test vote in the House was taken on the 27th of February, on a motion made by Mr. Branch of North Carolina to lay the bill on the table. Only 43 votes were given in favor, while 102 were recorded against this summary destruction of the measure. The sectional line was not so rigidly maintained as it was in the House.

Of the hostile vote 28 were from the South and 15 from the North.

The Virginia delegation, following Mr. Hunter's example, voted solidly in opposition. The Southern men who voted for the bill were in nearly every instance distinguished for their hostility to secession. John A. Gilmer of North Carolina, Thomas A. R. Nelson, and William B. Stokes of Tennessee, William C. Anderson, Francis M. Bristow, Green Adams, and Laban T. Moore of Kentucky, separated from their section, and in their support of a protective tariff openly affiliated with the North.

The Morrill Tariff, as it has since been popularly known, was part of a bill whose t.i.tle indicates a wider scope than the fixing of duties on imports. It provided also for the payment of outstanding Treasury notes and authorized a loan. These additional features did little to commend it to those who were looking to an alliance with the Secessionists, nor did the obvious necessity of money for the national Treasury induce the ultra disciples of free-trade in the North to waive their opposition to a measure which distinctly looked to the establishment of protection. It was a singular combination of circ.u.mstances which on the eve of the Southern revolt led to the inauguration of a policy that gave such industrial and financial strength to the Union in its hour of dire necessity, in the very crisis of its fate.

CHAPTER XIII.

Mr. Lincoln's Journey from Springfield to Was.h.i.+ngton.--Speeches on the Way.--Reaches Was.h.i.+ngton.--His Secret Journey.--Afterwards regretted.--Precautions for his Safety.--President Buchanan.-- Secretary Holt.--Troops for the Protection of Was.h.i.+ngton.--Inauguration of Mr. Lincoln.--Relief to the Public Anxiety.--Inaugural Address.

--Hopefulness and Security in the North.--Mr. Lincoln's Appeal to the South.--Fails to appease Southern Wrath.--Dilemma of the South.

--The New Cabinet.--The "Easy Accession" of Former Times.--Seward Secretary of State.--Chase at the Head of the Treasury.--Radical Republicans dissatisfied.--Influence of the Blairs.--Comment of Thaddeus Stevens.--The National Flag in the Confederacy.--Flying at only Three Points.--Defenseless Condition of the Government.-- Confidence of Disunion Leaders.--Extra Session of the Senate.-- Douglas and Breckinridge.--Their Notable Debate.--Douglas's Reply to Wigfall.--His Answer to Mason.--Condition of the Territories.-- Slavery not excluded by Law.--Public Opinion in Maine, 1861.--Mr.

Lincoln's Difficult Task.--His Wise Policy.--His Careful Preparation.

--Statesmans.h.i.+p of his Administration.

When Southern confidence was at its height, and Northern courage at its lowest point, Mr. Lincoln began his journey from Springfield to Was.h.i.+ngton to a.s.sume the government of a divided and disorganized Republic. His speeches on the way were noticeable for the absence of all declaration of policy or purpose touching the impending troubles. This peculiarity gave rise to unfavorable comments in the public press of the North, and to unfounded apprehensions in the popular mind. There was fear that he was either indifferent to the peril, or that he failed to comprehend it. The people did not understand Mr. Lincoln. The failure to comprehend was on their part, not on his. Had he on that journey gratified the aggressive friends of the Union who had supported him for the Presidency, he would have added immeasurably to the serious troubles which already confronted him. He had the practical faculty of discerning the chief point to be reached, and then bending every energy to reach it. He saw that the one thing needful was his regular, const.i.tutional inauguration as President of the United States. Policies both general and in detail would come after that. He could not afford by imprudent forwardness of speech or premature declaration of measures to increase the embarra.s.sment which already surrounded him. "Let us do one thing at a time and the big things first" was his homely but expressive way of indicating the wisdom of his course.

A man of ordinary courage would have been overwhelmed by the task before him. But Mr. Lincoln possessed a certain calmness, firmness, and faith that enabled him to meet any responsibility, and to stand unappalled in any peril. He reached Was.h.i.+ngton by a night journey, taken secretly much against his own will and to his subsequent chagrin and mortification, but urged upon him by the advice of those in whose judgment and wisdom he was forced to confide. It is the only instance in Mr. Lincoln's public career in which he did not patiently face danger, and to the end of his life he regretted that he had not, according to his own desire, gone through Baltimore in open day, trusting to the hospitality of the city, to the loyalty of its people, to the rightfulness of his cause and the righteousness of his aims and ends. He came as one appointed to a great duty, not with rashness, not with weakness, not with bravado, not with shrinking, but in the perfect confidence of a just cause and with the stainless conscience of a good man. Threats that he never should be inaugurated had been numerous and serious, and it must be credited to the administration of Mr. Buchanan, that ample provision had been made for the protection of the rightful ruler of the nation.

PATRIOTIC CONDUCT OF JOSEPH HOLT.

The active and practical loyalty of Joseph Holt in this crisis deserves honorable mention. When, at the close of December, 1860, he succeeded Mr. Floyd as Secretary of War, no troops were stationed in Was.h.i.+ngton or its neighborhood. After consultation with General Scott, then in command of the army, and with the full approval of President Buchanan, Secretary Holt thought it wise to make precautions for the safety of the National Capital. Seven companies of artillery and one company of sappers and miners were accordingly brought to Was.h.i.+ngton. This movement gave offense to the Southern men who still remained in Congress, and Mr. Branch of North Carolina offered a resolution declaring that "the quartering of troops around the capital was impolitic and offensive," and that, "if permitted, it would be destructive of civil liberty, and therefore the troops should be forthwith removed." The House laid the resolution on the table by a vote of 125 to 35. Ex-President Tyler had formally complained to the President from the Peace Congress, that United- States troops were to march in the procession which was to celebrate the 22d of February. When so many of the Southern people were engaged in seizing the forts and other property of the government, it was curious to witness their uneasiness at the least display of power on the part of the National Government.

The tone of Secretary Holt's report to the President in regard to the marshaling of troops in the National Capital was a manifestation of courage in refres.h.i.+ng contrast with the surrounding timidity.

He stated in very plain language that "a revolution had been in progress for the preceding three months in several of the Southern States;" that its history was one of "surprise, treacheries, and ruthless spoliations;" that forts of the United States had been captured and garrisoned, and "hostile flags unfurled from the ramparts;" that a.r.s.enals had been seized, and the arms which they contained appropriated to the use of the captors; that more than half a million of dollars, found in the mint of New Orleans, had been unscrupulously applied to replenish the treasury of Louisiana; that a conspiracy had been entered into for the armed occupation of Was.h.i.+ngton as part of the revolutionary programme; and that he could not fail to remember that, if the early admonitions in regard to the designs of lawless men in Charleston Harbor had been acted on, and "adequate re-enforcements sent there before the revolution began, the disastrous political complications which ensued might not have occurred."

The inauguration of Mr. Lincoln was an immense relief to the country.

There had been an undefined dread throughout the Northern States, colored and heightened by imagination, that Mr. Lincoln would in some way, by some act of violence or of treachery, be deprived of the Presidency, and the government thrown into anarchy. Mr.

Breckinridge was the Vice-President, and there had been a vague fear that the count of the electoral votes, over which he presided, would in some way be obstructed or tampered with, and that the regularity of the succession might be interrupted, and its legitimacy stained. But Mr. Breckinridge had performed his official duty with scrupulous fidelity, and Mr. Lincoln had been declared by him, in the presence of the two Houses of Congress, to be lawfully and const.i.tutionally elected President of the United States. Anarchy and disorder in the North would at that time have proved so advantageous to the leaders of Secession, that the apprehension was firmly fixed in the Northern mind that some attempt would be made to bring it about. The very fact, therefore, that Mr. Lincoln was in possession of the office, that he was quietly living in the Executive mansion, that the Senate of the United States was in session, with a quorum present, ready to act upon his nominations, imported a new confidence and opened a new prospect to the friends of the Union.

The Inaugural address added to the feeling of hopefulness and security in the North. It effectually removed every trace of unfavorable impression which had been created by Mr. Lincoln's speeches, and gave at once a new view and an exalted estimate of the man. He argued to the South, with persuasive power, that the inst.i.tution of Slavery in the States was not in danger by his election. He admitted the full obligation under the Const.i.tution for the return of fugitive slaves. He neither affirmed nor denied any position touching Slavery in the Territories. He was fully aware that many worthy, patriotic citizens desired that the National Const.i.tution should be amended; and, while he declined to make any recommendation, he recognized the full authority of the people over the subject, and said he should favor rather than oppose a fair opportunity for them to act upon it. He expressed a preference, if the Const.i.tution was to be amended, for a general convention rather than for action through State Legislatures. He so far departed from his purpose not to speak of particular amendments as to allude to the one submitted by the late Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic inst.i.tutions of the States; and he said that, holding such a provision to be now implied in the Const.i.tution, he had no objection to its being made express and irrevocable. He pleaded earnestly, even tenderly, with those who would break up the Union. "In your hands," said he, "my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not a.s.sail you. You can have no conflict without yourselves being the aggressors. You can have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect, and defend it. I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. Though pa.s.sion may have strained, it must not break, our bonds of affection."

While the effect produced by the Inaugural in the North was so auspicious, no corresponding impression was made in the South.

Mr. Lincoln's concise and candid statement of his opinions and purposes in regard to Slavery, his majestic and unanswerable argument against Secession, and his pathetic appeal to the people and States of the South, all alike failed to win back the disaffected communities.

The leaders of the Secession movement were only the more enraged by witnessing the favor with which Mr. Lincoln's position was received in the North. The declaration of the President that he should execute the laws in all parts of the country, as required by his oath, and that the jurisdiction of the nation under the Const.i.tution would be a.s.serted everywhere and constantly, inspired the doubting with confidence, and gave to the people of the North a common hope and a common purpose in the approaching struggle.

The address left to the seceding States only the choice of retiring from the position they had taken, or of a.s.suming the responsibilities of war. It was clear that the a.s.sertion of jurisdiction by two separate governments over the same territory and people must end in bloodshed. In this dilemma was the South placed by the Inaugural address of President Lincoln. Mr. Buchanan had admitted the right of Secession, while denying the wisdom of its exercise; but the right when exercised carried jurisdiction with it. Hence it was impossible for Mr. Buchanan to a.s.sert jurisdiction and attempt its exercise over the territory and people of the seceding States.

But Mr. Lincoln, by his Inaugural address, set himself free from all logical entanglements. His emphatic words were these: "I therefore consider that, in view of the Const.i.tution and the laws, the Union is unbroken; and to the extent of my ability, I shall take care, as the Const.i.tution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States.

. . . I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as a declared purpose of the Union that it will const.i.tutionally defend and maintain itself."

THE CABINET OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN.

Mr. Lincoln const.i.tuted his Cabinet in a manner at least unusual if not unprecedented. It had been the general practice of Presidents, from the first organization of the government, to tender the post of Secretary of State to the man considered to be next in prominence to himself in the party to which both belonged. In the earlier history of the country, the expected successor in the Executive office was selected. This was indeed for a long period so uniform that the appointment to the State Department came to be regarded as a designation to the Presidency. In political phrase, this mode of reaching the coveted place was known as the "easy accession."

By its operation Madison succeeded Jefferson, Monroe succeeded Madison, John Quincy Adams succeeded Monroe. After successful application for a quarter of a century the custom fell into disfavor and, by bitter agitation, into disuse. The cause of its overthrow was the appointment of Henry Clay to the State Department, and the baseless scandal of a "bargain and sale" was invented to deprive Mr. Clay of the "easy accession." After a few years, when National Conventions were introduced, it became the habit of the President to tender the State Department to a leading or prominent compet.i.tor for the Presidential nomination. Thus General Harrison offered the post to Mr. Clay, who declined; and then to Mr. Webster, who accepted. President Polk appointed Mr. Buchanan. President Pierce appointed Mr. Marcy. President Buchanan appointed General Ca.s.s.

Following in the same line, Mr. Lincoln now invited his chief rival, Mr. Seward, to the State Department. But his courtesy did not stop there. He was generous beyond all example to his rivals. He called Salmon P. Chase to the Treasury, appointed Simon Cameron to the War Department, and made Edward Bates of Missouri Attorney-General.

These were the three who, next to Mr. Seward, received the largest votes of the minority in the convention which nominated Mr. Lincoln.

The Cabinet was completed by the appointment of Gideon Welles of Connecticut Secretary of the Navy, Caleb B. Smith of Indiana Secretary of the Interior, and Montgomery Blair of Maryland Postmaster- General.

The announcement of these names gave fair satisfaction to the party, though the most advanced and radical element of the Republicans regarded its composition with distrust. There had been strong hope on the part of the conservative friends of the Union that some prominent man from the Cotton States would be included in the Cabinet, and overtures were undoubtedly made to that effect directly after the election in November. But the rapidly developing revolt against the Union made such an appointment undesirable if not altogether impracticable. By the time of the inauguration it was found that such an olive-branch from the President would exert no influence over the wild pa.s.sions which had been aroused in the South. The name most frequently suggested was that of Mr. John A.

Gilmer of North Carolina, who was a sincere friend of the Union, and did all in his power to avert a conflict; but his appointment to the Cabinet would have destroyed him at home, without bringing strength at that crisis to the National cause.

The opinions and characteristics of each member of the Cabinet were very closely scanned and criticised. Mr. Seward was known to be fully committed to the policy of conciliation towards the South, and to the adoption of every measure consistent with the honor of the country to avert war and induce the return of the seceding States. Mr. Chase was understood to favor a moderate policy, but did not go so far as Mr. Seward. Mr. Cameron sympathized with Mr.

Seward more than with Mr. Chase. Mr. Bates was extremely conservative, but a zealous friend of the Union, and a lifelong disciple of Mr.

Clay. Mr. Welles was of Democratic antecedents, a follower of Van Buren and Wright, an a.s.sociate of John M. Niles, anti-slavery in principle, a strict constructionist, instinctively opposed to Mr.

Seward, readily co-operating with Mr. Chase. His appointment was a surprise to New-England Republicans who expected a much more prominent member of the party to be called to the Cabinet. It was understood that the selection was due to the counsel of Vice- President Hamlin, who soon after had such serious differences with Mr. Welles that a state of absolute non-intercourse existed between them during the whole period of his inc.u.mbency of the Navy Department.

Mr. Caleb B. Smith had been prominent in the House of Representatives when Mr. Lincoln was a member, had been popular as a public speaker in the West, but had no apt.i.tude for so serious a task as the administration of a great department, and did not long retain his position.

THE CABINET OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN.

Mr. Blair was appointed as a citizen of Maryland. This gave serious offense to many of Mr. Lincoln's most valued supporters, and was especially distasteful to the Union men of Maryland, with Henry Winter Davis at their head. They regarded Mr. Blair as a non- resident, as not in any sense identified with them, and as disposed from the outset to foment disturbance where harmony was especially demanded. Mr. Bates had been appointed from Missouri largely by the influence of Francis P. Blair, Jr.; and the border-State Republicans were dissatisfied that the only two members of the Cabinet from the slave States had been appointed apparently without any general consultation among those who were best fitted to give the President advice on so important a matter. The extreme men in the Republican party, of the type of Benjamin F. Wade and Owen Lovejoy, believed that the Cabinet was so const.i.tuted as to insure what they termed "a disgraceful surrender to the South." It was a common saying at the time in Was.h.i.+ngton, among the radical Republicans, that Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet did not contain three as absolute and strong defenders of the Union as Dix, Holt, and Stanton, who had just retired with Mr. Buchanan. Thaddeus Stevens, with his accustomed sharpness of speech, said the Cabinet was composed of an a.s.sortment of rivals whom the President appointed from courtesy, one stump-speaker from Indiana, and two representatives of the Blair family.

In the seven States which const.i.tuted the original Southern Confederacy, the flag of the United States was flying at only three points on the day of Mr. Lincoln's inauguration. The army of the United States still held Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston; Fort Pickens, opposite the Pensacola Navy Yard; and Key West, the extreme southern point of Florida. Every other fort, a.r.s.enal, dock- yard, mint, custom-house, and court-house had been seized by the Confederacy, and turned to hostile use. Fort Moultrie, Castle Pinckney, and the United-States a.r.s.enal at Charleston had been seized by the troops of South Carolina; Forts Jackson and Pulaski, and the United-States a.r.s.enal at Augusta, by the troops of Georgia; the Chattahoochee and St. Augustine a.r.s.enals and the Florida forts, by the troops of that State; the a.r.s.enal at Baton Rouge, and Forts Jackson and St. Philip, together with the New-Orleans mint and custom-house, by the troops of Louisiana; the Little-Rock a.r.s.enal by the troops of Arkansas; Forts Johnson and Caswell by the troops of North Carolina; and General Twiggs had traitorously surrendered to the State of Texas all the military stores in his command, amounting in value to a million and a half of dollars. By these means the seceding States had come into possession of all the artillery, small arms, ammunition, and supplies of war needed for immediate use, and were well prepared for the opening of the campaign. On the part of the government there was no such preparation.

Indeed the government did not at that moment have twelve thousand available troops against the most formidable rebellion in history.

Its whole navy could not make one large squadron, and its most effective s.h.i.+ps were at points remote from the scene of conflict.

The revenues of the country were not then yielding more than thirty millions per annum, and the credit was so low that one per cent.

a month had been paid by the retiring administration for the funds necessary to close its unfortunate career.