Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete
to enact laws constituting your section a guard against the escape of
our property, we were willing to live with you. You have been
submissive to our rule heretofore; but it looks now as if you did not
intend to continue so, and we will remain in the Union no longer."
Instead of this the seceding States cried lustily,--"Let us alone; you
have no constitutional power to interfere with us." Newspapers and
people at the North reiterated the cry. Individuals might ignore the
constitution; but the Nation itself must not only obey it, but must
enforce the strictest construction of that instrument; the construction
put upon it by the Southerners themselves. The fact is the constitution
did not apply to any such contingency as the one existing from 1861 to
1865. Its framers never dreamed of such a contingency occurring. If
they had foreseen it, the probabilities are they would have sanctioned
the right of a State or States to withdraw rather than that there should
be war between brothers.
The framers were wise in their generation and wanted to do the very best
possible to secure their own liberty and independence, and that also of
their descendants to the latest days. It is preposterous to suppose
that the people of one generation can lay down the best and only rules
of government for all who are to come after them, and under unforeseen
contingencies. At the time of the framing of our constitution the only
physical forces that had been subdued and made to serve man and do his
labor, were the currents in the streams and in the air we breathe. Rude
machinery, propelled by water power, had been invented; sails to propel
ships upon the waters had been set to catch the passing breeze--but the
application of steam to propel vessels against both wind and current,
and machinery to do all manner of work had not been thought of. The
instantaneous transmission of messages around the world by means of
electricity would probably at that day have been attributed to
witchcraft or a league with the Devil. Immaterial circumstances had
changed as greatly as material ones. We could not and ought not to be
rigidly bound by the rules laid down under circumstances so different
for emergencies so utterly unanticipated. The fathers themselves would
have been the first to declare that their prerogatives were not
irrevocable. They would surely have resisted secession could they have
lived to see the shape it assumed.
I travelled through the Northwest considerably during the winter of
1860-1. We had customers in all the little towns in south-west
Wisconsin, south-east Minnesota and north-east Iowa. These generally
knew I had been a captain in the regular army and had served through the
Mexican war. Consequently wherever I stopped at night, some of the
people would come to the public-house where I was, and sit till a late
hour discussing the probabilities of the future. My own views at that
time were like those officially expressed by Mr. Seward at a later day,
that "the war would be over in ninety days." I continued to entertain
these views until after the battle of Shiloh. I believe now that there
would have been no more battles at the West after the capture of Fort
Donelson if all the troops in that region had been under a single
commander who would have followed up that victory.
There is little doubt in my mind now that the prevailing sentiment of
the South would have been opposed to secession in 1860 and 1861, if
there had been a fair and calm expression of opinion, unbiased by
threats, and if the ballot of one legal voter had counted for as much as
that of any other. But there was no calm discussion of the question.
Demagogues who were too old to enter the army if there should be a war,
others who entertained so high an opinion of their own ability that they
did not believe they could be spared from the direction of the affairs
of state in such an event, declaimed vehemently and unceasingly against
the North; against its aggressions upon the South; its interference with
Southern rights, etc., etc. They denounced the Northerners as cowards,
poltroons, negro-worshippers; claimed that one Southern man was equal to
five Northern men in battle; that if the South would stand up for its
rights the North would back down. Mr. Jefferson Davis said in a speech,
delivered at La Grange, Mississippi, before the secession of that State,
that he would agree to drink all the blood spilled south of Mason and
Dixon's line if there should be a war. The young men who would have the
fighting to do in case of war, believed all these statements, both in
regard to the aggressiveness of the North and its cowardice. They, too,
cried out for a separation from such people. The great bulk of the
legal voters of the South were men who owned no slaves; their homes were
generally in the hills and poor country; their facilities for educating
their children, even up to the point of reading and writing, were very
limited; their interest in the contest was very meagre--what there was,
if they had been capable of seeing it, was with the North; they too
needed emancipation. Under the old regime they were looked down upon by
those who controlled all the affairs in the interest of slave-owners, as
poor white trash who were allowed the ballot so long as they cast it
according to direction.
I am aware that this last statement may be disputed and individual
testimony perhaps adduced to show that in ante-bellum days the ballot
was as untrammelled in the south as in any section of the country; but
in the face of any such contradiction I reassert the statement. The
shot-gun was not resorted to. Masked men did not ride over the country
at night intimidating voters; but there was a firm feeling that a class
existed in every State with a sort of divine right to control public
affairs. If they could not get this control by one means they must by
another. The end justified the means. The coercion, if mild, was
complete.
There were two political parties, it is true, in all the States, both
strong in numbers and respectability, but both equally loyal to the
institution which stood paramount in Southern eyes to all other
institutions in state or nation. The slave-owners were the minority,
but governed both parties. Had politics ever divided the slave-holders
and the non-slave-holders, the majority would have been obliged to
yield, or internecine war would have been the consequence. I do not
know that the Southern people were to blame for this condition of
affairs. There was a time when slavery was not profitable, and the
discussion of the merits of the institution was confined almost
exclusively to the territory where it existed. The States of Virginia
and Kentucky came near abolishing slavery by their own acts, one State
defeating the measure by a tie vote and the other only lacking one. But
when the institution became profitable, all talk of its abolition ceased
where it existed; and naturally, as human nature is constituted,
arguments were adduced in its support. The cotton-gin probably had much
to do with the justification of slavery.
The winter of 1860-1 will be remembered by middle-aged people of to-day
as one of great excitement. South Carolina promptly seceded after the
result of the Presidential election was known. Other Southern States
proposed to follow. In some of them the Union sentiment was so strong
that it had to be suppressed by force. Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and
Missouri, all Slave States, failed to pass ordinances of secession; but
they were all represented in the so-called congress of the so-called
Confederate States. The Governor and Lieutenant-Governor of Missouri,
in 1861, Jackson and Reynolds, were both supporters of the rebellion and
took refuge with the enemy. The governor soon died, and the
lieutenant-governor assumed his office; issued proclamations as governor
of the State; was recognized as such by the Confederate Government, and
continued his pretensions until the collapse of the rebellion. The South
claimed the sovereignty of States, but claimed the right to coerce into
their confederation such States as they wanted, that is, all the States
where slavery existed. They did not seem to think this course
inconsistent. The fact is, the Southern slave-owners believed that, in
some way, the ownership of slaves conferred a sort of patent of
nobility--a right to govern independent of the interest or wishes of
those who did not hold such property. They convinced themselves, first,
of the divine origin of the institution and, next, that that particular
institution was not safe in the hands of any body of legislators but
themselves.
Meanwhile the Administration of President Buchanan looked helplessly on
and proclaimed that the general government had no power to interfere;
that the Nation had no power to save its own life. Mr. Buchanan had in
his cabinet two members at least, who were as earnest--to use a mild
term--in the cause of secession as Mr. Davis or any Southern statesman.
One of them, Floyd, the Secretary of War, scattered the army so that
much of it could be captured when hostilities should commence, and
distributed the cannon and small arms from Northern arsenals throughout
the South so as to be on hand when treason wanted them. The navy was
scattered in like manner. The President did not prevent his cabinet
preparing for war upon their government, either by destroying its
resources or storing them in the South until a de facto government was
established with Jefferson Davis as its President, and Montgomery,
Alabama, as the Capital. The secessionists had then to leave the
cabinet. In their own estimation they were aliens in the country which
had given them birth. Loyal men were put into their places. Treason in
the executive branch of the government was estopped. But the harm had
already been done. The stable door was locked after the horse had been
stolen.
During all of the trying winter of 1860-1, when the Southerners were so
defiant that they would not allow within their borders the expression of
a sentiment hostile to their views, it was a brave man indeed who could
stand up and proclaim his loyalty to the Union. On the other hand men
at the North--prominent men--proclaimed that the government had no power
to coerce the South into submission to the laws of the land; that if the
North undertook to raise armies to go south, these armies would have to
march over the dead bodies of the speakers. A portion of the press of
the North was constantly proclaiming similar views. When the time
arrived for the President-elect to go to the capital of the Nation to be
sworn into office, it was deemed unsafe for him to travel, not only as a
President-elect, but as any private citizen should be allowed to do.
Instead of going in a special car, receiving the good wishes of his
constituents at all the stations along the road, he was obliged to stop
on the way and to be smuggled into the capital. He disappeared from
public view on his journey, and the next the country knew, his arrival
was announced at the capital. There is little doubt that he would have
been assassinated if he had attempted to travel openly throughout his
journey.
CHAPTER XVII.
OUTBREAK OF THE REBELLION--PRESIDING AT A UNION MEETING--MUSTERING
OFFICER OF STATE TROOPS--LYON AT CAMP JACKSON--SERVICES TENDERED TO THE
GOVERNMENT.
The 4th of March, 1861, came, and Abraham Lincoln was sworn to maintain
the Union against all its enemies. The secession of one State after
another followed, until eleven had gone out. On the 11th of April Fort
Sumter, a National fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, was
fired upon by the Southerners and a few days after was captured. The