Washington, February 7, 1861.
To His Excellency
James Buchanan, President.
Sir: Your reply through your Secretary of the War Department to my communication
of the 31st of January, covering the demand of the Governor of South
Carolina for the delivery of Fort Sumter, was received yesterday. Although the
very distinct and emphatic refusal of that demand closes my mission, I feel
constrained to correct some strange misapprehensions into which your Secretary
has fallen.
There has been no modification of the demand authorized to
be made, and no change whatever in its character, and of this you were
distinctly informed in my communication of the 31st of January. You have the
original demand as delivered to me by Governor Pickens on the 12th of January,
and you have an extract from the further instructions received by me, expressly
stating that he, the Governor, was confirmed in the views he entertained on the 12th of January, by
that very correspondence which you assign as the cause of the alleged
modification. You assume that the character of the demand has been modified,
yet you have from me but one communication, and that asserts the contrary, and
you have nothing from the Governor but the very demand itself, which you say
has been modified. What purpose of peace or conciliation your Secretary could
have had in view in the introduction of this point at all, it is difficult to perceive.
You next attempt to ridicule the proposal as simply an offer
on the part of South Carolina to buy Fort Sumter and contents as property of
the United States, sustained by a declaration, in effect, that if she is not
permitted to make the purchase, she will seize the fort by force of arms. It is
difficult to consider this as other than intentional misconstruction. You were
told that South Carolina, as a separate, independent sovereignty, would not
tolerate the occupation, by foreign troops, of a military post within her
limits, but that inasmuch as you, in repeated messages and in your
correspondence, had “laid much stress” upon the character of your duties,
arising from considering forts as property, South Carolina, so far as this
matter of property suggested by yourself was concerned, would make compensation
for all injury done the property, in the exercise of her sovereign right of
eminent domain. And this your Secretary calls a proposal to purchase. The idea
of purchase is entirely inconsistent with the assertion of the paramout right
in the purchaser. I had supposed that an “interest in property” as such, could
be no other than “purely proprietary,” and if I confined myself to this narrow
view of your relations to Fort Sumter, you at least should not consider it the
subject of criticism. Until your letter of yesterday, you chose so to consider
your relations, in everything which you have written, or which has been written
under your direction.
It was precisely because you had yourself chosen to place your
action upon the ground of “purely proprietary” right, that the proposal of
compensation was made, and you now admit that in this view “it (Fort Sumter)
would probably be subjected to the exercise of the right of eminent domain.”
In your letter of yesterday (through your Secretary) you
shift your position. You claim that your Government bears to Fort Sumter “political
relations of a much higher and more imposing character.”
It was no part of my mission to discuss the “political relations”
of the United States Government to anything within the territorial limits of
South Carolina. South Carolina claims to have severed all political connection
with your Government, and to have destroyed all political relations of your
Government with everything within her borders. She is unquestionably at this
moment de facto a separate and independent Government, exercising
complete sovereignty over every foot of her soil except Fort Sumter. Now that
the intention is avowed to hold this place as a military post, with the claim
of exclusive jurisdiction on the part of a Government foreign to South
Carolina, it will be for the authorities to determine what is the proper course
to be pursued. It is vain to ignore the fact that South Carolina is, to yours,
a foreign Government, and how with this patent fact before you, you can
consider the continued occupation of a fort in her harbor a pacific measure and
parcel of a peaceful policy, passes certainly my comprehension.
You say that the fort was garrisoned for our protection, and
is held for the same purposes for which it has been ever held since its
construction. Are you not aware, that to hold, in the territory of a foreign
power, a fortress against her will, avowedly for the purpose of protecting her
citizens, is, perhaps, the highest insult which one Government can offer to
another? But Fort Sumter was never garrisoned at all until South Carolina had
dissolved her connection with your Government. This garrison entered it at
night, with every circumstance of secrecy, after spiking the guns and burning
the gun-carriages, and cutting down the flag-staff of an adjacent fort, which
was then abandoned. South Carolina had not taken Fort Sumter into her own
possession, only because of her misplaced confidence in a Government which
deceived her. A fortress occupied under the circumstances above stated, is
considered by you not only as no cause of irritation, but you represent it as
held for our protection!
Your Excellency's Secretary has indulged in irony on a very
grave subject. As to the responsibility for consequences, if indeed, it does
rest on us, I can assure your Excellency we are happily unconscious of the
fact.
I return to Charleston to-morrow. With considerations of
high regard,
I am, very
respectfully,
I. W. Hayne,
Special Envoy.
SOURCE: Samuel Wylie Crawford, The Genesis of the
Civil War: The Story of Sumter, 1860-1861, p. 231-3
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