Abraham Lincoln’s Message to the United States Congress, July 4, 1861

FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

Having been convened on an extraordinary occasion, as authorized by the Constitution, your attention is not called to any ordinary subject of legislation.

At the beginning of the present Presidential term, four months ago, the functions of the Federal Government were found to be generally suspended within the several States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida, excepting only those of the Post-Office Department.

Within these States all the forts, arsenals, dock-yards, custom-houses, and the like, including the movable and stationary property in and about them, had been seized, and were held in open hostility to this Government, excepting only Forts Pickens, Taylor, and Jefferson, on and near the Florida coast, and Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, S. C. The forts thus seized had been put in improved condition; new ones had been built, and armed forces had been organized, and were organizing, all avowedly with the same hostile purpose.

The forts remaining in the possession of the Federal Government in and near these States were either besieged or menaced by warlike preparations, and especially Fort Sumter was nearly surrounded by well-protected hostile batteries, with guns equal in quality to the best of its own and outnumbering the latter as perhaps ten to one. A disproportionate share of the Federal muskets and rifles had somehow found their way into these States and had been seized to be used against the Government. Accumulations of the public revenue lying within them had been seized for the same object. The Navy was scattered in distant seas, leaving but a very small part of it within the immediate reach of the Government. Officers of the Federal Army and Navy had resigned in great numbers, and of those resigning a large proportion had taken up arms against the Government. Simultaneously, and in connection with all this, the purpose to sever the Federal Union was openly avowed. In accordance with this purpose an ordinance had been adopted in each of these States declaring the States, respectively, to be separated from the National Union. A formula for instituting a combined government of these States had been promulgated, and this illegal organization, in the character of Confederate States, was already invoking recognition, aid, and intervention from foreign powers.

Finding this condition of things and believing it to be an imperative duty upon the incoming Executive to prevent, if possible, the consummation of such attempt to destroy the Federal Union, a choice of means to that end became indispensable. This choice was made and was declared in the inaugural address. The policy chosen looked to the exhaustion of all peaceful measures before a resort to any stronger ones. It sought only to hold the public places and property not already wrested from the Government and to collect the revenue, relying for the rest on time, discussion, and the ballot-box. It promised a continuance of the mails, at Government expense, to the very people who were resisting the Government, and it gave repeated pledges against any disturbance to any of the people or any of their rights. Of all that which a President might constitutionally and justifiably do in such a case, everything was forborne without which it was believed possible to keep the Government on foot.

On the 5th of March (the present incumbent's first full day in office), a letter of Major Anderson, commanding at Fort Sumter, written on the 28th of February, and received at the War Department on the 4th of March, was, by that Department, placed in his hands. This letter expressed the professional opinion of the writer that re-enforcements could not be thrown into that fort, within the time for his relief rendered necessary by the limited supply of provisions and with a view of holding possession of the same, with a force of less than 20,000 good and well-disciplined men. This opinion was concurred in by all the officers of his command, and their memoranda on the subject were made inclosures of Major Anderson's letter. The whole was immediately laid before Lieutenant-General Scott, who at once concurred with Major Anderson in opinion. On reflection, however, he took full time, consulting with other officers, both of the Army and the Navy, and at the end of four days came reluctantly, but decidedly, to the same conclusion as before. He also stated at the same time that no such sufficient force was then at the control of the Government or could be raised and brought to the ground within the time when the provisions in the fort would be exhausted. In a purely military point of view this reduced the duty of the Administration in the case to the mere matter of getting the garrison safely out of the fort.

It was believed, however, that to so abandon that position, under the circumstances, would be utterly ruinous; that the necessity under which it was to be done would not be fully understood; that by many it would be construed as a part of a voluntary policy; that at home it would discourage the friends of the Union, embolden its adversaries, and go far to insure to the latter a recognition abroad; that, in fact, it would be our national destruction consummated. This could not be allowed. Starvation was not yet upon the garrison, and ere it would be reached Fort Pickens might be reinforced. This last would be a clear indication of policy and would better enable the country to accept the evacuation of Fort Sumter as a military necessity. An order was at once directed to be sent for the landing of the troops from the steamship Brooklyn into Fort Pickens. This order could not go by land but must take the longer and slower route by sea. The first return news from the order was received just one week before the fall of Fort Sumter. The news itself was that the officer commanding the Sabine, to which vessel the troops had been transferred from the Brooklyn, acting upon some quasi armistice of the late Administration (and of the existence of which the present Administration, up to the time the order was dispatched, had only too vague and uncertain rumors to fix attention), had refused to land the troops. To now reinforce Fort Pickens before a crisis would be reached at Fort Sumter was impossible – rendered so by the near exhaustion of provisions in the latter-named fort. In precaution against such a conjuncture, the Government had a few days before commenced preparing an expedition, as well adapted as might be, to relieve Fort Sumter, which expedition was intended to be ultimately used or not, according to circumstances. The strongest anticipated case for using it was now presented, and it was resolved to send it forward. As had been intended, in this contingency, it was also resolved to notify the Governor of South Carolina that he might expect an attempt would be made to provision the fort, and that if the attempt should not be resisted there would be no effort to throw in men, arms, or ammunition, without further notice, or in case of an attack upon the fort. This notice was accordingly given, whereupon the fort was attacked and bombarded to its fall without even awaiting the arrival of the provisioning expedition.

It is thus seen that the assault upon and reduction of Fort Sumter was in no sense a matter of self-defense on the part of the assailants. They well knew that the garrison in the fort could by no possibility commit aggression upon them. They knew – they were expressly notified-that the giving of bread to the few brave and hungry men of the garrison was all which would on that occasion be attempted unless themselves, by resisting so much, should provoke more. They knew that this Government desired to keep the garrison in the fort, not to assail them, but merely to maintain visible possession, and thus to preserve the Union from actual and immediate dissolution, trusting, as hereinbefore stated, to time, discussion, and the ballot-box for final adjustment; and they assailed and reduced the fort for precisely the reverse object – to drive out the visible authority of the Federal Union and thus force it to immediate dissolution. That this was their object the Executive well understood, and having said to them in the inaugural address, “You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors,” he took pains not only to keep this declaration good, but also to keep the case so free from the power of ingenious sophistry as that the world should not be able to misunderstand it. By the affair at Fort Sumter, with its surrounding circumstances, that point was reached. Then and thereby the assailants of the Government began the conflict of arms, without a gun in sight or in expectancy to return their fire, save only the few in the fort sent to that harbor years before for their own protection and still ready to give that protection in whatever was lawful. In this act, discarding all else, they have forced upon the country the distinct issue, “Immediate dissolution or blood.”

And this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man the question whether a constitutional republic or democracy – a Government of the people, by the same people – can or cannot maintain its territorial integrity against its own domestic foes. It presents the question whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control administration, according to organic law, in any case, can always, upon the pretenses made in this case, or on any other pretenses, or arbitrarily without any pretense, break up their Government and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth. It forces us to ask: “Is there, in all republics, this inherent and fatal weakness?” “Must a government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?”

So viewing the issue, no choice was left but to call out the war power of the Government; and so to resist force employed for its destruction by force for its preservation.

The call was made, and the response of the country was most gratifying, surpassing in unanimity and spirit the most sanguine expectation. Yet none of the States commonly called slave States, except Delaware, gave a regiment through regular State organization. A few regiments have been organized within some others of those States by individual enterprise and received into the Government service. Of course the seceded States, so called (and to which Texas had been joined about the time of the inauguration), gave no troops to the cause of the Union. The border States, so called, were not uniform in their action, some of them being almost for the Union, while in others – as Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas – the Union sentiment was nearly repressed and silenced. The course taken in Virginia was the most remarkable, perhaps the most important. A convention elected by the people of that State to consider this very question of disrupting the Federal Union was in session at the capital of Virginia when Fort Sumter fell. To this body the people had chosen a large majority of professed Union men. Almost immediately after the fall of Sumter many members of that majority went over to the original disunion minority and with them adopted an ordinance for withdrawing the State from the Union. Whether this change was wrought by their great approval of the assault upon Sumter or their great resentment at the Government's resistance to that assault is not definitely known. Although they submitted the ordinance for ratification to a vote of the people to be taken on a day then somewhat more than a month distant, the convention and the Legislature (which was also in session at the same time and place), with leading men of the State not members of either, immediately commenced acting as if the State were already out of the Union. They pushed military preparations vigorously forward all over the State. They seized the U.S. Armory at Harper's Ferry and the navy-yard at Gosport, near Norfolk. They received – perhaps invited – into their State large bodies of troops with their warlike appointments from the so-called seceded States. They formally entered into a treaty of temporary alliance and co-operation with the so-called “Confederate States,” and sent members to their Congress at Montgomery. And finally, they permitted the insurrectionary Government to be transferred to their capital at Richmond.

The people of Virginia have thus allowed this giant insurrection to make its nest within her borders, and this Government has no choice left but to deal with it where it finds it. And it has the less regret, as the loyal citizens have in due form claimed its protection. Those loyal citizens this Government is bound to recognize and protect as being Virginia.

In the border States, so called – in fact, the middle States – there are those who favor a policy which they call “armed neutrality;” that is, an arming of those States to prevent the Union forces passing one way or the disunion the other over their soil. This would be disunion completed. Figuratively speaking, it would be the building of an impassable wall along the line of separation – and yet, not quite an impassable one, for under the guise of neutrality it would tie the hands of the Union men, and freely pass supplies from among them to the insurrectionists, which it could not do as an open enemy. At a stroke it would take all the trouble off the hands of secession, except only what proceeds from the external blockade. It would do for the disunionists that which of all things they most desire – feed them well and give them disunion without a struggle of their own. It recognizes no fidelity to the Constitution, no obligation to maintain the Union, and while very many who have favored it are doubtless loyal citizens it is nevertheless very injurious in effect.

Recurring to the action of the Government, it may be stated that at first a call was made for 75,000 militia, and rapidly following this a proclamation was issued for closing the ports of the insurrectionary districts by proceedings in the nature of blockade. So far all was believed to be strictly legal. At this point the insurrectionists announced their purpose to enter upon the practice of privateering.

Other calls were made for volunteers to serve for three years, unless sooner discharged, and also for large additions to the Regular Army and Navy. These measures, whether strictly legal or not, were ventured upon under what appeared to be a popular demand and a public necessity, trusting then, as now, that Congress would readily ratify them. It is believed that nothing has been done beyond the constitutional competency of Congress.

Soon after the first call for militia it was considered a duty to authorize the commanding general in proper cases, according to his discretion, to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, or in other words to arrest and detain, without resort to the ordinary processes and forms of law, such individuals as he might deem dangerous to the public safety. This authority has purposely been exercised but very sparingly. Nevertheless the legality and propriety of what has been done under it are questioned and the attention of the country has been called to the proposition that one who is sworn to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” should not himself violate them. Of course some consideration was given to the questions of power and propriety before this matter was acted upon. The whole of the laws which were required to be faithfully executed were being resisted and failing of execution in nearly one-third of the States. Must they be allowed to finally fail of execution, even had it been perfectly clear that by the use of the means necessary to their execution some single law, made in such extreme tenderness of the citizen's liberty that practically it relieves more of the guilty than of the innocent, should to a very limited extent be violated? To state the question more directly, are all the laws but one to go unexecuted and the Government itself go to pieces lest that one be violated? Even in such a case would not the official oath be broken if the Government should be overthrown, when it was believed that disregarding the single law would tend to preserve it? But it was not believed that this question was presented. It was not believed that any law was violated. The provision of the Constitution that “the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it,” is equivalent to a provision – is a provision – that such privilege may be suspended when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety does require it. It was decided that we have a case of rebellion, and that the public safety does require the qualified suspension of the privilege of the writ which was authorized to be made. Now, it is insisted that Congress and not the Executive is vested with this power. But the Constitution itself is silent as to which, or who, is to exercise the power; and as the provision was plainly made for a dangerous emergency, it cannot be believed the framers of the instrument intended that in every case the danger should run its course until Congress could be called together, the very assembling of which might be prevented, as was intended in this case, by the rebellion.

No more extended argument is now offered, as an opinion at some length will probably be presented by the Attorney-General. Whether there shall be any legislation upon the subject, and if any, what, is submitted entirely to the better judgment of Congress.

The forbearance of this Government had been so extraordinary and so long continued as to lead some foreign nations to shape their action as if they supposed the early destruction of our national Union was probable. While this, on discovery, gave the Executive some concern, he is now happy to say that the sovereignty and rights of the United States are now everywhere practically respected by foreign powers, and a general sympathy with the country is manifested throughout the world.

The reports of the Secretaries of the Treasury, War, and the Navy will give the information in detail deemed necessary and convenient for your deliberation and action, while the Executive and all the Departments will stand ready to supply omissions or to communicate new facts considered important for you to know.

It is now recommended that you give the legal means for making this contest a short and a decisive one; that you place at the control of the Government for the work at least 400,000 men and $400,000,000. That number of men is about one-tenth of those of proper ages within the regions where apparently all are willing to engage, and the sum is less than a twenty-third part of the money value owned by the men who seem ready to devote the whole. A debt of $600,000,000 now is a less sum per head than was the debt of our Revolution when we came out of that struggle, and the money value in the country now bears even a greater proportion to what it was then than does the population. Surely each man has as strong a motive now to preserve our liberties as each had then to establish them.

A right result at this time will be worth more to the world than ten times the men and ten times the money. The evidence reaching us from the country leaves no doubt that the material for the work is abundant, and that it needs only the hand of legislation to give it legal sanction and the hand of the Executive to give it practical shape and efficiency. One of the greatest perplexities of the Government is to avoid receiving troops faster than it can provide for them. In a word, the people will save their Government if the Government itself will do its part only indifferently well.

It might seem at first thought to be of little difference whether the present movement at the South be called “secession” or “rebellion.” The movers, however, well understand the difference. At the beginning they knew they could never raise their treason to any respectable magnitude by any name which implies violation of law. They knew their people possessed as much of moral sense, as much of devotion to law and order, and as much pride in and reverence for the history and Government of their common country as any other civilized and patriotic people. They knew they could make no advancement directly in the teeth of these strong and noble sentiments. Accordingly they commenced by an insidious debauching of the public mind. They invented an ingenious sophism, which, if conceded, was followed by perfectly logical steps through all the incidents to the complete destruction of the Union. The sophism itself is, that any State of the Union may, consistently with the national Constitution, and therefore lawfully and peacefully, withdraw from the Union without the consent of the Union or of any other State. The little disguise that the supposed right is to be exercised only for just cause, themselves to be the sole judge of its justice, is too thin to merit any notice.

With rebellion thus sugar coated, they have been drugging the public mind of their section for more than thirty years, and until at length they have brought many good men to a willingness to take up arms against the Government the day after some assemblage of men have enacted the farcical pretense of taking their State out of the Union, who could have been brought to no such thing the day before.

This sophism derives much, perhaps the whole, of its currency from the assumption that there is some omnipotent and sacred supremacy pertaining to a State – to each State of our Federal Union. Our States have neither more nor less power than that reserved to them in the Union by the Constitution – no one of them ever having been a State out of the Union. The original ones passed into the Union even before they cast off their British colonial dependence, and the new ones each came into the Union directly from a condition of dependence, excepting Texas; and even Texas in its temporary independence was never designated a State. The new ones only took the designation of States on coming into the Union, while that name was first adopted for the old ones in and by the Declaration of Independence. Therein the “United Colonies” were declared to be “free and independent States;” but even then the object plainly was not to declare their independence of one another or of the Union, but directly the contrary, as their mutual pledge and their mutual action before, at the time, and afterward, abundantly show. The express plighting of faith by each and all of the original thirteen in the Articles of Confederation, two years later, that the Union shall be perpetual is most conclusive. Having never been States, either in substance or in name, outside of the Union, whence this magical omnipotence of “State rights,” asserting a claim of power to lawfully destroy the Union itself? Much is said about the “sovereignty” of the States, but the word even is not in the national Constitution, nor, as is believed, in any of the State constitutions. What is a “sovereignty” in the political sense of the term? Would it be far wrong to define it “a political community without a political superior?” Tested by this, no one of our States, except Texas, ever was a sovereignty; and even Texas gave up the character on coming into the Union, by which act she acknowledged the Constitution of the United States and the laws and treaties of the United States made in pursuance of the Constitution to be for her the supreme law of the land. The States have their status in the Union, and they have no other legal status. If they break from this they can only do so against law and by revolution. The Union, and not themselves separately, procured their independence and their liberty. By conquest or purchase the Union gave each of them whatever of independence and liberty it has. The Union is older than any of the States, and in fact it created them as States. Originally some dependent colonies made the Union, and in turn the Union threw off their old dependence for them and made them States, such as they are. Not one of them ever had a State constitution independent of the Union. Of course it is not forgotten that all the new States framed their constitutions before they entered the Union, nevertheless dependent upon and preparatory to coming into the Union.

Unquestionably the States have the powers and rights reserved to them in and by the national Constitution; but among these, surely, are not included all conceivable powers, however mischievous or destructive; but, at most, such only as were known in the world, at the time, as governmental powers; and certainly a power to destroy the Government itself had never been known as a governmental – as a merely administrative power. This relative matter of national power and State rights, as a principle, is no other than the principle of generality and locality. Whatever concerns the whole should be confided to the whole – to the General Government; while whatever concerns only the State should be left exclusively to the State. This is all there is of original principle about it. Whether the national Constitution, in defining boundaries between the two, has applied the principle with exact accuracy is not to be questioned. We are all bound by that defining, without question.

What is now combatted is the position that secession is consistent with the Constitution – is lawful and peaceful. It is not contended that there is any express law for it; and nothing should ever be implied as law which leads to unjust or absurd consequences. The nation purchased, with money, the countries out of which several of these States were formed. Is it just that they shall go off without leave and without refunding? The nation paid very large sums (in the aggregate, I believe, nearly a hundred millions) to relieve Florida of the aboriginal tribes. Is it just that she shall now be off without consent, or without making any return? The nation is now in debt for money applied to the benefit of these so-called seceding States, in common with the rest. Is it just either that creditors shall go unpaid, or the remaining States pay the whole? A part of the present national debt was contracted to pay the old debts of Texas. Is it just that she shall leave and pay no part of this herself? Again, if one State may secede, so may another; and when all shall have seceded none is left to pay the debts. Is this quite just to creditors? Did we notify them of this sage view of ours when we borrowed their money? If we now recognize this doctrine by allowing the seceders to go in peace, it is difficult to see what we can do if others choose to go, or to extort terms upon which they will promise to remain.

The seceders insist that our Constitution admits of secession. They have assumed to make a national constitution of their own, in which, of necessity, they have either discarded or retained the right of secession, as, they insist, it exists in ours. If they have discarded it, they thereby admit that on principle it ought not to be in ours. If they have retained it by their own construction of ours, they show that to be consistent they must secede from one another whenever they shall find it the easiest way of settling their debts or effecting any other selfish or unjust object. The principle itself is one of disintegration and upon which no Government can possibly endure.

If all the States save one should assert the power to drive that one out of the Union, it is presumed the whole class of seceder politicians would at once deny the power and denounce the act as the greatest outrage upon State rights. But suppose that precisely the same act, instead of being called “driving the one out,” should be called “the seceding of the others from that one,” it would be exactly what the seceders claim to do; unless, indeed, they make the point that the one, because it is a minority, may rightfully do what the others, because they are a majority, may not rightfully do. These politicians are subtle and profound on the rights of minorities. They are not partial to that power which made the Constitution, and speaks from the preamble, calling itself “We, the people.”

It may well be questioned whether there is to-day a majority of the legally qualified voters of any State, except, perhaps, South Carolina, in favor of disunion. There is much reason to believe that the Union men are the majority in many, if not in every other one, of the so-called seceded States. The contrary has not been demonstrated in any one of them. It is ventured to affirm this, even of Virginia and Tennessee; for the result of an election, held in military camps, where the bayonets are all on one side of the question voted upon, can scarcely be considered as demonstrating popular sentiment. At such all election all that large class who are, at once, for the Union and against coercion would be coerced to vote against the Union.

It may be affirmed, without extravagance, that the free Institutions we enjoy have developed the powers and improved the condition of our whole people beyond any example in the world. Of this we now have a striking and an impressive illustration. So large an army as the Government has now on foot was never before known without a soldier in it but who had taken his place there of his own free choice. But more than this; there are many single regiments whose members, one and another, possess full practical knowledge of all the arts, sciences, professions, and whatever else, whether useful or elegant, is known in the world; and there is scarcely one from which there could not be selected a President, a Cabinet, a Congress, and perhaps a court abundantly competent to administer the Government itself. Nor do I say this is not true, also in the army of our late friends, now adversaries, in this contest; but if it is, so much better the reason why the Government which has conferred such benefits on them and us should not be broken up. Whoever, in any section, proposes to abandon such a Government would do well to consider in deference to what principle it is that he does it – what better he is likely to get in its stead – whether the substitute will give, or be intended to give, so much of good to the people. There are some foreshadowings on this subject. Our adversaries have adopted some declarations of independence, in which, unlike the good old one, penned by Jefferson, they omit the words “all men are created equal.” Why? They have adopted a temporary national constitution, in the preamble of which, unlike our good old one, signed by Washington, they omit “We, the people,” and substitute “We, the deputies of the sovereign and independent States.” Why? Why this deliberate pressing out of view the rights of men and the authority of the people?

This is essentially a people's contest. On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men – to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life. Yielding to partial and temporary departures, from necessity, this is the leading object of the Government for whose existence we contend.

I am most happy to believe that the plain people understand and appreciate this. It is worthy of note that while in this, the Government's hour of trial, large numbers of those in the Army and Navy who have been favored with the offices have resigned and proved false to the hand which had pampered them, not one common soldier or common sailor is known to have deserted his flag.

Great honor is due to those officers who remained true, despite the example of their treacherous associates; but the greatest honor, and most important fact of all, is the unanimous firmness of the common soldiers and common sailors. To the last man, so far as known, they have successfully resisted the traitorous efforts of those whose commands but an hour before they obeyed as absolute law. This is the patriotic instinct of plain people. They understand, without an argument, that the destroying the Government which was made by Washington means no good to them.

Our popular Government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it our people have already settled – the successful establishing and the successful administering of it. One still remains – its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided there can be no successful appeal back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace; teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take it by a war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.

Lest there might be some uneasiness in the minds of candid men as to what is to be the course of the Government toward the Southern States after the rebellion shall have been suppressed, the Executive deems it proper to say, it will be his purpose then, as ever, to be guided by the Constitution and the laws; and that he probably will have no different understanding of the powers and duties of the Federal Government relatively to the rights of the States and the people, under the Constitution, than that expressed in the inaugural address.

He desires to preserve the Government, that it may be administered for all, as it was administered by the men who made it. Loyal citizens everywhere have the right to claim this of their Government; and the Government has no right to withhold or neglect it. It is not perceived that, in giving it, there is any coercion, any conquest, or any subjugation, in any just sense of those terms.

The Constitution provides, and all the States have accepted the provision, that “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government.” But if a State may lawfully go out of the Union, having done so, it may also discard the republican form of government; so that to prevent its going out is an indispensable means to the end of maintaining the guaranty mentioned; and when an end is lawful and obligatory the indispensable means to it are also lawful and obligatory.

It was with the deepest regret that the Executive found the duty of employing the war power, in defense of the Government, forced upon him. He could but perform this duty or surrender the existence of the Government. No compromise by public servants could, in this case, be a cure; not that compromises are not often proper, but that no popular Government can long survive a marked precedent, that those who carry an election can only save the Government from immediate destruction by giving up the main point upon which the people gave the election. The people themselves, and not their servants, can safely reverse their own deliberate decisions.

As a private citizen the Executive could not have consented that these institutions shall perish; much less could he in betrayal of so vast and so sacred a trust as these free people had confided to him. He felt that he had no moral right to shrink, nor even to count the chances of his own life, in what might follow. In full view of his great responsibility he has, so far, done what he has deemed his duty. You will now, according to your own judgment, perform yours. He sincerely hopes that your views and your action may so accord with his as to assure all faithful citizens who have been disturbed in their rights of a certain and speedy restoration to them, under the Constitution and the laws.

And having thus chosen our course, without guile and with pure purpose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward without fear and with manly hearts.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

JULY 4, 1861.

SOURCES: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series III, Volume 1 (Serial No. 122), p. 311-21; Abstracted in Samuel Wylie Crawford’s The Genesis of the Civil War: The Story of Sumter, 1860-1861, p. 466-9.

Diary of Ethan Allen Hitchcock: February 3, 1861

I have been a greatly distressed observer of this movement, though I have made little note of it. The cotton States have passed “ordinances of secession.” Our hopes now rest upon the Northern line of slave States. If they remain in the Union, and no blood be shed, there is a slight hope that something may be done to heal the breach.

SOURCE: W. A. Croffut, Editor, Fifty Years in Camp and Field: Diary of Major-General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, U. S. A., p. 428

William H. Seward to Abraham Lincoln, March 15, 1861

Department of State

Washington, 15th March, 1861.

The President submits to me the following question, namely, “Assuming it to be possible to now provision Fort Sumter, under all the circumstances, is it wise to attempt it?”

If it were possible to peacefully provision Fort Sumter, of course I should answer that it would be both unwise and inhuman not to attempt it. But the facts of the case are known to be, that the attempt must be made with the employment of a military and marine force, which would provoke combat, and probably initiate a civil war, which the Government of the United States would be committed to maintain through all changes to some definite conclusion.

History must record that a sectional party practically constituting a majority of the people of the fifteen Slave States, excited to a high state of jealous apprehension for the safety of life and property, by impassioned, though groundless appeals, went into the late election with a predetermined purpose, if unsuccessful at the polls, to raise the standard of secession immediately afterwards, and to separate the Slave States, or so many of them as could be detached from the Union, and to organize them in a new, distinct, and independent confederacy: that party was unsuccessful at the polls. In the frenzy which followed the announcement of their defeat, they put the machinery of the State Legislatures and conventions into motion, and within the period of three months, they have succeeded in obtaining ordinances of secession by which seven of the Slave States have seceded and organized a new Confederacy under the name of the Confederated States of America. These States finding a large number of the mints, customhouses, forts and arsenals of the United States situate within their limits, unoccupied, undefended, and virtually abandoned by the late Administration, have seized and appropriated them to their own use, and under the same circumstances have seized and appropriated to their own use, large amounts of money and other public property of the United States, found within their limits. The people of the other Slave States, divided and balancing between sympathy with the seceding slave States and loyalty to the Union, have been intensely excited, but, at the present moment, indicate a disposition to adhere to the Union, if nothing extraordinary shall occur to renew excitement and produce popular exasperation. This is the stage in this premeditated revolution, at which we now stand.

The opening of this painful controversy, at once raised the question whether it would be for the interest of the country to admit the projected dismemberment, with its consequent evils, or whether patriotism and humanity require that it shall be prevented. As a citizen, my own decision on this subject was promptly made, namely, that the Union is inestimable and even indispensable to the welfare and happiness of the whole country, and to the best interests of mankind. As a statesman in the public service, I have not hesitated to assume that the Federal government is committed to maintain preserve and defend the Union, peaceably if it can, forcibly if it must, to every extremity. Next to Disunion itself, I regard civil war as the most disastrous and deplorable of national calamities, and as the most uncertain and fearful of all remedies for political disorders. I have therefore made it the study and labor of the hour, how to save the Union from dismemberment by peaceful policy and without civil war.

Influenced by these sentiments, I have felt that it is exceedingly fortunate that, to a great extent, the Federal government occupies, thus far, not an aggressive attitude, but, practically, a defensive one, while the necessity for action, if civil war is to be initiated, falls on those who seek to dismember and subvert this Union.

It has seemed to me equally fortunate that the Disunionists are absolutely without any justification for their rash and desperate designs. The administration of the Government had been for a long time virtually in their own hands, and controlled and directed by themselves, when they began the work of revolution. They had therefore no other excuse than apprehension of oppression from the new and adverse administration which was about to come into power

It seemed to me farther, to be a matter of good fortune that the new and adverse administration must come in with both Houses of Congress containing majorities opposed to its policy, so that, even if it would, it could commit no wrong or injustice against the States which were being madly goaded into revolution. Under the circumstances, Disunion could have no better basis to stand upon than a blind unreasoning popular excitement, arising out of a simple and harmless disappointment in a Presidential election – that excitement, if it should find no new aliment, must soon subside and leave Disunion without any real support. On the other hand, I have believed firmly that every where, even in South Carolina, devotion to the Union is a profound and permanent national sentiment which, although it may be suppressed and silenced by terror for a time, could, if encouraged, be ultimately relied upon to rally the people of the seceding States to reverse, upon due deliberation, all the popular acts of legislatures and Conventions by which they were hastily and violently committed to Disunion.

The policy of the time, therefore, has seemed to me to consist in conciliation, which should deny to the Disunionists any new provocation or apparent offence, while it would enable the Unionists in the slave states to maintain, with truth and with effect, that the claims and apprehensions put forth by the Disunionists, are groundless and false.

I have not been ignorant of the objection that the Administration was elected through the activity of the Republican party, that it must continue to deserve and retain the confidence of that party while conciliation towards the Slave States tends to demoralize the Republican party itself, on which party the main responsibility of maintaining the Union must rest.

But it has seemed to me a sufficient answer first, that the Administration could not demoralize the Republican party without making some sacrifice of its essential principles when no such sacrifice is necessary or is any where authoritatively proposed; and secondly, if it be indeed true that pacification is necessary to prevent dismemberment of the Union and civil war, or either of them, no patriot and lover of humanity could hesitate to surrender party for the higher interests of country and humanity.

Partly by design, partly by chance, this policy has been hitherto pursued by the last Administration of the Federal government and by the Republican party in its corporate action. It is by this policy thus pursued, I think, that the progress of dismemberment has been arrested after the seven Gulf States had seceded, and the Border States yet remain, although they do so uneasily, in the Union.

It is to a perseverance in this policy for a short time longer that I look as the only peaceful means of assuring the continuance of Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri and Arkansas, or most of those States, in the Union. It is through their good and patriotic offices that I look to see the Union sentiment revived and brought once more into activity in the seceding States, and through this agency those states themselves returning into the Union.

I am not unaware that I am conceding more than can reasonably be demanded by the people of the Border States. They could, speaking justly, demand nothing. They are bound by the federal obligation to adhere to the Union without concession or conciliation just as much as the people of the Free States are. But in administration we must deal with men, facts and circumstances not as they ought to be, but as they are.

The fact then is that while the people of the Border States desire to be loyal, they are at the same time sadly though temporarily demoralized by a sympathy for the Slave States which makes them forget their loyalty whenever there are any grounds for apprehending that the Federal Government will resort to military coercion against the seceding States, even though such coercion should be necessary to maintain the authority or even the integrity of the Union. This sympathy is unreasonable, unwise and dangerous, and therefore cannot, if left undisturbed, be permanent. It can be banished, however, only in one way, and that is by giving time for it to wear out and for reason to resume its sway. Time will do this, if it be not hindered by new alarms and provocations.

South Carolina opened the revolution Apprehending chastisement by the military arm of the United States, she seized all the Forts of the United States in the harbor of Charleston, except Fort Sumter, which, garrisoned by less than one hundred men, stands practically in a state of siege, but at the same time defying South Carolina and, as the seceding States imagine, menacing her with conquest. Every one knows, first, that even if Sumter were adequately reinforced, it would still be practically useless to the Government, because the administration in no case could attempt to subjugate Charleston or the State of South Carolina.

It is held now only because it is the property of the United States and is a monument of their authority and sovereignty. I would so continue to hold it so long as it can be done without involving some danger or evil greater than the advantage of continued possession. The highest military authority tells us that without supplies the garrison must yield in a few days to starvation, that its numbers are so small that it must yield in a few days to attack by the assailants lying around it, and that the case in this respect would remain the same even if it were supplied but not reinforced. All the military and naval authorities tell us, that any attempt at supplies would be unavailing without the employment of armed military and naval force. If we employ armed force for the purpose of supplying the fort, we give all the provocation that could be offered by combining reinforcement with supply.

The question submitted to me then, practically, is, Supposing it to be possible to reinforce and supply Fort Sumter, is it wise now to attempt it, instead of withdrawing the garrison. The most that could be done by any means now in our hands, would be to throw 250 to 400 men into the garrison with provisions for supplying it for six months. In this active and enlightened country, in this season of excitement with a daily press, daily mails and incessantly operating telegraph, the design to reinforce and supply the garrison must become known to the opposite party at Charleston as soon, at least, as preparation for it should begin. The garrison would then almost certainly fall by assault before the expedition could reach the harbor of Charleston. But supposing the secret kept, the expedition must engage in conflict on entering the harbor of Charleston, suppose it to be overpowered and destroyed, is that new outrage to be avenged or are we then to return to our attitude of immobility? Shall we be allowed to do so? Moreover, in that event, what becomes of the garrison?

Suppose the expedition successful– We have then a garrison in Fort Sumter that can defy assault for six months. What is it to do then? Is it to make war by opening its batteries and attempting to demolish the defences of the Carolinians? Can it demolish them if it tries? If it cannot, what is the advantage we shall have gained? If it can, how will it serve to check or prevent Disunion? In either case, it seems to me that we will have inaugurated a civil war by our own act, without an adequate object, after which reunion will be hopeless, at least under this administration, or in any other way than by a popular disavowal, both of the war and of the administration which unnecessarily commenced it. Fraternity is the element of Union. War the very element of disunion. Fraternity, if practiced by this administration, will rescue the Union from all its dangers. If this administration, on the other hand, take up the sword, then an opposition party will offer the olive branch and will, as it ought, profit by the restoration of peace and Union.

I may be asked, whether I would in no case and at no time, advise force – whether I propose to give up everything. I reply, no, I would not initiate a war to regain a useless and unnecessary position on the soil of the seceding States. I would not provoke war in any way now. I would resort to force to protect the collection of the revenue, because this is a necessary as well as a legitimate union object. Even then, it should be only a naval force that I would employ, for that necessary purpose– While I would defer military action on land until a case should arise when we would hold the defence. In that case, we should have the spirit of the country and the approval of mankind on our side. In the other, we should peril peace and Union, because we had not the courage to practice prudence and moderation at the cost of temporary misapprehension. If this counsel seems to be impassive and even unpatriotic, I console myself by the reflection that it is such as Chatham gave to his country under circumstances not widely different.

William H. Seward

SOURCE: Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Diary of Salmon P. Chase: Saturday, October 11, 1862

Surprised to read this morning that Stuart's Cavalry have taken Chambersburg, Penna. What next?

Reed, letter from John Cochrane, saying that McClellan appreciates my support while not approving his command, and would gladly cooperate with and see me; and that there is no substancial difference between us on the Slavery question. — Also received letter from Aspinwall about Five-twenty Loan, which he advises — He thinks 98 may be obtained — equivalent to, say, 75 in gold. — Also a letter from Cisco sending a $10 U. S. Note, purloined from National Bank Note Company and falsely filled and sealed. — Wrote Cisco about detective, and enclosed Aspinwall's note and asked his opinion. — Sundry other letters received and answered. — Needham (Ky) called. I accepted Williams' declination as Assessor Louisville District, and agreed to appoint Needham in his place — he to resign Collectorship.

Genl. Hunter, Maj. Halpin, Mr. Jay and Genl. Garfield (still our guest) at dinner. Maj. Halpin mentioned that McClellan had telegraphed Head Quarters that not one of the rebels who have invaded Pennsylvania shall return to Virginia. Hope it may be so, faintly. Too many bills of the same sort protested for the credit of the drawer.

After dinner talked a good deal with Genl. Hunter, who is very well read. Asked him his opinion of Halleck. He said, “He has ability and knowledge, but does not make an earnest study of the War — does not labor to get clear ideas of positions, conditions and possibilities, so as to seize and press advantages or remedy evils.” I then asked what he thought of the President? “A man irresolute but of honest intentions — born a poor white in a slave State and, of course among aristocrats — kind in spirit and not envious, but anxious for approval, especially of those to whom he has been accustomed to look up — hence solicitous of support of the Slaveholders in the Border States, and unwilling to offend them — without the large mind necessary to grasp great questions — uncertain of himself, and in many things ready to lean too much on others.” What of Stanton? “Know little of him. Have seen him but once, and was then so treated that I never desired to see him again. Think from facts which have come to my knowledge that he is not sincere. He wears two faces; but has energy and ability, though not steady power.” The conversation then turned on Douglas, whose ardent friend and constant supporter Hunter was — also on other persons and things. I found him well read and extremely intelligent.

Genl. Hunter tells me he desires to retire from the Army, and have some position in New York which will enable him to resume his special vocation as a writer for the Press. He says he has written lately some leaders for the “Republican”, and has aided the Proprietor of “Wilkes' Spirit of the Times.”

SOURCE: Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1902, Vol. 2, p. 104-6

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes: Thursday, March 27, 1862

A wintry morning — snow two or three inches deep, ground frozen; the ninth day since this equinoctial set in. P. M. The sun came out bright and warm about 9 A. M.; the snow melted away, and before night the ground became [began] to dry off so that by night we had a very fair battalion drill.

News of a battle near Winchester in which General Shields was wounded. Union victories. I am gradually drifting to the opinion that this Rebellion can only be crushed finally by either the execution of all the traitors or the abolition of slavery. Crushed, I mean, so as to remove all danger of its breaking out again in the future. Let the border States, in which there is Union sentiment enough to sustain loyal State Governments, dispose of slavery in their own way; abolish it in the premanently disloyal States, in the cotton States — that is, set free the slaves of Rebels. This will come, I hope, if it is found that a stubborn and prolonged resistance is likely to be made in the cotton States. President Lincoln's message recommending the passage of a resolution pledging the aid of the general Government to States which shall adopt schemes of gradual emancipation, seems to me to indicate that the result I look for is anticipated by the Administration. I hope it is so.

SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 218-9

Diary of 5th Sergeant Alexander G. Downing: Wednesday, January 18, 1865

The weather is very pleasant. We are still on duty guarding the main road to Beaufort. The trains have all gone in for supplies. All is quiet in front. This low-country, before the war, was planted to cotton, the planters living in town while their plantations were managed by overseers and worked by slaves brought down from the border states. We can see rows of the vacant negro huts on these large plantations, set upon blocks so as to keep the floors dry. The negroes are all gone, being employed in the armies of both sections.¹

_______________

¹ When I think of the vacant plantations I saw all through the South, when I recall the hardships of the negroes, and the different modes of punishment Inflicted upon the slaves, all with the consent of the Southern people, then I can understand how they could be so cruel in their treatment of the Union prisoners of war. They put them in awful prison pens and starved them to death without a successful protest from the better class of the people of the South. The guards of these prisons had lived all their lives witnessing the cruel tortures of slaves; they had become hardened and thus had no mercy on an enemy when in their power. Many an Andersonvllle prisoner was shot down Just for getting too close to an imaginary dead-line when suffering from thirst and trying to get a drink of water.

Not all Southerners were so cruel, for I lived in the same house with an ex-Confederate soldier from Georgia, when in southern Florida during the winter of 1911 and know that he had some feeling. He had been guard at Andersonville for a short time, and told me that he would have taken water to them by the bucketful, for he could not bear to hear the poor fellows calling for water; but that he did not dare to do it. This man's name was McCain, and at the time I met him his home was at College Park, Atlanta, Ga. — A. G. D.

Source: Alexander G. Downing, Edited by Olynthus B., Clark, Downing’s Civil War Diary, p. 247

John M. Forbes to Congressman Charles B. Sedgwick, June 2, 1862

June 2,1862.

My Dear Mr. Sedgwick, — I see I forgot the 21stly, as the old parsons used to say, of my sermon; my amen to your emancipation speech.

If you have such a devilish poor set in Congress that they are afraid to pass your bill, for freeing such slaves as come to our aid, you had better give up trying for any emancipation bill until Parson Brownlow, General Rodgers, and other pro-slavery border state men have cultivated the manliness of Congress up to the Tennessee standard! Why, I hear that the border state Unionists everywhere are in advance of Congress, and go for strangling the rebellion through its vitals, not pinching the ends of its toes! Rather than take anything worse than your bill, I would trust to old Abe's being pushed up to the use of the military powers of emancipation. What infernal nonsense is your present law, making freedom the reward of those who serve the enemy, while their masters only promise them hanging and burning if they serve us.

You carry on the war in such a manner that either slaves or other loyal men in the border and rebel States have one plain road to safety open; namely, to help the rebels. You reward the slaves with freedom for such help: you offer them no reward, except the chance of being shot by us and hanged by their masters, if they come into our lines! . . .

Your lame confiscation bill will be no terror to the rebels, but rather an indication of the mildness with which you will treat them hereafter, and the many exceptions you will make if you pass any confiscation acts.

I only wonder with such a policy that any Union men show their heads! All your efforts seem to be to make rebellion cheap and easy, and loyalty hard and dangerous.

In great haste, I bide yours,

J. M. Forbes

SOURCE: Sarah Forbes Hughes, Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, Volume 1, p. 315-6

John M. Forbes to Parke Godwin*, June 23, 1862

Boston, June 23,1862.

My Dear Sir, — . . . The “New Bedford Mercury,” under its new management, is getting to be quite a live paper. I wish as much could be said for our administration, which seems to be carrying a millstone about its neck in its dread of the border States and of “Hunkerism” generally. I believe to-day that the old Union Democrats, and even the true men of the border States, are ahead of Lincoln upon this question of hitting the rebels hard — with the negro or any other club. It is strange when a rattlesnake is attacking us that we should be so delicate about the stick we hit him with!

I look with much anxiety to our operations in South Carolina. Beauregard's army, on its way from Corinth, passes directly by Charleston. Our force is ridiculously small for attack, the Key West troops included — if they can get there. Our negro brigade amounts to nothing until trained. We need prompt reinforcement there, or we shall have another blow half struck, or possibly a recoil there.

_______________

* Editor of The New York Evening Post.

SOURCE: Sarah Forbes Hughes, Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, Volume 1, p. 314-5

Congressman Charles Baldwin Sedgwick to John M. Forbes, March 6, 1862 – 4 p.m.

Washington, 18 May, 1862.

. . . I hope God will give his servant Abraham the grace to stand by his general and not let the border state men sacrifice him. I cannot say, however, that I have the highest degree of faith in a president who thinks it necessary to salvation to allow the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law in this District at this time. . . .

SOURCE: Sarah Forbes Hughes, Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, Volume 1, p. 308-9

John Stuart Mill to John Lothrop Motley, October 31, 1862

ST. VERAN, 31st October 1862.

MY DEAR SIR, — Allow me to thank you most warmly for your long and interesting letter, which if it had been twice as long as it was would only have pleased me more. There are few persons that I have seen only once with whom I so much desire to keep up a communication as with you; and the importance of what I learn from you respecting matters so full of momentous consequences to the world would make such communication most valuable to me even if I did not wish for it on personal grounds. The state of affairs in America has naturally improved since you wrote, by the defeat of the enemy in Maryland and their expulsion from it, and still more by Mr. Lincoln's Anti-Slavery Proclamation, which no American, I think, can have received with more exultation than I did. It is of the highest importance, and more so because the manifest reluctance with which the President made up his mind to that decided step indicates that the progress of opinion in the country had reached the point of seeing its necessity for the effectual prosecution of the war. The adhesion of so many Governors of States, some of them originally Democrats, is a very favourable sign, and thus far the measure does not seem to have materially weakened your hold upon the border Slave States. The natural tendency will be, if the war goes on successfully, to reconcile those States to emancipating their own slaves, availing themselves of the pecuniary offers made by the Federal Government. I still feel some anxiety about the reception which will be given to the measure by Congress when it meets, and I should much like to know what are your expectations on the point. In England the proclamation has only increased the venom of those who, after taunting you so long with caring nothing for abolition, now reproach you for your abolitionism as the worst of your crimes. But you will find that, whenever any name is attached to these wretched effusions, it is always that of some deeply-dyed Tory — generally the kind of Tory to whom slavery is rather agreeable than not, or who so hate your democratic institutions that they would be sure to inveigh against you whatever you did, and are enraged at being no longer able to taunt you with being false to your own principles. It is from there also that we are now beginning to hear, what disgusts me more than all the rest, the base doctrine that it is for the interest of England that the American Republic should be broken up. Think of us as ill as you may (and we have given you abundant cause), but do not, I entreat you, think that the general English public is so base as this. Our national faults are not now of that kind, and I firmly believe that the feeling of almost all English Liberals, even those whose language has been the most objectionable, is one of sincere respect for the disruption which they think inevitable. As long as there is a Tory party in England it will rejoice at everything which injures or discredits American institutions, but the Liberal party, who are now, and are likely to remain much the strongest, are naturally your friends and allies, and will return to that position when once they see that you are not engaged in a hopeless, and therefore, as they think, an irrational and unjustifiable contest. There are writers enough here to keep up the fight and meet the malevolent comments on all your proceedings by right ones. Besides Cairns, and Dicey, and H. Martineau, and Ludlow, and Hughes, besides the Daily News, and Macmillan, and the Star, there is now the Westminster and the London Review, to which several of the best writers of the Saturday have gone over; there is Ellison of Liverpool, the author of “Slavery and Secession,” and editor of a monthly economical journal, the Exchange; and there are other writers less known who, if events go on favourably, will rapidly multiply. Here in France the state of opinion on the subject is most gratifying. All Liberal Frenchmen seem to have been with you from the first. They did not know more about the subject than the English, but their instincts were truer. By the way, what did you think of the narrative of the campaign on the Potomac in the Revue des Deux Mondes of 15th October by the Comte de Paris? It looks veracious, and is certainly intelligent, and in the general effect likely, I should think, to be very useful to the cause.

I still think you take too severe a view of the conduct of our Government. I grant that the extra-official dicta of some of the Ministry have been very unfortunate, especially that celebrated one of Lord Russell, on which I have commented not sparingly in the Westminster Review. Gladstone, too, a man of a much nobler character than Lord Russell, has said things lately which I very much regret, though they were accompanied by other things showing that he had no bad feelings towards you, and regretted their existence in others. But as a Government I do not see that their conduct is objectionable. The port of Nassau may be all that you say it is, but the United States also have the power, and have used it largely, of supplying themselves with munitions of war from our ports. If the principle of neutrality is accepted, our markets must be open to both sides alike, and the general opinion in England is (I do not say whether rightly or wrongly) that, if the course adopted is favourable to either side, it is to the United States, since the Confederates, owing to the blockade of their ports, have so much less power to take advantage of the facilities extended equally to both. What you mention about a seizure of arms by our Government must, I feel confident, have taken place during the Trent difficulty, at which time alone (and neither before nor after) has the export of arms to America been interdicted.

It is very possible that too much may have been made of Butler's proclamation, and that he was more wrong in form and phraseology than in substance. But with regard to the watchword said to have been given out by Pakenham at New Orleans, I have always hitherto taken it for a mere legend, like the exactly parallel ones which grew up under our own eyes at Paris in 1848 respecting the Socialist insurrections of June. What authority there may be for it I do not know, but, if it is true, nothing can mark more strongly the change which has taken place in the European standard of belligerent rights since the wars of the beginning of the century, for if any English commander at the present time were to do the like he never could show his face again in English society, even if he escaped being broken by a court-martial ; and I think we are entitled to blame in others what none of us, of the present generation at least, would be capable of perpetrating. You are perhaps hardly aware how little the English of the present day feel of solidarité with past generations. We do not feel ourselves at all concerned to justify our predecessors. Foreigners reproach us with having been the great enemies of neutral rights so long as we were belligerents, and with turning round and stickling for them now when we are neutrals; but the real fact is we are convinced, and have no hesitation in saying (what our Liberal party said even at the time), that our policy in that matter in the great Continental war was totally wrong.

But while I am anxious that liberal and friendly Americans should not think worse of us than we really deserve, I am deeply conscious and profoundly grieved and mortified that we deserve so ill; and are making, in consequence, so pitiful a figure before the world, with which, if we are not daily and insultingly taxed by all Europe, it is only because our enemies are glad to see us doing exactly what they expected, justifying their opinion of us, and acting in a way which they think perfectly natural, because they think it perfectly selfish.

SOURCE: Hugh S. R. Elliot, Editor, The Letters of John Stuart Mill, Volume 1, p. 263-6

The President on Emancipation.

If proof were wanting of the patriotic ardor of the President for the peace and well being of the country, it would be found abundantly in the message sent yesterday to Congress. Mr. Lincoln appreciates the infinite difficulty of the Slavery question. He evidently despairs of prostrating the institution by force of the war-power; he looks to its existence in full vigor, throughout the Gulf States at least, when the war shall have ended. The utmost reach of his practical dealing with the subject is to strip it of political influence in National affairs. To effect this capital object, there is certainly no way so sure as to destroy the identity of interest between Border Slave States and those at the southward; and this object the President's suggestion proposes to attain. It takes the form of a joint resolution submitted to the consideration of Congress. The possibility of one or more States discovering the impolicy of retaining slave-labor is assumed. To such the joint resolution offers pecuniary aid in the task of emancipation, by engaging to pay a sum prefixed for each enslaved negro set at liberty. This bounty the President evidently believes will turn the scale in favor of freedom. Satisfied of the good faith of the National Government in its professions of non-intervention in the legislation of the States, the States will be ready to look favorably upon a plan which, while it makes the merit of the act of emancipation their own, throws the cost elsewhere. And as the plan is adopted, one after another of the northerly Slave States will array themselves on the side of the free communities of the North.

In considering the Presidential project, a number of difficulties will no doubt suggest themselves to Congress. Any State disposed to part with its negroes will naturally offer them in the best market. The extreme South, in the supposition raised by Mr. Lincoln that Slavery will there retain all its vitality, will compete with the North in the purchase of the discarded labor; and must of necessity offer prices which the North will be unable to pay. When peace shall be restored -- always assuming the President to be right in regard to Slavery in the Gulf States – Kentucky will be able to get $130,000,000 for her negroes at the South, while the North, presupposing the round price of $200 – the highest rate heretofore named, and considered practicable – would be able to offer only one-third of that amount. If by an act of gradual emancipation Kentucky is thus able at any moment to get the larger sum for her slaves, what temptation to the passage of such an act will be the offer of the smaller? Congress will also have to weigh well that incessantly recurring question, what shall be done with the negroes when freed? Their freedom in any border State will no doubt be followed by their expulsion. Even from Illinois, Mr. Lincoln's immediate State, the blacks are about to be expelled. Will it not be necessary for the National Government to provide also for their removal from the country, and their colonization and christianization in a new and distant home? And will not this cost, added to the other, constitute a total from which the country, already startled at the coming terror of war taxation, will draw back appalled ? We fear that the Presidential plan will not achieve the good for which it is so patriotically designed. It will not induce any Slave State to discard Slavery; it will not, therefore, weaken any of the ties between the collective Slave States. It will offer no sufficient reason for departing, even in appearance, from the doctrine that, with Slavery in the States, the National Government has no concern whatever. It will be attended with an expense too overwhelming to be regarded favorably by a people who have already upon their shoulders the burden present and prospective of a debt of several thousands of millions – a burden placed there by Slavery. But let the plan have full discussion; let it also have full credit, as evidence that the Government contemplates no forcible interference with the institutions of any State, rebellious or loyal, and desirable good may grow out of it.

– Published in The New York Times, March 7, 1862

Major Wilder Dwight: July 26, 1861

Harper's Ferry, July 26, 1861.

We are here waiting on Providence, and holding on to this corner of Virginia by the skin of our teeth. I am not uneasy, for I do not care whether it comes or not; but why Beauregard with his large force should not kick our broken column into Maryland I do not see. This is not a cheerful view, but it is reasonable at least. You conclude, do you not? that the South has still got the start of us in preparation and in energy. Hope now hangs on McClellan, who has a prestige that will enable him to revive the spirit that belongs to our army. Manassas shows three things: First, our infantry, even in its present loosely organized condition, is better than theirs; our foot-soldiers will face and drive theirs. Second, our artillery outweighs theirs; and batteries are to be silenced, not stormed. Third, cavalry gives them great advantage. We must have more cavalry. In fact, we must create and organize a well-appointed army and armament: our “rash levied numbers” are mere numbers, not forces.

I seem to myself, here on the spot, to realize afresh the immensity of our task. I pity the statesman who is to recreate liberty and order upon the ashes of this civil war. You cannot form any idea of the real significance of civil war, without being in the midst of its experience, as we have been. I do hope that the Union will have power to shorten it, and I regard the disaster of last Sunday chiefly important because it checks the reaction which was restoring men in these Border States to their courage and allegiance. Panic and terrorism are doing their worst here, and they are terrible agencies in such times as these.

SOURCE: Elizabeth Amelia Dwight, Editor, Life and Letters of Wilder Dwight: Lieut.-Col. Second Mass. Inf. Vols., p. 57-8

John M. Forbes to Nassau W. Senior, December 10, 1861

Boston, December 10,1861.

My Dear Me. Senior, — I have yours of the 20th ulto. I shall read with much interest your article upon the nature of our government, and am glad you came to the same conclusion which everybody here long since arrived at except Calhoun and his gang of conspirators.

I don't blame Lord Russell for being puzzled at any question which you say has two sides to it; but I do blame him for jumping at his conclusions in such hot haste that he could not await the arrival of our new minister, whose explanation might have given him some light.

You don't blame the doctor (Medico) when, called to a serious case, he happens to take the dark view of it, and sentences the patient to “dissolution;” but you do think him a blunderer if he hastens to tell the victim that he has only to make his arrangements for his funeral!

Louis Napoleon, by quietly holding back his opinions and then uttering them covered up with sugared words, puts himself, with the masses of our people, where England was a few months since, our natural ally! Of course it is an enormous humbug, and thinking men are not gulled by it, but none the less [the situation] operates to inflame the old animosities that had grown out of two wars and that had been just forgotten.

Another thing must not be forgotten. The French press has not the chance, even when it has the will, to do the mischief that yours and ours has. We hardly read anything from the French papers; they still less read American papers, and this makes the grand difference between our situation as relating to the two countries.

You read our New York “Herald” edited by a renegade Scotchman . . . and you take it for the representative of American journalism! The “Herald” is really the organ of the seceders, it was so openly until after Sumter surrendered; and only came over nominally to the Northern side under the terrors of mob law. It has since served its masters still better by sowing the seeds of dissension between us and England.

We, with perhaps equal blindness, permit the “Times” and half a dozen other papers to stand for “England.” I look for a grand paper duello upon the Trent question, and shall be relieved if it goes no further. Should the questions assume a warlike aspect, we shall only be driven the sooner to our last desperate resort, emancipation. We are now only divided into two parties at the North, viz.: those who would use the negro when we can see no other way of conquering; and secondly, those who would use the negro at once, wherever he can be used to strengthen us or weaken the enemy! The logic of events has been from day to day settling this question, and if our talking men in Congress can only be patient or self-denying in the outpouring of patriotic words, we shall go on fast enough. . . .

You cannot believe we shall subjugate ten millions of people. Nor I; but classify these ten millions and all is changed. At least two are avowed loyalists in the border States; four more are blacks ready to help us when we will let them; three more are poor whites whose interests are clearly with us and against their would-be masters. How long will it be before the avowals of their masters, aided by the suffering of the war, will open their eyes?

This leaves one million, of all ages and sexes, who, through owning slaves and connection with slaveholders, may think they have a class interest in the success of the rebellion. This class we can crush out— or what will be left of them after the war debt of the rebels reaches its proper value — whenever we can divide the four million of poor whites, by an operation upon their eyes!

But if I underrate the difficulty, the necessity for doing it now is all the greater! If hard now, how much harder will it be after we shall have, as you desire, permitted them to separate. Now they have no manufactures, no foreign alliances, no warlike stores except what they stole from us, and these rapidly diminishing. They have missed their first spring in which lies the strength of a conspiracy; while our cold Anglo-Saxon blood is just getting roused from the lethargy of a long peace and of overmuch prosperity. We are just ready to begin to fight. We all feel that what is now a war between the people and a small class would, after a separation, become a war of sections. As for peace, nobody believes it possible; a truce we might have, to give them time to gather breath! It is only a question between war to the end now and a chronic state of war with two standing armies, two navies, two corps of diplomatists seeking alliances in every court in Europe, to end in another death struggle. There is no peace for us, unless we either conquer the arrogant slave-owner classes who have so long ruled us and bullied you, or permit them by a compromise to continue and extend their combination with our baser class and to drag us into a grand slave empire which shall absorb the West Indies and Mexico and Central America.

A bold stand at the polls by the North in 1850 would have given us the victory peacefully; now we must fight for it, or yield to the basest faction that ever ruled a country. Better a ten years' war than this; but it will not be a long war.

The conspirators counted upon an early success in arms and a division of the North. Foiled in this, their only hope is in foreign intervention. I have no doubt what you tell me is true of Louis Napoleon, still less that he secretly gave the rebels hopes of aid, nor that they have construed your course to favor them. Had you squarely taken the same ground that we did towards your Canadian rebels, this hope would have been extinguished; and now, if you want cotton, if you want trade, if you want to pave the way to a real alliance with the only free nation besides yourselves on the globe, you ought to help us in all legitimate ways. You should encourage our loan, you should sharpen your police to detect the outfit of hostile vessels, you should hold the Nashville strictly accountable for her acts of pillage and destruction, giving her the experience of a long trial in your courts, if only to discourage other pirates from being their own judges of what property they may appropriate.

Do this and the war will be short. Four months ago an offer from you to do what we should have readily done when your Indian empire was threatened, had it seemed necessary or proper, would have ended the war before this, — namely, to throw open to us for purchase your armories and your ironclad shipyards. We might not have accepted the offer, but it would have destroyed the rebels' last hope. I don't complain of your not doing it, but simply indicate what for the sake of both countries I wish might have been your policy!

As for the Sault Ste. Marie, the pine lands must wait for the prairie farmers to build again; but the developments in our mineral lands are said to be magnificent, and to promise results next summer.

Very truly yours,

J. M. Forbes.

SOURCE: Sarah Forbes Hughes, Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, Volume 1, p. 253-7