The Life of Jefferson Davis

It is easy to appreciate the delicate character of the diplomacy now required by the situation of the Confederacy. Without at all acquiescing in the Federal possession of Sumter and Pickens – on the contrary, asserting the right of the Confederacy to those places, and avowing its willingness to give adequate compensation whenever they should be surrendered – it was yet necessary to avoid affront to a respectable minority at the North, influenced, apparently, by pacific intentions. In short, it became the settled policy of the Confederate Government to postpone collision with the Federal Government until the latest possible moment – until obvious considerations of public safety should impel a resort to hostile measures.

President Buchanan, whose term of office expired March 4, 1861, after numerous badly disguised attempts at duplicity with the Confederate authorities, or more properly, with the authorities of some of the States constituting the Confederacy, and after a contemptibly weak and driveling policy of evasion, had left the negotiations between the two Governments in a most unsatisfactory and confused condition. A brief summary of Mr. Buchanan’s conduct affords a most singular exhibition of mingled imbecility, timidity, and disingenuousness. His course, until the meeting of Congress, in December, 1860, was understood to be in thorough accord with that of the States’ Rights party of the South. In that party were his most trusted advisers, both in and out of the Cabinet, and it had given to his administration a consistent and cordial support. Like them, he was pledged to the preservation of a constitutional Union, and also to a full recognition of the perils which menaced the South, resulting from the late sectional triumph. In his opening message he condemned the exercise of secession as unauthorized and illegal, but denied emphatically the right of coercion. Yet, in the sequel, he proved, equally with the Republican party, an enemy to peaceable secession.

When South Carolina was preparing for secession, Mr. Buchanan entered into a solemn understanding with a delegation of several of her most prominent citizens, that, upon condition that the people and authorities of that State should refrain from hostile demonstrations, no reinforcements should be sent to the forts in Charleston harbor, and that “their relative military status should remain as at present.” Yet, when Major Anderson, in positive violation of this agreement, removed his forces from the weaker forts to Fort Sumter, Mr. Buchanan refused to order him back. Having broken one stipulation, he now determined to disregard the other, and, under the pretense of “provisioning a starving garrison,” Mr. Buchanan attempted to send troops to Sumter.22

But the conduct of Mr. Buchanan, weak, offensive, and disgusting, as it was to both North and South, becomes simply pitiable, when contrasted with the greater magnitude of the perfidy of the Lincoln government.

The two Presidents, Davis and Lincoln, were inaugurated within a fortnight of each other – the first on the 18th of February, the latter on the 4th of March. Between them the question of peace or war must, after all, depend – for, however pacific might have been Mr. Buchanan’s policy, it would fail, should Lincoln adopt a belligerent course. Considerable hope was, at times, indulged, that the negotiations with Mr. Lincoln and his Cabinet would at least be marked with a better display of candor than had commemorated the policy of his predecessor. These negotiations, as fruitless as those attempted in Congress during the preceding winter, for the prevention of secession, were to involve a question of even more moment. The direct issue of peace or war was now pending. It is confidently and successfully maintained by the South, that in the grave question of responsibility for actual bloodshed, her vindication is as clear and incontestable as must ever be her acquittal of the responsibility of disunion. War with the United States was deprecated by official declaration of the Confederate States as “a policy detrimental to the civilized world.” Most impressive is the declaration of President Davis’ inaugural: “Sustained by the consciousness that the transition from the former Union to the present Confederacy has not proceeded from a disregard, on our part, of just obligations, or any failure to perform any constitutional duty – moved by no interest or passion to invade the rights of others – anxious to cultivate peace and commerce with all nations, if we may not hope to avoid war, we may at least expect that posterity will acquit us of having needlessly engaged in it.”

President Davis was at all times most solicitous for peace, and adopted every expedient of negotiation that could promote that end. Heartily responding to the wishes of the Congress and people of the Confederacy, he appointed, in February, an embassy to the Government at Washington. The resolution of Congress, asking that the embassy should be sent, explains its object to be the “negotiating friendly relations between that Government and the Confederate States of America, and for the settlement of all questions of disagreement between the two governments upon principles of right, justice, equity, and good faith.”

Two of these commissioners, Messrs. Crawford and Forsyth, arrived in Washington on the 5th of March, the day succeeding Mr. Lincoln’s inauguration. Wishing to allow the President abundant opportunity for the discharge of the urgent official duties necessarily crowding upon him at such a season, the Confederate commissioners did not immediately press their mission upon his attention. At first giving merely an informal announcement of their arrival, they waited until the 12th of March before making an official presentation of their mission. On that day they addressed a formal communication to the Secretary of State, Mr. Seward, announcing their authority to settle with the Federal Government all claims of public property arising from the separation of the States from the Union, and to negotiate for the withdrawal of the Federal forces from Forts Sumter and Pickens.

Here begins a record of perfidy, the parallel of which is not to be found in the history of the world. Mr. Seward, while declining to recognize the Confederate commissioners officially, yet frequently held confidential communication with them, by which the faith of the two Governments was fully pledged to a line of policy, by what should certainly be the strongest form of assurance – the personal honor of their representatives. In verbal interviews, the commissioners were frequently assured of a pacific policy by the Federal Government, that Fort Sumter would be evacuated, that the status at Fort Pickens should not be changed, and that no departure from these pacific intentions would be made without due notice to the Confederate Government.

The commissioners, conformably to the spirit of their Government, to avoid, if possible, collision with the United States, made an important concession in these interviews in consenting to waive all questions of form. It was alleged that formal negotiations with them, in an official capacity, would seriously jeopardize the success of Mr. Lincoln’s manipulation of public sentiment at the North, which, it was further confidentially alleged, he was sedulously educating to concurrence with his own friendly purposes toward the Confederates. By this cunning device and the unscrupulous employment of deception and falsehood in his interviews with the commissioners, Mr. Seward accomplished the double purpose of successful imposition upon the credulity of the commissioners and evasion of official recognition of the Confederate embassy.

In the meantime, while these negotiations were pending, and in the midst of these friendly assurances, the Lincoln administration was secretly preparing hostile measures, and, as was clearly demonstrated by subsequent revelations, had never seriously entertained any of the propositions submitted by the Confederate Government. Resolved not to evacuate Fort Sumter, the Federal Government, while amusing the Confederate commissioners with cunning dalliance, had for weeks been meditating the feasibility of reënforcing it. To pass the numerous batteries erected by the Confederates in Charleston harbor was clearly a task of the utmost difficulty, if, indeed, possible. So complete was the cordon of Confederate batteries which had been in course of preparation for many weeks, that the beleaguered fortress was evidently doomed whenever the Confederates were provoked to fire upon it. The evacuation of Fort Sumter was clearly a military necessity, so pronounced by the highest military authority in the United States, and so regarded by the intelligent public of the North. Never had a Government so auspicious an opportunity to save the needless effusion of blood, and to avert indefinitely, if not finally, the calamity of war.

Such a result was, however, farthest from the wishes of Mr. Lincoln and the majority of his Cabinet. Reinforcement of Fort Sumter being out of the question, it became the study of the Federal authorities to devise a convenient and effective pretext by which the North could be united in a war of subjugation against the South, and for the extermination of slavery. To this end an expedition was ordered to Charleston, for the purpose of supplying the garrison of Sumter with provisions, peaceably or forcibly, as events might decide. As it was well known that the Confederate authorities would not permit the execution of the object of this expedition, it was clearly a measure of hostility, prepared and conducted, too, under the most dishonorable circumstances of secrecy and falsehood as to its destination.

In the meantime the Federal authorities continued to practice the base policy of deception with the Confederate commissioners. Upon one occasion Mr. Seward declared that Fort Sumter would be evacuated before a letter, then ready to be mailed, could reach President Davis at Montgomery. Five days afterward, General Beauregard, commanding the Confederate forces in Charleston harbor, telegraphed the commissioners at Washington the ominous intelligence that the Federal commandant was actively strengthening Fort Sumter. The commissioners were again soothed with Mr. Seward’s renewed assurances of the positive intention of his government to evacuate the fort. As late as the 7th of April Mr. Seward gave the emphatic assurance: “Faith as to Sumter fully kept: wait and see.” This was the date of the sailing of the Federal fleet with a strong military force on board.23 The just characterization, by President Davis, of these deceptions, was, that “the crooked paths of diplomacy can scarcely furnish an example so wanting in courtesy, in candor, and directness, as was the course of the United States Government toward our commissioners in Washington.”24

The expedition was some hours on its way,25 when its purpose to provision the fort was announced to the Governor of South Carolina by an agent of the United States. This announcement was telegraphed to Montgomery by General Beauregard, who also asked for instructions. His government replied, that if the message was authentic, a demand should be made for the surrender of the fort to the Confederate forces; and in the event of refusal, its reduction should be undertaken. On the 11th of April the demand was made and refused.26 In obedience to the orders of his government General Beauregard opened fire upon Fort Sumter early on the morning of the 12th April. On the 13th the fort surrendered.

The calculations of Mr. Lincoln and his cabinet, as to the result to be produced by the attack on Fort Sumter, provoked by their deliberate and dishonest design, were not disappointed. A furious and instantaneous rush to arms by the North followed the intelligence of the surrender of the fort, and revealed the ferocious lust with which it had awaited the signal to begin the crusade against the liberties and property of the South. As no possible trait of guilt had been wanting in the means employed to precipitate hostilities, so no conceivable feature of atrocity was to be wanting in the conduct of a war by the North, produced by its own avarice, perfidy, and lust of dominion.

The brief recapitulation which we have given sufficiently exposes the pretexts upon which the North began the war of coercion. Assuming that the national dignity had been insulted, and the national honor violated, by an attack upon the flag of the Union, under the impious profession of vindicating the law, the North drew its sword against the sovereignty of the States. It had procured the assault upon Sumter – that essential step to the desired frenzy of the masses. By a shallow device, the South had been provoked to initiate resistance – that long-sought pretext which should justify the most barbaric invasion of modern times. Yet, under this flimsy imposition, the North cloaks its crime, and exults in its anticipated immunity from those execrations which have been the reward of similar examples of turpitude. The spirit of inquiry is not to be thus deftly eluded, nor the avenging sentence of history so easily perverted. The question shall not be, who fired the first shot? but, who offered the first aggression? who first indicated the purpose of hostility? We are not required to await the bursting forth of the flames over our heads, when the fell intent of the incendiary is revealed to our sight. The menace of the murderer justifies his intended victim in eluding the blow while the steel is uplifted.

Jefferson Davis signed the order for the reduction of Fort Sumter, but he did not thereby invoke the calamities of war. That act was simply the patriot’s defiance to the menace of tyranny. It was the choice of the freeman between resistance and shame.