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| Jefferson Davis and his wife |
|
War was in the air. |
Everyone sensed it was coming. Oh, yeah! It was
coming just like a plague of locusts or grasshoppers eating their way across
the prairies. It was inevitable, just as
it was inevitable that some damn fool would propose a plan to prevent it.
Prominent politicians authored two of the schemes that
circulated early in 1861. The first, the Crittenden Compromise, was
the brainchild of Kentucky Congressman John T. Crittenden. Former President
John Tyler promoted the second one, known today as the Washington Peace
Conference.
The
Crittenden Compromise was a little too much for most Northerners. It guaranteed
the rights of the slave states to continue to
own slaves in perpetuity, to extend slavery into the territories north
of latitude 36° 30’, and it ensured the
enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Laws. If the states thwarted slave owners in restoring their property, the federal
government could reimburse them. Union men could
not stomach the Crittenden Compromise.
It
contradicted the entire Chicago platform of the Republican Party. If adopted,
it would reverse the election’s course and the people’s will. At least, that
was the way Abraham Lincoln and his supporters viewed the Crittenden
Compromise.
The
House and Senate quickly rejected it.
Another
plan that initially showed great promise was the Washington Peace Conference.
Former President John Tyler conceived the
Peace Conference as a last-ditch effort
to prevent the impending crisis. Fourteen free states and seven slave states
attended. None of the seven states that had seceded attended.
The
Conference convened in the meeting hall of Willard’s Hotel in Washington, DC,
on February 1, 1861. Most of the participants, like John Tyler, were members of
the old guard. They were old men and proven politicians. Most of the 132 Peace
Commissioners were over fifty years of age. Many were in their sixties and
seventies.
The New York Herald
cut through the BS and called it as they
saw it. The paper called the commissioners a bunch of “political fossils.” The
implication was obvious—they were far from the best and the brightest. They
were the men who had created the crisis. No one
expected much from them. “They do not understand what is going on in the
world today,” wrote the paper, “nor do they know that the country has advanced
a whole century since they were alive.”
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| Washington, DC in 1861 |
From its beginning, there were many doubts about the Peace Conference. A week into the Conference, the Chicago Daily Tribune said the Commissioners were spending their “time principally in prayer. We like that. So long as they do nothing worse than invoke the blessings of the Almighty God, the country will be satisfied. They could do nothing better.”
The
new Confederate Government met in Montgomery, Alabama, on
the day the Peace Conference began. At least ten thousand people gathered to
watch the spectacle as Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as provisional president
of the Confederate States. Davis rode in the back of a coach drawn by six grays.
Vice President Alexander Stephens sat next to him. Across from them sat Captain
George Jones and Reverend Basil Manley. Behind them, in their carriages,
followed the members of the Confederate Congress. And further back walked the
crowds of onlookers.
Along
the route, cannons blasted, martial music blared, and people cheered.
The
inauguration ceremony took place on the portico
of the Capitol Building. President Davis sat on the portico, with Vice President Stephens on his right and Howell Cobb
on his left. Governor Moore and the members of the Confederate Congress sat on
the platform below them, facing Davis.
Reverend
Manly opened the proceedings with a prayer, and Howell Cobb swore Davis in.
When it was over, the ladies threw colorful wreaths, and ten thousand
spectators cheered Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy.
Seven
states had already seceded from the Union, and more were sure to follow.
Several
states held conventions to determine
whether they would go rogue or remain with the Union. One of those states was Virginia. The Virginia Convention
proposed that an Ordinance be submitted to voters to decide “whether Virginia
shall remain with the North or secede and go with
the South.”
Another
Ordinance was proposed to determine whether
the State should abide by the results of the Peace Conference.
The
debates showed that things remained at a stalemate. The National Republican said, “The peace propositions are generally acceptable to the Union men, but the
secessionists denounce them.”
When
the Conference ended, Mr. Harvey told the
Virginia Convention. “It is plain that it is Mr. Lincoln’s purpose to plunge the country into the civil
war by a coercive policy.” He suggested
Virginia should ready itself to resist the Union.
He
was not alone in that view.
 |
| Willard's Hotel in 1853 |
A few days before Harvey’s declaration, Ex-President Tyler expressed his displeasure with the outcome of the Peace Conference. He made a speech denouncing it as a “worthless affair.” He believed the South “had nothing to hope for from Republicans.”
When
Mr. Martin spoke at the Virginia Convention, he suggested the results were
little more than a “miserable abortion.” Mr. Morton spoke up for “immediate secession.”
As
if to prove there was a total disconnect
between the North and the South, that same day, the Virginians were advocating
secession based on the results of the Peace Conference. General Winfield Scott
had U S Batteries fire a one-hundred-gun salute in favor of the Peace Conference.
What
was he thinking?
Tennesseans
thought the same as people in Virginia. The Nashville
Union and American said, “the Black Republicans desire further time to more
efficiently divide the South and render it an easier prey to their fanatical
purposes.”
The
paper ended its discussion by saying it was the duty of the Southern States to
secede and called for Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and
Arkansas to join them.
To
many observers, the Peace Conference was too little too late. Unless cooler
heads prevailed—civil war was just over the horizon.
The
wildcard in the equation was Abraham
Lincoln.
Everyone
wondered what the president-elect would
do. The Juliet Signal (from Joliet,
Illinois) voiced what most Americans were thinking.
It
had been four months since Lincoln’s election. Since then, he had calmly sat
back and watched state after state secede when “by the utterance of a single
sentence he could have lulled the stolen
and preserved the country from the almost certain destruction which threatens
her.” As a result, they awaited Lincoln’s inaugural “with an anxiety bordering on fear; as, in our
estimation, it embodies the momentous issue of peace or war—national existence
or ruin.”
While
the Peace Commissioners were meeting in
Washington, Abraham Lincoln was slowly wending his way toward the Capitol. He
made frequent whistle stops, delivering short, informal speeches.
To
many newspapermen, it seemed as if Lincoln firmed up his stance with each
seceding speech. Each one made the South feel more threatened. His fellow
Republicans were just as uncomfortable. Many felt Lincoln’s speeches were
undoing the party. He could ruin them before he reached the Capitol if he kept
talking.
In
Cincinnati, Lincoln challenged his audience—repeatedly throwing questions at
them. But unfortunately, many unanswered
questions lingered in his wake.
He
asked the audience. “Would it be coercion and invasion to protect and defend
the property and forts of the U. States and retake those that have been taken possession of by States? Would it be
coercion to enforce the laws and collect the revenue for the support of the
Government?”
Speaking
of State’s rights, Lincoln asked the
crowd. “What rights has a State that
would enable a small fraction, one-eightieth, or one-ninetieth of a Government
to destroy it for all the rest.”
Then,
mindful that Southerners would take these as fighting words, Lincoln added.
“Mind I affirm nothing, [laughter] but only ask questions, and request that you
should reflect upon them and answer in your own good
time whence these peculiar rights of States.”
Laughter
aside, Lincoln in Cincinnati sounded like a man itching for a fight.
Abraham
Lincoln’s Pittsburg speech was brief but even more troubling. He told the crowd
assembled there, “Notwithstanding the troubles in the South, there is really no crisis except an artificial one.
There is nothing to justify their course. There is no crisis excepting such a one as could be got up at any time by turbulent people, aided by designing
politicians.”
The
Wilmington Journal said it means he sees no reason for compromise.
The Bedford Gazette
phrased the speech somewhat differently. It said, “At Pittsburg yesterday, he
[Lincoln] expressed the idea that notwithstanding
the trouble across the river (pointing Southward to the Monongahela and smiling) there is really
no crisis, except an artificial one.” Having said that, he advised both sides
(North and South) “to keep cool.”
So
be it for the Peace Conference. The one man with the power to make a lasting
peace had ideas of his own, and from what the South heard him say—he was not
favorable to their plight.
The
South heard Lincoln saying that the entire crisis was one of their making. A crisis more in their minds than a
genuine crisis. And he believed only a small portion of Southerners, perhaps
one-eightieth or one-ninetieth, were making all the commotion. If that were so,
would it be wrong to use force to restore the Federal
property and bring the secessionists back
into the fold?
Such
misunderstandings are the stuff wars are
made of. Of course, Lincoln and the South would eventually learn
this lesson, but the time wasn’t right for it—not yet.
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