CHAP. V. THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT. 1453 received with great enthusiasm, on the 15th of February. He was welcomed with the thunder of cannon and shouts of a great multitude; and at the railway station he made a speech, in which he briefly reviewed the then position of the South. He declared that the time for compromises had passed. "We are now determined," he said, "to maintain our position, and make all who oppose us smell Southern powder and feel Southern steel. We will maintain our rights and our government at all hazards. We ask nothing; we want nothing; and will have no complications. If the other States join our Confederacy, they can freely come in on our terms. Our separation from the old Union is complete, and no compromise, no reconciliation can now be entertained." He was inaugurated on the 18th, when he chose for his constitutional advisers, Robert Toombs, Secretary of State; Charles G. Memminger, Secretary of the Treasury; Le Roy Pope Walker, Secretary of War; Stephen R. Mallory, Secretary of the Navy, and John H. Reagan, Postmaster-General. Judah P. Benjamin was appointed Attorney-General. So was inaugurated the government known as the Confederate States of America, which carried on war against the life of our Republic for more than four years. CHAPTER VI. LUNACY-YIELDING FUTURE-BOASTING-THE CONFEDERATES PREPARE FOR WAR-PERMANENT CONSTITUTION ADOPTED-ADJOURNMENT OF THE MONTGOMERY CONVENTION-PRINCIPLES OF THE NEW GOVERNMENT EXPOUNDED-LINCOLN AND DAVIS-LINCOLN'S JOURNEY TO THE CAPITAL-NARRATIVE OF HIS ESCAPE-HIS INAUGURATION AND INAUGURAL ADDRESS-DUTIES OF THE ADMINISTRATION-CONDITION OF THE ARMY AND NAVY-BENTON'S PROPHECY-CONFEDERATE COMMISSIONERS AT THE CAPITALTHE VIRGINIANS-ATTEMPT TO RELIEVE FORT SUMTER AND THE RESULT. T HERE were symptoms of real lunacy among some of the leaders in the revolutionary movement, especially in South Carolina. When that new "nation" was only nine days old, a correspondent of the Associated Press wrote that it had been proposed to adopt for it a new system of civil time, to show its independence. Only a week after the organization of the Southern Confederacy at Montgomery, the editor of the Charleston Courier wrote: "The South might, under the new Confederacy, treat the disorganized and demoralized Northern States as insurgents, and deny them recognition. But if peaceful division ensues, the South, after taking the Federal Capitol and archives, and being recognized as the government de facto by all foreign powers, can, if they see proper, recognize the Northern Confederacy or Confederacies, and enter into treaty stipulations with them. Were this not done, it would be difficult for the Northern States to take a place among the nations, and their flag would not be respected or recognized." There was much "wild talk" of that sort; and the venerable James L. Pettigru of Charleston, who remained a firm friend of the Union in spite of the madmen around him, was justified when, on being asked by a stranger in the streets of the city, "Where is the lunatic asylum?" he said, as he pointed alternately to the east, "It is there;" to the west, "It is there;" to the north, "It is there;" and to the south, "It is there; the whole State of South Carolina is a lunatic asylum.” Notwithstanding the same arrogant and world-defying spirit was superficially manifested in the councils of the Confederacy at Montgomery, they were compelled to bow to the behests of prudence and expediency, and, abandoning the position that they would have free trade with all the world whereby the riches of the earth would fall at their feet, they proceeded not CHAP. VI. CONFIDENCE OF THE SECESSIONISTS. 1455 as only to impose a tariff upon imports, but regarding "King Cotton immortal and omniscient, they even went so far as to propose an export duty on the great staple of the Gulf States. Howell Cobb, who proposed it, said: “I apprehend that we are conscious of the power we hold in our hands, by reason of our producing that staple so necessary to the world. I doubt not that power will exert an influence mightier than armies or navies. We know that by an embargo we could soon place not only the United States, but many of the European powers, under the necessity of electing between such a recognition of our independence as we require, or domestic convulsions at home." Of this supposed omnipotent power, and the superior courage and prowess in arms of the people of the slave-labor States, the leaders were continually boasting. Senator Hammond, of South Carolina, a wealthy slaveholder and a son of a New England schoolmaster, writing to a feminine relative in Schenectady, New York, on the 5th of February, 1861, after alluding to the dissolution of the Union, and saying, "We absolve you, by this, from all the sins of slavery, and take upon ourselves all its supposed sin and evil, openly before the world, and in the sight of God," remarked: “Let us alone. Let me tell you, my dear cousin, that if there is any attempt at war on the part of the North, we can soundly thrash them on any field of battle." "One Southron is equal to five Yankees in a fight!" exclaimed Yancey, in a speech at Selma. And the Convention at Montgomery proceeded to prepare for testing the relative strength of the two sections. President Davis was authorized to accept one hundred thousand volunteers for six months, and to borrow $15,000,000 at the rate of eight per cent interest a year. Provision was made for a navy and a postal revenue; and Davis was authorized to assume control of "all military operations. between the Confederate States" or any of them, and powers foreign to them. The Convention recommended the several States to cede the forts and all other public establishments within their limits to the Confederate States; and P. G. T. Beauregard, a Louisiana creole, who had abandoned his flag, was appointed brigadier-general and ordered from New Orleans to the command of the insurgents at Charleston. Early in March a permanent constitution for the Confederacy was adopted; and a commission was appointed to proceed to Washington and make a settlement of all questions at issue between the "two governments," while the Confederate secretary of the treasury prepared to establish custom-houses along the frontiers of the Confederate States. After agreeing, by resolution, to accept a portion of the money belonging to the United States which Louisiana had unlawfully seized, the Convention adjourned. Their proceedings were never published, but constitute a part of the "Confederate archives" in the possession of the National Government. Meanwhile Mr. Stephens, the vice-president of the Confederacy, had assumed the office of expounder of the principles upon which the new government was founded. In a speech at Savannah, on the 21st of March, 1861, he declared that the immediate cause of the rebellion was African Slavery-the rock, he said, on which Mr. Jefferson declared the Union would split; but he doubted whether Mr. Jefferson understood the truth on which that rock stood. He believed the founders of the Republic held erroneous views on the subject of slavery, and that it was a false assumption of the fathers, put forth in the Declaration of Independence, that "all men are created equal.” He declared that the corner-stone of the new Confederacy rested "upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery-subordination to the superior race-is his natural and normal condition. It is upon this truth," he said, "on which our fabric is firmly planted; and I cannot permit myself to doubt the ultimate success of a full recognition of this principle throughout the civilized world." Then, to give strength to his declaration that slavery was the corner-stone of the new fabric, he rather irreverently quoted the words of the Apostle applied to Christ, saying: "This stone that was rejected by the first builders, 'is become the chief stone of the corner' in our new edifice." While there were preparations in the South for destroying the Union, there were preparations in the North for preserving it. In the former section, they were chiefly material; in the latter, they were chiefly moral, for it was difficult to persuade the loyal people that the Southern politicians would really organize an armed rebellion. At the time when Jefferson Davis was moving from his home in Mississippi to be inaugurated president of the Southern Confederacy at Montgomery, and to declare “all who oppose us shall smell Southern powder and feel Southern steel," Abraham Lincoln was moving from his home in Illinois to the National capital, to be installed Chief Magistrate of the whole undivided Republic, with sublime faith in justice, and to say to the North and the South, in his inaugural address: "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." Jefferson Davis was then about fifty-four years of age; Abraham Lincoln was fifty-two. Mr. Davis was, in person, sinewy and light, a little above the CHAP. VI. LINCOLN AND DAVIS. 1457 middle height, and erect in posture; Mr. Lincoln was tall, thin, large-boned, and six feet four inches in height. He was sinewy, easily lifting five hundred pounds. His legs and arms were disproportionately long, and there was no grace in his movements. The features of Davis were regular and well defined; his face was thin and much wrinkled; one eye was sightless, and the other was dark and piercing in expression. Lincoln's features were angular; his forehead was high; his eyes were dark grey and very expressive, alternately sparkling with fun and subdued into sadness. These men were both natives of Kentucky, but in early life Davis was taken to Mississippi. Raised in ease and comparative luxury, he was educated at the West Point Military Academy. He served in the army in Mexico under his father-in-law, General Zachary Taylor; held a distinguished place in the National Congress, and was President Pierce's Secretary of War. Lincoln was born in obscurity; passed his early days in poverty, laboring with his hands on a farm, in the forest, or as a flat-boatman on the Mississippi. He had settled with his father in Illinois, where he, self-taught, studied law and rose to distinction at the bar, and in the esteem of his fellow-citizens. Davis was a keen politician; calm, reticent, audacious, polished, cold, sagacious, rich in experience in the arts of the partisan and the affairs of state-craft, possessed of great concentration of purpose, an imperious will, abounding pride, and much executive ability. Lincoln was as open as the day; loved truth supremely, and country above party; abhorred trickery and deception; possessed great firmness of will and a child-like reliance upon God; read the Bible and Shakespeare more than any other books; with extraordinary conversational powers and exuberant mirthfulness manifested in sparkling jests, stories and anecdotes, at appropriate times. He was, at one time, a representative in the National Congress; and on all occasions appeared as a representative American, illustrating by his own career, in a most conspicuous and distinguished manner, the beneficent and elevating operations of republican government and institutions. His last words, when he parted from his home at Springfield, Illinois, after alluding to Washington, whose seat he was about to occupy: "I feel that I cannot succeed without the same Divine aid which sustained him, and on the same Almighty Being I place my reliance for support; and I hope you, my friends, will all pray that I may receive that Divine assistance without which I cannot succeed, but with which success is certain.” On his journey to the National capital by way of New York, Philadelphia and Harrisburg, Mr. Lincoln was everywhere greeted with affection and respect. He was in Philadelphia on Washington's birthday, and with his own hands raised the American flag high above the consecrated old |