Weed returned to Albany convinced that Lincoln was "capable in the largest sense of the term." In the Albany Evening Journal, he wrote: "his mind is at once philosophical and practical. He sees all who go there, hears all they have to say, talks freely with everybody, reads whatever is written to him; but thinks and acts by himself and for himself."
While publicly praising Lincoln"s independence, Weed was privately so chagrined by the complexion of the cabinet that he was no longer certain Seward should accept. "In one aspect all is gone," Weed wrote Seward on Christmas Day, likely indicating Welles, "nor do I know how much can be saved in the other," probably referring to Blair.
The following evening, Seward sent a note to Charles Francis Adams, asking him to call in the morning. With a tone of sorrow in his voice, Seward told Adams he had imagined that when Lincoln offered him the premier position in the cabinet, he "would have consulted him upon the selection of the colleagues with whom he was to act"; but Weed had returned from Springfield empty-handed. He had hoped Adams would be awarded the Treasury, but the likely choice of Welles would fill New England"s quota, closing the door on Adams. "This was not such a Cabinet," Seward confided to Adams, "as he had hoped to see, and it placed him in great embarra.s.sment what to do. If he declined, could he a.s.sign the true reasons for it, which was the want of support in it? If he accepted, what a task he had before him!" Adams replied that "in this moment of great difficulty and danger, there was no alternative for him but acceptance." This is probably what Seward wanted to hear all along, after he had expressed his distress at not being able to bring his friend Adams along.
The next day, Seward wrote to Lincoln that "after due reflection and with much self distrust," he had "concluded; that if I should be nominated to the Senate...it would be my duty to accept." That evening, he wrote to his wife, "I have advised Mr. L. that I will not decline. It is inevitable. I will try to save freedom and my country." Frances was not surprised by her husband"s acceptance. Though she wanted him to close the curtain on his political career and come home to his family in Auburn, when huge worshipful crowds met his whirlwind summer tour for Lincoln, she had foreseen that his driving ambition would never be satisfied in tranquil Auburn. Nor was she surprised by his grandiose claim that he would try to save freedom and his country. She often saw her man with a clearer eye than he saw himself.
WITH ACCEPTANCES from Seward and Bates in hand, Lincoln turned his attention to his third rival, Salmon Chase. Knowing that Chase would never accept a subordinate position, Lincoln had slated him for the Treasury Department. As soon as he received Seward"s written acceptance, he wrote to Chase: "In these troublous times, I would [much] like a conference with you. Please visit me here at once." The pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fall into place.
But Lincoln"s plans for Chase were temporarily waylaid by intense pressure for the appointment of Pennsylvania"s Simon Cameron as secretary of the treasury. Exactly what promises Swett and Davis had made to Cameron"s men at the convention for their switch to Lincoln on the second ballot went unrecorded. We know from Swett"s letter to Lincoln, however, that he had given his word to the Cameron men that "they should be placed upon the same footing as if originally they had been your friends." The lobbying for Cameron began days after Lincoln"s election with a deluge of letters "from very strong and unexpected quarters." Lincoln had understood from the start the importance of satisfying Pennsylvania. Initially, he had hoped Pennsylvania would accept New Jersey"s William Dayton, who, like Cameron, was a staunch protectionist. As testimonials to Cameron poured in, however, Lincoln dispatched Swett to Harrisburg to invite Cameron to Springfield.
"The unexpected arrival of [Cameron] was somewhat of a stunner," Henry Villard confessed, "not only to your correspondent but to a majority of the political schemers and intriguants in Springfield." Considering Lincoln"s "well known rigid adherence to honesty," it seemed impossible to Villard that Honest Abe would besmirch his cabinet with someone of Cameron"s unsavory reputation. For years, charges of bribery and bad dealings with the Winnebago Indians had sullied Cameron"s name. However compromised his reputation, the campaign on the Pennsylvanian"s behalf was organized with great skill and effectiveness.
As soon as Cameron reached the Chenery House on December 30, he sent a note to Lincoln. "Shall I have the honor of waiting on you,-or will you do me the favor to call here?" Lincoln told him to come to his office, where they spoke for several hours. The conversation continued that evening at the Chenery House. Their talks were candid and enjoyable, for even those opposed to Cameron acknowledged his winning personality, shrewd understanding of politics, and repertoire of intriguing stories. At the end of the interview, Lincoln told Cameron he would appoint him to the cabinet, as either secretary of the treasury or secretary of war. The wily Cameron asked Lincoln to put the offer in writing, which Lincoln somewhat impulsively did, on the promise that it remain confidential. Unfortunately, when Cameron returned home, he brandished the offer among his friends like "an exuberant school boy."
As word of the probable appointment leaked out, opposition flared. "There is an odor about Mr. C. which would be very detrimental to your administration," Trumbull warned Lincoln in a letter that probably reached Springfield shortly after Cameron left. "Not a Senator I have spoken with, thinks well of such an appointment." Then, on January 3, 1861, Alexander McClure, representing one of Pennsylvania"s anti-Cameron factions, came to Springfield carrying papers that purportedly revealed Cameron"s lack of moral fitness, particularly inappropriate for stewardship of the Treasury. Recognizing that he had acted too hastily, Lincoln sent a private note to Cameron on January 3: "Since seeing you things have developed which make it impossible for me to take you into the cabinet. You will say this comes of an interview with McClure; and this is partly, but not wholly true. The more potent matter is wholly outside of Pennsylvania." To save face, Lincoln suggested that Cameron decline the appointment, in which case Lincoln would "not object to its being known that it was tendered you."
Hopeful that Cameron would cooperate, Lincoln looked forward to his meeting with Chase, who arrived in Springfield on Friday, January 4, "travel-stained and weary after two days on the cramped, stuffy cars of the four different railroads he took from Columbus." Ever meticulous about his appearance, Chase barely had time to wash up before being notified that Lincoln was downstairs in the lobby of the Chenery House. Though discomfited by the awkwardness of their introduction, Chase was immediately disarmed by Lincoln"s warm expression of thanks for Chase"s support in 1858 during his failed Senate campaign against Douglas.
Lincoln then directly addressed the point of the meeting. "I have done with you," he said, "what I would not perhaps have ventured to do with any other man in the country-sent for you to ask you whether you will accept the appointment of Secretary of the Treasury, without, however, being exactly prepared to offer it to you." The problem, Lincoln explained, would be garnering acceptance for Chase"s appointment in Pennsylvania, a prospect complicated by the unresolved Cameron situation and by Chase"s previous support for free trade that had enraged industrial Pennsylvania. Lincoln"s straightforward manner impressed Chase, even as it irritated him. "I frankly said to him that I desired no position & could not easily reconcile myself to the acceptance of a subordinate one; but should gladly give to his admn., as a Senator, all the support which a sincere friend...could give." [Chase had once again been elected to the U.S. Senate by the Ohio legislature.]
As the interview continued, however, Chase began to relax. Lincoln explained that had Seward declined the State Department, he would have "without hesitation" offered it to Chase, certain that Seward and Chase deserved the two top positions in his cabinet. His dignity restored, Chase promised to consider the contingent Treasury offer "under the advice of friends." He and Lincoln continued their discussion on Sat.u.r.day, and Chase attended Sunday church with the Lincoln family.
After this long weekend meeting, Lincoln considered Chase"s inclusion in the cabinet essential. But what of Cameron, who had refused to withdraw from consideration? Early that Sunday morning, Lincoln walked over to the Chenery House, where Gustave Koerner was still in bed. Lincoln rounded up Judd and returned to Koerner"s room. Speaking in an agitated voice, Lincoln said: "I am in a quandary. Pennsylvania is ent.i.tled to a cabinet office." He had received "hundreds of letters, and the cry is "Cameron, Cameron!"...The Pennsylvania people say: "If you leave out Cameron you disgrace him."" Nonetheless, he had his mind "already fixed on Chase, Seward and Bates, my compet.i.tors at the convention." Koerner and Judd expressed themselves strongly against Cameron but were unable to solve Lincoln"s dilemma.
By Monday morning, as Chase left for Columbus, Lincoln had reached a tentative solution. He would not offer Cameron the Treasury but would hold open the possibility of another post. "It seems to me not only highly proper, but a necessity," he confided in Trumbull that day, "that Gov. Chase shall take [the Treasury]. His ability, firmness, and purity of character, produce the propriety." As for the necessity, his name alone would reconcile the merchant cla.s.s in New York who had long opposed Seward. "But then comes the danger that the protectionists of Pennsylvania will be dissatisfied; and, to clear this difficulty, Gen. C. must be brought to co-operate." The solution was to persuade him to take the lesser position of the War Department.
Moving carefully, Lincoln wrote a conciliatory letter to Cameron, admitting that his first letter was written "under great anxiety," and begging him to understand that he "intended no offence." He promised that if he made a cabinet appointment for Pennsylvania before he arrived in the capital, he would not do so without talking to Cameron, "and giving all the weight to your views and wishes which I consistently can."
Uncertain about Lincoln"s complex plans, Chase left Springfield with some ambivalence. Although he had to admit that his conversations with Lincoln "were entirely free & unreserved," he had not been given the firm offer he coveted, even as he claimed a preference to remain in the Senate. On the train back to Ohio, he penned notes urging several friends to visit Lincoln and support his case. "What is done must be done quickly & done judiciously," he told Hiram Barney, "with the concurrence of our best men & by a deputation to Springfield."
Chase"s friends appealed to Lincoln, but the trouble occasioned by his impulsive letter to Cameron had convinced Lincoln to make no more official offers until he reached Washington in late February. Uncertainty left Chase increasingly agitated. "I think that in allowing my name to be under consideration... and to be tossed about in men"s mouths and in the press as that of a compet.i.tor for a seat which I don"t want, I have done all that any friends can reasonably ask of me," he wrote Elizabeth Pike. "And it is my purpose by a note to Mr. Lincoln within the present week to put my veto on any further consideration of it. If he had thought fit to tender me the Treasury Department with the same considerate respect which was manifested toward Mr. Seward and Mr. Bates I might have felt under a pretty strong obligation to defer to the judgment of friends and accept it." In the end, Chase never did send a note requesting Lincoln to withdraw his name from further cabinet consideration. His desire for position and glory, as Lincoln shrewdly guessed, would allow Lincoln alone to determine the time and place of his appointment.
WHILE LINCOLN WAS PREOCCUPIED with the construction of his official family, the country was tearing itself apart. On December 20, 1860, the same day that Lincoln met with Thurlow Weed, South Carolina held a state convention in the wake of the Republican victory and pa.s.sed an ordinance to secede from the Union. The vote was unanimous. Throughout the Deep South, such "a s...o...b..lling process" began that over the next six weeks, six additional states followed suit-Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Texas.
For Southern radicals, a correspondent for the Charleston Courier observed, Lincoln"s victory opened the door to the goal "desired by all true hearted Southerners, viz: a Southern Confederacy." The night after the election, the citizens of Charleston had turned out in droves for a torchlight parade featuring an effigy of Lincoln, with a placard in its hand reading: "Abe Lincoln, First President Northern Confederacy." Two slaves hoisted the figure to a scaffold, where it was set afire and "speedily consumed amid the cheers of the mult.i.tude."
As the various secession ordinances made clear, the election of a "Black Republican" was merely the final injury in a long list of grievances against the North. These doc.u.ments cited attempts to exclude slaveholders from the new territories; failure to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act; continued agitation of the slavery question that held Southerners up to contempt and mockery; and the fear of insurrection provoked by the John Brown raid.
Though Southern newspapers had long threatened that secession would follow fast upon a Lincoln victory, the rapidity and vehemence of the secession movement took many in the North, including President Buchanan, by surprise. The bachelor president was attending a young friend"s wedding reception when he heard news of South Carolina"s secession. A sudden disturbance heralded the entrance of South Carolina congressman Lawrence Keitt. Flourishing his state"s session ordinance over his head, he shouted: "Thank G.o.d! Oh, thank G.o.d!...I feel like a boy let out from school." When Buchanan absorbed the news, he "looked stunned, fell back, and grasped the arms of his chair." No longer able to enjoy the festivities, he left immediately.
For Lincoln, who would not take office until March 4, it was a time of mounting anxiety and frustration. He strongly believed, he told John Nicolay, that the government possessed "both the authority and the power to maintain its own integrity," but there was little he could do until he held the reins of power. While he was "indefatigable in his efforts to arrive at the fullest comprehension of the present situation of public affairs," relying not simply on the newspapers he devoured but on "faithful researches for precedents, a.n.a.logies, authorities, etc.," it was hard to stand by while his country was disintegrating. He declared at one point that he would be willing to reduce his own life span by "a period of years" equal to the anxious months separating his election and the inauguration.
Besieged with requests to say something conciliatory, Lincoln refused to take "a position towards the South which might be considered a sort of an apology for his election." He was determined to stand behind the Republican platform, believing that any attempt to soften his position would dishearten his supporters in the North without producing any beneficial impact on the South. When asked by the editor of a Democratic paper in Missouri to make a soothing public statement that would keep Missouri in the Union, Lincoln replied: "I could say nothing which I have not already said, and which is in print and accessible to the public. Please pardon me for suggesting that if the papers, like yours, which heretofore have persistently garbled, and misrepresented what I have said, will now fully and fairly place it before their readers, there can be no further misunderstanding.... I am not at liberty to shift my ground-that is out of the question.... The secessionists, per se believing they had alarmed me, would clamor all the louder."
As panic began to affect the stock market and the business community in the North, Lincoln reluctantly agreed to insert an authorized pa.s.sage in a speech Trumbull was scheduled to make in Chicago. He simply repeated that once he a.s.sumed power, "each and all of the States will be left in as complete control of their own affairs respectively, and at as perfect liberty to choose, and employ, their own means of protecting property, and preserving peace and order within their respective limits, as they have ever been under any administration."
Just as Lincoln had predicted, however, the speech had no positive impact. "On the contrary," he wrote the New York Times"s Henry Raymond, "the Boston Courier, and its" cla.s.s, hold me responsible for the speech, and endeavor to inflame the North with the belief that it foreshadows an abandonment of Republican ground by the incoming administration; while the Washington Const.i.tution, and its" cla.s.s hold the same speech up to the South as an open declaration of war against them." The South, he claimed, "has eyes but does not see, and ears but does not hear."
Although increasingly infuriated by Southern misrepresentations of his positions, Lincoln confined expression of his anger to private letters. Upon hearing from the New York Times"s Henry Raymond that one of his correspondents, a wealthy Mississippi gentleman named William Smedes, had justified the state"s "blaze of pa.s.sion" for secession on the grounds that Lincoln was "pledged to the ultimate extinction of slavery, holds the black man to be the equal of the white, & stigmatizes our whole people as immoral & unchristian," Lincoln issued a blistering reply. As evidence, Smedes had cited an "infamous" speech Lincoln had purportedly given on the occasion when Chase was presented with his silver pitcher by the free blacks of Cincinnati. For such a speech, Smedes proclaimed, he would "regard death by a stroke of lightning to Mr. Lincoln as but a just punishment from an offended deity."
"What a very mad-man your correspondent, Smedes is," Lincoln replied, countering that he "was never in a meeting of negroes in [his] life; and never saw a pitcher presented by anybody to anybody." Moreover, he went on, "Mr. Lincoln is not pledged to the ultimate extinctincton of slavery; does not hold the black man to be the equal of the white, unqualifiedly as Mr. S. states it; and never did stigmatize their white people as immoral & unchristian."
However justifiable Lincoln"s anger at what he rightly called a "forgery out and out," his response reveals the gulf still separating him from Chase on the issue of race. Although Lincoln"s views on racial equality reflected the majority position in the North, Chase regarded his call at the pitcher ceremony to eradicate the Black Laws one of the proudest moments of his life.
WHILE OUTRAGED BY the South"s willful distortions of his positions, Lincoln was far more troubled by the growing rancor splitting his own party. Conciliators believed that with the proper compromises, the eight remaining slaveholding states could be kept in the Union, hoping that without expansion, the secession movement would ultimately die out. Hard-liners, meanwhile, ranged from those who thought compromise would only embolden the South to extremists who believed that military force alone would bring the South back to the Union fold. As president-elect, Lincoln had to balance two emerging poles of the Republican Party, a task made all the more difficult by the over 700 miles that separated Springfield from Washington.
Yet, almost unnoticed, Lincoln managed through a series of complex and subtle maneuvers to keep the Republican Party intact through the "Great Secession Winter." Whatever conciliatory measures he might consider, Lincoln was adamant, he told Trumbull, that there must be "no compromise on the question of extending slavery. If there be, all our labor is lost, and, ere long, must be done again.... Stand firm. The tug has to come, & better now, than any time hereafter." If the door were opened to slavery in any of the new territories, Lincoln feared that the South would eventually try to annex Cuba or invade Mexico, thereby restarting the long struggle.
Though Lincoln remained inflexible on the territorial question, he was willing, he told Seward, to compromise on "fugitive slaves, District of Columbia, slave trade among the slave states, and whatever springs of necessity from the fact that the inst.i.tution is amongst us." Knowing that two parallel committees in the House and Senate were set to address the sectional crisis, Lincoln relayed a confidential message to Seward that he had drafted three short resolutions. He instructed Seward to introduce these proposals in the Senate Committee of Thirteen without indicating they issued from Springfield. The first resolved that "the Const.i.tution should never be altered so as to authorize Congress to abolish or interfere with slavery in the states." The second would amend the Fugitive Slave Law "by granting a jury trial to the fugitive." The third recommended that all state personal liberty laws in opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law be repealed.
Seward agreed to introduce Lincoln"s resolutions without revealing their source, though he was of the opinion that they would do nothing to stop the secession movement. The best option, he told Lincoln, was to focus on keeping the border states in the Union, though he feared "nothing could certainly restrain them" short of adopting the series of proposals auth.o.r.ed by Kentucky"s John Crittenden. The Crittenden Compromise, among other provisions, offered to extend the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific, thereby initiating the very extension of slavery into the territories Lincoln had pledged to prevent.
Lincoln"s clear resolve never to accept any measure extending slavery prevented the wavering Seward and other like-minded Republicans from backing the Crittenden Compromise. As one Southern state after another withdrew from the Union, Seward came to believe that only conciliation could save the Union. With Lincoln"s iron hand guiding the way in this matter, however, Seward conceded that there was not "the slightest" chance that the Republican side would adopt the Compromise. Still, Seward retained his characteristic optimism, a.s.suring Lincoln that with the pa.s.sage of time, "sedition will be growing weaker and Loyalty stronger."
Events soon eclipsed the slender hope that time would bring about a peaceful solution to the sectional crisis. There were three federal forts in South Carolina: Fort Moultrie, under the command of Major Robert Anderson; Fort Sumter; and Castle Pinckney. South Carolina announced that all three were in its domain and that three commissioners of the new "republic" had been named to negotiate the matter with the Buchanan administration. "From the first," John Nicolay reported, it was apparent that "the Carolinians intended somehow to get possession of these fortifications, as it was the only means by which they could make any serious resistance to the federal government."
In late December, a rumor reached Springfield that Buchanan had instructed Major Anderson "to surrender Fort Moultrie if it is attacked." When Lincoln heard the news, he told Nicolay: "If that is true they ought to hang him!" Straightaway, he sent a message to General Scott through his friend Congressman Washburne, to be prepared at the time of the inauguration "to either hold, or retake, the forts, as the case may require."
In fact, the ever-vacillating Buchanan had not decided to surrender the forts. The issue produced an open rift in his already compromised cabinet. Treasury Secretary Howell Cobb of Georgia had resigned and departed for his native state, but several secessionists remained, "vying...for Buchanan"s ear" with staunch Unionists Secretary of State Jeremiah Black and Postmaster General Joseph Holt. In the midst of the cabinet crisis, Black prevailed on Buchanan to offer the attorney generalship to his good friend Edwin Stanton, who was still practicing law in Washington. Black also pressured Stanton to accept the post, adding a third ally to bolster Buchanan"s will. While Buchanan waffled over the proper course of action, Anderson preempted his decision on the night of December 26, 1860, by deciding to move his troops from Fort Moultrie to the less vulnerable Fort Sumter. The next day, South Carolina took possession of the abandoned Fort Moultrie as well as Castle Pinckney.
Under the influence of Black, Holt, and Stanton, Buchanan agreed to send reinforcements to Anderson at Sumter. In early January, the same day that Lincoln met with Chase in Springfield, an unarmed merchant vessel, the Star of the West, headed for Charleston Harbor equipped with men and supplies. The mission failed when the weaponless vessel was fired upon by sh.o.r.e batteries. The Star of the West turned back immediately and headed north.
These dramatic events created what Seward called "a feverish excitement" in Washington. No one felt more apprehensive than the newest member of Buchanan"s cabinet, Edwin Stanton. Thoroughly loyal to the Union, excitable and suspicious by nature, he became convinced that secessionists planned to seize the nation"s capital and prevent Lincoln"s inauguration. From his position inside the government, Stanton feared that "every department in Washington then contained numerous traitors and spies." He discovered that the army had been deployed in far-flung places and that treasonous officers had shifted arms and guns from a.r.s.enals in the North to various places in the South. If Maryland and Virginia could be provoked into secession, Stanton believed secessionists would be in a position to take Washington. With the essentially defenseless capital captured, they would possess "the symbols of government, the seals and the treaties-the treasuries & the apparent right to control the army & the navy." Stanton was driven to distraction when President Buchanan could not "be made to believe, the existence of this danger," and would not credit the treasonous plot, which, Stanton feared, would include an attempt to a.s.sa.s.sinate Lincoln before his inauguration.
At this juncture, his co-biographers report, Stanton "came to a momentous decision: he decided to throw party fealty and cabinet secrecy to the winds and to work behind the President"s back." With the White House paralyzed and the Democratic Party at loggerheads, he determined that "Congress and its Republican leaders were the last hope for a strong policy, the last place for him to turn." Stanton knew that becoming an informer violated his oath of office, but concluded that his oath to support the Const.i.tution was paramount.
Seeking the most powerful conduit for his information, Stanton chose Seward. Knowing they could not openly communicate, fearful that secessionists lurking on every corner would report the meetings in newspapers, Stanton prevailed on Peter Watson-the same Watson who had initially interviewed Lincoln for the Reaper trial-to act as his middleman. Almost every evening, Watson would call on Seward at his home to deliver oral and written messages from Stanton. Watson would then return to Stanton with Seward"s responses. "The question what either of us could or ought to do at the time for the public welfare was discussed and settled," Seward later recalled.
The first meeting between Seward and Watson likely took place on December 29, prompting the flurry of private letters that Seward penned late that night. "At length I have gotten a position in which I can see what is going on in the Councils of the President," Seward wrote Lincoln. "It pains me to learn that things are even worse than is understood.... A plot is forming to seize the Capitol on or before the 4th of March.... Believe that I know what I write. In point of fact the responsibilities of your administration must begin before the time arrives. I therefore renew the suggestion of your coming here earlier than you otherwise would.... I trust that by this time you will be able to know your correspondent without his signature, which for prudence is omitted." That same evening, Seward confided in Frances that "treason is all around and amongst us," and warned Weed, whose presence in Washington he would welcome, that a plot to seize the government had "abettors near the President."
Seward a.s.sumed that Stanton was communicating with him alone. In fact, the cunning Stanton secretly spread word of the danger to several other Republicans, including Charles Sumner, Salmon Chase, and Congressman Henry Dawes. "By early disclosure," Dawes later wrote, Stanton was able to thwart some of the attempts by treasonous officers to turn supplies and arms over to "the enemies of their country." Increasingly paranoid, Stanton invited Sumner to his office and then led him through a half-dozen different rooms before feeling safe to talk for a few minutes. Arrangements were made for papers to be "found and read by the light of the street lamp at night, and then returned to the place of deposit."
Unaware of these other communications, Seward a.s.sumed it was on his shoulders to save the Union, that he "held the key to all discontent." After his appointment as secretary of state was made public on January 10, 1861, when he "came to be regarded somewhat extensively as a person representing the incoming administration and the Republican party," the pressure of his position was immense. "By common consent," Seward"s admirer Henry Adams later wrote, "all eyes were turned on him, and he was overwhelmed by entreaties from men in all sections of the country to do something to save the Union." As members of Congress, the cabinet, and hundreds of nervous citizens approached him "with prayers and tears," Seward became "virtually the ruler of the country." Or so he thought.
Intuiting that the country needed a clear, strong Republican voice, Seward announced that he would deliver a major speech in the Senate on January 12. "Never in the history of the American Congress has there been witnessed so intense an anxiety to hear a speech as that which preceded the delivery of Mr. Seward"s," a reporter for the Chicago Tribune wrote. "What gave so much interest and weight to the Senator"s words, was the belief that it was equivalent to a speech from Lincoln himself."
"The families of nearly all the Senators and Cabinet officers were present," another correspondent reported, and the crush to get in was so great that "extravagant prices were offered to the various doorkeepers to obtain admission." As Seward began to speak, senators on both sides of the aisle sat in rapt attention, including Mississippi"s Jefferson Davis, who would soon resign the Senate to become the president of the Southern Confederacy. "No man was as usual engaged in writing letters, no one called for pages, no one answered messages," a witness observed, "and every ear in the vast a.s.sembly was strained to catch his every word."
Seward"s chief purpose was "to set forth the advantages, the necessities to the Union to the people...and the vast calamities to them and to the world which its destruction would involve." He warned that disunion would give rise to a state of "perpetual civil war," for neither side would tolerate an imbalance of strength or power. Opportunistic foreign nations would then move in, preying on the bickering factions. "When once the guardian angel has taken flight," he predicted, "everything is lost."
Listening from the packed galleries, a Boston reporter confessed that it was "difficult to restrain oneself from tears, when at the allusion of Seward to the great men of the country now dead and gone, and at his vivid portrayal of the horrors and evils of dissolution and civil war, we saw the venerable Senator Crittenden, who sat directly in front of Seward, shedding tears, and finally, overcome by his feelings, cover his face with his handkerchief."
As he moved into the second hour of his speech, Seward offered the concessions he hoped might stem the tide of secession. He endeavored "to meet prejudice with conciliation, exaction with concession which surrenders no principle, and violence with the right hand of peace." He began with Lincoln"s resolutions calling for a const.i.tutional amendment to prevent any future Congress from interfering with slavery where it already existed and suggesting a repeal of all personal liberty laws in opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law. He then added several resolutions of his own, including the prospect of a Const.i.tutional Convention "when the eccentric movements of secession and disunion shall have ended" to consider additional changes to the Const.i.tution. When, after nearly two hours, he concluded his emotional remarks, the galleries erupted in thunderous applause.
As Seward no doubt antic.i.p.ated, his speech had little impact on the seven states of the Deep South, where the secession movement continued its course. The following week, five Southern senators, including Jefferson Davis, rose to deliver farewell speeches to their colleagues before resigning their seats and heading south. Davis delivered the most wrenching farewell. Unable to sleep for days, he appeared "inexpressibly sad," very ill, and "in a state of mind bordering on despair."
"I am sure I feel no hostility to you, Senators from the North," he began. "I am sure there is not one of you, whatever sharp discussion there may have been between us, to whom I cannot now say, in the presence of my G.o.d, I wish you well." The friendships forged over the years were not easily discarded. Seward himself had visited Davis every day during a painful illness several years earlier, when it seemed that Davis might lose his eyesight. Seated by Davis"s side, Seward would recount all the speeches delivered that day by both Democrats and Republicans. The ever-genial Seward told how at one point, "Your man outtalked ours, you would have liked it, but I didn"t." The families of the senators likewise suffered as Southerners prepared for departure. Old Man Blair"s daughter, Elizabeth Blair Lee, and Varina Davis had been close friends for years. "Mrs Jef asked me if I was going down south to fight her," Elizabeth told her husband, Phil. "I told her no. I would kiss & hug her too tight to let her break any bonds between us."