Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs/Chapter 24

by George Sewall Boutwell

 

XXIV

THE PEACE CONVENTION OF 1861

IN the month of January, 1861, the State of Virginia invited the States to send delegates to a congress or convention to be held in the city of Washington. The call implied that the Union was a confederation of States as distinguished from an independent and supreme and sovereign government, set up and maintained by the people of the whole country, except as the States were made the servants of the nation for certain specified purposes. There was hesitation on the part of Massachusetts, and some of the States of the North declined to respond to the call. After delay, Governor Andrew appointed John Z. Goodrich, Charles Allen, George S. Boutwell, T. P. Chandler, F. B. Crowninshield, J. M. Forbes, and Richard P. Waters as commissioners to the convention.

The meeting was held on the 6th of February in Willard’s Hall, in the city of Washington. The door upon the street was closed, and the delegates were admitted from Willard’s Hotel through a side door, cut for the purpose. The entrance was guarded by a messenger, and only members were admitted. There were no reporters, but Mr. Chittenden, of Vermont, made notes from which he prepared a volume that was published, but not until several years after the congress had ceased to exist. A few of the members furnished him with reports of their speeches, but not always in the language used at the time of delivery. My memory of what was said by Mr. Chase and Mr. Frelinghuysen did not correspond with the Chittenden Report. As the Convention had been in session several days when the Massachusetts delegation appeared, we were assigned to seats that were remote from the chair.

The convention was composed of three classes of men. Secessionists, led by John Tyler, the president of the convention, Seddon of Virginia, and Davis and Ruffin of North Carolina; border State men from Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Kentucky, who had faith in differing degrees that the Union might be saved, and war averted; and radical men who had no faith that anything could be done by which the Union could be saved, except through war. Soon after my arrival in Washington, I called on a Sunday upon Mr. Seddon. We had a free conversation. He said:

“It is of no use for us to attempt to deceive each other. You have one form of civilization, and we have another. You think yours is the best for you, and we think that ours is the best for us. But our culture is exhausting, and we must have new lands. One part of your people say that Congress shall exclude slavery from the territories, and another set of men say that it will be excluded by natural laws. Under either theory, somebody must go, and if we can’t go with our slaves, we must go without them and our country will be given up to the negroes.”

With the system of slavery, and in the absence of knowledge of the value of manufactured fertilizers, this was not an unreasonable view. Looking forward a hundred years and assuming the continued existence of slavery, there was no conclusive solution of the problem presented by Mr. Seddon. But he did not seem to consider that he was warring against nature as well as against the Union in his attempt to extend the area of slavery. His efforts, had they been successful, could only have postponed the crisis for a period not definite, but surely not of long duration. When the Confederacy was formed, Mr. Seddon became Secretary of War, and when the war was over, I recognized his friendship by securing the removal of his disabilities under the Fourteenth Amendment. Of the Secessionists, Mr. Seddon was the leading man upon the floor of the convention. It was manifest that he did not wish to secure the return of the seceded States. On one point he was anxious, and he did not attempt to disguise his purpose. He sought to secure from the convention, or if not from the convention, from the delegates from the Republican States, an assurance that in no event should there be war. One of the errors, indeed, the greatest error, was the failure of the Northern delegates to assert that in no event should the Union be dissolved except through the success of the South in arms. As far as I remember, this was not asserted by any one except myself.

Many expressed their fear of war and urged the convention to agree to some plan of settlement as the only means of averting war. Mr. Stockton, of New Jersey, went so far as to assert that in case of war the North would raise a regiment to aid the South as often as one was raised to assail it. Mr. Chase’s remarks on the floor of the convention indicated a disposition to allow the South to go without resistance on our part, and in a conversation that I had with him as we walked one evening on Pennsylvania Avenue, toward Georgetown, he said:

“The thing to be done is to let the South go.”

The interest of the convention centered upon the Committee of Thirteen, of which Mr. Guthrie was chairman. While the Committee of Thirteen was considering what should be done, Mr. John Z. Goodrich said that he had called upon Mr. Seward, and that Mr. Seward expressed a wish to see me. I had not the personal acquaintance of Mr. Seward, and Mr. Goodrich offered to take me to Mr. Seward’s house. We called in the evening. His conversation and bearing were different from the conversation and bearing of most of the public men of the time. He spoke as though the subject of conversation was the chance of a client and the means of bringing him safely out of his perils. He spoke of the speech he had made in the Senate and said:

“My speech occupies the mind of the South for the present: then the proceedings of the Peace Congress will attract attention, and by and by we shall have the President’s inaugural which will probably have a good influence.”

He did not assume the possibility of war. Before we left he asked me whether I had seen a certain number of the Richmond Enquirer. I said that I had not. He sent for it, and gave it to me with the request that I should return it after reading the leading editorial. The editorial was upon Mr. Seward, and it was written upon the theory that he was engaged in a scheme for delaying definite action in Virginia and the other States of the South, until the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, when he would use both whip and spur. From the conversation and the editorial I inferred that he intended to have me understand that such was his purpose. It is possible he may have thought that war could be averted by dilatory proceedings.

When the report of the Committee of Thirteen was made, the border State men had high hopes that the country, both North and South, would accept its recommendations. In truth, there was no ground for believing that the Secessionists or the anti-slavery Republicans, would accept the propositions. The recommendations were more offensive to the North than the original constitution, with all the compromise legislation, considered together.

I think that there were five speeches made in support of the resolutions before a speech was made in opposition, and it fell to me to make that speech. One morning there was a conference between the Massachusetts delegation, which was composed of radical men only, and the radical members of the New York delegation, at which it was agreed that a speech should be made in opposition, and that Massachusetts should lead. The duty was put upon me, accompanied with the suggestion that I should speak that day. I had not made any preparation, but during the time that I had occupied a seat in the convention, my conviction had been strengthened that it was impossible to adopt any plan that would be acceptable to the contending parties, and consequently that any scheme of compromise that could be framed would result in a renewal of the controversy, under circumstances less favorable to the North. At that moment the government was in the hands of men who were incapable of decisive action. While we could not count upon active measures against secession on the part of Mr. Buchanan, on the other hand, the country had ample assurance that he would do nothing in aid of the unlawful proceeding. That he had declared in his message of December, 1860. Beyond that, we had a right to assume that Mr. Lincoln would maintain the Union by force. Hence, I resolved to say that no scheme would be accepted by us which did not contain an abandonment of the doctrine of secession, an acknowledgment of the legality of Mr. Lincoln’s election, and a declaration that it was the duty of the whole body of citizens to render obedience to the Government. I very well knew that these terms would be rejected with scorn, as I well knew that any other terms would be rejected. Conspirators are never disposed to make terms with the party or person against whom their conspiracy is aimed, until the conspiracy has failed. Hence it was that those who humbled themselves in the dust were treated with contumely, even more offensive than the invectives which the conspirators showered upon the heads of those who neither proffered nor accepted terms of compromise.

Mr. Chittenden’s report is accurate in respect to the views that I presented, but it is incomplete, as I spoke about an hour. When I began to speak, I advanced slowly up the aisle until I could look into the faces of the Virginia delegation, who occupied the settee next to the president's desk. Mr. William C. Rives was one of the Virginia delegation, a Union man, who sympathized with the border State men, and hoped by some concession to avert war. When I said that if the South persisted in secession, “the South would march its armies to the Great Lakes, or we should march ours to the Gulf of Mexico,” the tears came into his eyes. My remark that the North abhorred the institution of slavery, wounded the Southern men sorely. They were not indignant, but grieved rather. At any rate, such was their aspect, and for many days the remark was repeated or referred to with the hope, apparently, of inducing me to retract or qualify it. I allowed it to stand as a truth which they might well accept.

When the day came for a final vote upon the first resolution relating to slavery as reported by the Committee of Thirteen, a meeting of the New York delegation was called in consequence of the engagement of David Dudley Field to argue a case in the Supreme Court. Mr. Field was one of the six Republican members, and associated with them were five Democrats and Conservatives.

As each State had one vote, his absence would set New York out of the contest unless the Democrats would agree that Mr. Field’s vote should be counted in his absence. This proposition the Democrats refused to accept, and they gave notice that the vote of New York would be lost unless Mr. Field remained and voted. Mr. Field left, and the vote of the State was lost. There were twenty-one States represented, including Kansas, which was in a territorial condition when the convention assembled, and the Territorial Governor had sent a Conservative, Mr. Thomas Ewing, Jr. His father was a member from Ohio. When the State government of Kansas was organized, the Governor delegated a Republican. Both were allowed seats, although manifestly, Mr. Ewing should have retired.

When the vote was declared, it appeared that eight States had voted in the affirmative, and eleven States in the negative. The border State men were sorely disappointed, and some of them wept like children. The result they must have anticipated, but they had been wrought to a high condition of nervous excitement, due in part to the circumstance that they were unable to discuss the business of the convention in public. The disagreeable silence which followed the announcement of the vote, was broken by Mr. Francis Granger, who counseled calmness and deliberation, and finally, he appealed to the States of the majority to move a reconsideration. This was done by the State of Illinois, through Mr. Turner, who made the motion. The next day the resolution was adopted by a vote of nine to eight. Upon this question the Missouri delegation refused to vote, under the lead, it was said, of General Doniphan, who denounced the resolutions as not satisfactory to either side. Doniphan was a large, muscular man, who acquired some fame in the Mexican War as the leader of a cavalry expedition to California, of which nothing was heard for about six months.

The reconsideration was attributed to the interference of Mr. Lincoln or of his recognized friends.

When the convention was about to adjourn, President Tyler made a speech in which he thrice invoked the blessing of Heaven upon the doings of the convention, and from that act he went to Richmond, and in less than three days he was an avowed and recognized leader in secession. Indeed, it was understood in the convention that Mr. Seddon was his representative on the floor. The doings of the Congress were endorsed by Maryland, but in the National Congress, and in the States North and South they were neglected utterly. The result which Mr. Seward anticipated was not realized by the country.

After the arrival of Mr. Lincoln the Massachusetts delegation called upon him to recommend the selection of Mr. Chase for the Treasury Department in preference to General Cameron, and to say that the capitalists of the East would have more confidence in the former than in the latter. Mr. Lincoln did not say what his purposes were, but he made this remark:

“From what I hear, I think Mr. Chase is about one hundred and fifty to any other man’s hundred.”

On the Saturday next but one, preceding the 4th of March, we called upon Mr. Buchanan at about eleven o’clock in the morning. He said that he should prefer to see us in the evening. In the evening we found him alone. He at once commenced conversation, which he continued with but slight interruptions on our part. His chief thought seemed to be to avert bloodshed during his administration. Next, he thought he had been wronged by both sections. Said he:

“When I rebuked the North for their personal-liberty bills, the South applauded; but when I condemned the secession movement, then they turned against me.”

He referred to the Charleston Mercury as having been very unjust, and then putting his feet together, and with his head on one shoulder, he said:

“I am like a man on a narrow isthmus, without a friend on either side.”

Within a few days of this interview, we called upon General Cass, who was then living in a house that is now annexed to the Arlington Hotel. He had retired from the Cabinet of Mr. Buchanan, and he had regained something of his standing in the North, but he had been so long the advocate of compromises and the servant of the slave power, that he was unable to place himself in line with the movement that was destined to destroy slavery. The slave power had more vitality than slavery itself; and after a third of a century its poison still disturbs the politics of the country. The call was made in the forenoon. General Cass sat at a small, plain table, engaged in writing. He was in a large room, from which the furniture, including the carpets, had been removed. He said that he had been kept in Washington by the illness of his daughter, and that upon her improvement he should leave for Michigan. He was dressed in a much worn suit of black—his shirt had seen more than one day’s service—he had not been shaved recently, and his russet-colored wig was on awry. The room had an aspect of desolation, and General Cass appeared like a man for whom life had nothing of interest. As soon as the ceremony of introduction was over, he commenced walking and talking, while the tears ran down his wan and worn cheeks. He gave us an account of his early life, of his residence in Virginia, and then he said:

“I crossed the Ohio with only a dollar in my pocket. I went to Michigan. I was four times Governor of the Territory, and on more than one occasion I was confirmed by the Senate without a single dissenting vote. I have been a Senator, and Minister to France; and I am going home to Michigan to die. If I wanted the office of constable, there isn’t a town in the State that would elect me.”

He reminded me of Cardinal Wolsey, rather than of the Senator, Minister to France, and Secretary of the Department of State that he had been. He spoke of his course in politics, the substance of which was that he had always opposed secession and nullification, although he had maintained the right of the States to hold slaves if they chose to tolerate the institution.

General Cass was the last of the statesmen of the middle period of our history whom it was my fortune to meet. As a whole, and as individuals their fortunes were unenviable. They struggled against the order of things. They accomplished nothing, unless it may be said of them, that they kept the ship afloat. Their memories deserve commiseration, possibly gratitude. No effort of theirs could have secured the abolition of slavery. Any vigorous movement in that direction would have ended in the destruction of the government. From John Adams to Lincoln, only three important measures remain: The acquisition of Louisiana, the acquisition of California, and the Independent Treasury Bill. The war of 1812 was unwise, and in conduct it was weak. The policy of that middle period in regard to paper money, to internal improvements, in regard to the protection of domestic industry, and in regard to slavery has been set aside or overthrown by the better judgment of recent years. Yet so much are statesmen and parties the servants or victims of events, that our opinions should be tolerant of the men who kept the system in motion. Slavery was an inheritance, and time was required for its destruction.

I returned to Massachusetts without waiting for the inauguration.

As I spoke in the convention upon the request of the Republican members of the New York delegation, and as the Representative of the Massachusetts delegation; and as my remarks were not criticized adversely by either party, I reproduce the speech as it was reported by Mr. Chittenden:

SPEECH IN PEACE CONVENTION

I have not been at all clear in my own mind as to when, and to what extent, Massachusetts should raise her voice in this convention. She has heard the voice of Virginia, expressed through her resolutions, in this crisis of our country’s history. Massachusetts hesitated, not because she was unwilling to respond to the call of Virginia, but because she thought her honor touched by the manner of that call and the circumstances attending it. She had taken part in the election of the 6th of November. She knew the result. It accorded well with her wishes. She knew that the government whose political head for the next four years was then chosen was based upon a Constitution which she supposed still had an existence. She saw that State after State had left that government,—seceded is the word used,—had gone out from this great confederacy, and that they were defying the Constitution and the Union.

Charge after charge has been vaguely made against the North. It is attempted here to put the North on trial. I have listened with grave attention to the gentleman from Virginia to-day; but I have heard no specification of these charges. Massachusetts hesitated, I say: she has her own opinions of the Government and the Union. I know Massachusetts; I have been into every one of her more than three hundred towns; I have seen and conversed with her men and her women; and I know there is not a man within her borders who would not to-day gladly lay down his life for the preservation of the Union.

Massachusetts has made war upon slavery wherever she had the right to do it; but, much as she abhors the institution, she would sacrifice everything rather than assail it where she has not the right to assail it.

Can it be denied, gentlemen, that we have elected a President in a legal and constitutional way? It cannot be denied; and yet you tell us, in tones that cannot be misunderstood, that, as a precedent condition of his inauguration, we must give you these guarantees.

Massachusetts hesitated, not because her blood was not stirred, but because she insisted that the government and the inauguration should go on in the manner that would have been observed had Mr. Lincoln been defeated. She felt that she was touched in a tender point when invited here under such circumstances.

It is true, and I confess it frankly, that there are a few men at the North who have not yielded that support to the grand idea upon which this confederated Union stands that they should have yielded; who have been disposed to infringe upon, to attack certain rights which the entire North, with these exceptions, accords to you. But are you of the South free from the like imputations? The John Brown invasion was never justified at the North. If, in the excitement of the time, there were those to be found who did not denounce it as gentlemen think they should, it was because they knew it was a matter wholly outside the Constitution,—that it was a crime to which Virginia would give adequate punishment.

Gentlemen, I believe—yes, I know—that the people of the North are as true to the government and the Union of the States now as our fathers were when they stood shoulder to shoulder upon the field, fighting for the principles upon which that Union rests. If I thought the time had come when it would be fit or proper to consider amendments to the Constitution at all, I believe that we should have no trouble with you, except upon this question of slavery in the Territories. You cannot demand of us at the North anything that we will not grant, unless it involves a sacrifice of our principles. These we shall not sacrifice; these you must not ask us to abandon. I believe, further,—and I speak in all frankness, for I wish to delude no one,—if the Constitution and the Union cannot be preserved and effectually maintained without these new guarantees for slavery, then the Union is not worth preserving.

The people of the North have always submitted to the decisions of the properly constituted powers. This obedience has been unpleasant enough when they thought those powers were exercised for sectional purposes; but it has always been implicitly yielded. I am ready, even now, to go home and say that, by the decision of the Supreme Court, slavery exists in all the Territories of the United States. We submit to the decision, and accept its consequences. But, in view of all the circumstances attending that decision, was it quite fair, was it quite generous, for the gentleman from Maryland to say that. under it, by the adoption of these propositions, the South was giving up everything, the North giving up nothing? Does he suppose the South is yielding the point in relation to any territory which, by any probability, would become slave territory? Something more than the decision of the Supreme Court is necessary to establish slavery anywhere. The decision may give the right to establish it: other influences must control the question of its actual establishment.

I am opposed, further, to any restrictions on the acquisition of territory. They are unnecessary. The time may come when they would be troublesome. We may want the Canadas. The time may come when the Canadas may wish to unite with us. Shall we tie up our hands so that we cannot receive them, or make it forever your interest to oppose their annexation? Such a restriction would be, by the common consent of the people, disregarded.

There are seven States out of the Union already. They have organized what they claim is an independent government. They are not to be coerced back, you say. Are the prospects very favorable that they will return of their own accord? But they will annex territory. They are already looking to Mexico. If left to themselves, they would annex her and all her neighbors, and we should lose our highway to the Pacific coast. They would acquire it, and to us it would be lost forever.

The North will consider well before she consents to this, before she even permits it. Ever since 1820, we have pursued, in this respect, a uniform policy. The North will hesitate long, before, by accepting the condition you propose, she deprives the nation of the valuable privilege, the unquestionable. right, of acquiring new territory in an honorable way.

I have tried to look upon these propositions of the majority of the committee as true measures of pacification. I have listened patiently to all that has been said in their favor. But I am still unconvinced, or, rather, I am convinced that they will do nothing for the Union. They will prove totally inadequate; may perhaps be positively mischievous. The North, the free States, will not adopt them,—will not consent to these new endorsements of an institution which they do not like, which they believe to be injurious to the interests of the republic; and if they did adopt them, as they could only do by a sacrifice of principles which you should not expect, the South would not be satisfied: the slave States would not fail to find pretexts for a course of action upon which I think they have already determined. I see in these propositions anything but true measures of pacification.

But the North will never consent to the separation of the States. If the South persist in the course on which she has entered, we shall march our armies to the Gulf of Mexico, or you will march yours to the Great Lakes. There can be no peaceful separation. There is one way by which war may be avoided, and the Union preserved. It is a plain and a constitutional way. If the slave States will abandon the design which we must infer from the remarks of the gentleman from Virginia they have already formed, will faithfully abide by their constitutional obligations, and remain in the Union until their rights are in fact invaded, all will be well. But, if they take the responsibility of involving the country in a civil war, of breaking up the government which our fathers founded and our people love, but one course remains to those who are true to that government. They must and will defend it at every sacrifice—if necessary, to the sacrifice of their lives.

At the close of the session, and upon the request of my associates upon the commission, I wrote a report to Governor Andrew, which was signed by all the members of the delegation. Governor Andrew submitted the report, with his approval, to the Legislature the 25th day of March.

The character of the convention, and something of the condition of the country may be gathered from the following extracts from the report:

“The resolutions of the State of Virginia were passed on the 19th of January; and it was expected that within sixteen days thereafter the representatives of this vast country would assemble for the purpose of devising, maturing, and recommending alterations in the Constitution of the Republic. As a necessary consequence, the people were not consulted in any of the States. In several, the commissioners were appointed by the executive of each without even an opportunity to confer with the Legislature; in others, the consent of the representative body was secured, but in no instance were the people themselves consulted. The measures proposed were comparatively new; the important ones were innovations upon the established principles of the Government, and none of them had ever been submitted to public scrutiny. They related to the institution of slavery; and the experience of the country justifies the assertion that any proposition for additional securities to slavery under the flag of the nation, must be fully discussed and well understood before its adoption, or it will yield a fearful harvest of woe in dissensions and controversies among the people. Nor could the undersigned have justified the act to themselves, if they had concurred in asking Congress to propose amendments to the Constitution unless they were prepared also to advocate the adoption of the amendments by the people.

“It is due to truth to say that the Convention did not possess all the desirable characteristics of a deliberative assembly. It was in some degree disqualified for the performance of the important task assigned to it, by the circumstances of its constitution, to which reference has already been made. Moreover, there were members who claimed that certain concessions must be granted that the progress of the secession movement might be arrested; and on the other hand there were men who either doubted or denied the wisdom of such concessions.

“The circumstances were extraordinary. Within the preceding ninety days the integrity of the Union had been assailed by the attempt of six States to overthrow its authority; seven other States were disaffected, and some of them had assumed a menacing and even hostile attitude. The political disturbances had been associated with or followed by financial distress.

“The Convention was then a body of men without a recognized and ascertained constituency, called together in an exigency and without preparation, and invited to initiate measures for the amendment of the Constitution in most important particulars, and all at a moment when the public mind was swayed by fears and alarms such as have never before been experienced by the American people.

“In these circumstances the undersigned thought it inexpedient to propose amendments to the Constitution, believing that so important an act should not be initiated and accomplished without the greatest deliberation and care. Nor could the undersigned satisfy themselves that any or all of the proposed amendments would even tend, in any considerable degree, to the preservation of the Union. Although inquiries were repeatedly made, no assurance was given that any proposition of amendment would secure the return of the seceded States; and it was admitted that several of the border States would ultimately unite with the Gulf States, either within or without the limits of the Union, as might be dictated by events yet in the future. Indeed, no proposition was in any degree acceptable to the majority of delegates from the border slave States that did not provide for the extension of slavery to the Territories, and its protection and security therein.”