Condition of the Army and Navy

So, in a frank, generous, kindly manner, did Mr. Lincoln avow his determination to perform the duties of the Chief Executive of the nation, according to his convictions and his ability. He had said in a speech at Trenton, on his way from New York to Philadelphia: "I shall do all that may be in my power to promote a peaceful settlement of all our difficulties. The man does not live who is more devoted to peace than I am--no one who would do more to preserve it; but it may be necessary to put the foot down firmly." The Springfield Journal, published at the home of Mr. Lincoln, and his accredited "organ," had said weeks before: "If South Carolina violates the law [by obstructing the collection of the revenue], then comes the tug of war. The President of the United States, in such an emergency, has a plain duty to perform. Mr. Buchanan may shirk it, or the emergency may not exist during his administration. If not, then the Union will last through his term of office. If the overt act, on the part of South Carolina, takes place on or after the 4th of March, 1861, then the duty of executing the laws will devolve upon Mr. Lincoln." So felt all the loyal people of the land; and they were strengthened by hope, given in the promise of his inaugural address that he should faithfully do his duty.

In that address, the President also declared that he should "endeavor, by justice, to reconcile all discontents;" and he asked the enemies of the Government to point to a single instance where "any right, plainly written in the Constitution," had ever been denied. He then showed the danger of the precedent established by secession, for it might lead to infinite subdivisions by discontented minorities. "Plainly," he said, "the central idea of secession is anarchy." He referred to the impossibility of a dissolution of the Union, physically speaking; and contemplating a state of political separation of the sections, he asked, significantly, "Can treaties be more faithfully enforced among aliens than laws can among friends?" He reminded them that their respective territories must remain "face to face;" that they could not "fight always," and that the causes of feuds would continue to exist. He begged his countrymen to take time for serious deliberation. "Such of you," he said, "as are now dissatisfied, still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the new Administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either. In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of Civil War. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the Government; whilst I shall have the most solemn one to 'preserve, protect, and defend' it."

The Secessionists would listen to no words of kindness, of justice, or of warning; they had resolved to destroy the Union at all hazards; and the prophecy of Thomas H. Benton, uttered in 1857, was speedily fulfilled. He knew their schemes, for they had long tried to enlist him in them. "So long as the people of the North," he said to Senator Wilson, "shall be content to attend to commerce and manufactures, and accept the policy and rule of the disunionists, they will condescend to remain in the Union; but should the Northern people attempt to exercise their just influence in the nation, they would attempt to seize the Government or disrupt the Union; but," he said, with terrible emphasis, "God and their own crimes will put them in the hands of the people."

Mr. Lincoln chose for his constitutional advisers, Wm. H. Seward of New York, Secretary of State; Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, Secretary of the Treasury; Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania, Secretary of War; Gideon Welles of Connecticut, Secretary of the Navy; Caleb Smith of Indiana, Secretary of the Interior; Montgomery Blair of Maryland, Postmaster-General; and Edward Bates of Missouri, Attorney-General. With these men Mr. Lincoln began his eventful administration. With the close of the "Inauguration Ball," the night before these appointments were made, ended the poetry of his life; after that it was all the prose of care, anxiety, and incessant labor incident to the daily life of a conscientious head of a nation in a state of civil war. The plain meaning of his inaugural address was distorted by the Confederates to inflame the minds of the people in the slave-labor States. It was misrepresented and maligned, and the people were bewildered. Meanwhile the President and his cabinet went calmly at work to ascertain the condition of the ship of state. Means were planned for replenishing the exhausted Treasury and to strengthen the public credit. The condition of the Army and Navy was contemplated with great solicitude, for it was evident that the Confederates had resolved on war. Of the twenty forts in the slave-labor States, all but four had been seized by them. Every arsenal there was in their possession. The entire regular force of the Republic, in soldiers, was sixteen thousand men, and these were mostly on the Western frontiers, guarding the settlers against the Indians; and of this small number, General David E. Twiggs had treacherously surrendered between two and three thousand, with munitions of war, into the hands of the Texan insurgents, so early as the middle of February.