In 1864, Amos Kendall published a series of letters denouncing Lincoln. “Our federal Union,” he declared, “is in more danger this day from Abraham Lincoln and the unprincipled and fanatical faction to whom he has surrendered himself, soul and body, than from all other causes combined.”
There are always nuts, and the more violent their rhetoric the less reliable their views may be. What will people in the future say about our own era?
And consider: General Scott, war hero and Commander of the U.S. Army, said of the “wayward sisters…let them go in peace.”
Now surely you know that quote is taken out of context. Scott was writing a memo to the president outlining four possible courses of action: 1) cave in on slavery in hopes of keeping the slave states in the union, 2) non-recognition and blockade, 3) military conquest, 4) let the seceded states go with no effort to resist their demands. It's clear from Scott's language that he didn't think immediate action to retake the South would be wise, but it's not clear which of the other alternatives he favored. Given what he said and wrote on other occasions, it would be wrong to conclude that he favored just letting the slave states have their way.
I don't like to get drawn into these endless Civil War discussions. It's a lot of work researching quotes and their contexts and finding new quotes and facts. But sometimes something falls into one's lap. Here's something I read recently:
Americans remembered Andrew Jackson and his stern treatment of an earlier controversy with South Carolina when Jackson had vigorously rejected South Carolina’s ordinance nullifying the 1832 federal tariff. In this controversy Jackson warned South Carolina that states had no right to invalidate any federal law; he encouraged Congress to pass the Force Bill mobilizing the army, even as he began readying the navy at Norfolk along with three units of artillery to counter South Carolina’s actions. He also established communication with Unionists in the state, sending his own agents to collect tariffs and maintain the presence of the federal government. Buchanan did none of these things. In case Buchanan did not remember this precedent, Winfield Scott, who at the time of the nullification crisis was the commander of federal forces in Charleston harbor, reminded the president in a letter written on December 15, 1860, before the secession of South Carolina. According to Scott,
'Long prior to the force bill, (March 2, 1833,) and prior to the issue of his proclamation, and in part prior to the ordinance of nullification, President Jackson, under the act of March 3, 1807, “authorizing the employment of the land and naval forces,” caused reinforcements to be sent to Fort Moultrie, and a sloop of war, (the Natchez,) with two revenue cutters, to be sent to Charleston, in order, 1, to prevent the seizure of that fort by the nullifiers, and 2, to enforce the execution of the revenue laws. . . . President Jackson familiarly said at that time “that . . . he was not making war on South Carolina; but if South Carolina attacked them, it would be South Carolina that made war on the United States.”'
Even Buchanan’s fellow Democrats from the North were, like his great rival, Illinois senator Stephen Douglas, disgusted with the president. They believed the Militia Acts of 1795 and 1807 authorized the president’s calling out of the militia whenever the laws of the United States could not be sustained by normal police action. -- Jean H. Baker, "The South Has Been Wronged," in James Buchanan and the Coming of the Civil War, John Quist and Michael Birkner, eds.
So there was plenty of precedent and legal support for presidential action against the rebellion. Buchanan didn't want to take action, but Scott fully believed that the president could and should take a stand against secessionism. More from the same article:
By the winter months of December and January, Southerners had taken advantage of Buchanan’s hands-off policy and had begun what he predicted would never happen—their assaults on federal property, not just in South Carolina but throughout the South. Buchanan did not try to block the takeovers of Fort Moultrie and Castle Pinckney in Charleston harbor; nor did he comment on the surrender by a naval officer of the revenue cutter Aiken. He said nothing when, on January 3, 1861, Georgia troops captured Fort Pulaski, and nothing about the successful assaults by Louisiana militia forces on Forts Jackson, St. Phillips, and Pike or the seizure of the New Orleans or Baton Rouge customhouses. Nor did he respond a few days later when Florida militia seized the Pensacola navy yard along with Fort Barrancas and Fort McRae, or in February when secessionists seized the Little Rock arsenal in Arkansas. Perhaps most egregiously, he said nothing when a general of the U.S. Army, David Twiggs, simply surrendered his military units without any struggle to a local militia before Texas had even seceded. Most of these aggressive actions were prompted by the false statements and threatening propaganda, fostered by Southern governors, that the United States was about to send federal reinforcements.
For example, Governor Joseph Brown of Georgia ordered a local colonel in charge of 125 state volunteers to seize Fort Pulaski and to retain it until the Georgia convention “decided” on secession. In most cases there was no opposition from federal forces, and nearly all of these actions occurred extralegally, even before the states had seceded. The results would be devastating when the Civil War came. According to William Freehling, “some 75,000 stands of arms had been confiscated from U.S. forts and arsenals” in December and January.13 By any rendering, through his inactivity the president of the United States had become an activist, allowing arms to be delivered into the hands of the future enemies of the United States.
Although General Winfield Scott had twice recommended to the president the immediate garrisoning of these forts to deter any attempt to take them over and to make any effort “by surprise or coup de main ridiculous,” Buchanan had not agreed. Indeed, Scott, in an addendum to his “Views” written in October 1860, responded to the argument that there were no available troops by locating five specific regiments that could immediately be deployed
So state governments were seizing federal property before secession resolutions had been voted, and sometimes before secession conventions had even met. Those who want to argue that federal property somehow automatically became state property once secession was voted have to face the fact that rebel leaders were seizing property even before secession had been voted -- in an even more obvious breach of the law -- and Scott felt the federal government could legally take action against such expropriations.
When you have a major crisis, leaders are improvising. They're trying to figure out what their options are. Some options are lost as time goes one. New options may open up. Or the crisis actors may find them supporting moves that they didn't initially favor. You can't just pick one quote and say it reflects what they thought throughout the crisis - at its beginning, at the end, and in the middle of everything. Especially not your quote from General Scott, which was taken out of context.
“So state governments were seizing federal property before secession resolutions had been voted, and sometimes before secession conventions had even met. Those who want to argue that federal property somehow automatically became state property once secession was voted have to face the fact that rebel leaders were seizing property even before secession had been voted — in an even more obvious breach of the law . . .”
To that I would say this: When you have a major crisis, leaders are improvising. They’re trying to figure out what their options are. Some options are lost as time goes on. New options may open up. Or the crisis actors may find them supporting moves that they didn’t initially favor. That may have very well have happened in the South at times. I would be surprised if it didn’t.
Regardless, you took a lot of time to make a reasoned argument and supported your point of view with appropriate historical documents. I appreciate that. Thank you.
And this brings me to observe that the election of any one of our fellow-citizens to the office of President does not of itself afford just cause for dissolving the Union. This is more especially true if his election has been effected by a mere plurality, and not a majority of the people, and has resulted from transient and temporary causes, which may probably never again occur. In order to justify a resort to revolutionary resistance, the Federal Government must be guilty of "a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise" of powers not granted by the Constitution.
The late Presidential election, however, has been held in strict conformity with its express provisions. How, then, can the result justify a revolution to destroy this very Constitution? Reason, justice, a regard for the Constitution, all require that we shall wait for some overt and dangerous act on the part of the President elect before resorting to such a remedy. It is said, however, that the antecedents of the President-elect have been sufficient to justify the fears of the South that he will attempt to invade their constitutional rights. But are such apprehensions of contingent danger in the future sufficient to justify the immediate destruction of the noblest system of government ever devised by mortals? From the very nature of his office and its high responsibilities he must necessarily be conservative. The stern duty of administering the vast and complicated concerns of this Government affords in itself a guaranty that he will not attempt any violation of a clear constitutional right.
After all, he is no more than the chief executive officer of the Government. His province is not to make but to execute the laws. And it is a remarkable fact in our history that, notwithstanding the repeated efforts of the antislavery party, no single act has ever passed Congress, unless we may possibly except the Missouri compromise, impairing in the slightest degree the rights of the South to their property in slaves; and it may also be observed, judging from present indications, that no probability exists of the passage of such an act by a majority of both Houses, either in the present or the next Congress. Surely under these circumstances we ought to be restrained from present action by the precept of Him who spake as man never spoke, that "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." The day of evil may never come unless we shall rashly bring it upon ourselves.
It is alleged as one cause for immediate secession that the Southern States are denied equal rights with the other States in the common Territories. But by what authority are these denied? Not by Congress, which has never passed, and I believe never will pass, any act to exclude slavery from these Territories; and certainly not by the Supreme Court, which has solemnly decided that slaves are property, and, like all other property, their owners have a right to take them into the common Territories and hold them there under the protection of the Constitution.
State of the Union Address: James Buchanan (December 3, 1860)