Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

by James M. McPherson

Seldom in history has a counterrevolution so quickly provoked the very revolution it sought to pre-empt. This happened because most northerners refused to condone disunion. On that matter, if on little else, the outgoing and incoming presidents of the United States agreed.

on December 3, 1860, James Buchanan surprised some of his southern allies with a firm denial of the right of secession. The Union was not “a mere voluntary association of States, to be dissolved at pleasure by any one of the contracting parties,” said Buchanan. “We the People” had adopted the Constitution to form “a more perfect Union” than the one existing under the Articles of Confederation, which had stated that “the Union shall be perpetual.” The framers of the national government “never intended to implant in its bosom the seeds of its own destruction, nor were they guilty of the absurdity of providing for its own dissolution.”

Revolution was “a moral right, when exercised for a morally justifiable cause,” wrote Lincoln. But “when exercised without such a cause revolution is no right, but simply a wicked exercise of physical power.” The South had no just cause. The event that precipitated secession was the election of a president by a constitutional majority. The “central idea” of the Union cause, said Lincoln, “is the necessity of proving that popular government is not an absurdity. We must settle this question now, whether in a free government the minority have the right to break up the government whenever they choose.”

During the four-month interval between Lincoln’s election and inauguration, Buchanan had the executive power but felt little responsibility for the crisis, while Lincoln had responsibility but little power. The Congress elected in 1860 would not meet in regular session for thirteen months, while the Congress that did meet in December 1860 experienced an erosion of authority as members from the lower South resigned when their states seceded. Buchanan’s forceful denial of the legality of disunion ended with a lame confession of impotence to do anything about it.

Instead, a rather vague fourth alternative emerged—described as “masterly inactivity” or a “Fabian policy"—a position of watchful waiting, of making no major concessions but at the same time avoiding needless provocation, in the hope that the disunion fever would run its course and the presumed legions of southern unionists would bring the South back to its senses.

And how would customs duties be collected at southern ports? Whose customhouses were they—American or Confederate? In the nullification crisis of 1832, Andrew Jackson had vowed to use force to collect duties in South Carolina and to hang the nullification leaders. “Oh, for one hour of Jackson!” exclaimed many Yankee Republicans who developed a sudden retrospective affection for this Tennessee Democrat.

Lincoln seemed to agree. In December 1860 he told his private secretary that the very existence of government “implies the legal power, right, and duty . . . of a President to execute the laws and maintain the existing government.” Lincoln quietly passed word to General-in-Chief Winfield Scott to make ready to collect the customs and defend federal forts in seceded states, or to retake them if they had been given up before his inauguration.

In any event the whole question was hypothetical until March 4, for Buchanan intended no “coercion.” And even if he had, the resources were pitifully inadequate. Most of the tiny 16,000-man army was scattered over two thousand miles of frontier, while most of the navy’s ships were patrolling distant waters or laid up for repair. The strongest armed forces during the winter of 1860–61 were the militias of seceding states.

Buchanan’s message to Congress set the agenda for these efforts. He first blamed the North in general and Republicans in particular for “the incessant and violent agitation of the slavery question” which had now “produced its natural effects” by provoking disunion. Because of Republicans, said the president, “many a matron throughout the South retires at night in dread of what may befall herself and children before morning.” Buchanan stopped short of asking the Republican party to dissolve; instead he asked northerners to stop criticizing slavery, repeal their “unconstitutional and obnoxious” personal liberty laws, obey the fugitive slave law, and join with the South to adopt a constitutional amendment protecting slavery in all territories.

Although few of the compromise proposals introduced in Congress went so far as Buchanan’s, they all shared the same feature: Republicans would have to make all the concessions.

The very notion of a territorial compromise, Lincoln pointed out, “acknowledges that slavery has equal rights with liberty, and surrenders all we have contended for. . . . We have just carried an election on principles fairly stated to the people. Now we are told in advance, the government shall be broken up, unless we surrender to those we have beaten. . . . If we surrender, it is the end of us. They will repeat the experiment upon us ad libitum. A year will not pass, till we’ shall have to take Cuba as a condition upon which they will stay in the Union.”

Did this mean that Republicans killed the last, best hope to avert disunion? Probably not. Neither Crittenden’s nor any other compromise could have stopped secession in the lower South. No compromise could undo the event that triggered disunion: Lincoln’s election by a solid North.

Delegates from seven states who met in Montgomery on February 4, 1861, to organize a new nation paid no attention to the compromise efforts in Washington.

By February 1861 the main goal of compromise maneuvers was to keep the other eight from going out. The legislatures of five of these states had enacted provisions for the calling of conventions.49 But thereafter the resemblance to events below the 35th parallel ceased. Voters in Virginia, Arkansas, and Missouri elected a majority of unionists to their conventions. Voters in North Carolina and Tennessee, given the choice of voting for or against the holding of a convention, voted against doing so.

The main reason for this outcome was the lesser salience of slavery in the upper South. Slaves constituted 47 percent of the population in the Confederate states but only 24 percent in the upper South; 37 percent of the white families in Confederate states owned slaves compared with 20 percent of the families in the upper South.

But much of that unionism was highly conditional. The condition was northern forbearance from any attempt to “coerce” Confederate states. The Tennessee legislature resolved that its citizens “will as one man, resist [any] invasion of the soil of the South

Next day the House adopted a proposed Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing slavery in the states against any future interference by the federal government. This was too much for three-fifths of the Republicans to swallow, but the two-fifths who did vote for it in both House and Senate gave this Amendment the bare two-thirds majority needed to send it to the states for ratification. Before that process got anywhere, however, other matters intervened to produce four years later a Thirteenth Amendment that abolished slavery.

Befitting the new Confederacy’s claim to represent the true principles of the U. S. Constitution which the North had trampled upon, most of the provisional constitution was copied verbatim from that venerable document. The same was true of the permanent Confederate Constitution, adopted a month later, though some of its departures from the original were significant. The preamble omitted the general welfare clause and the phrase “a more perfect Union,” and added a clause after We the People: “each State acting in its sovereign and independent character.” Instead of the U. S. Constitution’s evasions on slavery (“persons held to service or labor”), the Confederate version called a slave a slave. It guaranteed the protection of bondage in any new territory the Confederacy might acquire. The Constitution did forbid the importation of slaves from abroad, to avoid alienating Britain and especially the upper South, whose economy benefitted from its monopoly on export of slaves to the lower South.

Another clause forbade government aid for internal improvements. The Constitution also nurtured state’s rights by empowering legislatures to impeach Confederate officials whose duties lay wholly within a state.

Since the new Confederacy—containing scarcely 10 percent of the country’s white population and 5 percent of its industrial capacity—desperately needed the allegiance of the upper South, Yancey and Rhett were ruled out.

Austere, able, experienced in government as a senator and former secretary of war, a Democrat and a secessionist but no fire-eater, Davis was the ideal candidate. Though he had not sought the job and did not really want it, the delegates elected him unanimously on February 9.

So said a genial William L. Yancey as he introduced Jefferson Davis to a cheering crowd in Montgomery on February 16. It was on this occasion that “Dixie” began its career as the unofficial Confederate anthem. Perhaps inspired by the music, Davis made a brief, bellicose speech.

Putting together a cabinet gave Lincoln no end of trouble.

Lincoln had to satisfy all of these interests with his seven cabinet appointments, which would also indicate the direction of his policy toward the South.58 With an aplomb unparalleled in American political history, the president-elect appointed his four main rivals for the nomination to cabinet posts.

This tour may have been a mistake in two respects. Not wishing by a careless remark or slip of the tongue to inflame the crisis further, Lincoln often indulged in platitudes and trivia in his attempts to say nothing controversial. This produced an unfavorable impression on those who were already disposed to regard the ungainly president-elect as a commonplace prairie lawyer. Second, Lincoln’s mail and the national press had for weeks been full of threats and rumors of assassination. A public journey of this sort with all stops announced in advance greatly increased the risk of violence.

An assassination plot probably did exist; the danger was real. But Lincoln thereafter regretted the decision to creep into Washington “like a thief in the night.”

While he had been composing it, seven states were not only seceding but were also seizing federal property within their borders—customshouses, arsenals, mints, and forts.

Fort Sumter had become a commanding symbol of national sovereignty in the very cradle of secession, a symbol that the Confederate government could not tolerate if it wished its own sovereignty to be recognized by the world.

Montgomery Blair alone wanted to hold on to the fort whatever the risk. He believed that instead of encouraging southern unionists, surrender would discourage them. Only “measures which will inspire respect for the power of the Government and the firmness of those who administer it” could sustain them, said Blair. To give up the fort meant giving up the Union.71 Lincoln was inclined to think so, too.

Whether or not influenced by Seward (as most cabinet members assumed), Scott’s politically motivated recommendation rendered suspect his initial opinion that reinforcement of Sumter was impossible. The cabinet reversed its vote of two weeks earlier. Four of the six members (Caleb Smith still went along with Seward; Cameron was absent) now favored resupply of Sumter.

To recoup his position Seward acted boldly—and egregiously. He intervened in the Fort Pickens reinforcement and managed to divert the strongest available warship from the Sumter expedition, with unfortunate consequences. Then on April 1 he sent an extraordinary proposal to Lincoln. In mystifying fashion, Seward suggested that to abandon Sumter and hold Pickens would change the issue from slavery to Union. Beyond that, the secretary of state would “demand explanations” from Spain and France for their meddling in Santo Domingo and Mexico, and declare war if their explanations were unsatisfactory. Presumably this would reunite the country against a foreign foe.

Lincoln’s astonishment when he read this note can well be imagined. Not wanting to humiliate Seward or lose his services, however, the president mentioned the matter to no one and wrote a polite but firm reply the same day. He had pledged to hold, occupy and possess federal property, Lincoln reminded his secretary of state, and he could not see how holding Sumter was any more a matter of slavery or less a matter of Union than holding Pickens.

Instead of trying to shoot its way into the harbor, the task force would first attempt only to carry supplies to Anderson. Warships and soldiers would stand by for action but if Confederate batteries did not fire on the supply boats they would not fire back, and the reinforcements would remain on shipboard. Lincoln would notify Governor Pickens in advance of the government’s peaceful intention to send in provisions only. If Confederates opened fire on the unarmed boats carrying “food for hungry men,” the South would stand convicted of an aggressive act. On its shoulders would rest the blame for starting a war.

If southerners allowed the supplies to go through, peace and the status quo at Sumter could be preserved and the Union government would have won an important symbolic victory. Lincoln’s new conception of the resupply undertaking was a stroke of genius. In effect he was telling Jefferson Davis, “Heads I win, Tails you lose.” It was the first sign of the mastery that would mark Lincoln’s presidency.

This news galvanized the North. On April 15 Lincoln issued a proclamation calling 75,000 militiamen into national service for ninety days to put down an insurrection “too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.” The response from free states was overwhelming. War meetings in every city and village cheered the flag and vowed vengeance on traitors.

In New York City, previously a nursery of pro-southern sentiment, a quarter of a million people turned out for a Union rally. “The change in public sentiment here is wonderful—almost miraculous,” wrote a New York merchant on April

Democrats joined in the eagle-scream of patriotic fury. Stephen Douglas paid a well-publicized national unity call to the White House and then traveled home to Chicago, where he told a huge crowd: “There are only two sides to the question. Every man must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war, only patriots—or traitors.” A month later Douglas was dead—a victim probably of cirrhosis of the liver—but for a year or more his war spirit lived on among most Democrats.

These eight states contained most of the South’s resources for waging war: more than half of its population, two-thirds of its white population, three-quarters of its industrial capacity, half of its horses and mules, three-fifths of its livestock and food crops. In addition, men of high potential as military leaders hailed from these states: Robert E. Lee, Thomas J. Jackson, Joseph E. Johnston, James E. B. Stuart, and Ambrose Powell Hill of Virginia; Daniel H. Hill of North Carolina; Albert Sidney Johnston and John Bell Hood of Kentucky; Nathan Bedford Forrest of Tennessee.

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Virginia brought crucial resources to the Confederacy. Her population was the South’s largest. Her industrial capacity was nearly as great as that of the seven original Confederate states combined. The Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond was the only plant in the South capable of manufacturing heavy ordnance. Virginia’s heritage from the generation of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison gave her immense prestige that was expected to attract the rest of the upper South to the Confederacy. And as events turned out, perhaps the greatest asset that Virginia brought to the cause of southern independence was Robert E. Lee.

General-in-Chief Winfield Scott considered Lee the best officer in the army. In April, Scott urged Lincoln to offer Lee field command of the newly levied Union army. As a fellow Virginian Scott hoped that Lee, like himself, would remain loyal to the service to which he had devoted his life. Lee had made clear his dislike of slavery, which he described in 1856 as “a moral and political evil.” Until the day Virginia left the Union he had also spoken against secession.

Scores of southern officers, however, like Scott remained loyal to nation rather than section. Some of them played key roles in the eventual triumph of nation over section: Virginian George H. Thomas, who saved the Union Army of the Cumberland at Chickamauga and destroyed the Confederate Army of Tennessee at Nashville; Tennessean David G. Farragut, who captured New Orleans and damned the torpedoes at Mobile Bay; North Carolinian John Gibbon, who became one of the best division commanders in the Army of the Potomac while three of his brothers fought for the South.

New Jersey’s Samuel Cooper, who married a Virginian and became adjutant general in the Confederate army; Pennsylvanian John Pemberton, who also married a Virginia woman and rose to command of the Army of Mississippi, which he surrendered to Grant at Vicksburg; and Josiah Gorgas, also of Pennsylvania, who married the daughter of an Alabama governor, became chief of ordnance for the Confederacy, where he created miracles of improvisation and instant industrialization to keep Confederate armies supplied with arms and ammunition.

The voters in 35 Virginia counties with a slave population of only 2.5 percent opposed secession by a margin of three to one, while voters in the remainder of the state, where slaves constituted 36 percent of the population, supported secession by more than ten to one. The thirty counties of east Tennessee that rejected secession by more than two to one contained a slave population of only 8 percent, while the rest of the state, with a slave population of 30 percent, voted for secession by a margin of seven to one.

In the four border states the proportion of slaves and slaveowners was less than half what it was in the eleven states that seceded. But the triumph of unionism in these states was not easy and the outcome (except in Delaware) by no means certain. Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri contained large and resolute secessionist minorities.

Much was at stake in this contest. The three states would have added 45 percent to the white population and military manpower of the Confederacy, 80 percent to its manufacturing capacity, and nearly 40 percent to its supply of horses and mules. For almost five hundred miles the Ohio river flows along the northern border of Kentucky, providing a defensive barrier or an avenue of invasion, depending on which side could control and fortify it. Two of the Ohio’s navigable tributaries, the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers, penetrate through Kentucky into the heart of Tennessee and northern Alabama. Little wonder that Lincoln was reported to have said that while he hoped to have God on his side, he must have Kentucky.

Maryland was even more immediately crucial, for the state enclosed Washington on three sides (with Virginia on the fourth) and its allegiance could determine the capital’s fate at the outset of the war.

To prevent more northern regiments from entering Baltimore, the mayor and the chief of police, with the reluctant approval of Governor Hicks, ordered the destruction of bridges on the railroads from Philadelphia and Harrisburg. Secessionists also tore down telegraph lines from Washington through Maryland. The national capital was cut off from the North. For several days, rumors were the only form of information reaching Washington. They grew to alarming proportions.

But next day a troop train carrying the crack New York 7th puffed into Washington, followed by more trains bearing additional regiments from northeastern states. They had arrived over a circuitous route via Annapolis under the command of Benjamin F. Butler, who thereby achieved one of the few military successes of his contentious career.

Union officials nonetheless continued to worry about underground Confederate activities in Baltimore. Army officers overreacted by arresting a number of suspected secessionists and imprisoning them in Fort McHenry. One of those arrested was a grandson of Francis Scott Key,