Memories of the Ford Administration (44 page)

Next morning, the 28th, brought the Carolina Commissioners: Barnwell, Orr, and J. H. Adams.
Men of parts
, says Nevins.
They had a natural sense of their dignity in representing a new republic, and came not to sue for terms but to treat as equals
. Buchanan told them, “I receive you as private gentlemen of the highest character, and not as diplomatic agents. As I stated unmistakably in my message of December 3rd, Congress
alone has the authority to decide what shall be the relations between South Carolina and the federal government.”

Former Governor James Hopkins Adams was the most extreme of the three: an old nullifier and ardent proponent of reviving the African slave trade, he owned one hundred ninety-two slaves on his cotton plantation in lower Richland County. He struck a note of high formality. “We have the honor, Mr. President, to transmit to you a copy of the ordinance of secession by which the state of South Carolina has resumed the powers she once delegated to the government of the United States.”

“A well-worded document, no doubt,” Buchanan said, but did not reach out his hand to accept it. Seated at his little walnut desk, while the commissioners stood, he was struck by the pendulous motion of Adams’s watch fob, a chain leading into the pocket of his dove-gray vest and swinging in sympathy with the motions of his diaphragm as he spoke.

It was Orr’s turn to speak. Buchanan liked James Lawrence Orr: a sound man. Like Buchanan himself, he had worked in his father’s store and then turned lawyer; a former Speaker of the House, Orr knew the North’s case better than most Southerners, and as recently as this past April had argued for the Union at his state’s Democratic convention. Campaigning for the Senate in 1858, he had dared quote Daniel Webster on nullification, and been defeated for it. But now the secessionist tide was carrying him along. He stated, “Mr. President, in this very office, little more than a fortnight ago, you made a solemn pledge, as a gentleman, to maintain the
status quo
in Charleston Harbor. Major Anderson has violated that pledge, and unless restitution is made, a bloody issue is most probable.”

The President permitted himself a wintry smile, and cocked
his head to bring the other’s large, flushed face into focus. “But, Mr. Orr, word has just arrived that the troops of Governor Pickens have now seized Castle Pinckney and Fort Moultrie, not to mention the post office and the customhouse. How can we order Major Anderson back, when the place to which he would return has been occupied by force?” Buchanan waited briefly for their reply, while contemplating their three vests. These men had been his friends and political allies a few weeks ago, solid congenial men with whom, save for a few trifling matters such as the sacred status of slavery, he had no disagreements. It now seemed that that had been an illusion. These men were willing to sink his Presidency and douse Anderson and his troops in blood. These groomed and well-stuffed bellies, these bulging vests and starched shirtfronts were hollow: there was nothing in there; nothing had ever been there but self-interest and expediency. The President added, in the face of their momentarily baffled silence, “I ask my question in a rhetorical sense merely, for it is not my office, nor my purpose, to negotiate with you. Only Congress can negotiate.”

Barnwell, a Harvard graduate who had been President of the South Carolina College as well as Representative and Senator, bore down with a pedantic relentlessness. “Mr. Buchanan, sir, we came here as the representatives of an authority which could at any time within the past sixty days have taken possession of the forts, but which, upon pledges given in a manner that we cannot doubt, determined to trust to your honor rather than to its own power. We urge upon you the immediate withdrawal of all the troops from the harbor of Charleston. They constitute a standing menace; their presence poisons negotiations that should be settled with temperance and judgment. Remove
them, Mr. President, to safeguard your own honor, and the welfare of the people who still accept your governance.”

“My honor is not at issue,” Buchanan said curtly. “I made no pledge; I distinctly recall stating that the President could not be bound by any proviso.”

Barnwell insisted, “But, Mr. President, your personal honor
is
involved in this matter; the faith you pledged has been violated; and your personal honor requires you to issue the order. Withdrawal or war, sir. Choose. Withdrawal or war.”

Buchanan then said, so memorably that Orr recounted it word for word in a letter written on September 17, 1871, “Mr. Barnwell, you are pressing me too importunely; you don’t give me time to consider; you don’t give me time to say my prayers. I always say my prayers when required to act upon any great state affair.”

In truth, history testifies, the three Commissioners had been badgering Buchanan for two hours. There is real time and narrative time; if they were not different, it would take as long to tell a man’s life as to live it.

Perhaps it was this troubled day, or the day before, that Buchanan had the agitated conversation with Senator Robert Toombs reported in Trescot’s
Narrative
. Trescot reports it but provides as clue to the exact day only this opening remark by Toombs: “I
am aware Mr President
”
said T
“
that the Cabinet is in session and that today is the annual dinner to the Supreme Court and that you have scarcely time to see me
.” It would take a trip to Washington City, I fear, and the dampest dimmest depths of the Library of Congress, to ferret out the date of that Supreme Court dinner. [
Retrospect
eds.: Will make trip, if expenses covered. Just airfare and modest hotel—will pay for own meals and incidentals.] Toombs continued, “
But while I
apologize for the intrusion, it is an evidence what importance I attach to the interview. I would ask Mr President whether you have decided upon your course as to Fort Sumter?
” [Italics indicate exact transcription of Trescot’s telegraphic style.]

“No Sir, I have not decided. The Cabinet is now in session upon that very subject.”

“I thank you Sir for the information that is all I wanted to know,” said T. retiring
.

“But Mr T. why do you ask?”

“Because Sir my State has a deep interest in the decision.”

“How your State—what is it to Georgia whether a fort in Charleston harbour is abandoned?”

“Sir the cause of Charleston is the cause of the South.”

“Good God Mr Toombs do you mean that I am in the midst of a revolution?”

“Yes Sir—more than that—you have been there for a year and have not yet found it out” and he retired
. [According to Trescot, whom Nevins admires uncritically, calling him
the honest Trescot
and asserting of this secessionist Alger Hiss that
Few men had quicker insight than Trescot
,]
When the President returned to the Cabinet he seemed very much excited and said
, “
Gentlemen I really begin to believe that this is revolution
.”

The Cabinet meeting of the evening of the 28th, a Friday, found Floyd, still ill, stretched out on a sofa between the windows of the Cabinet Room. The spotlight shifts to the other major Southerner, Jacob Thompson, as he argues soothingly, “Mr. President, South Carolina is a tiny state, with a sparse white population. The United States are a powerful nation with a vigorous government. This great nation can well afford to say to South Carolina, ‘See, we will withdraw our garrison as an evidence that we mean you no harm.’ ”

Stanton—that pharaonically bearded pepperpot, that fiery Laertes duelling Buchanan’s white-haired Hamlet!—expostulated, “Mr. President, the proposal to be generous implies that the government is strong, and that we, as the public servants, have the confidence of the people. I think that is a mistake. No administration has ever suffered the loss of public confidence and support as this has done. Only the other day it was announced that a million of dollars has been stolen from Mr. Thompson’s department. The bonds were found to have been taken from the vault where they should have been kept, and the notes of Mr. Floyd were substituted for them. Now it is proposed to give up Sumter. All I have to say is that no administration, much less this one, can afford to lose a million of money and a fort in the same week!”
^h

Stanton’s account, which has become history, claims that Floyd made no reply in his own defense. It seems unlikely—it contravenes all dramatic principles—that Floyd did not arise from his couch of infirmity and protest, with suitable broad gestures, “Mr. President, this attorney has shared our counsels a few brief days and he presumes to sit in judgment upon those of us loyal to you and this administration for four years! The truth of the matter of these acceptances is that, had I not signed them, our troops, through the negligence of Congress, would have been left unequipped in the wilderness of Utah! Not a dollar has been lost to the government through my department; the malfeasances of the Yankee contractor Russell and Mr. Thompson’s appointee Bailey leave my honor untouched. And furthermore, to substantiate my loyalty, let me confide to you that, on Christmas Day, I was approached by a Senator from a state of the same latitude as Mr. Thompson’s, and wherein disunionist views are likewise proclaimed in public daily; this Senator, I swear, invited me to join a conspiracy, sir, to kidnap
you
, and to place Mr. Breckinridge in the Presidential chair!” Smiling wanly at the sensation his words produced at the Cabinet table, the ailing, impugned, yet persistently aristocratic Virginian made a curt bow in Buchanan’s direction and went on, “Of course, I indignantly refused; and from that same store of righteous indignation I hereby state that I cannot countenance your violation of solemn pledges respecting Fort Sumter!”

And then Black, that
emotional and sharp Scotch-Irish son of
thunder from Pennsylvania’s mountainous Somerset
according to Nichols, must have leaped up, and, with an ironical small bow echoing Floyd’s, asked, “May we hope, Governor Floyd, to construe this lack of countenance, with its imputations of grave disrespect, as the long-delayed fulfillment of our expectations that you resign the post you have administered with such notorious incompetence?”

Stanton, his lipless mouth clamping on his words like a nutcracker, his eye sockets filling, now one and now the other, with blind ovals of reflected gaslight, would very likely have ringingly seconded: “You say incompetence; I say, with half the nation, treachery!”

In the event, on the next day, the 29th, Buchanan received a letter of resignation from Floyd. It read,
Our refusal, or even delay, to place affairs back as they stood under our agreement, invites collision, and must inevitably inaugurate civil war in our land. I can not consent to be the agent of such a calamity
.

I deeply regret to feel myself under the necessity of tendering to you my resignation as Secretary of War, because I can no longer hold it, under my convictions of patriotism, nor with honor, subjected as I am to the violation of solemn pledges and plighted faith
.

With the highest personal regard, I am most truly yours
.

When loved ones kiss us off, the question arises, did they ever love us? Or has it all been illusion and cool scheming? That blow job in the hotel. That panicked mating, once, right in her back yard, on the damp grass, ejaculation and absorption, while the girls waited to be tucked into bed with prayers, their docilely glowing windows rectangling the lawn. The voluptuousness of Buchanan’s prayers. The floor of things: the worse things get, God draws closer, a sublime absence we conjure from the void, from beneath the floor. JB’s
jouissance,
praying. Events, and the Buddhist something that is not-event. Work this in? [Among my working notes as of late 1976.]

That day Buchanan also received, as requested, the written statement of the South Carolina Commissioners—lost, alas, to history—and presented it, with a draft of his proposed reply, at a meeting of the Cabinet that evening.

Stanton brandished the papers in question and declaimed, “These gentlemen claim to be Ambassadors. It is preposterous! They cannot be Ambassadors; they are lawbreakers, traitors. They should be arrested. You cannot negotiate with them; and yet it seems by this paper that you have been led into doing that very thing. With all respect to you, Mr. President, I must say that the Attorney General, under his oath of office, dares not be cognizant of the pending proceedings. Your reply to these so-called Ambassadors must not be transmitted as the reply of the President. It is wholly unlawful and improper; its language is unguarded and to send it as an official document will bring the President to the verge of usurpation!”

Nevins has the grace to footnote this piece of oratory with the sly demur,
This quotation has the ring of truth even if not literally accurate
.

The ring of truth, too, attaches to Buchanan’s placating answer: “I will allow the urgency of the days, Mr. Stanton, to excuse the heat of your words. I hold out to the Commissioners merely the hope of submitting a proposal from them to the Congress. If they will retreat from Moultrie, and guarantee our federal property immunity for the rest of our administration, I see no harm in considering the restoration of Major Anderson to where he was five days ago.”

Thompson, now the last of the original Southern members
of the Cabinet,
^k
asserted, “The subject for consideration, Mr. President, is the removal of Major Anderson from Charleston Harbor entirely. I urge it upon you as the only sane and magnanimous course.”

“For such magnanimity,” piped up Stanton, “they carve gallows timber!”

When the flurry of shouts died down, Black said soothingly, of Buchanan’s proposed response to the Commissioners, “Mr. President, the language of this paper is self-incriminatory. It appears to concede the right of negotiation, when the ownership of federal forts is beyond negotiation. It implies that
Major Anderson might be at fault in regard to a pledge made by you, when any such pledge or bargain should be flatly denied.”