February 5, 1861; The New York Herald
We publish in another column a strong and significant address from Senators Slidell and Benjamin, and other Congressional representatives of Louisiana to the Convention of that State which decreed its secession from the United States, strongly urging an immediate co-operation with South Carolina, and approving of the seizure of the forts and arsenals at New Orleans, which they had urged. The Louisiana representatives were previously in favor of submitting to the authority of the federal government until the 3d of March; but we learn from their address to the convention that they were led to counsel immediate secession in consequence of the military movements at Washington, which have been set on foot by the rumors of an intended attack on the national capital to prevent the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln. They say that Gen. Scott is well known to have submitted to the President a plan of a campaign on a gigantic scale for the subjugation of the seceding States, the initiation of movements for garrisoning all the Southern forts and arsenals, with a view of employing them, not for the beneficent purposes for which they were intended – our defence against a foreign foe – But for intimidation and coercion.
It is true that serious fears have been entertained of an attempt to prevent the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, and perhaps to seized up the federal capital by armed bands from the border slave States of Virginia and Maryland, aided by volunteers from the neighboring slave States, and that in consequence of these reports Gen. Scott has been concentrating troops, artillery and munitions of war at Washington.
We learn also that the United States troops in the Northern States are being rapidly put upon a war footing. At the laboratories destructive pyrotechnics, with balls and cartridges, are being prepared. Large contracts for ambulances and field litters have been given out by the War Department. Within the past week five hundred additional troops have arrived in Washington, forming an aggregate of about one thousand men, with five batteries of light artillery – a quota sufficient for an army of five thousand men. General Scott has also ordered large supples of ammunition to be sent to Fort McHenry.
In the Northern navy yards no less activity prevails. The equipment of vessels of light draught is being pushed with energy, so as to have ready in a short time a coast guard to cruise in the southern waters.
The steamer Water Witch is already under orders to be fitted out at Philadelphia; the steam gunboat Pawnee, also at the same place; the Harriet Lane, at this port; the brig Perry is now being speedily prepared at Brooklyn; the brigs Dolphin and Bainbridge are approaching readiness at Norfolk and Boston, and the steam gunboats Crusader, Wyandot and Mohawk, now in the Gulf, can all be concentrated in a few days.
These preparations, and especially those so actively and quietly prosecuted under General Scott’s orders, aided in this city by his son in law, Col. Scott, look warlike. The latter is actively superintending operations here. Recruiting is in active progress. There are on Governor’s sand Dedloe’s Islands at this time 600 troops, chiefly recruits, who are being actively drilled.
These movements have not passed unobserved by people in Virginia and Maryland, some of whom have charged that the concentration of the warlike arrangements at Washington is to form the basis of a coercive army, with the view of overaweing those two States, and thus prevent their withdrawal and keep them in the Union.
Military men consider that the present force of regular troops now in Washington is quite ample to repel 10,000 irregular troops had such a number designed to prevent Lincoln’s inauguration. Gen. Scott continues to order troops and munitions of war to Washington, and to concentrate others at New York, and other convenient places. The Corps of Engineers have been removed from West Point to Washington, a measure not resorted to except in case the country is engaged in war. The garrison at that place has been left without a regular soldier, a thing which, it is said, has not previously occurred since its establishment.
Now, it is manifest that if the two sections of the country separate peaceably, and form two distinct confederacies, there will be no necessity for coercion, and no need of an increased military organization; but if there be any good grounds for the news relative to a conspiracy to seized upon the national capital by an armed force, on or previous to the 4th of March, it is quite proper that precautionary measures should be taken to prevent it. Mr. Lincoln has been constitutionally elected President of the United States, and he should be constitutionally inaugurated at Washington, the capital of the republic. The President, the Secretary of War, and General Scott, the acting Commander in Chief of the Army, are perfectly right, of course, in resolving that he shall be so inaugurated. Any attempt to prevent it by an armed mob, or any other body, we have no doubt would be frowned down by the conservative people of the South and the North alike: but if there be any fears that such an outrage may be committed, it is clearly the duty of the Executive, the War Department and General Scott to be prepared to resist it, by the addition of any number of men that may be deemed necessary, and if five thousand men are not sufficient, by all means let then have ten thousand.
If, however, the intimations of Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward that a coercive policy is to be pursued by the new administration should be accepted as a fact, and if the idea so forcibly embodied in this manifesto of Messrs. Slidell and Benjamin – that these military movement are the precursors of a gigantic plan to subjugate the seceding States – should gain ground in the border slave States and the south generally, then the worst fate predicted for the country will have befallen us – a devastating civil war. It is unnecessary to say that the inauguration of such a policy would be stubbornly resisted in the North as well as in the South; for there would be two parties in the North widely divided upon that question. As to the propriety of insuring the peaceful inauguration of the new President in the federal capital, there may be but one statement; but a plan to subjugate the South is a very different question.