January 17, 1861, The New York Herald
Our Washington despatches on Tuesday informed us of the arrival of the federal capital of Colonel Hayne – a special messenger from the Governor of South Carolina to the President of the United States. Col. Hayne’s errand was to demand the surrender of Fort Sumter to the authorities of South Carolina. The decision of the President, announced this morning, is that under no circumstances will the government resign possession of Fort Sumter; and it is understood that Major Anderson will be instructed to defend the post at all hazards.
It is very unfortunate that the question as to this comparatively unimportant point should have been raised just at this moment, when there is an opening for compromise. Except Sumter and some obscure works in Florida and Texas, the entire line of Southern seacoast defences are in the hands of the disunionists. Now, the Charleston people hold, to be consistent, they must remove the federal flag from Sumter, even if they are compelled to accomplish the act by force. As a matter of course, they would be sustained by all the Gulf States wherein federal property has been seized. Sumter might be taken by exhausting the garrison, or a general naval fight ensue, in which the city of Charleston would suffer severely and the best blood of Carolina flow in torrents. The cotton States would then come to the rescue, and the result would be a frightful civil war. Now, the sober, earnest, thinking men of all parties regard with aversion any movements that look to the arbitrament of the sword. At the same time it is a point of honor with all of us who still adhere to the Union that Fort Sumter should not be taken, and we believe that the forbearance of Major Anderson in the matter of the Star of the West should lead to equal consideration on the part of the Charleston authorities. They, however, seem to think that the presence of the federal flag on Sumter is a tacit defiance of the government which they have set up, and they feel the matter more deeply than any of us at the North can possibly imagine.
Sumter has been called the key to the defences of Charleston harbor. It is something more just now. It is the turning point in the crisis of the Union. There can be no doubt that the action of the President upon Hayne’s rather cool proposition will be received with approbation in the border slave states, and that the Union party in the South will secretly approve it.
At the same time that we receive this news from Washington we have important intelligence from Springfield, to the effect that Mr. Seward’s speech receives the endorsement of the President elect; and it is by no means improbable that if affairs could be kept in status quo ante bells for a short time longer the republicans would offer some plan of compromise, based upon the Crittenden amendments. The radical wing of the party is already getting frightened at the weakness, as they term it, of the republican members of Congress. Greeley & Co. howl vigorously over Seward’s speech – the very best possible proof that it has hit the right spot. So we find the extreme republicans and the thorough going fire-eaters, as usual, united in the endeavor to break up the Union. Between these two fires the conservatives North and South are unable to stir hand or foot. They are as effectively shut up as Anderson in Fort Sumter.
Suppose the worst comes to the worst (for we must look at these things squarely) and Sumter is attacked, what then? Then the North will be aroused as one man, and, until reason regains its sway, we shall be compelled to suffer all the horrors of a fratricidal conflict, which will destroy the industrial interests of all sections and put us back at least a hundred years in the estimation of the civilized world. We will assume, for the sake of argument, that in the event of war the border States would cast their lot in with the North, although the tenor of all our advices from Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Maryland and Virginia are inflexibly the other way; and then it is not so clear that the army of the North could subjugate the cotton States. And if they did succumb, of what value would their forced submission be? Then, again, where are the troops to come from? Where will the general government find volunteers to fight against men who take up arms on their own soil to defend their own rights? Can we depend upon officers of the army and navy when they are commanded to turn their guns against their own relatives, or their comrades, with whom they have shared the bivouac or joined in the assault upon a foreign foe? Are we to take a hundred thousand men from the workshops, the plough or the counting house, and send them to attack our brethren of the South in their own homes? Is there no danger that in the event of civil war and the withdrawal of a large number of law-abiding citizens from the Northern cities, that the dangerous classes will prove too much for the local authorities? Is the commerce of the country to be suspended without overthrowing all other interests interwoven with and dependant upon it?
These are questions which the coercionists will do well to ponder upon earnestly, and if they are not as crazy as the advocates of immediate secession in the South, they will agree that, in case no settlement of the difficulty can be arranged, it will be better that we should part in peace. There is nothing so dreadful in the idea of two great confederacies, managed upon the same general plan as the present Union, with trade, commerce, manufactures, friendly intercourse going on the same as in the most peaceable times. If our Southern brethren think they can better themselves by going out, and are resolved to try the experiment, in Heaven’s name let them go in peace. We cannot keep them by force. People in their position, defending their own firesides, may be overthrown many times, but history teaches us that the work of subjugation is, besides exceedingly difficult, as unprofitable to the conquerors as to the conquered.
We have hopes that the Charleston people will think over the matter of Fort Sumter, and that the new administration will offer terms that will meet the approbation of the Union party in the border States, where they demand a lever to begin with. Further South the Union sentiment lies dormant, but is not dead, and may yet rise superior to the secession lunacy. But coercion is not to be thought of for a moment.