The Great Conspiracy - John Alexander Logan

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we look not for it. We are just as competent to take Queen Victoria and Louis Napoleon under our protection, as they are to take us; and they are a great deal more interested to-day in receiving cotton from our ports than we are in shipping it. You may lock up every bale of cotton within the limits of the eight Cotton States, and not allow us to export one for three years, and we shall not feel it further than our military resources are concerned. Exhaust the supply of cotton in Europe for one week, and all Europe is in revolution.

      "These are facts. You will blockade us! Do you suppose we shall do nothing, even upon the sea? How many letters of marque and reprisal would it take to put the whole of your ships up at your wharves to rot? Will any merchant at Havre, or Liverpool, or any other portion of the habitable globe, ship a cargo upon a New England, or New York, or Philadelphia clipper, or other ship, when he knows that the seas are swarming with letters of marque and reprisal? Why the mere apprehension of such a thing will cut you out of the Carrying Trade of the civilized World. * * * I speak not of the absurdity of the position that you can blockade our ports, admitting at the same time that we are in the Union. Blockade is a remedy, as all writers on International law say, against a Foreign Power with whom you are at War. You cannot use a blockade against your own people. An embargo even, you cannot use. That is a remedy against a Foreign Nation with whom you expect to be at War. You must treat us as in the Union, or out of it. We have gone out. We are willing to live at peace with you; but, as sure as fate, whenever any flag comes into one of our ports, that has thirty-three stars upon it, that flag will be fired at. Displaying a flag with stars which we have plucked from that bright galaxy, is an insult to the State within whose waters that flag is displayed. You cannot enforce the laws without Coercion, and you cannot Coerce without War.

      "These matters, then, can be settled. How? By withdrawing your troops; admitting our right to Self-government clearly, unqualifiedly. Do this, and there is no difficulty about it. You say that you will not do it. Very well; we have no objection—none whatever. That is Coercion. When you have attempted it, you will find that you have made War. These, Senators, are facts. I come here to plead for Peace; but I have seen so much and felt so much, that I am becoming at last, to tell the plain truth of the matter, rather indifferent as to which way the thing turns. If you want War, you can have it. If you want Peace, you can get it; but I plead not for Peace."

      Mr. Davis almost at once left Jackson, Mississippi, for Montgomery, where he arrived and delivered his Inaugural, February 17, having received on his road thither a succession of ovations from the enthusiastic Rebels, to which he had responded with no less than twenty-five speeches, very similar in tone to those made in the United States Senate by Mr. Wigfall and others of that ilk—breathing at once defiance and hopefulness, while admitting the difficulties in the way of the new Confederacy.

      "It may be," said he, at Jackson, "that we will be confronted by War; that the attempt will be made to blockade our ports, to starve us out; but they (the Union men of the North) know little of the Southern heart, of Southern endurance. No amount of privation could force us to remain in a Union on unequal terms. England and France would not allow our great staple to be dammed up within our present limits; the starving thousands in their midst would not allow it. We have nothing to apprehend from Blockade. But if they attempt invasion by land, we must take the War out of our territory. If War must come, it must be upon Northern, and not upon Southern soil. In the meantime, if they were prepared to grant us Peace, to recognize our equality, all is well."

      And, in his speech at Stevenson, Alabama, said he "Your Border States will gladly come into the Southern Confederacy within sixty days, as we will be their only friends. England will recognize us, and a glorious future is before us. The grass will grow in the Northern cities, where the pavements have been worn off by the tread of Commerce. We will carry War where it is easy to advance—where food for the sword and torch await our Armies in the densely populated cities; and though they may come and spoil our crops, we can raise them as before; while they cannot rear the cities which took years of industry and millions of money to build."

      Very different in tone to these, were the kindly and sensible utterances of Mr. Lincoln on his journey from Springfield to Washington, about the same time, for Inauguration as President of the United States. Leaving Springfield, Illinois, February 11th, he had pathetically said:

      "My friends: No one, not in my position, can realize the sadness I feel at this parting. To this people I owe all that I am. Here I have lived more than a quarter of a century. Here my children were born, and here one of them lies buried. I know not how soon I shall see you again. I go to assume a task more difficult than that which has devolved upon any other man since the days of Washington. He never would have succeeded except for the aid of Divine Providence, upon which he at all times relied. I feel that I cannot succeed without the same Divine blessing which sustained him; and on the same Almighty Being I place my reliance for support. And I hope you, my friends, will all pray that I may receive that Divine assistance, without which I cannot succeed, but with which success is certain. Again I bid you an affectionate farewell."

      At Indianapolis, that evening, the eve of his birthday anniversary, after thanking the assembled thousands for their "magnificent welcome," and defining the words "Coercion" and "Invasion"—at that time so loosely used—he continued: "But if the United States should merely hold and retake her own Forts and other property, and collect the duties on foreign importation, or even withhold the mails from places where they were habitually violated, would any or all of these things be 'Invasion' or 'Coercion'? Do our professed lovers of the Union, who spitefully resolve that they will resist Coercion and Invasion, understand that such things as these on the part of the United States would be 'Coercion' or 'Invasion' of a State? If so, their idea of means to preserve the object of their great affection would seem to be exceedingly thin and airy."

      At Columbus, Ohio, he spoke in a like calm, conservative, reasoning way —with the evident purpose of throwing oil on the troubled waters—when he said: "I have not maintained silence from any want of real anxiety. It is a good thing that there is no more than anxiety; for there is nothing going wrong. It is a consoling circumstance that, when we look out, there is nothing that really hurts anybody. We entertain different views upon political questions; but nobody is suffering anything. This is a consoling circumstance; and from it we may conclude that all we want is time, patience, and a reliance on that God who has never forsaken this People."

      So, too, at Pittsburg, Pa., February 15th, he said, of "our friends," as he termed them, the Secessionists: "Take even their own views of the questions involved, and there is nothing to justify the course they are pursuing. I repeat, then, there is no crisis, except such an one as may be gotten up at any time by turbulent men, aided by designing politicians. My advice to them, under the circumstances, is to keep cool. If the great American People only keep their temper both sides of the line, the trouble will come to an end, and the question which now distracts the Country be settled, just as surely as all other difficulties, of a like character, which have been originated in this Government, have been adjusted. Let the people on both sides keep their self-possession, and, just as other clouds have cleared away in due time, so will this great Nation continue to prosper as heretofore."

      And toward the end of that journey, on the 22nd of February—Washington's Birthday—in the Independence Hall at Philadelphia, after eloquently affirming his belief that "the great principle or idea that kept this Confederacy so long together was * * * that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave Liberty not alone to the People of this Country, but" he hoped "to the World, for all future time * * * which gave promise that, in due time, the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men"—he added, in the same firm, yet temperate and reassuring vein: "Now, my friends, can this Country be saved on that basis? If it can, I

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