American Discord : The Republic and its People in the Civil War Era

Acts of War

The Southern Seizure of Federal Forts and Arsenals, 1860–1861

RACHEL K. DEALE

A little over a month after John Brown’s execution on December 2, 1859, the House of Representatives engaged in a fierce debate over potential emancipation and jurisdiction over federal property throughout the country. Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens defended “what [he] considered the principles of the Republican Party.” Although the Constitution did not give the Republican Party the “power to interfere with any institution in the States,” it did grant Congress “the power to regulate and the right to abolish slavery” in “the Territories, the District of Columbia, the navy-yards, and the arsenals [that] have no legislative bodies but Congress, or those granted by Congress.”1

Furious over Stevens’s bold assertions that Congress had the power to eliminate slavery on public property located in slave states, Virginia congressman Sherrard Clemens asked if the Republican Party’s policy “was to encircle the slave States of this Union with free States as a cordon of fire, and that slavery, like a scorpion, would sting itself to death.” Without hesitation Stevens retorted, “If I did, it is in the books.” Frustrated with the taunts coming from the Republicans in the chamber, Clemens continued to press Stevens on his proposed desire to abolish slavery at federal forts, arsenals, and dockyards. “If his [Stevens’s] policy is carried out, whether today, tomorrow, or fifty years hence; if not a single new slave State is admitted into the Union; if slavery is abolished in the District of Columbia, in the Territories, in the arsenals, dockyards, and forts; if, in addition to that, his party grasps the power of the Presidency, with the patronage attached to it, and with the prestige of the Army and Navy calling upon the people of the South to be tried under the laws of the United States for treason,” Clemons asked if Stevens sought to destroy slavery from within. With laughter Stevens simply replied, “I do not know, not being a prophet.”2

Some historians have argued that this debate revealed that the Republican Party’s goal was to ensure that slavery was put on the course of ultimate extinction, but this discussion also shows that the South feared that the Republican Party planned to use control of public property to undermine slavery.3 Even before Stevens suggested that Congress had the authority to abolish slavery on public property, Mississippi representative Otho Singleton argued that the South was “fully awake” and “preparing to meet” the North’s desire to abolish “slavery in the District of Columbia; in the dockyards, the arsenals, and all public places.”4 North Carolina senator Thomas Clingman agreed that the Republican Party threatened the South by supporting repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law and the abolition of slavery in “the District of Columbia, the forts and arsenals, and wherever the United States has exclusive jurisdiction.”5 As a result, William Gwin, a Democratic senator from California, argued that the southern states should “take possession of all the public property within their limits, and prepare against any aggression from the non-slaveholding States, or any other power that may choose to infringe upon what they conceive to be their rights.” As he saw it, the installations along the southern “harbors [were] so fortified, that if they [took] possession of them in advance, they [could] defend themselves against any enemy who may attack them.”6 Secessionists obviously agreed with Gwin because three months before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, Deep South officials seized virtually all the federal property in their states.7

The Civil War began long before Edmund Ruffin fired his famous shot at Fort Sumter. Before seceding, southern states already committed acts of war by aggressively seizing the federal forts and arsenals within their borders.8 Yet despite the importance of these events, historians have not properly examined the capture of federal property.9 While scholars have argued that the Confederacy engaged in a “pre-emptive counterrevolution,” they have primarily focused on secession, the creation of the Confederacy, and the failure of political compromise.10 The South’s most dramatic and threatening actions during the secession crisis have received scant attention. As a result, historians have not fully explained how the Confederacy launched their preemptive strike.

In late October 1860, General in Chief of the US Army Winfield Scott warned Secretary of War John B. Floyd that secessionists might try to take preemptive military action by capturing federal military property in Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, and Virginia. He feared that southern states could easily seize the federal forts along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts because they were not garrisoned at the recommended strength. Before the secessionists made “any attempt to take any one of them by surprise,” Scott advised the War Department to reinforce all military installations immediately.11

The southerners in Buchanan’s cabinet asserted that adopting General Scott’s plan would create more problems for the administration. Floyd expressed deep concerns about reinforcing the forts and added that he could not consent to sending “a military power that would choke [the South] to the ground.” Floyd told Buchanan that he could strengthen the forts but warned that “it [would] lead to the effusion of blood.”12 It was clear that Scott intended his “Views” to be public, as he sent a copy not only to the president but also to his political friends and newspaper editors. The Charleston Courier reported that the publication of General Scott’s call for reinforcements “created the most intense excitement” throughout the city.”13 The Charleston Mercury warned that the forts would “be filled with enemies to enforce the authority of a Government as unscrupulous as it is tyrannical.”14 Eventually, Buchanan sided with the southern cabinet members because he worried that reinforcing the forts would lend credence to southern fears. But he later argued that Scott’s plan “excited much indignation throughout the South, caused the violent and unsparing abuse of its author throughout the Southern States and afforded the pretext, if not the reason, for their rash and unjustifiable conduct in seizing the forts.”15

The crisis showed that mid-nineteenth-century politicians did not understand federal authority. On November 6, 1860, the president warned Secretary of War John Floyd that if South Carolina forces captured the forts in Charleston Harbor because “of our neglect to put them in a defensible condition, it [would] be better for you and me both to be thrown into the Potomac with millstones tied about our necks.”16 When Buchanan told his cabinet that he intended to protect the federal property located in the South, some southern cabinet members claimed he had no authority to do so. Unsure of what authority he had to prevent secession and the seizure of public property, Buchanan asked Attorney General Jeremiah Black five questions concerning the legal authority of the executive office. Two of these dealt directly with the issue of the forts and arsenals. First, he inquired, “What right have I to defend the public property (for instance, a fort, arsenal, and navy yard), in case it should be assaulted?” Secondly, he asked, “Can a military force be used for any purpose whatever under the Acts of 1795 and 1807, within the limits of a State where there are no judges, marshal, or other civil officers?”17

A few days after receiving the president’s questions, Black presented an opinion that helped Buchanan define a policy on secession. Unfortunately, Black’s answer left a lot to be desired because he encouraged the president not to adopt any precautionary defensive measures and showed little desire to preserve the Union. Rather than explicitly defining the legal parameters of presidential power, Black left a lot of room for Buchanan to interpret the law himself. In fact, Black’s response suggests that even the attorney general did not understand presidential authority. Black thought that the Militia Act of 1795 “imposes upon the President the sole responsibility of deciding whether the exigency has arisen, which requires the use of military force.” Similarly, the Insurrection Act of 1807 gave the president the authority to use land and naval forces “as [he] may judge necessary” to enforce the law in the face of insurrection and rebellion. This meant that the president had the authority to call on the militia as a defensive measure “to repel an assault on the public property.” Yet, despite asserting that the president had the authority to protect federal property, Black recommended that Buchanan continue to “execute the laws to the extent of the defensive means placed in [his] hands.” Black encouraged Buchanan to act as if southern states still belonged to the Union “until a new order” was “established by either law or force.” Additionally, Black maintained that although Congress had the power to declare war against a foreign power, the founders did not grant Congress the authority to declare war against one or more states. As he saw it, “The Union must utterly perish at the moment when Congress shall arm one part of the people against another for any purpose beyond that of merely protecting the General Government in the exercise of its proper constitutional functions.”18

Despite advising Buchanan not to take action, Black unequivocally argued that the president had the right to protect government property because the government “bought, built, and paid for” the forts and arsenals. Moreover, according to article 1, section 8, of the Constitution, the federal government had the authority to regulate and control the property. “If any one of an owner’s rights is plainer than another,” Black argued, “it is that of keeping exclusive possession and repelling intrusion.” As Black saw it, “The right of defending the public property includes also the right of recapture after it has been unlawfully taken by another” as seen by the fact that “every one acknowledged the legal justice” of the government’s response to John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry.19 But suggesting that John Brown’s raid set a precedent for executive power protecting public property is problematic. Although Brown could have been prosecuted by the federal government, the Buchanan administration placated southern fears by allowing Virginia to try Brown. Even though Brown seized a federal arsenal, he was found guilty of treason against the commonwealth of Virginia, not the United States.20 If anything, Buchanan’s handling of the Harpers Ferry fiasco established the precedent of placating the South to prevent potential violence and not using federal power to protect public property.

Armed with Black’s legal guidance, Buchanan began writing his fourth annual message and interpreted the entire situation as a northern problem rather than a national or southern problem. The president observed that the Union was not “a mere voluntary association of States” that could be dissolved at any instant. In his view, the founders “never intended to implant in its bosoms the seeds of its own destruction” through dissolution. He pleaded for the South to “wait for the overt act,” by maintaining that Lincoln’s election in itself did not justify radical action. Yet, after firmly denying a constitutional right to secede, Buchanan tempered his statement by announcing that he had no power to prevent a state from leaving the Union. Nor did he believe that Congress possessed the power to “coerce a State into submission.” Buchanan believed that Congress could only preserve the Union through conciliation because the Constitution did not grant them the power “to preserve it by force.” Just minutes after declaring that he stood for the Union and the Constitution, the president conceded that the Union “must one day perish.”21

President Buchanan clearly interpreted the crisis through a partisan lens. If war occurred, it would be a Republican war, not a Democratic war. Consequently, navigating the crisis would be the Republican Party’s responsibility. It was merely his job to hand over the Union intact to the incoming Lincoln administration. Those closest to Buchanan thought that no matter what course of action he pursued, the administration would face “bitter hostility.”22 Americans, especially in the North, were losing confidence in the administration. On December 12, Secretary of State Lewis Cass resigned because the president refused to reinforce the southern forts.23 Ohio governor William Dennison maintained that “the sacredness of private and public property is the life of republican forms of government, and one of the very highest duties of the legislator, is to surround it with all the necessary safe-guards of law.”24 The New-York Tribune complained that “the President’s Message insults reason, outrages humanity, falsifies history, and defies common sense.”25 A Connecticut editor proclaimed that “Mr. Buchanan [showed] weakness, imbecility and inconsistency which proves him utterly unfit for the emergencies of the times, and that he has no better remedy for preventing a dissolution of the Union, than a concession of all and everything asked by the disunionists.” The paper ridiculed Buchanan’s claim that the federal government had no power to enforce laws in the states.26 A friend of Illinois congressman John A. Logan suggested that if the federal government had “no power to coerce a rebellious state to obedience to the law,” then the founders “must have been fools.”27 Others simply questioned the federal government’s purpose “if it had no resources in an emergency.”28

Meanwhile President-elect Lincoln chose not to address southern concerns publicly. He did, however, respond to North Carolina congressman John Gilmer’s fear that Lincoln supported congressional measures to eliminate slavery in the District of Columbia and on federal property in the slave states.29 Although Lincoln was “greatly disinclined” to “even privately” respond to Gilmer’s questions, he thought it necessary because he feared Gilmer would misinterpret his silence. He promised Gilmer that he had “no thought of recommending the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, nor the slave trade among the slave states . . . and if I were to make such recommendation, it is quite clear Congress would not follow it.” Furthermore, he claimed that “freeing slaves in Arsenals and Dockyards” was “a thing I never thought of in my life.”30 Several days later, Lincoln wrote a similar letter to Alexander Stephens asking if “the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would, directly, or indirectly, interfere with their slaves, or with them, about their slaves?” Lincoln assured the Georgian that “there is no cause for such fears.”31

Unlike Buchanan, Lincoln made it clear to those closest to him that he believed the president had the authority to maintain order in the states. Though he remained silent publicly, he confidently asserted that no state had the right to secede from the Union and that “it is the duty of the President, and other government functionaries to run the machine as it is.”32 As a result, Lincoln requested that his friend Elihu Washburne instruct General Winfield Scott “to be as prepared as he can to either hold, or retake, the forts, as the case may require, at, and after the inauguration.”33 When Lincoln heard rumors in late December that Buchanan had ordered Anderson to surrender Fort Moultrie if it was attacked, he angrily snapped, “If that is true they ought to hang him!”34

But during the interregnum the government’s authority still rested in the weak hands of James Buchanan, and the events of late December and early January came too fast for the timid and indecisive Buchanan administration. On December 20, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union. Excitement and celebration filled the streets of Charleston. Shortly after seceding, the South Carolina secession convention appointed three commissioners to discuss with President Buchanan the “delivery” of the forts, arsenals, magazines, and other federal installations within the state’s borders.35 Negotiations were cut short, however, because on December 26, Major Robert Anderson felt that his position at Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island was vulnerable. As a result, Anderson decided to spike his guns and move to Fort Sumter, an unfinished fort in the middle of the Charleston Harbor. In retaliation, Governor Francis Pickens ordered the state militia to seize Fort Moultrie, Fort Johnson, Castle Pickney, the US arsenal, and the US Custom House under the “authority of the sovereign state of South Carolina.”36 In a letter to the president of the South Carolina secession convention, David Flavel Jamison, Governor Pickens declared that Major Anderson’s move to Fort Sumter “brought on a state of war.” He believed it was in the state’s best interest to occupy, hold, and maintain all remaining federal property.37

To an extent Pickens was right. The seizure of federal property was clearly an act of war, but Anderson and the United States were not the guilty party. As Jeremiah Black had told Buchanan in late November, according to the Constitution the federal property scattered throughout the South belonged to the federal government, not the states. But Buchanan continued to stand by his claim that even though South Carolina did not have the right to secede, neither he nor Congress had the power to stop them. While the Buchanan administration stalled, by January 2, 1861, South Carolina forces facing no federal opposition successfully captured all the federal installations within its borders except Fort Sumter.

Although South Carolina only seized federal property after formally seceding, most Deep South states took action before their secession conventions even met. Throughout January 1861, government facilities in Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, and Florida fell into the hands of state militias on an almost daily basis. After hearing a rumor that Buchanan intended to appoint Joseph Holt, a “bitter foe” of the South, as the next secretary of war, state political and military leaders feared that the president intended to reinforce the southern forts. On January 1, 1861, Georgia governor Joseph E. Brown met in Savannah with Colonel William J. Hardee and Colonel Alexander Lawton “to discuss the seizure of Fort Pulaski.”38 Located on Cockspur Island near the mouth of the Savannah River, the fort guarded Savannah, the state’s most important commercial city. Although the fort was designed to protect the city from foreign attack, in January 1861 Secretary of War John Floyd had “scattered the army so that much of it could be capture[d] when hostilities” commenced.39 At the time, there were only two federal soldiers stationed at Fort Pulaski. Confident that Georgia would secede, Brown wanted to take the fort before the federal government had time to send reinforcements that might prevent the state from holding a secession convention.

On January 2, 1861, more than two weeks before the state seceded from the Union, Governor Brown ordered Colonel Alexander Lawton to seize Fort Pulaski. Brown justified his decision by arguing that the federal government had “decided on the policy of coercing a seceded state back into the Union, and it is believed now has a movement on foot to occupy with Federal Troops, the Southern Forts, including Fort Pulaski.” The next morning over one hundred armed Georgians demanded the fort’s surrender.40 Neither of the two US soldiers stationed there had received orders on how to respond, but seeing that they were vastly outnumbered, the two men agreed to surrender the fort.41 Georgia troops immediately went to work strengthening the fort’s defenses.42 As one Georgia soldier told the Savannah Republican, “There is the best feeling imaginable between all the corps here, and a brotherly sympathy which is gratifying.”43

In Georgia support for Brown’s decision was overwhelming. The Federal Union proclaimed that Brown acted out “of peace and a desire to save bloodshed in case hostilities actually begin.” As the paper saw it, “For his promptness and energy in this crisis, Gov. Brown deserved the gratitude of every citizen of Georgia.”44 When Brown returned to Milledgeville, he was greeted by “a large number of citizens with music and torches. The Alabama Spirit of the South lauded Brown, who “executes his plans with the nerve of a soldier and the skill of a statesman. He defies the threats of Federal power, and laughs his enemies to scorn. He is full of Jacksonian will and courage; possessing wisdom to devise and boldness and sagacity to execute.” The Augusta Democrat maintained that Brown “exhibited an intelligence, firmness and comprehensive statesmanship, equaled by few and surpassed by none in the annals of the state.”45 When the state’s secession convention met two weeks later, they celebrated the governor’s “energetic and patriotic conduct” and promised to hold onto “Fort Pulaski, and all other Federal property within her borders.”46

The reaction to Georgia’s takeover indicates that secessionists did not believe that the federal government actually owned the federal installations. Many thought that the southern states had ceded the fortifications built on southern soil to the federal government for protection from foreign enemies, but now they believed that the government planned to use the fortifications “against her own people in an effort to subjugate them.” As a result, they thought it was necessary to reclaim what they considered their property.47 The Albany Patriot claimed that “there [was] no division of opinion in our community as to the wisdom of his policy.” “Nothing [could] be more abhorrent to the hearts of our people, nothing more shocking to their sense of justice,” the paper proclaimed, than for the federal government to turn fortifications built on Georgia soil “into instruments of police coercion.”48 The Fayetteville Observer suggested that Governor Brown had to order the seizure of the fort, or a mob would have taken matters into their own hands.49

Once South Carolina and Georgia officials seized the forts and arsenals in their states, they justified their actions by claiming the property belonged to the state and not the federal government. The Milledgeville Federal Union believed that handling federal property within the seceded states was “the most dangerous problem” of secession.50 Following the capture of Fort Pulaski, one Georgia soldier proclaimed that “there [were] many opinions amongst the privates as to the propriety of the step we have taken in obtaining this fort.”51 The Georgia secession convention, however, made clear its belief that the state was the true owner of the public property. Before signing an ordinance of secession, the delegates declared that “the buildings, machinery, fortifications, or other improvements, erected on the land so heretofore ceded to the said United States, or other property found therein, shall be held by this State.”52 Jefferson Davis argued later that even though southern states ceded land to the federal government for military installations, “the ultimate ownership of the soil . . . remains with the people of the State in which it lies, by virtue of their sovereignty.” According to Davis, the forts “should be used solely and exclusively for the purposes for which they were granted” or the state could reclaim the property.53

Believing that the federal military installations really belonged to the state, Governor Brown also advised the governors of Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida to take preemptive action. Citing rumors of potential federal occupation, on January 5, Brown encouraged the Deep South governors to “cooperate and occupy the Forts.” According to Brown, capturing the federal installations was the only way the states could ensure the federal government would not interfere with their secession conventions.54 The governors readily agreed with Brown and almost immediately ordered the capture of the federal installations in their states.

On January 3, the same day that Georgia seized Fort Pulaski and eight days before Alabama seceded, Alabama Governor Andrew B. Moore ordered Colonel John Todd of the 1st Volunteer Regiment to occupy Forts Morgan and Gaines and “to take possession of the U.S. arsenal immediately and to hold them for the State of Alabama” until the state convention dictated otherwise. Moore repeatedly maintained that this was not an act of hostility toward the federal government and that “both the forts and the arsenal” should be taken “without bloodshed.”55 The next day four companies of Alabama volunteers took over the Mount Vernon arsenal in Mobile. As in South Carolina and Georgia, Federal troops did not resist the demand for surrender. Jesse L. Reno, commander of Federal troops stationed at Mount Vernon, reported the affair as an “unexpected catastrophe” because the Alabama volunteers caught him and his seventeen men completely off guard. Reno decided that there was no way eighteen men could have prevented the hundred plus Alabamans from seizing the arsenal.56 The New York Herald reported that the arsenal was “probably the strongest and best built arsenal” in the United States as it sat almost five hundred feet “above the rest of the country.” Additionally, the paper warned that the Mount Vernon Arsenal housed enough arms and ammunition to equip Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida troops.57 That might have been an exaggeration, as the arsenal contained only 150,000 pounds of gunpowder and enough weapons to arm roughly 20,000 men.58

On January 5, Todd’s forces of roughly five hundred men seized Fort Morgan and the unfinished Fort Gaines located at the mouth of Mobile Bay. The Mobile Tribune referred to the event as an “exciting little dash at Dauphin Island.”59 Together the two forts housed roughly 220 guns.60 As with the previous takeovers, instead of resisting, US Lieutenant Chauncey Barnes Reese complied with the secessionists’ demands. Upon learning of the capture of the two forts, the city of Montgomery celebrated with a one-hundred-gun salute. State troops paraded throughout the city with drum and fife.61 Abraham Lincoln’s private secretary John Nicolay later described the process well: “The ordinary process [of seizing property] was, the sudden appearance of a superior armed force, a demand for surrender in the name of the State, and the compliance under protest by the officer in charge—salutes to the flag, peaceable evacuation, and unmolested transit home being graciously permitted as a military courtesy.”62

As Alabama troops seized federal property, on January 4 Governor Moore informed President Buchanan why he ordered the state militia to capture the forts and arsenals. Moore assured the president that “the purpose with which my order was given and had been executed was to avoid and not to provoke hostilities between the State and Federal government.” Believing that Alabama was about to secede, Moore contended that seizing federal military installations was a “precautionary step to make the secession of the State peaceful, and prevent detriment to her people.” Because he feared that the federal government would attempt to reinforce southern forts and arsenals, Moore argued that it would have been an “unwise policy” not to act. He therefore had acted in “self-defense.” He assured Buchanan that if Alabama voted not to secede, he would peacefully return all forts, arsenals, and ammunition.63

On January 5, eighteen days before Louisiana’s secession convention even assembled, General Elisha L. Tracy met with militia captains to discuss the seizure of the five federal forts and an arsenal located in the state.64 Governor Thomas Moore maintained that “the safety of the state of Louisiana demands that I take possession of all Government property within her limits.”65 Although the Buchanan administration had yet to take any action to stop the seizures or recapture federal property, Moore believed that Congress’s “hostile language” and the “tyrannical purposes” of the incoming administration were enough to merit preemptive action.66 But Moore had been planning military action for well over a month. On December 12, 1860, the governor had established a military board designed to protect the state from federal coercion by raising a five-thousand-man army. One of the first people appointed to the board was Colonel Braxton Bragg, who still held a commission in the US Army. Despite being opposed to secession, Bragg agreed to serve his state, though before Bragg could raise any forces or resign his commission with the US Army, Governor Moore decided that the state needed to act.67

After receiving his orders to take the federal arsenal in Baton Rouge, Bragg told his wife, Elise, that he had reservations about Moore’s decision to seize the property but admitted that he thought it was the “only course [Moore] could adopt to avoid bloodshed.”68 Despite his fears, on January 7, Bragg led six hundred men to take control of the arsenal and barracks at Baton Rouge. Under a flag of truce, Moore’s aides-de-camp Richard Taylor and Braxton Bragg warned the Federal captain Joseph A. Haskin that “any attempt at defense on your part will be a rash sacrifice of life.” Vastly outnumbered and not expecting reinforcements or additional support, Haskin surrendered.69 Following this success, Bragg boasted that he had handled the negotiations with “prudence and conciliation” and exulted that Federal “officers left perfectly satisfied.”70

The seizure of the Baton Rouge arsenal greatly strengthened the nascent Confederacy’s military capability at the beginning of the Civil War. Before the capture, Louisiana had experienced a shortage in arms and ammunition. Seizing the arsenal provided the state over four thousand rifles, almost thirty thousand percussion muskets, and over eight thousand flintlock muskets. Governor Moore gave Mississippi enough weapons to arm its newly formed volunteer army. Yet capturing the Baton Rouge arsenal was only a temporary solution to the weapons shortage because the arsenal did not contain the machinery needed to produce more arms and ordnance.71 Well-armed and with superior numbers, the Louisiana militia proceeded to seize Forts Jackson, St. Philip, Livingston, Pike, and Macomb without bloodshed.

Not everyone, however, celebrated Moore’s decision. General William Tecumseh Sherman, who had recently retired from the military and taught at the Louisiana Seminary of Learning and Military Academy, later pointed out that “long before the North, or the Federal Government, dreamed of war the South seized the U.S. arsenals, forts, mints, and custom-houses.”72 He concluded that “war existed against the General Govt. from the date of the first seizure of property—I did resent it as an act of hostility and Treason.” After watching what he thought to be acts of war, Sherman headed to Washington to help suppress the South’s treasonous actions, but Buchanan told him that “military men were not needed.”73 In a letter to Robert Anderson’s brother in 1863, Sherman recalled the circumstances in more detail:

War existed before Sumter was fired on. The seizure of our Forts and arsenals by armed bodies led by Governors and Commissioned officers preceded the attack on Sumter. It was the seizure of the Forts and mails of Louisiana, more especially the arsenal at Baton Rouge with its small Garrison by a force of vols. led by Governor Moore and Col. (now Genl.) Bragg, then my most intimate friends, that made me declare it “high Treason,” and I quit the state, before as in your case malignant men had wrought up public feeling to a maddened State.74

Unionists and northerners were appalled by the South’s capture of federal military installations. The pro-Lincoln Daily Palladium argued that the South struck the first blow by “seizing the property of the Union, garrison[ing] its forts against the officers of law, tak[ing] possession of its revenue-cutters, rifl[ing] its arsenals to arm their forces against its authority.” “This is not secession; it is not dissolution; it is rebellion and aggressive war!” the paper boldly argued. According to the editors, the Gulf states’ “deliberate purpose to seize the Government by force is at last unmasked, and they have swept the cotton states into open, armed, aggressive rebellion.”75 On January 12, a concerned Ohio citizen asked Congressman John Sherman, “Is it not the duty, and the true policy of its government to arm and keep all the forts, arsenals, and government property? Possess it and then wait arm and defend it until wiser council shall give forth the opinion of the South and cooler councilors shall be heard.”76 Another Ohioan believed that the “insecurity of government property at Washington . . . is a serious affair and should be forthwith guarded against . . . any possible degree of danger.” He warned Congressman John Sherman that “if the federal property [fell] into the Rebel’s hands it will double their numbers in 24 hours.”77

Northerners also argued that the South had committed acts of war and treason by capturing federal military installations. Douglas Democrat and Illinois senator John A. Logan argued that “the recognition of the South as an independent sovereignty, the forts, the arsenals, all government property” will “embroil the sections in a war.”78 The Fifth Ward Republican Association argued that “the inhabitants of Louisiana are now in a state of insurrection” and have committed “treason to their country.”79 On January 14, US Circuit Court Judge Smalley termed the secessionists’ aggressive seizure of forts, arsenals, and barracks “high treason by levying war. . . . There can be no doubt about it.”80 According to Smalley, “It is well known that war—civil war—exists in person of the Union.” Judge Smalley repeatedly maintained that “the actual seizing of the Forts in Carolina, and in other States, is a levying of war against the United States.”81 Abraham Lincoln’s private secretary John Nicolay also agreed that the South’s actions were “nothing less than levying actual war against the United States, though as yet attended by no violence or bloodshed.”82

Because the federal government did nothing to stop the southern militias, by February 1, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida had seized all of the federal installations within their borders except Fort Sumter in Charleston and Forts Pickens, Jefferson, and Taylor in Florida. As Lincoln traveled to Washington in February 1861, he stopped to speak from the balcony of Bates House in Indianapolis, Indiana. In exploring the meaning of “coercion” and “invasion,” Lincoln argued that “the marching of an army into South Carolina . . . without the consent of her people, and in hostility against them” would constitute both coercion and invasion if Federal forces forced South Carolinians to submit to federal authority. He then asked the audience what if the government “simply insists upon holding its own forts, or retaking those forts which belong to it, or the enforcement of the laws of the United States in the collection of duties upon foreign importations, or even the withdrawal of the mails from those portions of the country where the mails themselves are habitually violated; would any or all of these things be coercion?” According to Lincoln, anyone who believed that reclaiming federal property to preserve the Union was coercion must be “of a thin and airy character.” Comparing the Union to a family, Lincoln suggested that Americans who did not wish to maintain a federal presence in the seceded states was similar to preferring a “free-love arrangement” to marriage.83

The New-York Tribune, however, cited Lincoln’s Indianapolis speech as evidence of his intention to embrace coercion. The New York Herald warned that Lincoln’s speech “was the signal for massacre and bloodshed by the incoming administration.”84 Similarly, a Washington correspondent for the Tribune reported that Lincoln was claiming “the right to use force against the seceding States to the extent of recovering United States property, collecting the revenues, and enforcing the laws generally.”85 These responses to Lincoln’s Indianapolis address probably encouraged him to tone down his language as he made his way to Washington. Speaking to the New Jersey General Assembly in Trenton, Lincoln sounded more cautious, claiming to harbor “no malice toward any section.” He would do all within his power to “promote a peaceful settlement of all our difficulties” but nevertheless thought “it may be necessary to put the foot down firmly . . . and if I do my duty, and do right, you will sustain me will you not?”86

Lincoln fully understood what the seizure of federal property meant for the Union; that is why he was so adamant about maintaining possession of the property. He recognized that surrendering the property meant accepting disunion and possibly war. In the initial draft of his first inaugural address Lincoln directly discussed the seizure of property. He wanted to assure people that “there will be no invasion of any State” but promised to use his presidential authority to “reclaim the public property and places which have fallen” that belong to the federal government.87 Unlike Buchanan, Lincoln believed the president had the power to maintain the Union and wanted to make his policy on secession clear.88

Nevertheless, those closest to Lincoln did have to encourage him to temper his strong stance against southern secession.89 This is not to suggest that Lincoln did not understand southern attitudes toward federal authority but that Lincoln was not afraid to stand firm against southern aggression. After reading a draft of Lincoln’s address, Orville Browning told him that “the declaration of the purpose of reclamation [of federal properties], [would] be construed into a threat, or menace, and [would] irritate even . . . the border states.” While Browning agreed that the property must be reclaimed, he asked, “Cannot that be accomplished as well, or even better without announcing the purpose in your inaugural?”90 William Seward agreed and suggested some changes to “soothe the public mind.” Most notably, Seward wanted Lincoln to replace the word “treasonable” with “revolutionary.”91

Some of Seward’s suggested edits, however, changed the meaning behind what Lincoln wanted to say. Originally Lincoln wrote, “A disruption of the Federal Union is menaced, and, so far as can be on paper, is already effected.” Seward, however, encouraged Lincoln to say, “A disruption of the Federal Union heretofore only menaced is now formidably attempted.”92 Lincoln was trying to make the argument that the South was already in open rebellion. In other words, Lincoln was arguing that the war had already started. Seward’s phrasing, on the other hand, sought to soften this point. In the end, Lincoln decided it was best to placate the South, but he did say that he intended to “hold, occupy, and possess the property, and places belonging to the government.”93

Once Lincoln assumed office, northerners continued to comment on southern acts of war. Northern Democratic papers such as the Pittsburgh Post argued that the “forts were built to protect the States where located against foreign aggression, not to be used against the people of the States themselves. . . . There is no humiliation in the abandonment. The reason of it will be fully appreciated by the nation and by the world. It will be regarded as a willingly offered, a voluntary peace measure, magnanimously adopted to save the Union.”94 But other northerners had had their fill of secessionist aggression. On March 28, President Lincoln received a letter that begged, “In the name of reason and consistency don’t subject our country to another burning disgrace and shame in the shape of evacuating any of the Forts and defenses without an effort to save them from that lawless rattlesnake crew that are not only wrenching State after State from our Union but are cutting up States and establishing Capitals to suit their own purposes and designs.”95

If southerners really thought that seizing public property would prevent potential conflict, they were sorely mistaken. As state and local authorities seized federal installations, northerners concluded that the South had committed acts of war. In Lincoln’s call for seventy-five thousand militia volunteers after the Confederate firing on Fort Sumter he asserted that their first assignment would “be to repossess the forts, places, and property which have been seized from the Union.”96 The New York Herald insisted that an “appeal to arms” was necessary to regain control of federal “customs houses, forts, arsenals, navy yards, mints, marine hospitals, courts of justice, post offices and post roads.” As the Herald saw it, all public property needed to be returned and “the utmost penalties due to treason” imposed upon the seceding states.97 According to northerners, the Civil War began with the seizure of federal property.

Notes

1. Congressional Globe, 36th Cong., 1st Sess., 586.

2. Ibid.

3. James Oakes uses this same passage to argue that the Republican Party intended to abolish slavery before the Civil War began. Oakes, The Scorpion’s Sting: Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014).

4. Daily Mississippian (Jackson), January 18, 1860.

5. Daily Globe, January 17, 1860, quoted in New York Herald, January 28, 1860.

6. Speech delivered on December 12, 1859, published in Sacramento Daily Union, January 12, 1860.

7. This challenges William Freehling’s assertion that the seizure of federal property had nothing to do with slavery. See Freehling, The Road to Disunion, vol. 2, Secessionist Triumphant, 1854–1861 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

8. Silvana Siddali persuasively argues that many northerners focused their discussions on the seizure of property rather than political rhetoric and the Confederate capture of federal property brought “unexpectedly painful questions before the northern public.” This implies that northerners had more concrete reasons to fight than James McPherson suggests. Siddali, From Property to Person: Slavery and the Confiscation Acts, 1861–1862 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005), 49. See also James McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); and Rachel K. Deale, “Acts of War: The Southern Seizure of Federal Property, 1860–1861” (PhD diss., University of Alabama, 2017).

9. Almost every book on the coming of the Civil War or early war mentions the seizure of federal property, but no full-length study exists on the topic. Kenneth Stampp’s And the War Came spends little time examining the northern reactions to the South’s aggressive captures outside of Charleston, South Carolina. Edwin Bearss examines the capture of federal forts, arsenals, and barracks in Louisiana, but his work provides no explanation of why Louisiana Governor Thomas Overton Moore ordered the state militia to seize the property or what the seizure meant for the coming of the Civil War. James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom briefly discusses that the South captured federal forts, but he does not explain who was responsible for the seizures, how they captured the forts, or why they decided to take the property. He also does not examine the North’s response to the seizures. More recent works on the secession crisis, such as Russell McClintock’s Lincoln and the Decision for War and William J. Cooper’s We Have the War upon Us focus primarily on efforts of political compromise. See Stampp, And the War Came: The North and the Secession Crisis, 1860–1861 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1950); Edwin C. Bearss, “The Seizure of the Forts and Public Property in Louisiana,” Louisiana History 2 (Autumn 1961): 401–409; James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Russell McClintock, Lincoln and the Decision for War: The Northern Response to Secession (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008); William J. Cooper, We Have the War upon Us: The Onset of the Civil War, November 1860–April 1861 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012).

10. This argument supports James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom and Arno Mayer’s The Dynamics of Counterrevolution in Europe. According to Mayer, a “pre-emptive counterrevolution” occurs when a group is so fearful of a revolutionary movement that they “intentionally exaggerate the magnitude and imminence of the revolutionary threat” and rather than waiting for the revolutionary force to take power, they attack before the revolutionaries have time to defend themselves. See McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 245; Mayer, The Dynamics of Counterrevolution in Europe, 1870–1956: An Analytic Framework (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 86.

11. Winfield Scott, “Views,” October 29, 1860, John J. Crittenden Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

12. Southern Recorder (Milledgeville, GA), January 22, 1861.

13. Charleston Courier, January 10, 1861.

14. Charleston Mercury, January 1, 1861.

15. James Buchanan to Edwin Stanton, April 8, 1861, in Philip Gerald Auchampaugh, James Buchanan and His Cabinet on the Eve of Secession (Duluth: privately printed, 1926), 63–64.

16. Horatio King, Turning on the Light: A Dispassionate Survey of President Buchanan’s Administration from 1860 to Its Close, (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1895), 120; interview with Judge Jeremiah Black published in Chicago Daily Tribune, August 7, 1881, quoted in Philip Shriver Klein, President James Buchanan: A Biography (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1962), 359; Roy F. Nichols, Disruption of Democracy (New York: Macmillan, 1948), 381.

17. James Buchanan to Jeremiah Black, November 17, 1860, James Buchanan Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

18. Attorney General Jeremiah Black, “Power of the President in Executing the Laws,” November 20, 1860, in A Documentary History of the American Civil War Era, ed. Thomas C. Mackey (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2013), 2:204–206.

19. Mackey, A Documentary History, 2:204.

20. William A. Blair, With Malice toward Some: Treason and Loyalty in the Civil War Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 13.

21. James Buchanan, Fourth Annual Message, December 3, 1860, in The Works of James Buchanan: Comprising His Speeches, State Papers, and Private Correspondence, ed. John Bassett Moore (New York: Antiquarian, 1960), 11:7–40.

22. Jeremiah Black’s Historic Notes no. 1, Jeremiah Black Papers, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washington, DC.

23. Edward McPherson, Political History of the United States of America, during the Great Rebellion (Washington, DC: Philip and Solomons, 1865), 28.

24. Daily Cleveland Herald, January 9, 1860.

25. New-York Tribune, December 5, 1860.

26. Morning Journal and Courier (New Haven, CT), December 6, 1860, in Howard Cecil Perkins, Northern Editorials on Secession (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1942), 1:136.

27. J. H. Wilson to John Logan, January 9, 1861, Logan Family Papers, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washington, DC.

28. Buffalo Daily Courier, December 6, 1860, in Perkins, Northern Editorials on Secession, 1:139.

29. John A Gilmer to Abraham Lincoln, December 10, 1860, Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washington, DC.

30. Abraham Lincoln to John Gilmer, December 15, 1860, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 9 vols., ed. Roy P. Basler et al., (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 151–153.

31. Abraham Lincoln to Alexander Stephens, December 22, 1860, in Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 4:160.

32. Abraham Lincoln to Thurlow Weed, December 17, 1860, in Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 4:154.

33. Abraham Lincoln to Elihu B. Washburne, December 21, 1860, in Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 4:159.

34. Memorandum, Springfield, Illinois, December 22, 1860, John G. Nicolay Papers, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washington, DC.

35. McPherson, Political History of the United States, 29.

36. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 127 vols. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1880–1901), ser.1, vol. 1, 112 (hereafter cited as OR). For more information about the seizure of federal property in South Carolina see Deale, “Acts of War.”

37. OR, ser. 1, vol. 1, 252.

38. Savannah Republican, December 31, 1860; OR, ser. 1, vol. 53, 112–113; Albany (GA) Patriot, January 3, 1861.

39. Ulysses Simpson Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant (New York: Century, 1903), 1:181.

40. At the time, Governor Brown believed that Buchanan had issued an order to reinforce all southern forts. This order was issued the last week of November but was almost immediately rescinded. See New York Times, January 18, 1861; Auchampaugh, James Buchanan and His Cabinet, 150; Joseph Brown, Executive Minutebook, January 2, 1861, Georgia Archives, Morrow, Georgia; OR, ser. 1, vol. 1, 318, 319; Allen D. Candler, The Confederate Records of the State of Georgia: Compiled and Published under Authority of the Legislature (Atlanta: Charles P. Byrd, 1910), 2:9–19. See also Freehling, The Road to Disunion, 2:482–483; Joseph Howard Parks, Joseph E. Brown of Georgia (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999), 124–126.

41. OR, ser. 1, vol. 1, 319.

42. Southern Watchman (Athens, GA), January 9, 1861.

43. Savannah Republican, January 5, 1861, quoted in New York Herald, January 12, 1861.

44. Federal Union (Milledgeville, GA), January 8, 1861.

45. Papers quoted from I. W. Avery, The History of the State of Georgia from 1850 to 1881, Embracing the Three Important Epochs: The Decade before the War of 1861–5; The War; The Period of Reconstruction, With Portraits of the Leading Public Men of This Era (New York: Brown and Derby, 1881), 148.

46. Journal of the Public and Secret Proceedings of the Convention of the People of Georgia Held in Milledgeville and Savannah in 1861 (Milledgeville, GA: Boughton, Nisbet and Barnes, 1861), 19, 26.

47. Daily Morning News (Savannah, GA), January 3, 1861.

48. Albany (GA) Patriot, January 10, 1861.

49. Fayetteville (NC) Observer, January 7, 1861.

50. Federal Union (Milledgeville, GA), January 15, 1861.

51. New York Herald, January 12, 1861.

52. Journal of the Public and Secret Proceedings of the Convention of the People of Georgia Held in Milledgeville and Savannah in 1861, 61.

53. Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (New York: Sagamore, 1953), 1:209.

54. Joseph E. Brown to Governor Moore, January 5, 1861, Samuel Crawford Papers, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washington, DC.

55. Andrew B. Moore to John Todd, January 3, 1861, John B. Todd Correspondence, Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, Alabama.

56. OR, ser. 1, vol. 1, 327.

57. New York Herald, January 12, 1861.

58. Confederate War Journal 1, no. 1 (1893): 48.

59. Mobile Tribune, quoted in the New York Herald, January 14, 1861.

60. There were 132 guns at Fort Morgan and 89 guns stored at Fort Gaines. New York Herald, January 14, 1861; Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, DC), February 5, 1861.

61. Thomas J. McClellan to wife (Martha Fleming Beatie), January 6, 1861, Thomas J. McClellan Letters, 1861, Alabama Department of Archives and History.

62. John G. Nicolay, The Outbreak of Rebellion (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1881), 16.

63. OR, ser. 1, vol.1, 327, 328; William Russell Smith, The History and Debates of the Convention of the People of Alabama, Begun and Held in the City of Montgomery, on the Seventh Day of January, 1861; in Which is Preserved the Speeches of the Secret Sessions, and Many valuable State Papers (Montgomery: White, Pfister, 1861), 40–41.

64. Bearss, “The Seizure of the Forts,” 401.

65. OR, ser. 1, vol. 1, 490.

66. OR, ser. 1, vol. 1, 495.

67. For more information about Braxton Bragg during the secession crisis see Grady McWhiney, Braxton Bragg and Confederate Defeat, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969); and Earl J. Hess, Braxton Bragg: The Most Hated Man of the Confederacy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016).

68. Braxton Bragg to Elise Bragg, January 11, 1861, William K. Bixby Collection of Braxton Bragg Papers, Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Missouri; McWhiney, Braxton Bragg, 150–151.

69. OR, ser. 1, vol. 1, p. 490.

70. Braxton Bragg to Elise Bragg, January 11, 1861, William K. Bixby Collection of Braxton Bragg Papers, Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Missouri.

71. OR, ser. 1, vol. 1, 495. For more information about the problems of southern arms shortages and Major Josiah Gorgas, chief of Confederate ordnance, see Frank E. Vandiver, Ploughshares into Swords: Josiah Gorgas and Confederate Ordnance (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1952); and Bearss, “The Seizure of the Forts,” 404.

72. William T. Sherman to James Guthrie, August 14, 1864, in Sherman’s Civil War: Selected Correspondence of William T. Sherman, 1860–1865, ed. Brooks D. Simpson and Jean V. Berlin (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 693.

73. William T. Sherman to Thomas Ewing Jr., April 26, 1861, in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 75.

74. William T. Sherman to Charles Anderson, ca. August 1863, in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 510.

75. Daily Palladium (New Haven, CT), January 11, 1861, in Perkins, Northern Editorials on Secession, 1:210.

76. Peleg Bunker to John Sherman, January 12, 1861, John Sherman Papers, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washington, DC.

77. Jake L. Smith to John Sherman, January 15, 1861, John Sherman Papers, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washington, DC.

78. John A. Logan to I. N. Haynie, January 1, 1861, John A. Logan Correspondence, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washington, DC.

79. Copy of the Resolutions Adopted by the Fifth Ward Republican Association, January 14, 1861, John Sherman Papers, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washington, DC.

80. New York Times, January 15, 1861.

81. Ibid.; Daily Picayune (New Orleans), January 24, 1861.

82. Nicolay, The Outbreak of Rebellion, 16.

83. Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 4:194–196.

84. New York Herald, February 13, 1861.

85. New-York Tribune, February 18, 1861.

86. Address to the New Jersey General Assembly at Trenton, New Jersey; Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 4:236–237.

87. Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 4:254.

88. David Donald refers to Lincoln’s first draft as a “no-nonsense document.” Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 283.

89. For more analysis of Lincoln’s first inaugural address see Douglas L. Wilson, Lincoln’s Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006).

90. Orville Browning to Abraham Lincoln, February 17, 1861, Abraham Lincoln Papers, Springfield, Illinois.

91. Douglas Wilson also argues that most of Seward’s changes were designed to “placate the South and play down the seriousness of the crisis.” William H. Seward to Abraham Lincoln, February 24, 1861, in John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History, 10 vols. (New York: Century, 1890), 3:319; Wilson, Lincoln’s Sword, 61.

92. For the first edition and revisions to Lincoln’s first inaugural address see Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 4:249–262.

93. Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 4:266.

94. Pittsburgh Post, March 18, 1861, in Perkins, Northern Editorials on Secession, 2:649.

95. Joseph Blanchard to Abraham Lincoln, March 28, 1861, Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washington, DC.

96. Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 4:159.

97. New York Herald, April 24, 1861.