The order interfering with the Navy Department was designed to checkmate the titular head of the department.Furthermore,Seward had had the amazing coolness to assume that Lincoln would certainly accept his Thoughts and that the simple President need not hereinafter be consulted about details.He aimed to circumvent Welles and to make sure that the Sumter expedition,whether sailing orders were issued or not,should be rendered innocuous.The warship Powhatan,which was being got ready for sea at the Brooklyn Navy Yard,was intended by Welles for the Sumter expedition.One of those unread despatches signed by Lincoln,assigned it to the Pickens expedition.When the sailing orders from Welles were received,the commander of the Sumter fleet claimed the Powhatan.The Pickens commander refused to give it up.The latter telegraphed Seward that his expedition was "being retarded and embarrassed"by "conflicting"orders from Welles.The result was a stormy conference between Seward and Welles which was adjourned to the White House and became a conference with Lincoln.And then the whole story came out.Lincoln played the scapegoat,"took the whole blame upon himself,said it was carelessness,heedlessness on his part;he ought to have been more careful and attentive."But he insisted on immediate correction of his error,on the restoration of the Powhatan to the Sumter fleet.Seward struggled hard for his plan.Lincoln was inflexible.As Seward had directed the preparation of the Pickens expedition,Lincoln required him to telegraph to Brooklyn the change in orders.Seward,beaten by his enemy Welles,was deeply chagrined.In his agitation he forgot to be formal,forgot that the previous order had gone out in the President's name,and wired curtly,"Give up the Powhatan.
Seward."
This despatch was received just as the Pickens expedition was sailing.The commander of the Powhatan had now before him,three orders.Naturally,he held that the one signed by the President took precedence over the others.He went on his way,with his great warship,to Florida.The Sumter expedition sailed without any powerful ship of war.In this strange fashion,chance executed Seward's design.
Lincoln had previously informed the Governor of South Carolina that due notice would be given,should he decide to relieve Sumter.Word was now sent that "an attempt will be made to supply Fort Sumter with provisions only;and that if such attempt be not resisted,no effort to throw in men,arms or ammunition will be made without further notice,or in case of an attack upon the fort."[25]Though the fleet was not intended to offer battle,it was supposed to be strong enough to force its way into the harbor,should the relief of Sumter be opposed.But the power to do so was wholly conditioned on the presence in its midst of the Powhatan.And the Powhatan was far out to sea on its way to Florida.
And now it was the turn of the Confederate government to confront a crisis.It,no less than Washington,had passed through a period of disillusion.The assumption upon which its chief politicians had built so confidently had collapsed.The South was not really a unit.It was not true that the secession of any one State,on any sort of issue,would compel automatically the secession of all the Southern States.North Carolina had exploded this illusion.Virginia had exploded it.
The South could not be united on the issue of slavery;it could not be united on the issue of sectional dread.It could be united on but one issue-State sovereignty,the denial of the right of the Federal Government to coerce a State.The time had come to decide whether the cannon at Charleston should fire.As Seward had foreseen,Montgomery held the trumps;but had Montgomery the courage to play them?There was a momentous debate in the Confederate Cabinet.Robert Toombs,the Secretary of State,whose rapid growth in comprehension since December formed a parallel to Lincoln's growth,threw his influence on the side of further delay.He would not invoke that "final argument of kings,"the shotted cannon."Mr.
President,"he exclaimed,"at this time,it is suicide,murder,and will lose us every friend at the North.You will instantly strike a:hornet's nest which extends from mountain to ocean,and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death.It is unnecessary;it puts us in the wrong;it is fatal."But Toombs stood alone in the Cabinet.Orders were sent to Charleston to reduce Fort Sumter.Before dawn,April twelfth,the first shot was fired.The flag of the United States was hauled down on the afternoon of the thirteenth.'Meanwhile the relieving fleet had arrived--without the Powhatan.Bereft of its great ship,it could not pass the harbor batteries and assist the fort.Its only service was to take off the garrison which by the terms of surrender was allowed to withdraw.On the fourteenth,Sumter was evacuated and the inglorious fleet sailed back to the northward.
Lincoln at once accepted the gage of battle.On the fifteenth appeared his proclamation calling for an army of seventy-five thousand volunteers.Automatically,the upper South fulfilled its unhappy destiny.Challenged at last,on the irreconcilable issue,Virginia,North Carolina,Tennessee,Arkansas,seceded.
The final argument of kings was the only one remaining.
