strained, it must not break, our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearth-stone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

The constitutional amendment to which Lincoln referred and to which he assented as "implied constitutional law," passed Congress on the last day of Buchanan's administration and was signed by him, probably his last official act. It read:

"Article XIII.-No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State."

It was the last attempt by the National government to concede to the will of slavocracy and in the agitation of civil war was lost and forgotten, yet it was ratified by a convention in Illinois, and by the legislatures of Maryland and Ohio.

If it be asked, What were the causes of the Civil War?— and an outline of those causes has been given in this chapter and the two preceding the answer, comprehensively, must be, slavery. Once introduced into the country, the selfishness of men and climate made its continuance possible. The original domain of the United States was supposed, by the Fathers, to be fairly divided between freedom and slavery, but the extension of the national domain across the Mississippi by the purchase of the Louisiana country precipitated a contest over slavery extension which waxed more serious down to the election of Lincoln to the presidency. Into that contest all other forces were drawn: conflicting theories of the nature of the Union and conflicting theories of its proper administration. The slave power grew until it controlled the Federal government, but it lacked an economic basis: land and people. Industrially it could not compete

with free labor. Looking back now over the development of the country down to 1860, it is difficult to understand how civil war could be avoided. The idea of Confederacy was hostile to the idea of Nationality, and no Federal government which human beings are ever likely to make could be administered to the equal satisfaction of the slave States and the free States.

South Carolina declared in the most solemn manner what it held to be the causes, the justifiable causes for its secession from the Union: some of these are political, some economic, some constitutional, some climatic, some social: but the essential cause was the incompatibility of free institutions and slave institutions under the same General government. Search as one may into the archives, and weigh as he must all the evidence, he will at last reach the conclusion, now a matter of history, but when first uttered a startling assertion, and considered by the South, and by many at the North, as merely a piece of political propagandism:

"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this Government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved-I do not expect the house to fall-but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all the one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new-North as well as South."

The obscure man who uttered these words in 1858 was now president of the United States. What would he do, what would the Nation do to keep the house from falling?

CHAPTER IV

THE FIRST YEAR OF THE WAR

INTENT upon separation from the Union and the formation of a Slaveholding Confederacy, South Carolina swiftly proceeded to carry out a programme agreed upon. It elected three commissioners, December 22, 1860, Robert W. Barnwell, James H. Adams, and James L. Orr, who should negotiate with President Buchanan for the delivery to the State of all Federal property within its limits, including forts, magazines and lighthouses. The partnership having been dissolved, South Carolina hastened to divide the property among the partners. The South Carolina Congressmen had had interviews with Buchanan relative to the matter of the occupation of the forts in Charleston harbor and interpreted the president's words as a promise that he would not change the status there without due notice to them. But on the 26th, Major Anderson, in command at Fort Moultrie, dismantled that stronghold and retired with his force to Fort Sumter as the more defensible fort. The act enraged the secessionists in Charleston and persuaded them that Buchanan's word was untrustworthy. The truth is that Anderson had removed strictly for military reasons and at his own instance, and to the demands of Governor Pickens replied, "I cannot and will not go back." The governor at once ordered the State troops to take possession of Fort Moultrie and the palmetto flag was raised over it. Jefferson Davis and his fellow-secessionists from other Southern States were

not yet retired from Congress and upon receipt of the news from Charleston, Davis, and others, accompanied by Trescot, the assistant secretary of state and the go-between in the programme of negotiation, called upon Buchanan to expostulate. Davis accused the president of precipitating bloodshed. Buchanan, amazed at the news, declared that Anderson's course was "against my policy." Next day the president received the South Carolina commissioners, not as officials, but as private gentlemen. Out of the interview arose the expected: that the commissioners asserted one thing and the president understood another. The national element at the North was becoming impatient at the president's course; the South convinced herself that he had promised one thing and done another, and the North blamed him for doing nothing. One conclusion is safe-that he did not comprehend the gravity of the situation. Civil War was upon the country and the president did not know it. South Carolina interpreted Major Anderson's removal to Fort Sumter as an act of war and the North interpreted Buchanan's course as an act of cowardice. At heart, Buchanan inclined to accede to the demands of the commissioners and prepared a favorable reply to them. This was on the 29th. He submitted it to a divided Cabinet; Stanton, recently made attorney-general, and Black, secretary of state, counselled against it; if it should be issued, Black determined to resign. The secretary would not longer support a policy of non possumus, and so informed the president. Buchanan, confessing his weakness by the act, handed his proposed answer over to Black, requesting him to modify it as he thought best. The secretary rewrote the memorandum and converted it into a state paper of national character, attacked and refuted the whole secession theory and concluded with the entreaty that Major Anderson be at once supported by the army and navy, else he could see nothing before the country but disaster and ruin.

Black's revision of the president's policy was the first act in a long series which culminated at last in the suppression