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misled and excited people were made to believe that a war for subjugation was about to be waged against them.
“It is our wisest policy,” said the satanic
Charleston Mercury, “to accept it as a declaration of war;” and urged its readers not to waste time in thinking, but to raise the arm of resistance immediately.
The conspirators were most afraid of deliberation.
They would not allow the people to reflect, but hurried them on, willing or unwilling, into open armed rebellion.
“To carry out his threats,” they said, “not only on the forts now in possession of the
Federal Government to be held, but fortresses along the coast, and owned [by virtue of unlawful seizure] by the
Confederate States Government, are to be ‘possessed’ and ‘held’ by the United States Government.
This warns us that our course now must be entirely one of policy and war strategy.”
1 A member (
Mr. Harvie, of
Amelia) of the politicians' convention in
Virginia, then in session in
Richmond, introduced a resolution declaring that it was
Mr. Lincoln's purpose to plunge the country into civil war by “coercive policy,” and asked the Legislature to take measures for resistance; and some were so indiscreet as to rejoice because the Inaugural seemed to give a pretext for rebellion.
Every thing that unholy ambition and malice could devise was used to distort the plain meaning of the address, and inflame the passions of the people against those of the Free-labor States.
2 It was falsely asserted that it breathed hostility to the
people of the Slave-labor States, when it was only hostile to the conspirators and their friends.
For that reason they sought to blind and mislead the people; and they illustrated the truth, that
No rogue e'er felt the halter draw
With good opinion of the law.
The first business of the
President and his Cabinet was to inform themselves about the condition of public affairs, the resources of the
Government, and the powers at its command.
They first turned to the Treasury Department, and there found, under the skillful management of
Secretary Dix, cheerful promises, because of evidences of renewed public confidence.
The national debt was something more than sixty millions of dollars, and was slowly increasing, because of the necessity for loans.
After the Presidential election, in November, 1860, as we have seen, the public inquietude and the dishonest operations of
Secretary Cobb caused much distrust among capitalists, and they were loth to buy Government stocks.
Of a loan of twenty millions of dollars, authorized by Congress in June,
one-half of it was asked for in October.
It was readily subscribed for, but only a little more than seven millions of dollars were paid in. A few days after
Cobb left the Treasury, Congress authorized the issue of treasury notes
to the amount of ten millions of dollars, payable in one year, at the lowest rates of interest offered.
Of these, five millions of dollars were offered on the 28th of December.
