John G. Nicolay, The Outbreak of Rebellion

[70] press was full of kindred echoes. Potent public voices had declared that the North would not entertainnay, would not permit, a policy of subjugation. ExPresi-dent Franklin Pierce-Buchanan's predecessor-had given Jefferson Davis very broad confidential assurances on this head. “Without discussing the question of right,” wrote he, January 6, 1860, “of abstract power to secede, I have never believed that actual disruption of the Union can occur without blood; and if, through the madness of Northern Abolitionism, that dire calamity must come, the fighting will not be along Mason's and Dixon's line merely. It [will] be within our own borders, in our own streets, between the two classes of citizens to whom I have referred. Those who defy law and scout constitutional obligations will, if we ever reach the arbitrament of arms, find occupation enough at home.”

As the oracle of another faction, Douglas had made an elaborate argument in the Senate to show that the President possessed no right of coercion; repeating the theory of Buchanan's message, that the army and navy and the militia of the States could not move except behind a marshal with his writ, and that both the tongue and the arms of justice were dead in South Carolina. Similar encouragement came from many individuals of lesser note. It even appeared that the spirit of secession was finding a lodgment in the North. A member had declared on the floor of Congress that the Empire State would set up her own separate sovereignty; while in a still more radical ambition the Mayor of New York City, in an official message, proposed the secession of that metropolis, and its assumption of territorial independence as a “free city.” The firing on the Star of the West, in January, had in a slight degree touched the national pride, and somewhat checked the gathering current of seditious utterance;