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that no State, as a State, had seceded or could secede; that the National Government is a unit, and that it knows no States in the exercise of its executive authority, but deals only with the individuals of the people; therefore the “coercing of a State” was an impossibility, the contemplation of it an absurdity, and the assertion of its possibility a positive misrepresentation.
And during the entire war that ensued, the Government acted upon the plain fact, declared by the very nature of the construction of the nation, that no State, as a State, was at any time in insurrection or rebellion, but only certain persons in certain States were acting in open defiance of the Law and of the Constitution.
Individual citizens, not States, any more than counties or towns, were held amenable to the outraged Constitution and laws.1
Mr. Seward's Memorandum remained uncalled for and undelivered for twenty-three days, when, on the 8th of April, J. F. Pickett, Secretary of the Commissioners, applied for it.2 The Commissioners explained the delay in seeking a reply to their note, by asserting that they had been assured by “a person occupying a high official station in the Government,” and who, they believed, was speaking by authority, that Fort Sumter would soon be evacuated, and that there would be no change in the relations of Fort Pickens to the “Confederacy,” prejudicial to the “new government.”
They were also informed, they said, on the 1st of April, that an attempt might be made to send provisions to Fort Sumter, but nothing was said about re-enforcing the garrison.
Governor Pickens, they understood, was to be informed before any attempt to send supplies should be made.
With the belief that no hostile act would be undertaken unheralded, they had consented to wait, that they might secure the great object of their mission, namely, “a peaceful solution of existing complications.”
The “person occupying a high official station” was John A. Campbell, a judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, who soon afterward resigned his seat on the bench, and joined the conspirators in their unholy work.
He had received from Secretary Seward such assurances of peaceful intentions on the part of the Government, that on the day when the Secretary wrote his Memorandum for the Commissioners, Judge Campbell advised them not to press the matter of their mission.
“I feel an entire confidence,” he said, “that an immediate demand for an answer to your communication will be productive of evil and not of good.”
They acted upon his advice, and waited.
It was from Judge Campbell that they received from Mr. Seward, on the 1st of April, the assurance that he was “satisfied that the Government would not undertake to supply Fort Sumter without giving notice to Governor Pickens.”
When, on the 8th, they were informed that
1 At Indianapolis, while on his way to Washington, Mr. Lincoln asked, significantly:--“In what consists the special sacredness of a State? I speak of that assumed primary right of a State to rule all which is less than itself, and ruin all which is greater than itself. If a State and a county, in a given case, should be equal in extent of territory and equal in number of inhabitants, in what, as a matter of principle, is the State better than the county? Would an exchange of names be an exchange of rights, upon principle? On what rightful principle may a State, being not more than one-fiftieth part of the Nation in soil and population, break up the Nation, and then coerce a proportionably larger subdivision of itself, in the most arbitrary way? What mysterious right to play tyrant is conferred on a district of country, with its people, by merely calling it a State?”
2 The original Memorandum is in the office of the Secretary of State. On it is an indorsement, setting forth that its delivery was delayed by the consent of the “Commissioners,” and that, when called for, a verified copy was delivered to their Secretary.
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