Page:Confederate Cause and Conduct.djvu/80

 58 The following letter of Senator Chandler, of Michigan, indicates too clearly the feelings of the Republican party at that time to require comment. It is dated February 11th, 1861, a week after Congress assembled, and addressed to the Governor of his State.

He says:

"Governor Bingham (the other Senator from Michigan) and myself telegraphed to you on Saturday at the request of Massachusetts and New York, to send delegates to the Peace Compromise Congress. They admit that we were right and they were wrong, that no Republican State should have sent delegates; but they are here and can't get away. Ohio, Indiana and Rhode Island are caving in, and there is some danger of Illinois; and now they beg us, for God's sake to come to their rescue and save the Republican party from rupture. I hope you will send stiff-backed men or none. The whole thing was gotten up against my judgment and advice, and will end in thin smoke. Still I hope as a matter of courtesy to some of our erring brethren, that you will send the delegates.

"Z. Chandler."

"His Excellency, Austin Blair."

" P. S.—Some of the Manufacturing States think that a fight would be awful. Without a little blood-letting this Union will not, in my estimation, be worth a curse."

Mr. Lunt says:

"If this truly eloquent and statesmanlike epistle does not express the views of the Republican managers at the time, it does at least indicate with sufficient clearness their relations towards the 'Peace Conference' and the determined purpose of the radicals to have 'a fight,' and it furthermore foreshadows the actual direction given to future events."

But I cannot protract this discussion further. Suffice it to say, that Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas did not secede until Mr. Lincoln had actually declared war against the seven Cotton and Gulf States, then forming the Southern