Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/353

Rh began in October to counsel the administration of Buchanan in writing to make certain dispositions of the armies which would prevent secession. (Life of Buchanan, 1866.) A communication October 3ist from Colonel Craig, ordnance officer, to Secretary Floyd, that the officer in charge of Fort Sumter desired a few small arms to be given the workmen in the fort for protection of government property, and asking authority to issue forty muskets, was approved by Floyd and the order issued. (Rebellion Rec., vol. 2, p. 100.) A meeting of a few prominent politicians at the home of Senator Hammond in South Carolina, October 25, 1860, to discuss secession, has been often named as one of the preliminaries of that event In the meantime the fight was made most aggressively by Northern leaders. (Sherman’s Recollections, vol. 2, pp. 199-203.) The States of Pennsylvania, Indiana, New Jersey and Delaware were considered doubtful, and in them the contest was warm even to violence. The strong denunciations of Southern arrogance and open criticisms of Buchanan s administration as "broken down, corrupt and demoralized,&quot; with never ceasing appeals to the anti-slavery feeling by public speakers, were reproduced in hundreds of Northern news papers, which were circulated among Southern subscribers. The South saw itself already set aside so far as the Presidential race was concerned. It was cut off from practical participation in the election where the issue was sectional, for whether it would or would not vote could make no difference. A solid electoral Southern vote could be only its protest in the Union under the Constitution. The actual severance of the inter-state comity which made North and South one country had already so far happened that the executive and legislative policies of the United States were dependent upon the result of the conflict raging in the Northern States. It was evident that the North was about to decide the important question whether the whole country composed of all the States shall be ruled by a part of the States.