Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/385

CHAPTER IX.

COERCION AND ITS CONSEQUENCE.

POLICY FORESHADOWED IN DECEMBER, 1860—WAR LIKE PREPARATIONS—STAR OF THE WEST HIRED TO REINFORCE SUMTER—SOUTHERN LEADERS GROW HOPELESS OF PEACE—NORTHERN LEADERS OPPOSE COMPROMISE— CRITTENDEN, DAVIS, TOOMBS AND OTHERS URGE CONCILIATION—VIRGINIA TO THE RESCUE—BORDER STATES DECLARE AGAINST COERCION—SECESSION OF SEVERAL STATES—PEACE CONGRESS—"PEACE HATH NO VICTORIES."

THE last weeks of the year 1860 produced no event which betokened a peaceful solution of the controversy between North and South. On the contrary, nearly all events combined to increase the discontent and make secession and a Southern Confederacy certain. For nearly a decade the causes had been accumulating with convergent tendency to the result now near at hand. The Union was the resultant force of compromises ordained in the Constitution. Disunion was the effect produced by unpatriotic breach of these unifying principles. The Union was made possible in its beginning by the superintending presence of non-partisan patriotism. Disunion was decreed in 1860 by the necessities of party policy. There was good practical politics in the earnest charge, December, 1860, of the President-elect, Mr. Lincoln, to Senator Washburne, to prevent all compromise which would demoralize the party. The advice meant that there should be no settlement except on the terms of the late party platform,—a political manifesto made by a bare majority of States, all Northern, assembled in