John Gilmer’s Last Stand
By DANIEL W. CROFTS NY TIMES
Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.
Library of Congress John A. GilmerWriting from Greensboro, N.C., in March 1861, the week after Abraham Lincoln took power, Representative John A. Gilmer sent a rapid-fire sequence of letters to William Henry Seward, the new secretary of state. “I am here in the very midst of the South,” Gilmer implored Seward, “and I beg you to weigh well the suggestions which I make to you.” He described the nervous impetuousness among secessionists, who were beginning to believe that fighting and bloodshed were necessary to sustain their flagging revolution. Their only hope was to instigate a collision between federal and state forces in the Deep South.
To prevent that from happening, Gilmer advised, the federal government must voluntarily relinquish the two Deep South coastal forts that it still controlled: Fort Pickens, offshore from Pensacola, Fla., and Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, S.C. Gilmer knew that his advice would be painful: Sumter had become a symbol of Union and nationality, a rebuke to secessionist claims to have created a separate nation. When Maj. Robert Anderson transferred his forces from a vulnerable position on shore to Sumter, which sat on an artificial island, in late December, he was instantly hailed across the North as a hero.
But Gilmer believed that Sumter could drag the country into civil war. As he well knew from his home state, the fear of “coercion” — that is, the use of federal force against the seceding states — continued to prop up the floundering secession cause in the Upper South. “The only thing now that gives the secessionists the advantage of the conservatives,” Gilmer wrote, “is the cry of coercion — that the whipping of a slave state, is the whipping of slavery.” He wanted to extinguish this dangerous firebrand.
Library of Congress William Henry SewardGilmer’s four intense, passionate letters to Seward were among the most important documents written during the months between the 1860 election and the start of the war. If the peace were to hold, Gilmer offered perhaps the only plausible road map. What’s more, the hurried correspondence between Gilmer, a North Carolinian, and Seward, an eminent New Yorker, gives lie to the notion that the North and South were two two utterly divergent regions — on the contrary, even as the voices of secessionists and Northern radicals grew ever louder, men on both sides sought desperately to find a resolution to the crisis.
Gilmer’s first letter sketched his plan for saving the Union. Gilmer believed the Deep South could not successfully maintain its independence if the Upper South — where two-thirds of white Southerners lived — remained in the Union. Eventually, Gilmer predicted, the Upper South would “unite cordially with the free states” to pressure the Lower South to return to the Union. The essential prerequisite was an interval of time — perhaps a year or two — to allow new, strongly pro-Union leadership to take power in the Upper South. At the same time, the experience of going “out into the cold for a while” would diminish popular enthusiasm for independence in the Deep South.
A man of medium height with a “strong compact form and powerful muscular development,” Gilmer conveyed “an atmosphere of hope, confidence, and cheerfulness.” Born on a farm in 1805, he grew up wearing homespun clothes but became one of North Carolina’s most accomplished lawyers. Observers recalled how his “full round face” with “laughing dark eyes” was framed by thick hair and long sideburns. Photos show that the chin beard he wore as a youth was clean-shaven by his middle years.
Gilmer ventured into politics in the 1840s. After representing his home of Greensboro and its adjacent rural districts in the state senate for a decade, he won a seat in Congress in 1857. Re-elected in 1859, he was chosen to lead the Southern Opposition Party in the House, a bloc of almost two dozen former Whigs. At the start of the session, his party put him forward as a compromise choice for speaker of the House. But even though he owned 53 slaves, Gilmer was distrusted by Southern Rights absolutists. They feared the Opposition would become more formidable if North-South tensions ebbed — and that an arrangement between the Opposition and the hated “Black Republicans” might evolve.
Democrats had reason to worry. Although Lincoln was elected president entirely with Northern votes, he wanted to include one or more Southerners in his cabinet, in order to show that his administration would be national, not sectional. At the behest of Seward, whom Lincoln persuaded to take the top cabinet post as secretary of state, the president-elect secretly agreed that Seward and his right-hand man, Thurlow Weed, might offer Gilmer a cabinet seat. Lincoln had reservations about selecting a non-Republican, but he respected Gilmer, knew that he was an intense Unionist, and knew too that he had been a long-term Whig.
For two months, Gilmer weighed Lincoln’s offer, but in the end he declined. He was disappointed that Republicans would not offer the South a symbolic concession regarding slavery in the territories, and he was alarmed to see the initial version of Lincoln’s Inaugural Address, which promised to reclaim federal property in Confederate hands and closed with an ominous threat to defend the Union by force if necessary. Gilmer’s refusal must have distressed Seward, who was struggling desperately to move Lincoln in a more conciliatory direction.
To make matters worse, Lincoln discovered on his first full day in office that Major Anderson was running low on food at Sumter, and that he no longer felt able to defend himself against the powerful weapons Confederates installed at other points in the harbor. Gen. Winfield Scott, who had masterminded the abortive mission to reinforce Sumter in early January, weighed in to say that it would be futile to attempt the same thing again. Thus the acute phase of the Sumter tangle landed in Lincoln’s lap just as he started his presidency.
Gilmer’s letters to Seward, sent on March 7, 8, 9 and 12, each would have reached Washington a few days later. At just this time, Seward tried to push Lincoln toward withdrawal. Seward had loyally toed the line for Lincoln up until this point, while at the same time reassuring Southern Unionists that the new administration would, in the end, swallow the bitter pill.
An unfolding history of the Civil War with photos and articles from the Times archive and ongoing commentary from Disunion contributors.
Suddenly — acting with courage, or audacity, or hubris, or insubordination, or treachery, or desperation or some combination of these qualities — Seward leaked word that Sumter would soon be abandoned. He knew in advance that Lincoln and other Republicans dreaded the impact this news would have on the party, especially among hardliners. Seward gambled that the story could be managed if announced quickly, so as to blame the outgoing Buchanan administration for leaving Sumter indefensible. Most of all, Seward gambled that Lincoln would ultimately support him.
Seward judged that giving up on Sumter was the only way Lincoln could uphold his inaugural appeal for peace. But that address had also included a promise “to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government.” What it boiled down to was this: Were peace and Sumter compatible? And if not, which would take priority?
Unionists in the Upper South jubilantly received news of the supposed coming Sumter evacuation. It had “acted like a charm,” one wrote to Seward, and given them “great strength.” When, after several days, nothing happened, however, they became anxious. The weeks dragged by, and contradictory reports flew along the telegraph lines. Was the apparent promise not to be kept?
Finally, on April 12, Gilmer posted another letter to Seward. “I am so deeply distressed that my heart seems to melt within me,” he wrote. “If what I hear is true that we are to have fighting at Sumter or Pickens, it is what the disunionists have most courted, and I seriously apprehend that it will instantly drive the whole South into secession.” That same day, at dawn, Confederate cannons already had opened the bombardment of Sumter.
Sources: Gilmer’s letters to Seward, in the William Henry Seward Papers at the University of Rochester, were published a century ago as an appendix to Frederic Bancroft, “The Life of William H. Seward,” two vols. Thanks to Google Books, interested readers may consult them through the hyperlink. The original and revised versions of Lincoln’s Inaugural Address, with Seward’s modifications indicated, may be found in Roy P. Basler, ed, “The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln.” See also Daniel W. Crofts, “Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis“; David M. Potter, “Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis“; and Russell McClintock, “Lincoln and the Decision for War: The Northern Response to Secession.”
Daniel W. Crofts is a professor at the College of New Jersey
By DANIEL W. CROFTS NY TIMES
Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.
Library of Congress John A. GilmerWriting from Greensboro, N.C., in March 1861, the week after Abraham Lincoln took power, Representative John A. Gilmer sent a rapid-fire sequence of letters to William Henry Seward, the new secretary of state. “I am here in the very midst of the South,” Gilmer implored Seward, “and I beg you to weigh well the suggestions which I make to you.” He described the nervous impetuousness among secessionists, who were beginning to believe that fighting and bloodshed were necessary to sustain their flagging revolution. Their only hope was to instigate a collision between federal and state forces in the Deep South.
To prevent that from happening, Gilmer advised, the federal government must voluntarily relinquish the two Deep South coastal forts that it still controlled: Fort Pickens, offshore from Pensacola, Fla., and Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, S.C. Gilmer knew that his advice would be painful: Sumter had become a symbol of Union and nationality, a rebuke to secessionist claims to have created a separate nation. When Maj. Robert Anderson transferred his forces from a vulnerable position on shore to Sumter, which sat on an artificial island, in late December, he was instantly hailed across the North as a hero.
But Gilmer believed that Sumter could drag the country into civil war. As he well knew from his home state, the fear of “coercion” — that is, the use of federal force against the seceding states — continued to prop up the floundering secession cause in the Upper South. “The only thing now that gives the secessionists the advantage of the conservatives,” Gilmer wrote, “is the cry of coercion — that the whipping of a slave state, is the whipping of slavery.” He wanted to extinguish this dangerous firebrand.
Library of Congress William Henry SewardGilmer’s four intense, passionate letters to Seward were among the most important documents written during the months between the 1860 election and the start of the war. If the peace were to hold, Gilmer offered perhaps the only plausible road map. What’s more, the hurried correspondence between Gilmer, a North Carolinian, and Seward, an eminent New Yorker, gives lie to the notion that the North and South were two two utterly divergent regions — on the contrary, even as the voices of secessionists and Northern radicals grew ever louder, men on both sides sought desperately to find a resolution to the crisis.
Gilmer’s first letter sketched his plan for saving the Union. Gilmer believed the Deep South could not successfully maintain its independence if the Upper South — where two-thirds of white Southerners lived — remained in the Union. Eventually, Gilmer predicted, the Upper South would “unite cordially with the free states” to pressure the Lower South to return to the Union. The essential prerequisite was an interval of time — perhaps a year or two — to allow new, strongly pro-Union leadership to take power in the Upper South. At the same time, the experience of going “out into the cold for a while” would diminish popular enthusiasm for independence in the Deep South.
A man of medium height with a “strong compact form and powerful muscular development,” Gilmer conveyed “an atmosphere of hope, confidence, and cheerfulness.” Born on a farm in 1805, he grew up wearing homespun clothes but became one of North Carolina’s most accomplished lawyers. Observers recalled how his “full round face” with “laughing dark eyes” was framed by thick hair and long sideburns. Photos show that the chin beard he wore as a youth was clean-shaven by his middle years.
Gilmer ventured into politics in the 1840s. After representing his home of Greensboro and its adjacent rural districts in the state senate for a decade, he won a seat in Congress in 1857. Re-elected in 1859, he was chosen to lead the Southern Opposition Party in the House, a bloc of almost two dozen former Whigs. At the start of the session, his party put him forward as a compromise choice for speaker of the House. But even though he owned 53 slaves, Gilmer was distrusted by Southern Rights absolutists. They feared the Opposition would become more formidable if North-South tensions ebbed — and that an arrangement between the Opposition and the hated “Black Republicans” might evolve.
Democrats had reason to worry. Although Lincoln was elected president entirely with Northern votes, he wanted to include one or more Southerners in his cabinet, in order to show that his administration would be national, not sectional. At the behest of Seward, whom Lincoln persuaded to take the top cabinet post as secretary of state, the president-elect secretly agreed that Seward and his right-hand man, Thurlow Weed, might offer Gilmer a cabinet seat. Lincoln had reservations about selecting a non-Republican, but he respected Gilmer, knew that he was an intense Unionist, and knew too that he had been a long-term Whig.
For two months, Gilmer weighed Lincoln’s offer, but in the end he declined. He was disappointed that Republicans would not offer the South a symbolic concession regarding slavery in the territories, and he was alarmed to see the initial version of Lincoln’s Inaugural Address, which promised to reclaim federal property in Confederate hands and closed with an ominous threat to defend the Union by force if necessary. Gilmer’s refusal must have distressed Seward, who was struggling desperately to move Lincoln in a more conciliatory direction.
To make matters worse, Lincoln discovered on his first full day in office that Major Anderson was running low on food at Sumter, and that he no longer felt able to defend himself against the powerful weapons Confederates installed at other points in the harbor. Gen. Winfield Scott, who had masterminded the abortive mission to reinforce Sumter in early January, weighed in to say that it would be futile to attempt the same thing again. Thus the acute phase of the Sumter tangle landed in Lincoln’s lap just as he started his presidency.
Gilmer’s letters to Seward, sent on March 7, 8, 9 and 12, each would have reached Washington a few days later. At just this time, Seward tried to push Lincoln toward withdrawal. Seward had loyally toed the line for Lincoln up until this point, while at the same time reassuring Southern Unionists that the new administration would, in the end, swallow the bitter pill.
An unfolding history of the Civil War with photos and articles from the Times archive and ongoing commentary from Disunion contributors.
Suddenly — acting with courage, or audacity, or hubris, or insubordination, or treachery, or desperation or some combination of these qualities — Seward leaked word that Sumter would soon be abandoned. He knew in advance that Lincoln and other Republicans dreaded the impact this news would have on the party, especially among hardliners. Seward gambled that the story could be managed if announced quickly, so as to blame the outgoing Buchanan administration for leaving Sumter indefensible. Most of all, Seward gambled that Lincoln would ultimately support him.
Seward judged that giving up on Sumter was the only way Lincoln could uphold his inaugural appeal for peace. But that address had also included a promise “to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government.” What it boiled down to was this: Were peace and Sumter compatible? And if not, which would take priority?
Unionists in the Upper South jubilantly received news of the supposed coming Sumter evacuation. It had “acted like a charm,” one wrote to Seward, and given them “great strength.” When, after several days, nothing happened, however, they became anxious. The weeks dragged by, and contradictory reports flew along the telegraph lines. Was the apparent promise not to be kept?
Finally, on April 12, Gilmer posted another letter to Seward. “I am so deeply distressed that my heart seems to melt within me,” he wrote. “If what I hear is true that we are to have fighting at Sumter or Pickens, it is what the disunionists have most courted, and I seriously apprehend that it will instantly drive the whole South into secession.” That same day, at dawn, Confederate cannons already had opened the bombardment of Sumter.
Sources: Gilmer’s letters to Seward, in the William Henry Seward Papers at the University of Rochester, were published a century ago as an appendix to Frederic Bancroft, “The Life of William H. Seward,” two vols. Thanks to Google Books, interested readers may consult them through the hyperlink. The original and revised versions of Lincoln’s Inaugural Address, with Seward’s modifications indicated, may be found in Roy P. Basler, ed, “The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln.” See also Daniel W. Crofts, “Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis“; David M. Potter, “Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis“; and Russell McClintock, “Lincoln and the Decision for War: The Northern Response to Secession.”
Daniel W. Crofts is a professor at the College of New Jersey
Copyright 2011 The New York Times Company
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