Volume III Part 7 (1/2)
[Footnote 895: Appleton's _Cyclopaedia_, 1863, p. 689.]
At great length Lincoln replied to the resolutions forwarded by Corning. ”In my own discretion,” wrote the President, ”I do not know whether I would have ordered the arrest of Mr. Vallandigham.... I was slow to adopt the strong measures which by degrees I have been forced to regard as being within the exceptions of the Const.i.tution and as indispensable to the public safety.... I think the time not unlikely to come when I shall be blamed for having made too few arrests rather than too many.... Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert? This is none the less injurious when effected by getting a father, a brother, or friend into a public meeting and then working upon his feelings till he is persuaded to write the soldier boy that he is fighting in a bad cause for a wicked administration and contemptible government, too weak to arrest and punish him if he shall desert.”[896] This argument, undoubtedly the strongest that could be made in justification, found great favour with his party, but the danger Seymour apprehended lay in the precedent. ”Wicked men ambitious of power, with hatred of liberty and contempt of law,” said Justice Davis of the United States Supreme Court, in deciding a case of similar character, ”may fill the place once occupied by Was.h.i.+ngton and Lincoln, and if this right [of military arrest] is conceded, and the calamities of war again befall us, the dangers to human liberty are frightful to contemplate.”[897]
[Footnote 896: Appleton's _Cyclopaedia_, 1863, pp. 800-802. Lincoln, _Complete Works_, Vol. 2, p. 347.]
[Footnote 897: 4 Wallace, p. 125.]
Much as Seymour resented the arrest of Vallandigham, he did not allow the incident to interfere with his official action, and to the Secretary of War's call for aid when General Lee began his midsummer invasion of Pennsylvania, he responded promptly: ”I will spare no effort to send you troops at once,” and true to his message he forwarded nineteen regiments, armed and equipped for field service, whose arrival brought confidence.[898] But governed by the sinister reason that influenced him earlier in the year, he refused to acknowledge the President's letter of thanks, preferring to express his opinion of Administration methods unhindered by the exchange of courtesies. This he did in a Fourth of July address, delivered at the Academy of Music in New York City, in which he pleaded, not pa.s.sionately, not with the acrimony that ordinarily characterised his speeches, but humbly, as if asking a despotic conqueror to return the rights and liberty of which the people had been robbed. ”We only ask freedom of speech,--the right to exercise all the franchises conferred by the Const.i.tution upon an American. Can you safely deny us these things?” Mingled also with pathetic appeals were joyless pictures of the ravages of war, and cheerless glimpses into the future of a Republic with its bulwarks of liberty torn away. ”We stand to-day,” he continued, ”amid new made graves; we stand to-day in a land filled with mourning, and our soil is saturated with the blood of the fiercest conflict of which history gives us an account. We can, if we will, avert all these disasters and evoke a blessing. If we will do what? Hold that Const.i.tution, and liberties, and laws are suspended?
Will that restore them? Or shall we do as our fathers did under circ.u.mstances of like trial, when they battled against the powers of a crown? Did they say that liberty was suspended? Did they say that men might be deprived of the right of trial by jury? Did they say that men might be torn from their homes by midnight intruders?... If you would save your country and your liberties, begin at the hearthstone; begin in your family circle; declare that their rights shall be held sacred; and having once proclaimed your own rights, claim for your own State that jurisdiction and that government which we, better than all others, can exercise for ourselves, for we best know our own interests.”[899]
[Footnote 898: Couch's report, _Official Records_, Vol. 27, Part 2, 214.]
[Footnote 899: Horatio Seymour, _Public Record_, pp. 118-124.
Ten days later, in the midst of riot and bloodshed, the _World_ said: ”Will the insensate men at Was.h.i.+ngton now give ear to our warnings?
Will they now believe that defiance of law in the rulers breeds defiance of law in the people? Does the doctrine that in war laws are silent, please them when put in practice in the streets of New York?”--New York _World_, July 14, 1863.]
One week later, on Sat.u.r.day, July 11, the draft began in the Ninth Congressional District of New York, a portion of the city settled by labourers, largely of foreign birth. These people, repeating the information gained in neighbourhood discussions, violently denounced the Conscription Act as illegal, claiming that the privilege of buying an exemption on payment of $300 put ”the rich man's money against the poor man's blood.” City authorities apprehended trouble and State officials were notified of the threatened danger, but only the police held themselves in readiness. The Federal Government, in the absence of a request from the Governor, very properly declined to make an exception in the application of the law in New York on the mere a.s.sumption that violence would occur. Besides, all available troops, including most of the militia regiments, had been sent to Pennsylvania, and to withdraw them would weaken the Federal lines about Gettysburg.
The disturbance began at the corner of Forty-sixth Street and Third Avenue, the rioters destroying the building in which the provost-marshal was conducting the draft. By this time the mob, having grown into an army, began to sack and murder. Prejudice against negroes sent the rioters into hotels and restaurants after the waiters, some of whom were beaten to death, while others, hanged on trees and lamp-posts, were burned while dying. The coloured orphan asylum, fortunately after its inmates had escaped, likewise became fuel for the flames. The police were practically powerless. Street cars and omnibuses ceased to run, shopkeepers barred their doors, workmen dropped their tools, teamsters put up their horses, and for three days all business was stopped. In the meantime Federal and State authorities cooperated to restore order. Governor Seymour, having hastened from Long Branch, addressed a throng of men and boys from the steps of the City Hall, calling them ”friends,” and pleading with them to desist. He also issued two proclamations, declaring the city in a state of insurrection, and commanding all people to obey the laws and the legal authorities. Finally, the militia regiments from Pennsylvania began to arrive, and cannon and howitzers raked the streets. These quieting influences, coupled with the publication of an official notice that the draft had been suspended, put an end to the most exciting experience of any Northern community during the war.
After the excitement the _Tribune_ a.s.serted that the riot resulted from a widespread treasonable conspiracy,[900] and a letter, addressed to the President, related the alleged confession of a well-known politician, who, overcome with remorse, had revealed to the editors of the _Tribune_ the complicity of Seymour. Lincoln placed no reliance in the story, ”for which,” says Hay, ”there was no foundation in fact;”[901] but Seymour's speech ”intimated,” says the Lincoln historian, ”that the draft justified the riot, and that if the rioters would cease their violence the draft should be stopped.”[902] James B.
Fry, provost-marshal general, substantially endorsed this view. ”While the riot was going on,” he says, ”Governor Seymour insisted on Colonel Nugent announcing a suspension of the draft. The draft had already been stopped by violence. The announcement was urged by the Governor, no doubt, because he thought it would allay the excitement; but it was, under the circ.u.mstances, making a concession to the mob, and endangering the successful enforcement of the law of the land.”[903]
[Footnote 900: New York _Tribune_, July 15, 1863.]
[Footnote 901: Nicolay-Hay, _Abraham Lincoln_, Vol. 7, p. 26.]
[Footnote 902: _Ibid._, p. 23.]
[Footnote 903: James B. Fry, _New York and the Conscription_, p. 33.]
Of the four reports of Seymour's speech, published the morning after its delivery, no two are alike.[904] Three, however, concur in his use of the word ”friends,”[905] and all agree that he spoke of trying to secure a postponement of the draft that justice might be done. It was a delicate position in which he placed himself, and one that ever after gave him and his supporters much embarra.s.sment and cause for many apologies. Nevertheless, his action in nowise impugned his patriotism. a.s.suming the riot had its inception in the belief which he himself entertained, that the draft was illegal and unjust, he sought by personal appeal to stay the destruction of life and property, and if anyone in authority at that time had influence with the rioters and their sympathisers it was Horatio Seymour, who probably accomplished less than he hoped to.
[Footnote 904: New York _Tribune_, _Herald_, _Times_, and _World_, July 15; also, _Public Record of Horatio Seymour_, pp. 127-128.]
[Footnote 905: New York _Tribune_, _Herald_, and _Times_.]
Seymour's views in relation to the draft first appeared in August.
While the Federal authorities prepared the enrolment in June, the Governor, although his cooperation was sought, ”gave no a.s.sistance,”
says Fry. ”In fact, so far as the government officers engaged in the enrolment could learn, he gave the subject no attention.”[906] On the day the drawing began, however, he became apprehensive of trouble and sent his adjutant to Was.h.i.+ngton to secure a suspension of the draft, but the records do not reveal the reasons presented by that officer.
Certainly no complaint was made as to the correctness of the enrolment or the a.s.signment of quotas.[907] Nevertheless, his delay taught him a lesson, and when the Federal authorities notified him later that the drawing would be resumed in August, he lost no time in beginning the now historic correspondence with the President. His letter of August 3 asked that the suspension of the draft be continued to enable the State officials to correct the enrolment, and to give the United States Supreme Court opportunity to pa.s.s upon the const.i.tutionality of the Conscription Act, suggesting the hope that in the meantime New York's quota might be filled by volunteers. ”It is believed by at least one-half of the people of the loyal States,” he wrote, ”that the Conscription Act, which they are called upon to obey, is in itself a violation of the supreme const.i.tutional law.... In the minds of the American people the duty of obedience and the rights to protection are inseparable. If it is, therefore, proposed on the one hand to exact obedience at the point of the bayonet, and, upon the other hand, to shut off, by military power, all approach to our judicial tribunals, we have reason to fear the most ruinous results.”[908]
[Footnote 906: James B. Fry, _New York and the Conscription_, p. 14.
”Seymour showed his lack of executive ability by not filling up the quota of New York by volunteers in less than a month after the Conscription Act was pa.s.sed. This a clever executive could easily have done and so avoided all trouble.”--New York _Herald_, September 11, 1863.]