The failure of the Virginia Compromise is one more proof that a great deal of vital history never gets into words until after it is over.During the second half of March,Unionists and Secessionists in the Virginia Convention debated with deep emotion this searching new proposal.The Unionists had a fatal weakness in their position.This was the feature of the situation that had not hitherto been put into words.Lincoln had not been accurate when he said that the slavery question was "the only substantial dispute."He had taken for granted that the Southern opposition to nationalism was not a real thing,--a mere device of the politicians to work up excitement.
All the compromises he was ready to offer were addressed to that part of the South which was seeking to make an issue on slavery.They had little meaning for that other and more numerous part in whose thinking slavery was an incident.For this other South,the ideas which Lincoln as late as the middle of March did not bring into play were the whole story.
Lincoln,willing to give all sorts of guarantees for the noninterference with slavery,would not give a single guarantee supporting the idea of State sovereignty against the idea of the sovereign power of the national Union.The Virginians,willing to go great lengths in making concessions with regard to slavery,would not go one inch in the way of admitting that their State was not a sovereign power included in the American Union of its own free will,and not the legitimate subject of any sort of coercion.
The Virginia Compromise was really a profound new complication.
The very care with which it divided the issue of nationality from the issue of slavery was a storm signal.For a thoroughgoing nationalist like Lincoln,deep perplexities lay hidden in this full disclosure of the issue that was vital to the moderate South.Lincoln's shifting of his mental ground,his perception that hitherto he had been oblivious of his most formidable opponent,the one with whom compromise was impossible,occurred in the second half of the month.
As always,Lincoln kept his own counsel upon the maturing of a purpose in his own mind.He listened to every adviser--opening his office doors without reserve to all sorts and conditions--and silently,anxiously,struggled with himself for a decision.He watched Virginia;he watched the North;he listened--and waited.General Scott continued hopeless,though minor military men gave encouragement.And whom should the President trust-the tired old General who disagreed with him,or the eager young men who held views he would like to hold?
Many a time he was to ask himself that question during the years to come.
On March twenty-ninth,he again consulted the Cabinet.[17]Agreat deal of water had run under the mill since they gave their opinions on March sixteenth.The voice of the people was still a bewildering roar,but out of that roar most of the Cabinet seemed to hear definite words.They were convinced that the North was veering toward a warlike mood.The phrase "masterly inactivity,"which had been applied to the government's course admiringly a few weeks before,was now being applied satirically.Republican extremists were demanding action.A subtle barometer was the Secretary of the Treasury.Now,as on the sixteenth,he craftily said something without saying it.After juggling the word "if,"he assumed his "if"to be a fact and concluded,"If war is to be the result,I perceive no reason why it may not best be begun in consequence of military resistance to the efforts of the Administration to sustain troops of the Union,stationed under authority of the government in a fort of the Union,in the ordinary course of service."This elaborate equivocation,which had all the force of an assertion,was Chase all over!Three other ministers agreed with him except that they did not equivocate.One evaded.Of all those who had stood with Seward on the sixteenth,only one was still in favor of evacuation.Seward stood fast.This reversal of the Cabinet's position,jumping as it did with Lincoln's desires,encouraged him to prepare for action.But just as he was about to act his diffidence asserted itself.He authorized the preparation of a relief expedition but withheld sailing orders until further notice.[18]Oh,for Seward's audacity;for the ability to do one thing or another and take the consequences!
Seward had not foreseen this turn of events.He had little respect for the rest of the Cabinet,and had still to discover that the President,for all his semblance of vacillation,was a great man.Seward was undeniably vain.That the President with such a Secretary of State should judge the strength of a Cabinet vote by counting noses--preposterous!But that was just what this curiously simple-minded President had done.If he went on in his weak,amiable way listening to the time-servers who were listening to the bigots,what would become of the country?And of the Secretary of State and his deep policies?
The President must be pulled up short--brought to his senses--taught a lesson or two.
Seward saw that new difficulties had arisen in the course of that fateful March which those colleagues of his in the Cabinet--well-meaning,inferior men,to be sure--had not the subtlety to comprehend.Of course the matter of evacuation remained what it always had been,the plain open road to an ultimate diplomatic triumph.Who but a president out of the West,or a minor member of the Cabinet,would fail to see that!
