The Diary of George Templeton Strong - 11/9/1860 to 1/15/1861

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Partition of Washington D.C. was a seriously entertained possibility at the outset of this war? I had no idea. Wow!

Born in 1820 in Manhattan, George Templeton Strong was an archetype of the city’s emergent professional class: well-educated (Columbia), well-rounded and well-employed (a real-estate lawyer), he spread himself widely, founding civic organizations, serving as a vestryman at Trinity Church and sitting on the board of trustees at his alma mater.

But it is for his diary that Strong is best remembered: he wrote in it almost daily, making it one of the best accounts of mid-19th century New York and placing it among the best records of how Americans viewed the Civil War.

November 9, 1860. Much gasconading from the sunny South, condensed in telegraphic reports fortunately. “Palmetto Flag” raised, great speeches, fuss and fury, messages from governors, conventions called, Collector of Charleston resigning, “secession inevitable,” and so on. It’s a critical time, but things are not so bad as I expected they would be three days after Lincoln’s election.

November 15, 1860. No material progress in the political crisis. Stocks have rallied a little here. Perhaps the febrile symptoms and cerebral disturbance of the South seem a shade easier. But the reign of terror in South Carolina continues unmitigated. Mrs. Sally Hampton, now in New York, wants to go home to Columbia, S.C., or thereabouts, and requires an escort, of course. Her husband can’t come North without exposing himself to a conviction of “incivisme,” and Mr. George Baxter, her papa, cannot go South without danger of being tarred and feathered as a Northerner and a possible Abolitionist. So Mrs. Sally Hampton and her three pretty babies will abide in Second Avenue. Willie Alston and Pringle meant to spend another month here, but their neighbors write them that they must come home. Their loyalties to the South will be suspected if they keep away. So they return, reluctantly…

We are generally reconciling ourselves to the prospect of secession by South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, little Florida, and perhaps Mississippi, too. We shall be rid of them. Perhaps the prevalence of this feeling – the cordial consent of the North – will keep them from seceding. I think these porcine communities incline to run out of the Union merely because they think we want to keep them in. One should never pull a pig in the direction one wants it to travel. They have long governed us and controlled our votes by the threat of secession. They naturally think secession will be a crushing calamity to the North and the severest punishment they can inflict on us for electing Lincoln.

November 19, 1860. A most gloomy day in Wall Street. Everything at a deadlock. First-class paper not negotiable; demand for money greater than in October, 1857. Stocks falling. It’s said the banks resolved today to buy three millions of exchange on London. This may probably see the machine going again, for the time at least, and enable the West and South to begin moving their grain and cotton …

Very few now deny the probability of secession by the Cotton States, and South Carolina is given up as hopeless. Our national mottoes must be changed to “e pluribus duo” (at least) and “United we stand, divided we stand easier.” It is generally conceded, moreover, that if federal coercion be applied to a single seceding state, the whole South will range itself against the government.

November 26, 1860. Today’s newspapers indicate no new symptom in our sore national sickness. The tide is still rising, I think, in all the Cotton States. Reaction and ebb are sure to follow, but they may come too late. This growing excitement may do irreparable mischief before it dies out and reaction sets in. The country may be overwhelmed by a flood of disaster and disgrace before the tide begins to fall.

December 2, 1860. I fear Northerner and Southerner are aliens, not merely in social and political arrangements, but in mental and moral constitution. We differ like Celt and Anglo-Saxon, and there is no sufficient force in “a government of opinion” to keep us together against our will … These Southern heretics would be inexhaustible mines of fun, were the position a little less grave. For example, Governor Gist of South Carolina writing a grand revolutionary message and recommending all sorts of measures for “national” defense and “national” finance and so on, and the enlargement of the State Lunatic Asylum! “National,” indeed! The whole white population of that dirty little spiteful district is considerably less than that of Brooklyn, less than the increase of this city and county of New York since 1855.

December 10, 1860. Tonight’s Commercial [newspaper] says the tide has turned; the “seceding states” will merely send commissioners to Washington to negotiate for a dissolution of the Union, and the whole treasonable movement will be procrastinated and postponed and come to naught. Perhaps. Time will tell.

I’m satisfied, too, that secession of the Cotton States alone will do us little harm. If we hold Fort Moultrie and other posts, the federal revenue will not suffer. If South Carolina and Alabama choose to decline a United States postal service and representation in Congress, I don’t perceive that they will thereby hurt us much. We need not make war on them. Should we find it necessary to do so, they are weak and vulnerable and powerless for aggressive hostility. It seems questionable whether England and the other powers of Europe would feel inclined cordially to recognize a state of confederacy founded on the one idea of slavery and the extension of slavery as entitled to a place in the family circle of Christian nations.

December 13, 1860. Colonel Henry Scott tells me Major Anderson has only forty available men, at most, in Fort Moultrie. The War Department has sent him no orders. If he is repairing the works and so on, as the newspapers say, he is acting on his own responsibility. In other words, our disgraceful executive has been and is playing into the hands of traitors. That Buchanan might be hanged under lynch law almost reconciles me to that code.

Things look black. But I don’t repent of my vote for Lincoln. It contributed to an experiment that tests our Boiler, and it must have undergone that same test very soon had Lincoln been defeated. The question may as well be settled at once whether we have a national government that can sustain itself under pressure, or a mere sham government that must perish whenever a set of semi-barbarous Southerners pronounce against it, with out without reason.

December 15, 1860. This has been the gloomiest day yet. Mr. Secretary Cass has resigned, following the example of Mr. Secretary Cobb, whom no one regrets in the least. General Scott has been in council with the Cabinet, giving advice that old Buchanan declines to adopt, namely, that the garrison of Fort Moultrie be strengthened. The necessity for reinforcements there is most urgent and the duty to send them with the least possible delay as clear as the sun. Is old Buchanan an imbecile, or a traitor? Or does he calculate profoundly on uniting the whole North in one flame of indignation against South Carolina by tempting the Charleston militiamen and mob to make a rush on the forts and destroy Major Anderson and his little party of less than fifty available men? The folly of his non-feasance, too! With these forts decently manned, the commerce of Charleston is under control, Federal revenue secured at that port, and South Carolinian treason paralyzed. If her chivalry attempt a siege, one month’s experience of its cost would bring that Bedlamite state to its senses, like a bucket of cold water on the head of a patient in hysteria. The experiment of war could not be tried under conditions more auspicious for the Union and more sure to convince the South of its folly. Yet old Buchanan leaves Anderson and his party unsupported, with orders to defend the fort as best he may. When the calamities that seem at hand are upon us, Buchanan will hardly be able to live at the North. He will have to emigrate below the Potomac and become a “poor white” dirt-eater of the pine-barrens. Perhaps the South will tolerate the presence of a Northerner who has made himself infamous and become a fugitive and an exile by knuckling to Southern dictation. But perhaps it won’t. It may hang Mr. Buchanan and tar and feather him and expel him from Southern soil as being a mere proselyte of the Gate, not a thorough-going Southerner. I don’t know where the poor wretch can go with safety after dissolution is established.

Today’s feeling is that secession is inevitable; that Virginia and Kentucky and the other Border States must follow their sisterhood on the Gulf, and that civil war is at hand. The prospect of conciliation by any Congressional action seems fading away.

Were we only united and unanimous here at the North, I should welcome the prospect of vigorous war on Southern treason. But we are discordant, corrupt, deeply diseased, unable to govern ourselves, and in most unfit condition for a war on others.

December 27, 1860. Great News … Last night Major Anderson secretly moved his command from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter, which is isolated in mid-channel and commands Fort Moultrie and is able to resist all the armies and navies of South Carolina, even with its present garrison. He fired Fort Moultrie and some say blew it up, spiked the guns, and doubtless made it innocuous. An excellent move, no doubt due to Scott. It postpones actual collision and saves the lives probably of Anderson and his little handful of men.

“Great indignation” said to prevail in Charleston…

During these four days people have been settling down to the conviction that all the Slave States will go out, that the South will make an attempt on Washington, and that civil war is certain. All of which is not cheering at all.

January 5, 1861. [strong is in Washington with his friend, New York lawyer Samuel B. Ruggles, and goes to the Capitol to see a speech by New York Sen. William Seward about whether to build a railroad to the West Coast.]

With Mr. Ruggles, inspecting exterior of the Treasury, Patent Office, and so forth, and to the Capitol. Settled ourselves in Senate Chamber, first calling on Seward at his house, and calling also on Mr. Speaker Pennington in his gorgeously gilt-and-mirrored Speaker’s room. Seward opened the Pacific railroad question in a dignified, statesmanlike speech (which Mr. Ruggles wrote in our little parlor last night). There was opposition from Missouri, from the extreme factions South, of course, and from the Northwest, which wants a route yet farther north. Rice of Minnesota objected and opposed, with a dirty appeal to Southern prejudice and passion for which he ought to be burned in effigy from Boston to St. Paul’s [sic]. It went off at last without any decisive vote. I left the Senate in disgust and adjourned to the Smithsonian, preferring stuffed penguins and pickled lizards to the dishonest gabble of the Senate Chamber.

Much impressed by the amplitude and grandeur of all the federal buildings, and by the splendid marbles and frescoes of the Capitol. We cannot spare these structures quite yet. If a partition of federal property is inevitable, let us give South Carolina all the pictures in the Rotunda, and Clark Mills’s equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson.

January 10, 1861. [strong is in Washington.]

Great news at the breakfast table. Steamer Star of the West, carrying reinforcements to Major Anderson, fired upon by the savages of South Carolina. Rumor No. 2 was that she had nevertheless made her way into Charleston harbor and fulfilled her mission. Rumor No. 3 (unfortunately correct) that being without heavy guns, she had turned tail and steamed out of the harbor. This will produce great excitement and strengthen the Union feeling all through the North. At Senate heard Jefferson Davis talk treason awhile. Thence to Smithsonian with Eliot and Judge Huntington of the Court of Claims. Spent four hours there, with Professor and Mrs. Henry, not unprofitably. Growing cold and windy.

…

A visit to Washington gives one no special insight into national affairs. People there are eager for New York papers to tell them what the government did or talked about the day before. But my prognosis is unfavorable. Virginia and Kentucky and Tennessee will secede (i.e., rebel) and Maryland will follow Virginia. War seems inevitable. We cannot let the rebels occupy the national capital without a fight.

January 15, 1861. [strong is back in New York City after his trip to Washington.]

Nothing new from Washington, or from the insurgents of the South, except that the Old Pennsylvania Fossil [i.e., President Buchanan - ed.] is rumored to have relapsed into vacillation and imbecility. It seemed a week ago as if her were developing germs of a backbone. Had this old mollusk become vertebrate, the theories by Darwin and the “Vestiges of Creation” would have been confirmed.

Rumors multiply and strengthen of an organization in this city intended to give aid and comfort to Southern treason by getting up such disturbances here as will paralyze any movement to strengthen the government by men or money. The programme is (as reported) a nocturnal insurrection by an armed mob, taking possession of the armories of the several militia corps, breaking into the banks, and sacking the houses of conspicuous Republicans. I know (from T. Bailey Myers) that the editor of the Washington Constitution (a renegade Englishman) is privy to this plot, and I have the best moral evidence that [isaac C.] Delaplaine (“Ikey Pig”), a Congressman-elect from this city, favors it.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/the-diary-of-george-templeton-strong-jan-15-1861/

Edited January 16, 2011 by \

[alienlovechild 75]

Partition of Washington D.C. was a seriously entertained possibility at the outset of this war? I had no idea. Wow!

Where did you read that in Strong's diary?

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Where did you read that in Strong's diary?

Jan 5

[alienlovechild 75]

Jan 5

It's about building a railroad. The sentence in question is a joke not a plan for partition.

January 5, 1861. [strong is in Washington with his friend, New York lawyer Samuel B. Ruggles, and goes to the Capitol to see a speech by New York Sen. William Seward about whether to build a railroad to the West Coast.]

If a partition of federal property is inevitable, let us give South Carolina all the pictures in the Rotunda, and Clark Mills’s equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson.

You've been punked by a 19th century diarist on a 21st century web forum.

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It's about building a railroad.

You could be right, but that's not how I read it.

Much impressed by the amplitude and grandeur of all the federal buildings, and by the splendid marbles and frescoes of the Capitol.

We cannot spare these structures quite yet. If a partition of federal property is inevitable

,

let us give South Carolina

all the pictures in the Rotunda, and Clark Mills’s equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson.

To me, the key there is the use of us vs South Carolina. If you've read his previous and subsequent diary entries, it is clear that he sees South Carolina as the primary villain in this secessionist saga. Maybe he is talking about the railroad, but I doubt it. Why would a railroad require a partition of federal property? The creation of two separate nations actually might.

[웃 910]

\

Edited January 17, 2011 by Lord Infamous

[alienlovechild 75]

Why would a railroad require a partition of federal property? The creation of two separate nations actually might.

It's all about the railroad west. To read it literally makes no sense as South Carolina would get portraits from the Rotunda so presumably Virginia would get the Jefferson memorial. Mississippi would get the White House furniture?

The only federal proprty the South would want would be Federal forts and other Federal property in the South.

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It's all about the railroad west. To read it literally makes no sense as South Carolina would get portraits from the Rotunda so presumably Virginia would get the Jefferson memorial. Mississippi would get the White House furniture?

The only federal proprty the South would want would be Federal forts and other Federal property in the South.

You could be right. I did do some googling and I see no hint at all that the South wanted any part of D.C. Of course, you may have noticed in an earlier diary entry Mr. Strong hints that the North would be happy to let the South go. He makes his disdain for the South clear. It is possible his conceit of being a Northerner is what led him to believe that; that same conceit could be why he assumed the South would want the majestic structures he himself was so enamored by. I don't know - just a thought.

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Another diary entry by Mr. Strong published today! Looks like conquest of DC was on the agenda after all.

February 13, 1861. Ash-Wednesday. After dinner, Ellie [strong's wife] read Haydn for me, and [John] Ehninger and George Anthon came in for a few minutes. Jack things he and his associates (eighty or thereabouts), who have been diligently drilling for six weeks, will not be required at Washington on March 4 after all. Probably he’s right. Seizing that city by a coup de main was certainly on the conspirators’ programme, but Scott’s preparations to receive them and the unexpected attitude assumed by the Border States have brought that project to naught. The electoral votes were counted today, and as I hear no extras in the streets, they were probably counted in due form, and the result announced without disturbance. This was the critical day for the peace of the capital. A foray of Virginia gents, with Governor Wise at their head and Governor Floyd at the tail, could have done infinite mischief by destroying the legal evidence of Lincoln’s election (after they had killed and beaten General Scott and his Flying Artillery, that is).

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/the-diary-of-george-templeton-strong-feb-13-1861/?src=fbcivilwar

Edited February 14, 2011 by \