January 8, 1861 Tuesday Sec. of the Interior Jacob Thompson of Mississippi, last Southerner in the Cabinet, resigned because of Buchanan’s policies. He felt, also, that he had been kept in the dark as to Fort Sumter plans. But Thompson and others, learning of the sailing of Star of the West, telegraphed Charleston she was coming. Chief Clerk Moses Kelly filled out the term as Acting Secretary of the Interior.
President Buchanan sent a depressing special message to Congress. He felt the present situation was beyond Executive control and he commended the question to Congress, saying, “let us pause at this momentous point and afford the people, both North and South, an opportunity for reflection….Let the question be transferred from the political assemblies to the ballot box,” before the crisis ended in war. He called for prompt action by Congress. He advocated the Compromise of Crittenden, dividing the territories along the old Missouri Compromise Line.
Alabama Convention receives Commissioner from South Carolina. North Carolina Senate Bill arming the State passes the North Carolina House: yeas 73, neas 26. Virginia Legislature passes anti-coercion resolution.
Governor Madison Starke Perry of Fla. ordered the occupation of Fort Clinch (Amelia Island) by Florida troops. He also authorized Colonel William Chase to seize the Federal forts at Pensacola if he can. At Pensacola, Fla., Federal troops fired during the night upon about twenty men who had approached Fort Barrancas. The party fled. In the Secession Convention, the Ordinance of Secession was introduced for debate. The efforts of George T. Ward of Leon County and Jackson Morton of Santa Rosa County to defer secession until Georgia and Alabama have seceded were defeated.
The story continues from the Florida Civil War blog with the seizure of Fort Marion, Fla. on the 7th:
The Apalachicola Arsenal having been successfully taken on the morning of the 6th, Florida's military forces wasted no time in moving against other military facilities in the state. The next facilities to fall were St. Francis Barracks and Fort Marion in St. Augustine.
Fort Marion was the name applied during the 19th and early 20th centuries to the Castillo de San Marcos, a massive Spanish fortification that is now a national monument on the waterfront of St. Augustine. Begun in 1670, the fortress is the oldest masonry fort in the continental United States. Although it was nearly 200 years old in 1861, it was still a U.S. Army installation.
The seizure took place on the morning of January 7, 1861, when a company of state militia appeared at the St. Francis Barracks, now the headquarters of the Florida National Guard, and took Ordnance Sergeant Henry Douglas into temporary custody. They demanded from him the keys to the fort and magazine:
I demanded them to show me their authority. An aide-de-camp of the governor showed me his letter of instructions authorizing him to seize the property, and directing him to use what force might be necessary. Ordnance Sergeant Henry Douglas January 7, 1861
Perhaps the most surprising part of the move by state forces to seize the Castillo is that the U.S. Army had knowledge of the plan at least four days earlier, but took no action either to prevent or even to alert Douglas to the possibility.
On January 3, 1861, when the George militia moved to seize Fort Pulaski at Savannah, Captain W.H.C. Whiting, then at Fort Clinch in Fernandina and commanding the forts along the Georgia and Florida Atlantic Coast, learned that a move was also afoot to seize the fort at St. Augustine:
On Saturday, 3d instant, the regular mail-boat from Fernandina to this place (i.e. Savannah), by which I intended to travel, was taken off line by the governor of Florida and ordered, as I was informed, to St. Augustine, with a force to seize the ordnance mounted in the water battery of Fort Marion for the purpose of arming Fort Clinch. Captain W.H.C. Whiting, U.S. Engineers January 7, 1861
Whiting, who would later become a Confederate general, did not write a report describing the situation until the 7th, the same day that the state troops appeared in St. Augustine. While state authorities had taken control of the telegraph lines and he could not send a wire through to Washington, he made no effort to warn the ordnance sergeant commanding in St. Augustine that something was afoot.
As a result, Douglas was taken by complete surprise. Faced with an overwhelming force, he could only submit:
Upon reflection I decided that the only alternative for me was to deliver the keys, under protect, and demand a receipt for the property. One thing certain, with the exception of the guns composing the armament of the water battery, the property seized is of no great value. The gentleman acting under the governor’s instructions has promised to receipt to me for the stores. Ordnance Sergeant Henry Douglas January 7, 1861
The Florida troops quickly took possession of the fort and, despite Whiting's claim to the contrary, seized an impressive quantity of military ordnance and supplies in the process. Included were four 8-inch guns in the water battery, sixteen older 32-pounders, six field batteries made up of twenty-four 6-pounders and two 12-pounders, more than 300 muskets, rifles and carbines, 931 pounds of gunpowder, 15,000 percussion caps and 147,720 fixed cartridges for small arms.
Later that day the Florida Secession Convention reconvened in Tallahassee and, after considerable debate, passed the following resolution by an overwhelming margin:
WHEREAS, All hope in the preservation of the Federal Union upon terms consistent with the safety and honor of the slaveholding States, has been finally dissipated by the recent indications of the strength of the anti-slavery sentiment of the free States; therefore, be it Resolved, By the People of the State of Florida in convention assembled, that as it is the undoubted right of the several States of the Federal Union, known as the United States of America, to withdraw from the said Union, at such time and for such cause or causes as in the opinion of the people of each State, acting in their sovereign capacity, may be just and proper, in the opinion of this Convention, the causes are such as to compel the State of Florida to proceed to exercise that right.
The state would secede from the Union three days later.
As President Buchanan reaches the final turning point of his Presidency and the upcoming American Civil War, it is worthwhile to take a look at who he was and how he got there. This is from Wikipedia:
James Buchanan, Jr. (April 23, 1791 – June 1, 1868) was the 15th President of the United States, from 1857 to 1861, and the last president to be born in the 18th century. He is the only president from Pennsylvania and the only president who was a life-long bachelor.
Buchanan was a popular and experienced state politician and a very successful attorney before his presidency. He represented Pennsylvania in the U.S. House of Representatives and later the Senate, and served as Minister to Russia under President Andrew Jackson. He also was Secretary of State under President James K. Polk. After turning down an offer for an appointment to the Supreme Court, he served as Minister to the United Kingdom under President Franklin Pierce, in which capacity he helped draft the controversial Ostend Manifesto.
After unsuccessfully seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in 1844, 1848, and 1852, "Old Buck" was nominated in the election of 1856. Throughout most of Franklin Pierce's term he was stationed in London as a Minister to England and therefore was not caught up in the crossfire of sectional politics that dominated the country. Buchanan was viewed by many as a compromise between the two sides of the slavery question. His subsequent election victory took place in a three-man race with Fremont and Fillmore. As President, he was often called a "doughface", a Northerner with Southern sympathies, who battled with Stephen A. Douglas for the control of the Democratic Party. Buchanan's efforts to maintain peace between the North and the South alienated both sides, and the Southern states declared their secession in the prologue to the American Civil War. Buchanan's view of record was that secession was illegal, but that going to war to stop it was also illegal. Buchanan, first and foremost an attorney, was noted for his mantra, "I acknowledge no master but the law.”
_________________ Gen Ned Simms 2/XVI Corps/AotT Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em. VMI Class of '00
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