uchanan and his advisers, on the one
hand magnified reports of the daily clamors of the Charleston mob, on
the other hand encouraging intimations from the Charleston authorities
that they, while adhering to their political heresies and demands, were
yet averse to disorder and bloodshed, and to this end desired and
invoked the utmost forbearance of the Government. Put in truthful
language, their request would have been, "Help us keep the peace while
we are preparing to break the law. Let the Government send no ships,
men or supplies to the forts, in order that we may without danger or
collision build batteries to take them. Armament by the Federal
sovereignty is war, armament by State authority is peace." And it will
forever remain a marvel that a President of the United States consented
to this certain process of national suicide.

CHAPTER XXIV

MR. BUCHANAN'S TRUCE

[Sidenote] 1860.

The concession yielded by Mr. Buchanan, instead of tending to
conciliate the conspirators only brought upon him additional demands.
It so happened that the principal Federal ships of war were absent
from the harbors of the Atlantic coast on service in distant waters.
But now, as a piece of good fortune amid many untoward occurrences,
the steam sloop-of-war _Brooklyn_, a new and formidable vessel of
twenty-five guns, which had been engaged in making preliminary surveys
in the Chiriqui Lagoon to test the practicability of one of the
proposed interoceanic ship canals, unexpectedly returned to the Norfolk
navy yard on the 28th of November, less than a week before the meeting
of Congress. She had until recently been under the command of Captain
Farragut, afterwards famous in the war of the rebellion, and was, with
trifling exceptions, ready for sea.

In the Cabinet, where the feasibility of collecting the customs revenue
at Charleston on shipboard had already been discussed as a possible
contingency, and especially where the forcible protection of the public
property had also received serious consideration, this sudden
appearance of the _Brooklyn_ must have furnished a conclusive reason in
favor of both these propositions. Be this as it may, when the President
affirmed these duties in his message, the conspirators realized that he
held the means of practical enforcement at instantaneous command. With
a ship of war ready at Norfolk, with troops at Fortress Monroe, might
not a careless _emeute_ at Charleston bring the much-dreaded