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TCNJ Magazine: Spring 18

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20 The College of New Jersey Magazine would "give a kingdom for a fight" to jumpstart their stalled revolution. So long as war remained a threat, the constitutional amendment could not have a tranquilizing effect, Gilmer reported to Seward. Secessionists continued to clamor about the danger of "coercion" and warn "that the whipping of a slave state is the whipping of slavery." Union men in the Upper South would be "swept away in a torrent of madness" if the federal government used force against the seceding states. But the administration could choke off the secession impulse in the Upper South if it relinquished Sumter and demonstrated its peaceful intentions. once it became plain that majorities of white Southerners opposed secession. Most of all, Seward prized Virginia, the South's most populous state and a paramount symbolic prize. One Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, had drafted the Declaration of Indepen- dence, another, James Madison, had done more than anyone else to make the Constitution a reality, and everyone knew George Washington, who had been "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." To keep the Old Dominion in the Union, Seward sent word secretly to the leading Unionist in Richmond, George W. Summers, that the administration intended to remove its men from Sumter. Summers reported the news had "acted like a charm" and given the Unionists "great strength." Without revealing his source of information, he announced to the Virginia Convention that "a pacific policy has been wisely determined on at Washington," and that the troops in Sumter soon would be withdrawn. Seward also made sure Confederate authorities in Montgomery, Alabama, received the same news. Eager to forestall any fighting, he was confident he could persuade Lincoln to follow his lead. Seward's bold gambit bought time, but he could not redeem his promises. Only one person could do that, and Lincoln was dissatisfied with his The North Carolinian envisioned a process that might require two years to achieve results. The Deep South's enthusiasm for independence would erode, Gilmer predicted, after it had gone "out into the cold for a while." At the same time, "Union Conservative men" would solidify their control in the Upper South. Eventually they would "unite cordially with the free states" to pressure the Deep South. The Confederate enterprise would wither Our new sensibilities obscure the political situation just before the war began, when many Northerners tried to maintain the peace and conciliate the disaffected white South.

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