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Re: It Used to Be Common Knowledge That....

Seward was Secretary of State and as the head of the United States Department of State, his duties were concerned with foreign affairs. As Secretary of State Seward was the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence. Seward was negotiating with South Carolina, looking for compromise, and a solution. His verbal promise may not have been legislative law or binding contract, however, it is part of the process, and part of that process is full faith in the word of a government official.

Below is an forwarded letter in a complaint by Jefferson Davis on this matter.

"Saturday, Aptil 13, 1861. Hon. WILLIAIM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State: SIR: On the 15th of March ultimo I left with Judge Crawford, one of the commissioners of the Confederate States, a note, in writing, to the effect following: "I feel entire confidence that Fort Sumter will been evacuated in the next ten days; and this measure is felt as imposing great responsibility on the Administration. I feel entire confidence that no measure changing the existing status, prejudicially to the Southern Confederate States, is at present contemplated. I feel an entire confidence that an immediate demand for an answer to the communication of the commissioners will be productive of evil and not of good. I do not believe that it ought at this time to be pressed". The substance of this statement I communicated to you the same evening by letter. Five days elapsed and I called with a telegram from General Beauregard to the effect that Sumter was not evacuated, but that Major Anderson was at work making repairs. The next day, after conversing with you, I communicated to Judge Crawford, in writing, that the failure to evacuate Sumter was not the result of bad faith, but was attributable to causes consistent with the intention to fulfill the engagement, and that as regarded Pickens I should have notice of any design to alter the existing status there. Mr. Justice Nelson was present at these conversations, three in number, and I submitted to him each of my written communications to Judge Crawford, and informed Judge Crawford that they had his (Judge Nelsons) sanction. I gave you, on the 22d of March, a substantial copy of the statement I had made on the 15th. The 30th of March arrived, and at that time a telegram came from Governor Pickens inquiring concerning Colonel Lamon, whose visit to Charleston he supposed had a connection with the proposed evacuation of Fort Sumter. I left that with you, and was to have an answer the following Monday (1st of April). On the 1st of April I received from you the statement in writing, I am satisfied the Government will not undertake to supply Fort Sumter without giving notice to Governor Pickens. The words I am satisfied were for me to use as expressive of confidence in the remainder of the declaration. The proposition, as originally prepared, was, The President may desire to supply Sumter, but will not do so, & c., and your verbal explanation was that you did not believe any such attempt would be made and that there was no design to re-enforce Sumter. There was a departure here from the pledges of the previous month, but with the verbal explanation I did not consider it a matter then to complain of; I simply stated to you that I had that assurance previously. On the 7th of April I addressed you a letter on the subject of the alarm that the preparations by the Government had created, and asked you if the assurances I had given were well or ill founded. In respect to Sumter your reply was, Faith as to Sumter fully kept; wait and see. In the mornings paper I read, An authorized messenger from President Lincoln informed Governor Pickens and General Beauregard that provisions will be sent to Fort Sumter peaceably, or otherwise by force. This was the 8th of April, at Charleston, the day following your last assurance, and is the evidence of the full faith I was invited to wait for and see. In the same paper I read that intercepted dispatches disclose the fact that Mr. Fox, who has been allowed to visit Major Anderson on the pledge that his purpose was pacific, employed his opportunity to devise a plan for supplying the fort by force, and that this plan had been adopted by the Washington Government, and was in process of execution. My recollections of the date of Mr. Foxs visit carries it to a day in March. I learn he is a near connection of a member of the Cabinet. My connection with the commissioners and yourself was superiuduced by a conversation with Justice Nelson. He informed me of your strong disposition in favor of peace, and that you were oppressed with a demand of the commissioners of the Confederate States for a reply to their first letter, and that you desired to avoid, if possible, at that tinme. I told him I might perhaps be of some service in arranging the difficulty. I came to your office entirely at his request and without time knowledge of the commissioners. Your depression was obvious to both Judge Nelson and myself. I was gratified at the character of the counsels you were lesirous of pursuing, and much impressed with your observation that a civil war might be prevented by the success of my mediation. You read a letter of Mr. Weed to show how irksome and responsible the withdrawal of troops from Fort Sumter was. A portion of my communication to Judge Crawford on the 15th of March was founded upon these remarks, and the pledge to evacuate Sumter is less forcible than the words you employed. Those words were, "Before this letter reaches you (a proposed letter by me to President Davis) Sumter will have been evacuated". The commissioniers who received those communications conclude they have been abused and over-reached. The Montgomery Government hold the same opinion. The commissioners have supposed that my communications were with you, and upon time hypothesis prepared to arraign you before the country in connection with the President. I placed peremptory prohibition upon this as being contrary to the terms of my comumunications with them. I pledged myself to them to communicate information upon what considered as the best authority, and they were to confide in the ability of myself, aided by Judge Nelson, to determine upon the credibility of my informant. I think any candid man who will read over what I have written, and consider for a moment what is going on at Sumter, will agree that the equivocating conduct of the Adminstration as measured and interpreted in connection with these promises, is the proxiate cause of the great calamity. I have a profound conviction that the telegrams of the 8th of April of General Beauregard, and of the 10th of April of General Walker, The Secretary of War, can be referred to nothing else than their belief that there has been systematic duplicity practiced upon them throughout. It is under an oppresive sense of the weight of this responsibility that I submit to you these things for our explanation.

Very respectfully, JOHN A. CAMPBELL, Associale Justice of the Supreme Court."

A better source of this debate is found at...

http://books.google.com/books?id=uXQsAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA141&dq=%22John+Archibald+Campbell%22+seward&hl=en&ei=q_byS8iPBYGC8gaV263uDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22John%20Archibald%20Campbell%22%20seward&f=false

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