On Friday we saw you, and we
called upon you then to redeem your pledge. You could not deny it. With
the facts we have stated, and in the face of the crowning and conclusive
fact that your Secretary of War had resigned his seat in the Cabinet,
upon the publicly avowed ground that the action of Major Anderson had
violated the pledged faith of the Government, and that unless the pledge
was instantly redeemed he was dishonored, denial was impossible; you did
not deny it. You do not deny it now, but you seek to escape from its
obligations on two grounds: 1. That _we_ terminated all negotiation by
demanding, as a preliminary, the withdrawal of the United States troops
from the harbor of Charleston; and, 2. That the authorities of South
Carolina, instead of asking explanation and giving you the opportunity
to vindicate yourself, took possession of other property of the United
States. We will examine both.
In the first place, we deny positively that we have ever, in any way,
made any such demand. Our letter is in your possession; it will stand by
this on the record. In it we inform you of the objects of our mission.
We say that it would have been our duty to assure you of our readiness
to commence negotiations with the most earnest and anxious desire to
settle all questions between us amicably, and to our mutual advantage,
but that events had rendered that assurance impossible. We stated the
events, and we said that, until some satisfactory explanation of these
events was given us, we could not proceed; and then, having made this
request for explanation, we added: "And, in conclusion, we would urge
upon you the immediate withdrawal of the troops from the harbor of
Charleston.
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