This right she can not permit to be drawn
into discussion. As to compensation for any property, whether of an
individual or a Government, which she may deem it necessary for her
honor or safety to take into her possession, her past history gives
ample guarantee that it will be made, upon a fair accounting, to the
last dollar. The proposition now is, that her law officer should, under
authority of the Governor and his Council, distinctly pledge the faith
of South Carolina to make such compensation in regard to Fort Sumter,
and its appurtenances and contents, to the full extent of the money
value of the property of the United States delivered over to the
authorities of South Carolina by your command.
I will not suppose that a pledge like this can be considered
insufficient security. Is not the money value of the property of the
United States in this fort, situated where it can not be made available
to the United States for any one purpose for which it was originally
constructed, worth more to the United States than the property itself?
Why, then, _as property_, insist on holding it by an armed garrison? Yet
such has been the ground upon which you have invariably placed your
occupancy of this fort by troops; beginning, prospectively, with your
annual message of the 4th December; again in your special message of the
9th (8th) January, and still more emphatically in your message of the
28th January.
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