By the late 1850s, Robert Field Stockton had truly faded into private life. His second eldest, John Potter Stockton was made Ambassador to Italy and seemed to be taking his father’s place in politics. Most of the news about the Commodore concerned the Joint Companies and his Sea Girt Estate.
Many marveled at its position bravely facing the waves. The largest storm in decades struck in 1857 in January, washed away his bathhouses, and destroyed most of the Manasquan surf boats, the bridge over Deal Lake and the Shark River bridge. Five men were killed when their ship ran aground on the icy beach. The Beach House prevailed and the bathhouses were quickly rebuilt. The next summer a 30-pound cabbage from the Sea Girt farm won accolades in Long Branch. Robert seemed fit as a fiddle in early 1860. The Freehold Democrat reported:
“I saw your distinguished fellow citizen, Commodore Stockton, in our streets yesterday, looking as young and determined as he did on his first return from the conquest of California some fourteen years ago. His firm and elastic step denotes robust health, and a long lease upon life- Such men as Commodore Stockton are in these degenerate days, and cannot be spared in the present crisis when experience and intelligence and patriotism have such a wide field for the exercise of their qualities. A truer or a better for the pressing emergencies of the does not exist than Commodore Robert Stockton, of New Jersey”
Stockton was troubled. In November 1860, the Republicans selected Abraham Lincoln, a dark horse candidate who expressed his personal views as anti-slavery, and his obligation if elected, to uphold the laws and enforce the principles of the Constitution. To Lincoln, that meant preserving the union at all costs. At the Republican convention, he laid out his position:
Lincoln 1860 election lithograph (Library of Congress)
"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new, North as well as South.”
The Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court in 1857 denied even free African-Americans the rights of citizens. Rather than settling the issues of escaped slaves, and new states, judicial activism further divided the country.
In the November 1860 Election, Stephen Douglas and John Breckenridge split the Democrats, and Lincoln carried most of the North including Oregon and California. John Bell, a moderate and former Whig took his home state of Tennesee, plus Kentucky and Virginia for the Constitutional Union Party. Lincoln won 60% of the electors but only 40% of the popular vote.
His position as President on the issue of slavery was that if the Union could only be preserved by not freeing a single slave, that was his primary obligation. If the union could only be saved by freeing all slaves, that too was his obligation.
As soon as Lincoln was elected, South Carolina, feeling threatened by his position, seceded from the Union. Six other states followed before his inauguration in March. Outgoing President Buchanan threatened that any state interference with Federal property, primarily forts, would result in conflict.
The rebel states formed a Confederate Union and appointed Jefferson Davis as President. In a last-ditch effort, a retired President Tyler, who had known the founding fathers and given Robert his steam frigate The Princeton, called for a peace convention for Virginia in February of 1861.
It brought together past members of Congress, and delegates from the remaining slave states still in the Union, from the border states who were likely to see battle in a war, and others who had an interest in preserving the peace. Virginia would withhold its decision in the conflict until after the convention. In all, 131 delegates, whom the press called “The Old Gentlemen’s Convention” came together for three weeks at Willard’s Hotel in DC to propose constitutional amendments to solve the divide. Willard had purchased the old church next door and converted it into a music hall. The meetings would be closed to the press but were recorded by Lucious E. Chittenden.
Peace Conference assembled in Washington DC at Willard’s Hotel
Stockton led the New Jersey delegation and spoke early in the convention. He, like Lincoln, felt that the nation needed preserving above all. His comments over the past four years had been consistent. He felt the 1820 compromise needed to be the standard until the will of the people changed the Constitution, rather than politicians making deals for their petty needs.
He tried acting like a ship’s captain. If the delegates just followed his direction, there would be peace:
“If the Conference felt as I do, it would at once establish such peremptory orders as would bring a speedy termination to this whole business. Upon what, let me ask gentlemen, does the salvation of the Union depend at this moment? What is it alone that prevents civil war now? I answer, it is the session of this Convention—this august Convention! We stand in the presence of an awful danger! We feel the throes of an earthquake which threatens to bring down ruin on the whole magnificent fabric of our Government! Is it possible that we should suffer this ruin to take place? Would it not impeach the wisdom and good sense of our day and generation to permit the edifice which our fathers constructed—to crumble to pieces? No! fellow countrymen, it is necessary that we, by trusting in God, who guided our ancestors through the stormy vicissitudes of the Revolution, should this day resolve that the Union shall be preserved!”
“In the execution of that resolve let us unfold a new leaf in our national history, and write thereon words of peace. Peace or war is in our hands—an awful alternative! Peace alone is the object of our mission; to restore peace to a distracted country. I have spent my whole life in the service of my country. I love the people of every State in it. They have been under my command and I have been under theirs. I know them, and I know that this Union can never be dissolved without a struggle. Will you hasten the time when we shall begin to shed each other's blood? No! gentlemen, no!”
“There seems to be but one question which gives us any difficulty in adjusting. That is, about the right of the South to take their slaves into the territories. Is it possible that we can permit this Union to be broken up because of any difference on such a question as this? Better that the territories were buried in the deep sea beyond the plummet's reach, than that they should be the cause of such a deplorable result.”
“But it is not the value of the territories which is in dispute; it is not whether the North or the South shall colonize them, because, as the gentleman from New York has said, that though the territory south of 36° 30´ had been ten years open to Southern colonization, only twenty-four slaves had been introduced into it. No, the real question is, whether pride of opinion shall succumb to the necessities of the crisis.”
“The Premier of the incoming administration has declared that parties and platforms are subordinate to, and must disappear in the presence of the great question of the Union. This gives me hope. Let him and his friends act upon that, and this Conference can in six hours, in conjunction with a committee of his political friends, adjust such terms of settlement as will save the Union.”
“Gentlemen, will you not consider? Shall we not settle the question here, and not trouble the rest of the Union with it? We will settle it fairly and squarely. It is too small a matter to get mad about—to set about destroying the Union. Why quarrel over such a simple question? No, gentlemen, you shall not do it.”
“I am going to talk to you as individuals—as men—as patriots. I know too many of you and too much about you. You love your country too well to destroy her for such a cause. You are too patriotic. The North will never dissolve this Union on any such pretexts. You cannot destroy your country for that. You love it too much. I call on you, Wadsworth and King, Field and Chase and Morrill—as able men, as brothers—as good patriots—to give up everything else if it is necessary, to save your country. But we don't ask you to give up anything in the way of principles.”
“Now that Chicago Platform of yours is a nice paper. It has many good things in it. But it must not control this question. You can keep that platform and save your country: but you must save your country. Shall we go into war upon this little question about the Territories? No! No!!”
“Under the most favorable circumstances possible for the experiment of self-government, with every possible inducement to preserve our country, we must not give it up.”
“The years of civil war which will succeed in the dismemberment of the Union will cause true men to seek refuge and security, from military despotism, in some other country. Some Cæsar or Napoleon will spring from the vortex of revolution and war, and with his sword cleave his way to supreme command. If all history is not a failure, and if mankind are now what they have always been, such will be the fate of free government in the United States, in the event of war.”
“Shall we bring such a catastrophe upon us to vindicate the Chicago Platform? No! the American people will rise in their omnipotence and trample into dust the man who dared to put in jeopardy this Union, in order to maintain such demagogism. Away with parties and platforms and every thing else which would obstruct the free and patriotic efforts now making for the salvation of the Union. It shall not be destroyed.“
“I tell you, friends, I am going to stand right in the way. You shall not go home; you shall never see your wives and families again, until you have settled these matters, and saved your good old country, if I can help it. Spread aloft the banner of stripes and stars, let the whole country rally beneath its glorious folds, with no other slogan on their lips but the unanimous cry:
The Union, it must be Preserved!”
The conference dragged on. Some were sent to keep an eye on proceedings with no intent on settling anything. The Republicans met secretly each night to strategize together. By the second week, amendments were drafted. Stockton seemed convinced the measures were not enough to sway the southern states from their path toward war. And he understood their position and castigated all sides. His parting shot reflected his disappointment.
“I have not much to say, sir. I rise with a sadness which almost prevents my utterance. I was born at Princeton. My heart has always beat for the Union. I have heard these discussions with pain from the commencement. Shall we deliberate over any proposition which shall save the Union? The country is in jeopardy. We are called upon to save it. New Jersey and Delaware came here for that purpose and no other. They have laid aside every other motive; they have yielded everything to the general good of the country.
The report of the majority of the committee meets their concurrence. Republicans and Democrats alike, have dropped their opinions, for politics should always disappear in the presence of a great question like this. Politics should not be thought of in view of the question of disunion. By what measure of execution will posterity judge a man who contributed toward the dissolution of the Union? Shall we stand here and higgle about terms when the roar of the tornado is heard that threatens to sweep our Government from the face of the earth? Believe me, sir, this is a question of peace or war.
In the days of Rome, Curtius threw himself into the chasm when told by the oracle that the sacrifice of his life would save his country. Alas! is there no Curtius here? The alternative is a dreadful one to contemplate if we cannot adopt these propositions and secure peace. It is useless to attempt to dwarf this movement of the South by the name of treason. Call it by what name you will, it is a revolution, and this is a right which the people of this country have derived in common from their ancestors.”
By the time the Senate rejected the amendments, Lincoln was inaugurated. He needed to take a train from Illinois on a long route through Ohio and Pennsylvania. For his safety, the President elect traveled in disguise as the train passed through Maryland and into the capital. Pinkerton’s had uncovered an assasination plot where eight men drew lots to assasinate the President before he took the oath of office.
Lincoln’s inaugural address on March 4th made it clear. He would not start the war, but he also would defend the counrty, "There needs to be no bloodshed or violence; and there shall be none, unless it be forced upon the national authority."
War was declared one month later when Fort Sumter South Carolina was bombarded by Confederate troops.
Setting up for Lincoln’s Inaugural Address with the Capitol Dome under construction (National Archives)