A Scholarly Napoleon: Pryor would sink U.S. Navy to the "deepest abyss of the ocean"
The January 14, 1861 edition of The New-York Times included a report of proceedings in the U.S. House of Representatives. During debate on a naval appropriations bill Virginia Congressman Roger Atkinson Pryor made a statement (The Times January 14, 1861):
WASHINGTON, Saturday, Jan. 12.
Mr. PRYOR, of Virginia, (Dem.,) moved to strike out the appropriation of $4,438,000 for the pay of the officers and men of the navy. Sir, said Mr. PRYOR, so long as the navy was engaged in the laudable and beneficent enterprise of protecting the interests of the country, enlarging the bounds of discovery, and sustaining the honor of our flag against foreign attacks, I should have accorded it a generous support. But now, Sir, since it is to be employed for the humiliating purpose of subjugating Southern States, and imposing the yoke of a military despotism upon the people, who are guilty of no crime beyond that of presenting a gallant defence against oppression, I would sink it in the deepest abyss of the ocean before I would grant it one farthing. As the bulwark of national defence, it invokes a nation’s regard; the dread instrument of death and desolation in fratricidal strife, it deserves a nation’s execration. Sir, to my mind, the most distressing portent of these unhappy times is the obvious and absolute prevalence of military temper in the councils of the nation. What do we see? An imbecile Executive under the complete ascendancy of an ambitious and enterprising soldier; and the country, in the most critical period of her history, ruled by the Mayor of the Palace; the experience and good sense of the Administration no longer appealed to in the solution of its political difficulties, but the sword cast into the balance of sectional conflict. Instead of measures of conciliation to a malcontent people, the, Government dispatches men and munitions of war to control and subject them to an abject obedience to an obnoxious Government. Though no foreign foot treads the soil of America with hostile purpose, troops are distributed and concentrated as if to repel imminent invasion.
You can read the about the entire proceedings at The New York Times Archive, including fellow Virginian Sherrard Clemens’ request that Pryor tone it down. Maybe not coincidentally, Clemens was from Wheeling in modern day West Virginia.
I’ve heard that the Cotton States tried to put a fairly moderate spin on the Confederacy convention in Montgomery (February 1861) to help entice Virginia and other more moderate states to join up. It seems like there are quite a few fire-eating types in Virginia as it is. A lot of the rhetoric seems to be generated by the idea of the federal government coercing the South.
As always I’m interested in what you think.
