GEORGIA, ALABAMA, ETC., SECEDING. 21 24 347 more formal ratification, at which | and Herschel V. Johnson, late Dougthe Governor "1 and Legislature were las leaders in the South, were recorded invited to attend. Then and there, among the Nays. the Ordinance, having been duly engrossed, was read by the President, then signed by all the delegates in alphabetical order, and thereupon displayed by the President to the enthusiastic crowd, with a declaration that the State of South Carolina is now and henceforth a free and independent commonwealth." And then, with wild, prolonged, exulting huzzas, the assemblage dispersed; and the Charleston papers began to print thenceforth their daily quantum of intelligence from the non-seceding States as "Foreign News." Georgia, as was arranged and expected, was the first State to follow South Carolina in her fatal plunge. Her new Legislature, moved by an impassioned Message from her Governor, Joseph E. Brown, passed 22 a bill appropriating $1,000,000 to arm and equip the State; and, on the 18th, a bill calling a Convention of delegates, to be chosen in the several counties on the 2d of January ensuing, and to meet one week thereafter. The Convention bill passed by a unanimous vote; the Convention thus chosen and convened finally passed" an Ordinance of Secession: Yeas 208; Nays 89. The names of A. H. Stephens 21 Francis W. Pickens, newly chosen by the Legislature; an original Nullifier and life-long Disunionist, "born insensible to fear." He was in Congress (House) from 1835 to 1843; sent as Minister to Russia by Buchanan in 1858. 22 November 13, 1860. 23 January 18, 1861. 24 "A sad thing to observe is, that those who are determined on immediate secession have not the coolness, the capacity, or the nerve, to propose something after that. We must secede, it is said; but, what then we are to do, nobody knows, or, at least, nobody says. This is extremely foolish, and more wicked than foolish. Alabama was held back by a scruple on the part of her Governor, Andrew B. Moore, who declined to act decisively until the Presidential Electors in the several States had met, and a majority cast their votes for Lincoln. He issued his call on the 6th, and the election of delegates was held on the 24th of December. The Secessionists claimed a popular majority of 50,000 in the votes of the several counties; but when the Convention 25 passed an Ordinance of Secession," by a vote of 61 to 39, it was claimed that the minority, being mainly from the Northern counties, where the free population is proportionally far more numerous than among the great plantations of the South, represented more freemen than did the majority. 27 29 Florida, through her Legislature, voted to call a Convention. That Convention met at Tallahassee,28 and passed " an Ordinance of Secession: Yeas 62; Nays 7. Several delegates elected expressly as Unionists voted for Secession. Mississippi assembled her Legislature, on the call of Gov. John J. Pettus, at Jackson; and a Convention was thereby called to meet at the same place, January 7th; and a Se All sorts of business are going to wreck and 25 Assembled at Montgomery, January 7th. 29 ordinance was submitted to a popular vote, and ratified by a considerable majority; it being very much safer, in most districts, to vote Secession than not at all, and not to vote at all than to vote Union. cession Ordinance was passed by it two days thereafter: Yeas 84; Nays 15. Mississippi having, next to South Carolina, the largest proportional Slave population of any State in the Union, it is probable that this action more nearly conformed to the real sentiment of her reading, governor's reticence, was blest with a Coning class, than that of any other State which is claimed as having seceded. 30 In Louisiana, Gov. Thomas O. Moore, an extensive planter and slaveholder, cherishing the prejudices of his class, called " her new Legislature to meet at Baton Rouge, December 10th. This lost no time in calling" a Convention, by which an Ordinance of Secession was passed: Yeas 103; Nays 17. But a New Orleans journal, which had not yet fallen into treason, confidently asserted that a majority of the people who voted for delegates to that Convention had voted for Union delegates, and challenged the Secessionists to publish and scrutinize the popular vote. This they were finally impelled to do, figuring out a small majority for their own side. It was plain that, while every Secessionist voted and many Unionists abstained, the vote for Union and that for Secession delegates were just about equal. As made up by the Secessionists, they stood: For Secession, 20,448; Against it, 17,296. 17,296. The vote for Secession is only two-fifths of the vote cast for President just before. The Convention refused84 to 45-to submit their act to a vote of the people. In Texas, a Convention-called, as we have seen-assembled at Austin, January 28th, passed an Ordinance of Secession: Yeas 166; Nays 7. This 33 30 November 26, 1860. 31 December 17, 1860. January 26, 1860. Arkansas, in spite of her Govern vention; her Legislature voting a call for one; but her popular® vote showed a Union majority, and the conspirators were baffled for the time. North Carolina was under the rule, but not at first under the control, of the conspirators. Among the dispatches flying, thick as hail, over the South the day after Lincoln's election, was the following: RALEIGH, N. C., Nov. 7, 1860. "The Governor and Council are in session. The people are very much excited. North Carolina is ready to secede." The Governor (John W. Ellis) and Legislature being of the Breckinridge school of Democracy, it was easy to call a Convention, but difficult to assemble one without giving the People some voice in the premises. And they, upon the appointed day of elec tion, not only chose a strong majority of Union delegates, but voted further (for fear of what might happen) that the Convention should not meet at all. Yet another Convention was, directly after the reduction of Sumter, hastily elected, which voted the State out of the Union. So, in Virginia, where Gov. Letcher had early and heartily entered into the counsels of the Disunionists, the Legislature was called by him to meet. in extra session at Richmond on the 7th of January, which it did, and3 passed a bill calling a Convention; 33 February 1, 1861. 35 January 13, 1861. 35 34 November 16, 1860. MISSOURI, KENTUCKY, ETC., REFUSE TO SECEDE. but the people returned an overwhelming Union majority; which, so late as April 4th, by 89 to 45, decided not to pass an Ordinance of Secession. 36 Missouri, under Gov. C. F. Jackson's rule, had a Democratic Legislature, which voted to call a Convention; but that body, when convened, was found to be decidedly and inflexibly Union. The pretended Secession of the State, some time afterward, was the work of unauthorized persons, and had not a shadow of legal validity. So, Tennessee, whose Legislature met January 7th, though her Governor, Isham G. Harris, was thoroughly with the Disunionists, could not be induced to take the first step in their company. 37 In Kentucky, the open Secessionists were but a handful, and were unable to make any show of strength in the Legislature. The few slavetraders, some scions of the planting aristocracy, with quite a number of politicians of bygone eminence and power (many, if not most, of them Whigs' of other days), were early enlisted in the movement, and sought to counterbalance, if not conceal, their paucity of numbers by intense bitterness and preternatural activity. They were enabled, through the timidity and twaddling of the leading politicians who had supplanted them in 36 January 16, 1861. 37 The Nashville Banner, a leading journal of the old Whig school, contained late in January, 1861, the following warning of the treacherous schemes that were then culminating in Ten nessee: "Let every true, honest citizen of the South beware. The vilest, most damnable, deep-laid and treacherous conspiracy that was ever concocted in the busy brain of the most designing knave, is being hatched to destroy his liberties 349 place and power, to exert a baleful influence over the course of their State throughout the ensuing year, but never to drive or lure her to the brink of Secession. So, in Maryland, which was early visited by emissaries from the seceded States, who exerted every art to drag her after them into the abyss. They were patiently, respectfully treated; feasted and toasted by the aristocratic few, but nowise encouraged or sympathized with by the great body of the industrious classes. Gov. Thomas H. Hicks, though a slaveholder, and not very determined nor consistent in his course at the outset of the Rebellion, met the original appeal for Secession with a decided rebuff. Being strongly memorialized to convene the Legislature in extra session, he responded" as follows: "Identified, as I am, by birth, and every other tie, with the South-a slaveholder, and feeling as warmly for my native State as any man can do--I am yet compelled by my sense of fair dealing, and my respect for the Constitution of our country, to declare that I see nothing in the bare election of Mr. Lincoln which would justify the South in taking any steps tending toward a separation of these States. Mr. Lincoln being elected, I am administer the Government in a proper and willing to await further results. If he will patriotic manner, we are all bound to submit to his Administration, much as we may have opposed his election. "As an individual, I will very cheerfully sustain him in well-doing, because my suftutional administration of the Government. fering country will be benefited by a constiIf, on the contrary, he shall abuse the trust by breaking up this Government. If the people do not rise in their strength and put back these meddling politicians, the latter will chloroform them with sectional prejudice, and then ride over them rough-shod before they can recover from the narcotic. The political tricksters, who see their power slipping from their grasp, are playing a desperate game, and will not 'lose a trick' double-dealers do not 'stock the cards.' if they can help it. Let honest men see that the 38 November 27, 1861. confided to him, I shall be found as ready and determined as any other man to arrest him in his wrong courses, and to seek redress of our grievances by any and all proper means. Before the opening of 1861, a perfect reign of terror had been established throughout the Gulf States. A secret order, known as "Knights of the Golden Circle," or as "Knights of the Columbian Star," succeeding that known, six or seven years earlier, as the Order of the Lone Star,' having for its ostensible object the Delaware had, in 1858, chosen William Burton (Democrat) for Governor by 7,758 votes to 7,544 for his Opposition rival; Democracy in Delaware being almost exclusively based on Slavery, and having at length car-acquisition of Cuba, Mexico, and Cenried the State by its aid. The great tral America, and the establishment body of the party, under the lead of of Slavery in the two latter, but really Senator James A. Bayard, had sup- operating in the interest of Disunion, ported Breckinridge, and were still had spread its network of lodges, in sympathy with his friends' view of grips, passwords, and alluring myste"Southern Rights,' but not to the ry, all over the South, and had ramiextent of approving South Carolina fications even in some of the cities of remedies. Their Legislature met at the adjoining Free States. Other Dover, January 2, 1861. Gov. Bur- clubs, more or less secret, were known ton, in his Message, said: as 'The Precipitators,' 'Vigilance Committee,' 'Minute Men,' and by kindred designations; but all of them were sworn to fidelity to 'Southern Rights;' while their members were gradually prepared and ripened, wherever any ripening was needed, for the task of treason. Whoever ventured to condemn and repudiate Secession as the true and sover "The cause of all the trouble is the persistent war of the Abolitionists upon more than two billions of property; a war waged from pulpits, rostrums, and schools, by press and people-all teaching that Slavery is a crime and a sin, until it has become the opinion of a portion of one section of the country. The only remedy for the evils now threatening is a radical change of public sentiment in regard to the whole ques tion. The North should retire from its untenable position immediately." Mr. Dickenson, Commissioner from Mississippi, having addressed the two Houses jointly in advocacy of Secession, they passed, directly thereafter, separately and unanimously, the following: "Resolved, That, having extended to the Hon. H. Dickenson, Commissioner from Mississippi, the courtesy due him as the representative of a sovereign State of the confederacy, as well as to the State he represents, we deem it proper, and due to ourselves and the people of Delaware, to express our unqualified disapproval of the remedy for the existing difficulties suggested by the resolutions of the Legislature of Mississippi." 39 To Mr. O. J. Victor, author of 'The History of the Southern Rebellion,' who knew him well, and vouches for his integrity. (See his vol. i., eign remedy for Southern wrongs, in any neighborhood where Slavery was dominant, was thenceforth a marked man, to be stigmatized and hunted down as a 'Lincolnite,' Submissionist,' or 'Abolitionist.' One refugee planter from Southern Alabama, himself a slaveholder, but of northern birth, who barely escaped a violent death, because of an intercepted letter from a relative in Connecticut, urging him to free his slaves and return to the North, as he had promised, stated that he had himself been 39 p. 134.) See to the same effect the testimony of Hon. A. J. Hamilton, of Texas, Rev. Mr. Aughey, of Mississippi, and hundreds of others. South THE SLAVE STATES ON SECESSION. obliged to join the 'Minute Men' of his neighborhood for safety, and had thus been compelled to assist in hanging six men of Northern birth because of their Union sentiments; and he personally knew that not less than one hundred men had been hung in his section of the State and in the adjoining section of Georgia, during the six weeks which preceded his escape in December, 1860. 40 When, therefore, the time at length arrived, in pursuance of a formal invitation from South Carolina, for the assembling at Montgomery of a Convention of delegates from all the States which should, by that time, have seceded from the Union, with a view to the formation of a new Confederacy, the States which had united in the movement were as follows: 351 The Slave States and District which had not united in the movement, were as follows: States. Delaware. Maryland. North Carolina. Tennessee. Dist. Columbia Total.. Free Population in 1860. 324,323 110,420 So that, after the conspiracy had had complete possession of the Southern mind for three months, with the Southern members of the Cabinet, nearly all the Federal officers, most of the Governors and other State functionaries, and seven-eighths of the prominent and active active politicians, pushing it on, and no force exerted against nor in any manner threatening to resist it, a majority of the 708,812 Slave States, with two-thirds of the 964,296 free population of the entire slave709,290 holding region, were openly and positively adverse to it; either because they regarded the alleged grievances of the South as exaggerated if not unreal, or because they believed that those wrongs would rather be aggravated than cured by Disunion. Total. Slaves. 529.164 435,132 |