On motion of Mr. Inglis, it was unanimously, and amid tremendous cheering,

"Resolved, That it is the opinion of the Convention that the State of South Carolina should forthwith secede from the Federal Union, known as the United States of America."

The small-pox then raging in Columbia, the Convention adjourned to 'Secession Hall' in Charleston, where it met next day. Mr. Buchanan's last Annual Message having been received, Judge Magrath, of Charleston, offered the following, which was debated next day, but does not seem to have passed:

"Resolved, That so much of the Message of the President of the United States as relates to what he designates the property of the United States in South Carolina, be referred to a Committee to report of what such property consists, how the same was acquired, or, whether the purposes for which it was so acquired can be enjoyed by the United States after the State of South Carolina shall have seceded, consistently with the dignity and safety of the State; and that said Committee further report the value of the property of the United States not in South Carolina, and the value of the share thereof to which South Carolina may be entitled upon an equal division thereof among the States. [Great applause in the galleries."]

The President announced an address from a portion of the Legislature of Georgia, which he thought should not be made public; so it was not. It was afterward understood to be an appeal from fifty-two members of said Legislature for delay and consultation among the Slave States.

The next day, Hon. J. A. Elmore

345

communicated a dispatch from the Governor of Alabama, in these words:

"MONTGOMERY, ALA., Dec. 17, 1860. "Tell the Convention to listen to no proposition of compromise or delay.

"A. B. MoORE."

Among the utterances of this Convention, the following seem especially significant and memorable:

Mr. Parker said:

We

"I have been engaged in this movement ever since I entered political life. I am content with what has been done to-day, and with what will take place to-morrow. have carried the body of this Union to its last resting-place, and now we will drop the flag over its grave. After that is done, I am ready to adjourn, and leave the remaining ceremonies for to-morrow.”

And Mr. Robert Barnwell Rhett

"The Secession of South Carolina is not an event of a day. It is not anything produced by Mr. Lincoln's election, or by the non-execution of the Fugitive Slave Law. It has been a matter which has been gather* * ** The ing head for thirty years. this: He says he thought it expedient to point in which I differ from my friend is put this great question before the world upon this simple matter of wrongs-on the question of Slavery; and that question turned upon the Fugitive Slave Law. Now, in regard to the Fugitive Slave Law, I myself doubted its constitutionality, and doubted it on the floor of the Senate, when I was a member of that body. The States, acting

in their sovereign capacity, should be responsible for the rendition of fugitive slaves. That was our best security."

It was, on motion of Mr. Hayne,

resolved that a Commissioner be sent

to each Slave State, with a copy of the Secession Ordinance, with a view to hasten coöperation on the part of those States; also, that three Commissioners be sent to Washington, with a copy of the same, to be laid before the President, to treat for the delivery of the United States property in South Carolina over to the State, on the subject of the Public Debt,

"An Ordinance to dissolve the Union between the State of South Carolina, and other States united with her under the compact entitled the Constitution of the United States of America:

"We, the people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, that the Ordinance adopted by us in Convention, on the 23d day of May, in the year of our Lord 1788, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and also all Acts and parts of Acts of the General Assembly of this State ratifying the amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed; and that the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved."

A formal "Declaration of Causes, which induced the Secession of South Carolina,” was in like manner reported and adopted. Its substance and force are entirely derived from and grounded on the alleged infidelity of the Free States to their constitutional obligations with respect to Slavery, but more especially in the non-rendition of fugitive slaves. New York,

among other States, is herein charged (of course by mistake) with having passed acts to obstruct the return of such fugitives. Indiana and Illinois are likewise among the States thus erroneously accused. The Constitution is pronounced a compact between sovereign States, and the Convention proceeds:

"We maintain that, in every compact between two or more parties, the obligation is mutual; that the failure of one of the contracting parties to perform a material part of the agreement, entirely releases the obligation of the other; and that, where no arbiter is provided, each party is remitted to his own judgment to determine the fact of failure, with all its consequences.

No grievance of any name or nature is alleged or insinuated, but such as flow from anti-Slavery feeling and action in the Free States, culminating in the election of Lincoln. The

Declaration concludes as follows:

lina, by our delegates in Convention assem"We, therefore, the people of South Carobled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State, with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do."

On motion of Mr. W. F. De Saussure, it was further

Resolved, That the passage of the Ordinance be proclaimed by the firing of artillery and the ringing of the bells of the city, may deem appropriate on the passage of the and such other demonstrations as the people great act of deliverance and liberty."

The President, at a quarter past 1, announced that the Ordinance had unanimously passed; whereupon there burst forth a pent-up flood of congratulatory and jubilant speeches, and then the Convention adjourned, to meet again in the evening for a

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, governing class, than that of any other State which is claimed as having seceded.

In Louisiana, Gov. Thomas O. Moore, an extensive planter and slaveholder, cherishing the prejudices of his class, called 30 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.

The

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.

Arkansas, in spite of her Governor's reticence, was blest with a Convention; 84 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 election, 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 that same Convention was, directly after the reduction of Sumter, called together, and 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, and passed a bill calling a Convention;

33 February 1, 1861. 35 January 13, 1861.

34 November 16, 1860.

349

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.

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

6

36 January 16, 1861.

37 The Nashville Banner, a leading journal of the old Whig school, contained late in January, 1860, 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

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:

38

"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 wil 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' if they can help it. Let honest men see that the double-dealers do not 'stock the cards.'

38 November 27, 1861.