SOUTH CAROLINA FOLLOWED.

583

may be unknown, and the accusations of parties, the claims of factions, spread, uncorrected, on the pages of history, may pervert the judgment of posterity and perpetuate

errors.

The South Carolina program of secession was repeated, with little variation in other slaveholding States. The governor assembled the legislature; a disunion message was delivered; a secession campaign, started long before was vigorously carried on. A convention "direct from the people" was called. Public opinion was thus guided and guarded by the secession leaders. An ordinance of secession was formally passed amidst great excitement, the thunder of cannon, the raising of a new flag1 and with electric notice to the whole world. The State was put in readiness for war, for which preparation had long been made. The Breckinridge, not the Douglas, Democrats of the South were foremost in the movement.

1 The "official description" of the scenes attending the passage of the secession ordinance in Alabama is given by William R. Smith, one of the delegates from Tuskaloosa. He voted against the ordinance.

The question being upon the adoption of the Preamble, Ordinance of Secession and Resolutions as amended, the vote wasayes, 61; noes, 39. (Among the ayes were seven "elected as cooperationists.") Mr. President Brooks announced the result of the vote and that the Ordinance of Secession was adopted, and that Alabama was a free, sovereign and independent State. Mr. Yelverton introduced the following resolution:

Resolved, That the secrecy be removed from the proceedings of this day, and that the President of the Convention be requested to telegraph the information of the passage of the ORDINANCE OF SECESSION to our members of Congress, and to the Governors of the Slaveholding States.

Mr. Yelverton's Resolution was adopted, and by motion of Mr. Yancey, the doors were thrown open.

It would be difficult to describe with accuracy the scenes that presented themselves in and around the Capitol during this day. A vast crowd had assembled in the rotunda, eager to hear the

announcement of the passage of the Ordinance. In the Senate Chamber, within hearing of the Convention, the citizens and visitors had called a meeting; and the company was there addressed by several distinguished orators, on the great topic which was then engrossing the attention of the Convention. The wild shouts and the round of rapturous applause that greeted the Speakers in this impromptu assembly often broke in upon the ear of the Convention, and startled the grave solemnity that presided over its deliberations.

Guns had been made ready to herald the news, and flags had been prepared in various parts of the city to be hoisted upon a signal.

When the doors were thrown open the lobby and the galleries were filled to suffocation in a moment. The ladies were there in crowds, with visible eagerness to participate in the exciting scenes. With them the love songs of yesterday had swelled into the political hosannas of to-day.

PRESENTATION OF THE FLAG.

Simultaneously with the entrance of the multitude, a magnificent Flag was unfurled in the center of the Hall, so large as to reach nearly across the ample chamber. Gentlemen mounted upon tables and desks held up the floating ends, the better thus to be able to display its figures. The cheering was now deafening for some moments. It seemed really that there would be no end to the raptures that had taken possession of the company.

Mr. Yancey addressed the Convention, in behalf of the ladies of Montgomery, who had deputed him to present to the Convention this Flag, the work of the ladies of Alabama. In the course of his speech he described the mottoes and the devices of the flag, and paid a handsome tribute to the ardor of the female patriotism.

The roar of cannon was heard during the remainder of this eventful day. The new flag of Alabama displayed its virgin features from the windows and towers of surrounding houses; and the finest orators of the State in harangues of congratulation, commanded until a late hour in the night the attention of shouting multitudes. Every species of enthusiasm prevailed. Political parties, which had so lately been standing in sullen antagonism, seemed for the time to have forgotten their differences of opinion; and one universal glow of fervent patriotism kindled the enraptured community."

(History and Debates of the Convention of Alabama, for January Eleventh, 1861, 118-119, 122. For similar scenes in South Carolina, see Crawford's Genesis of the Civil War, Chapters I, II.)

THE REAL LEADERS OF SECESSION.

585 In the mountainous part of Georgia and Alabama, indeed over that mountainous peninsula which projects southward between the Mississippi river and the Atlantic seaboard, disunion sentiment was feeble and secession was not easily carried out. Threats of coercion were freely made, and not always in vain by the "straight-out" disunionists.1 The real leaders of the whole movement were in Washington,-Senators, members of Congress and of the President's cabinet, and judges in United States Courts. If the leaders in the seceding States seem more ardent and active, it was because they were less prominent in the movement than their confederates in Washington. It is not always the chief leader who carries the red flag. That the secession program of 1860 was planned in Washington by those who soon became the chief officials of the

1 The attitude of the "co-operationists" as distinct from the "straight-out secessionists" towards the question of separation from the Union is shown in the Minority Report, of the Committee of Thirteen, in the Alabama convention, "to whom was referred all matters touching the proper mode of resistance to be adopted by the State of Alabama," etc., etc.

"Looking to harmony of action among our own people as desirable above all other things, we have been earnestly desirous of concurring with the majority in the line of policy marked out by them, but after the most careful consideration, we have been unable to see in Separate State Secession the most effectual mode of guarding our honor and securing our rights. Without entering into any argument upon the nature and amount of our grievances, or any speculations as to the probability of our obtaining redress and security in the Union, but looking alone to the most effectual mode of resistance, it seems to us that this great object is best to be attained by the concurrent and concerted action of all the States interested, and that it becomes us to make the effort to obtain that concurrence, before deciding finally and conclusively on our own policy.

"We are further of opinion that, in a matter of this importance vitally affecting the property, the lives and the liberties of the whole people, sound policy dictates that an ordinance of secession should be submitted for their ratification and approval."

586

A PROGRAM FOR PACIFICATION.

Confederacy is beyond doubt. Whether to secede as separate States, or in a body, was for some time the question. In South Carolina the "straight-out" secession faction was in control and separate State secession was inaugurated. By the first of February, 1861, six States had followed the example. But long before that date, a general convention that should not meet later than the middle of February for the purpose of organizing a Southern Confederacy, had been practically agreed upon.

The action of South Carolina was not a spark from a sudden generation of heat, for the seeds of disunion may be said to have been planted with the planting of the government. Not merely the compromises of the Constitu

Accompanying the report was a program for pacification:

(1) All the slaveholding States to meet in convention at Nashville, Tennessee, on the 22d day of February, 1861, to consider their wrongs and the appropriate remedies for them.

(2) The Constitution of the United States to be amended so as to secure:

(1) A faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Law, and a repeal of all State Laws calculated to impair its efficacy.

(2) A more stringent and explicit provision for the surrender of criminals charged with offences against the laws of one State and escaping into another.

(3) A guarantee that slavery shall not be abolished in the District of Columbia, or in any other place over which Congress has exclusive jurisdiction.

(4) A guarantee that the inter-State slave trade shall not be interfered with.

(5) A protection to slavery in the Territories, while they are Territories, and a guarantee that when they ask for admission as States they shall be admitted into the Union with or without slavery, as their Constitutions may prescribe.

(6) The right of transit through free States with slave property. (Alabama Convention, 77-79.)

The motion to submit the secession ordinance to popular vote was defeated by a vote of 45 to 54. For the relative advantages of co-operation and straight-out secession, see Clark's speech, Alabama Convention, 81-90.

See also pp. 55, 147, 281, 323, 325, 336, 354, 358.

PRECEDENTS FOR 1860.

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tion, but the antagonistic administrative policies which necessarily grew out of the two industrial systems in the country, bred disaffection, sectionalism, distrust and disunion. Because the Hartford Convention voiced the opinion of some New Englanders, in 1812, touching slave-representation, the admission of new States, embargoes, the power to declare war, native-Americanism, and a single term for the President,' it is by no means proof that New England, or the delegates who framed the Hartford resolutions had any intention to advocate disunion and secession. But even granting the truth of such a charge, the Hartford resolutions indicate no more than political discontent.2

From 1814 to 1832, disunion sentiments were frequently heard in Congress; secession as a political remedy was openly mentioned in debate in State legislatures, and in conventions, and it was the theme of an ever-growing volume of pamphlet literature. The South Carolina Convention of 1832 merely condensed a mass of disunion sentiment that had been accumulating for at least twenty years. Nullification was as old as the Kentucky Resolutions and was quieted for a time by the vigorous Jackson and the compromising Clay. After 1848 and the acquisition of California, and the discovery of gold, and the swift movement of population into Western territory, the doctrines of State sovereignty, free-trade, slavery extension and confederacy became more clearly antithetic to those of national sovereignty, a tariff for protection, unrestricted immigration, and the extension of the franchise, and a growing demand, after 1850, that slavery be excluded from

1 Proceedings (Boston, 1815), 20, 21.

2 For a refutation of the charge of disloyalty, made against this Convention, see Otis' Letters, in Defence of the Hartford Convention, especially Nos. VIII and IX (Boston, 1824). Also Dwight's History of the Convention, 405.