MONARCHICAL INSTITUTIONS PREFERRED. 91 The results of the labors of the Committee of Thirteen, who acted upon the Crittenden Compromise and other measures, will be considered hereafter. Let us now, for a while, leave the halls of legislation, and become spectators of the movements in South Carolina, preparatory to the open revolt that occurred in that State early in 1861. The rebellious movement in South Carolina was under the control of a few sagacious and unscrupulous men, who were the self-constituted leaders of the people. They were men who hated democracy and a republican form of government-men who yearned for the pomps of royalty and the privileges of an hereditary aristocracy; and who had persuaded themselves and the common people around them that they were superior to all others on the continent, and patterns of gentility, refinement, grace, and every characteristic in the highest ideal of chivalry. "More than once," said one of her orators, and an early conspirator, "has the calm self-respect of old Carolina breeding been caricatured by the consequential insolence of vulgar imitation." And this was the common tone of thought among them. They cherished regret that their fathers were so unwise as to break the political connection with Great Britain. "Their admiration," says a correspondent of the London Times, writing from Charleston at the close of April, 1861, "for monarchical institutions on the English model, for privileged classes, and for a landed aristocracy and gentry, is undisguised and apparently genuine. Many are they who say, 'We would go back to-morrow, if we could.' An intense affection for the British connection, a love of British habits and customs, a respect for British sentiment, law, authority, order, civilization, and literature, pre-eminently distinguish the inhabitants of this State, who, glorying in their descent from ancient families on the three islands, whose fortunes they still follow, and with whose members they maintain, not unfrequently, familiar relations, regard with an aversion which it is impossible to give an idea of to one who has not seen its manifestations, the people of New England and the population of the Northern States, whom they regard as tainted beyond cure by the venom of Puritanism." They were ready for any thing rather than continue a union with the North, with whom they declared it was an insufferable degradation to live as equals." They were arrogantly boastful of their honor, their courage, their invincibility, and their ever-willingness to die in defense of their rights and their "sacred soil." How well the conduct of these men-these betrayers of the people-justified their boastings, let the history of the Civil War determine. 992 In this overweening pride, this arrogant self-conceit, this desire for class privileges and every anti-republican condition for the favored few at the 1 William H. Trescot, Assistant Secretary of State under President Buchanan, in an Oration before the South Carolina Historical Society, in 1859. Mr. Trescot was a member of an association of South Carolinians, in 1850, whose avowed object was the destruction of the Republic by disunion. Letter of William H. Russell, LL.D., dated Charleston, April 30, 1861. Mr. Russell was sent over by the proprietors of the London Times, at the breaking out of the insurrection, as a special war correspondent of that paper. He landed in New York and proceeded southward. He mingled freely with the ruling class there, among whom he heard, he says, but one voice concerning their aspirations for an eternal separation from democ racy. "Shades of George III, of North, of Johnston," he exclaims; "of all who contended against the great rebellion which tore these colonies from England, can you hear the chorus which rings through the State of Marion, Sumter, and Pinckney, and not clap your ghostly hands in triumph? That voice says, 'If we could only get one of the royal race of England to rule over us, we should be content.' That sentiment, varied a hundred ways, has been repeated to me over and over again." expense of the great mass of the people around them, which for a generation had appeared in the deportment, the public speeches, the legislation, and the literature of the oligarchy of South Carolina, we may look for a solution and explanation of that insanity which made them emulous of all others in the mad race toward destruction which their wicked revolt brought upon them. Ever since the failure of their crazy scheme of disunion in 1832-23, in which John C. Calhoun was the chief actor as well as instigator, the politicians of that State-survivors of that failure, and their children, trained to seditious acts-had been restive under the restraints of the National Constitution, and had been seeking an occasion to strike a deadly blow at the life of the Republic, either alone, or in concert with the politicians of other Slavelabor States. Strong efforts were made in that direction in 1850, when the National Congress mortally offended the Slave interest by discussing the admission of California into the Union as a Free-labor State. Then the Legislature of South Carolina openly deliberated on the expediency of a "Southern Congress," for the initiation of immediate measures looking to disunion as an end. There were utterances, in the course of that discussion, calculated to "fire the Southern heart," as they were intended to do. The debaters spoke vaguely of wrongs suffered and endured by South Carolina, but very clearly of the remedy, which was secession. "The remedy," said W. S. Lyles, "is the union of the South and a Southern Confederacy. The friends of the Southern movement in the other States look to the action of South Carolina; and I would make the issue in a reasonable time, and the only way to do so is by secession. There will be no concert among the Southern States until a blow is struck." F. D. Richardson said:--" We must not consider what we have borne, but what we must bear hereafter. There is no remedy for these evils in the Government; we have no alternative but to come out of the Government." John S. Preston was afraid of the people, and opposed a convention. He thought popular conventions "dangerous things, except when the necessities of the country absolutely demand them." He opposed them, he said, "simply and entirely with the view of hastening the dissolution of the Union." For the same reason, Lawrence M. Keitt favored a convention. think," he said, "it will bring about a more speedy dissolution of the Union."1 The passage of the Compromise Act in September, 1850, silenced the 1 At this time the Union men of the State took measures for counteracting the madness of the disunionists. They celebrated the 4th of July by a mass meeting at Greenville, South Carolina. Many distinguished citizens were invited to attend, or to give their views at length on the great topic of the Union. Among these was Francis Lieber, LL.D., Professor of History and Political Economy in the South Carolina College at Columbia. He sent an address to his fellow-citizens of the State, which was a powerful plea for the Union and against secession. He warned them that secession would lead to war. "No country," he said, "has ever broken up or can ever break up in peace, and without a struggle commensurate to its own magnitude." He asked, Will any one who desires secession for the sake of bringing about a Southern Confederacy, honestly aver that he would insist upon a provision in the new constitution securing the full right of secession whenever it may be desired by any member of the expected Confederacy?" This significant question was answered in the affirmative, ten years later, by the madmen at Montgomery, who formed such "Confederacy" and "new constitution;" and before the rebellion that ensued was crushed, the "Confederacy" was in the throes of dissolution, caused by the practical assertion of the "right of secession." 2 In February, 1850, the representatives of California in Congress asked for the admission of the Territory as a Free-labor State, the inhabitants having formed a State constitution in which Slavery was prohibited. This was in accordance with the doctrine of Popular Sovereignty, accepted by the Slave power as right at that time, and for some years afterward; and yet that power now declared that, if California should be admitted as a Free-labor State, the Slave-labor States should leave the Union. To allay this feeling, Henry Clay proposed a compromise REBELLION IN SOUTH CAROLINA. 93 conspirators for a while; but when, in 1856, John C. Frémont, an opponent of Slavery, was nominated for the Presidency by the newly formed Republican party, they had another pretext for a display of their boasted disloyalty to the Union. One of their number, named Brooks, with his hands stained, as it were, with the blood of a Senator whom he had struck to the floor in the Senate Chamber at Washington with a bludgeon, with murderous intent (and who, for this so-called "chivalrous act," was rewarded by his compeers with the present of a gold-headed cane, and re-election to Congress), said, in an harangue before an excited populace, "I tell you that the only mode which I think available for meeting the issue is just to tear in twain the Constitution of the United States, trample it under-foot, and form a Southern Confederacy, every State of which shall be a Slave-holding State. . . . I have been a disunionist from the time I could think. If I were commander of an army, I never would post a sentinel who would not swear that slavery was right. If Frémont be elected President of the United States, I am for the people in their majesty rising above the laws and leaders, taking the power into their own hands, going by concert, or not by concert, and laying the strong arm of Southern freemen upon the treasury and archives of the Government." This is a favorable specimen of speeches made to excited crowds all over South Carolina and the Cotton-growing States at that time. ... The restless spirits of South Carolina were quieted, for a while, by the election of Buchanan, in the autumn of 1856. They were disappointed, because they seemed compelled to wait for another pretext for rebellion. But they did not wait. They conferred secretly, on the subject of disunion, with politicians in other Slave-labor States, and finally took open action in the old State House at Columbia. The lower House of the South Carolina Legislature, CHARLES G. MEMMINGER. his State. His object was to enlist the representatives of Virginia in a scheme of disunion, whilst, with the degrading hypocrisy which has ever characterized the leaders in the Great Rebellion, he professed zealous attachment to the Union. He proposed, in the name of South Carolina, a and as an offset for the admission of California as a Free-labor State, the infamous Fugitive Slave Law, which no man not interested in slavery ever advocated as right in principle, became a law of the land, with some other concessions in that direction. 94 INTER-STATE SLAVE-TRADE. convention of the Slave-labor States, to consider their grievances, and to "take action for their defense." He reminded the Virginians of the coinci dence of the people of the two States in long cherishing sentiments of disunion. He pointed to their public acts relative to meditated revolt, under certain contingencies. He reminded them of the dangers which had just menaced their State by the raid of John Brown and twenty men, at Harper's Ferry; of the "implacable condition of Northern opinion" concerning Slavery; and the rapid increase of Abolition sentiment in the Free-labor States. He reminded them that "the South" had a right to demand the repeal of all laws hurtful to Slavery; the "disbanding of every society which was agitating the Northern mind against Southern institutions ;" and the "surrender of the power to amend the Constitution in regard to Slavery," after it should be amended so as to nationalize the system. He made an able plea, and closed by saying: "I have delivered into the keeping of Virginia the cause of the South." But the politicians of Virginia, who, like those of South Carolina, had usurped the powers of the people, were averse to the establishment of a Southern Confederacy in which there was to be free trade in slaves brought from Africa; for that free trade would destroy the inter-State trade in slaves, from which the oligarchy of Virginia were receiving an annual income of from twelve millions to twenty millions of dollars. The Virginia Legislature, which Mr. Memminger said he found "extremely difficult to see through," consequently hesitated. There was also another reason for hesitation, which one of Virginia's ablest, most patriotic, and Union-loving men unhesitatingly avowed to a friend, who wished to enlist him in the revolutionary scheme of South Carolina :-" If a new Confederacy should be formed," he said, "I could not go with you, for I should use whatever influence I might be able to exert against entering into one with South Carolina, that has been a common brawler and disturber of the peace for the last thirty years, and who would give no security that I would be willing to accept, that she would not be as faithless 1 See resolutions of the General Assembly of Virginia, in March, 1847, concerning the measure known as the Wilmot Proviso, in relation to Slavery in the region just taken from Mexico. 2 When, as we shall hereafter observe, Virginia hesitated to join the Southern Confederacy, formed at Montgomery, Alabama, in February, 1861, the threat was held out that there should be a clause in the Constitution of the Confederacy prohibiting the importation of siaves from any State not in union with them. The threatened loss of this immense revenue was the most powerful argument used by Virginia politicians in favor of uniting the fortunes of that State with those of the Cotton-growing States. The Richmond papers shamelessly advocated the union of Virginia with those States in the revolt, on the ground, almost solely, that she would otherwise lose the chief source of income for "seventy thousand families of the State," arising from the sale of boys and girls, men and women. According to a report before me, five thousand slaves were sent South from Richmond, Virginia, over the Petersburg Road, five thousand over the Tennessee Road, and two thousand by other channels, during the year 1860, valued at one thousand dollars each. "Twelve millions of dollars have been received in cash by the State," said the report. 3 Mr. Memminger, in an autograph letter before me, written to R. B. Rhett, Jr., editor of The Charleston Mercury, and dated “Richmond, Va., January 28, 1860," revealed some of the difficulties in the way of the success of his treasonable mission. He says: "It is extremely difficult to see through the Virginia Legislature. The Democratic party is not a unit, and the Whigs hope to cleave it with their wedge, whenever dissensions arise. Governor Wise seems to me to be really with us, as well as Mr. Hunter, but he seems to think it necessary to throw out tubs to the Union whale. The effect here of Federal politics is most unfortunate. It makes this great State comparatively powerless. I am making but little progress, as every thing proceeds here very slowly. They have got into a tangle about committees, which has excited considerable feeling to-day, and may embarrass the result. But still I hope that the result will be favorable. I see no men, however, who would take the position of leaders in a Revolution. "As soon as I can get a printed copy of my Address, I will send it to you. "Yours very truly, C. G. MEMMINGER.” MEMMINGER'S PROPHECIES. 95 to the next compact as she has been to this which she is now endeavoring to avoid." We may also add the important fact that the great mass of the people, especially of Western Virginia, were too thoroughly loyal to follow the leadings of the politicians into revolutionary ways. 1860. Almost a year rolled away, and the same man (Memminger) November 30, stood up before a large congregation of citizens in Charleston," and, in a speech which perfectly exhibited the power of the politicians over the people of South Carolina, foreshadowed, in distinct outline, the course of revolutionary events in the near future. He foretold the exact day when an ordinance of secession would be passed in the coming State Convention; that Commissioners would be sent to Washington to treat on the terms of separation; that the demand would be made for the surrender of the forts in Charleston harbor into the hands of insurgents, and if surrender should be refused, armed South Carolinians would take them. He spoke of the weakness of the National Government with Buchanan at its head, and the consequently auspicious time for them then to strike the murderous blow at the life of the Republic. He exhorted the people to be prepared for revolution, for it was surely at hand. He knew how plastic would be the material of the Legislature and the coming Convention in the hands of the few leaders like himself, and that these leaders had power to accomplish the fulfillment of their own prophecies concerning the course of events under their control. Memminger was one of the managers of a league of conspirators in Charleston known as "The 1860 Association," formed in September previous, for the avowed purpose of maddening the people, and forcing them into acquiescence in the revolutionary scheme of the conspirators. As early as the 19th of November, Robert N. Gourdin, "Chairman of the Executive Committee" of the Association, in a circular letter said :--"The North is preparing to soothe and conciliate the South, by disclaimers and overtures. The success of this policy would be disastrous to the cause of Southern union and independence, and it is necessary to resist and defeat it. The Association is preparing pamphlets for this special object." As we shall observe hereafter, all of the time and labor spent in Congress in endeavors to conciliate the Slave-power was wasted. There was a predetermination to accept of nothing as satisfactory.2 South Carolina was then in a blaze of excitement. The Legislature, which, in special session, had provided for a Convention and the arming of the State, had adjourned on the 13th of November. The members were honored that evening by a great torch-light procession in the streets of Columbia. The old banner of the Union was taken down from the State House and the Palmetto Flag was unfurled in its place; and it was boastfully declared that the old ensign-the "detested rag of the Union"-shou'd never again float in the free air of South Carolina. 1 Letter of John Minor Botts to "HI. B. M., Esq.." of Staunton, dated November 27, 1860. * See Chapter IX. In the circular referred to, Gourdin stated the principal objects of the Association to be the interchange of views to "prepare the Slave States to meet the impending crisis;" to prepare, print, and circulate tracts and pamphlets designed to awaken the people " to a sense of danger," and to aid the Legislature in promptly establishing "an effective military organization." The object of this circular was to beg for money to carry on the work of the Association. He stated that one hundred and sixty thousand pamphlets had already been distributed, and yet there was a good demand for them. |