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CHAPTER VII.

SECESSION ARMING.

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THE SOUTH CAROLINA SECESSION CONVENTION MEETS-SPEECHES, AT
66 SECESSION HALL," OF PARKER, KEITT, INGLIS, BARNWELL,
RHETT, AND GREGG-THE FIRST ORDINANCE OF SECESSION-ITS
JUBILANT ADOPTION AND RATIFICATION-SECESSION STAMPEDE
-A SOUTHERN CONGRESS PROPOSED-PICKENS'S PROCLAMATION
OF SOVEREIGN INDEPENDENCE-SOUTH CAROLINA CONGRESS-
MEN WITHDRAW-DISSENSIONS IN BUCHANAN'S CABINET-COBB,
FLOYD, AND THOMPSON, DEMAND WITHDRAWAL OF FEDERAL
TROOPS-BUCHANAN'S REPLY-SEIZURE OF FORTS, ETC.-THE
"STAR OF THE WEST FIRED ON-THE MAD RUSH OF REBELL-
IOUS EVENTS SOUTH CAROLINA DEMANDS THE SURRENDER
OF FORT SUMTER-THE DEMAND REFUSED-SECRETARY HOLT'S
LETTER TO CONSPIRING SENATORS AND REBEL AGENT TROOPS
AT THE NATIONAL CAPITAL-HOLT'S REASONS THEREFOR-THE
REVOLUTIONARY PROGRAMME—“ ARMED OCCUPATION OF WASH-
INGTON CITY"-LINCOLN'S INAUGURATION TO BE PREVENTED—
THE CRUMBLING AND DISSOLVING UNION-THE NORTH STANDS
AGHAST-GREAT DEBATE IN CONGRESS, 1860-1861-CLINGMAN
ON THE SOUTHERN TARIFF-GRIEVANCE-DEFIANCE OF BROWN
OF MISSISSIPPI-IVERSON'S BLOODY THREAT-WIGFALL'S UN-
SCRUPULOUS ADVICE-HIS INSULTING DEMANDS-BAKER'S
GLORIOUSLY ELOQUENT RESPONSE ANDY JOHNSON THREAT-
ENED WITH BULLETS-THE NORTH BULLIED-INSOLENT, IM-
POSSIBLE TERMS OF PEACE-LINCOLN'S SPEECHES EN ROUTE
FOR WASHINGTON-SAFE ARRIVAL-"I'LL TRY TO STEER HER
THROUGH!"-THE SOUTH TAUNTS HIM-WIGFALL'S CHALLENGE
TO THE BLOODY ISSUE OF ARMS!.....
.Pages 114 to 144.

WH

HILE Congress was encouraging devotion to the Union, and its Committees striving for some mode by which the impending perils might be averted without a wholesale surrender of all just principles, the South Carolina Convention met (December 17, 1860) at Columbia, and after listening to inflammatory addresses by commissioners from the States of Alabama and Mississippi, urging imme

diate and unconditional Secession, unanimously and with ̈“tremendous cheering" adopted a resolution: “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,”—and then adjourned to meet at Charleston, South Carolina.

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The next day, and following days, it met there, at "Secession Hall,” listening to stimulating addresses, while a committee of seven worked upon the Ordinance of Secession. Among the statements made by orators, were several clear admissions that the rebellious Conspiracy had existed for very many years, and that Mr. Lincoln's election was simply the long-sought-for pretext for Rebellion. Mr. Parker said: "It is no spasmodic effort that has come suddenly upon us; it has been gradually culminating for a long period of thirty years. At last it has come to that point where we may say, the matter is entirely right.' Mr. Inglis said: "Most of us have had this matter under consideration for the last twenty years; and I presume that we have by this time arrived at a decision upon the subject." Mr. Keitt said: “I have been engaged in this movement ever since I entered political life; * we have carried the body of this Union to its last resting place, and now we will drop the flag over its grave." Mr. Barnwell Rhett said: "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 gathering head for thirty years." Mr. Gregg said: "If we undertake to set forth all the causes, do we not dishonor the memory of all the statesmen of South Carolina, now departed, who commenced forty years ago a war against the tariff and against internal improvement, saying nothing of the United States Bank, and other measures which may now be regarded as obsolete."

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On the 20th of December, 1860-the fourth day of the sittings--the Ordinance of Secession was reported by the Committee, and was at once unanimously passed, as also was a resolution that "the passage of the Ordinance be proclaimed by the firing of artillery and ringing of the bells of the city,

and such other demonstrations as the people may deem appropriate on the passage of the great Act of Deliverance and Liberty;" after which the Convention jubilantly adjourned to meet, and ratify, that evening. At the evening session of this memorable Convention, the Governor and Legislature attending, the famous Ordinance was read as engrossed, signed by all the delegates, and, after announcement by the President that "the State of South Carolina is now and henceforth a Free and Independent Commonwealth;" amid tremendous cheering, the Convention adjourned. This, the first Ordinance of Secession passed by any of the Revolting States, was in these words:

"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 23rd 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."

Thus, and in these words, was joyously adopted and ratified, that solemn Act of Separation which was doomed to draw in its fateful train so many other Southern States, in the end only to be blotted out with the blood of hundreds of thousands of their own brave sons, and their equally courageous Northern brothers.

State after State followed South Carolina in the mad course of Secession from the Union. Mississippi passed a Secession Ordinance, January 9, 1861. Florida followed, January 10th; Alabama, January 11th; Georgia, January 18th; Louisiana, January 26th; and Texas, February 1st; Arkansas, North Carolina, and Virginia held back until a later period;

while Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware, abstained altogether from taking the fatal step, despite all attempts to bring them to it.

In the meantime, however, South Carolina had put on all the dignity of a Sovereign and Independent State. Her Governor had a "cabinet " comprising Secretaries of State, War, Treasury, the Interior, and a Postmaster General. She had appointed Commissioners, to proceed to the other Slave-holding States, through whom a Southern Congress was proposed, to meet at Montgomery, Alabama; and had appointed seven delegates to meet the delegates from such other States in that proposed Southern Congress.

On the 21st of December, 1860, three Commissioners (Messrs. Barnwell, Adams, and Orr) were also appointed to proceed to Washington, and treat for the cession by the United States to South Carolina, of all Federal property within the limits of the latter. On the 24th, Governor Pickens issued a Proclamation announcing the adoption of the Ordinance of Secession, declaring "that the State of South Carolina is, as she has a right to be, a separate sovereign, free and independent State, and as such, has a right to levy war, conclude peace, negotiate treaties, leagues or covenants, and to do all acts whatsoever that rightfully appertain to a free and independent State; " the which proclamation was announced as "Done in the eighty-fifth year of the Sovereignty and Independence of South Carolina." On the same day (the Senators from that State in the United States Senate having long since, as we have seen, withdrawn from that body) the Representatives of South Carolina in the United States House of Representatives withdrew.

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Serious dissensions in the Cabinet of President Buchanan, were now rapidly disintegrating the "official family of the President. Lewis Cass, the Secretary of State, disgusted with the President's cowardice and weakness, and declining to be held responsible for Mr. Buchanan's promise not to reinforce the garrisons of the National Forts, under Major Anderson, in Charleston harbor, retired from the Cabinet December 12th-Howell Cobb having already, "because his duty to Georgia required it," resigned the Secretaryship

of the Treasury, and left it bankrupt and the credit of the Nation almost utterly destroyed.

On the 26th of December, Major Anderson evacuated Fort Moultrie, removing all his troops and munitions of war to Fort Sumter-whereupon a cry went up from Charleston that this was in violation of the President's promise to take no step looking to hostilities, provided the Secessionists committed no overt act of Rebellion, up to the close of his fast expiring Administration. On the 29th, John B. Floyd, Secretary of War, having failed to secure the consent of the Administration to an entire withdrawal of the Federal garrison from the harbor of Charleston, also resigned, and the next day he having in the meantime escaped in safety to Virginia-was indicted by the Grand Jury at Washington, for malfeasance and conspiracy to defraud the Government in the theft of $870,000 of Indian Trust Bonds from the Interior Department, and the substitution therefor of Floyd's acceptances of worthless army-transportation drafts on the Treasury Department.

Jacob Thompson, Secretary of the Interior, also resigned, January 8th, 1861, on the pretext that "additional troops, he had heard, have been ordered to Charleston" in the "Star of the West."*

Several changes were thus necessitated in Mr. Buchanan's cabinet, by these and other resignations, so that by the 18th of January, 1861, Jeremiah S. Black was Secretary of State; General John A. Dix, Secretary of the Treasury; Joseph Holt, Secretary of War; Edwin M. Stanton, Attorney General; and Horatio King, Postmaster General. But before leaving the Cabinet, the conspiring Southern members of it, and their friends, had managed to hamstring the National Government, by scattering the Navy in other quarters of the World; by sending the few troops of the United States to remote points; by robbing the arsenals in the Northern States of arms and munitions of war, so as to abundantly supply the Southern States at the critical moment; by bankrupting the Treasury and shattering the public credit of the Nation; and by other means no less nefa* McPherson's History of the Rebellion, p. 28.

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