supplies, the preparation for war. Already the trade and agriculture of the State were beginning to show signs of peril; business was uncertain; property values rose and fell as in times of uncertain speculation. The people refrained from idle amusements and devoted themselves to preparation for the long sacrifice of war. No longer were prayers publicly offered for the president of the United States; no longer was the stars and stripes seen floating, save over Fort Moultrie.

On December 17th, Francis W. Pickens was inaugurated governor and said, in the course of his inaugural address: "South Carolina is resolved to assert her separate independence, and as she acceded separately to the compact of union, so will she most assuredly secede separately and alone, be the consequences what they may; and I think it right to say with no unkind feeling whatever, that on this point there can be no compromise, let it be offered from where it may. . . . It is our sincere desire to separate from the States of the North in peace, and leave them to develop their own civilization according to their own sense of duty and interest. But if, under the guidance of ambition and fanaticism, they decide otherwise, then be it so. We are prepared for any event, and, in humble reliance upon that Providence who presides over the destiny of men and of nations, we will endeavor to do our duty faithfully, bravely, and honestly." On the day of his inauguration, Governor Pickens wrote to Buchanan requesting that Fort Sumter be handed over to South Carolina.

On the same day the Convention, called by the Legislature, assembled at Columbia, but on account of an epidemic of small-pox it adjourned to Charleston. Every delegate was present and the membership enrolled the representative men of the State, there being no fewer than five of its ex-governors, clergymen, railroad presidents, rich planters and Judge A. G. Magrath, a New Englander by birth, who, on the day after Lincoln's election, had resigned as United States circuit judge. No convention ever assembled in America

with greater unanimity. A sentence in the brief remarks of D. F. Jameson, of Barnwell, tells the whole story:

"There is no honor I esteem more highly than to sign the Ordinance of Secession, as a member of this body; but I will regard it as the greatest honor of my life to sign it as your presiding officer."

This utterance was on the 17th; on the 20th, John A. Inglis, chancellor, and judge in Chancery, reported the Ordinance:

"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 twenty-third day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, 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 amendments of 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."

No ordinance of convention was ever received with more enthusiasm than did the people of Charleston receive this one; multitudes were parading the streets with banners and martial music; the chimes in the churches were pealing, and cannon thundered forth the joy of the people over the news.

That evening, amidst great ceremony, in the presence of a vast and joyous audience, the delegates affixed their names to the Ordinance. When the last name was written, President Jameson said: "I proclaim the State of South Carolina an independent Commonwealth."

Then the outburst of enthusiasm again echoed to the skies: the people were as one.

Meanwhile the programme of secession was being carried out in other Southern States, to the same end, as events proved, but not wholly by the same means. Disunion sentiment was paramount in the Cotton States, though not in

every section of them-being weak in the mountainous parts of Alabama and Georgia, and opposed by individuals here and there throughout the lower South: but opposition was trifling with dominant thought, not in any sense affecting it. In five States conventions elected by popular vote, as was that of South Carolina, passed ordinances of secession: Mississippi, January 9th; Florida, January 10th; Alabama, January 11th; Georgia, January 19th; Louisiana, January 26th. Texas followed, February 1st. In Georgia public opinion, unlike that in South Carolina, was mirrored in a resolution of the Convention looking toward a possible compromise of the slavery question with the United States, and the Mississippi Convention declared that the secession of a State was "utterly unsanctioned by the Federal Constitution which was framed to establish and not to destroy the Union of the States;" but the South knew and felt that secession meant "a civil revolution." The conviction of the South may be said to be expressed in an utterance of Alexander H. Stephens, as early as 1850, stating his conviction of the sovereignty of the States and of the right of secession: "The argument is exhausted; we have ultimately to submit or fight." And Stephens opposed disunion to the last moment; but his hopes, had they fruited, would only have put off the Civil War. He saw clearly that the conflict was irrepressible; he believed that it was inevitable: he believed that secession should not be resorted to until all possible efforts at peace between anti-slavery and pro-slavery should be exhausted. But Lincoln had wholly covered the ground: the right or the wrong of slavery; a principle was at stake. Yet the South talked solemnly of principle; appealed to the God of nations and prepared for war.

Like the early Congress of the States, the South Carolina Convention issued a "Declaration of Causes," an imitation of the Declaration of Independence, and also issued an "Address to the People of the Slaveholding States." The Mississippi Convention also issued "A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of

the State from the Federal Union." The Georgia Convention discussed and formulated a set of "Fundamental Principles" according to which it professed to act. Similar discussions were heard in other secession Conventions; but the South Carolina Declaration of Causes and the Address omit nothing in the case for the South and may be accepted as the deliberate utterances of the South on the causes of the Civil War.

"The People of the State of South Carolina"-so opens the Declaration of Causes-"in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, 1852, declared that the frequent violation of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal government, and its encroachments on the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

"And now the State of South Carolina having resumed her separate and equal place among nations, deems it due to herself, to the remaining United States of America, and to the nations of the world, that she should declare the immediate causes which have led to this act.

"In the year 1765, that portion of the British Empire embracing Great Britain, undertook to make laws for the government of that portion composed of the thirteen American Colonies. A struggle for the right of self-government ensued, which resulted, on the 4th of July, 1776, in a Declaration, by the Colonies, 'that they are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; and that, as free and independent States, they have 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.'

"They further solemnly declared that whenever any 'form of government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established, it is the right of the people to alter or