4. the quickest manner and by the most direct means, to withdraw from the Union." Other members of the Legislature were equally vehement; and on the 12th of November (1860) an act was passed authorizing a Convention. The Legislature also formulated the doctrine of "State Sovereignty" or State. Supremacy, in a resolution that declared that a "Sovereign State" of the Union had a right to secede from it, adopting as its own the doctrine that the States of the Union are not subordinate to the National Government; were not created by it, and do not belong to it; that they created the National Government; from them it derives its powers; to them it is responsible, and when it abuses the trust reposed in it, they, as equal sovereigns, have a right to resume the powers respectively delegated to it by them. This is the sum and substance of the doctrine of State Supremacy ("State Rights" as it was adroitly called) which dwarfs patriotism to the narrow dimensions of a single State, denationalizes the American citizen, and opposes the fundamental principles upon which the founders of the Republic securely built our noble superstructure of a free, powerful and sovereign Commonwealth. And it perverts the plain meaning of the Preamble to the National Constitution, which declares that the people (not States) of the whole country had given vitality to that fundamental law of the land, and to the nation. James Madison, one of the founders of the Republic, in a letter to Edmund Randolph in April, 1787, wrote: "I hold it for a fundamental point, that an individual independence of the States is utterly irreconcilable with the idea of aggregate sovereignty." And Washington wrote in a letter to John Jay, in March, 1787, on the subject of the National Constitution: "A thirst for power, and the bantling-I had liked to have said the monster-sovereignty, which have taken such fast hold of the States individually, will, when joined by the many whose personal consequence in the line of State politics will, in a manner, be annihilated, form a strong phalanx against it." The politicians in other slave-labor States followed the example of South Carolina in immediate preparations for secession. Robert Toombs, then a National Senator, was one of the chief conspirators against the life of the nation, and by violent harangues aided materially in bringing upon his State (Georgia) the awful calamities of war. In a speech at Milledgeville on the 13th of November, he exclaimed, "Withdraw your sons from the army, from the navy, and from every department of the Federal public service. Keep your own taxes in your own coffers. Buy arms with them, and throw the bloody spear into this den of incendiaries and assassins [the Northern people], and let God defend the right. Twenty years of labor, CHAP. III. ACTION OF SEVERAL STATES. 1427 and toils, and taxes, all expended upon preparation, would not make up for the advantage the enemy would gain if the rising sun on the 5th of March should find you in the Union. Then strike while it is yet time." Then he cried: "I ask you to give me the sword; for, if you do not give it to me, as God lives, I will take it myself!" In the war that ensued, the sword was given him, with the commission of a brigadier-general; and it is on record that Mr. Toombs, acting upon the maxim that "Prudence is the better part of valor," was never known to remain longer than he was compelled to in a place of danger to himself. On the following evening, Alexander H. Stephens, a man of conservative views and equal courage, in a speech in favor of the Union, exposed the many misstatements of Mr. Toombs, and touched the fiery Georgian and others to the quick, with the Ithuriel spear of truth, when he said: "Some of our public men have failed in their aspirations; that is true, and from that comes a great part of our troubles." The Georgia Legislature followed the example of South Carolina in -ordering a Convention to consider secession. So, also, did the Legislatures of Mississippi and Alabama. L. Q. C. Lamar, a representative in Congress of the people of the first-named State, submitted to the inhabitants, before the close of November, a plan for a Southern Confederacy; and a few days before the election of delegates to the Alabama Convention, the Conference of the "Methodist Church South," sitting at Montgomery, resolved that they believed "African Slavery, as it existed in the Southern States of the Republic, to be a wise, humane, and righteous institution, approved of God, and calculated to promote, in the highest possible degree, the welfare of the slave. They also resolved: "Our hearts are with the South; and should they ever need our hands to assist in achieving our independence, we shall not be found wanting in the hour of danger." The politicians of little Florida, with those of Louisiana and Texas, followed in the wake of the leaders in the other four States named, in preparing for secession, all of them asserting the right of their respective States to secede because they had "created the National Government." The fallacy of this claim is apparent when we remember that Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas and Florida did not exist, even in territorial form, as parts of the Union, when the National Government was created, and that three of them belonged to foreign governments at that time. North Carolina, one of the original thirteen States, joined South Carolina and Georgia, her ancient sisters, in providing for a Convention; and the governors of all the slave-labor States, excepting those of Delaware and Maryland, who had been elected by the Democratic party, showed their readiness to act in concert with the Secessionists. It was soon ascertained that the President of the Republic, and a majority of his cabinet, were ready to declare that the National Constitution did not give the Chief Magistrate authority to stay the arm of insurrection or rebellion by coercive measures. Such is a brief outline history of the preparations by politicians in the slave-labor States, for marshalling a combined host for the overthrow of the Republic. The important initial step was taken by those of South Carolina. When the Legislature authorized a Convention, orators of every grade immediately went out to harangue the people in all parts of the State. Motley crowds of men, women, and children Caucasian and African-listened, in excited groups, at cross-roads, court-houses, and other usual gathering places. Every speech was burdened with complaints of "wrongs suffered by South Carolina in the Union;" her right and her duty to leave it; her power to "defy the world in arms;" and the glory that would illumine her whole domain in that near future when her independence of the thralls of the "detested Constitution" should be secured. Their themes were as various as the character of their audiences. One of their orators, addressing the slaveholders in Charleston, said: "Three thousand millions of property is involved in this question; and if you say at the ballot-box that South Carolina shall not secede, you put into the sacrifice three thousand millions of your property. The Union is a dead carcass, stinking in the nostrils of the South. Ay, my friends, a few weeks more, and you will see floating from the fortifications the ensign that now bears the Palmetto, the emblem of a Southern Confederacy.' of a Southern Confederacy." The Charleston Mercury called upon all natives of South Carolina in the army or navy to resign their commissions and join in the revolt. "The mother looks to her sons," said this fiery organ of sedition, “ to protect her from outrage. She is sick of the Union-disgusted with it, upon any terms within the range of the widest possibility." This call was responded to by the resignation of the commissions of many South Carolinians; and the leaders in the revolutionary movements in that State, seemingly unable to comprehend the principles of honor and fidelity-the highest virtues of a soldier-boasted that "not a son of that State would prove loyal to the old flag." They were amazed when men like the late Admiral Shubrick, a native of South Carolina, refused to do the bidding of disloyal politicians, while they commended the action of Lieutenant J. R. Hamilton of the navy, another "son" of South Carolina, who, at Fortress Monroe, issued a circular letter to his fellow "Southrons" in the marine service, in which, after writing much of honor, counselled them to follow his example, to engage in plundering the Government, in these words: "What the South asks of you now is, to bring with CHAP. II. VIGILANCE COMMITTEES. 1429 you every ship and man you can, that we may use them against the oppressors of our liberties, and the enemies of our aggravated but united people." Vigilance committees were speedily organized to discover and suppress every anti-secession sentiment and movement in South Carolina; and before the close of November these committees were in active operation, clothed with extraordinary powers, as "guardians of Southern rights." Their officers possessed full authority to decide all questions brought before them, and their decision was "final and conclusive." The patrols had power to arrest all suspicious white persons, and bring them before the Executive Committee for trial; to suppress all "negro preachings, prayer-meetings, and all congregations of negroes that may be considered unlawful by the patrol companies," the latter having unrestricted authority to "correct and punish all slaves, free negroes, mulattoes and mestizoes, as they may deem proper." The powers of these vigilance committees were soon felt. Northern men, suspected of feelings opposed to the secession movements, were banished from the State, and some who were believed to be "Abolitionists" were tarred and feathered. The committees having authority to persecute, soon made the expressed sentiment in South Carolina "unanimous in favor of secession;" and the Charleston Mercury was justified in saying to the army and navy officers from that State, in the service of the Republic, when calling them home: "You need have no more doubt of South Carolina's going out of the Union than of the world's turning round. Every man that goes to the Convention will be a pledged man―pledged for immediate separate State secession, in any event whatever." This promise was uttered before the members of the Convention had been chosen. Everything had been arranged by the politicians; the people had nothing to do with it. The Southern Presbyterian, a theological publication of wide influence, issued at Columbia, said, on the 15th of December, that it was well known that every member of the Convention was pledged to pass an ordinance of secession, and added: "It is a matter for devout thankfulness that the Convention will embody the very highest wisdom and character of the State; private gentlemen, judges of her highest legal tribunals, and ministers of the Gospel." Even almost the very day when the ordinance of secession would be adopted was known to those who were engaged in the business. In a letter to me, written on the 13th of December, the late William Gilmore Simms, the distinguished South Carolina scholar, said: "In ten days more South Carolina will have certainly seceded; and in a reasonable interval after that event, if the forts in our harbor are not surrendered to the State, they will be taken." CHAPTER IV. SBCBSSION CONVENTION IN SOUTH CAROLINA-PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONVENTION-ORDINANCE OF OF HARBOR SECRETARY FLOYD'S Ο N the 3d of December, 1860, delegates to the State Convention of on the 17th, and chose David F. Jamison president of their body. When he was about to administer an oath to the delegates, a serious difficulty was presented. The Constitution of the State of South Carolina provided that, on such occasions, an oath to support the Constitution of the United States must be taken. That requirement was like a cobweb before the leaders in the movement; and the difficulty was swept away by ex-Governor Adams, who said: "We have come here to break down a government, not to support one." The delegates were all of one mind concerning the object of their assemblage; so they proceeded without the solemnity of an oath of any kind, conscious that the fundamental law of their State declared them to be an unlawful body, and their acts not binding upon any one. President Jamison briefly addressed the Convention on taking the chair, and closed by saying: “I cannot offer you anything better, in inaugurating this movement, than the words of Danton at the commencement of the French Revolution: 'To dare! and again to dare! and without end to dare!'" These brave words were followed by considerable excitement in the Convention, for intelligence came that the small-pox was raging as an epidemic in Columbia. It was immediately proposed to adjourn to Charleston. One of the delegates (W. P. Miles) begged them not to flee. "We shall be sneered at," he said; and exclaimed, "Is this the chivalry of South Carolina?" But chivalry was not proof against fear of the loathsome disease, and by the first railway train the next morning, the delegates all fled to Charleston, and reassembled the same afternoon at Institute Hall. |