an hour of Jackson!" was the spontaneous cry of conscience Democrats. Never before was the weak joint of our constitutional armor so clearly exposed, which kept the whole resources of this vast government sequestered for four months after the people had declared their will, in control of an administration and Congress defeated at the polls.*

Southern disunionists did not falter; they were not spinning out distinctions, just now, for the vanity of a constitutional argument, but they went straight forward to their object. South Carolina took the field quickly. The State convention met at Columbia on the 17th of De

December. cember, but small-pox prevailing there, an adjournment was carried so as to meet at Charleston on the following day. A salute of fifteen guns - one for each slaveholding State - welcomed the members to this latter city. On the 20th of the month an ordinance of secession, reported from an appropriate committee, was unanimously adopted; and after being engrossed on parchment, was publicly signed by all the members of the convention, one hundred and sixty-nine in number, who thought, not doubt, that in their chamber fame was born.† A "declaration of independence" followed on the 24th, which bor

* Black, the attorney general, who had given the main legal idea of the message, himself objected to the pusillanimous turn, unfavorable to "coercing a State," which the President's message had lent to his argument. See, at length, 2 Curtis's Buchanan, cs. 15, 16.

This ordinance (which served as the model for other seceding States) was styled "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.'” It read as follows. "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 1788, whereby the Constitution of the United States was ratified, and also all acts and parts of acts of the General Assembly of this State, ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed, and that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States under the name of 'The United States of America,' is hereby dissolved."

1860.

SOUTH CAROLINA SECEDES.

475

rowed the immortal phrase of Jefferson in mutually pledging "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." But what a recital of grievances was this upon which South Carolina based the resumption of her "separate and equal place among nations," agitation at the North, and the spread of abolition societies, as though to pronounce slavery sinful; the passage of personal liberty acts, and persistent refusal to restore fugitive slaves as the Constitution required; and finally, the election by a geographical party of a man who had declared that this government could not endure, permanently, half-slave and half-free. Not a word in the whole document of Texas, the Mexican war, the repeal of the Missouri compromise, or the persistent efforts the South had been making in various directions to extend its institutions into free territory during the past twenty years or more. But for such persistent aggressions on slavery's behalf, moral agitation at the North would have burned with a feeble flame.

Rash, impulsive, and uncalculating as South Carolina had always been, she showed her readiness to stand alone, this second time, in experimenting with the theories of her favorite statesman. But commissioners from Alabama and Mississippi had encouraged immediate action, promising the co-operation of their States; and South Carolina labored earnestly to induce other slave States to plunge into secession after her, appointing commissioners for that purpose, and painting in the most glowing colors the prospects of a new and independent Southern Union, based upon negro slavery. The Charleston convention argued in an address that the government of the United States had degenerated into a consolidated Democracy, which laid oppressive taxes at the South to spend in the North. "A great slaveholding confederacy, stretching its arms over a territory larger than any power in Europe possesses," offered a new object for Southern allegiance; "with a population four times greater than that of the whole United States when they achieved their independence of the British empire; with productions which make its existence more important to the world than that of any other people inhabiting it;

with common institutions to defend and common dangers to encounter." By such roseate representations was the effort made throughout the gulf region "to fire the Southern heart."

After passing on the 20th the ordinance of secession, this convention despatched three commissioners to Washington, Robert W. Barnwell, James H. Adams, and James L. Orr, to negotiate a division of the public property and a surrender of the forts in Charleston harbor. Millions of dollars had lately been expended by Congress in this ungrateful city and New Orleans to build new custom-houses. The national fortifications in Charleston consisted at this time of Forts Moultrie and Sumter and Castle Pinckney, the harbor comprising an expanding bay, which was landlocked and had a difficult bar at the entrance. Fort Mcultrie was a large work which required some seven hundred men to garrison it fully; but its only force at the present time consisted of about sixty men, commanded by a loyal and valiant officer, Major Robert Anderson, of Kentucky. It was exposed to attack on the land side. Fort Sumter,

which was now occupied only by workmen who were mounting the guns, was more impregnable than Moultrie, when properly manned, being situated on an island; and to this sea-girt stronghold Anderson resolved to transfer his command, when he found that the South Carolinians were zealously preparing to seize all the forts, and that the President would send him no reinforcements. The night of December 26th, soon after the Charleston convention had adjourned, saw his little garrison concentrated at Fort Sumter, after spiking the cannon and destroying their carriages at Moultrie. There was intense excitement at Charleston on the next day, when this became known, and the State authorities at once seized Fort Moultrie and Castle Pinckney in the name of South Carolina. The Palmetto flag was hoisted also over the custom-house and post-office, the Federal officials having all resigned their appointments; and a few days later the United States. arsenal, with public property estimated at half a million dollars, was captured in defiance of the Federal govern

1860.

COMMISSIONERS TO WASHINGTON.

477

ment. Calhoun had pleaded in his day for "peaceable secession," for permitting the discontented sisters to "depart in peace." But this generation of Carolinian madcaps showed little comprehension of such philosophy, save so far as they might have expected meekness and servile compliance from that tremendous Northern mass that mob of a majority which they goaded so arrogantly. In their present temper they could not begin to penetrate the difficulties of the task they had proposed on their sole responsibility. They were like men drunk with new wine; and the ready chronicles of Northern news. as "foreign" in their local press, the quick suppression of the national colors for the Palmetto flag, and a thousand little punctilios for secession's sake, showed how childishly they strove to keep up the illusions of independence. South Carolina had never, in truth, even within her own confines, realized in the full sense submission to the will of the people.

The commissioners of this errant State reached Washington city inflated with the idea of being recognized as the representatives of a seceding and independent sovereignty, and of arranging in some way with the United States for an ignominious surrender, to a State numbering some seven hundred thousand, of the forts and public property which belonged to thirty-one millions of people. South Carolina had proceeded with sublime temerity, as though the rest of the Union must admit her sovereign independence upon her own fiat. She struck for rebellion and a new confederacy before the victorious Republicans could come into power, and while the reins of national office were still held by an administration which showed the white feather and bent under the weight of disloyal influences. The three commissioners — one of whom had but lately laid down the Speaker's gavel in the south wing of the capitol- were sure not to be arrested as traitors. But in undertaking to negotiate concerning the "new relations" of their State to the Union, they heeded too lightly the circumstance that Buchanan, with all his miserable petti

foggery against "coercing a State," had refused to admit the right of secession. Even were that right conceded, the divestment of the Federal title to forts and public property in and about South Carolina by no means followed. Indeed that property reservation in the United States against all local menace or violence whatsoever was what reduced secession to a logical absurdity, and gave to the loyal people of America, a few months later, their first palpable object for rallying in arms to the defence of the flag. The rashness of imperious South Carolina was too headlong for the arts of diplomacy to avail anything; they flung logic. to the winds; "give up the forts or we will take them," was the tenor of their insulting embassy. Buchanan had been approached still more insultingly on this point already; for Governor Pickens, of South Carolina, before his State had seceded and before Major Anderson had removed his troops, sent a written demand that Fort Sumter be delivered into his hands.*

Oct 29-30.

Imbecile and treacherous counsels had long prevailed at Washington over the question of these strongholds. As far back as October, Scott, as general-in-chief of the army, had pointed out the defenceless condition of the Southern forts, and the danger of their seizure in the event of Lincoln's election. He apprehended Southern experiments at secession, and advised that the several garrisons be quietly increased at once.† Scott's advice was sound, but the President ignored it utterly; nor would the rebellious sympathizers of his Cabinet probably have permitted such a step. That energy which had been directed so lately against

* 2 Curtis's Buchanan, 383, 384. A messenger bore to the President this letter (which was written on the 17th of December); but upon a conference with South Carolina men in Washington, Pickens was induced to withdraw this letter, and the President sent no reply.

† 2 Scott's Memoirs, 610; 2 Curtis's Buchanan, c. 14.

In defence of Buchanan on this point, it has been said that the reinforcement of Southern forts would have been too much of a "menace to Southern States. And besides that there were forts at five important points which General Scott's advice thus covered; whereas our army was small, and so great a force could not well be spared from the West. 2 Curtis's Buchanan, c. 14, But could no means be found of adding to the