Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

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.” ¹ 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.” ² 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 mein — these betrayers of the people — justified their boastings, let the history of the Civil War determine.

In this overweening pride, this arrogant self-conceit, this desire for class privileges and every anti-republican condition for the favored few at the