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| South Carolina medal. |
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statesmanship which for years was palmed off on the confiding people of the Slave-labor States as genuine.1
On the same day when the “Declaration” was adopted, Governor Pickens issued a proclamation declaring to the world that “South Carolina is, and has a right to be, a separate, sovereign, free, and independent State, and, as such, has a right to levy war, to conclude peace, to negotiate treaties, leagues, or covenants, and to do all acts whatever that rightfully appertain
to a free and independent State.”
He declared the proclamation to be given under his hand, on the 24th of December, 1860, “and in the eighty-fifth year of the sovereignty and independence of South Carolina.”
2
With perfect consistency, the Charleston papers now published intelligence from all the other States of the Union as “Foreign news.”
In various ways, the world was given to understand that South Carolina was a first-class Power among the nations of the earth, whose smiles would be blessings, but whose frowns would be calamitous; and a small medal was struck in commemoration of the great act of separation, which was adorned with appropriate devices and inscriptions.3
On the day when the Ordinance of Secession was passed, the Convention adopted a banner for the new empire.
It was composed of red and blue silk, the former being the ground of the standard, and the latter, in the form of a cross, bearing fifteen stars.
The largest star was for South Carolina.
On the red field were a silver Palmetto and Crescent.4 The introduction of the Crescent
1 The Augusta (Georgia) Chronicle and Sentinel, a leading newspaper in the South, said, twelve days after the Ordinance of Secession was passed in the South Carolina Convention:--“It is a sad thing to observe, that those who are determined on immediate secession have not the coolness, the capacity, or the nerve, to propose something after that. . . . No statesmanship has ever been exhibited yet, so far as we know, by those who will dissolve the Union.” --January 1, 1861.
2 The London Morning Star, commenting on this declaration of the “Sovereignty” of South Carolina, said:--“A nationality I Was there ever, since the world began, a nation constituted of such materials — a commonwealth founded on such bases? The greatest empire of antiquity is said to have grown up from a group of huts, built in a convenient location by fugitive slaves and robber huntsmen. But history nowhere chronicles the establishment of a community of slaveholders solely upon the alleged right of maintaining and enlarging their property in man. Paganism at least protected the Old World from so monstrous a scandal upon free commonwealths, by shutting out the idea of a common humanity, and of individual rights derivable from inalienable duties. . . . They are not content to be left in undisturbed possession of the human beings they have, bought or bred. They demand that the law and government of a confederacy embracing States twice as populous as their own shall consecrate slavery forever; that in none of these States shall there be any hiding-place for the fugitive; nay, no platform on which the abstract rights of the slave may be asserted. It is not on account of abolition that they separate from the Union, but of Abolitionism. In the vulgar but expressive phraseology invented by themselves, they not only claim the right to ‘ wallop their own niggers,’ but that all their neighbors shall for them turn slave-catchers and scourgers., They would make the vast territory of the Union one great slave-field, and put in the hand of every freeman a fetter and a whip for himself as well as for the negro. Such audacity of folly and wickedness revolts the common sense of mankind. For the sake of interests dear to all humanity, we pray the Northern States to let these madmen go, rather than restrain or chastise them with the sword. But the burlesquers of the grand drama of American independence excite only scorn, and their blasphemous appeals to Divine and human sympathy can bring down only the rebuke of universal hatred and contempt.”
3 The engraving is the exact size of the medal. On one side is a Palmetto-tree; a group of barrels and bales of cotton; a cannon and heap of balls; the date 1860; a radiation of light from behind the Palmetto and its accompaniments, and fifteen stars, with the words, “no submission to the North.” On the other side is a group of Southern productions of the earth, and over and around them the words, “the wealth of the South--Rice, tobacco, sugar, and Cotton.”
4 The Crescent was placed in the South Carolina flag in 1775, under the following circumstances:--The Provincial Council had taken measures to fortify Charleston, after the Royal Governor was driven away. “As there was no national flag at the time,” says General Moultrie, in his Memoirs, “I was desired by the Council of Safety to have one made, upon which, as the State troops were clothed in blue, and the fort [Johnson, on James Island] was garrisoned by the First and Second Regiments, who wore a silver crescent on the front of their eaps, I had a large blue flag made, with a crescent in the dexter corner, to be in uniform with the troops. This was the first American flag displayed in the South.” See Lossing's Pictorial Field-book of the Revolution, II. 545.
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