John D. Billings, Hardtack and Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life

As early as the 25th of October, several southerners who were or had been prominent in politics met in South Carolina, and decided by a unanimous vote that the State should withdraw from the Union in the event of Lincoln's election, which then seemed almost certain. Some other States held similar meetings about the same date. Thus early did the traitor leaders prepare the South for disunion. These men were better known at that time as “Fire-eaters.”

As soon as Lincoln's election was announced, without waiting to see what his policy towards the slave States was going to be, the impetuous leaders at the South addressed themselves at once to the carrying out of their threats; and South Carolina, followed, at intervals more or less brief, by Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and Texas, seceded from the Union, and organized what was known as the Southern Confederacy. Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee seceded later. The people at the North stood amazed at the rapidity with which treason against the government was spreading, and the loyal Unionloving men began to inquire where President Buchanan was at this time, whose duty it was to see that all such uprisings were crushed out; and “Oh for one hour of Andrew Jackson in the President's chair!” was the common exclamation, because that decided and unyielding soldierPresi-dent had so promptly stamped out threatened rebellion in South Carolina, when she had refused to allow the duties to be collected at Charleston. But that outbreak in its proportions was to this one as an infant to a giant, and it is quite doubtful if Old Hickory himself, with his promptness to act in an emergency, could have stayed the angry billows of rebellion which seemed just ready to break over the nation. But at any rate he would have attempted it,