This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[27]
essential purposes of the conspiracy.
It was signed by about one-half the Senators and Representatives from the States of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas, and is the “official” beginning of the subsequent “Confederate States,” just as Gist's October circular was the “official” beginning of South Carolina secession.
On the fifth day after the publication of this manifesto, the South Carolina Convention passed, signed, and published its ordinance of secession, as already related; and now it was resolved to demand possession of the Charleston forts as an incident of sovereignty and independence.
It was assumed that the President would not refuse to yield them up after peaceful diplomatic negotiation, and upon an offer to account for them as property in a regular business settlement between the two governments.
The convention, acting upon this theory, appointed three commissioners to proceed to Washington to treat for the delivery of the forts, magazines, light-houses, and other real estate, for an apportionment of the public debt, for a division of all other property, and generally to negotiate about other measures and arrangements.
All this proceeded with the decorum and mock solemnity
Scanned printed text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.