John G. Nicolay, The Outbreak of Rebellion

[8] of the Ordinance was sought to be magnified into a solemn public ceremony; after which the chairman proclaimed South Carolina an “independent commonwealth.” With all their affectation of legality, formality, and present justification, some of the members were honest enough to acknowledge the true character of the event as the culmination of a chronic conspiracy, not a spontaneous revolution. “The secession of South Carolina,” said one of the chief actors, “is not an event of a day. It is not anything produced by Mr. Lincoln's election, or by the non-execution of the Fugitive Slave Law. It is a matter which has been gathering head for thirty years.” This, with many similar avowals, crowns and completes the otherwise abundant proof that the revolt was not only against right, but that it was without cause.

The original suggestion of Governor Gist in his circular letter, for a concerted insurrection, fell upon fruitful soil. The events which occurred in South Carolina were in substance duplicated in the neighboring States of Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. These States, however, had stronger and more formidable union minorities than South Carolina; or rather, if the truth could have been ascertained with safety, they had each of them decided majorities averse to secession, as was virtually acknowledged by their governors' replies to the Gist circular. But during the presidential campaign, the three Southern parties, for factional advantage, had vied with each other in their denunciations of the hated “Black Republicans” --they had berated each other as “submissionists” in secret league or sympathy with the Abolitionists. The partisans of Breckinridgegenerally either active or latent disunionists — were ready, positive, and relentlessly aggressive; the adherents of Bell and of Douglas were demoralized and suspicious. Where