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| Seal of South Carolina. |
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The telegraph instantly sent its swift messages with the intelligence to every accessible part of the Republic; and within twenty-four hours after the passage of the ordinance, the nation was profoundly moved by this open revolutionary act. Three days afterward, a railway train came in from Savannah with twenty delegates from an organization there, known as the “Sons of the South.”
They represented, they said, “three hundred and fifty gentlemen in Georgia,” and were authorized to offer their services to the Governor of South Carolina, to aid in “maintaining her noble and independent position.”
They brought with them the banner of their association, which was white, with the device of a Palmetto-tree, having its trunk entwined by a rattle-snake; also, five stars and a crescent, and the words, “separate State action.”
At a quarter before four o'clock the Convention took a recess, and while leaving St. Andrew's Hall and going in irregular procession through Broad Street, to dinner, they were cheered by the populace, and the chimes of St. Michael's Protestant Episcopal Church1 pealed forth “Auld Lang Syne” and other airs.
At seven o'clock they reassembled in the great hall of the South Carolina Institute,2 afterward known as “Secession Hall,” for the purpose of signing the
ordinance, which, in the mean time, had been engrossed on a sheet of parchment twenty-five by thirty-three inches in size, with the great seal of South Carolina attached.
The Governor and his Council, and both branches of the Legislature were present, and the remainder of the hall not occupied by the Convention and those State officials, was crowded densely with the men and women of Charleston.
Back of the President's chair was suspended a banner, a copy of which, in miniature, is given on the next page.3 It was a significant object for the contemplation of the excited multitude.
On each side of the platform on which sat the President stood a real Palmetto-tree, that had been brought in for the occasion.
1 St. Michael's is one of the oldest, if not the oldest Church in Charleston, and the bells, chimed for the unholy purpose mentioned in the text have interesting historical associations. When an attack on Charleston was expected, in 1776, the church spire, which was white, and was visible from some distance at sea, was painted black, that the enemy might not see it as a beacon. It was a mistake, for it was then more prominent than ever against a light gray sky. When the British finally took possession of the city, in the spring of 1780, the bells of St. Michael's were sent to London as spoils of victory. The merchants of that city purchased them, and returned them to the church, where they chimed and chimed, until the conspirators now believed they had sounded the death-knell of the Union, which its vestry, in 1776, zealously assisted to create. St. Michael's spire was the target for General Gillmore's great cannon, called “The Swamp angel,” during his long siege of Charleston, in the latter years of the civil war. It was afterward found that a shell from the “Angel” had gone through the church, and, striking the tablet of the Commandments on the wall, effaced every one of them but these:--“Thou shalt not steal.” “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” So declared a writer in the New York Independent, who professed to have been an eye-witness of the effects of the shell.
2 See page 19.
3 This banner is composed of cotton cloth, with devices painted in water-colors, by a Charleston artist named Alexander. The base of the design is a mass of broken and disordered blocks of stone, on each of which are the name and arms of a Free-labor State. Rising from this mass are seen two columns of perfect and symmetrical blocks of stone, connected by an arch of the same material, on each of which, fifteen in number, are seen the name and coat-of-arms of a Slave-labor State. South Carolina forms the key-stone of the arch, on which stands Powers' statue of Calhoun leaning upon the trunk of a Palmetto-tree, and displaying, to spectators, a scroll, on, which are the words, “Truth, justice, and the Constitution.” On one side of Calhoun is an allegorical figure of Faith, and, on the other side, of Hope. Beyond each of these is the figure of a North American Indian armed with a rifle. In the space formed by the two columns and the arch, is the device on the seal and flag of South Carolina, namely, a Palmetto-tree with a rattlesnake coiled around its trunk, and at its base a pa-k of cannon, and some emblems of the State commerce. On a scroll fluttering from the body of the tree are the words, “Southern Republic.” Over the whole design, on the segment of a circle, are fifteen stars, the then number of Slave-labor States. Underneath all, in large letters, are the words, built from the ruins.
This picture, painted for the South Carolina Convention, and under the direction of its leaders, is a remarkable testimony concerning the real intentions of the conspirators at the beginning, which they continually attempted to conceal beneath the mantle of hypocrisy. It was designed and painted before any ordinance of secession had been adopted, or any convention for the purpose had been held in any State excepting South Carolina, and yet it foreshadows their grand plan, well understood by the conspirators in all of the Slave-labor States, to lay thee Republic in ruins, and upon those ruins to construct an empire whose “corner-stone” should be negro laborers in perpetual and hopeless Slavery. It was their intention to cast down and break in pieces the Free-labor States, and build the new structure wholly of Slave-labor States, most of which. were known to be, at that time, hostile to the disunion schemes of the South Carolina politicians. The egotism and arrogance of these politicians are most conspicuously shown in making South Carolina not only the key-stone of the arch, with its revered Calhoun as the surmounting figure — in heraldic language, the symbolizing crest of the device — but in giving as the prominent feature of the affair the palmetto, snake, &c.,which are the chosen insignia of the power of the State. It said plainly to the fifteen Slave-labor States, “South Carolina is to be the head and heart of the new Confederacy; the Dictator and Umpire.” The banner was intended as a menace and a prophecy. How the events of four succeeding years rebuked the arrogant false prophets! Most of the Slave-labor States were in ruins, and South Carolina, that was to be the key-stone of the new and magnificent structure, was the weakest and most absolutely ruined of all. This banner is now (1865) in the possession of John S. H. Fogg, M. D., of Boston. It was presented by the painter to John F. Kennard, of Charleston, who, after the attack on Fort Sumter, in April, 1861, sent it to Dr. Fogg, by the hands of Mrs. Fogg, who was then visiting in Charleston. lam indebted to Dr. Fogg for a sketch of the banner, kindly made for my use by J. M. Church, of Boston.
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