Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

[112] or New Moon on the standard was considered even by thinking South Carolinians, as singularly appropriate, for those who there inaugurated the rebellion were certainly afflicted with lunacy, “a species of insanity or madness,” says the lexicon, “which is broken by intervals of reason, formerly supposed to be influenced by the changes of the Moon.” It is related of the late Judge Pettigru, of Charleston, who resisted the madness of the secessionists while he lived, that on being asked by a stranger in the streets of his city the right direction to the Lunatic Asylum, he pointed to the east, the west, the north, and the south, and said, “It is there, and there, and there, and there — the whole State is a lunatic asylum.”

Banner of South Carolina.

On the 26th, the Convention agreed to send a commissioner to each Slave-labor State that might hold a convention, to bear to them a copy of the South Carolina Ordinance of Secession;¹ to ask their co-operation; to propose the National Constitution just abandoned as a basis for a provisional government; and to invite the seceding States to meet South Carolina in convention at Montgomery, Alabama, on the 13th of February, 1861, for the purpose of forming a Southern Confederacy. They also made provision

December 26, 1860.

for continuing commercial operations, by using the United States officers and revenue laws, but changing the style of all papers to the name of “South Carolina,” and ordering all duties to be paid into the State treasury. On the following day, the Governor was authorized to receive embassadors, ministers, consuls, &c., from foreign countries, and to appoint the same officers to represent South Carolina abroad. It was also decreed, that all citizens of the United States who were living within the limits of South Carolina at the time of the passage of the Ordinance of Secession should be considered citizens of the new nation.

On the 29th, the Convention, which assumed supreme dignity in the State, transferred to the Legislature the powers lately vested in Congress, excepting during the session of the Convention. The judicial powers of the United States were vested in the State Courts; and Governor Pickens, who had organized his cabinet, assumed the exalted position of the Chief Magistrate of an independent nation. His constitutional advisers consisted of A. G. Magrath, Secretary of State; D. F. Jamison, Secretary of War; C. G. Memminger, Secretary of the Treasury; W. W. Harllee, Postmaster-General; and A. C. Garlington, Secretary of the Interior. After making provision for