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

[252] Rhett fulminated anathemas against it through the Charleston Mercury, especially on account of its tariff, clause, the prohibition of the African Slave-trade, and the adoption of the three-fifths rule of representation for slaves, in the National Constitution.¹ “Let your people,” he said, “prepare their minds for a failure in the future permanent Southern Constitution, for South Carolina is about to be saddled with almost every grievance, except Abolition, for which she long struggled, and has just withdrawn from the United States Government. Surely McDuffie lived in vain, and Calhoun taught for naught, if we are again to be plundered, and our commerce crippled, destroyed by tariffs — even discriminating tariffs. Yet this is the inevitable prospect. The fruit of the labors of thirty odd long years, in strife and bitterness, is about to slip through our fingers.” Of the three-fifths rule, he said:--“It most unfairly dwarfs the power of some of the States in any Federal representation.” He called that rule, which was really a compromise in favor of the slaveholders, “one of the many Yankee swindles put upon us, in the formation of the old Constitution.” As the slave population of South Carolina was the majority, he complained that two-fifths or more of the people were unrepresented. “South Carolina,” he said, “is small enough without again flinging away what legitimate power she possesses. That power is in her slaves-socially, politically, economically.” He complained of the prohibition of the Slave-trade. “A stigma,” he said, “is thus broadly stamped upon the whole institution, before the whole world, and sealed by ourselves. It is an infamous slur upon the whole institution — the lives and the property of every slaveholder in the land.” Rhett and his fellows were restive in view of the restraints to which the “sovereignty” of South Carolina would be subjected as a member of a Confederacy, and seemed inclined, at one time, to reject all leagues, and have their “gallant State” stand alone as an independent nation.²

On the sixth day of the session,

February 9, 1861.

the President of the Convention and all of the members took the oath of allegiance

Jefferson Davis.

to the Provisional Constitution, and at noon the doors of the hall were thrown open to the public, and the Convention proceeded to the election of a President and Vice-President of the “Confederacy.” Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, received six votes (the whole number) for President, and Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, the same number, for Vice-President. The announcement of the result was received with the most vehement applause