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| The old State House at Columbia. |
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so strong in the movement, I fear they will be violent beyond control.”
The seizure of the Government, before Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, was a part of the plan of operations.
“The successful, unrestricted installation of Lincoln,” wrote this viper, nestled in the warm bosom of the Republic, “is the beginning of the end of Slavery.”
1 Thompson afterward took up arms against the Republic, plotted the blackest crimes against the people of his country while-finding an asylum in Canada, and was finally charged with complicity in the murder of President Lincoln.
Floyd, indicted for enormous frauds on the Government while in office, perished ignobly, after wearing the insignia of a brigadier-general among the insurgent enemies of his country.
The Governors and Legislatures of several of the Slave-labor States took early action against the National Government.
The South Carolina politicians moved first.
They were traditionally rebellious, gloried in their turbulence, and were jealous of any leadership or priority of action in the great drama of Treason about to be opened.
Governor Gist called the South Carolina Legislature to meet in extraordinary session, in the old State House at Columbia, on Monday, the 5th of November, for the purpose of choosing, on the following day, Presidential electors.2 In his message to both Houses, he recommended the authorization of a convention of the people, to consider the expediency of withdrawing the State from the Union, in the event of Lincoln's election.
He expressed a desire that such withdrawal should be accomplished.
“The indications from many of the Southern States,” he said,
“justify the conclusion that the secession of South Carolina will be immediately followed, if not adopted simultaneously, by them, and ultimately by the entire South. . . . The State has, by great unanimity, declared that she has the right peaceably to secede,3 and no power on earth can rightfully prevent it. If, in the exercise of arbitrary power, and forgetful of the lessons of history, the Government of the United States should attempt coercion, it will become our solemn duty to meet force by force; and, whatever may be the decision of the convention ”
1 Letter to Mr. Peterson, of Mississippi. It fell into the hands of United States troops while in that region, in 1863.
2 In South Carolina, political power had always been as far removed from the people as possible. The Governor of the State and the Presidential electors were, by a provision of the State Constitution, chosen by the Legislature, and not directly by the people.
3 In 1852, a State Convention in South Carolina reiterated the sentiments of the Nullification Convention twenty years before, and declared that the State had a “right to secede from the Confederacy whenever the occasion should arise justifying her, in her judgment, in taking that step.” The Convention informed the world that the State forbore the immediate exercise of that right from considerations of expediency only.
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