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

[60] and others, stirred up the people to revolt. He had been active in procuring the passage of joint resolutions by the Legislature of that State, long before the Presidential election,

February 24, 1860.

which provided, in the event of the election of the Republican candidate, for a convention to consider what should be done; in other words, to declare the secession of the State from the Union, in accordance with the long and well-devised plan of the conspirators. So early as October, Herschell V. Johnston, the candidate for Vice-President on the Douglas ticket, declared, in a speech in the Cooper Institute, New York,

October 24.

that Alabama was ripe for revolt, in the event of Mr. Lincoln's. election--“pledged,” he said, “to withdraw from the Union, and has appropriated two hundred thousand dollars for military contingencies.” ¹ In an address to the people of the state, early in November, the Governor declared that, in his opinion, “the only hope and future security for Alabama and other Slaveholding States, is in secession from the Union.” On the 6th of December he issued a proclamation, assuring the people that the contingency contemplated by the Legislature had occurred, namely the election of Mr. Lincoln, and, by the authority given him by that body, he ordered delegates to be chosen on the 24th of December, to meet in convention on the 7th of January.

1861.

Five days before that election, the Alabama Conference of the “Methodist Church South,” a very large and most influential body, sitting at Montgomery, resolved that: they believed “African Slavery, as it existed in the Southern States of the Republic, to be a wise, humane, and righteous institution, approved of God, and calculated to promote, to the highest possible degree, the welfare of the slave ;² that the election of a sectional President of the United States was evidence, of the hostility of the majority to the people of ‘the South,’ and which,. in fact, if not in form, dissolves the compact of Union between the States, and drives the aggrieved party to assert their independence ;” and therefore, they said, “our hearts are with the South, and should they ever need our hands to assist in achieving our independence, we shall not be found wanting in the hour of danger.” ³

Florida, the most dependent upon the Union for its prosperity of all the. States, and the recipient of most generous favors from the National Government, was, by the action of its treasonable politicians, and especially by its representatives in Congress, made the theater of some of the earliest and most active measures for the destruction of the Republic. Its Legislature met at Tallahassee on the 26th of November, and its Governor, Madison S. Perry, in his message at the opening of the session, declared that the