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expense of the great mass of the people around them, which for a generation had appeared in the deportment, the public speeches, the legislation, and the literature of the oligarchy of South Carolina, we may look for a solution and explanation of that insanity which made them emulous of all others in the mad race toward destruction which their wicked revolt brought upon them.
Ever since the failure of their crazy scheme of disunion in 1832-3, in which John C. Calhoun was the chief actor as well as instigator, the politicians of that State-survivors of that failure, and their children, trained to seditious acts — had been restive under the restraints of the National Constitution, and had been seeking an occasion to strike a deadly blow at the life of the Republic, either alone, or in concert with the politicians of other Slave-labor States.
Strong efforts were made in that direction in 1850, when the National Congress mortally offended the Slave interest by discussing the admission of California into the Union as a Free-labor State.
Then the Legislature of South Carolina openly deliberated on the expediency of a “Southern Congress,” for the initiation of immediate measures looking to disunion as an end. There were utterances, in the course of that discussion, calculated to “fire the Southern heart,” as they were intended to do. The debaters spoke vaguely of wrongs suffered and endured by South Carolina, but very clearly of the remedy, which was secession. “The remedy,” said W. S. Lyles, “is the union of the South and a Southern Confederacy.
The friends of the Southern movement in the other States look to the action of South Carolina; and I would make the issue in a reasonable time, and the only way to do so is by secession.
There will be no concert among the Southern States until a blow is struck.”
F. D. Richardson said :--“We must not consider what we have borne, but what we must bear hereafter.
There is no remedy for these evils in the Government; we have no alternative but to come out of the Government.”
John S. Preston was afraid of the people, and opposed a convention.
He thought popular conventions “dangerous things, except when the necessities of the country absolutely demand them.”
He opposed them, he said, “simply and entirely with the view of hastening the dissolution of the Union.”
For the same reason, Lawrence M. Keitt favored a convention.
“I think,” he said, “it will bring about a more speedy dissolution of the Union.”
1
The passage of the Compromise Act2 in September, 1850, silenced the
1 At this time the Union men of the State took measures for counteracting the madness of the disunionists. They celebrated the 4th of July by a mass meeting at Greenville, South Carolina. Many distinguished citizens were invited to attend, or to give their views at length on the great topic of the Union. Among these was Francis Lieber, Ll.D., Professor of History and Political Economy in the South Carolina College at Columbia. He sent an address to his fellow-citizens of the State, which was a powerful plea for the Union and against secession. He warned them that secession would lead to war. “No country,” he said, “has ever broken up or can ever break up in peace, and without a struggle commensurate to its own magnitude.” He asked, “Will any one who desires secession for the sake of bringing about a Southern Confederacy, honestly aver that he would insist upon a provision in the new constitution securing the full right of secession whenever it may be desired by any member of the expected Confederacy?” This significant question was answered in, the affirmative, ten years later, by the madmen at Montgomery, who formed such “Confederacy” and “new constitution ;” and before the rebellion that ensued was crushed, the “Confederacy” was in the throes of dissolution, caused by the practical assertion of the “right of secession.”
2 In February, 1850, the representatives of California in Congress asked for the admission of the Territory as a Free-labor State, the inhabitants having formed a State constitution in which Slavery was prohibited. This was in accordance with the doctrine of Popular Sovereignty, accepted by the Slave power as right at that time, and for some years afterward; and yet that power now declared that, if California should be admitted as a Free-labor State, the Slave-labor States should leave the Union. To allay this feeling, Henry Clay proposed a compromise and as an offset for the admission of California as a Free-labor State, the infamous Fugitive Slave Law, which no man not interested in slavery ever advocated as right in principle, became a law of the land, with some other concessions in that direction.
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