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On the 16th of November, the Chancellor (Dunkin) of South Carolina closed his court, and expressed a hope that when the members should reassemble, it would be “as a court in an independent State, and that State a member of a Southern Confederacy.”
The next day was a gala one in Charleston.
A pine “liberty-pole,” ninety feet in height, was erected, and a Palmetto flag was unfurled from its top — a white flag, with a green Palmetto-tree in the middle, and the motto of South Carolina:--Animis Opibusque Parati; that is, “Prepared in mind and resources — ready to give life and property.”
It was greeted with the roar of cannon a hundred times repeated, and the “Marseillaise Hymn” by a band.
This was followed by the “Miserere” from “II Trovatore,” played as a requiem for the departed Union.
Full twenty thousand people, it is said, participated in this “inauguration of revolution;” and the Rev. C. P. Gadsden invoked the blessing of God upon their acts.
These ceremonies were followed by speeches (some from Northern men, in Charleston on business), in which the people were addressed as “Citizens of the Southern Republic ;” and processions filled the streets, bearing from square to square many banners with significant inscriptions.1 No Union flag was seen upon any ship in the harbor, for vigilance committees, assuming police powers, had already been formed in Charleston and other places, as a part of the system of coercion put in practice against Union men in the Slave-labor States immediately after Lincoln's election.2
These vigilance associations were in active operation by the close of November, and before the ordinance of secession had been decreed by the Convention, large numbers of persons from the North had been arraigned by them, and banished from the State, after much suffering, on suspicion of being unfriendly to the schemes of the conspirators.
In some cases, where men were accused of being actual Abolitionists, they were stripped, and covered with tar and feathers.
These committees, with the power to torture, soon made the expressed sentiment of South Carolina “unanimous in favor of secession ;” and the organ of the conspirators — the Mercury--was justified in assuring the South Carolinians in the employment of the United States Government, when calling them home, that “they need have no more doubt of South Carolina's going out of the ”
1 On these banners were the words:--“South Carolina goes it alone;” “God, Liberty, and the State;” “South Carolina wants no Stripes;” “Stand to your arms, Palmetto boys;” “Huzza for a Southern Confederacy;” “Now or never, strike for Independence;” “Good-by, Yankee Doodle;” “Death to all Abolitionists;” “Let us bury the Union's dead carcass,” &c.
2 Orville J. Victor, in the first volume (page 47) of his History of the Southern Rebellion and War for the Union, cites the resolutions of the citizens of Lexington District, South Carolina, in forming a vigilance association, as a fair example of the power conferred upon these self-constituted guardians of “Southern rights.” They provided for monthly meetings of the officers, who should have full power to decide all cases that might be brought before them, which decisions should be “final and conclusive;” that the president should appoint as many captains of patrol of five men as he might think necessary; that the patrol companies should have power to arrest all suspicious white persons, and bring them before the Executive Committee for trial; that they stood pledged to “put down all negro preachings, prayer-meetings, and all congregations of negroes that may be considered unlawful by the patrol companies ;” that these companies should have the power to correct and punish all slaves, free negroes, mulattoes, and mestizoes, as they may deem proper; that they should give special passes; that every person should be requested to sign the resolutions, and thus sanction them; that all who refuse to do duty, when called upon, should be reported; and that all peddlers should be prohibited from passing through the country, unless duly authorized to do so.
3 in this little sketch is seen the spire of the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. John and St. Finbar, mentioned at near the close of Chapter XIII. of this volume.
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