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Mr. Stephens was, in his earlier years, an admirer and follower of
Mr. Clay; but, since 1850, he had gone a roving after strange gods.
He now said:
Should Georgia determine to go out of the Union, I speak for one, though my views may not agree with them, whatever the result may be, I shall bow to the will of her people.
Their cause is my cause, and their destiny is my destiny; and I trust this will be the ultimate course of all. The greatest curse that can befall a free people is civil war. But, as I said, let us call a Convention of the people; let all these matters be submitted to it; and, when the will of a majority of the people has thus been expressed, the whole State will present one unanimous voice in favor of whatever may be demanded.
Of course,
Mr. Stephens was taken at his word.
A Convention
was called; a majority of delegates secured for Disunion; an Ordinance of Secession passed; and
Mr. Stephens sank from the proud position of a citizen of the
American Republic into that of
Vice-President of the
Confederacy of slaveholding traitors and their benighted, misguided satellites and dupes.
The South Carolina Convention met at
Columbia on the appointed day--December 17th.
Gen. D. F. Jamison, its temporary
Chairman, on being called to preside, paraded the wrongs of the
South in the admission of
California, organization and settlement of
Kansas, etc., etc., and trusted that “the door is now closed
forever against any further connection
1 with the
Northern confederacy,” etc., etc., etc. He further trusted that “we shall not be diverted from our purpose by any dictates
from without;” and that the
Convention, in inaugurating such a movement, would heed the counsels of a master-spirit of the
French Revolution, whose maxim was, to “
dare, and again to dare, and without end to dare.”
Mr. Chas. G. Memminger2 having suggested that the members, on the roll being called, advance and be sworn, a delegate responded: “Oh no!
that is not required; we came not to
make, but to
unmake, a government.”
Gen. Jamison was, on the fifth ballot, chosen
President.
At the evening session of the first day,
Hon. John A. Elmore, a Commissioner from
Alabama, and
Hon. Charles Hooker, a Commissioner from
Mississippi, were introduced by the
President, and successively addressed the
Convention — of course, in favor of prompt and unconditional Secession.
Mr. Elmore said:
I am instructed by the Governor of Alabama to say that he desires, and, lie believes,