John G. Nicolay, The Outbreak of Rebellion

[4] of the conspirators the prevailing question was, who was the most zealous “resistance” candidate. To a legislature elected from this kind of material, Governor Gist, on November 5th, sent a defiant, revolutionary message-the first official notice and proclamation of insurrection. He declared that “our institutions” were in danger from the hostility of the “fixed majorities” of the North; and recommended the calling of a State convention, and the purchase of arms and material of war.

A lingering doubt about the result of the presidential contest appears in the formal choice by the Legislature, of electors who would vote for Breckinridge and Lane. But that doubt was short-lived. The morning of November 7th brought the certain news of the election of Lincoln and Hamlin on the previous day, and the rejoicings which would have been uttered over their defeat became jubilations that their success offered the long-coveted pretext for disunion.

From this time forth everything was managed to swell the revolutionary furor. The Legislature immediately ordered a convention, made appropriations, passed military bills. The federal office-holders, with much public flourish of their patriotic sacrifice, resigned their offices. Military companies enrolled themselves in the city; organizations of minutemen sprang up in the rural neighborhoods. Drills, parades, meetings, bonfires, secession harangues, secession cockades, palmetto flags, purchase of fire-arms and powder, singing of the Marseillaise — there is not room to enumerate the follies to which the general populace, especially of Charleston, devoted their days and nights. There was universal satisfaction; to the conspirators, because their schemes were progressing; to the rabble, because it had a continuous holiday.