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| John Caldwell Calhoun. |
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[42]
H. Hammond (son of a New England schoolmaster, and an extensive land and slave holder, near the banks of the Savannah River), to consult upon a plan of treasonable operations.
Hammond was then a member of the United States Senate, pledged by solemn oath to see that the Republic received no hurt; and yet, under his roof, he met in conclave a band of men, like himself sworn to be defenders of his native land, from foes without and foes within, to plot schemes for the ruin of that country.
At his table, and in secret session in his library, sat William H. Gist, then Governor of South Carolina; ex-governor James H. Adams; James L. Orr, once Speaker of the National House of Representatives; the entire Congressional Delegation of South Carolina,1 excepting William Porcher Miles (who was compelled by sickness to be absent), and several other prominent men of that State.
Then and there the plan for the overt act
of rebellion, performed by South Carolinians in Convention at Charleston, sixty days later, seems to have been arranged.
They were assured that their well-managed sundering of the Democratic party at Charleston, in April,2 would result in the election of Mr. Lincoln, and that the pretext for rebellion, so long and anxiously waited for, would be presented within a fort-night from that time.
This meeting was followed by similar cabals in the other cotton-growing States; and, in Virginia, that ever-restless mischief-maker, ex-governor Henry A. Wise, with R. M. T. Hunter, John Tyler, James M. Mason, the author of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, who had been his co-plotter against the life of the Republic four years before,3 and other leading politicians in that State, were exceedingly active in arranging plans for that Commonwealth to join her Southern sisters in the work of treason.
Wise, who assumed to be their orator on all occasions, had openly declared, that
1 These were John McQueen, Lawrence M. Keitt, Milledge L. Bonham, John D. Ashmore, and William W. Boyce, of the House of Representatives, and Senators James H. Hammond and James Chesnut, Jr.
2 See page 23.
3 In response to an invitation from Wise, a convention of Governors of Slave-labor States was secretly held at Raleigh, North Carolina, of which Jefferson Davis, then the Secretary of War, was fully cognizant. The object was to devise a scheme of rebellion-at that time, in the event of the election of Colonel John C. Fremont, the Republican candidate for the Presidency. Wise afterward boasted that, had Fremont been elected, he should have marched, at the head of twenty thousand men, to Washington, taken possession of the Capitol, and prevented the inauguration of the President elect. Fremont's defeat postponed overt acts of treason by the conspirators.--The American Conflict: by Horace Greeley, i. 829. Senator Mason, writing to Jeff. Davis on the 30th of September, said :--“I have a letter from Wise, of the 27th, full of spirit. He says the governments of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Louisiana have already agreed to the rendezvous at Raleigh, and others will — this in your most private ear. He says further, that he had officially requested you to exchange with Virginia, on fair terms of difference, percussion for flint muskets. I don't know the usage or power of the Department in such cases; but, if it can be done, even by liberal construction, I hope you will accede. Was there not an appropriation at the last session for converting flint into percussion arms? If so, would it not furnish good reason for extending such facilities to the States? Virginia probably has more arms than the other Southern States, and would divide, in case of need. In a letter, yesterday, to a committee in South Carolina, I gave it as my judgment, in the event of Fremont's election, the South should not pause, but proceed at once to ‘immediate, absolute, and eternal separation’ So I am a candidate for the first halter.”
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