Movements in South Carolina

Such is a brief outline history of the preparations by politicians in the slave-labor States, for marshalling a combined host for the overthrow of the Republic. The important initial step was taken by those of South Carolina. When the Legislature authorized a Convention, orators of every grade immediately went out to harangue the people in all parts of the State. Motley crowds of men, women, and children--Caucasian and African--listened, in excited groups, at cross-roads, court-houses, and other usual gathering places. Every speech was burdened with complaints of "wrongs suffered by South Carolina in the Union;" her right and her duty to leave it; her power to "defy the world in arms;" and the glory that would illumine her whole domain in that near future when her independence of the thralls of the "detested Constitution" should be secured. Their themes were as various as the character of their audiences. One of their orators, addressing the slaveholders in Charleston, said: "Three thousand millions of property is involved in this question; and if you say at the ballot-box that South Carolina shall not secede, you put into the sacrifice three thousand millions of your property. The Union is a dead carcass, stinking in the nostrils of the South. Ay, my friends, a few weeks more, and you will see floating from the fortifications the ensign that now bears the Palmetto, the emblem of a Southern Confederacy." The Charleston Mercury called upon all natives of South Carolina in the army or navy to resign their commissions and join in the revolt. "The mother looks to her sons," said this fiery organ of sedition, "to protect her from outrage. She is sick of the Union--disgusted with it, upon any terms within the range of the widest possibility." This call was responded to by the resignation of the commissions of many South Carolinians; and the leaders in the revolutionary movements in that State, seemingly unable to comprehend the principles of honor and fidelity--the highest virtues of a soldier--boasted that "not a son of that State would prove loyal to the old flag." They were amazed when men like the late Admiral Shubrick, a native of South Carolina, refused to do the bidding of disloyal politicians, while they commended the action of Lieutenant J.R. Hamilton of the navy, another "son" of South Carolina, who, at Fortress Monroe, issued a circular letter to his fellow "Southrons" in the marine service, in which, after writing much of honor, counselled them to follow his example, to engage in plundering the Government, in these words: "What the South asks of you now is, to bring with you every ship and man you can, that we may use them against the oppressors of our liberties, and the enemies of our aggravated but united people."

Vigilance committees were speedily organized to discover and suppress every anti-secession sentiment and movement in South Carolina; and before the close of November these committees were in active operation, clothed with extraordinary powers, as "guardians of Southern rights." Their officers possessed full authority to decide all questions brought before them, and their decision was "final and conclusive." The patrols had power to arrest all suspicious white persons, and bring them before the Executive Committee for trial; to suppress all "negro preachings, prayer-meetings, and all congregations of negroes that may be considered unlawful by the patrol companies," the latter having unrestricted authority to "correct and punish all slaves, free negroes, mulattoes and mestizoes, as they may deem proper."

The powers of these vigilance committees were soon felt. Northern men, suspected of feelings opposed to the secession movements, were banished from the State, and some who were believed to be "Abolitionists" were tarred and feathered. The committees having authority to persecute, soon made the expressed sentiment in South Carolina "unanimous in favor of secession;" and the Charleston Mercury was justified in saying to the army and navy officers from that State, in the service of the Republic, when calling them home: "You need have no more doubt of South Carolina's going out of the Union than of the world's turning round. Every man that goes to the Convention will be a pledged man--pledged for immediate separate State secession, in any event whatever."

This promise was uttered before the members of the Convention had been chosen. Everything had been arranged by the politicians; the people had nothing to do with it. The Southern Presbyterian, a theological publication of wide influence, issued at Columbia, said, on the 15th of December, that it was well known that every member of the Convention was pledged to pass an ordinance of secession, and added: "It is a matter for devout thankfulness that the Convention will embody the very highest wisdom and character of the State; private gentlemen, judges of her highest legal tribunals, and ministers of the Gospel." Even almost the very day when the ordinance of secession would be adopted was known to those who were engaged in the business. In a letter to me, written on the 13th of December, the late William Gilmore Simms, the distinguished South Carolina scholar, said: "In ten days more South Carolina will have certainly seceded; and in a reasonable interval after that event, if the forts in our harbor are not surrendered to the State, they will be taken."