Secession Convention in South Carolina: Message and Constitutional

This Message, so indecisive and inconsistent, alarmed the people and pleased nobody. When a motion was made in the National Senate for its reference, it was spoken lightly of by the friends and foes of the Union. Senator Clingman, of North Carolina, who first sounded the trumpet of disunion in the Upper House, declared that it fell short of stating the case then before the country. Senator Wigfall, of Texas, said he could not understand it; and in the course of debate a few weeks afterward, Senator Jefferson Davis said that it had "all the characteristics of a diplomatic paper, for diplomacy is said to abhor certainty, as nature abhors a vacuum; and," he continued, "it is not within the power of man to reach any fixed conclusion from that Message. When the country was agitated, when opinions are being formed, when we are drifting beyond the power ever to return," he said, "this is not what we have the right to expect from a Chief Magistrate. One policy or the other he ought to have taken . either of a Federalist, that every State is subordinate to the Federal Government, and he was bound to enforce its authority; or as a State Rights Democrat, which he professed to be, holding that the Constitution gave no power to the Federal Government to coerce a State. The President should have brought his opinion to one conclusion or another, and, to-day, our country would have been safer than it is."

Senator Hale, of New Hampshire, said that if he understood the meaning of the Message on the subject of secession, it was this:--"South carolina has just cause for seceding from the Union; that is the first proposition. The second is, that she has no right to secede. The third is, that we have no right to prevent her from seceding. He goes on to represent this as a great and powerful country, and that no State has a right to secede from it; but the power of the country, if I understand the President, consists in what Dickens makes the English constitution to be-a power to do anything at all. Now I think it was incumbent on the President of the United States to point out definitely and to recommend to Congress some rule of action, and to tell us what he recommended us to do. But, in my judgment, he has entirely avoided it. He has failed to look the thing in the face. He has acted like the ostrich, which hides her head, and thereby thinks to escape danger."

So thought the people, who perceived that no reliance could be placed upon the arm of the Executive in defending the integrity of the Union. Had they then comprehended the fearful proportions of the imminent danger, they would have almost despaired. Patriotic men wrote to their representatives in Congress, asking them to be firm, yet conciliatory; and clergymen of every sect exhorted their people to be "firm in faith, patient in hope, careful in conduct, and trustful in God. More than forty of the leading clergymen of various denominations in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, united in sending forth a Circular Letter on New Year's day, 1861, making an appeal to the Churches. "We cannot doubt," they said, "that a spirit of candor and forbearance, such as our religion prompts, and the exigencies of the times demand, would render the speedy adjustment of our difficulties possible, consistently with every Constitutional right. Unswerving fealty to the Constitution justly interpreted, and a prompt return to its spirit and requirements whenever these may have been divergent from either, would seem to be the first duty of citizens and legislators. It is our firm, and, we think, intelligent conviction, that only a very inconsiderable fraction of the people of the North will hesitate in the discharge of their Constitutional obligations; and that whatever enactments are found to be in conflict therewith, will be annulled." This well-meant missive operated only as the mildest soothing-syrup; the disease was too malignant and widespread to be touched by anything but the probe and cautery.