Secession Convention in South Carolina
ON the 3d of December, 1860, delegates to the State Convention of South Carolina were chosen. They met at Columbia, the capital, on the 17th, and chose David F. Jamison president of their body. When he was about to administer an oath to the delegates, a serious difficulty was presented. The Constitution of the State of South Carolina provided that, on such occasions, an oath to support the Constitution of the United States must be taken. That requirement was like a cobweb before the leaders in the movement; and the difficulty was swept away by ex-Governor Adams, who said: "We have come here to break down a government, not to support one." The delegates were all of one mind concerning the object of their assemblage; so they proceeded without the solemnity of an oath of any kind, conscious that the fundamental law of their State declared them to be an unlawful body, and their acts not binding upon any one.
President Jamison briefly addressed the Convention on taking the chair, and closed by saying: "I cannot offer you anything better, in inaugurating this movement, than the words of Danton at the commencement of the French Revolution: 'To dare! and again to dare! and without end to dare!'" These brave words were followed by considerable excitement in the Convention, for intelligence came that the small-pox was raging as an epidemic in Columbia. It was immediately proposed to adjourn to Charleston. One of the delegates (W. P. Miles) begged them not to flee. "We shall be sneered at," he said; and exclaimed, "Is this the chivalry of South Carolina?" But chivalry was not proof against fear of the loathsome disease, and by the first railway train the next morning, the delegates all fled to Charleston, and reassembled the same afternoon at Institute Hall.
The Convention proceeded to business by appointing several committees to consider various subjects, such as the relations of South Carolina to the United States in regard to public property within the limits of that State, and commercial relations; also their connection with the people of other slave-holding States. A committee was also chosen, with John A. Inglis as chairman, to report the form of an ordinance of secession. After debating some questions, and proposing a provisional government for the States that might follow the example of South Carolina in seceding; to send commissioners to Washington city to negotiate with the National Government for the cession of its property within the State of South Carolina, and to elect delegates to meet others from slave-labor States for the purpose of forming a Southern Confederacy, the proper committee reported an ordinance of secession in the following words, in accordance with the theory of State supremacy:
"We, the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, that the ordinance adopted by us in convention, on the 23d day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States was ratified, and also all acts and parts of acts of the General Assembly of the State, ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed, and the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved."
It was noon on the 20th of December, 1860, when this ordinance was submitted. At a quarter before one o'clock, it was adopted by the unanimous voice of the Convention, one hundred and sixty-nine delegates voting in the affirmative. They were then assembled in St. Andrew's Hall. It was proposed that the members should walk in procession to Institute Hall, and there, at seven o'clock in the evening, in the presence of the constituted authorities of the State and of the people, to sign it--"the great Act of Deliverance and Liberty."
The cry at once went forth, "The Union is dissolved!" It was echoed and re-echoed in the streets of Charleston, and was sent upon the wings of the lightning all over the Republic. Placards announcing the fact were posted throughout the city of Charleston, and again the people of that town were almost wild with excitement. All business was suspended, and huzzas for a "Southern Confederacy" filled the air. Women appeared in the streets with secession bonnets, the invention of a Northern milliner in Charleston. Flags waved; church-bells pealed merrily, and cannon boomed; and some enthusiastic young men went to the grave of John C. Calhoun, in St. Philip's church-yard, and forming a circle around it, made a solemn vow to devote their "lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor" to the cause of "South Carolina independence."