The Pretext for Disunion: South Carolina and Alabama

The politicians in other slave-labor States followed the example of South Carolina in immediate preparations for secession. Robert Toombs, then a National Senator, was one of the chief conspirators against the life of the nation, and by violent harangues aided materially in bringing upon his State (Georgia) the awful calamities of war. In a speech at Milledgeville on the 13th of November, he exclaimed, "Withdraw your sons from the army, from the navy, and from every department of the Federal public service. Keep your own taxes in your own coffers. Buy arms with them, and throw the bloody spear into this den of incendiaries and assassins [the Northern people], and let God defend the right. Twenty years of labor, and toils, and taxes, all expended upon preparation, would not make up for the advantage the enemy would gain if the rising sun on the 5th of March should find you in the Union. Then strike while it is yet time." Then he cried: "I ask you to give me the sword; for, if you do not give it to me, as God lives, I will take it myself!" In the war that ensued, the sword was given him, with the commission of a brigadier-general; and it is on record that Mr. Toombs, acting upon the maxim that "Prudence is the better part of valor," was never known to remain longer than he was compelled to in a place of danger to himself. On the following evening, Alexander H. Stephens, a man of conservative views and equal courage, in a speech in favor of the Union, exposed the many misstatements of Mr. Toombs, and touched the fiery Georgian and others to the quick, with the Ithuriel spear of truth, when he said: "Some of our public men have failed in their aspirations; that is true, and from that comes a great part of our troubles."

The Georgia Legislature followed the example of South Carolina in ordering a Convention to consider secession. So, also, did the Legislatures of Mississippi and Alabama. L.Q.C. Lamar, a representative in Congress of the people of the first-named State, submitted to the inhabitants, before the close of November, a plan for a Southern Confederacy; and a few days before the election of delegates to the Alabama Convention, the Conference of the "Methodist Church South," sitting at Montgomery, resolved that they believed "African Slavery, as it existed in the Southern States of the Republic, to be a wise, humane, and righteous institution, approved of God, and calculated to promote, in the highest possible degree, the welfare of the slave. They also resolved: "Our hearts are with the South; and should they ever need our hands to assist in achieving our independence, we shall not be found wanting in the hour of danger."

The politicians of little Florida, with those of Louisiana and Texas, followed in the wake of the leaders in the other four States named, in preparing for secession, all of them asserting the right of their respective States to secede because they had "created the National Government." The fallacy of this claim is apparent when we remember that Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas and Florida did not exist, even in territorial form, as parts of the Union, when the National Government was created, and that three of them belonged to foreign governments at that time. North Carolina, one of the original thirteen States, joined South Carolina and Georgia, her ancient sisters, in providing for a Convention; and the governors of all the slave-labor States, excepting those of Delaware and Maryland, who had been elected by the Democratic party, showed their readiness to act in concert with the Secessionists. It was soon ascertained that the President of the Republic, and a majority of his cabinet, were ready to declare that the National Constitution did not give the Chief Magistrate authority to stay the arm of insurrection or rebellion by coercive measures.