Coming Fury, Volume 1 (22 page)

As South Carolina proceeded with the election of delegates for the convention that would pass the ordinance of secession, her leaders were kept posted on the drift of affairs in Washington. The key figure here was a cheerful little man from Charleston, William Henry Trescot, a lawyer and a planter who had written books on diplomacy and who was now Assistant Secretary of State; a sincere patriot but also a man who could see the fun in things—Mrs. Chesnut, who liked him, called him “a man without indignation.” Trescot was reporting now on the cabinet’s activities. On November 17 he wrote, “I have no idea that any intention to use coercive measures is entertained,” and shortly after this he wrote to Drayton that it could be taken for granted, as long as Cobb and Thompson remained in the cabinet, that “no action has been taken which seriously affects the position of any Southern State.” He himself would know as soon as any decision was reached, and “upon such knowledge I will act as I ought.”
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Meanwhile, everything awaited the convening of Congress.

Congress convened on December 3. No Southern members had resigned except for Senators Chesnut and Hammond, of South Carolina; all the rest were present to look out for their states’ interests in what might be a history-making session. It was possible
that some compromise might be worked out, but the chances were dim. Everybody seemed to hope that there could be peace, but most of the cotton-state men were deeply committed to secession by now and their opposite numbers, the Republicans, were equally committed to a resolute containment of slavery, and unless one group or the other gave ground, the chances for peace were not good. Perhaps the President would have something to suggest.

The President’s annual message, delivered on December 4, pleased practically nobody, and reflected accurately the state of distressed indecision which Mr. Buchanan had brought out of the long cabinet meetings. He began by denouncing Northern abolitionists, urging them to let the sovereign states of the South manage their own domestic institutions in their own way, and he balanced this by remarking that the mere “election of any one of our fellow-citizens to the office of President does not of itself afford just cause for dissolving the Union.” He believed that secession was nothing less than revolution—justifiable, possibly, but nevertheless revolution. It was a time for calmness and deliberation; the slavery question, like everything else, would have its day, but if the excitement about it caused the Union to dissolve, “the evil may then become irreparable.” As to coercion: “Our Union rests upon public opinion and can never be cemented by the blood of its citizens shed in a civil war. If it cannot live in the affections of its people it must one day perish. Congress possesses many means of preserving it by conciliation but the sword was not placed in their hands to preserve it by force.”

By way of making a concrete proposal, Buchanan suggested that Congress might submit “an explanatory amendment” to the Constitution on the subject of slavery. Such an amendment might expressly recognize the right of property in slaves in states where slavery existed, might state the duty of protecting this right in the territories, and might stress the right of a master to have a fugitive slave speedily restored to him. With this, which did no more than restate the very issues over which the country was dividing, the President had said his say.
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There was something here to irritate everyone and to encourage no one. Facing both ways, Buchanan had been able to see
nothing but the difficulties. Obviously, his administration through the months that remained to it would mark time, trying to avoid collisions and hoping for the best. The next step was going to be up to South Carolina.

CHAPTER THREE

Beyond any question, almost all of the people in the United States in 1860 wanted to remain at peace. Wanting this, they kept drifting toward war, and as they drifted, the power to make the final, irrevocable decision—the ability to say or to leave unsaid the words that would start the guns firing—got farther and farther out of their hands. This meant that 600,000 young men who otherwise might have lived were going to die, but it seemed that there was no help for it.

It seemed so because the powers that could have been used were not used. In the spring every piece of the intricate machinery by which a democracy can make its solemn choice was available-party conventions, speeches and petitions and debates, a national-election campaign, finally a vote on candidates and parties; yet by mid-November all of this had gone by and nothing had been settled. So then the focus narrowed to the White House and the national Capitol; what was said and done there might still determine whether the crisis could be solved or must be brought to the point of explosion.

Somehow this did not work, either; from the noblest of motives, all of the public servants involved seemed to shy away from the crucial point. So now it came down, in December, to an even more constricted field: specifically, to the state convention of South Carolina, which brought 170 men together to say what was going to happen next. These 170, elderly and slightly tired by the standards of that day but nevertheless good men and true, had been
chosen by the voters of South Carolina to say whether the Union of states would endure or dissolve. (The focus would become even narrower in the weeks just ahead, so very narrow that when the explosion finally came it would seem a thing foreordained, brought on by nobody in particular; but even in December it was too narrow for comfort.) The people had lost control over their own destiny. One trouble was that they had passed beyond the stage of reason and wanted only an act. The act would quickly be forthcoming.

Pursuant to instructions from the general assembly of South Carolina, delegates chosen by the several electoral districts of the state came together in the state capital, Columbia, on December 17, seated themselves in the Baptist Church, and permitted themselves to be called to order. President of the convention was a state patriot and militia officer, D. F. Jamison, who addressed his compatriots with much eloquence.

In the auditorium before him were the state’s best men—clergymen and railroad presidents, manufacturers and planters and merchants, present and former United States Senators, including the noted secessionist R. Barnwell Rhett, not to mention Robert W. Barnwell, William F. DeSaussure, and James Chesnut, Jr., and five former governors, one of them being the W. H. Gist who had just been replaced in the gubernatorial chair by Francis W. Pickens. Most of these and the lesser delegates had come here to vote for secession, but they were faintly nervous about it. They wanted it done peacefully, and they hoped everything would come out all right; still, they had no love for the old Union, they were not prepared to compromise, and they had a deep sense of their historic responsibilities. They would lead their state out into what might be a starless dark, and they had the kind of courage that keeps forlorn hopes alive beyond rational expectation, but they believed that the rest of the South would follow them and they clung to the hope that whatever they did would have a peaceful aftermath. President Jamison rose to talk to them.

Jamison mentioned a point that was familiar to all: the elections that had created this convention had shown that South Carolina was determined to get out of the Union as quickly as might be. There were, however, two dangers—“overtures from without, and precipitation within.” He did not believe that any overtures from men
in the North would have any effect. “As there is no common bond of sympathy or interest between the North and the South, all efforts to preserve this Union will be not only fruitless but fatal to the less numerous section”; but there might be trouble, arising from “too great impatience on the part of our people to precipitate the issue, in not waiting until they can strike with the authority of law.” With proper caution but with iron hearts, therefore, the people of South Carolina must go forward, trusting in the revolutionary motto of Danton (who, after all, did come to the guillotine, although this was not mentioned): “To dare! and again to dare! and without end to dare!”
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The speech was applauded, and it was clear that the delegates had met not to debate secession but to accomplish it. Unanimously, the convention voted to instruct a select committee to prepare a proper resolution separating the palmetto state from the rest of the American Union. Then, small pox being prevalent in Columbia, the convention voted to reconvene in Charleston, and adjourned.
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The delegates reached Charleston early in the afternoon of December 18, and there was a fifteen-gun salute at the railroad station and a big parade. The Marion Artillery Company, on no more than two and one-half hours’ notice, assembled to fire the salute and do the honors, and a battalion of State Cadets stood in line at the railroad station to meet the delegates. With shouldered arms, the cadets escorted President Jamison to his carriage, and infantry and artillery together marched down to the Mills House, where the chief dignitaries would be quartered. An outlander, reporting these events for the New York
Times
, said that most of the adult males in Charleston were members of one or another of the numerous military organizations; all in all, he wrote, the state could put 33,000 armed men in uniform (about twice as many men as were enlisted in all of the United States Army), and he asserted that these men had taken guns and uniforms for no purpose but to resist, if need be, the power of the Federal government.
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Meeting in Institute Hall amid the shadows of the Democratic convention of the past spring, the convention appointed committees, referred sundry motions and resolutions to them, received commissions sent to observe and report by the governors of Alabama and Mississippi, and agreed to hold subsequent meetings in St.
Andrews’ Hall. Two days passed thus; then, on December 20, the convention sat back to hear the report from the Committee to Prepare an Ordinance of Secession, Mr. John A. Inglis.

The report was brief and to the point. It was a resolution that read as follows:

“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 of the twenty-third 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 this State, ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed; and that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of ‘The United States of America,’ is hereby dissolved.”

There was no debate. The motion was put to a vote and was carried, 169 to 0. The delegates then voted to meet again that evening for formal signing of the ordinance and for a general celebration, to which the governor, members of the legislature, and sundry other dignitaries were invited. Then, at one o’clock, the convention adjourned for the afternoon, and as these new founding fathers came out into the streets, bells were ringing, bold-faced placards were being circulated, cannon were being fired, and parades were in movement. By its own declaration South Carolina was now an independent nation, and Charleston was in a mood to celebrate.
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South Carolina was a state (or a nation) of complete individualists, and one of these—frail, aging, picturesque, and outspoken-refused to go along with the rejoicing. James Louis Petigru, an old-time Whig, a leading lawyer for thirty years and an old-fashioned Federalist of the Alexander Hamilton school, seems to have been the one outspoken Union man in Charleston, and he did not care who knew how he felt. Stalking down Broad Street just after the convention had adjourned, he heard all of the bells ringing and, meeting a friend in front of the city hall, asked dryly: “Where’s the fire?” There was no fire, the friend replied; the bells were ringing to announce the city’s joy at the passage of the ordinance of secession. Old Petigru turned on him. “I tell you there is a fire,”
he snapped. “They have this day set a blazing torch to the temple of constitutional liberty and, please God, we shall have no more peace forever.” Then he turned and walked away. (He had told a friend, some days before this, that the Constitution was only two months older than he himself was; he expected now to outlive it.)
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