wrote the following letter to Governor Pickens, and with it dispatched Caleb Cushing to Charleston, to see if he might not exert a personal influence upon the malcontents, who paid no heed to any wishes or interests but their own: WASHINGTON, December 18, 1860. MY DEAR SIR: From common notoriety, I assume the fact that the State of South Carolina is now deliberating on the question of seceding from the Union. Whilst any hope remains that this may be prevented, or even retarded, so long as to allow the people of her sister States an opportunity to manifest their opinions upon the causes which have led to this proceeding, it is my duty to exert all the means in my power to avert so dread a catastrophe. I have, therefore, deemed it advisable to send to you the Hon. Caleb Cushing, in whose integrity, ability, and prudence I have full confidence, to hold communications with you on my behalf, for the purpose of changing or modifying the contemplated action of the State in the manner I have already suggested. Commending Mr. Cushing to your kind attention, for his own sake, as well as that of the cause, I remain, Very respectfully, your friend, HIS EXCELLENCY FRANCIS W. PICKENS. Mr. Cushing was a man of great affability, and of prominence in the Democratic party. He had been Attorney-General under President Pierce, and was called to preside over the Charleston Convention, until the dissension in that body between Northern and Southern Democrats caused its disruption and adjournment to Baltimore. In the second disruption at Baltimore, Mr. Cushing had followed the fortunes of the Southern leaders, and with them had seceded, and presided over that fraction of the original body which nominated Breckinridge. Though a Massachusetts man, he was thus affiliated in party principle, party organization, and party action with the South, and President Buchanan not unnaturally thought that he was personally an agreeable agent, and ought to be an influential party representative, capable, in behalf of the Administration, of dissuading the Charleston conspirators from their dangerous determination, or at least from their reckless precipitancy. But the sequel shows that Buchanan both misunderstood the men he had to deal with, and was unequal in purpose and will to cope with their superior daring and resolution. Mr. Cushing arrived in Charleston on the day the South Carolina Convention passed its ordinance of secession. He obtained an interview with the Governor, and presented the President's letter. "I had but a short interview with him," said Governor Pickens in his message of November 5, 1861, "and told him I would return no reply to the President's letter, except to say very candidly that there was no hope for the Union, and that, so far as I was concerned, I intended to maintain the separate independence of South Carolina, and from this purpose neither temptation nor danger should for a moment deter me." There is a notable contrast in this haughty and defiant reception by a South Carolina governor of the messenger of the President of the United States, to the cringing and apologetic spirit in which the President had on that same morning received the messenger of the Governor and replied to his demand. Mr. Cushing's reply deserves special notice. "He said," continues Governor Pickens, "that he could not say what changes circumstances might produce, but when he left Washington, there was then no intention whatever to change the status of the forts in our harbor in any way." By this language Mr. Cushing himself seems to have changed his errand from a patriotic mission of protest and warning to one conveying advantageous information to the conspirators. It could hardly have been without a sense of personal mortification to Mr. Cushing that the drama which he had been sent to avert, or at least to postpone, immediately unrolled itself under his very eyes, and his mortification must have risen to indignation when he was requested by his presence to grace the pageant. The South Carolina Convention, during the two days which had elapsed since its adjournment hither from Columbia, had been deliberating in secret session. A little after midday of December 20, the streets of Charleston were filled with placards (see page 14) giving the public the first notice of its action. The usual jubilations immediately followedringing of bells, salutes of cannon, and the noise and display of street parades. The convention resolved to celebrate the event further by a public ceremonial to which it invited the Governor, the Legislature, and other dignitaries; and both branches of the Legislature also sent a committee to Caleb Cushing to give him an official invitation to attend. At half-past six that evening the members of the convention marched in procession to Institute Hall, where the public signing of the ordinance of secession was performed with appropriate solemnities, and at its close the presiding CHAP. I. СНАР. І. CHARLESTON MERCURY EXTRA: Passed unanimously at 1.15 o'clock, P. M., December 20th, 1860. AN ORDINANCE To dissolve the Union between the State of South Carolina and other States united with her under the compact entilled “The Constitution of the United States of America." We the People of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and is hereby declared and ordained, That the Ordinance adopted by us in Convention, on 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 of America 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. THE UNION IS DISSOLVED! officer announced: "The ordinance of secession has been signed and ratified, and I proclaim the State of South Carolina an Independent Commonwealth." The city and the State joined in general exultation as if a great work had been accomplished, as if the efforts of a generation had been crowned with fulfillment, and nothing remained but to rest and enjoy the ripened fruit of independence. There seemed to be no dream amid all this rejoicing, that nothing definite had as yet been effected; that the reckless day's act was but the prelude to the most terrible tragedy of the age, the unchaining of a storm which should shake the continent with terror and devastation, leaving every Southern State a wreck, and sweeping from the face of the earth the institution in whose behalf the fatal work was done. The secession ordinance having been passed, signed, and proclaimed, the convention busied itself for the next few days in making up a public statement of its reasons for the anomalous procedure. The discussion showed a wide divergence of opinion as to the causes which had produced the act. One ascribed it to the election of Lincoln, another to the failure of the Northern States to execute the fugitive-slave law, a third to the antislavery sentiment of the free States, a fourth to the tariff, a fifth to unconstitutional appropriations by Congress, and so on. On the 24th of December the convention adopted a " Declaration of Causes," and an "Address to the Slave-holding States," the two papers together embracing the above and other specifications. Since neither the Constitution of the United States nor the laws of Congress contained CHAP. I. |