50 THE FEELING IN SLAVE-LABOR STATES. gia. "This State is ready to assert her rights and independence. The leading men are eager for the business."-" There is a great deal of excitement here," said a dispatch from Washington City; "several extreme Southern men, in office, have donned the Palmetto cockade,' and declared themselves ready to march South."-"If your State secedes," said another, from Richmond, Virginia, "we will send you troops of volunteers to aid you."-" Placards are posted about the city," said a message from New Orleans, "calling a convention of those favorable to the organization of a corps of Minute-men. The Governor is all right."-"Be firm," said a second dispatch from Washington; "a large quantity of arms will be shipped South from the Arsenal here, to-morrow. The President is perplexed. His feelings are with the South, but he is afraid to assist them openly."-"The bark James Gray, owned by Cushing's Boston line, lying at our wharves," said a message from Charleston, "has hoisted the Palmetto flag, and fired a salute of fifteen guns, under direction of her owner. The Minute-men throng the streets with Palmetto cockades in their hats. There is great rejoicing here." SECESSION COCKADE. Stimulated by these indications of sympathy, the South Carolina Legislature took bold and vigorous action. Joint resolutions were offered in both Houses, providing for the calling of a State Convention at an early day, for the purpose of formally declaring the withdrawal of the State from the Union. These, generally, contemplated immediate separate State action, before the excitement caused by the election should subside, and the heads of the people should become cool and capable of sober reflection. But there were able men in that Legislature, who foresaw the perils which a single. State, cut loose from her moorings during a terrible storm of passion, would have to encounter, and pleaded eloquently for the exercise of reason and prudence. They were as zealous as their colleagues for ultimate secession, but regarded the co-operation of at least the other Cotton-growing States as essential to success. "If the State, in her sovereign capacity, determines that secession will produce the co-operation which we have so earnestly sought," said Mr. McGowan, of Abbeville, "then it shall have my hearty approbation. . . . If South Carolina, in Convention assembled, deliberately secedes-separate and alone, and, without hope of co-operation, decides to cut loose from her moorings, surrounded as she is by Southern sisters in like circumstances I will be one of her crew, and, in common with every true son of hers, will endeavor, with all the power that God has given me, to 'Spread all her canvas to the breeze, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the God of storms, But these cautious men were overborne by the fiery zealots. One of these (Mullins, from Marion), in his eagerness to hurry the State out of the Union, revealed not only the fact that the heads and hearts of the great mass of the people of South Carolina were not in unison with the desperate Made of blue silk ribbon, with a button in the center, bearing the image of a Palmetto-tree. ACTION IN SOUTH CAROLINA AND GEORGIA. 51 politicians who were exciting them to revolt, but another fact, afterward made clear—that months before Mr. Lincoln's election, emissaries of the conspirators had been sent to Europe, to prepare the way for aid and recognition of the contemplated Southern Confederacy by foreign powers. "If we wait for co-operation," he said, "Slavery and State Rights will be abandoned, State Sovereignty and the cause of the South lost forever; and we would be subjected to a dominion, the parallel to which is that of the poor Indian under the British East India Company. When we have pledged ourselves to take the State out of the Union, and place it on record, then I am willing to send a commissioner to Georgia, or any other Southern State, to announce our determination, and to submit the question whether they will join us or not. We have it from high authority, that the representative of one of the imperial powers of Europe, in view of the prospective separation of one or more of the Southern States from the present Confederacy, has made propositions in advance for the establishment of such relations between it and the government about to be established in this State, as will insure to that power such a supply of cotton for the future as their increas ing demand for that article will require." Led by Robert Barnwell Rhett, Senior, the extremists in the South Carolina Legislature held sway in that body, and on the 9th of November a bill calling a convention for the purpose of secession passed the Senate, and was concurred in by the House on the 12th. It provided for the election of delegates on the 6th of December, to meet in convention on the 17th of that month. This accomplished, Messrs. Chesnut and Hammond formally offered the resignation of their seats in the Senate of the United States. The offer was accepted with great applause, as the beginning of the dissolution of the Union. Georgia was the first to follow the bad example of South Carolina. Its Legislature was convened on the 7th of November. Robert Toombs and Alfred Iverson, then United States Senators, and others, had been laboring with intense zeal, during the Presidential canvass, to arouse the people to revolt when the leaders should give the signal. Many influential men were co-workers with them. It was exceedingly difficult to seduce the people of that State from their affection for the Union. They succeeded, however, in producing a general ferment and unrest throughout the State; and, by falsehoods, impassioned addresses, and, in some cases, intimations of impending wrath for Union men, they confused, distracted, and divided the people. Toombs, like Rhett, was anxious for the immediate and separate secession of his State. November 7. By the time the Legislature met, which was on the day after the Presidential election, there had been created quite a strong disunion feeling throughout the State. It permeated the woof of society, and was prominent in the whole social fabric. The Legislature was divided in sentiment; and a majority of them did not coincide with the Speaker, who, in opening the session, declared that the triumph of the Republican party would lead to a nullification of the Fugitive Slave Law; the exclusion of Slavery from the Territories; the non-admission of any more Slave States This matter is elucidated in another portion of this work. 52 THE GEORGIA LEGISLATURE.-STATE SUPREMACY. into the Union; the abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia; the desecration of the Church, by the installation therein of an "Anti-slavery God;" the dissolution of every bond of union between the North and the South, and a practical application of the theory that the Republic could not exist, half slave and half free. These predictions of the Speaker, through the operations of war, were fulfilled to the letter. They are now History. Governor Joseph E. Brown's message to the Legislature of Georgia was long, temperate in language, but very hostile toward the people of the North. After reviewing, at great length, the legislation in several of the Northern States concerning the Fugitive Slave Law, he urged the enactment, as a retaliatory measure, of a law making it a penal offense to introduce any goods, wares, or merchandise into Georgia from any of those States. "In my opinion," he said, "the time for bold, decided action, has arrived." He was opposed to secession as a remedy for existing evils, and did not like the project of a Southern Convention of States looking to that end, which had been proposed; yet, he recommended the appropriation of a million of dollars for the purpose of arming the State. The Legislature discussed the exciting topics presented to them with calmness. It was generally agreed that the State could not remain within the Union excepting on certain conditions, such as the repeal of the Personal Liberty Laws existing in some of the Free-labor States, and the enactment of laws by Congress for the protection of Slave property in the Territories. By a heavy majority they voted that a "Sovereign State" of the Union had a right to secede from it, adopting as their own the doctrine put forth by the Governor in his message, that the States of the Union are not subordinate to the National Government; were not created by it, and do not belong to it; that they created the National Government; from them it derives its powers; to them it is responsible, and; when it abuses the trust reposed in it, they, as equal sovereigns, have a right to resume the powers respectively delegated to it by them. This is the sum and substance of the doctrine of State supremacy, as defined and inculcated by Calhoun and his followers, for the evident purpose of weakening the attachment of the people to the Union, and so dwarfing their patriotism that narrow State pride should take the place of the lofty sentiment of nationality, and predispose them to acquiescence in the scheme for forming a "Southern Confederacy," to be composed of the Slave-labor States. That definition of the character of our Government has no real foundation in truth, discoverable in the teachings or actions of the founders of the Republic who framed the National Constitution, nor in the revealments of history. It defines, with proximate accuracy, the char 1 Let us here consider two or three expressions of those founders: "I hold it for a fundamental point, that an individual independence of the States is utterly irreconcilable with the idea of an aggregate sovereignty."—Letter to Edmund Randolph, April 8, 1787, by James Madison. "The Swiss Cantons have scarce any union at all, and have been more than once at war with one another. How, then, are all these evils to be avoided? Only by such a complete sovereignty in the General Government as will turn all the strong principles and passions above mentioned on its side.”—Speech by Alexander Hamilton in the Constitutional Convention, June 18, 1787. "A thirst for power, and the bantling-I had like to have said the MONSTER-sovereignty, which have taken such fast hold of the States individually will, when joined by the many whose personal consequence in the line of State politics will, in a manner, be annihilated, form a strong phalanx against it."—Letter of Washington to John Jay, March 10, 1787, on proposed changes in the fundamental laws of the land.-Life of Jay, i. 259. See also, Two Lectures on the Constitution of the United States, by Francis Lieber, LL. D. TOOMBS AND STEPHENS BEFORE THE PEOPLE. 53 acter of the Government under the old Confederation, which existed for eight or ten years before the National Constitution became the supreme law of the land; but it is clearly erroneous as applied to the Government which was founded on that Constitution in 1789. Instead of the National Government being a creation of the States as States, it is a creation of the people of the original thirteen States existing when the present Government was formed, and is the political creator of every State since admitted into the Union, first as a Territory, and then as a State, solely by the exercise of its potential will expressed by the general Congress. Without the consent of Congress, under the provisions of the Constitution, no State can enter the Union. This subject has received the attention due to its importance in another portion of this work. It is introduced here incidentally, to mark the line of difference between Unionists and Secessionists at the beginning of the great struggle-between those who hold that our Republic is a unit or consolidated nation, composed of distinct common wealths, and those who hold that it is only a league of Sovereign States, whose existence may be ended by the withdrawal, at its own pleasure, of any member of the league. We will only add, that the leaders in the great rebellion found their full justification in the doctrine of the supremacy of the States, which, if it be the true interpretation of our system of government, makes secession and consequent disunion lawful. • November 14, 1860. Whilst the Georgia Legislature was considering the great questions of the day, and Robert Toombs and other conspirators were urging them to treasonable action, Alexander H. Stephens, a leading man in intellect and personal character in that State, and for a long time its representative in Congress, addressed a large concourse of people," in the Assembly Chamber at Milledgeville. Toombs had harangued them on the previous evening, with his accustomed arrogance of manner and insolence of speech. He denounced the National Government as a curse, and made many false charges concerning its partiality to Northern interests, to the injury of Southern interests. He also urged the Legislature to act on the subject of Secession, independent of the people. He was "afraid of conventions," he said; that is to say, he was afraid to trust the people. His language was violent and seditious in the extreme. He demanded unquestioning acquiescence in his secession schemes, and, with the bravado characteristic of a nature lacking true courage, he said :-"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,"-and much more of like tenor. It may not be amiss to say, in this connection, that, during the war that ensued, Toombs was made a brigadier-general in the armies of the conspirators, and, acting in accordance with the maxim, that "Prudence is the better part of valor," was never 1 See Section 3, Article IV. of the National Constitution, After telling the people that after the 4th of March ensuing, the National Government, which had from the beginning been controlled by men from the Slave-labor States, would be in the hands of the majority composing the population of the Free-labor States, he said:-" Withdraw your sons from the Army, from the Navy, and 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, 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 your enemies would gain if the rising sun on the 5th of March should find you in the Union. Then strike while it is yet time!" 54 STEPHENS'S UNION SPEECH. known to remain a moment longer than he was compelled to in a place of danger to himself. Stephens's matter and manner were the reverse of all this. He was calm, cool, dignified, dispassionate, and solemn, but apparently earnest. "My object," he said, "is not to stir up strife, but to allay it; not to appeal to your passions, but to your reason." With the fervor which patriotic impulses inspire, and the apparent candor as well as sagacity of a philosopher, he commented on the election just ended, its significance, and its probable bearing upon the future history of the country, and especially of the Slavelabor States. "Let us reason together," he said. "Shall the people of the South secede from the Union in consequence of the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States? My countrymen, I tell you frankly, candidly, and earnestly, that I do not think that they ought. In my judgment, the election of no man, constitutionally chosen, to that high office, is sufficient cause for any State to separate from the Union. It ought to stand by and aid still in maintaining the Constitution of the country. To make a point of resistance to the Government, to withdraw from it, because a man has been constitutionally elected, puts us in the wrong. We are pledged to maintain the Constitution. Many of us have sworn to support it. Can we, therefore, for the mere election of a man to the Presidency, and that, too, in accordance with the prescribed forms of the Constitution, make a point of resistance to the Government, by withdrawing from it, without becoming the breakers of that sacred instrument ourselves? Would we not be in the wrong? Whatever fate is to befall this country, let it never be laid to the charge of the people of the South, and especially to the people of Georgia, that we were untrue to our national engagements. Let the fault and the wrong rest upon others. If all our hopes are to be blasted-if the Republic is to go down-let us be found to the last moment standing on the deck, with the Constitution of the United States waving over our heads. Let the fanatics of the North break the Constitution, if that is their fell purpose. Let the responsibility be upon them. I shall speak presently more of their acts; but let not the South-let us not be the ones to commit the aggression. We went into the election with this people. The result was different from what we wished; but the election has been constitutionally held. Were we to make a point of resistance to the Government, and go out of the Union on that account, the record would be made up hereafter against us." Mr. Stephens then showed, that with a majority of the United States. Senate and of the Supreme Court politically opposed to him, the new President would be powerless to do evil to the Slave system. "Why, then," he asked, "should we disrupt the ties of this Union when his hands are tied, and he can do nothing against us ?" "My countrymen," he continued, "I am not one of those who believe this Union has been a curse, up to this time. True men, men of integrity, entertain different views from me on this subject. I do not question their right to do so; I would not impugn their motives in so doing. Nor will I undertake to say that this Government of our fathers is perfect. There is nothing perfect in this world, of a human origin-nothing connected with human nature, from man himself to any of his works. . . . But that this Government of our fathers, with all |