MEMMINGER'S PROPHECIES. 95 to the next compact as she has been to this which she is now endeavoring to avoid." We may also add the important fact that the great mass of the people, especially of Western Virginia, were too thoroughly loyal to follow the leadings of the politicians into revolutionary ways. November 30, 1860. Almost a year rolled away, and the same man (Memminger) stood up before a large congregation of citizens in Charleston," and, in a speech which perfectly exhibited the power of the politicians over the people of South Carolina, foreshadowed, in distinct outline, the course of revolutionary events in the near future. He foretold the exact day when an ordinance of secession would be passed in the coming State Convention; that Commissioners would be sent to Washington to treat on the terms of separation; that the demand would be made for the surrender of the forts in Charleston harbor into the hands of insurgents, and if surrender should be refused, armed South Carolinians would take them. He spoke of the weakness of the National Government with Buchanan at its head, and the consequently auspicious time for them then to strike the murderous blow at the life of the Republic. He exhorted the people to be prepared for revolution, for it was surely at hand. He knew how plastic would be the material of the Legislature and the coming Convention in the hands of the few leaders like himself, and that these leaders had power to accomplish the fulfillment of their own prophecies concerning the course of events under their control. Memminger was one of the managers of a league of conspirators in Charleston known as "The 1860 Association," formed in September previous, for the avowed purpose of maddening the people, and forcing them into acquiescence in the revolutionary scheme of the conspirators. As early as the 19th of November, Robert N. Gourdin, "Chairman of the Executive Committee" of the Association, in a circular letter said: "The North is preparing to soothe and conciliate the South, by disclaimers and overtures. The success of this policy would be disastrous to the cause of Southern union and independence, and it is necessary to resist and defeat it. The Association is preparing pamphlets for this special object." As we shall observe hereafter, all of the time and labor spent in Congress in endeavors to conciliate the Slave-power was wasted. There was a predetermination to accept of nothing as satisfactory.' South Carolina was then in a blaze of excitement. The Legislature, which, in special session, had provided for a Convention and the arming of the State, had adjourned on the 13th of November. The members were honored that evening by a great torch-light procession in the streets of Columbia. The old banner of the Union was taken down from the State House and the Palmetto Flag was unfurled in its place; and it was boastfully declared that the old ensign-the "detested rag of the Union "-should never again float in the free air of South Carolina. 1 Letter of John Minor Botts to "HI. B. M., Esq.," of Staunton, dated November 27, 1860. * See Chapter IX. In the circular referred to, Gourdin stated the principal objects of the Association to be the interchange of views to "prepare the Slave States to meet the impending crisis;" to prepare, print, and circulate tracts and pamphlets designed to awaken the people to a sense of danger,” and to aid the Legislature in promptly establishing "an effective military organization." The object of this circular was to beg for money to carry on the work of the Association. He stated that one hundred and sixty thousand pamphlets had already been distributed, and yet there was a good demand for them. 96 SPEECH OF ROBERT BARNWELL RHETT Already Robert Barnwell Rhett, appropriately called the "Father of South Carolina secession," had sounded the tocsin. He was an arrogant demagogue, whose family name was Smith, and whose lineal root was to be found in obscurity, among the sand-hills near the mouth of the Cape Fear River, in North Carolina. He made his residence at Beaufort, South Carolina, when he dropped the name of Smith and took that of Rhett-a name honorable in the early history of that State.' He succeeded in taking position among respectable men in South Carolina. With vulgar instinct ROBERT BARNWELL RHETT. he spurned the " common people," boasted of "superior blood," and by the force of social influence, and much natural talent for oratory and intrigue, with the aid of the Charleston Mercury, edited by his equally disloyal son, he did more than any other man since the days of Hamilton, and Hayne, and Calhoun, to bring the miseries of civil war upon the State that gave him shelter and honor. From the moment of the disruption of the Charleston Convention of Democrats, in April, 1860, he had been an active traitor in deeds and words; and so early as the 12th of November, the day before the South Carolina Legislature adjourned, he declared in Institute Hall, in Charleston, that the Union was dissolved; and that henceforth there would be deliverance, and peace, and liberty for South Carolina. "The long weary night of our humiliation, oppression, and danger," he said, "is passing away, and the glorious dawn of a Southern Confederacy breaks on our view." Alluding to the people of the North, he said, "Swollen with insolence and steeped in ignorance, selfishness, and fanaticism, they will never understand their dependence on the South until the Union is dissolved, and they are left naked to their own resources." Then the poor madman, with ludicrous gravity, began to prophesy. "Then, and not till then," he said, "will they realize what a blessing the Almighty conferred upon them when he placed them in union with the South; and they will curse, in the bitterness of penitence and suffering, the dark day on which they compelled us to dissolve it with them. Upon a dissolution of the Union, their whole system of commerce and manufactures will be paralyzed or overthrown-their banks will suspend specie payments their stocks and real estate will fall in price, and confusion and distress will pervade the North. Broad processions will walk the streets of their great cities; mobs will break into their palaces, and society there will be resolved into its original chaos." He then went on to say, that there would be great difficulty in limiting the Southern Confederacy. "Many of the Free States," he said, "will desire to join us." He proposed to let them in, on condition that "the Southern Confederacy should be a Slaveholding Confederacy;" that taxation should be light, and that the forts in Charleston 1 Note to article on "Beaufort District," by Frederic Kidder, in the Continental Monthly, 1862. Anxious to secure European good-will, the leaders in the great revolt, when it assumed the form of civil war, tried to hide this fact-this great object of the Rebellion-but there were some too honest or too MISSIONARIES OF TREASON. 97 harbor should "never be surrendered to any power on earth." Such was the language of a "leading statesman" of South Carolina, whom the people were required to venerate as an oracle of wisdom. Rhett gave the key-note. Men went out at once, as missionaries of treason, all over South Carolina, and motley crowds of men, women, and children-Caucasian and African-listened, in excited groups, at crossroads, court-houses, and other usual gathering-places. The burden of every speech was the wrongs suffered by South Carolina, in the Union; her right and her duty to leave it; her power to "defy the world in arms;" and the glory that would illumine her whole domain in that near future, when her independence of the thralls of the "detested Constitution" should be secured. "Statesmen," released from service in the Legislature, joined in this missionary work. To the slaveholders one said, in a speech in Charleston:"Three thousand millions of property is involved in this question, and if you say at the ballot-box that South Carolina shall not secede, you put into the sacrifice three thousand millions of your property. . . . The Union is a dead carcass, stinking in the nostrils of the South. . . . Ay, my friends, a few di weeks more, and you will see floating from the fortifications the ensign that now bears the Palmetto, the emblem of a Southern Confederacy." The Charleston Mercury, conducted, as we have observed, by a son of R. B. Rhett, called upon all natives of South Carolina in the Army or Navy of the United States to throw up their commissions, and join in the revolt. "The mother looks to her sons," said this fiery organ of treason, "to protect her from outrage. . . . She is sick of the Union-disgusted with it, upon any terms within the range of the widest possibility." The call was responded to by the resignations of many commissions held by South Carolinians; and the conspirators, unable to comprehend a supreme love for the Union, boasted that not a son of that State would prove loyal to the old flag.' They were amazed when patriots like Commodore Shubrick refused to do the bidding of traitors. 5137 THE PALMETTO.! reckless to keep it back. At the end of almost four years of war, the Charleston Mercury, the leading organ of rebellion from the beginning, declared [February, 1864]: "South Carolina entered into this struggle for no other purpose than to maintain the institution of Slavery. Southern independence has no other object or meaning.... Independence and Slavery must stand together or fall together." The tree of the palm family, known as the Cabbage Palmetto, grows near the shores of South Carolina and Georgia, in great perfection. It is confined to the neighborhood of salt water. Its timber is very valuable in all submarine constructions. Its unexpanded young leaves form a most delicious vegetable for the table. Its perfect leaves are used in the manufacture of hats, mats, baskets, &c. The foliage forms a broad tuft at the upper part of the stem. It is the chief figure on the seal of South Carolina, and has ever been an embim of the State. 2 One of those who abandoned the flag was Lieutenant J. R. Hamilton, of the Navy, who, on the 14th of January, 1861, issued a circular letter from Fort Moultrie to his fellow-officers in that branch of the service, VOL. I.-7 98 EXCITEMENT IN CHARLESTON. On the 16th of November, the Chancellor (Dunkin) of South Carolina closed his court, and expressed a hope that when the members should reassemble, it would be "as a court in an independent State, and that State a member of a Southern Confederacy." The next day was a gala one in Charleston. A pine "liberty-pole," ninety feet in height, was erected, and a Palmetto flag was unfurled from its top-a white flag, with a green Palmetto-tree in the middle, and the motto of South Carolina :-ANIMIS OPIBUSQUE PARATI; that is, "Prepared in mind and resources--ready to give life and property." It was greeted with the roar of cannon a hundred times repeated, and the "Marseillaise Hymn" by a band. This was followed by the "Miserere" from "Il Trovatore," played as a requiem for the departed Union. Full twenty thousand people, it is said, participated in this "inauguration of revolution;" and the Rev. C. P. Gadsden invoked the blessing of God upon their acts. These ceremonies were followed by speeches (some from Northern men, in Charleston on business), in which the people were addressed as Citizens of the Southern Republic ;" and processions filled the streets, bearing from square to square many banners with significant inscriptions.1 No Union flag was seen upon any ship in the harbor, for vigilance committees, assuming police powers, had already been formed in Charleston and other places, as a part of the system of coercion put in practice against Union men in the Slave-labor States immediately after Lincoln's election." These vigilance associations were in active operation by the close of November, and before the ordinance of secession had been decreed by the Convention, large numbers of persons from the North had been arraigned by them, and banished from the State, after much suffering, on suspicion of being unfriendly to the schemes of the conspirators. In some cases, where men were accused of being actual Abolitionists, they were stripped, and covered with tar and feathers. These committees, with the power to torture, soon made the expressed sentiment of South Carolina "unanimous in favor of secession ;" and the organ of the conspirators--the Mercury-was justified in assuring the South Carolinians. in the employment of the United States Government, when calling them home, that "they need have no more doubt of South Carolina's going out of the STREET FLAG- calling upon them to follow his example. It was a characteristic production. After talking much of "honor," he thus counseled his friends to engage in plundering the Government:-"What the South most asks of you now is, to bring with you every ship and man you can, that we may use them against the oppressors of our liberties, and the enemies of our aggravated but united people." At that time, thirty-six naval officers, born in Slavelabor States, had resigned. 1 On these banners were the words:-"South Carolina goes it alone;" "God, Liberty, and the State;" *South Carolina wants no Stripes;" "Stand to your arms, Palmetto Boys;" "Huzza for a Southern Confederacy" "Now or never, strike for Independence;" "Good-by, Yankee Doodle;" "Death to all Abolitionists;" "Let us bury the Union's dead carcass," &c. 2 In this little sketch is seen the spire of the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. John and St. Finbar, mentioned at near the close of Chapter XIII. of this volume. Orville J. Victor, in the first volume (page 47) of his History of the Southern Rebellion and War for the Union, cites the resolutions of the citizens of Lexington District, South Carolina, in forming a vigilance asso REVOLT DETERMINED ON BY CONSPIRATORS. 99 Union than of the world's turning round. Every man that goes to the Convention will be a pledged man," it said, "pledged for immediate separate State secession, in any event whatever." This was before the members of the proposed convention had been chosen. The Southern Presbyterian, a theological work of wide and powerful influence, published at Columbia, said, on the 15th of December, “It is well known that the members of the Convention have been elected with the understanding and expectation that they will dissolve the relations of South Carolina with the Federal Union, immediately and unconditionally. This is a foregone conclusion in South Carolina. It is a matter for devout thankfulness that the Convention will embody the very highest wisdom and character of the State: private gentlemen, judges of her highest legal tribunals, and ministers of the Gospel..... Before we issue another number of this paper the deed may be done--the Union may be dissolved—we may have ceased to be in the United States." One of the most distinguished literary men of the South (William Gilmore Simms), in a letter to the author, dated December 13,a said: "In ten days more, South Carolina will have certainly seceded; and in reasonable interval after that event, if the forts in our harbor are not surrendered to the State, they will be taken." With equal confidence and precision all the politicians spoke in the ears of the people, and only a few men, like the noble and venerable J. L. Pettigru of Charleston, gladly doubted the success of the kindling revolt, and dared to say so. The conspirators had settled the question beforehand; the people had nothing to do with it, excepting as instruments employed to give to the work of these men the appearance of its having been done "according to due forms of law." ☐ 1860. The Legislature of South Carolina met in regular session on the 26th of November; and on the 10th of December it chose Francis W. Pickens to be Governor of the State. That body was greeted with the most cheering news of the spreading of secession sentiments, like a fierce conflagration, all over the Slave-labor States; and Governor Gist, in his farewell message, intended as much for the Convention as the Legislature, stimulated it to revolutionary action. He urged the necessity of quickly arranged and efficient measures on the part of South Carolina. He was afraid of the return of calm thought to the minds of the people. "The delay of the Convention," he said, "for a single week to pass the Ordinance of Secession will have a blighting and chilling influence upon the other States. He hoped that, by the 28th of December, "no flag but the Palmetto would float over any part of South Carolina." Pickens, who had been a member of the National Congress ten consecutive years, and minister to the Russian Court by Buchanan's appointment, was a worthy successor of Gist; 1835-1845. ciation, as a fair example of the power conferred upon these self-constitnted guardians of "Southern Rights." They provided for monthly meetings of the officers, who should have full power to decide all cases that might be brought before them, which decisions should be "final and conclusive;" that the president should ap point as many captains of patrol of five men as he might think necessary; that the patrol companies should have power to arrest all suspicions white persons, and bring them before the Executive Committee for trial; that they stood pledged to "put down all negro preachings, prayer-meetings, and all congregations of negroes that may be considered unlawful by the patrol companies;" that these companies should have the power to correct and punish all slaves, free negroes, mulattoes, and mestizocs, as they may deem proper; that they should give special passos; that every person should be requested to sign the resolutions, and thus sanction them; that all who refuse to do duty, when called upon, should be reported; and that all peddlers should be prohibited from passing through the country, unless duly authorized to do so. |