THE ACTION OF SOUTH CAROLINA.
South Carolina was urged forward in this course by leading Disunionists in other States who needed the force of one bold example of secession to furnish the requisite stimulus to their own communities. The members of the South Carolina convention, recognizing the embarrassment and incongruity of basing their action simply upon the constitutional election of a President, declared that the public opinion of their State "had for a long period been strengthening and ripening for Disunion." Mr. Rhett, eminent in the public service of his State, asserted "that the secession of South Carolina was not produced by Mr. Lincoln's election, or by the non-execution of the Fugitive- slave Law; that it was a matter which had been gathering head for thirty years," and that they were now "determined upon their course at whatever risk."
Among the singular incidents of the South-Carolina secession, followed subsequently by other States, was the solemn import attached to the word ordinance. The South gave it a significance which elevated its authority above the Constitution, and above the laws of their own State and of the United States. And yet, neither in legal definition nor in any ordinary use of the word, was there precedent or authority for attaching to it such impressive meaning. An ordinance of Parliament was but a temporary Act which the Commons might alter at their pleasure. An Act of Parliament could not be changed except by the consent of king, lords, and commons. In this country, aside from the use of the word in declaring the freedom of the North-west Territory in 1787, ordinance has uniformly been applied to Acts of inferior bodies, to the councils of cities, to the authorities of towns, to the directors of corporations,—rarely if ever to the Acts of legislative assemblies which represent the power of the State.
It is still more singular that, in passing the ordinance of Secession, the convention worded it so that it should seem to be the repeal of the ordinance of the 23d of May, 1788, whereby the Constitution of the United States was ratified by South Carolina, when, in simple truth, the Act of that State ratifying the Federal Constitution was never called an ordinance. Mirabeau said that words were things; and this word was so used in the proceedings of Secession conventions as to impress the mind of the Southern people with its portentous weight and solemnity. With an amendment to the constitutions of their States they had all been familiar. In the enactment of their laws thousands had participated. But no one of them had ever before seen or heard or dreamed of any thing of such momentous and decisive character as an Ordinance. Even to this day, when disunion, secession, rebellion have all been destroyed by the shock of arms, and new institutions have been built over their common grave, the word "ordinance" has, in the minds of many people both in the North and in the South, a sound which represents the very majesty of popular power.
If the other Southern States would have been left to their own counsels, South Carolina would have stood alone, and her Secession of 1860 would have proved as abortive as her Nullification of 1832. The Disunion movement in the remaining States of the South originated in Washington. Finding that the Cotton States, especially those bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, were moving too slowly, the senators from Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, and Florida held a meeting in Washington on the 5th of January, 1861. The South had always contended for the right of States to instruct their senators, but now the Southern senators proceeded to instruct their States. In effect they sent out commands to the governing authorities and to the active political leaders, that South Carolina must be sustained; that the Cotton States must stand by her; and that the secession of each and all of them must be accomplished in season for a general convention to be held at Montgomery, not later than Feb. 15, and, in any event, before the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln. The design was that the new President of the United States should find a Southern Confederacy in actual existence, with the ordinary departments of government in regular operation, with a name and a flag and a great seal, and all the insignia of national sovereignty visible.
It is a suggestive fact that, in carrying out these designs, the political leaders determined, as far as possible, to prevent the submission of the ordinances of Secession to the popular vote. It is not indeed probable that, in the excited condition to which they had by this time brought the Southern mind, Secession would have been defeated; but the withholding of the question from popular decision is at least an indication that there was strong apprehension of such a result, and that care was taken to prevent the divisions and acrimonious contests which such submission might have caused. In the Georgia convention the resolution declaring it to be her right and her duty to secede was adopted only by a vote of 165 to 130. A division of similar proportion in the popular vote would have stripped the secession of Georgia of all moral force, and hence the people were not allowed to pass upon the question.
ACTION OF OTHER COTTON STATES.
Georgia was really induced to secede, only upon the delusive suggestion that better terms could be made with the National Government by going out for a season than by remaining steadfastly loyal. The influence of Alexander H. Stephens, while he was still loyal, was almost strong enough to hold the State in the Union; and but for the phantasm of securing better terms outside, the Empire State of the South would have checked and destroyed the Secession movement at the very outset. Mississippi followed Jefferson Davis with a vote amounting almost to unanimity. Florida, Louisiana, and Alabama followed with secession ordained by conventions and no vote allowed to the people. Texas submitted the ordinance, after the other States had seceded, and by the force of their example carried it by a vote of about three to one. These were the original seven States that formed the nucleus of the Confederacy. They had gone through what they deemed the complete process of separation from the Union, without the slightest obstruction from any quarter and without the interposition of any authority from the National Government against their proceedings.
Long before the Secession movement had been developed to the extent just detailed, Congress was in session. It assembled one month after the Presidential election, and fifteen days before the Disunionists of South Carolina met in their ill-starred convention. Up to that time there had been excitement, threats of resistance to the authority of the government in many sections of the South, and an earnest attempt in the Cotton States to promote co-operation in the fatal step which so many were bent on taking. But there had been no overt act against the national authority. Federal officers were still exercising their functions in all the States; the customs were still collected in Southern ports; the United- States mails were still carried without molestation from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. But the critical moment had come. The Disunion conspiracy had reached a point where it must go forward with boldness, or retreat before the displayed power and the uplifted flag of the Nation. The administration could adopt no policy so dangerous as to permit the enemies of the Union to proceed in their conspiracy, and the hostile movement to gain perilous headway. At that juncture Mr. Buchanan confronted a graver responsibility than had ever before been imposed on a President of the United States. It devolved on him to arrest the mad outbreak of the South by judicious firmness, or by irresolution and timidity to plunge the Nation into dangers and horrors, the extent of which was mercifully veiled from the vision of those who were to witness and share them.