Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

[176] personal aggrandizement, and contempt for “common folks,” made him impatient of the popular will, and consequently inimical to republican institutions, was unceasing in his efforts to destroy the confidence of the people in their free Government. He employed falsehood, menaces, and the low arts of the mere demagogue in his unholy work; and he seems to have been the chief manager, while at home and in Washington, of a system of subtle terrorism, by which a majority of the members of the Convention, called to consider secession, were chosen from among the politicians of his disloyal school. In Georgia, as in Virginia, and most of the other Slavelabor States, there were “Minute-men,” “Vigilance committees,” “Defense committees,” “Brotherhoods,” “Knights of the Golden Circle,” “Southern rights,” and other associations, all working in the interest of the conspirators. These were used before the election, and at the ballot-box, with great effect. “It is a notable fact,” said a leading Georgia journal,¹ “that wherever the ‘Minute-men,’ as they are called, have had an organization, those counties have voted, by large majorities, for immediate secession. Those that they could not control by persuasion and coaxing, they dragooned and bullied by threats, jeers, and sneers. By this means, thousands of good citizens were induced to vote the immediate secession ticket through timidity. Besides, the towns and cities have been flooded with sensation dispatches and inflammatory rumors, manufactured in Washington City for the especial occasion. To be candid, there has never been as much lying and bullying practiced, in the same length of time, since the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, as has in the recent campaign. The fault has been at Washington City; from that cesspool have emanated all the abominations that ever cursed a free people.”

The Georgia journalist told the truth at that time, for Washington City was, indeed, the place where the voltaic pile of active treason was to be found, in the persons of the congregated conspirators in Congress. So early as the 13th of December,

1860.

about twenty of them assembled at night, at the rooms of Reuben Davis, a Representative from Mississippi (one of the Committee of Thirty-three²), and there signed the following letter to their constituents:--“The argument is exhausted. All hope of relief in the Union, through the agency of Committees, Congressional legislation, or Constitutional amendments, is extinguished, and we trust the South will not be deceived by appearances or the pretense of new guaranties. The Republicans are resolute in the purpose to grant nothing that will or ought to satisfy the South. We are satisfied the honor, safety, and independence of the Southern people are to be found only in a Southern Confederacy--a result to be obtained only by separate State secession — and that the sole and primary aim of each Slaveholding State ought to be its speedy and absolute separation from an unnatural and hostile Union.”

This declaration, signed by a large number of Senators and Representatives, was scattered broadcast over the Slave-labor States, first by the telegraph and then in print.³ It was one of the many “sensation dispatches”