The Governors and Legislatures of several of the Slave-labor States took early action against the National Government. The South Carolina politicians moved first. They were traditionally rebellious, gloried in their turbulence, and were jealous of any leadership or priority of action in the great drama of Treason about to be opened.
Governor Gist called the South Carolina Legislature to meet in extraordinary session, in the old State House at Columbia, on Monday, the 5th of November, for the purpose of choosing, on the following day, Presidential electors.2 In his message to both Houses, he recommended the authorization of a convention of the people, to consider the expediency of withdrawing the State from the Union, in the event of Lincoln's election. He expressed a desire that such withdrawal should be accomplished. “The indications from many of the Southern States,” he said,
The old State House at Columbia. |
“justify the conclusion that the secession of South Carolina will be immediately followed, if not adopted simultaneously, by them, and ultimately by the entire South. . . . The State has, by great unanimity, declared that she has the right peaceably to secede,3 and no power on earth can rightfully prevent it. If, in the exercise of arbitrary power, and forgetful of the lessons of history, the Government of the United States should attempt coercion, it will become our solemn duty to meet force by force; and, whatever may be the decision of the convention ”