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who feared public ridicule more than the contagion, begged them not. to flee.
“We shall be sneered at,” he said.
“It will be asked on all sides, ‘Is this the chivalry of
South Carolina?’
They are. prepared to face the world, but they run away from small-pox.”
He was afraid of an hour's delay in their treasonable work.
He said that the last thing urged upon him by Congressmen from the Cotton-producing States, when he left
Washington, was to take
South Carolina out of the
Union instantly.
“Now, Sir,” he said, “when the news reaches
Washington that we have met here, that a panic arose about a few cases of small-pox in the city, and that we forthwith scampered off to
Charleston, the effect would be a little ludicrous.”
The “chivalry of
South Carolina” did “scamper off to
Charleston” the next morning,
where they were received with military honors, and at four o'clock in the afternoon re-assembled in Institute Hall.
At the evening session in Columbia, before their flight, John A. Elmore, of Alabama, and Charles E. Hooker, of Mississippi, were introduced to the Convention as commissioners from their respective States.
They successively addressed the Convention in favor of the immediate and unconditional secession of the State; and so anxious was Governor Moore, of Alabama, that South Carolina should not delay a moment, for fear of the people, that he telegraphed to Elmore as follows:--“Tell the Convention to listen to no proposition of compromise or delay.”
1
On assembling at Charleston, the Convention proceeded at once to business.
They appointed
one Committee to draft an ordinance of secession ;
2 another to prepare an address to the people of the
Southern States;
3 another to draft a declaration of the causes that impelled and justified the secession of
South Carolina ;
4 and five others, consisting of thirteen persons each, and entitled, respectively, “Committee on the Message of the
President of the
United States, relating to property ;” “Committee on Relations with the
Slaveholding States of
North America;” “Committee on foreign relations;” “Committee on Commercial Relations and Postal Arrangements ;” and “Committee on the
Constitution of this State.”
Judge Magrath moved to refer to a committee of thirteen so much of President Buchanan's Message as related to the property of the United States within the limits of South Carolina, and instruct them to report “of what such property consists, how acquired, and whether the purpose for which it was so acquired can be enjoyed by the United States after the State of South ”
