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conspirators for a while; but when, in 1856,
John C. Fremont, an opponent of Slavery, was nominated for the Presidency by the newly formed Republican party, they had another pretext for a display of their boasted disloyalty to the
Union.
One of their number, named
Brooks, with his hands stained, as it were, with the blood of a Senator whom he had struck to the floor in the
Senate Chamber at
Washington with a bludgeon, with murderous intent (and who, for this so-called “chivalrous act,” was rewarded by his compeers with the present of a gold-headed cane, and re-election to Congress), said, in an harangue before an excited populace, “I tell you that the only mode which I think available for meeting the issue is just to tear in twain the
Constitution of the United States, trample it under-foot, and form a Southern Confederacy, every State of which shall be a Slave-holding State. . . . . I have been a disunionist from the time I could think.
If I were commander of an army, I never would post a sentinel who would not swear that slavery was right.... If
Fremont be elected
President of the
United States, I am for the people in their majesty rising above the laws and leaders, taking the power into their own hands, going by concert, or not by concert, and laying the strong arm of Southern freemen upon the treasury and archives of the
Government.”
This is a favorable specimen of speeches made to excited crowds all over
South Carolina and the Cotton-growing States at that time.
The restless spirits of South Carolina were quieted, for a while, by the election of Buchanan, in the autumn of 1856.
They were disappointed, because they seemed compelled to wait for another pretext for rebellion.
But they did not wait.
They conferred secretly, on the subject of disunion, with politicians in other Slave-labor States, and finally took open action in the old
State House at Columbia.
The lower House of the South Carolina Legislature, on the 30th of November, 1859, resolved that the “Commonwealth was ready to enter, together with other Slave-holding States, or such as desire prompt action, into the formation of a Southern Confederacy.”
At the request of the Legislature, the Governor of the State sent a copy of this resolution to the Governors of the other Slave-labor States; and in January following,
C. G. Memminger, one of the arch-conspirators of
South Carolina, appeared before the General Assembly of
Virginia as a special commissioner from his State.
His object was to enlist the representatives of
Virginia in a scheme of disunion, whilst, with the degrading hypocrisy which has ever characterized the leaders in the Great Rebellion, he professed zealous attachment to the
Union.
He proposed, in the name of
South Carolina, a
