ry
moment the people of South Carolina were inhibited from making the
slightest alteration in their own constitution except by slow and
conservative processes which gave time for deliberation and
reflection. In determining a question momentous beyond all
calculation to themselves and to their posterity, they were hurried
into the election of delegates, and the delegates were hurried into
convention, and the convention was hurried into secession by a
terror of public opinion that would not endure resistance and would
not listen to reason.

The few who were left in possession of coolness and sound judgment
among the public men of South Carolina, desired to stay the rush
of events by waiting for co-operation with the other slave-holding
States. Their request was denied and their argument answered by
the declaration that co-operation had been tried in 1850, and had
ended in defeating all measures looking to Disunion. One of the
members declared that if South Carolina again waited for co-operation,
slavery and State-rights would be abandoned, State-sovereignty and
the cause of the South would be lost forever. The action of the
convention was still further stimulated by the resignation of Mr.
Hammond and Mr. Chestnut, United-States senators from South Carolina,
and by the action of Governor Pickens in appointing a cabinet of
the same number and of the same division of departments that had
been adopted in the National Government.

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 S