lved in the
institution. The blood of the dominant race became intermingled
with the black, and often white blood predominated in the slave.
The offspring of slaveholders became slaves, and were dealt in the
same as the pure African. Concubinage existed generally where
slaves were numerous.

The rule was that any person born of a slave mother was doomed to
perpetual slavery.

As early as 1856, perhaps earlier, conferences were proposed among
leaders in some of the Southern States looking to secession. They
were repeated again in 1858, and before the election of Lincoln in
1860.(102) And Southern secret societies were formed in 1860 to
promote the same end.

The existence of a disunion cabal in Buchanan's Cabinet, working
to bring about disunion, was hardly a secret.

Howell Cobb of Georgia, Secretary of the Treasury, John B. Floyd
of Virginia, Secretary of War, Jacob Thompson of Mississippi,
Secretary of the Interior, and possibly others, were of the Cabinet
cabal.

Buchanan, though himself desiring to preserve the Union, had not
the bold temperament, and he had too long been a political tool of
the slave power to effectually resist its violent aggressions; nor
did he have the discernment to discover that his official household
was the centre of a disunion movement. His Secretary of War
distributed officers of the army believed to be friendly to the
South where they could become available to it; he sent from the
North small arms and cannon, ammunition and stores where they could
be seized at the right time.(103) Members of the Cabinet kept the
secession leaders advised of all acts of the administration, and
generally aided them. The auspicious time, if ever, seemed to have
come for a successful dissolution of the Union. The army and navy
were full of able Southern men, ready, as the sequel proves, to go
with their States, abandon the country that had nurtured and educated
them, and the flag that had been their glory.

Governor Wm. H. Gist, of South Carolina, October 5, 1860, by
confidential letters to the governors of the cotton States, fairly
inaugurated disunion, based on the anticipated election of Abraham
Lincoln a month thence.(104)

One week later, without waiting for a consultation of governors of
slave States, he, by proclamation, convened the Legislature of
South Carolina to "_take action for the safety and protection of
the State_."

This body met November 5th, the day preceding the Presid