To effect these objects a brief and
simple Constitution was adopted, creating a President,
a Secretary and Treasurer, and an Executive Committee
specially charged with conducting the business of
the Association. One hundred and sixty-six thousand
pamphlets have been published, and demands for
further supplies are received from every quarter.
The Association is now passing several of them through
a second and third edition.
The conventions in several of the Southern
States will soon be elected. The North is
preparing to soothe and conciliate the South by
disclaimers and overtures. The success of this
policy would be disastrous to the cause of Southern
Union and Independence, and it is necessary to
resist and defeat it. The Association is preparing
pamphlets with this special object. Funds
are necessary to enable it to act promptly.
“The 1860 Association” is laboring for
the South, and asks your aid.
I am, very respectfully your
obedient servant,
ROBERT N. GOURDIN,
Chairman of the Executive
Committee.
The half-public endeavors of “The 1860 Association”
to create public sentiment were vigorously seconded
by the efforts of high official personages to set
on foot concerted official action in aid of disunion.
In this also, with becoming expressions of modesty,
South Carolina took the initiative. On the 5th
of October, Governor Gist wrote the following confidential
letter, which he dispatched by a secret agent to his
colleagues, the several Governors of the Cotton States,
whom the bearer, General S.R. Gist, visited in
turn during that month of October.
The responses to this inquiry given by the Executives
of the other Cotton States were not all that so ardent
a disunionist could have wished, but were yet sufficient
to prompt him to a further advance.
[Sidenote] MS. Confederate Archives, U.S.
War Department.
EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT,
UNIONVILLE, S.C., Oct. 5,
1860.
His EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR MOORE.
DEAR SIR: The great probability,
nay almost certainty, of Abraham Lincoln’s
election to the Presidency renders it important that
there should be a full and free interchange of
opinion between the Executives of the Southern,
and more especially the Cotton, States, and while
I unreservedly give you my views and the probable
action of my State, I shall be much pleased to hear
from you; that there may be concert of action,
which is so essential to success. Although
I will consider your communication confidential, and
wish you so to consider mine so far as publishing in
the newspapers is concerned, yet the information,
of course, will be of no service to me unless
I can submit it to reliable and leading men in
consultation for the safety of our State and the South;
and will only use it in this way. It is the
desire of South Carolina that some other State
should take the lead, or at least move simultaneously
