Meanwhile public excitement had been kept at fever
heat by all manner of popular demonstrations.
The two United States Senators and the principal Federal
officials resigned their offices with a public flourish
of their insubordinate zeal. An enthusiastic ratification
meeting was given to the returning members of the Legislature.
To give still further emphasis to the general movement
a grand mass meeting was held at Charleston on the
17th of November. The streets were filled with
the excited multitude. Gaily dressed ladies crowded
balconies and windows, and zealous mothers decorated
their children with revolutionary badges. There
was a brisk trade in fire-arms and gunpowder.
The leading merchants and prominent men of the city
came forth and seated themselves on platforms to witness
and countenance a formal ceremony of insurrection.
A white flag, bearing a palmetto tree and the legend
Animis opibusque parati (one of the mottoes
on the State seal), was, after solemn prayer, displayed
from a pole of Carolina pine. Music, salutes,
and huzzahs filled the air. Speeches were addressed
to “citizens of the Southern Republic.”
Orations and processions completed the day, and illuminations
and bonfires occupied the night. The preparations
were without stint. The proceedings and ceremonies
were conducted with spirit and abandon. The rejoicings
were deep and earnest. And yet there was a skeleton
at the feast; the Federal flag, invisible among the
city banners, and absent from the gay bunting and
decorations of the harbor shipping, still floated far
down the bay over a faithful commander and loyal garrison
in Fort Moultrie.
CHAPTER XX
MAJOR ANDERSON
President Buchanan and his Administration could not,
if they would, shut their eyes to the treasonable
utterances and preparations at Charleston and elsewhere
in the South; but so far neither the speeches nor
bonfires nor palmetto flags, nor even the secession
message of Governor Gist or the Convention bill of
the South Carolina Legislature, constituted a statutory
offense. For twelve years the threat of disunion
had been in the mouths of the Southern slavery extremists
and their Northern allies the most potent and formidable
weapon of national politics. It was declaimed
on the stump, elaborated in Congressional speeches,
set out in national platforms, and paraded as a solemn
warning in executive messages.
Mr. Buchanan had profited by the disunion cry both
as politician and functionary; and now when disunion
came in a practical and undisguised shape he was to
a degree powerless to oppose it, because he was disarmed
by his own words and his own acts. The disunionists
were his partisans, his friends, and confidential
counselors; they constituted a remnant of the once
proud and successful party which, by his compliance
and cooeperation in their interest, he had disrupted
and defeated. Their programme hitherto had been
the policy upon which he had staked the success or
failure of his Administration, so that in addition
to every other tie he was bound to them by the common
sorrow of political disaster.
Copyrights
Abraham Lincoln, a History — Volume 02 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
