The President’s message provoked immediate and heated controversy in Congress.  In the Senate the battle was begun by the radical secessionists, who at once avowed their main plans and purposes.  Mr. Clingman, of North Carolina, opening the debate, predicted that the same political organization which had elected Lincoln must soon control the entire Government, and being guided by a sentiment hostile to the Southern States would change the whole character of the Government without abolishing its forms.  A number of States would secede within the next sixty days.

Mr. Brown, of Mississippi, said the accumulating wrongs of years had finally culminated in the triumph of principles to which they could not and would not submit.  All they asked was to be allowed to depart in peace.

[Illustration:  GENERAL ROBERT TOOMBS.]

  [Sidenote] “Globe,” Dec. 5 1860, p. 11.

Mr. Iverson, of Georgia, invoking not only secession, but revolution and assassination, announced specifically the hopes of the conspirators.  “I am satisfied that South Carolina will resolve herself into a separate sovereign and independent State before the Ides of January; that Florida and Mississippi, whose conventions are soon to meet, will follow the example of South Carolina, and that Alabama ... will go out of the Union on the 7th of January.  Then the Georgia Convention follows on the 16th of that month; and if these other surrounding sisters shall take the step, Georgia will not be behind ...  I speak what I believe on this floor, that before the 4th of March five of the Southern States at least will have declared their independence; and I am satisfied that three others of the Cotton States will follow as soon as the action of the people can be had.  Arkansas, whose Legislature is now in session, will in all probability call a convention at an early day.  Louisiana will follow.  Her Legislature is to meet; and although there is a clog in the way of the lone star State of Texas, in the person of her Governor, ... if he does not yield to public sentiment, some Texan Brutus will arise to rid his country of the hoary-headed incubus that stands between the people and their sovereign will.  We intend, Mr. President, to go out peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must.”

  [Sidenote] “Globe,” Dec. 5, 1860, p. 14.

Senator Wigfall, of Texas, took a high revolutionary attitude.  “We simply say that a man who is distasteful to us has been elected and we choose to consider that as a sufficient ground for leaving the Union.”  He said he should “introduce a resolution at an early moment to ascertain what are the orders that have gone from the War Department to the officers in command of those forts” at Charleston.  If the people of South Carolina believed that this Government would hold those forts, and collect the revenues from them, after they had ceased to be one of the States of this Union, his judgment was that the moment they became satisfied of that fact they would take the forts, and blood would then begin to flow.