Expectant Immediatism: The South Carolina Secession Movement, 1859-1861 Item Type Electronic Thesis; text Authors Harvey, Sean Parulian Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 01/10/2021 01:20:16 Item License http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/144326 Table of Contents Introduction: A Reputation for Disunion .............................................................................................. 1 Part I: To Sow the Seeds of Disunion: Christopher Memminger’s Mission to Virginia .......................... 10 Part II: The Ties that Bind: The Association of 1860, Circular Letters and Fort Sumter ......................... 25 Conclusion: Expectations Fulfilled ...................................................................................................... 36 Bibliography ...................................................................................................................................... 38 Introduction: A Reputation for Disunion In the fall of 1860, South Carolinians thought they were living in precarious times. A group of concerned citizens, ever‐fearful of the growing power of the Republican Party, met in the waterfront town of Charleston, South Carolina. Wary of the imminent Republican ascendancy which would lead to the installment of the dreaded “Seward Platform,” these denizens of the Palmetto state eagerly sought any way to avert the potentially disastrous anti‐slavery effects of a GOP administration.1 In order to combat the menace to slavery that Lincoln and his cronies presented, these common citizens banded together to voice their displeasure and to devise methods to thwart the incoming administration. The device by which these men decided to combat the Republican Party was an organization that they dubbed the “1860 Association,” whose primary stated goal was: “to conduct a correspondence with leading men in the South, and by interchange of information and views prepare the slave states to meet the impending crisis.”2 This association, instead of banding together to effect political change by persuading voters, was preparing for war and openly advocated for disunion. To those familiar with the narrative surrounding South Carolina in the antebellum era, groups such as the “1860 Association” fit the prototypical conception of South Carolina as the paragon of disunionist sentiment. From the days when fiery Southern ideologue John C. Calhoun figuratively taunted the commander‐in‐chief over the tariff issue, South Carolina was viewed as the leader of the political fringe. South Carolina was filled with calculating characters eager to sever the ties with the federal government and concoct schemes and theories to justify a political and legal separation from the rest of the country. Due to the highly‐visible and salient rhetoric of people such as Calhoun,by 1859 the Palmetto State cultivated a reputation for being precipitate, rash, and hot‐headed. 1 Steven A. Channing, Crisis of Fear: Secession in South Carolina, (New York: WW North and CO, 1974), 95. 2 Robert N. Gourdin, as excerpted from John G. Nicholay and John G. Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History, (New York: The Century Co, 1914), 305. 1 This radical image had its primary origins in the Nullification Crisis of 1832, in which South Carolina boldly faced down the federal government. Emboldened by the rhetoric of John C. Calhoun, the South Carolina legislature declared a symbolically‐reduced tariff null and void within their state boundaries. South Carolina was abandoned by the rest of the South to face down the irascible Andrew Jackson. The dearth of support from the rest of the South, coupled with the pressure from Washington caused South Carolina to ultimately retreat from its position. The nullifiers’ stance was ultimately untenable, so they decided to recede from its extreme rhetoric and remain within the Union. Even though the nullifiers ultimately receded from their position out of anxiety and a lack of Southern empathy, the dominant political view highlighted South Carolina’s propensity towards disunion. South Carolina tentatively advocated secession several other times in the antebellum years and their proclivity towards disunion would eventually culminate in the Palmetto State’s “Ordinance of Secession” on December 20, 1860. This decree formally dissolved any ties between the state of South Carolina and the federal government and was issued before any other Southern state even considered the secession. According to the historiography, South Carolina’s rapid secession process symbolized the rashness and irrationality that dominated the political machinations of the Palmetto state. To the analysts that ascribe a reputation of unbridled disunion upon South Carolina, the narrative of disunion begins and ends in South Carolina. It was not a question of if but how South Carolina would secede. In this historiographical tradition, the reputation of South Carolina as a petulant disunionist preceded itself. Whether this reputation is warranted or not, is a matter that has been largely ignored by historians. On the surface, Robert N. Gourdin and his coterie of disunionists appear to fit into the typical mold of South Carolina immediatists—or, as the parlance of the day would describe them, “separate‐ state actionists.”3 According to historians, an unseen cabal of powerful politicians and prominent citizens provided the impetus for disunion. Recent treatments of secession describe a secret network of 3 Charles Edward Cauthen, South Carolina Goes to War, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1950), 4 2 powerful individuals, most prominent among them Governor William H, Gist who, “by clandestine communication with other Southern governors… offered assurances, as early as October, that his state would secede immediately upon Lincoln’s election and solicited their commitment to follow.”4 In this view—which is typical of the historiography surrounding the subject—South Carolina had unequivocally decided to exit the Union alone, with the cooperationof other states merely serving as an afterthought, or perhaps an added bonus. This framework posits a paradigm in which two opposing camps jostled to control the direction of secession in South Carolina and scholars tend to bifurcate secessionists into immediatists and coooperationists.5 Traditionally, people like Governor William H. Gist and the members of the 1860 Association are described as immediatists, since they advocated “immediate secession, alone if necessary.” In the typical narrative surrounding the secession movement, immediatists, or separate‐ state actionists comprised the overwhelming majority of secessionists, and were confined to the upper‐ echelons of the political elite. In contrast to that faction stood the cooperationists, who claimed to “stand for secession ultimately alone if necessary, but only after an attempt had been made in a Southern conference to enlist the cooperation of other Southern states.”6 The primary argument states that cooperationists comprised the majority of South Carolinians, and were largely coerced by immediatists into exiting the Union, or falsely‐informed that cooperation with other states was imminent.7 While the separation of secessionists into two discrete camps is a useful tool to understand the political tension among the Gulf‐Squadron states upon the eve of the Civil War, this starkly‐divided conception over‐simplifies the ultimate purpose that motivated both immediatists and cooperationists 4 Stephanie McCurry, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South, (Harvard University Press, 2010), 51. 5 Charles Edward Cauthen, South Carolina Goes to War, 4. 6 Ibid. 7 McCurry, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South, 51‐52. 3 to depart from the Union. Undeniably, the goal for both immediatists and cooperationists was the creation of an independent Southern nation, which inevitably required the collaboration of other slaveholding states.8 This goal remained foremost on the minds of immediatists such as Robert N. Gourdin and the 1860 Association, which engaged in practices such as pamphleteering and circular correspondence directed at other Southern states to bolster support for “the cause of Southern Union and Independence.”9 Consistent with the goals of cooperationists, Governor William Henry Gist eagerly eagerly sought the assurance of other Southern states. The Governor declared: “It is the desire of South Carolina that some other state should take the lead or move at least simultaneously with her… [i]f no other State takes the lead, South Carolina will secede…alone, if she has any assurance that she will be soon followed by another or other States; otherwise it is doubtful.”10 When examining the secession movement from its genesis in 1859 to its consummation in 1861, it becomes apparent that the movement was founded upon the notion that even if secession were undertaken separately, it required the eventual cooperation of other states. In order to fully comprehend the secession movement in South Carolina, it is critical to understand that cooperationism and immediatism were not mutually‐exclusive. To be sure, leaders such as Gist felt that cooperation