s. CAR. REF 973.713 LES c ' S5 CAR. Lesser, Charles H. REF Re11c o£ the Lost 973.713 Cause4 LES Iistory The design on the cover and title page is adapted from the line drawing of the "Secession Banner" in George Henry Preble's Histary of the Flag of the United States ... Illillllll~illl~III~11I ~111111111111iijlllilllllllllll 9502 9100 019 202 1 - - ----_ .._----, -- ,--.-':.".- >,-:-~/,:"~~,,. '\:~'I'i-t-j. 'The Story of South Carolina's Ordinance of Secession by Charles H Lesser * The Ordinance of Secession David F. Jamison, President of tlM Secession Convention. This contnnporary carte tk oisise is by tlM Charleston photographer C j. Quinby, whose firm was on J(jng Street. Quinby executed a remarkable series of photographs of 11Mtklegates while they urerein Charleston. "The Ordinance of Secession has been like evening, he read South Carolina's Charleston for weeks. Since Novern- signed and ratified," intoned David F. new Declaration of Independence to ber, when several large public meet- Jamison, president of the Convention the assembled throng. Concluding, ings were held. the streets had been of the People of South Carolina. In a he held up the Ordinance of Secession festooned with increasing numbers of loud voice he continued, "I proclaim and called for three cheers "for the banners, transparencies. paintings. and the State of South Carolina an Inde- Separate Commonwealth of South flags. A liberty pole stood at the corner pendent Commonwealth." In Insti- Carolina." More than seventy years of Havne and Meeting streets. In the tute Hall in Charleston, South Caro- earlier in 1788, South Carolinians in a evenings, the Charleston Restaurant lina, on the evening of December 20, special convention of elected delegates near the Charleston Theater illumi- 1860, that fateful act was now con- had ratified the United States nated a full length transparency of the cluded. Wild cheering broke out. Constitution. Now the delegates of leader of the most extreme secession- Order was restored, and at 9:15 P.M. "the people" in another convention ists, Robert Barnwell Rhett, and the the convention adjourned.· William had again expressed their sovereign theater, on its facade. featured a thirty- Edward Martin, clerk of the South power. Fully conscious of the historic by-twenty-foot painting of the city as it Carolina Senate for more than twenty moment, South Carolina pronounced would be after independence. The years, went out into Meeting Street. the union dissolved.' Pavilion Hotel at Meeting and Hasell On this unusually warm and spring- Excitement had been building in streets displayed a banner painted by 1* .--- Hiram Powerss statue of John C Calhoun on an 1861 one dollar note of th~ Bank of th~ State of South Carolina. Commissioned by tix Charleston City Council bifor~ Calhoun s death, th~statu« was sent to Columbia for safokuping during tbe Civil War and destroy~dtber« in 1865. Lawrence L. Cohen depicting Hiram Photographists," had been busy with cornerstone of an edifice of southern Powers's statue of John C. Calhoun. similar productions, including one for states "BUILT FROM THE RUINS." The statue's tablet bore the words a liberty pole in the new railroad town Later in the day, thatbannerwasmoved "Truth,Justice, and the Constitution," of Florence." to Institute Hall and hung above the but Cohen painted the banner with a On the afternoon of December 20, table where the Ordinance of Seces- shattered tablet and gave Calhoun's the officers of the Lower Guard House sion was to be signed. The artist who spirit, looking down from the clouds, stretched a line from their quarters at painted this banner, Isaac B. Alexan- the words "Behold its Fate." The Powers the corner of Meeting and Broad across der, came to Charleston as a business statue itself, like much else, would be the intersection to City Hall. From the associate of John N. Gamewell, who shattered during the ensuing War line they hung another banner featur- had purchased the rights to a new fire Between the States. Artist Cohen, who ing the Powers statue of Calhoun, this alarm system. Charleston, like New worked for "Osborn and Durbec, one portraying South Carolina as the York,Philadelphia, and Baltimore, had *2 f. ~~----------l been wired for this modern protec- wanted South Carolina to act in con- where there had been strong oppo- tion, but Gamewell's Fire Alarm Tele- junction with other southern states, a nents of secession, the few Unionists graph did not save Institute Hall from larger group demanded immediate whose names were offered as candi- a devastating fire the next year. and separate state secession. On No- dates met overwhelming defeat." As Alexander's "Secession Banner" sur- vember 6, this more radical group Mary Boykin Chesnut put it later in vived as a relic of the Lost Cause, but defeated a last ditch attempt to ad- her diary, it seemed that "Mr. Petigru the edifice of southern states it cele- journ the newly elected General As- alone in South Carolina has not se- brated on this Independence Day sembly, thereby assuring the forma- ceded.?" would, like Institute Hall, be in ruins tion of a convention as soon as the Five former governors, four former in a few years." state received word of Lincoln's elec- United States senators, the chief offi- South Carolina had long been in tion." cers of Furman University and Lime- the forefront of the southern rights That news arrived the next day. Both stone College, two railroad presidents, movement. Until his death in 1850, the state senate and house of represen- and a dozen clerics were among the _ i John C. Calhoun was the movement's tatives immediately began the legisla- 169 men elected as delegates to the political theorist and leading states- tive process that led to the Ordinance convention. The majority were col- man. In 1832, a convention of the of Secession. On November 13, the lege graduates. More than one people used Calhoun's arguments to General Assembly in joint session rati- hundred were planters, and many of declare the federal tariff acts of 1828 fied an act calling for a convention of these planters had also passed the bar. and IR~2 unconstitutional and to sus- the people to convene in Columbia on More than forty had served in the state pend their legal force within thestate, I \)ccemi>erI7. The election of dele- senate, more than one hundred in the Compromise prevented armed con- gates was set for December 6. James house of representatives. Nearly 90 flict, but the threat of sectional strife Louis Petigru, South Carolina's most per cent had been born in the state. still loomed. In 1852, the political eminent Unionist, would warn that Nearly all the delegates owned slaves. leadership of South Carolina "in "South Carolina is too small for a re- Almost half of them owned at least Convention assembled" asserted that public and too large for an insane fifty, and twenty-seven had very large "encroachments upon the reserved asylum," but even in the upcountry holdings of one hundred or more. rights of the sovereign States of this John A. Inglis. author of the Union, especially in relation to slav- Decem,," 17 resolution that ery" justified disunion. Though the South ClUolina immediately state did not then secede, the ques- secede and chairman of the tion remaining was less one of "if' committee that drafted the than "when." The last popular vote in Ordinance of Secession. which secession was to any degree an open question was castat the general election of October 8,1860. The men eligible to vote in that canvass elected a strongly pro-secession General As- sembly. White South Carolinians, be- .deviled by a perception of northern aggression that threatened their way oflife, saw the impending election of Abraham Lincoln as the last straw. While conservative "cooperationists" 3* the committee to draft an ordinance and appointedlohn A. Inglis as chair- ~. man. By Ih(' next (Ow/ling, Ih(' ('0111- mince had agreed on the text that they ...•..~ would introduce for South Carolina's ~~. • < Ordinance of Secession." Unfortunately we have no contem- porary account of the committee's work, but earlier the Charleston Mrrrw)' had printed the essence of what must have been its debate. On November 29, the Mrrr1lly printed a draft ordi- nance contributed by a "W. F. H.," who noted that "the speedy secession of the State may be considered a fixed fact" and offered "a sort of diagram on which the problem can he worked." RokrtBamweORhett. the "Fatherof The draft took nearly one hundred Secession." Rhettw~amtmkrofthe lines of tiny newsprint. It hegan: committee that tlrafteti the Ortlinllnct "Whereas, The Constitution of the of Stctssion, but accortling to a later United Stales was adopted in order to recollectionbyhisson,tlmietl personal form a more perfect Union, establish authorship of the text. justice, ensure domestic tranquility, Former govertlor John L. Manning Columhia caused the change in loca- provide for the COIJIIIIOII defence. pro- owned more than six hundred fifty tion. Robert A. Thompson, who owned mote the general welfare, and secure slaves.' the newspaper the Kroioee Courier and the blessings ofliberty to ourselves and The convention assembled in represented Pickens District in the our posterity." But then "W,F.H." Columbia's First Baptist Church and, convention, described the scene in the deadened the ring of these familiar on its first day, unanimously resolved flickering gaslight at the depot of the words by adding, "And whereas it has that "the State of South Carolina should South Carolina Railroad at four the ceased to effect anyone of these ob- forthwith secede from the Federal next morning.