January 1, 1861. |
This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[154]
Charleston and vicinity, liable to do military duty, was immediately called to arms.
Measures were taken to increase the strength and armament of Fort Moultrie.
A garrison composed of the Charleston Rifles, under Cap. tain J. Johnson, was sent to occupy Fort Johnson.
The erection of batteries that would command the ship-channel of the harbor, and bear heavily upon Fort Sumter, was commenced on Morris and Sullivan's Islands, and a thousand negro slaves were employed in the work.
The commander of Castle Pinckney ordered that no boat should approach its wharf-head except by permission.
The city of Charleston was placed under the protection of a military patrol.
Look-out boats scouted the outer harbor at night.
The telegraph was placed under the most rigid censorship, and Major Anderson was denied all communication with his Government.
The United States Sub-treasurer at Charleston (Pressley) was forbidden by the authorities to cash any more drafts from Washington.1 The National Collector of the Port (Colcock), participating in the treasonable work, announced that all vessels from and for ports outside of South Carolina must enter and clear at Charleston.
The Convention, assuming supreme authority, passed an ordinance on the 1st of January, defining treason against the State; and with a barbarous intent unknown in a long obsolete British law, and with a singular misunderstanding of its terms, they declared the punishment to be “death, without benefit of the clergy.”
2 On that morning
they had received intelligence from the “Commissioners” at Washington that their mission would be fruitless; and the Rev. Mr. Du Pre, in the prayer at the opening of the Convention, evidently believing that war was inevitable, supplicated the Almighty, saying:--“Wilt thou bring confusion and discomfiture upon our enemies, and wilt thou strengthen the hearts, nerves, and arms of our sons to meet this great fire.”
Then a bust of John C. Calhoun, cut from pure white marble, was placed on the table before the President, bearing a curious inscription on a piece of paper.3
Frantic appeals were now made to the politicians of other Southern coast States to seize the forts and arsenals of the Republic within their borders.
The organs of the South Carolina conspirators begged that Fort Pickens, and the Navy Yard and fortifications on the shores of Pensacola Bay, and Forts Jefferson and Taylor, at the extremity of the Florida Peninsula, might be seized at once — also Fort Morgan, near Mobile; for a grand scheme of piracy, which was inaugurated a hundred days later, was then in embryo.
1 This dishonest order plagued Governor Pickens in a way that provoked much merriment. With amazing assurance, that officer, then in open insurrection against his Government, wrote to the Secretary of the Treasury for three thousand dollars, due him on his salary as Minister to Russia. The Secretary sent him a draft on the Sub-treasurer at Charleston, who, pursuant to his instructions, refused to honor it. See Harper's History of the Great Rebellion, page 36.
2 The term in the old criminal law was, “without benefit of clergy,” not of the clergy; for it had no reference to the attendance of a clergyman upon a criminal, of which favor the South Carolinians intended to deprive him. It was a law in Roman Catholic countries, or where that form of Christianity, as a system, prevailed. That church claimed the right to try its own clergy at its own tribunals. When a man was condemned, and was about to be sentenced, he might, if he had the right, claim that he was a clergyman, and he was relieved from the power of the civil law and remanded to the ecclesiastical tribunal, under the privilege called “benefit of clergy.” In certain cases of heinous offenses, this “benefit of clergy” was denied.
3 Associated Press Dispatch from Charleston. January 1, 1861. The following is the inscription:--“Truth, Justice, and Fraternity, you have written your name in the Book of Life, fill up the page with deliberation that which is written, execute quickly — the day is far spent, the night is at hand. Out names and honor summon all citizens to appear on the parade-ground for inspection.”
Scanned printed text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.