rst of patriotism as immediately followed all over the North,
uniting the people of all classes in a determination to maintain the
majesty of the Union, and vindicate the honor of the flag. How little
he foresaw the mighty sweep and terrible devastation of the pitiless
storm of civil war which now burst over the land, and which never
departed from the soil of South Carolina till every rebel ensign was
"lowered and trailed in a sea of blood;" till slavery, the cause of
the conflict, was forever abolished, and the power of the United
States firmly re-established on land and sea.

Four years had scarcely passed ere he heard the tramp of Sherman's
army sweeping victoriously across the State, and beheld the once proud
and haughty Charleston in possession of the Union legions. As he saw
the starry flag again waving aloft in triumph, he hastened, with
reluctant footsteps, to place himself once more under its protecting
folds, thus renewing, in 1865, his oath of allegiance to the
government whose authority he had defied in 1861!

A few months later, at the State Convention at Columbia, assembled
under the direction of the President of the United States, it is none
other than our _reconstructed_ friend, Ex-Governor Pickens, who rises
amid the ashes of his once beautiful Capital, and offers the following
ordinance:

"_Resolved_, We, the delegates of the people of the State of
South Carolina, in general convention met, do ordain, that
the ordinance [of secession] passed in convention on the
twentieth of December, 1860, withdrawing this State from the
Federal Union, be, and the same is hereby repealed. The
fortunes of war, together with the proclamations of the
President of the United States and the generals in the
field commanding, having decided that domestic slavery is
abolished, that therefore, under the circumstances, we
acquiesce in said proclamations, and do hereby ordain
implicit obedience to the Constitution of the United States,
and all laws made in pursuance thereof."

He had thus at last learned the truth of that ancient and profound
maxim, that "he who would aspire to _govern_, should first learn to
_obey_!"

General Sherman did not pause in his rapid march northward from
Savannah, through the Carolinas, to make any demonstration against
Charleston; he conquered it, in the words of General Robert Anderson,
"by turning his _back_ on it!" His military ope