. The first to assemble was the convention of South Carolina,
which organized at Columbia, on December 17, 1860. Two weeks earlier
Congress had met. Northerners and Southerners had at once joined issue
on their relation in the Union. The House had appointed its committee
of thirty-three to consider the condition of the country. So unpromising
indeed from the Southern point of view had been the early discussions
of this committee that a conference of Southern members of Congress
had sent out their famous address To Our Constituents: "The argument is
exhausted. All hope of relief in the Union... is extinguished, and we
trust the South will not be deceived by appearances or the pretense
of new guarantees. In our judgment the Republicans are resolute in the
purpose to grant nothing that will or ought to satisfy the South. We
are satisfied the honor, safety, and independence of the Southern people
require the organization of a Southern Confederacy--a result to be
obtained only by separate state secession." Among the signers of this
address were the two statesmen who had in native talent no superiors
at Washington--Judah P. Benjamin of Louisiana and Jefferson Davis of
Mississippi.

The appeal To Our Constituents was not the only assurance of support
tendered to the convention of South Carolina. To represent them at
this convention the governors of Alabama and Mississippi had appointed
delegates. Mr. Hooker of Mississippi and Mr. Elmore of Alabama made
addresses before the convention on the night of the 17th of December.
Both reiterated views which during two days of lobbying they had
disseminated in Columbia "on all proper occasions." Their argument,
summed up in Elmore's report to Governor Moore of Alabama, was "that
the only course to unite the Southern States in any plan of cooperation
which could promise safety was for South Carolina to take the lead and
secede at once without delay or hesitation... that the only effective
plan of cooperation must ensue after one State had seceded and presented
the issue when the plain question would be presented to the other
Southern States whether they would stand by the seceding State engaged
in a common cause or abandon her to the fate of coercion by the arms of
the Government of the United States."

Ten years before, in the unsuccessful secession movement of 1850 and
1851, Andrew Pickens Butler, perhaps the ablest South Carolinian then
living, strove to arrest the movement by exactl