commence cutting one another's throats."

Stephen's counsel was that the State should hold a convention, that with
the other Southern States it should draw up a formal bill of complaint
as to the personal liberty laws and the like, and if the North then
refused redress, secede. But whatever the State should do, he would
accept its decision, since the only alternative was civil war within the
State. He succeeded in having the convention deferred till January, and
the other Gulf States took similar action, while Virginia called a
convention for February 13.

With the tide of secession rising swiftly in the South, and surprise,
consternation, and perplexity at the North, Congress met in early
December. President Buchanan, in his message, following the advice of
his attorney-general, Jeremiah S. Black of Pennsylvania,--both of them
honest and patriotic men, but legalists rather than statesmen--argued
that Secession was wholly against the Constitution, but its forcible
repression was equally against the Constitution. Thus encouraged, the
Southern leaders confronted the Republicans in Congress,--how far would
they recede, how much would they yield, to avert Secession? Naturally,
the Republicans were not willing to undo the victory they had just won,
or to concede the very principle for which they had fought. But in both
Houses large committees were appointed and the whole situation was
earnestly discussed. On all sides violence was deprecated; there was
general dread of disruption of the Union, general doubt of the
feasibility of maintaining it by force, and the wide wish and effort to
find some practicable compromise.

But there was no hesitation on South Carolina's part. Her convention
passed, December 20, an Ordinance of Secession; a clear and impressive
statement of her complaints and the remedy she adopts. The Federal
compact has been broken; the personal liberty laws violate the
Constitution; the Northern people have denounced as sinful the
institution of slavery; they have elected a man who has declared that
"this government cannot permanently endure half slave and half free";
they are about to exclude Southern institutions from the territories,
and to make the Supreme Court sectional. "All hope of redress is
rendered vain by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested
a great political error with the sanction of a more erroneous religious
belief." So, from a partnership of which the letter has been broke