is necessary to resist and defeat it. The Association is preparing
pamphlets with this special object. Funds are necessary to enable
it to act promptly. "The 1860 Association" is laboring for the
South, and asks your aid.

I am, very respectfully your obedient servant,

ROBERT N. GOURDIN,
Chairman of the Executive Committee.

The half-public endeavors of "The 1860 Association" to create public
sentiment were vigorously seconded by the efforts of high official
personages to set on foot concerted official action in aid of
disunion. In this also, with becoming expressions of modesty, South
Carolina took the initiative. On the 5th of October, Governor Gist
wrote the following confidential letter, which he dispatched by a
secret agent to his colleagues, the several Governors of the Cotton
States, whom the bearer, General S.R. Gist, visited in turn during
that month of October.

The responses to this inquiry given by the Executives of the other
Cotton States were not all that so ardent a disunionist could have
wished, but were yet sufficient to prompt him to a further advance.

[Sidenote] MS. Confederate Archives, U.S. War Department.

EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT,
UNIONVILLE, S.C., Oct. 5, 1860.
His EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR MOORE.

DEAR SIR: The great probability, nay almost certainty, of Abraham
Lincoln's election to the Presidency renders it important that
there should be a full and free interchange of opinion between the
Executives of the Southern, and more especially the Cotton,
States, and while I unreservedly give you my views and the
probable action of my State, I shall be much pleased to hear from
you; that there may be concert of action, which is so essential to
success. Although I will consider your communication confidential,
and wish you so to consider mine so far as publishing in the
newspapers is concerned, yet the information, of course, will be
of no service to me unless I can submit it to reliable and leading
men in consultation for the safety of our State and the South; and
will only use it in this way. It is the desire of South Carolina
that some other State should take the lead, or at least move
simultaneously with her. She will unquestionably call a convention
as soon as it is ascertained that a majority of the electors will
support Lincoln. If a single State secedes, she will follow her.
If no o