outh Carolina Legislature in calling an Unconditional
Secession Convention, acted among the Southern States like a spark in a
train of gunpowder. Long accustomed to incendiary resolutions of
Pro-Slavery political platforms, as embodying the creed of Southern men;
committed by those declarations to the most extreme action when, in
their judgment, the necessity should arise; and worked up during the
Presidential campaign by swarming Federal officials inspired by the
fanatical Secession leaders; the entire South only needed the spark from
the treasonable torch of South Carolina, to find itself ablaze, almost
from one end to the other, with the flames of revolt.

Governor after Governor, in State after State, issued proclamation after
proclamation, calling together their respective Legislatures, to
consider the situation and whether their respective States should join
South Carolina in seceding from the Union. Kentucky alone, of them all,
seemed for a time to keep cool, and look calmly and reasonably through
the Southern ferment to the horrors beyond. In an address issued by
Governor Magoffin of that State, to the people, he said:

"To South Carolina and such other States as may wish to secede from the
Union, I would say: The geography of this Country will not admit of a
division; the mouth and sources of the Mississippi River cannot be
separated without the horrors of Civil War. We cannot sustain you in
this movement merely on account of the election of Mr. Lincoln. Do not
precipitate by premature action into a revolution or Civil War, the
consequences of which will be most frightful to all of us. It may yet
be avoided. There is still hope, faint though it be. Kentucky is a
Border State, and has suffered more than all of you. * * * She has a
right to claim that her voice, and the voice of reason, and moderation
and patriotism shall be heard and heeded by you. If you secede, your
representatives will go out of Congress and leave us at the mercy of a
Black Republican Government. Mr. Lincoln will have no check. He can
appoint his Cabinet, and have it confirmed. The Congress will then be
Republican, and he will be able to pass such laws as he may suggest.
The Supreme Court will be powerless to protect us. We implore you to
stand by us, and by our friends in the Free States; and let us all, the
bold, the true, and just men in the Free and Slave States, with a united
front, stand by each other, by our principles,