ts, declaring South Carolina's connection with the Union at
an end. It has been truly said, that this body of men who passed the
ordinance of secession was one of the most deliberate, representative,
and talented that had ever assembled in the State of South Carolina.
When the news flashed over the wires the people were in a frenzy of
delight and excitement--bells tolled, cannons boomed, great parades
took place, and orators from street corners and hotel balconies
harangued the people. The ladies wore palmetto upon their hats or
dresses, and showed by every way possible their earnestness in the
great drama that was soon to be enacted upon the stage events. Drums
beat, men marched through the streets, banners waved and dipped,
ladies from the windows and from the housetops waved handkerchiefs or
flags to the enthusiastic throng moving below. The bells from historic
old St. Michael's, in Charleston, were never so musical to the ears of
the people as when they pealed out the chimes that told of secession.
The war was on.

Still with all this enthusiasm, the sober-headed, patriotic element
of the South regretted the necessity of this dissolution. They, too,
loved the Union their ancestors had helped to make--they loved the
name, the glory, and the prestige won by their forefathers upon the
bloody field of the revolution. While they did not view this Union as
indispensable to their existence, they loved and reverenced the flag
of their country. As a people, they loved the North; as a nation,
they gloried in her past and future possibilities. The dust of their
ancestors mingled in imperishable fame with those of the North. In the
peaceful "Godsacre" or on the fields of carnage they were ever willing
to share with them their greatness, and equally enjoyed those of
their own, but denied to them the rights to infringe upon the South's
possessions or rights of statehood. We all loved the Union, but we
loved it as it was formed and made a compact by the blood of our
ancestors. Not as contorted and misconstrued by demagogueism and
fanaticism. We almost deified the flag of the Union, under whose folds
it was made immortal by the Huguenots, the Roundheads, the Cavaliers,
and men of every faith and conviction in the crowning days of the
revolution. The deeds of her great men, the history of the past, were
an equal heritage of all--we felt bound together by natural bonds
equal to the ties of blood or kindred. We loved her towering
mou