Websters March 7th Speech/Secession | Page 6

Carolinian wrote his former
principal in Vermont. "We are beginning to look upon it [disunion] as a
relief from incessant insult. I have been myself surprised at the unusual
prevalence and depth of this feeling."[3] "The abolition movement", as
Houston has pointed out, "prevented any considerable abatement of
feeling, and added volume to the current which was to sweep the State
out of the Union in 1860." South Carolina's ex-governor, Hammond,
wrote Calhoun in December, 1849, "the conduct of the abolitionists in
congress is daily giving it [disunion] powerful aid". "The sooner we
can get rid of it [the union] the better."[5] The conclusion of both Blair
of Kentucky and Winthrop[6] of Massachusetts, that "Calhoun and his
instruments are really solicitous to break up the Union", was warranted

by Calhoun's own statement.
[3] Bennett, Dec. 1, 1848, to Partridge, Norwich University. MS.
Dartmouth.
[4] Houston, Nullification in South Carolina, p. 141. Further evidence
of Webster's thesis that abolitionists had developed Southern reaction
in Phillips, South in the Building of the Nation, IV, 401-403; and
unpublished letters approving Webster's speech.
[5] Calhoun, Corr., Amer. Hist. Assoc., Annual Report (1899, vol 11.),
pp. 1193-1194.
[6] To Crittenden, Dec. 20, 1849, Smith, polit. Hist. Slavery, I. 122;
Winthrop MSS., Jan. 6, 1850.
Calhoun, desiring to save the Union if he could, but at all events to save
the South, and convinced that there was "no time to lose", hoped "a
decisive issue will be made with the North". In February, 1850, he
wrote, "Disunion is the only alternative that is left us."[7] At last
supported by some sort of action in thirteen Southern states, and in nine
states by appointment of delegates to his Southern Convention, he
declared in the Senate, March 4, "the South, is united against the
Wilmot proviso, and has committed itself, by solemn resolutions, to
resist should it be adopted". "The South will be forced to choose
between abolition and secession." "The Southern States . . . cannot
remain, as things now are, consistently with honor and safety, in the
Union."[8]
[7] Calhoun, Corr., p. 781; cf. 764-766, 778, 780, 783-784.
[8] Cong. Globe, XXI. 451-455, 463; Corr., p. 784. On Calhoun's
attitude, Ames, Calhoun, pp. 6-7; Stephenson, in Yale Review, 1919, p.
216; Newbury in South Atlantic Quarterly, XI. 259; Hamer, Secession
Movement in South Carolina, 1847-1852, pp. 49-54.
That Beverley Tucker rightly judged that this speech of Calhoun
expressed what was "in the mind of every man in the State" is
confirmed by the.approval of Hammond and other observers; by their
judgment that "everyone was ripe for disunion and no one ready to
make a speech in favor of the union"; by the testimony of the governor,
that South Carolina "is ready and anxious for an immediate separation";
and by the concurrent testimony of even the few "Unionists" like
Petigru and Lieber, who wrote Webster, "almost everyone is for
southern separation", "disunion is the . . . predominant sentiment". "For

arming the state $350,000 has been put at the disposal of the governor."
"Had I convened the legislature two or three weeks before the regular
meeting," adds the governor, "such was the excited state of the public
mind at that time, I am convinced South Carolina would not now have
been a member of the Union. The people are very far ahead of their
leaders." Ample first-hand evidence of South Carolina's determination
to secede in 1850 may be found in the Correspondence of Calhoun, in
Claiborne's Quitman, in the acts of the assembly, in the newspapers, in
the legislature's vote "to resist at any and all hazards", and in the choice
of resistance-men to the Nashville Convention and the state convention.
This has been so convincingly set forth in Ames's Calhoun and the
Secession Movement of 1850, and in Hamer's Secession Movement in
South Carolina, 1847-1852, that there is need of very few further
illustrations.[9]
[9] Calhoun, Corr., Amer. Hist. Assoc., Annual Report (1899, vol. II),
pp. 1210-1212; Toombs, Corr., (id., 1911, vol. II), pp. 188, 217;
Coleman, Crittenden, I. 363; Hamer, pp. 55-56, 46-48, 54, 82-83; Ames,
Calhoun, pp. 21-22, 29; Claiborne, Quitman, H. 36-39.
That South Carolina postponed secession for ten years was due to the
Compromise. Alabama and Virginia adopted resolutions accepting the
compromise in 1850-1851; and the Virginia legislature tactfully urged
South Carolina to abandon secession. The 1851 elections in Alabama,
Georgia, and Mississippi showed the South ready to accept the
Compromise, the crucial test being in Mississippi, where the voters
followed Webster's supporter, Foote.[10] That Petigru was right in
maintaining that South, Carolina merely abandoned immediate and
separate secession is shown by the almost unanimous vote of the South
Carolina State Convention of 1852,[11] that the state was amply
justified "in dissolving at once all political connection with her
co-States", but refrained from this