On the 4th of March 1861, the Government will pass into the hands of the Abolitionists. It will then cease to have the slightest claim either upon your confidence or your loyalty; and, in my honest judgment, each hour that Georgia remains thereafter a member of the Union will be an hour of degradation, to be followed by certain and speedy ruin. I entertain no doubt of either your right or duty to secede from the Union. Arouse, then, all your manhood for the great work before you, and be prepared on that day to announce and maintain your independence out of the Union, for you will never again have equality and justice in it. Identified with you in heart, feeling, and interest, I return to share in whatever destiny the future has in store for our State and ourselves.

Two days after writing the above letter, Secretary Cobb put his resignation in President Buchanan's hands.

Washington City, Dec. 8, 1860

MY DEAR SIR: A sense of duty to the State of Georgia requires me to take a step which makes it proper that I should no longer continue to be a member of your Cabinet.

In the troubles of the country consequent upon the late Presidential Election, the honor and safety of my State are involved. Her people so regard it, and in their opinion I fully concur. They are engaged in a struggle where the issue is life or death. My friends ask for my views and counsel. Not to respond would be degrading to myself and unjust to them. I have accordingly prepared, and must now issue to them, an address which contains the calm and solemn convictions of my heart and judgment. . . .

For nearly four years I have been associated with you as one of your Cabinet officers, and during that period nothing has occurred to mar, even for a moment, our personal and official relations. In the policy and measures of your Administration I have cordially concurred, and shall ever feel proud of the humble place which my name may occupy in its history. If your wise counsels and patriotic warnings had been heeded by your countrymen, the fourth of March next would have found our

country happy, prosperous, and united. That this will not be so is no fault of

yours.

The evil has now passed beyond control, and must be met by each and all of us under our responsibility to God and our country. If, as I believe, history will have to record yours as the last administration of our present Union, it will also place it side by side with the purest and ablest of those that preceded it. With the kindest regards for yourself and the members of your Cabinet, with whom I have been so pleasantly associated.

On December 20, 1860, the convention which had been assembled in South Carolina, on the news of Lincoln's election, by a unanimous vote of its one hundred and sixty-nine members adopted the following ordinance :

TO DISSOLVE THE UNION BETWEEN THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA AND THE OTHER STATES UNITED WITH HER UNDER THE COMPACT ENTITLED "THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA"

We, the people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained

That the ordinance adopted by us in Convention, on the twenty-third day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and also all Acts and parts of Acts of the General Assembly of this State, ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed; and that the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and the other States, under the name of the "United States of America" is hereby dissolved.1

1 Accompanying the ordinance, was issued (December 24) a Declaration of Causes, in which the state, "having resumed her separate and equal place among nations," deemed it due to herself and the other states of the Union to declare the causes of separation. After accusing the Northern states of a steady course of policy for twenty-five years, destructive of constitutional government, the Declaration concludes by

The subsequent ordinances of secession were more detailed than the single paragraph of the South Carolina convention. The following ordinance of Alabama, adopted January 11, 1861, is unique in its specific mention of the election of Lincoln as the cause of secession, as well as in its invitation to all the other slaveholding states, whether they had seceded or not, to meet in a convention for securing concerted and harmonious action":

Whereas, the election of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin to the offices of President and Vice President of the United States of America, by a sectional party, avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions and to the peace and security of the people of the State of Alabama, preceded by many and dangerous infractions of the Constitution of the United States by many of the States and people of the Northern section, is a political wrong of so insulting and menacing a character as to justify the people of the State of Alabama in the adoption of prompt and decided measures for their future peace and security: Therefore

Be it declared and ordained by the people of the State of Alabama in convention assembled, That the State of Alabama now withdraws, and is withdrawn, from the Union known as "the United States of America," and henceforth ceases to be one of the said United States, and is, and of right ought to be, a sovereign and independent State.

Sec. 2. Be it further declared and ordained by the people of the State of Alabama in convention assembled, That all the powers over the territory of said State, and over the people thereof, heretofore delegated to the Government of the United States of America be, and they are hereby, withdrawn from said

an appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of the conduct of the convention, and the unequivocal announcement of the independence of South Carolina, "with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do." Printed in American History Leaflets, ed. Hart and Channing, No. 12, pp. 3–9.

Government, and are hereby resumed and vested in the people of the State of Alabama.

And as it is the desire and purpose of the State of Alabama to meet the slaveholding States of the South who may approve such purpose, in order to frame a provisional as well as a permanent government, upon the principles of the Constitution of the United States

Be it resolved by the people of Alabama in Convention assembled, That the people of the States of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri, be, and are hereby, invited to meet the people of the State of Alabama, by their delegates, in convention, on the 4th day of February, A.D. 1861, at the city of Montgomery, in the State of Alabama, for the purpose of consulting with each other as to the most effectual mode of securing concerted and harmonious action in whatever measures may be deemed most desirable for our common peace and security.

And be it further resolved, That the President of this convention be, and is hereby, instructed to transmit forthwith a copy of the foregoing preamble, ordinance, and resolutions, to the Governors of the several States named in said resolutions.

Done by the people of the State of Alabama, in convention assembled, at Montgomery, on this, the 11th day of January, A.D. 1861.

THE FALL OF FORT SUMTER

bombardment

14, 1861

Captain Abner Doubleday, from whose vivid narrative 92. The the following extract is taken, was second in command to of Fort SumMajor Robert Anderson in the little garrison at Fort Sum- ter, April 12ter. It was Doubleday who conducted the transfer of Anderson's force from Fort Moultrie on the mainland to Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, on December 16, 1860;1 it was he who fired the first gun from the parapet

1 Anderson's dispatch to Colonel Cooper, adjutant general, dated from Fort Sumter, December 16, 1860, 8 P.M.: "Colonel: I have the honor to report that I have just completed, by the blessing of God, the

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of Sumter in reply to Beauregard's bombardment; and it was he who after the surrender led the garrison out with the honors of war, the flag flying, and the band playing "Yankee Doodle,"

The enemy's batteries on Sullivan's Island were so placed as to fire directly into the officers' quarters at Fort Sumter; and as our rooms would necessarily become untenable, we vacated them, and chose points that were more secure. ... About 4 A.M. on the 12th [of April] I was awakened by some one groping about my room in the dark and calling out my name. It proved to be Anderson who came to announce to me that he had just received a dispatch from Beauregard,1 dated 3.20 A.M., to the effect that he should fire upon us in an hour.

As soon as the outline of our fort could be distinguished, the enemy carried out their programme. . . . In a moment the firing burst forth in one continuous roar, and large patches of both the exterior and interior masonry began to crumble and fall in all directions. The place where I was had been used for the

removal to this fort of all my garrison, except the surgeon, four noncommissioned officers, and seven men. We have one year's supply of hospital stores and about four months' supply of provisions for my command. I left orders to have all the guns at Fort Moultrie spiked, and the carriages of the 32-pounders, which are old, destroyed. I have sent orders to Captain Foster, who remains at Fort Moultrie, to destroy all the ammunition which he cannot send over. The step which I have taken was, in my opinion, necessary to prevent the effusion of blood." Quoted by S. W. Crawford, The Genesis of the Civil War, p. 106. 1 Dispatch of Colonel Chestnut and Captain Lee to Major Anderson, dated April 12, 1861, 3.30 A.M.: "Sir: By authority of BrigadierGeneral Beauregard, commanding the provisional forces of the Confederate States, we have the honor to notify you that he will open the fire of his batteries on Fort Sumter in one hour from this time." The Genesis of the Civil War, p. 426.

2 S. W. Crawford, surgeon general of the garrison, gives the following picture of the opening of the fire: "The sea was calm, and the night still under the bright starlight, when at 4.30 A.M. the sound of a mortar from a battery at Fort Johnson broke upon the stillness. It was the signal to the batteries around to open fire. The shell, fired by Capt. George St. James, who commanded the battery, rose high in air, and