of Charleston are eminently courteous.  South Carolina had seceded forever, defying all the hazards; she would accept nothing but independence or destruction; she did not desire any supposable compromise; she had altogether done with the Union.  Yet her desire was not for war; it was simply and solely for escape.  She would forget all her wrongs and insults, she would seek no revenge for the injurious past, provided she were allowed to depart without a conflict.  Nearly every man with whom I talked began the conversation by asking if the North meant coercion, and closed it by deprecating hostilities and affirming the universal wish for peaceable secession.  In case of compulsion, however, the State would accept the gage of battle; her sister communities of the South would side with her, the moment they saw her blood flow; Northern commerce would be devoured by privateers of all nations under the Southern flag; Northern manufactures would perish for lack of Southern raw material and Southern consumers; Northern banks would suspend, and Northern finances go into universal insolvency; the Southern ports would be opened forcibly by England and France, who must have cotton; the South would flourish in the struggle, and the North decay.

“But why do you venture on this doubtful future?” I asked of one gentleman.  “What is South Carolina’s grievance?  The Personal-Liberty Bills?”

“Yes,—­they constitute a grievance.  And yet not much of one.  Some of us even—­the men of the ‘Mercury’ school, I mean—­do not complain of the Union because of those bills.  They say that it is the Fugitive-Slave Law itself which is unconstitutional; that the rendition of runaways is a State affair, in which the Federal Government has no concern; that Massachusetts, and other States, were quite right in nullifying an illegal and aggressive statute.  Besides, South Carolina has lost very few slaves.”

“Is it the Territorial Question which forces you to quit us?”

“Not in its practical issues.  The South needs no more territory; has not negroes to colonize it.  The doctrine of ‘No more Slave States’ is an insult to us, but hardly an injury.  The flow of population has settled that matter.  You have won all the Territories, not even excepting New Mexico, where slavery exists nominally, but is sure to die out under the hostile influences of unpropitious soil and climate.  The Territorial Question has become a mere abstraction.  We no longer talk of it.”

“Then your great grievance is the election of Lincoln?”

“Yes.”

“And the grievance is all the greater because he was elected according to all the forms of law?”

“Yes.”

“If he had been got into the Presidency by trickery, by manifest cheating, your grievance would have been less complete?”

“Yes.”

“Is Lincoln considered here to be a bad or dangerous man?”

“Not personally.  I understand that he is a man of excellent private character, and I have nothing to say against him as a ruler, inasmuch as he has never been tried.  Mr. Lincoln is simply a sign to us that we are in danger, and must provide for our own safety.”