Secession peaceable!  It is what is most particularly desired at Charleston, and, I believe, throughout the Cotton States.  Certainly, when I was there, the war-party, the party of the “Mercury,” was not in the ascendant, unless in the sense of having been “hoist with its own petard” when it cried out for immediate hostilities.  Not only Governor Pickens and his Council, but nearly all the influential citizens, were opposed to bloodshed.  They demanded independence and Fort Sumter, but desired and hoped to get both by argument.  They believed, or tried to believe, that at last the Administration would hearken to reason and grant to South Carolina what it seemed to them could not be denied her with justice.  The battle-cry of the “Mercury,” urging precipitation even at the expense of defeat, for the sake of uniting the South, was listened to without enthusiasm, except by the young and thoughtless.

“We shall never attack Fort Sumter,” said one gentleman.  “Don’t you see why?  I have a son in the trenches, my next neighbor has one, everybody in the city has one.  Well, we shan’t let our boys fight; we can’t bear to lose them.  We don’t want to risk our handsome, genteel, educated young fellows against a gang of Irishmen, Germans, British deserters, and New York roughs, not worth killing, and yet instructed to kill to the best advantage.  We can’t endure it, and we shan’t do it.”

This repugnance to stake the lives of South Carolina patricians against the lives of low-born, mercenaries was a feeling that I frequently heard expressed.  It was betting guineas against pennies, and on a limited stock of guineas.

Other men, anti-secessionists even, assured me that war was inevitable, that Fort Sumter would be attacked, that the volunteers were panting for the strife, that Governor Pickens was excessively unpopular because of his peaceful inclinations, and that he would soon be forced to give the signal for battle.  Once or twice I was seriously invited to stay a few days longer, in order to witness the struggle and victory of South Carolina.  However, it was clear that the enthusiasm and confidence of the people were no longer what they had been.  Several dull and costly weeks had passed since the passage of the secession ordinance.  Stump-speeches, torchlight-processions, fireworks, and other jubilations, were among bygone things.  The flags were falling to pieces, and the palmettos withering, unnoticed except by strangers.  Men had begun to realize that a hurrah is not sufficient to carry out a great revolution successfully; that the work which they had undertaken was weightier, and the reward of it more distant, if not more doubtful, than they had supposed.  The political prophets had been forced, like the Millerites, to ask an extension for their predictions.  The anticipated fleet of cotton-freighters had not arrived from Europe, and the expected twelve millions of foreign gold had not refilled the collapsed banks.  The daily expenses