from afar.  The old cooks, mammas, house servants, and negro eavesdroppers gathered enough of “freedom of slaves,” “war,” “secession,” to cause the negroes to think that a great measure was on foot somewhere, that had a direct bearing on their long looked for Messiah—­“Freedom.”  Vigilance committees sprung up all over the South, to watch parties of Northern sentiment, or sympathy, and exercise a more guarded scrutiny over the acts of the negroes.  Companies were organized in towns and cities, who styled themselves “Minute Men,” and rosettes, or the letters “M.M.,” adorned the lapels of the coats worn by those in favor of secession.  The convention met in Columbia, but for some local cause it was removed to Charleston.  After careful deliberation, a new constitution was framed and the ordinance of secession was passed without a dissenting voice, on the 20th of December, 1860, setting forth the State’s grievances and acting upon her rights, 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