Senator John C. Calhoun to John H. Means,* April 13, 1849

Fort Hill 13th April 1849.

MY DEAR SIR, I am glad to learn by your letter and from other Sources, that a meeting is to be held next month in Columbia, to be composed of delegates from the different Commitees of correspondence. I regard it as a step of much importance and responsibility.

You ask my opinion as to the course the Meeting should take. Before I give it, I deem it due to candour and the occasion to State, that I am of the impression that the time is near at hand when the South will have to chose between disunion, and submission. I think so, because I see little prospect of arresting the aggression of the North. If anything can do it, it would be for the South to present with an unbroken front to the North the alternative of dissolving the partnership or of ceasing on their part to violate our rights and to disregard the stipulations of the Constitution in our favour; and that too without delay. I say without delay; for it may be well doubted whether the alienation between the two sections has not already gone too far to save the Union; but, if it has not, there can be none that it soon will, if not prevented by some prompt and decisive measure. It has been long on the increase and is now more rapidly increasing than ever. The prospect is as things now stand, that before four years have elapsed, the Union will be divided into two great hostile sectional parties.

But it will be impossible to present such a front, except by means of a Convention of the Southern States. That, and that only could speak for the whole, and present authoritatively to the North the alternative, which to choose. If such a presentation should fail to save the Union, by arresting the aggression of the North and causing our rights and the stipulations of the Constitution in our favour to be respected, it would afford proof conclusive that it could not be saved, and that nothing was left us, but to save ourselves. Having done all we could to save the Union, we would then stand justified before God and man to dissolve a partnership which had proved inconsistent with our safety, and, of course, distructive of the object which mainly induced us to enter into it. Viewed in this light, a Convention of the South is an indispensible means to discharge a great duty we owe to our partners in the Union; that is, to warn them in the most solemn manner that if they do not desist from aggression, and cease to disregard our rights and the stipulations of the Constitution, the duty we owe to ourselves and our posterity would compel us to dissolve forever the partnership with them. But should its warning voice fail to save the Union, it would in that case prove the most efficient of all means for saving ourselves. It would give us the great advantage of enjoying the conscious feeling of having done all we could to save it and thereby free us from all responsibility in reference to it, while it would afford the most efficient means of United and prompt action, and thereby of meeting the momentous occasion without confusion or disorder, and with certainty of success.

Thus thinking, my opinion is that the great object to be aimed at by the Meeting is to adopt measures to prepare the way for a Convention of the Southern States. What they should be the Meeting can best decide. It seems to me, however, that the organization of our own and the other Southern States is an indispensible step and for that and other purposes there ought to be an able Committee appointed having its center in Charleston, or Columbia, and vested with power to take such steps as may be deemed necessary to carry into effect that and the other measures which may be adopted by the Meeting.

I agree with you as to a non intercourse with the North in commerce and trade. Passing over the objection that it would be below the dignity of the occasion, it would be neither prudent nor efficient, most certainly as preceeding the meeting of a Southern Convention.

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* From a draft in Calhoun's handwriting. John H. Means was an active secessionist, was chosen governor of South Carolina the next year, and was killed, a Confederate colonel, at the second battle of Bull Run.

SOURCE: J. Franklin Jameson, Editor, Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1899, Volume II, Calhoun’s Correspondence: Fourth Annual Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, Correspondence of John C. Calhoun, p. 764-6

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: July 21, 1862

Jackson has gone into the enemy's country. Joe Johnston and Wade Hampton are to follow.

Think of Rice, Mr. Senator Rice,¹ who sent us the buffalo-robes. I see from his place in the Senate that he speaks of us as savages, who put powder and whisky into soldiers' canteens to make them mad with ferocity in the fight. No, never. We admire coolness here, because we lack it; we do not need to be fired by drink to be brave. My classical lore is small, indeed, but I faintly remember something of the Spartans who marched to the music of lutes. No drum and fife were needed to revive their fainting spirits. In that one thing we are Spartans.

The Wayside Hospital² is duly established at the Columbia Station, where all the railroads meet. All honor to Mrs. Fisher and the other women who work there so faithfully! The young girls of Columbia started this hospital. In the first winter of the war, moneyless soldiers, sick and wounded, suffered greatly when they had to lie over here because of faulty connections between trains. Rev. Mr. Martin, whose habit it was to meet trains and offer his aid to these unfortunates, suggested to the Young Ladies' Hospital Association their opportunity; straightway the blessed maidens provided a room where our poor fellows might have their wounds bound up and be refreshed. And now, the “Soldiers' Rest” has grown into the Wayside Hospital, and older heads and hands relieve younger ones of the grimmer work and graver responsibilities. I am ready to help in every way, by subscription and otherwise, but too feeble in health to go there much.

Mrs. Browne heard a man say at the Congaree House, “We are breaking our heads against a stone wall. We are bound to be conquered. We can not keep it up much longer against so powerful a nation as the United States. Crowds of Irish, Dutch, and Scotch are pouring in to swell their (armies. They are promised our lands, and they believe they will get them. Even if we are successful we can not live without Yankees.” “Now,” says Mrs. Browne, “I call that man a Yankee spy.” To which I reply, “If he were a spy, he would not dare show his hand so plainly.” “To think,” says Mrs. Browne, “that he is not taken up. Seward's little bell would tinkle, a guard would come, and the Grand Inquisition of America would order that man put under arrest in the twinkling of an eye, if he had ventured to speak against Yankees in Yankee land.”

General Preston said he had “the right to take up any one who was not in his right place and send him where he belonged.” “Then do take up my husband instantly. He is sadly out of his right place in this little Governor's Council.” The general stared at me and slowly uttered in his most tragic tones, “If I could put him where I think he ought to be!” This I immediately hailed as a high compliment and was duly ready with my thanks. Upon reflection, it is borne in upon me, that he might have been more explicit. He left too much to the imagination.

Then Mrs. Browne described the Prince of Wales, whose manners, it seems, differ from those of Mrs. –––, who arraigned us from morn to dewy eve, and upbraided us with our ill-bred manners and customs. The Prince, when he was here, conformed at once to whatever he saw was the way of those who entertained him. He closely imitated President Buchanan's way of doing things. He took off his gloves at once when he saw that the President wore none. He began by bowing to the people who were presented to him, but when he saw Mr. Buchanan shaking hands, he shook hands, too. When smoking affably with Browne on the White House piazza, he expressed his content with the fine cigars Browne had given him. The President said: “I was keeping some excellent ones for you, but Browne has got ahead of me.” Long after Mr. Buchanan had gone to bed, the Prince ran into his room in a jolly, boyish way, and said: “Mr. Buchanan, I have come for the fine cigars you have for me.”

As I walked up to the Prestons', along a beautiful shaded back street, a carriage passed with Governor Means in it. As soon as he saw me he threw himself half out and kissed both hands to me again and again. It was a whole-souled greeting, as the saying is, and I returned it with my whole heart, too. “Good-by,” he cried, and I responded “Good-by.” I may never see him again. I am not sure that I did not shed a few tears.

General Preston and Mr. Chesnut were seated on the piazza of the Hampton house as I walked in. I opened my batteries upon them in this scornful style: “You cold, formal, solemn, overly-polite creatures, weighed down by your own dignity. You will never know the rapture of such a sad farewell as John Means and I have just interchanged. He was in a hack,” I proceeded to relate, “and I was on the sidewalk. He was on his way to the war, poor fellow. The hackman drove steadily along in the middle of the street; but for our gray hairs I do not know what he might have thought of us. John Means did not suppress his feelings at an unexpected meeting with an old friend, and a good cry did me good. It is a life of terror and foreboding we lead. My heart is in my mouth half the time. But you two, under no possible circumstances could you forget your manners.”

Read Russell's India all day. Saintly folks those English when their blood is up. Sepoys and blacks we do not expect anything better from, but what an example of Christian patience and humanity the white “angels” from the West set them.

The beautiful Jewess, Rachel Lyons, was here to-day. She flattered Paul Hayne audaciously, and he threw back the ball.

To-day I saw the Rowena to this Rebecca, when Mrs. Edward Barnwell called. She is the purest type of Anglo-Saxon — exquisitely beautiful, cold, quiet, calm, lady-like, fair as a lily, with the blackest and longest eyelashes, and her eyes so light in color some one said “they were the hue of cologne and water.” At any rate, she has a patent right to them; there are no more like them to be had. The effect is startling, but lovely beyond words.

Blanton Duncan told us a story of Morgan in Kentucky. Morgan walked into a court where they were trying some Secessionists. The Judge was about to pronounce sentence, but Morgan rose, and begged that he might be allowed to call some witnesses. The Judge asked who were his witnesses. “My name is John Morgan, and my witnesses are 1,400 Confederate soldiers.”

Mrs. Izard witnessed two instances of patriotism in the caste called “Sandhill tackeys.” One forlorn, chills, and fever-freckled creature, yellow, dirty, and dry as a nut, was selling peaches at ten cents a dozen. Soldiers collected around her cart. She took the cover off and cried, “Eat away. Eat your fill. I never charge our soldiers anything.” They tried to make her take pay, but when she steadily refused it, they cheered her madly and said: “Sleep in peace. Now we will fight for you and keep off the Yankees.” Another poor Sandhill man refused to sell his cows, and gave them to the hospital.

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¹ Henry M. Rice, United States Senator from Minnesota, who had emigrated to that State from Vermont in 1835.

² Of ameliorations in modern warfare, Dr. John T. Darby said in addressing the South Carolina Medical Association, Charleston, in 1873: “On the route from the army to the general hospital, wounds are dressed and soldiers refreshed at wayside homes; and here be it said with justice and pride that the credit of originating this system is due to the women of South Carolina. In a small room in the capital of this State, the first Wayside Home was founded; and during the war, some seventy-five thousand soldiers were relieved by having their wounds dressed, their ailments attended, and very frequently by being clothed through the patriotic services and good offices of a few untiring ladies in Columbia. From this little nucleus, spread that grand system of wayside hospitals which was established during our own and the late European wars."

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 205-9

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: April 8, 1861

Yesterday Mrs. Wigfall and I made a few visits. At the first house they wanted Mrs. Wigfall to settle a dispute. ''Was she, indeed, fifty-five?'' Fancy her face, more than ten years bestowed upon her so freely. Then Mrs. Gibbes asked me if I had ever been in Charleston before. Says Charlotte Wigfall (to pay me for my snigger when that false fifty was flung in her teeth), “and she thinks this is her native heath and her name is McGregor.” She said it all came upon us for breaking the Sabbath, for indeed it was Sunday.

Allen Green came up to speak to me at dinner, in all his soldier's toggery. It sent a shiver through me. Tried to read Margaret Fuller Ossoli, but could not. The air is too full of war news, and we are all so restless.

Went to see Miss Pinckney, one of the last of the oldworld Pinckneys. She inquired particularly about a portrait of her father, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney,¹ which she said had been sent by him to my husband's grandfather. I gave a good account of it. It hangs in the place of honor in the drawing-room at Mulberry. She wanted to see my husband, for “his grandfather, my father's friend, was one of the handsomest men of his day.” We came home, and soon Mr. Robert Gourdin and Mr. Miles called. Governor Manning walked in, bowed gravely, and seated himself by me. Again he bowed low in mock heroic style, and with a grand wave of his hand, said: “Madame, your country is invaded.” When I had breath to speak, I asked, “What does he mean?” He meant this: there are six men-of-war outside the bar. Talbot and Chew have come to say that hostilities are to begin. Governor Pickens and Beauregard are holding a council of war. Mr. Chesnut then came in and confirmed the story. Wigfall next entered in boisterous spirits, and said: “There was a sound of revelry by night.” In any stir or confusion my heart is apt to beat so painfully. Now the agony was so stifling I could hardly see or hear. The men went off almost immediately. And I crept silently to my room, where I sat down to a good cry.

Mrs. Wigfall came in and we had it out on the subject of civil war. We solaced ourselves with dwelling on all its known horrors, and then we added what we had a right to expect with Yankees in front and negroes in the rear.! “The slave-owners must expect a servile insurrection, of course,” said Mrs. Wigfall, to make sure that we were unhappy enough.

Suddenly loud shouting was heard. We ran out. Cannon after cannon roared. We met Mrs. Allen Green in the passageway with blanched cheeks and streaming eyes. Governor Means rushed out of his room in his dressing-gown and begged us to be calm. “Governor Pickens,” said he, “has ordered in the plenitude of his wisdom, seven cannon to be fired as a signal to the Seventh Regiment. Anderson will hear as well as the Seventh Regiment. Now you go back and be quiet; fighting in the streets has not begun yet.”

So we retired. Dr. Gibbes calls Mrs. Allen Green Dame Placid. There was no placidity to-day, with cannon bursting and Allen on the Island. No sleep for anybody last night. The streets were alive with soldiers, men shouting, marching, singing. Wigfall, the “stormy petrel,” is in his glory, the only thoroughly happy person I see. To-day things seem to have settled down a little. One can but hope still. Lincoln, or Seward, has made such silly advances and then far sillier drawings back. There may be a chance for peace after all. Things are happening so fast. My husband has been made an aide-de-camp to General Beauregard.

Three hours ago we were quickly packing to go home. The Convention has adjourned. Now he tells me the attack on Fort Sumter may begin to-night; depends upon Anderson and the fleet outside. The Herald says that this show of war outside of the bar is intended for Texas. John Manning came in with his sword and red sash, pleased as a boy to be on Beauregard's staff, while the row goes on. He has gone with Wigfall to Captain Hartstein with instructions. Mr. Chesnut is finishing a report he had to make to the Convention.

Mrs. Hayne called. She had, she said, but one feeling; pity for those who are not here. Jack Preston, Willie Alston, the “take-life-easys,” as they are called, with John Green, “the big brave,” have gone down to the islands volunteered as privates. Seven hundred men were sent over. Ammunition wagons were rumbling along the streets all night. Anderson is burning blue lights, signs, and signals for the fleet outside, I suppose.

To-day at dinner there was no allusion to things as they stand in Charleston Harbor. There was an undercurrent of intense excitement. There could not have been a more brilliant circle. In addition to our usual quartette (Judge Withers, Langdon Cheves, and Trescott), our two ex-Governors dined with us, Means and Manning. These men all talked so delightfully. For once in my life I listened. That over, business began in earnest. Governor Means had rummaged a sword and red sash from somewhere and brought it for Colonel Chesnut, who had gone to demand the surrender of Fort Sumter. And now patience we must wait.

Why did that green goose Anderson go into Fort Sumter? Then everything began to go wrong. Now they have intercepted a letter from him urging them to let him surrender. He paints the horrors likely to ensue if they will not. He ought to have thought of all that before he put his head in the hole.

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¹ Charles Cotesworth Pinckney was a brigadier-general in the Revolution and a member of the Convention that framed the Constitution of the United States. He was an ardent Federalist and twice declined to enter a National Cabinet, but in 1796 accepted the office of United States Minister to France. He was the Federalist candidate for Vice-President in 1800 and for President in 1804 and 1808. Other distinguished men in this family were Thomas, Charles, Henry Laurens, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, the second.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 32-5

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: April 2, 1861

Governor Manning came to breakfast at our table. The others had breakfasted hours before. I looked at him in amazement, as he was in full dress, ready for a ball, swallow-tail and all, and at that hour. “What is the matter with you?” “Nothing, I am not mad, most noble madam. I am only going to the photographer. My wife wants me taken thus.” He insisted on my going, too, and we captured Mr. Chesnut and Governor Means.¹ The latter presented me with a book, a photo-book, in which I am to pillory all the celebrities.

Doctor Gibbes says the Convention is in a snarl. It was called as a Secession Convention. A secession of places seems to be what it calls for first of all. It has not stretched its eyes out to the Yankees yet; it has them turned inward; introspection is its occupation still.

Last night, as I turned down the gas, I said to myself: “Certainly this has been one of the pleasantest days of my life.” I can only give the skeleton of it, so many pleasant people, so much good talk, for, after all, it was talk, talk, talk à la Caroline du Sud. And yet the day began rather dismally. Mrs. Capers and Mrs. Tom Middleton came for me and we drove to Magnolia Cemetery. I saw William Taber's broken column. It was hard to shake off the blues after this graveyard business.

The others were off at a dinner party. I dined tête-a-tête with Langdon Cheves, so quiet, so intelligent, so very sensible withal. There never was a pleasanter person, or a better man than he. While we were at table, Judge Whitner, Tom Frost, and Isaac Hayne came. They broke up our deeply interesting conversation, for I was hearing what an honest and brave man feared for his country, and then the Rutledges dislodged the newcomers and bore me off to drive on the Battery. On the staircase met Mrs. Izard, who came for the same purpose. On the Battery Governor Adams² stopped us. He had heard of my saying he looked like Marshal Pelissier, and he came to say that at last I had made a personal remark which pleased him, for once in my life. When we came home Mrs. Isaac Hayne and Chancellor Carroll called to ask us to join their excursion to the Island Forts to-morrow. With them was William Haskell. Last summer at the White Sulphur he was a pale, slim student from the university. To-day he is a soldier, stout and robust. A few months in camp, with soldiering in the open air, has worked this wonder. Camping out proves a wholesome life after all. Then came those nice, sweet, fresh, pure-looking Pringle girls. We had a charming topic in common — their clever brother Edward.

A letter from Eliza B., who is in Montgomery: “Mrs. Mallory got a letter from a lady in Washington a few days ago, who said that there had recently been several attempts to be gay in Washington, but they proved dismal failures. The Black Republicans were invited and came, and stared at their entertainers and their new Republican companions, looked unhappy while they said they were enchanted, showed no ill-temper at the hardly stifled grumbling and growling of our friends, who thus found themselves condemned to meet their despised enemy.”

I had a letter from the Gwinns to-day. They say Washington offers a perfect realization of Goldsmith's Deserted Village.

Celebrated my 38th birthday, but I am too old now to dwell in public on that unimportant anniversary. A long, dusty day ahead on those windy islands; never for me, so I was up early to write a note of excuse to Chancellor Carroll. My husband went. I hope Anderson will not pay them the compliment of a salute with shotted guns, as they pass Fort Sumter, as pass they must.

Here I am interrupted by an exquisite bouquet from the Rutledges. Are there such roses anywhere else in the world? Now a loud banging at my door. I get up in a pet and throw it wide open. “Oh!” said John Manning, standing there, smiling radiantly; “pray excuse the noise I made. I mistook the number; I thought it was Rice's room; that is my excuse. Now that I am here, come, go with us to Quinby's. Everybody will be there who are not at the Island. To be photographed is the rage just now.”

We had a nice open carriage, and we made a number of calls, Mrs. Izard, the Pringles, and the Tradd Street Rutledges, the handsome ex-Governor doing the honors gallantly. He had ordered dinner at six, and we dined tête-atête. If he should prove as great a captain in ordering his line of battle as he is in ordering a dinner, it will be as well for the country as it was for me to-day.

Fortunately for the men, the beautiful Mrs. Joe Heyward sits at the next table, so they take her beauty as one of the goods the gods provide. And it helps to make life pleasant with English grouse and venison from the West. Not to speak of the salmon from the lakes which began the feast. They have me to listen, an appreciative audience, while they talk, and Mrs. Joe Heyward to look at.

Beauregard³ called. He is the hero of the hour. That is, he is believed to be capable of great things. A hero worshiper was struck dumb because I said: “So far, he has only been a captain of artillery, or engineers, or something.” I did not see him. Mrs. Wigfall did and reproached my laziness in not coming out.

Last Sunday at church beheld one of the peculiar local sights, old negro maumas going up to the communion, in their white turbans and kneeling devoutly around the chancel rail.

The morning papers say Mr. Chesnut made the best shot on the Island at target practice. No war yet, thank God. Likewise they tell me Mr. Chesnut has made a capital speech in the Convention.

Not one word of what is going on now. “Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh,” says the Psalmist. Not so here. Our hearts are in doleful dumps, but we are as gay, as madly jolly, as sailors who break into the strong-room when the ship is going down. At first in our great agony we were out alone. We longed for some of our big brothers to come out and help us. Well, they are out, too, and now it is Fort Sumter and that ill-advised Anderson. There stands Fort Sumter, en evidence, and thereby hangs peace or war.

Wigfall⁴ says before he left Washington, Pickens, our Governor, and Trescott were openly against secession; Trescott does not pretend to like it now. He grumbles all the time, but Governor Pickens is fire-eater down to the ground. “At the White House Mrs. Davis wore a badge. Jeff Davis is no seceder,” says Mrs. Wigfall.

Captain Ingraham comments in his rapid way, words tumbling over each other out of his mouth: “Now, Charlotte Wigfall meant that as a fling at those people. I think better of men who stop to think; it is too rash to rush on as some do.” “And so,'” adds Mrs. Wigfall, “the eleventh-hour men are rewarded; the half-hearted are traitors in this row.”

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¹ John Hugh Means was elected Governor of South Carolina in 1850, and had long been an advocate of secession. He was a delegate to the Convention of 1860 and affixed his name to the Ordinance of Secession. He was killed at the second battle of Bull Run in August, 1862.

² James H. Adams was a graduate of Yale, who in 1832 strongly opposed Nullification, and in 1855 was elected Governor of South Carolina.

³ Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard was born in New Orleans in 1818, and graduated from West Point in the class of 1838. He served in the war with Mexico; had been superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point a few days only, when in February, 1861, he resigned his commission in the Army of the United States and offered his services to the Confederacy.

⁴ Louis Trezevant Wigfall was a native of South Carolina, but removed to Texas after being admitted to the bar, and from that State was elected United States Senator, becoming an uncompromising defender of the South on the slave question. After the war he lived in England, but in 1873 settled in Baltimore. He had a wide Southern reputation as a forcible and impassioned speaker.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 25-9