altogether from taking the fatal step, despite all attempts to bring
them to it.

In the meantime, however, South Carolina had put on all the dignity of
a Sovereign and Independent State. Her Governor had a "cabinet"
comprising Secretaries of State, War, Treasury, the Interior, and a
Postmaster General. She had appointed Commissioners, to proceed to the
other Slave-holding States, through whom a Southern Congress was
proposed, to meet at Montgomery, Alabama; and had appointed seven
delegates to meet the delegates from such other States in that proposed
Southern Congress. On the 21st of December, 1860, three Commissioners
(Messrs. Barnwell, Adams, and Orr) were also appointed to proceed to
Washington, and treat for the cession by the United States to South
Carolina, of all Federal property within the limits of the latter. On
the 24th, Governor Pickens issued a Proclamation announcing the adoption
of the Ordinance of Secession, declaring "that the State of South
Carolina is, as she has a right to be, a separate sovereign, free and
independent State, and as such, has a right to levy war, conclude peace,
negotiate treaties, leagues or covenants, and to do all acts whatsoever
that rightfully appertain to a free and independent State;" the which
proclamation was announced as "Done in the eighty-fifth year of the
Sovereignty and Independence of South Carolina." On the same day (the
Senators from that State in the United States Senate having long since,
as we have seen, withdrawn from that body) the Representatives of South
Carolina in the United States House of Representatives withdrew.

Serious dissensions in the Cabinet of President Buchanan, were now
rapidly disintegrating the "official family" of the President. Lewis
Cass, the Secretary of State, disgusted with the President's cowardice
and weakness, and declining to be held responsible for Mr. Buchanan's