"If a
single State secedes," he wrote, "she will follow her. If no other State
takes the lead, South Carolina will secede; in my opinion, alone, if she
has any assurance that she will be soon followed by another or other
States; otherwise, it is doubtful." He asked information, and advised
concerted action.
The governors of North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and
Georgia sent replies; but the discouraging tone of their responses
establishes, beyond controversy, that, with the exception of South
Carolina, "the Rebellion was not in any sense a popular revolution, but
was a conspiracy among the prominent local office-holders and
politicians, which the people neither expected nor desired, and which
they were made eventually to justify and uphold by the usual arts and
expedients of conspiracy."
From the dawn of its existence the South had practically controlled the
government; she very naturally wished to perpetuate her control. The
extension of slavery and the creation of additional slave States was a
necessary step in the scheme, and became the well-defined single issue
in the presidential election, though not necessarily the primal cause of
the impending civil war.
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