Beschreibung:

Lot of 7 official, clerical retained copies of correspondence and instructions relating to the secession of South Carolina, the crisis at Fort Sumter, and eventually the price for the conflict paid by the city of Charleston. The state owned copies of these can be turned up through online searches. These examples were probably retained as personal copies by one of the many officials involved in the early movement for secession in South Carolina and likely came north as war souvenirs. With Lincoln’s election in November 1860, South Carolina secessionists went into overdrive, and six weeks later a state convention passed an ordinance of secession claiming the dissolution of the Union, and in accordance with that determination state officials decided to open negotiations with Washington for the transfer of Federal facilities within their borders. Major Anderson, in charge of Federal troops at Charleston, moved his men to Fort Sumter in late December, but instead of pulling out, the Federal government sent reinforcements and supplies on the USS Star of the West, which was fired on by state forces on January 9, 1861. Negotiations were then halted and the governor demanded Anderson surrender two days later. Anderson declined, but agreed that envoys would go to Washington to try to straighten things out. South Carolina Governor Pickens then sent Attorney-General Isaac W. Hayne as the envoy to meet with (still) President Buchanan and demand the fort. The lot contains a cover letter dated Senate Chamber, January 10th (or 11th), 1861. Addressed to President Buchanan, it is signed by three senators, Ben. Fitzpatrick, S.R.(Stephen) Mallory, and John Slidell. We have been requested to present to you copies of a correspondence between certain Senators of the United and Col. Isaac W. Hayne now in this city on behalf of the government of South Carolina and to ask that you will take into consideration the subject of said correspondence. Isaac William Hayne (1809-1880) was the state attorney-general and had been the man who officially read out the ordinance of secession. A member of a prominent South Carolina family, among his relatives was Robert Y. Hayne, senator and governor, who engaged in a famous debate with Daniel Webster in 1830, and was active in the nullification convention in South Carolina in 1832. Isaac Hayne was admitted to the bar in 1831 and after practicing law for a time in Alabama, returned to South Carolina in 1848 and was elected repeatedly to the office of attorney general (an office Robert Y. Hayne had also held), a post he held continuously from 1848 to 1868. On January 15 several senators from other states that had seceded or were on the verge of doing so (among the visitors were Jefferson Davis and Judah Benjamin) asked Hayne to delay delivering his demand to the President, assuring him and the governor of South Carolina that the arrival of the Star of the West was not an attack on the state and suggesting that negotiations might still resolve the question of Federal facilities. They advised delay at least until February 15, by which time they expected their own states would meet in convention with South Carolina and form a “new Confederation and Provisional government.” They hoped the delay would allow for, “calm and deliberate” counsel, and that together they might come to some “wise just and peaceable solution of existing difficulties.” They must have been also worried that South Carolina might provoke outright war prematurely. We offer Hayne’s response to this letter from the senators of seceded states, dated January, 1861, but probably January 17, given a subsequent reference in another document. In our letter Hayne acknowledges the senators’ letter and its contents: that your people feel they have a common destiny with our people, and expect to form with them in that Convention a new Confederacy and Provisional Government; that you must, and will share our fortunes, suffering with us the evils of war, if it cannot