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This is designed to be a daily post describing what occurred on this day during the American Civil War 150 years ago. There are bound to be times that the schedule will be interrupted (sickness, absence, computer/ISP problems, etc) which could result in past or future days being posted. There also can be a few days, particularly at the beginning, where nothing noteworthy happened. The primary reference to be used is “The Civil War Day by Day AN ALMANAC 1861-1865” by E. B. Long with Barbara Long published in 1971.

_________________
Gen Ned Simms
1/1/XIV Corps/AotC
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.
VMI Class of '00

November 6, 1860 Tuesday
Abraham Lincoln was elected sixteenth President of the United States with Hannibal Hamlin of Maine his Vice-President.

….Republican (Lincoln)……………........1,866,452 votes….180 electoral votes
….Northern Democratic (Douglas)…......1,376,957 votes…...12 electoral votes
….Southern Democratic (Breckinridge)….849,781 votes…...72 electoral votes
….Constitutional Unionists (Bell)…............588,879 votes…...39 electoral votes

Lincoln carried all of the free states but none of the slave states. Only Bell carried his home county in the voting.

November 10, 1860 Saturday
The legislature of South Carolina passed a law calling for a convention to meet at Columbia December 17 to consider the question of secession from the Union. The two South Carolina U.S. Senators resigned their seats in the Senate.

November 12, 1860 Monday
The financial market in New York experienced heavy selling with a sharp drop in prices.

November 13, 1860 Tuesday
The legislature of South Carolina resolved to raise ten thousand volunteers for defense of the state.

November 15, 1860 Thursday
U.S. Navy Lieut. T. A. Craven informed Washington that due to the “deplorable condition of affairs in the Southern States” he was proceeding to take moves to guard Fort Taylor at Key West and Fort Jefferson on Dry Tortugas, Fla., from possible seizure. Fort Taylor and the Key West area later became a vital coaling station for the Federal Navy and blockading squadron.

November 23, 1860 Friday
Maj. Robert Anderson, newly in command at Fort Moultrie on the edge of Charleston Harbor, reported that when the outworks were completed, the fort, appropriately garrisoned, would be capable of “making a very handsome defense”. Fort Sumter, ungarrisoned, on a shoal in the harbor, was incomplete but work was proceeding on mounting of guns. Maj. Anderson favored garrisoning Fort Sumter at once, as he did Castle Pinckney, which commanded the city of Charleston. The forts had been left in a state of general stagnation. Sand dunes had piled up around Fort Moultrie so that cows could walk right in. Fort Sumter, begun in 1829, remained incomplete. Castle Pinckney was small and near the city, occupied by just an ordnance sergeant and his family.

December 3, 1860 Monday
Congress convenes.

December 4, 1860 Tuesday
President James Buchanan sent his message on the State of the Union to Congress. He found the “state” not too good. “The long-continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of slavery in the Southern States has at length produced its natural effects.” He said that the slave states should be let alone. The states were sovereign and their rights could not be interfered with. At the same time, he told the South, “the election of any one of our fellow-citizens to the office of President does not of itself afford just cause for dissolving the Union.” No overt or dangerous act had been committed by the President-elect. Calling for calmness and deliberation, the President said he believed slavery was on the way out. As to the forts in South Carolina, Mr Buchanan believed that if there was any attempt to take the forts by force they would be defended. Both sides were disappointed by the message: the North because he opposed secession but proposed no way to meet it; the South because he condemned secession

_________________
Gen Ned Simms
1/1/XIV Corps/AotC
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.
VMI Class of '00

December 5, 1860 Wednesday
In Springfield, Ill., President-elect Lincoln read a summary of the President's message to Congress and expressed displeasure that Buchanan placed responsibility for secession on the free states.

December 6 and 7, 1860 Thursday and Friday
Nothing memorable to report.

_________________
Gen Ned Simms
1/1/XIV Corps/AotC
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.
VMI Class of '00

December 8, 1860 Saturday
Secretary of the Treasury Howell Cobb of Georgia resigned. Formerly a strong unionist, he had come to believe that the election of a Republican justified secession and had dissented with Buchanan’s message to Congress. “The evil has now passed beyond control, and must be met by each and all of us, under our responsibility to God and our country,” Cobb wrote Buchanan. Cobb was succeeded for about a month by Philip F. Thomas of Maryland. This marked the first break in Buchanan’s Cabinet. It was 86 days prior to Lincoln's inauguration March 4, 1861.

A delegation of South Carolina congressmen called upon Mr. Buchanan and said that if reinforcements were going to Charleston it would be a sure way to bring about what he wanted to avoid. They asked for negotiations with South Carolina commissioners to consider the turning over of Federal property to the state. The President asked for a memorandum.

_________________
Gen Ned Simms
1/1/XIV Corps/AotC
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.
VMI Class of '00

December 9, 1860 Sunday
This is a letter from John Sherman (Republican Congressman from Ohio due to become Senator from Ohio the following year) to his older brother William Tecumseh Sherman (superintendent of the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy [later to become Louisiana State University])

Washington, D. C., December 9, 1860.

. . . I am clearly of the opinion that you ought not to remain much longer at your present post. You will in all human probability be involved in complications from which you cannot escape with honor. Separated from your family and all your kin, and an object of suspicion you will find your position unendurable. A fatal infatuation seems to have seized the southern mind, during which any act of madness may be committed. . . If the sectional dissensions only rested upon real or alleged grievances, they could be readily settled, but I fear they are deeper and stronger. You can now close your connection with the Seminary with honor and credit to yourself, for all who know you speak well of your conduct, while by remaining you not only involve yourself but bring trouble upon those gentlemen who recommended you.

It is a sad state of affairs, but it is nevertheless true, that if the conventions of the Southern States make anything more than a paper secession, hostile collisions will occur and probably a separation between the free and the slave states. You can judge whether it is at all probable that secession of this capital, the commerce of the Mississippi, the control of the territories, and the natural rivalry of enraged sections can be arranged without war. In that event you cannot serve in Louisiana against your family and kin in Ohio. The bare possibility of such a contingency, it seems to me renders your duty plain, to make a frank statement to all the gentlemen connected with you, and with good feeling close your engagement. If the storm shall blow over, your course will strengthen you with every man whose good opinion you desire; if not, you will escape humiliation. When you return to Ohio, I will write you freely about your return to the army, not so difficult a task as you imagine. . .

December 10, 1860 Monday
The South Carolina delegation in Washington spoke again with the President, presenting a memorandum saying that the state would not attack or molest the United States forts in Charleston Harbor prior to the act of secession and, they hoped, until an offer had been made to negotiate for an amicable arrangement between the state and the United States, provided no reinforcements should be sent to the forts. The delegation received the impression that no change would be made by the Federals in the military situation at Charleston. For their part, state authorities would try to prevent any premature collision. This interview later became a subject of dispute.

The President also moved to prepare the limited military resources of the nation for possible action. Maj. Anderson reported every day or two from Charleston.

Abraham Lincoln, in Springfield, wrote Sen. Lyman Trumbull, “Let there be no compromise on the question of extending slavery. If there be, all our labor is lost, and, ere long, must be done again … The tug has to come & better now, than any time hereafter.”

_________________
Gen Ned Simms
1/1/XIV Corps/AotC
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.
VMI Class of '00

December 11, 1860 Tuesday
At Fort Moultrie Maj. Don Carlos Buell (a Regular Army member who was to rise quickly in rank after the war started), sent by the War Department to Charleston, prepared for Maj. Anderson a memorandum of verbal instruction given Buell by Sec. of War Floyd. Floyd pointed out that he had refrained from sending reinforcements in order to avoid a collision and that he felt South Carolina would not attempt to seize the forts. Anderson was not to take up any position which could be construed as hostile in attitude, but he was to hold possession of the forts and, if attacked, defend his position. He was authorized to put his command into any fort in order to increase its power of resistance if attacked or threatened with attack. A tour of the forts and Charleston convinced Buell that Fort Sumter would be seized. Furthermore, Moultrie would be taken unless Sumter was occupied. There apparently was talk of transferring Anderson’s command from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter.

President-elect Lincoln wrote Congressman William Kellogg, as he had others, to “Entertain no proposition for a compromise in regard to the extension of slavery. The instant you do, they have us under again …” He add, “You know I think the fugitive slave clause of the constitution ought to be enforced – to put it on the mildest form, ought not to be resisted.”

_________________
Gen Ned Simms
1/1/XIV Corps/AotC
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.
VMI Class of '00

December 12, 1860 Wednesday
Sec. of State Lewis Cass of Michigan resigned because the President refused to reinforce the Charleston forts. Now two Cabinet members had quit, but they were of opposite viewpoints. The resignation upset Buchanan as Cass still had considerable political influence, and Buchanan felt the Secretary had shifted his opinion since the message to Congress.

In Springfield Lincoln was holding conferences in regard to his Cabinet appointments – this day with Francis P. Blair, Jr., of St Louis, a powerful political figure.

At Washington some twenty-three bills and resolutions purporting to solve the crisis were submitted to the House Committee of Thirty-Three, which was seeking some plan of compromise. Eventually there were thirty or forty plans, including some calling for dual Presidents, and for splitting the country into districts.

_________________
Gen Ned Simms
1/1/XIV Corps/AotC
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.
VMI Class of '00

December 13, 1860 Thursday
Seven senators and twenty-three representatives from the South issued a manifesto which urged secession and the organization of a Southern Confederacy.

President-elect Lincoln continued to write letters advising against compromise of any sort on slavery extension. He also made a trip to John Williams' store in Springfield, Ill. to buy some yard goods and paid 75 cents for a pocket handkerchief. That night, he attended a wedding.

_________________
Gen Ned Simms
1/1/XIV Corps/AotC
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.
VMI Class of '00

December 14, 1860 Friday
The Georgia legislature issued a call to South Carolina, Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi for delegates to be appointed to a convention to consider a Southern Confederacy.

_________________
Gen Ned Simms
1/1/XIV Corps/AotC
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.
VMI Class of '00

December 15, 1860 Saturday
President-elect Lincoln wrote a confidential letter to Congressman John A. Gilmer of North Carolina who had written to Lincoln citing the "alarming" national situation, and expressed concerns about Lincoln's policies regarding the South and slavery. Lincoln advises Gilmer to read the "Republican platform, or my speeches." Lincoln again expressed his reasons for not making any new statements, as they might be misinterpreted. He said further, "I never have been, and not now, and probably never shall be, in a mood of harassing the people, either North or South." But he was inflexible on the question of slavery extension in the territories; "You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. For this, neither has any just occasion to be angry with the other."

On invitation of Lincoln, Bates of Missouri is in Springfield. He spends most of the day with Lincoln, and it is rumored he has been offered a cabinet post.

December 16, 1860 Sunday
Nothing of note happened on this day other than a God fearing nation hopefully conducting worship in their churches.

_________________
Gen Ned Simms
1/1/XIV Corps/AotC
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.
VMI Class of '00

December 17, 1860 Monday
South Carolina Secession Convention Meets
In the Baptist church of Columbia, S.C., the state capital, the Convention of the People of South Carolina gathered. President D. F. Jamison of Barnwell stated, "It is no less than our fixed determination to throw off a Government to which we have been accustomed, and to provide new safeguards for our future security. If anything has been decided by the elections which sent us here, it is, that South Carolina must dissolve her connection with the [Federal] Confederacy as speedily as possible." Proceeding to list gievancces, Jamison went on, "Let us be no longer duped by paper securities. Written Constitutions are worthless, unless they are written, at the same time, in the hearts, and founded on the interests of the people; and as there is no common bond of sympathy or interest between the North and South, all efforts to preserve this Union will not only be fruitless, but fatal to the less numerous section." That evening a resolution stated "That it is the opinion of this Convention that the State of South Carolina should forthwith secede from the Federal Union, known as the United States of America." Another resolution called for a committee to draft such an ordinance. The question on secession passed 159 to nothing, and, in effect, South Carolina was out of the Union. However, the convention adjourned to Charleston due to the prevalence of smallpox at Columbia.

In Washington President Buchanan, faced with dissolution of his Cabinet, named Att. Gen Jeremiah S. Black of Pennsylvania as Secretary of State to replace resigned Lewis Cass.

In Springfield, Ill. President-elect Lincoln writes to Thurlow Weed a definition of his position on secession: "My opinion is that no state can, in any way lawfully, get out of the Union, without the consent of the others; and that it is the duty of the President, and other government functionaries to run the machine as it is." Also in Springfield, Mrs. Lincoln buys and charges yard goods and edging.

_________________
Gen Ned Simms
1/1/XIV Corps/AotC
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.
VMI Class of '00

December 18, 1860 Tuesday
Reconvening in Charleston, the South Carolina Convention met in Institute Hall, with committee work taking most of the day. At Raleigh, N.C., commissioners from Alabama and Mississippi arrived to discuss the situation and the state senate passed a bill to arm the state.

In Washington the Senate passed a resolution that a special committee of thirteen members “inquire into the present condition of the country, and report by bill or otherwise.” Sen. John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, basically a strong unionist who had two sons become Generals during the ensuing war, one for the North and one for the South, presented his “Crittenden Compromise” which was basically the last attempt to resolve the problems by political means. Referred to the new Committee of Thirteen, the Compromise proposed several amendments to the Constitution: 1. Slavery should be prohibited in all territories north of the old Missouri Compromise line, and slavery should not be interfered with by Congress south of that line. When admitted as a state, a territory should be admitted with or without slavery as the state constitution provided. 2. Congress could not abolish slavery in places under its exclusive jurisdiction. 3. Congress could not abolish slavery within the District of Columbia so long as it existed in nearby states or without the consent of the inhabitants or without just compensation. 4. Congress had no power to prohibit or hinder transportation of slaves from one state to another. 5. Congress should have power to provide that the United States pay to the owner full value of fugitive slaves when officers were prevented from arresting the fugitives. 6. No future amendment should affect the five preceding articles, nor the sections of the Constitution permitting slavery, and no amendment should be made which would give Congress power to abolish or interfere with slavery in states where state laws permitted it. Crittenden felt revival of the Missouri Compromise line, probably the main feature of the plan, would prevent any expansion at all, while, on the other hand, the Republicans could not accept any slavery expansion in the territories and the South could not accept limitation.

Today, a Sergeant and 20 troopers from the Second Cavalry, captain Sul Ross and a contingent of Texas Rangers and several Tonkawa scouts, and volunteers under Captain Jack Cureton are on an expedition against the Comanches. On the Pease River, near Crowell, Texas, they discover a Comanche village. The soldiers attack and easily defeat the Indians. During the fighting, Cynthia Ann Parker, captured on May 19, 1836, is "rescued" by the soldiers. Despite her pleas to be allowed to stay with the Comanches, Parker is forced to return to "civilization" with the troops.

PARKER, CYNTHIA ANN (ca. 1825-ca. 1871). Cynthia Ann Parker, a captive of the Comanches, was born to Lucy (Duty) and Silas M. Parker in Crawford County, Illinois. According to the 1870 census of Anderson County she would have been born between June 2, 1824, and May 31, 1825. When she was nine or ten her family moved to Central Texas and built Fort Parker on the headwaters of the Navasota River in what is now Limestone County. On May 19, 1836, a large force of Comanche warriors accompanied by Kiowa and Kichai allies attacked the fort and killed several of its inhabitants. During the raid the Comanches seized five captives, including Cynthia Ann. The other four were eventually released, but Cynthia remained with the Indians for almost twenty-five years, forgot white ways, and became thoroughly Comanche. It is said that in the mid-1840s her brother, John Parker, who had been captured with her, asked her to return to their white family, but she refused, explaining that she loved her husband and children too much to leave them. She is also said to have rejected Indian trader Victor Rose's invitation to accompany him back to white settlements a few years later, though the story of the invitation may be apocryphal.

A newspaper account of April 29, 1846, describes an encounter of Col. Leonard G. Williams's trading party with Cynthia, who was camped with Comanches on the Canadian River. Despite Williams's ransom offers, tribal elders refused to release her. Later, federal officials P. M. Butler and M.G. Lewis encountered Cynthia Ann with the Yamparika Comanches on the Washita River; by then she was a full-fledged member of the tribe and married to a Comanche warrior. She never voluntarily returned to white society. Indian agent Robert S. Neighbors learned, probably in 1848, that she was among the Tenawa Comanches. He was told by other Comanches that only force would induce her captors to release her. She had married Peta Nocona and eventually had two sons, Quanah Parker and Pecos, and a daughter, Topsannah.

On December 18, 1860, Texas Rangers under Lawrence Sullivan Ross attacked a Comanche hunting camp at Mule Creek, a tributary of the Pease River. During this raid the rangers captured three of the supposed Indians. They were surprised to find that one of them had blue eyes; it was a non-English-speaking white woman with her infant daughter. Col. Isaac Parker later identified her as his niece, Cynthia Ann. Cynthia accompanied her uncle to Birdville on the condition that military interpreter Horace P. Jones would send along her sons if they were found. While traveling through Fort Worth she was photographed with her daughter at her breast and her hair cut short, a Comanche sign of mourning. She thought that Peta Nocona was dead and feared that she would never see her sons again. On April 8, 1861, a sympathetic Texas legislature voted her a grant of $100 annually for five years and a league of land and appointed Isaac D. and Benjamin F. Parker her guardians. But she was never reconciled to living in white society and made several unsuccessful attempts to flee to her Comanche family. After three months at Birdville, her brother Silas took her to his Van Zandt County home. She afterward moved to her sister's place near the boundary of Anderson and Henderson counties. Though she is said in some sources to have died in 1864, the 1870 census enrolled her and gave her age as forty-five. At her death she was buried in Fosterville Cemetery in Anderson County. In 1910 her son Quanah moved her body to the Post Oak Cemetery near Cache, Oklahoma. She was later moved to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and reinterred beside Quanah. In the last years of Cynthia Ann's life she never saw her Indian family, the only family she really knew. But she was a true pioneer of the American West, whose legacy was carried on by her son Quanah. Serving as a link between whites and Comanches, Quanah Parker became the most influential Comanche leader of the reservation era.

_________________
Gen Ned Simms
1/1/XIV Corps/AotC
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.
VMI Class of '00

December 19, 1860 Wednesday
At Charleston various motions and resolutions and speeches were made at the South Carolina Convention. Leaders of the state were also declaring that no more Federal soldiers should be sent to the harbor forts.

A representative from Mississippi was making speeches in Baltimore outlining the intentions of the states which proposed to secede.

A Mississippian called upon President-elect Lincoln in Springfield, Ill. and made some sullen remarks when the conversation turned to secession. Lincoln defined the stand of his party and presented the disunionist an autographed copy of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. The visitor was visibly chastened.

Meanwhile in the state of Georgia:

1860 Session of the Georgia General Assembly
Resolution 14
Adopted Dec. 19, 1860

WHEREAS, A large portion of the people of the non-slaveholding States, have for many years past, shown in many ways, a fanatical spirit bitterly hostile to the Southern States, and have, through the instrumentality of incendiary publications, the pulpit, and the newspaper press, finally organized a political party for the avowed purpose of destroying the institution of slavery, and consequently spreading ruin and desolation among the people in every portion of the country where it exists, And,
Whereas, This spirit of fanaticism has allied itself with a design, long entertained by leading politicians of the North, to wield the taxing power of the Government for the purpose of protecting and fostering the interests of that section of the Union, and also to appropriate the common Territories of the United States to the exclusive use of Northern emigration, for the purpose of extending, consolidating, and rendering that power irreversible. And,
Whereas, These designs and movements have attained such ascendency [sic], as to combine a large majority of the Northern people in this sectional party, which has elected to the Presidency and Vice-Presidency of the United States, candidates who are pledge in the most solemn form, and by the plainest, repeated declarations, to wield all the influence and power of the Federal Government to accomplish the objects and purposes of the party by which they have been elected. And,
Whereas, Many of the slaveholding States are about to assemble in Conventions for the purpose of adopting measures for the protection of their rights and the security of their institutions. And,
Whereas, The State of Mississippi has, in a noble spirit of fraternity, sent a Commissioner to communicate to this General Assembly her desire in this emergency in our federal relations. Therefore be it
Resolved, 1st. That the General Assembly of Georgia has listened with sentiments of profound sympathy and respect to the message of Mississippi, on the subject of the present threatening relations of the Northern and Southern sections of the United States, communicated by her distinguished commissioner, the Hon. William L. Harris.
Resolved 2d. That, believing as we do that the present crisis in our national affairs demands resistance, this General Assembly, at its present session, has with great unanimity passed an Act providing for the call of a convention of the people of Georgia, to assemble on the 16th day of January, 1861, for the purpose of determining on the mode, measure and time of that resistance.
Resolved 3d. That we cordially respond to the patriotic hopes of Mississippi, so earnestly expressed by her Legislature, and so ably communicated by her commissioner; and we do hereby give to our sister State the confident assurance that, in our judgment, Georgia will promptly co-operate with her in the adoption of efficient measures for the common defense, safety and honor of the South.
Resolved 4th. That, should any or all of the Southern States determine in the present emergency to withdraw from the Union and resume their sovereignty, it is the sense of this General Assembly that such seceding States should form a confederacy under a republican form of government; and to that end they should adopt the Constitution of the United States, so altered and amended as to suit the new state of affairs.
Resolved 5th. That we do hereby express our cordial appreciation of the dignified and gentlemanly bearing of the Hon. William L. Harris towards this General Assembly, as well as the satisfactory manner in which he has discharged the responsible duties of his high commission.
Resolved 6th. That his Excellency the Governor be, and he is, hereby requested to cause all the proceedings in the reception of the Commissioner from the State of Mississippi to be enrolled on parchment, signed by the officers of both Houses of the General Assembly, and by the Governor, with the seal of State attached thereto; and that the same be presented by him to the Hon. William L. Harris, as the response of Georgia to the friendly greeting of Mississippi.
Committee on the part of the Senate, T. Butler King, Hines Holt, Hugh M. Moore, L.H. Briscoe, A.R. Lawton, Dan'l S. Printup.
Committee on the part of the House of Representatives, Julian Hartridge, Geo. N. Lester, Clifford Anderson, M.w. Lewis, Isham S. Fannin, Geo. T. Barnes, John L. Harris.
Assented to December 19th, 1860.

_________________
Gen Ned Simms
1/1/XIV Corps/AotC
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.
VMI Class of '00

December 20, 1860 Thursday
THE UNION IS DISSOLVED.

In 1832, South Carolina threatened secession over the tariff issue. Without support from the rest of the South and in the face of strong declarations from President Andrew Jackson, South Carolina had backed down. Not so this day, when Abraham Lincoln's election had galvanized the Deep South.

Bells rang in Charleston, South Carolina, cannons fired, people poured out into the streets, waved flags and shouted. They were celebrating the passage of a law by a special state convention. The law proclaimed that South Carolina would become the first state to secede. This was the start of a chain of events leading up to the beginning of The Civil War, four months later.

By a vote of 169 to nothing the convention had severed the ties of Union and the act so long spoken of was done. “We, the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, That the ordinance adopted by us in convention on the twenty-third day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and also all acts and parts of acts of the General Assembly of this State ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed; and that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of the "United States of America," is hereby dissolved.”

President Buchanan was attending a wedding reception in Washington when South Carolina Congressman Laurence Keitt came in, crying, “Thank God! Oh, thank God!” Told the news quietly, the President looked stunned, fell back, and grasped the arms of his chair. Buchanan left at once.

Earlier in the day President Buchanan had named prominent Washington attorney and Democratic leader Edwin M. Stanton, originally from Ohio, Attorney General to succeed J. S. Black, who had become Secretary of State. It was the first major role for Stanton, a man whose name was to become both famous and infamous in the years to come.

In the Senate Vice-President Breckinridge named the Committee of Thirteen to look in to the condition of the country. It included Senators Jefferson Davis of Mississippi and Robert Toombs of Georgia, Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, William H. Seward of New York, and Ben Wade of Ohio. Thus many shades of opinion from secessionist to Radical were included.

At Springfield President-elect Lincoln received the news of secession calmly by joining Mrs. Lincoln for a latte at the local Starbucks.

Secretary of War John Floyd ordered 113 columbiad cannon and 11 32-pounders from the Pittsburgh Arsenal to Ship Island, Mississippi and Galveston, Texas.

_________________
Gen Ned Simms
1/1/XIV Corps/AotC
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.
VMI Class of '00

December 21, 1860 Friday
In Washington the four South Carolina congressmen formally withdrew from the House of Representatives, their letter being presented on Monday, Dec. 24.

In Springfield Mr. Lincoln wrote Democratic leader Francis P. Blair, Sr., that “According to my present view if the forts (at Charleston) shall be given up before the inauguration, the General (Scott) must retake them afterwards.” He wrote similarly to Congressman Elihu B. Washburne.

_________________
Gen Ned Simms
1/1/XIV Corps/AotC
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.
VMI Class of '00