Today’s excerpts:
Catton, The Coming Fury, reply #35
Goodwin, Team of Rivals, #36
Cooper, Jefferson Davis, American, #37
U.S. Grant, Memoirs, #38
George T. Strong, #39
And these three letters.
[MOUND CITY, KANSAS, November 20, 1860.]
In the winter of ’59, after the second expulsion of Border-ruffians, a county meeting, duly advertised and largely attended, composed mainly of Democrats and conservative men, Bob Mitchell himself among them, passed a series of resolutions sustaining the jayhawkers, and condemning to perpetual banishment those violent men, who had been forcibly expelled. The resolutions passed unanimously, even Bob Mitchell voting in the affirmative.
In fact, it was plain to the common sense of every man that if it had been necessary to drive them out, it was necessary to keep them out. Such were their habits, and the violence of their character, that it were vain to think of living with them on peaceable terms. Our “Free-state” Democrats are, to-day, more venomous and less disposed to forgive and forget than their Border-ruffian brethren.
Cowardly and sneaking, they are the men to plan the schemes for assassination which they depend on the “Border-ruffians” to execute. Striking in the dark, and keeping their names and numbers concealed, they hoped to stampede the whole antislavery force of the territory Of the existence of this “dark lantern fraternity,” we have incontestable evidence.
We are in possession not only of their plans, but even their private signals, and, as in the case of More, we have evidence sufficient to warrant handling several of them individually.
We have had several additions to our colored population within the week, while several of our Democratic friends have left the country. A friend observed to me yesterday: “The Democrats are leaving and the Black Republicans are coming in.”
SOURCE: Preston Stearns, The Life and Public Services of George Luther Stearns, p. 235-6
https://civilwarnotebook.blogspot.com/2018/08/captian-james-montgomery-to-george-l.html
AN ORDINANCE to dissolve the union between the State of South Carolina and other States united with her under the compact entitled "The Constitution of the United States of America."
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.
Done at Charleston the twentieth day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty.
SOURCE: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series IV, Volume I, Serial 127, p. 1
https://civilwarnotebook.blogspot.com/2010/12/south-carolinas-ordinance-of-secession.html
CHARLESTON, December 20, 1860.
Hon. W. H. TRESCOT.
You are authorized and requested to withdraw my letter by Dr. Hamilton immediately I have seen General Cushing. Despatch back immediately. Have you seen Huger?
F. W. PICKENS.
SOURCE: Samuel Wylie Crawford, The Genesis of the Civil War: The Story of Sumter, 1860-1861, p. 84
https://civilwarnotebook.blogspot.com/2015/02/governor-francis-w-pickens-to-william-h.html
Well, Secession Day has arrived. I had not appreciated how close to Christmas South Carolina’s action was. Quite a present they gave the nation.