Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 38.djvu/257

Rh

As in the non-seceding States at the breaking out of the stupendous War of 1861-1865, between the States, there was a universal and patriotic display of Union banners, so each of the seceding States made haste to desecrate and insult the Stars and Stripes and display banners with strange devices as emblems of State sovereignty. Three days after the passage of the ordinance of secession, a railway train came in from Savannah with twenty delegates of "the Sons of the South," representing three hundred and fifty gentlemen in Georgia. They brought with them the banner of their association, which was white, with the device of a palmetto tree, having its trunk entwined with a rattlesnake; also five stars and a crescent, and the words, ''"Separate State Action." ''

After a little while, in defiance of the very principles of secession, these State flags were, as in the North, made subordinate to a general union flag established by the Southern Confederacy.

On the adjourning of the South Carolina Legislature (which had provided for a convention), on the 13th of November, 1860, a few days after the election of Lincoln was ascertained, the members were honored with a torch-light procession in the streets of Columbia.

The old banner of the Union was taken down from the State House, and the Palmetto flag unfurled in its place; and it was boastfully declared that the old ensign, "the detested rag of the Union," should never again float in free air of South Carolina.

On the 16th of November, the Chancellor (Dunkin) of South Carolina closed his court, and expressed a hope that when the members should reassemble it would be "as a court in an independent State, and that State a member of a Southern Confederacy." The next day was a gala day in Charleston. A pine