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VIII. “… at liberty, is this our birth month …”
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CHAPTER EIGHT " ... at liberty, is this our birth month . .. " DESPITE the separating wedges of internal strife, in April, 1860, Alabama's delegation, led by Yancey, entrained for the national convention with great hopes, positively instructed to take their stand against any encroachment on the rights of slavery in the territories.! Hooper, who was destined not to attend this momentous session in Charleston's Institute Hall,2 sent his old friend "Horseshoe Ned" Hanrick as correspondent for the Mail. On the eve of the meeting, however, Hooper, his heart in Carolina, could not restrain himself: The South ~Ien of tIle South! look up, There are omens in the sky; The murky clouds are gathering, Red meteors flash on high; And there are moans and mutterings Sent up by heaving waves; Our eagle poises on his wings And shrieks 0'er patriots' graves. Men of the South! the brand Hath flared upon the heath; Its flame hath tinged the leaden clouds, And hissed its song of death. 130 ALIAS SIMON SUGGS The rifle and the murderous knife Have seen the light of day, And ruffian men, prepared for strife, Stood up in bold array. Men of the South! your homes, Where peace and plenty smiled, Have been assailed by thieving bands, And by their tread defiled. The canting traitors of the North With lying tongues declaim, And spit at you their slime and froth, Their venom and their flame. Men of the South! take heedBe watchful and be firm; Ye have to smite the giant's head And crush the poisonous worm. Arrayed around your chartered right, Strong in your holy cause, Be this your cry in valor's fight: Our State-Our Rights-Our Laws!3 Hanrick's daily, almost hourly, communications from Charleston were the spiciest the usually sedate Mail had ever published, and Hooper conspiciously embellished each with a cut of a horseshoe, inscribed ~~Ned." In addition to the news Hanrick, a clever reporter, frequently permitted his pen to run off onto personalities, oddities and personal opinions. But the editor deleted not a word. c4I don't like Douglas much now ... he's a dead cock," Ned wrote the first day. "We are all here from Alabama. We have things our own· way .... We _Alabamians have been making speeches, and we make good speeches; d----d if we don't." Hour by hour, as the tension mounted, Ned became more disturbed, however. Even in his [54.165.248.212] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 16:27 GMT) " .•• AT LIBERTY, IN THIS OUR BmTH MONTH •••" 131 jolly, devil-may-care attitude he foresaw trouble and his stories were rife with expressions like CCastounding news!" and "immense excitement" and cCmore d----d uncertainty!" On the twenty-sixth he deplored, c'Nobody knows anything. The pot is boiling, I tell you, and it's devilish hard to sift the scum on the top! . .. The responsibility (and bad whiskey) is breaking me down." When the convention at last adopted the "Squatter Sovereignty Platform" and the Alabama delegation , accompanied by those of Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Texas, and Arkansas, walked out in defiance, Ned exclaimed: (CNight. All gone to the devil! No use talking ... The Douglas devils would put the Squatter doctrine in. Where will a patriot go now? ... I weep-d----d if I don't-for the death of the old Democracy. Bu'sted up with sudden fit of Squatter Morbus, she pegged out-d-----d if didn't-like an old horse with the colic, dashing out her hind legs in the last agonies, and breaking the shins of her best friends!"4 As a thousand men gathered about the telegraph office on Montgomery's Court Square (the very same office from which Confederate Secretary of War Leroy Pope Walker was a short year later to wire General Beauregard to fire on Fort Sumter ), nervously interpreting the preliminary dispatches from Charleston, Hooper wondered if the South had grown "comatose ." "She sees the weapon at her throat," he forewarned, "but like a man in a dream has no power to raise an arm to dash it aside . . . . Will the South stand Douglas? Take Douglas?" And then, emphatically, with all his venom: "By no means! ... We are Southern to the core.. .but if the Convention fail to discharge its [duty to the South] fully-if it hesitate, equivocate or dodge ... , we shall be found opposing it to the bitter end." His section, not the party, was all that mattered now: if...