Senator John C. Calhoun to John H. Means,* April 13, 1849

Fort Hill 13th April 1849.

MY DEAR SIR, I am glad to learn by your letter and from other Sources, that a meeting is to be held next month in Columbia, to be composed of delegates from the different Commitees of correspondence. I regard it as a step of much importance and responsibility.

You ask my opinion as to the course the Meeting should take. Before I give it, I deem it due to candour and the occasion to State, that I am of the impression that the time is near at hand when the South will have to chose between disunion, and submission. I think so, because I see little prospect of arresting the aggression of the North. If anything can do it, it would be for the South to present with an unbroken front to the North the alternative of dissolving the partnership or of ceasing on their part to violate our rights and to disregard the stipulations of the Constitution in our favour; and that too without delay. I say without delay; for it may be well doubted whether the alienation between the two sections has not already gone too far to save the Union; but, if it has not, there can be none that it soon will, if not prevented by some prompt and decisive measure. It has been long on the increase and is now more rapidly increasing than ever. The prospect is as things now stand, that before four years have elapsed, the Union will be divided into two great hostile sectional parties.

But it will be impossible to present such a front, except by means of a Convention of the Southern States. That, and that only could speak for the whole, and present authoritatively to the North the alternative, which to choose. If such a presentation should fail to save the Union, by arresting the aggression of the North and causing our rights and the stipulations of the Constitution in our favour to be respected, it would afford proof conclusive that it could not be saved, and that nothing was left us, but to save ourselves. Having done all we could to save the Union, we would then stand justified before God and man to dissolve a partnership which had proved inconsistent with our safety, and, of course, distructive of the object which mainly induced us to enter into it. Viewed in this light, a Convention of the South is an indispensible means to discharge a great duty we owe to our partners in the Union; that is, to warn them in the most solemn manner that if they do not desist from aggression, and cease to disregard our rights and the stipulations of the Constitution, the duty we owe to ourselves and our posterity would compel us to dissolve forever the partnership with them. But should its warning voice fail to save the Union, it would in that case prove the most efficient of all means for saving ourselves. It would give us the great advantage of enjoying the conscious feeling of having done all we could to save it and thereby free us from all responsibility in reference to it, while it would afford the most efficient means of United and prompt action, and thereby of meeting the momentous occasion without confusion or disorder, and with certainty of success.

Thus thinking, my opinion is that the great object to be aimed at by the Meeting is to adopt measures to prepare the way for a Convention of the Southern States. What they should be the Meeting can best decide. It seems to me, however, that the organization of our own and the other Southern States is an indispensible step and for that and other purposes there ought to be an able Committee appointed having its center in Charleston, or Columbia, and vested with power to take such steps as may be deemed necessary to carry into effect that and the other measures which may be adopted by the Meeting.

I agree with you as to a non intercourse with the North in commerce and trade. Passing over the objection that it would be below the dignity of the occasion, it would be neither prudent nor efficient, most certainly as preceeding the meeting of a Southern Convention.

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* From a draft in Calhoun's handwriting. John H. Means was an active secessionist, was chosen governor of South Carolina the next year, and was killed, a Confederate colonel, at the second battle of Bull Run.

SOURCE: J. Franklin Jameson, Editor, Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1899, Volume II, Calhoun’s Correspondence: Fourth Annual Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, Correspondence of John C. Calhoun, p. 764-6