James Chesnut, Jr. of South Carolina had tendered his resignation from the Senate just four days after the presidential election becoming the first Southern senator to do so. His fellow South Carolina senator, James Henry Hammond, most famous for his 1858 Senate speech that popularized the phrase "Cotton is King," followed the next day. He wrote privately that "the scenes of the French Revolution are being enacted already." (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Charles Edward Cauthen, J. Tracy Power, South Carolina goes to war, 1860-1865 (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2005), 61.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Lawmaking/Litigating
