South Carolina congressman calls for secession should Abraham Lincoln win the general election
Congressman William W. Boyce had earlier pressed co-operation in the sectional crisis but at a mass election meeting in Winsboro, South Carolina he spoke in favor of secession if needed. He concluded that "if Lincoln be elected, I think that the Southern States should withdraw from the Union. All, but if not all, as many as will, and if no other, South Carolina alone, in the promptest manner and by the most direct means." (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Samuel Wylie Crawford, The Genesis of the Civil War: The Story of Sumter, 1860-1861 (New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1887), 10.