Charleston Mercury Bulletin
Heritage Auctions (HA.com)
A historic bulletin earns big
The Artifact
A Charleston Mercury broadside announcing South Carolina’s secession
Condition
There is a half-inch hole at the top center and one small hole and two tiny indentations along the top edge, plus small tack holes at the left and right center and the lower corners. There is a hint of aging on the text in the center and two very light stains at the lower left edge. Otherwise, the broadside is as sound as the day it was printed, with no weakness or tears at the folds.
Details
Three days after the election of Abraham Lincoln as president, the South Carolina General Assembly called for a “Convention of the People of South Carolina” to consider the state’s secession from the Union. The convention convened in Columbia on December 17, 1860, and voted unanimously (169–0) for secession. Three days later, the ordinance of secession drafted by the convention was adopted in Charleston, making South Carolina the first of what would be 11 southern slave states to leave the Union, a move that put the country firmly on the path toward civil war. News of the momentous event spread quickly; the pro-secession Charleston Mercury produced 12-by-24-inch broadsides emblazoned with the message “The Union is Dissolved!” that were distributed throughout the city. As the editors of the Mercury recounted, “Within a few minutes after the announcement of the secession vote our messengers arrived…. [I]n less than fifteen minutes our Extras, containing the long looked for Ordinance, were being thrown off by fast presses and distributed among the eager multitude that thronged under the great banner of the ‘Southern Confederacy.’ As the brief and expressive words of the ordinance were read from our bulletin by the crowd, cheer after cheer went up in honor of the glorious event.” While many copies of the broadside were printed, very few survived. The copy shown here was sold at an estate auction held in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in April 2009.
Quotable
Four days after the ordinance was adopted, South Carolina issued a proclamation to explain its reasons for the decision. It reads in part: “A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that the ‘Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,’ and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction…. On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government…. The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy. Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanction of more erroneous religious belief.”
Value
$77,675 (price realized at Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas, in 2009). “This is a truly remarkable piece of American history,” noted a Heritage representative at the time. “It’s the very first Confederate imprint defining the moment that the American nation was torn asunder.”
