Red Letter Day : South Carolina Secedes 20 December 1860

Please note: This post was last updated on 24 July 2026. - gmc.

20 December 1860 is a date that was highly significant in United States, South Carolina - and Beaufort District's - past as South Carolina was the first state to formally secede from the United States. Soon thereafter years of blood-letting and profound social and economic changes would follow. 

Secession had been championed by native Beaufortonian and Charleston Mercury publisher Robert Barnwell Rhett ever since his fulminant speech under the live oak tree near Bluffton in 1833. Others known as "Fire-Eaters" followed his lead and over the years more and more influential Southern White men began to consider secession as a viable option to their political, social and economic problems during the mid-19th century. Dr. John McCardell, Jr. examined how this change in thought came about in his lecture "The Idea of a Southern Nation" as part of the 2009 Beaufort Tricentennial Lecture Series.

On December 20th, 1860, one hundred sixty-nine (169) delegates sat in Charleston's Institute Hall deciding whether or not South Carolina could - and should -  leave the United States of America. Representing Beaufort District at the Convention were: Robert Woodward Barnwell; Langdon Cheves; Richard James Davant; John Edward Frampton; William Ferguson Hutson; Joseph Daniel Pope; George Rhodes; and Ephraim Mikell Seabrook. You can read what they and others said at the Convention in South Carolina on the "Documenting the American South" website. All these men -- indeed all the delegates present at the Secession Convention -- voted in favor of secession and signed the state's Ordinance of Secession. 

However, not everyone in South Carolina was in favor of secession. Beaufort native William John Grayson, though pro-slavery, remained a Unionist until his death during the war years. South Carolina's most ardent Unionist was James Louis Petigru who had taught school at Beaufort College and practiced law at the Beaufort District Courthouse when it was located in Coosawhatchie. He is most remembered for saying "They've gone mad. South Carolina is too small to be a republic and too large to be an insane asylum."

Petigru remained an Unionist until his death in Charleston in 1863. He was highly respected despite his political views. City and state officials, as well as Charleston's Confederate officer corps, followed his coffin to St. Michael's Cemetery in tribute. 

• The real SC Ordinance of Secession is safely stored away in the South Carolina Department of Archives and History.
• We have a facsimile of the Ordinance of Secession in the BDC Research Room.
• For a basic introduction to South Carolina's Ordinance of Secession published by the South Carolina Department of Archives and History we recommend Relic of the Lost Cause.
  
• The American Battlefield Trust has created lesson plans for elementary through high school students to help them draw conclusions about the legality of the Ordinance.

Here's a local history fun fact to share: The first "true copy" of the South Carolina Ordinance of Secession to fall into Union hands was actually captured in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Port Royal Sound -- right here in Beaufort County. 

There are indeed many more titles on the topic of "Secession" in the SCLENDS catalog and through the Hoopla catalog. In addition, the BDC's WordPress blog contains lists of links and materials about the man who started the Bluffton Movement that ultimately led to the Palmetto State's secession, Robert Barnwell Rhett; his cousin, Robert Woodward Barnwell; Unionist  William John Grayson; and Unionist James Louis Petigru.