The delegates were to be chosen directly by the people, and when assembled were to determine the future relation of South Carolina to the Government of the United States.

The election was to be held in four weeks, and the convention was to assemble on the 17th of December.

The unnatural and unprecedented haste of this action, by which South Carolina proceeded, as she proclaimed, to throw off her national relations, is more easily comprehended by recalling the difficult mode provided in every State for a change in its constitution.

In not a single State of the American Union can the organic law be changed in less than a year, or without ample opportunity for serious consideration by the people.

At that very moment the people of South Carolina were inhibited from making the slightest alteration in their own constitution except by slow and conservative processes which gave time for deliberation and reflection.