North Carolina Secession Convention Letter.

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As is well known, shortly after Lincoln's election in 1860 the majority of the Southern states called for state conventions in order to vote on secession. Following South Carolina's declaration of disunion on Dec. 20, 1860, the question was immediately raised in her sister state of North Carolina. The field was nearly evenly split between Unionists who termed the decision as being between a vote for "union or disunion" and secessionists who termed their campaign as being an act of self-defense. At the time this letter was written, Gates County Senator Mills L. Eure (1834-?) was decidedly a Unionist who in the following urges a fellow congressman to call a local town meeting in order to gauge the voracity for secession in his district. Whatever the outcome of these called for meetings we can only imagine, but what we do know is that by late January 1861 Eure and the General Assembly of North Carolina decided to put the vote of secession to the people on February 28 and then they voted to send their delegates to the Washington Peace Conference which was to occur in the coming weeks. After much debate and political wrangling the secession vote passed and North Carolina succeeded from the Union on May 20, 1861. Eure did not sign the state's Ordinance of Secession on the following day, but he did service as captain in the 2nd North Carolina cavalry and was captured during the Gettysburg campaign and spent the remainder of the war in Northern prisons until being exchanged near the end of the war. The letter, 3pp. 4to., "M. L. Eure", Gatesville, N. C., Dec. 26, 1860 is addressed to "Dear Doctor" and reads, in part: "As we have leave of absence from raleigh until the 7th Jany. I have returned home with a view of ascertaining…the sentiments of my constituents on the subject of a convention in this state. The people of Gates have determined to hold a public meeting…on Saturday next and I should not be surprised if you did the same in Chowan. As both meetings are to instruct their representative. I trust that the instructions of both counties will be the same, otherwise I should be awkwardly situated. Had this subject of a convention been pressed to a vote…I should have voted against it for several reasons. First, because it was set on foot by a disunion clique with W. W. Avery at its head with the [?] that if they could get a convention called, they would succeed by chicane and every other devise to procure the election of a majority of disunion delegates…and thus vote N. Carolina forthwith out of the Union. Secondly, as our representatives in Congress are endeavoring to compromise and settle our National differences I saw nothing for a State Convention…the Whig members of the Legislature had determined to vote for a proposition submitting the question to the people and let them vote Convention, or no Convention; instead of voting for a Bill authorizing the Governor to cause elections to be held for delegates which is the disunion movement….the leading Democrats in the state are organizing for secession, disunion or revolution…they will attempt to urge it on the people in the election of delegates for a convention…of [the] opinion in Gates I am induced to think that they will instruct me to vote for the Bill authorizing the call of a convention and I expect your county would do the same…the subject will be up very soon after we go to Raleigh…the present Democratic dynasty has come to a pitfall end and many of them are fancying high positions in a Southern Confederacy…please not speak of this let except to our mutual friends…I have written Ewd. Wood on the subject…". Negligible damp staining at lower margin effecting few words, else VG.

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