The news of the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States--through strictly constitutional methods, by a large majority of the electoral vote and by a plurality of over half a million in the popular vote--was received with cheering and expressions of joy in many of the Southern cities. The men who exulted there were those who believed that with this pretext sectional passion could be kindled into instant rebellion, and they at once set about the work of consummating disunion before the close of the term of the traitorous and imbecile administration of James Buchanan. On Nov. 12, 1860, South Carolina ordered the election of a convention to take the formal step of secession, and the other cotton States promptly followed its example. Congress met on the 3d of December, and listened to a message from President Buchanan, in which he said: "After much serious reflection I have arrived at the conclusion that no power to coerce into submission a State which is attempting to withdraw, or has actually withdrawn, from the confederacy, has been delegated to Congress or to any other department of the Federal government. It is manifest upon an inspection of the constitution that this is not among the specific and enumerated powers granted to Congress; and it is equally apparent that its exercise is not 'necessary and proper for carrying into execution' any one of these powers." On December 20 South Carolina adopted its ordinance of secession. Mississippi did likewise on Jan. 9, 1861, Florida on January 10, Alabama on January 11, Georgia on January 18, Louisiana on January 26, and Texas on February 1. On Feb. 4, 1861, a convention of delegates from the seceding States met in the city of Montgomery and proceeded to form and organize the "Southern Confederacy." These events were attended by popular demonstrations throughout the South, in which the Union was denounced with unstinted bitterness and its power defied with the utmost audacity, and by the active drilling of the local militia and the organization of large bodies of armed men. More than all this, the officers of the United States in that section abandoned their positions, and sub-treasuries, post-offices, large sums of money, arsenals, arms, ammunition, fortifications, and vessels of the United States were seized in all the leading cities of the South, and used to prepare for war upon the power from which they had been stolen. The value of the government property thus confiscated by the rebels before the nation fired a shot was not less than $30,000,000. On Jan. 5, 1861, the United States steamer Star of the West was fired upon in the harbor of Charleston and driven out to sea, and within that month a bloodless siege of Fort McRae at Pensacola compelled its surrender to rebel forces by a United States garrison. Amid these events the traitors in Buchanan's Cabinet boldly resigned their portfolios, and Southern Congressmen with insolent words