After the middle of December Governor Hayne's office was transformed from that of an executive to that of a commander-in-chief. "General Orders" were issued from "Head Quarters," on December 20, 1832, that in accordance with a recent act of the legislature the services of patriotic citizens as volunteers would be accepted, "either individually or by companies, troops, battalions, divisions, or regiments, of artillery, cavalry, or riflemen." The governor on the same day selected prominent State Rights leaders in each district and commissioned them in due form as aides-de--
affairs for taking the field at an early day, not to qtiit it until all is settled. "In this part of the country the people are very ignorant and have been heretofore rather inclined to the Union party, but if you think I can be best employed in recruiting volunteers I will set about raising a company as soon as I receive your instructions as to the time and place [you] will want them, and whether you can furnish arms, etc., and will endeavor to have them ready for service in due time. I have however no choice of employment, so far as I am concerned....I take it for granted that you will concentrate a large force in Charleston to meet the emergency. Permit me again with much humility to suggest that that concentration be effected silently and without parade; we have already done enough to alarm the more timid of our friends and to afford apparent grounds of justification for the mad counsels of the President. At the same time care should be taken to have the force strong enough to annihilate instantaneously the first show of resistance to our laws, and give to treason as well as tyranny so signal and severe a rebuke that they will not recover from it soon."
