Scrapbook containing newspaper clippings; most appear to be from Charleston newspapers such as the Courier, the Evening News, the Mercury and the Southern Standard, although there are reports from other South Carolina newspapers and articles from the Washington, D.C. Southern Press. The clippings present both sides of the debate over secession for the period August 1851-July 1852. Most of the clippings focus on events in South Carolina, such as the election of individuals to local, state and southern conventions and the activities of cooperationist (unionist) and southern/state rights (secessionist) groups. However, there are also reports about activities in other states and events at the national level. There are also clippings from June 1875 issues of the New York Weekly Herald on the case of Tilton v. Beecher, in which Henry Ward Beecher was accused of adultery with the wife of Theodore Tilton. This scrapbook may have been compiled in part by Cordes W. Seabrook, possibly a son of Whitemarsh Benjamin Seabrook, a Governor of South Carolina (1848-1850) and member of the 1852 Southern Convention.