it was not the perception that the Virginia program had put the
whole matter in a new light, that the issue had indeed been changed from
slavery to sovereignty, and that to join battle on the latter issue
was a far more serious matter than to join battle on the former. And if
Toombs reasoned in this fearful way, it is easy to believe that the more
buoyant natures in that council may well have reasoned in precisely
the opposite way. Virginia had lifted the Southern cause to its highest
plane. But there was danger that the Virginia compromise might prevail.
If that should happen these enthusiasts for a separate Southern
nationality might find all their work undone at the eleventh hour.
Virginians who shared Montgomery's enthusiasms had seen this before
then. That was why Roger Pryor, for example, had gone to Charleston as
a volunteer missionary. In a speech to a Charleston crowd he besought
them, as a way of precipitating Virginia into the lists, to strike blow.
Charleston Mercury, April 11, 1861.

The only way to get any clue to these diplomatic tangles is by
discarding the old notion that there were but two political ideals
clashing together in America in 1861. There were three. The Virginians
with their devotion to the idea of a league of nations in this country
were scarcely further away from Lincoln and his conception of a Federal
unit than they were from those Southerners who from one cause or another
were possessed with the desire to create a separate Southern nation.
The Virginia program was as deadly to one as to the other of these two
forces which with the upper South made up the triangle of the day. The
real event of March, 1861, was the perception both by Washington and
Montgomery that the Virginia program spelled ruin for its own. By the
middle of April it would be difficult to say which had the better reason
to desire the defeat of that program, Washington or Montgomery.

24. Lincoln, VI, 240, 301, 302; N. R., first series, IV, 109, 235, 239;
Welles, I, 16, 22-23, 25; Bancroft, II, 127, 129-130,138,139, 144; N.
and H., III, Chap. XI, IV, Chap. I. Enemies of Lincoln have accused him
of bad faith with regard to the relief of Fort Pickens. The facts appear
to be as follows: In January, 1861, when Fort Pickens was in danger of
being seized by the forces of the State of Florida, Buchanan ordered a
naval expedition to proceed to its relief. Shortly afterward--January
2--Senator Mallory on behalf of Florida persua