be dissolved
without shock and without resistance. They took leave with no more
formality than that with which a private gentleman, aggrieved by
discourteous treatment, withdraws from a company in which he feels
that he can no longer find enjoyment. Their confidence was based
on the declarations and admissions of Mr. Buchanan's message; but
they had, in effect, constructed that document themselves, and the
slightest reflection should have warned them that, with the change
of administration to occur in a few weeks, there would be a different
understanding of Executive duty, and a different appeal to the
reason of the South.

The senators from the seceding States were more outspoken than the
representatives. They took the opportunity of their retirement to
say many things which, even for their own personal fame, should
have been left unsaid. A clear analysis of these harangues is
impossible. They lacked the unity and directness of the simple
notifications with which the seceding representatives had withdrawn
from the House. The valedictories in the Senate were a singular
compound of defiance and pity, of justification and recrimination.
Some of the speeches have an insincere and mock-heroic tone to the
reader twenty years after the event. They appear to be the
expressions of men who talked for effect, and who professed themselves
ready for a shock of arms which they believed would never come.
But the majority of the utterances were by men who meant all they
said; who, if they did not anticipate a bloody conflict, were yet
prepared for it, and who were too deeply stirred by resentment and
passion to give due heed to consequences.

On the 21st of January the senators from Florida, Alabama, and
Mississippi formally withdrew from the Senate. Their speeches
showed little variety of thought, consisting chiefly of indictments
against the free States for placing the government under the control
of an anti-slavery administration. Mr. Yulee was the first to
speak. He solemnly announced to the Senate that "the State of
Florida, though a convention of her people, had decided to recall
the powers which she had delegated to the Federal Government, and
to assume the full exercise of all her sovereign rights as an
independent and separate community." At what particular period in
the history of the American continent Florida had enjoyed "sovereign
rights," by what process she had ever "delegated powers to the
Federal Gover