for popular support. They are not justly chargeable with original
Disunion proclivities. Sentiments of that kind had been consolidated
in the Breckinridge party. But they are responsible for permitting
a party whose rank and file did not outnumber their own to lead
captive the public opinion of the South, and for permitting themselves
to be pressed into a disavowal of their political principles, and
to the adoption of the extreme views against which they had always
warred. The precipitate manner in which the Southern men of the
ancient Whig faith yielded their position as friends of the Union
was an instructive illustration of the power which a compact and
desperate minority can wield in a popular struggle. In a secret
ballot, where every man could have voted according to his own
convictions and desires, the Secession scheme would have been
defeated in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and
Arkansas. But the men who led the Disunion movement, understood
the practical lesson taught by the French revolutionist, that
"audacity" can overcome numbers. In such a contest conservatism
always goes down, and radicalism always triumphs. The conservative
wishes to temporize and to debate. The radical wishes to act, and
is ready to shoot. By reckless daring a minority of Southern men
raised a storm of sectional passion to which the friends of the
Union bowed their heads and surrendered.

It would be incorrect to speak of a Whig party in the South at the
outbreak of the civil war. There were many Whigs, but their
organization was gone. It was the destruction of that party which
had prepared the way for a triumph of the Democratic Disunionists.
In the day of their strength the Whigs could not have been overborne
in the South by the Secessionists, nor would the experiment have
been tried. No party in the United States ever presented a more
brilliant array of talent than the Whigs. In the South, though
always resting under the imputation of not being so devoted to the
support of Slavery as their opponents, they yet maintained themselves,
by the power of intellect and by the prestige of chivalric leadership,
in some extraordinary political battles. Many of their eminent
men have a permanent place in our history. Others, with less
national renown, were recognized at home as possessing equal power.
In their training, in their habits of mind, in their pride and
independence, in their lack of discipline and subm