on is not the
victory of a political party, but the domination of a Section. It
proclaims in significant tones the destruction of that equality among
the States which is the vital cement for our Federal Union. It places 15
of the 33 States in the position of humble recipients of the bounty,
or sullen submissionists to the power of a Government which they had no
voice in creating, and in whose councils they do not participate.

26

It cannot, then, be a matter of surprise to any--victors or
vanquished--that these 16 States, with a pecuniary interest at stake
reaching the enormous sum of $3,600,000,000 should be aroused and
excited at the advent of such a party to power.

Would it not rather be an instance of unprecedented blindness and
fatuity, if the people and Governments of these 16 Slaveholding States
were, under such circumstances, to manifest quiet indifference, and to
make no effort to avoid the destruction which awaited them?

The meeting of the Legislature naturally brought to the State Capital at
Jefferson City all of the powerful coterie which was self-charged with
the work of taking Missouri into the road whither South Carolina was
leading the Cotton States. This coterie included the Judges of the
Supreme Court and all the State officials, and the United States
Senators and Representatives. Ever since the Anti-Benton faction had
accomplished the great Senator's defeat, the shibboleth for admission
into the higher circles of Missouri Democracy had been "Southern
Rights." As the mass of the Middle Class Democrats favored Senator
Douglas's plan of letting the settlers in each Territory decide for
themselves whether they would have Slavery, it was highly politic for
every candidate to claim that he was a Douglas Democrat. It must be
known to the inner ring, however, that he was at heart fully in accord
with the views of the extreme Pro-Slavery men, and ready at the word to
join the Secessionists. So thorough was this preliminary organization,
that while in Missouri tens of thousands of professed Union men went
over to Secession when the stress came, there was no instance of an
avowed Pro-Slavery man cleaving to the side of the Union.

27

Next to Gov. Jackson,--surpassing him in intellectual acuteness and
fertile energy,--was Lieut.-Gov. Thos. C. Reynolds, then in his 40th
year, a short, full-bodied man, with jet-black hair and eyes shaded by
gold-rimmed glasses. He boasted of being born of Virginia pa