along the Mississippi. There
remains a solid and far larger South in which indeed (except for South
Carolina) dominant Southern policy was briskly debated, but as a question
of time, degree, and expediency. Three mental forces worked for the same
end: the alarmed vested interest of the people of substance, aristocratic
and otherwise; the racial sentiment of the poor whites, a sentiment often
strongest in those who have no subject of worldly pride but their colour;
and the philosophy of the clergy and other professional men who
constituted what in some countries is called the intellectual class.
These influences resulted in a rare uniformity of opinion that slavery
was right and all attacks on it were monstrous, that the Southern States
were free to secede and form, if they chose, a new Confederacy, and that
they ought to do this if the moment should arrive when they could not
otherwise safeguard their interests. Doubtless there were leading men
who had thought over the matter in advance of the rest and taken counsel
together long before, but the fact seems to be that such leaders now
found their followers in advance of them. Jefferson Davis, by far the
most commanding man among them, now found himself--certainly it served
him right--anxiously counselling delay, and spending nights in prayer
before he made his farewell speech to the Senate in words of greater
dignity and good feeling than seem to comport with the fanatical
narrowness of his view and the progressive warping of his determined
character to which it condemned him. Whatever fundamental loyalty to the
Union existed in any man's heart there were months of debate in which it
found no organised and hardly any audible expression. The most notable
stand against actual secession was that which was made in Georgia by
Stephens; he was determined and outspoken, but he proceeded wholly upon
the ground that secession was premature. And this instance is
significant of something further. It has been said that discussion and
voting were not free, and it would be altogether unlikely that their
freedom should in no cases be infringed, but there is no evidence that
this charge was widely true. It is surely significant of the general
temper of the South, and most honourable to it, that Stephens, who thus
struggled against secession at that moment, was chosen Vice-President of
the Southern Confederacy.

By February 4, 1861, the States of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama,