on for
secession, Stephens said that the South had no reason to feel aggrieved,
for all along she had received more than her share of the nation's
privileges, and had almost always won in the main that which was
demanded. She had had sixty years of presidents to the North's
twenty-four; two-thirds of the clerkships and other appointments
although the white population in the section was only one-third that
of the country; fourteen attorneys general to the North's five;
and eighteen Supreme Court judges to the North's eleven, although
four-fifths of the business of the court originated in the free states.
"This," said Stephens in an astonishing declaration, "we have required
so as to guard against any interpretation of the Constitution
unfavorable to us."

Still another voice from the South, in a slightly different key,
attacked the tendencies in the section. _The Impending Crisis_ (1857),
by Hinton Rowan Helper, of North Carolina, was surpassed in sensational
interest by no other book of the period except _Uncle Tom's Cabin_. The
author did not place himself upon the broadest principles of humanity
and statesmanship; he had no concern for the Negro, and the great
planters of the South were to him simply the "whelps" and "curs" of
slavery. He spoke merely as the voice of the non-slaveholding white men
in the South. He set forth such unpleasant truths as that the personal
and real property, including slaves, of Virginia, North Carolina,
Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, and Texas, taken all together,
was less than the real and personal estate in the single state of New
York; that representation in Southern legislatures was unfair; that in
Congress a Southern planter was twice as powerful as a Northern man;
that slavery was to blame for the migration from the South to the West;
and that in short the system was in every way harmful to the man of
limited means. All of this was decidedly unpleasant to the ears of the
property owners of the South; Helper's book was proscribed, and the
author himself found it more advisable to live in New York than in his
native state. _The Impending Crisis_ was eagerly read, however, and it
succeeded as a book because it attempted to attack with some degree of
honesty a great economic problem.

The time for speeches and books, however, was over, and the time for
action had come. For years the slave had chanted, "I've been listenin'
all the night long"; and his prayer had reached the thr