llowing letter, written by one of the most active of the Southern
conspirators in 1858, during the great Douglas and Lincoln Debate of
that year, to which extended reference has already been made, is of
interest in this connection, not only as corroborative evidence of the
fact that the Rebellion of the Cotton States had been determined on long
before Mr. Lincoln was elected President, but as showing also that the
machinery for "firing the Southern heart" and for making a "solid South"
was being perfected even then. The subsequent split in the Democratic
Party, and nomination of Breckinridge by the Southern wing of it, was
managed by this same Yancey, simply as parts of the deliberate programme
of Secession and Rebellion long before determined on by the Cotton Lords
of the Cotton States.

"MONTGOMERY, June 15, 1858.

"DEAR SIR:--Your kind favor of the 13th is received.

"I hardly agree with you that a general movement can be made that will
clean out the Augean Stable. If the Democracy were overthrown it would
result in giving place to a greedier and hungrier swarm of flies.

"The remedy of the South is not in such a process. It is in a diligent
organization of her true men for prompt resistance to the next
aggression. It must come in the nature of things. No National Party
can save us. No Sectional Party can ever do it. But if we could do as
our fathers did--organize 'Committees of Safety' all over the Cotton
States (and it is only in them that we can hope for any effective
movement), we shall fire the Southern heart, instruct the Southern mind,
give courage to each other, and at the proper moment, by one organized,
concerted action, we can precipitate the Cotton States into a
revolution.

"The idea has been shadowed forth in the South by Mr. Ruffin; has been
taken up and recommended in the Advertiser under the name of 'League of
United Southerners,' who, keeping up their old relations on all other
questions, will hold the Southern issues paramount, and influence
parties, legislatures and statesmen. I have no time to enlarge, but to
suggest merely.

"In haste, yours, etc.
"W. L. YANCEY.

"To JAMES S. SLAUGHTER."

At Jackson, Mississippi, in the fall of the same year (1858) just after
the great Debate between Douglas and Lincoln had closed, Jefferson Davis
had already raised the standard of Revolution, Secession and Disunion,
during the course of a s