uld regard as prophetic
inspirations. When he left Washington "on the beautiful morning of the
5th of March, 1859, he stood at the stern of the boat for some minutes
gazing back at the capital." He had announced his intention of not
standing again as a Representative, and one of his fellow-passengers
asked jokingly whether he was thinking of his return as a Senator.
Stephen's reply was full of emotion, "No, I never expect to see
Washington again unless I am brought here as a prisoner of war." During
the summer he endeavored to cast off his intuition of approaching
disaster. At his plantation, "Liberty Hall," he endeavored to be content
with the innumerable objects associated with his youth; he tried to feel
again the grace of the days that were gone, the mysterious loveliness of
the Southern landscape with its immense fields, its forests, its great
empty spaces filled with glowing sunshine. He tried to possess his
troubled soul with the severe intellectual ardor of the law. But his
gift of second sight would not rest. He could not overcome his intuition
that, for all the peace and dreaminess of the outward world, destiny
was upon him. Looking out from his spiritual seclusion, he beheld what
seemed to him complete political confusion, both local and national. His
despairing mood found expression a little later in the words: "Indeed
if we were now to have a Southern convention to determine upon the true
policy of the South either in the Union or out of it, I should expect to
see just as much profitless discussion, disagreement, crimination, and
recrimination amongst the members of it from different states and from
the same state, as we witness in the present House of Representatives
between Democrats, Republicans, and Americans."

Among the sources of confusion Stephens saw, close at home, was the
Southern battle over the reopening of the slave trade. The reality
of that issue had been made plain in May, 1859, when the Southern
commercial congress at Vicksburg entertained at the same time two
resolutions: one, that the convention should urge all Southern States
to amend their constitutions by a clause prohibiting the increase
of African slavery; the other, that the convention urge all the
Legislatures of Southern States to present memorials to Congress asking
the repeal of the law against African slave trade. Of these opposed
resolutions, the latter was adopted on the last day of the convention*,
though the moderates foug