Virginia and Kentucky. In Virginia, an emancipation act failed
of passing by a single vote.

About the time that Calhoun was spreading the heresy of his state-rights
doctrine in South Carolina and taking his 'logical ground' on the
slavery question, a class, then almost universally branded as fanatics,
but whose proportions have since very largely swelled, arose at the
North, which were a match for the South Carolina senator with his own
weapons. Each laid hold of an extreme point and maintained it. We refer
to the Abolitionists of thirty years ago, under Garrison, Tappan & Co.
These people seized on a single idea, exclusive of any other, and went
nearly mad over it. Apparently blind to the evils around them, which
were close at hand, within their own doors, swelling perhaps in their
own hearts, they were suddenly 'brought to see' the 'vile enormity' of
slave-holding. Their argument was very simple. 'Slavery is an awful sin
in the sight of God. Slave-holders are awful sinners. We of the North,
having made a covenant with such sinners, are equally guilty of the sin
of slavery with them. Slavery must be immediately abolished. _Fiat
justitia ruat coelum_. Better that the Republic fall than continue in
the unholy league one day.' These men were ready to 'dissolve the
Union,' to disintegrate the nation, to blast the hopes of perhaps
millions of persons over the world, who were watching with anxious
hearts the experiment of our government, trembling lest it should fail.

In South Carolina John C. Calhoun was ready to do the same. And thus
extremes met.

Meanwhile the Southern conspirators pursued their labors. Gathering up
the reports of the meetings of the Abolition Societies, and selecting
the most inflammable extracts from the speeches of the most violent,
they circulated them far and wide, as indications of the hostile spirit
of the North, and as proofs of the impossibility of living under the
same government with people who were determined to destroy their
domestic institutions and stir up servile insurrections. The
Abolitionists saw the alarm of the South, and pressed their advantage.
Thus year after year passed, till the memorable November elections of
1860. The conspirators received the intelligence of the election of
Lincoln with grim satisfaction. The Abolitionists witnessed the progress
of secession in the various States with a joy they did not attempt to
conceal. 'Now we can pursue our grand scheme of empire,'