of my State, and there was War
then, and angry faces and hostile men were gathered; and we knew then
well that the Southern States had determined to withdraw themselves from
the Federal Union.

"I happened to be one of those men who said, 'they shall not do it;' and
it appears to me that the whole argument is between that class of men
and the class of men who said they would let them do it. * * * When
this doctrine was started here of disintegrating the Cotton States from
the rest of the Confederacy, I opposed it at once. I saw immediately
that War was to be invoked. * * *

"I will not say these things were understood by gentlemen of the
Republican Party * * * but I, having been accepted and received as a
Democrat of the old school from the olden time, and HAVING FAST SOUTHERN
SYMPATHIES, I DID KNOW ALL ABOUT THEM. * * * I KNOW THAT SECESSION WAS A
THING DETERMINED UPON. * * * I was advised of and understood the whole
programme, KNEW HOW IT WAS TO BE DONE IN ITS DETAILS; and I being
advised, made war against it. * * *

"War had been, in fact, inaugurated. What is War? Was it the firing on
our flag at Sumter? Was that the first adversary passage? To say so,
is trifling with men's judgments and information. No, sir; when they
organized a Government, and set us at defiance, they commenced War; and
the various steps they took afterwards, by organizing their troops, and
forming their armies, and advancing upon Sumter; all these were merely
acts of War; but War was inaugurated whenever they undertook to say they
would maintain themselves as a separate and independent government; and,
after that time, every man who gave his assistance to them was a
Traitor, according to the highest Law."

The following 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 Rebellio