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any time in his career, to have given much attention to that division of his argument. The history of the century was replete, he said, with evidences of the preparations of the free States to consolidate the powers of government and to destroy the social system of the slave States. The hope, if any were so blind as to indulge hope, that the revolution, already set in, would turn back in its course, was not founded upon events which had distinguished its rise or marked its progress. Indeed, the Union orator, rich in fancy, had presented a pathetic picture of the dread approach of revolution, from the South, which he asked the people to believe was unnecessary; the secession orator asked the people to hear the evidence proving that revolution coming from the North was already predominant. Men yet living relate with lingering delight the scenes of this extraordinary debate. Wit rebounded against wit, sarcasm foiled sarcasm; metaphor, illustration, syllogism, on wings of eloquence that never tired, wrought to frenzy the partisans, now of this orator and then of the other.

On the third day the debate was joined at Glenville. The crowd was greater and the scene more animating than ever before. Eufaula stood next on the list of Mr. Hilliard's appointments, and there the fourth day's encounter was expected. All the afternoon, before the promised event, the people were seen gathering in the town, some from Georgia, some from remote neighborhoods near the Florida line. After night the committees met to arrange plans. But, news came from Mr. Hilliard that having resolved to adhere to his original purpose to avoid debate, he had turned his face homeward. Never was audience doomed to greater disappointment.

The next week the elections were held. The Unionists triumphed. But an analysis of the result encouraged the Southern Rights men, justly, as will appear. Shields, a strong man, in his candidature for Governor presented the issue of unconditional Union against the Georgia Platform, represented by Governor Collier. Shields' support did not exceed one-seventh of Collier's vote. In the First District, Bragg, Deniocrat, holding to the Georgia Platform without the parenthetical qualification, defeated Langdon, unconditional Union Whig; in the Second, Abercrombie succeeded only in establishing the Georgia Platform as against immediate secession;

S. W. Harris, Southern Rights Democrat, was re-elected in the Third; a contest in the Fourth, between Sydenham Moore, Southern Rights Democrat, Stephen F. Hale, Georgia Platform Whig, and William R. Smith, unconditional Unionist, resulted in the election of the last named by a small majority. In the Fifth, the contest was second in animation only to that which prevailed in the Second District. Alexander White, Georgia Platform Whig, and Samuel F. Rice, Secessionist, were the rival candidates. White was elected by a few hundred majority. The most northern Districts, were, as usual, carried by Union Democrats. Yancey received a complimentary vote of 414 for Governor.

Mr. Yancey did not confine his oratorical labors to the debate with Mr. Hilliard in the campaign. Earlier than that occurrence, he spoke at Hayneville and at other county capitals where the courts he attended met. Generally he alone spoke on such occasions. The Hayneville Chronicle used the following expressions describing his oratory at that place :

"We have never seen such intense interest. There was none of that light hearted enthusiasm usually to be seen in mere party contests. There was a solemnity, a deep, intense earnestness of feeling pervading the entire assembly, which we have never witnessed before. Of the speech, we know not how to speak. We never heard such an effort from the lips of any man, upon the question or any other. We heard men of mature age, not ultra, and of admitted talents, declare it was unanswerable, and so we believe. We are certain no such speech, for ability and telling effect, was ever before delivered in Lowndes county."

CHAPTER 13.

The Delusive Success.

1852.

Mr. Yancey retired from general political discussion with the result of the campaign of 1851, consecrating himself to his profession and to the study of science and literature. He waited four or five years. on public events, and they arrived, to justify his rejected counsels, even more suddenly and decisively than he had anticipated.

The time had returned for organizing the quadrennial party contest for the Presidency. On June 1, 1852, the Democrats met in National Convention, at Baltimore, and nominated Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire, for the Presidency and William R. King for the vice-Presidency. On the 16th of the same month the Whigs met, at the same place, and nominated General Scott for the Presidency and William A. Graham, of North Carolina, for the vice-Presidency. Scott was forced on the slave States, as Harrison had been twelve years before. In fifty ballots taken the slave States voted steadily against him. Mr. Seward, supported by Mr. Greeley, held the free States to him. The slave States preferred Fillmore or Webster. Mr. Webster expected the nomination. A day or two before the assembling of the Convention, Webster and Choate submitted to A. H. Stephens, in his apartments at Washington, a draft of resolutions prepared by the Northern friends of Mr. Webster upon which he was willing to stand as a candidate. Stephens proposed an amendment, declaring the

acts of 1850 to be "in substance and in principle" a settlement of the sectional dispute. The amendment was accepted by the persons present. Seward's influence, however, was potential in the platform as well as in the choice of the nominee. The force of the agreement in Stephens' apartments was broken by the failure of the platform to acknowledge the legislation of 1850 as a compromise, and, therefore, binding. It was denominated a "series of acts," the phrase constructively implying ordinary legislation, and it was farther explained, in the same paragraph, that these acts should be enforced "until time and experience shall demonstrate the necessity of further legislation."

There were two other Conventious and two other candidates, remarkable inasmuch as they were the nucleuses of future controlling parties. As early as March the Southern Rights Association of Alabama met in Convention at Montgomery; a hundred persons, representing half dozen of the rich counties, to consider the nomination of a candidate for the Presidency. Resolutions were adopted, predicated on the declaration that, "our civilization is worth preserving and is in danger," one of which announced:

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That, believing both the old national parties are sensitive to the majority sentiment and, therefore, in effect, antagonistic to our sectional interests, we will preserve our separate organization and coalesce with neither, but shall leave ourselves free to oppose both or co-operate with either as, from time to time, their respective doctrines may coincide more or less with our own."

A resolution to nominate a candidate was voted down, but, in September, the Convention was recalled to consider the neglect of General Pierce to reply to the letter of inquiry of its chairman touching his views, in detail, on the sectional question; and to consider the reply received from General Scott, of a non-committal character. At the September meeting, George M. Troup, noted as a defender of the rights of Georgia in her conflict with the Administration of John Quincy Adams, and John A. Quitman, late a Secession Governor, of Mississippi, were nominated for President and vice-President.

On August 11, the Abolitionists, in Convention, at Pittsburgh, nominated John P. Hale, of New Hampshire, and George W. Julian, of Indiana, for President and vice-President. Resolutions were adopted, predicated on the declaration

that there should be "no more slave States, no more slave territory, no nationalized slavery, no national legislation for the extradition of slaves," one of which announced :

"That the Free Democratic party is not organized to aid either the Whig or the Democratic wing of the great slave, compromise party of the Nation, but to defeat them both; and that, repudiating and renouncing both as hopelessly corrupt and utterly unworthy of confidence, the purpose of the Free Democracy is to take possession of the federal government and administer it for the better protection of the rights and interests of the whole people."

The student of the temper of revolutions will not fail to find in the first resolution cited the motive of self-defense, as he finds in the other the resolve of conquest.

It is significant, in evidence of the fickleness of the public mind, that while the National Democratic platform endorsed the "compromise," the first provision of which, relating to California, was a flagrant abuse of State autonomy, it reaffirmed the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798-99; and while the Whigs shrank from an endorsement of the "compromise," because one of its provisions demanded the execution of an express clause of the federal Constitution, they declared "the Union should be revered and watched over as the palladium of our liberty." It will appear that the result of the election, ostensibly for the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions and the "compromise," by a great majority, was destined to be speedily lost in a majority against the "compromise."

Mr. Yancey did not approve of the nomination of candidates for President and vice-President by the Southern Rights Associations of Alabama. He gave no attention to the campaign, and was in attendance on the Circuit Court, in Autauga county, when he received a letter from Mr. G. W. Gayle, informing him, in an excited style, that the Southern Rights party had become alarmed at his silence, and as he had been "its soul and spirit for several years past" besought him to speak out. It had been rumored, even, that he would vote for Pierce! Turning to his desk, while the court proceeded with business, he wrote a hasty reply. "If my vote were at all necessary (he said) to give the vote of this State and to elect General Pierce, in order to prevent the election of General

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