Griffin, a rhetorician of rare accomplishment. The youth applied himself diligently to his studies, assisted in the editorial conduct of the Adelphi, the college literary journal, and contributed carefully prepared papers, of a controversial character, to it. The increase of his mother's family and the limited resources possessed by his stepfather, induced him to refuse longer to be a burden upon them. Not waiting to take his diploma he hastened to the law office of Nathan Sayre, of Sparta, Georgia, to prepare for the law. While on a visit to "Rosemont," he met Mr. B. F. Perry, of Greenville, South Carolina, a young lawyer of pleasing address and excellent ability. A mutual regard sprung up and Yancey soon appeared at Perry's office as a student of the law. Governor Perry wrote many years later: "I loved William L. Yancey much. He was a very young man when I made his acquaintance (19 years old). I was charmed by his pleasing and cordial manners, prepossessing appearance and intellectual endowments. He read law in my office one or two years, and then gave evidence of that brilliant career in politics which he afterwards ran. * He wielded a fierce and terrible pen against nullification and disunion. In a time of high political excitement in South Carolina, he addressed large mass meetings with great success. I remember he made a speech at a public dinner, in reply to Hon. Warren R. Davis, a member of Congress, poet, wit and friend of his father. Mr. Davis was completely surprised, and at the conclusion of the young orator's speech, rose and complimented him highly to the audience. Mr. Yancey was a man of talent and genius; a man of impulse and deep feeling. He spoke with extraordinary fluency and clearness of statement. His style of speaking was more conversational than might have been expected from one of his impulsive nature. He wrote as forcibly as he spoke, and with great rapidity. He was a very handsome young man, always neat in his dress, and his habits were good and regular. I never knew him to indulge in any kind of dissipation. In company, he was the merriest of associates, but when left to himself, he was meditative to sadness.

I will venture on a single anecdote, which will illustrate the affectionate nature and generous heart of William L. Yancey. He came from the North on a visit to Judge Huger, at

Charleston. An aged negress, who had been the property of his father, called to see him. As she was making her departure he slipped his purse into her hand. It contained all the cash he possessed. The act is an index to his whole character, as I knew it."

In the dawn of the age of mechanics and political economy, a written compact of Union had been made between "free and independent States" of America, divided almost equally into navigating States of the North and agricultural States of the South. Unity of empire was not declared to be the primary object of patriotic desire by the compact.*

No citizenship of the Union superior to State citizenship was established.

The sections, feeling the impulse of the new age, began to test the sufficiency of the compact. Until sectional supremacy should ascend in the one to a height which required no argu ment to vindicate it, or sectional vitality should descend so low in the other as to be incapable of offence, the fast maturing rivalry between them promised little of reconciliation. The modern ideal of liberty a conventional guaranty of free speech, a free press, and the reservation in the States, or the people, of all power not specifically delegated — began, early, to feel the impigning presence of the ancient fact of arbitrary power. Theories were on trial. Leaders came forward from the North and the South to remind the country that, in the time of Cato, Republican virtue had been made secure by the current of fearless inquiry into public affairs, and in the bold devotion of the people to abstract principle: but that, in the time of Tiberius, a splendid public extravagance and the prodigality of government corrupted private morals, surrendering to the petty wrangles of officers and their sentimental measures, the liberty of the people. And there was also a powerful party which cried out, there was no danger.

The excitement over the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory had subsided. War raged in Europe. The king of England forbid American merchantmen to carry French commerce: Napoleon forbid them to carry English commerce.

* See the Preface to the Federalist, prepared by Hamilton.