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interposing between the offence charged and the satisfaction to wounded honor demanded. Senator William R. King, a planter of Dallas, distinguished for the dignity and kindliness of his manners, being insulted by a citizen on the streets of Cahawba, drew the sword from his cane, presented it to the breast of the offender, and, in contempt, returned the weapon to its sheath. He refused a call to the field of honor on the plea of the challenger's personal unworthiness. The second who bore the challenge, as the code required, revived the call in his own name, but the vicarious antagonist, thinking better, declared there was nothing to battle for against so chivalrous a gentleman.

In the community of great plantations ultimately reposed the determining influence of Alabama politics. A very high moral as well as sentimental tone prevailed. There was no heart for revolution. National institutions have never been established in finer social sentiments than prevailed in this community.

"Flush times" enveloped the Southwest. No State was so rapidly populated by a wealthy immigration as Alabama. The roads leading out from Georgia were filled by white top wagons, followed by marching scores of black men, women and children. At the head of the procession rode Virginian or Carolinian, leading his inheritance of two centuries to fresh fields of the most important of modern industries. The State became quickly a land of homes. In the prairie belt lands, in the cane and forest, commanded thirty-five dollars the acre, to which must be added fifteen dollars the acre cost in labor of clearing the undergrowth. In the other of the two sections, most sought by slave master immigrants, the Valley of the Tennessee, the Indians had long kept the undergrowth down by spring burning. There it was supposed cotton flourished best, and lands in the wood commanded one hundred dollars an acre at public sales at Huntsville. Exposing a beautiful landscape, a generous soil, from which countless springs of pure water gushed, the wild deer's hoof dyed with the juice of the wild strawberry growing on every knoll, this valley was the most attractive situation of the whole Southwest.

But in 1837, soon after the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Yancey in Alabama, the Bank of the United States failed, prostrating

industry everywhere. He added to the duties of conducting his plantation the editorial charge of two weekly newspapers, the Cahawba Democrat and the Southern Democrat, both published at Cahawba. Benjamin Cudworth Yancey was now Register in Chancery for a division of rich counties, with his office at Cahawba. In the spring of 1839 the brothers bought the Wetumpka Commercial Advertiser and the Argus and consolidated them. The junior of the firm took control. Wetumpka was a promising town of three thousand inhabitants, sitting on either side of the Coosa, at the head of navigation from Mobile. Already the chosen site of the penitentiary, the town had strong claims to the choice of the Legislature and the people, as the Capital of the State.

The weekly newspaper half century ago in the Southwest partook of the character of the present magazine. Its literature reflected the earnestness and culture of its patrons. The circulation of the Argus soon extended, under its new management, to the interior of the States of Georgia and Mississippi along the line of stage travel from Savannah to Jackson, and it was among the leading papers of its class in the plantation. region of Alabama. The subscription price was $4 per annum in advance, or $5 if payment should be delayed ninety days. Charles Yancey, a writer of much merit, a Whig, a Virginian and doubtless a blood relative of the proprietors of the Argus, put up a rival paper, the Times, in West Wetumpka. An agreement was made between the publishers that both papers should print at one charge to advertisers all business notices offered to either. But Whigs and Democrats revolted. Individuals of neither party would tolerate the appearance, in an opposing journal, of their business patronage. Thereupon the Argus, of East Wetumpka, purchased the Times, of West Wetumpka.

E. White and William Hager, citizens of Wetumpka, advertised in the Argus to the printers of the United States their invention of "a machine for casting type," the first known, which they alleged would be sure to drive out "the English unhealthy plan, by hand, on account of its superiority."

A declaration of principles accompanied the announcement, that the Argus had purchased a new press and outfit. "It is a lamentable reflection (wrote the editor) that political

controversies of the present day are conducted with intemperance unsuited to conflicts of reason. Our columns shall

be devoted to carrying the fundamental principles of Public Education into every cottage of the State."

W. L. Yancey, in order to avoid the expense of regular summer visits to Greenville, S. C., with his family, seeking to escape the malaria of fresh cleared forests about Cahawba, bought a tract of land, perhaps one hundred acres, at Harrowgate Spring, near Wetumpka, in Coosa county. While residing there in the summer of 1839 an accident occurred which proved the turning point in his career. Until now the life of an agriculturist and political leader, very consistent with each other in Alabama, when the individual, as in Mr. Yancey's case, had small ambition to hold office, opened before him. He studied the science of government as a philosopher. The Coosa county farm was to be his retreat, where green meadows and fine live stock were to be sources of profit, as well as a perennial delight. While in his summer home, for the first season, he was summoned to repair with all haste to his cotton plantation in Dallas county. A general poisoning of his slaves had been perpetrated. A vulgar feud, unknown to him, existed between his overseer and the overseer of a neighbor. Poison was deposited in a hillside spring from which Yancey's overseer habitually drank on his way from the fields. By chance the intended victim went, on the fatal day, another way, and, by chance, the slaves, passing by, paused to slake their thirst, unsuspicious of the deadly draught. Instantly all were prostrated in agony. The most skilled physicians were called. The master remained at the bed sides of the afflicted. A large proportion of the number died; the remainder were disabled for labor for many months. The convalescents were sent to the Harrowgate Spring farm to be nursed. The crops of the year were necessarily abandoned; there was no wage labor available. All was lost; in the year following the great trouble at Greenville the master's fortune was swept away. His family and invalid slaves were to be supported entirely on his labor. He lost not a moment of time. In February, 1840, he removed his family to Wetumpka and assumed personal control of the Argus, pushing the business in every direction. He took down his law books, unopened for

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