everybody else did, that vehement and fervent language, proper to awaken one's people from perilous apathy, may really be at the time understatement, and that, after the people have awakened, to seek in that same language the counsel of right action would be the extreme of immoderate folly. The more you meditate it the more plainly you discern that his leadership was masterly. From the first to the last his appeal was to the middle class of property owners - then so numerous that it was practically the whole of southern society. His object at the first, as he declared, was to make with this class the protection of their fundamental property interest the prominent question of national politics. And the end showed that he not only took, but that he kept, the right road. The Georgia Platform became the bible of every political following in the State. The next year, 1851, Toombs, still a whig, supported Howell Cobb, a democrat, for governor against McDonald, one of the most popular men of the State, the southernrights candidate. Toombs's side, which won by a large majority, was called the union party. You will not be deceived by this if you keep in mind that Cobb was elected on the Georgia Platform, which had pledged the people of the State to resist, even to disunion, certain named encroachments upon slavery which providence had already ordered to be made.

In 1848 Yancey had aroused the people of Alabama into demanding that the United States protect slavery in the Territories, and he advocated secession in 1850. But in both these things he was premature. As compared with Toombs he uncompromisingly stood for every tittle of what he believed were the rights of the south. Toombs was a far more practical and able opportunist. His falling back upon the Georgia Platform from a much more advanced position, as I have just told, is an instance. I want to give others. He always declared in private conversation after the war that the democratic party was ripened and committed by Douglas and his co-workers to the repeal of the Missouri compromise while he was kept away from Washington by necessary attention to the interests of a widowed sister, otherwise, with his commanding position at the time, he would have crushed the scheme at its first proposal. When he returned to his public duties, to his amazement he found that every prominent member of the party was irrevocably for the repeal, and he could do nothing but embrace the inevitable. Then he would say substantially, "Had it not been for that administratorship which I could not avoid taking, we would all still be working our slaves in peace and comfort. That Missouri settlement was not right, but we had agreed to it; and with me a wrong settlement, when I agree to it, is just as binding as a righteous one."

When others are urging that the United States ought to protect slavery in the Territories, the record does not show that he is interested at first; although when at last the question is forced into debate he makes by far the strongest speech of all in championship of the Davis resolutions. I believe the current sucked him in.

Just after Lincoln's election - an event which influenced nearly all of even the most moderate elderly people of my acquaintance to declare at once for a southern confederacy - he proposed that Stephens join with him in an address to the people of Georgia, counselling that no immediate secessionist nor non-resistance man be elected to the convention; 1 and later he professed willingness to accept the Crittenden compromise.

The truth is that the ablest leaders, as we call them, do not lead - they are led. If they should become non-representative, their followers would go elsewhere.

And those of these leaders whose influence is the most potent and permanent are the conservative and moderate. Toombs was never really ahead in the southern movement except when for a brief while in the session of 1849-50 he planted the standard far to the front and called his people forward. Afterwards there were always others who appeared to be fighting much in advance of him.

He companioned his people as they steadily developed their readiness for the dread action commanded by the Georgia Platform if the north should say not another inch of extension for slavery, and no extradition of fugitive slaves. Of course he matured in feeling for secession far beyond what appeared to be his ripeness in 1850. With all his conservatism, he was of that stuff out of which the most earnest and biased partisans are made. There are many who can admit nothing against those they love, and a still larger number who hug their country with a religious acceptance of everything in it as the best in the world. To him and his people, the south, under the mighty influence of the nationalization we have explained, had long been unconsciously displacing the union in their hearts. As one may learn from his Tremont Temple lecture, he saw and magnified all of the good in the society to which he belonged, and was as blind to the bad as a mother is to the faults of her children. He was often heard to run through an enumeration of southern superiorities. The courage and valor of the men, the virtue and loveliness of the women, the purity of the administration of justice and of the performance of all public duties; especially did he love to say that the honesty of his section was so well established that its few venal congressmen were like a woman of easy virtue in a good family, whom the reputation of the latter keeps

from solicitation; and he would fall to praising the kingliness of cotton, the beneficence of slavery both to master and slave, the delicacy of our yam, the excelling flavor given by crab grass to beef and butter, the juice of the peach of Middle Georgia, sweeter than nectar, the incomparable melon, and cap the climax by asserting persimmon beer to be more acceptable to the palate of a connoisseur than any champagne. And in the days just preceding the great outbreak he had become more intense in his deep love for his State and section. The raid of John Brown into Virginia was, I think, the event which turned the scale with him, and made him feel that secession was near. Taking the occasion offered by Douglas's resolution, directing the judiciary committee to report a bill for the protection of each State against invasion by the authorities and inhabitants of other States, January 24, 1860, he delivered in the senate a speech which we must notice. It is common in Georgia to adopt the eulogy of Stephens and pronounce the speech of January 7, 1861, justifying secession, as Toombs's greatest effort. But I hesitate, unable to decide which is superior. He states his propositions thus:

"I charge, first, that this organization of the abolitionists has annulled and made of no effect a fundamental principle of the federal constitution in many States, and has endeavored and is endeavoring to accomplish the same result in all non-slaveholding States.

Secondly, I charge them with openly attempting to deprive the people of the slaveholding States of their equal enjoyment of, and equal rights in, the common Territories of the United States, as expounded by the supreme court, and of seeking to get the control of the federal government, with the intent to enable themselves to accomplish this result by the overthrow of the federal judiciary.

Thirdly, I charge that large numbers of persons belonging to this organization are daily committing offences against the people and property of the southern States which, by the law of nations, are good and sufficient causes of war even among independent States; and governors and legislatures of States, elected by them, have repeatedly committed similar acts."

The facts are reviewed closely and summed up with extraordinary force; the subject is treated as carefully under the law of nations as under the constitution; the quotation from Mill's "Moral Sentiments," and that from Thucydides, narrating the successful effort of Pericles in persuading the Athenians to resort to war rather than concede the right of the Megareans to receive their revolted slaves, are appositely used; the conviction that there is no longer safety for the south in the union speaks out in every line; and, with the exception of a few overheated passages, the entire speech is from the loftiest height of the statesman who bids his people arm for self-preservation. Just preceding the peroration there are paragraphs describing nervously and graphically the great resources of the south and her rapid development from feeble beginnings, one of which especially emphasizes the past and present of Virginia, adding at the last

"One blast upon her bugle horn
Were worth a million men."

Next before this are words which invoke the northern democracy, but they seem out of place and foreign. He abruptly ends his appeal to the national classes who have his respect by saying, "The union of all these elements may yet secure to our country peace and safety. But if this cannot be done, peace and safety are incompatible with this union. Yet there is safety and a glorious future for the south. She knows that liberty in its last