CHAPTER XI.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF DISUNION.

THE Presidential Campaign. Wm. L. Yancey and his Labors Welcomes the Montgomery Convention - The Scarlet Letter Outlines the Plan of the Conspirators Replies to " The States," "The Great Southern Party," the Members pledged to Disunion - Its Design - Indication of Southern Determination to rebel "The Spirit of the South," Mobile "Mercury," Charleston "Mercury," Barnwell Rhett - Judge Benning - Governor Potter Governor Gist-Jeff. Davis - L. W. Spratt - L. M. Keitt― Porcher Miles --Pugh of Alabama-Governor Perry-M. L. Bonham - Herschell V. Johnson explains why Buchanan persecuted Douglas Robert J. Walker, Governor of Kansas Buchanan, Douglas and Walker agree on a Kansas Policy Buchanan breaks Faith - The Cry of Popular Sovereignty against Douglas a Pretext The Democratic Convention broken and Disunion Inaugurated by Sectional Ambition and Personal Enmity.

THE Presidential campaign was one of great excitement, bitterness, boldness, power and brilliancy. The excitement was general, the bitterness and boldness chiefly confined to the strife between the Union Democracy and the wing nominally led by Breckinridge, but actually inspired by Mr. William L. Yancey and guided by Jefferson Davis, and the brilliancy and power mainly centered around Douglas. The dashing vigor displayed in his Southern tour, his reception there, and the enthusiasm which lit up the Northern Democracy in his favor, at times led people to hope almost against hope. But the disruption in the Democratic ranks was too wide spread, and in the South, the work of too many years to be overcome by such power as might be compressed into a few months.

The Southern conspiracy had been developing itself for

some time; but the threats of the leaders were regarded as "sound and fury signifying nothing" more. Many, like Andrew Johnson, in the deep devotion of their own hearts to the Union had no fear of its safety, and could not conceive how any sane man or set of men could dare to compass its destruction. The declared Disunionists and advocates of the opening of the slave trade were underrated. They were regarded as more eccentric than earnest, or more contemptible than discontented. I have said that to their persistent efforts, and the influences of the Buchanan Administration, was entirely due the surging commotion in which the country rocked after the disruption of the Democratic party.

It is not sought to be denied that the state of affairs was the result of deep machinations and great labor on the part of the avowed Disunionists. These fanatics constantly, or on every occasion they deemed their personal vanity wounded by the common sense of the people, threatened disunion, and the North only treated them with pleasantry or silent contempt. They, however, kept on preaching their views into rash and discontented minds. While relying on Northern Democrats to carry their legislative measures, these ungrateful and restless propagandists were inculcating disaffection against the whole North, and sneering at Northern Democrats as no better than "Abolitionists." It was no later than the previous session of Congress that Senator Iverson, of Georgia, made a turbulent speech against the Northern Democrats, charging them with being unfavorable to Southern interests, when they had been in fact their leading guardians. The Disunionists pursued their discontented wayskept on insinuating with a boldness apparently more ingenuous than ingenious, but which was actually the reversetheir vile and desperate doctrines all over the extreme South, in some instances captivating a reckless and ruthless spirit here and there in the border States. Secret societies, "Southern Leagues" and orders were created, and now and

then this seething cauldron of treason boiled over on the floor of Congress, on some Southern "stump," or through the journals of the Disunionists.

William L. Yancey, of Alabama, was the principal, or at least the most relentless and persistent of the conspirators. His record teems with treason; and he meant what he said. On extending a welcome to those who attended the Southern convention in Montgomery, Ala., in May, 1858, Mr. Yancey said:

"I must be allowed, at least on my own behalf, to welcome you, too, as but the foreshadowing of that far more important body; important as you evidently will be, that if injustice and wrong shall continue to rule the hour and councils of the dominant section of the country, must, ere long, assemble upon Southern soil for the purpose of devising some measure by which not only your industrial, but your social and political relations shall be placed upon the basis of an independent sovereignty, which will have within itself a unity of climate, a unity of soil, a unity of production, and a unity of social relations; that unity which alone can be the basis of a successful and permanent government."

This he followed up with the Scarlet letter, explaining how the cotton States might be precipitated into revolution:

"MONTGOMERY, June 15, 1858.

"DEAR SIR-Your kind favor of the 15th is received.

"I hardly agree with you that a general movement can be made that will clear out the Augean stable. If the Democracy were overthrown, it would result in giving place to a greater and hungrier swarm of flies.

"The remedy of the South is not in such a process; it is in a diligent organization of her true men for prompt resistance to the next aggression. It must come in the nature of things. No national party can save us; no sectional party can ever do it; but if we could do as our fathers did, organize committees of safety all over the cotton States-and it is only in them that we can hope for an effective movement-we shall fire the Southern heart, instruct the Southern mind, give courage to each other, and at the proper moment, by one organized, concerted action, we can precipitate the cotton States into a revolution.

"The idea has been shadowed forth in the South by Mr. Ruffin,

and has been taken up and recommended by the Advertisor [the Montgomery organ of Mr. Yancey] under the name of 'The League of United Southerners,' who, keeping up their old party relations on all other questions, will hold the Southern issues paramount, and will influence parties, legislatures and statesmen. I have no time to enlarge, but to suggest merely. In haste, yours, etc.

"To JAS. S. SLAUGHTER, Esq."*

W. L. YANCEY.

On the 18th July, 1859, Mr. Yancey made a speech at Columbia, S. C., to fire the Southern heart, and outlined the plan which events proved to have been adopted by the conspirators:

"To obtain the aid of the Democracy in this contest, it is necessary to make a contest in the Charleston Convention. In that body, Douglas' adherents will press his doctrine to a decision. If the State-rights men keep out of that convention, that decision must inevitably be against the South, and that, either in direct favor of the Douglas doctrine, or by the indorsement of the Cincinnati platform, under which Douglas claims shelter for his principles. The State-rights men should present in that convention their demand for a decision, and they will obtain an indorsement of their demands, or a denial of these demands. If indorsed, we shall have greater hope of triumph within the Union. If denied, in my opinion, the Staterights wing should secede from the convention, and appeal to the whole people of the South without distinction of parties, and organize another convention upon the basis of their principles, and to go into the election with a candidate nominated by it, as a grand constitutional party. But in the Presidential contest a Black Republican may be elected.

"If this dire event should happen, in my opinion, the only hope of safety for the South is a withdrawal from the Union before he shall be inaugurated, and the sword and the treasury of the Federal Government shall be placed in the keeping of that party. I would suggest that the several State Legislatures should by law require their governments, when it shall be made manifest that the Black Republican candidate for the Presidency shall receive a majority of the

It is a coincidence worthy of remark, that the recipient of this noted epistle, and the person held up for his imitation, both committed suicide. Mr. Slaughter died by his own hand, while "in a fit of melancholy" before the fall of Sumter; and old Mr. Ruffin, who fired the first gun at the fort, fired the last at the head of a traitor after the fall of the rebellion and killed himself, let us charitably hope, in a fit of remorse.

Electoral votes, to call a convention of the people of the State to assemble in ample time to provide for their safety before the 4th of March, 1861. If, however, a Black Republican should not be elected, then, in pursuance of the policy of making this contest within the Union, we should initiate measures in Congress which should lead to a repeal of all the unconstitutional acts against slavery. If we should fail to obtain so just a system of legislation, then the South should seek her independence out of the Union."

This plainly stated programme needs no comment. A great deal of attention was directed to Mr. Yancey as the most daring propagandist of the Disunionists. He seemed to be ubiquitous and overflowing. His pen rivaled his tongue. None doubted his ability any more than his disunion doctrines, but the expression of the latter made the former fiendish. In August, 1860, he made a four-hours' speech at Memphis, in which he replied to the exposition of his disunion league societies made in the Washington States. But almost in the very breath in which he declared the writer in The States to have manufactured a lie in stating he (Yancey) was forming leagues, he admitted that he had formed a league in Montgomery which was frowned down by the Democracy in 1858. It was not usual with him to deny any charges of disunion; but he sought to ignore the league on a verbal quibble, as it proved distasteful to the Democrats, and he had in this exigency formed what was called "The Great Southern party," a continuation of the league on a grander scale.

This new society had a formidable preamble, which after stating that the dismemberment of the existing Union was inevitable, pledged the members to do all they could to achieve it. If possible, they would peaceably and "honorably" sever" the Southern slave States from the Northern free States," and would "ask for nothing more nor receive any thing less than an equal division of all the territories, immunities, rights, privileges, obligations, treaties, etc., now claimed or enjoyed by the United States." This society