he popular vote of the South. They were
definitely in the minority in their own section. The majority of the
Southerners had so far reacted from the wild alarms of the beginning
of the year that they refused to go along with the candidates of the
extremists. They were for giving the Union another trial. The South
itself had repudiated the slave profiteers.

This was the immensely significant fact of November, 1860. It made a
great impression on the whole country. For the moment it made the fierce
talk of the Southern extremists inconsequential. Buoyant Northerners,
such as Seward, felt that the crisis was over; that the South had voted
for a reconciliation; that only tact was needed to make everybody happy.
When, a few weeks after the election, Seward said that all would be
merry again inside of ninety days, his illusion had for its foundation
the Southern rejection of the slave profiteers.

Unfortunately, Seward did not understand the precise significance of
the thought of the moderate South. He did not understand that while the
South had voted to send Breckinridge and his sort about their business,
it was still deeply alarmed, deeply fearful that after all it might at
any minute be forced to call them back, to make common cause with them
against what it regarded as an alien and destructive political power,
the Republicans. This was the Southern reservation, the unspoken
condition of the vote which Seward--and for that matter, Lincoln,
also,--failed to comprehend. Because of these cross-purposes, because
the Southern alarm was based on another thing than the standing or
falling of slavery, the situation called for much more than tact, for
profound psychological statesmanship.

And now emerges out of the complexities of the Southern situation a
powerful personality whose ideas and point of view Lincoln did not
understand. Robert Barnwell Rhett had once been a man of might in
politics. Twice he had very nearly rent the Union asunder. In 1844,
again in 1851, he had come to the very edge of persuading South Carolina
to secede. In each case he sought to organize the general discontent of
the South,--its dread of a tariff, and of Northern domination. After his
second failure, his haughty nature took offense at fortune. He resigned
his seat in the Senate and withdrew to private life. But he was too
large and too bold a character to attain obscurity. Nor would his
restless genius permit him to rust in ease. During the troubl