l might have discovered the approach of that storm which has since
burst with such fury upon the land. But this was not the case. Although
every one looked forward with anxiety to the time of election, it was
only a portion of the so-called BRECKINRIDGE party who saw with any
distinctness the point toward which all things were tending. Nor did
these men make public the extent of their hopes.

They were satisfied at first to do nothing more than familiarize the
minds of the people with the idea of secession. They spread the doctrine
that the only hope of Union lay in the defeat of Mr. Lincoln. Expressing
the worst fears of all, this doctrine was thought to be peculiarly
calculated to increase the numbers of the Union or Bell party, and was
therefore readily adopted by those who would at first have repelled with
patriotic horror the alternative it suggested.

It is impossible to estimate the influence of this lurking fallacy. Not
merely were multitudes of well-meaning, but unreasoning men, who were
confident of the success of their party, brought to acquiesce in a
proposition utterly false in its base, but the whole conservative
element in society was placed in a position from which it would be
thrown by defeat into a most dangerous reaction. Thus consciously or
unconsciously all parties were using every effort in their power to
prepare the popular mind for the question of secession.

But the period was not without its traits of patriotism. In October
strong efforts were made in the States of Alabama and Georgia to unite
the three parties in the South on one of the three candidates; thus
securing a President to the South, and the certainty of the Union. The
Breckinridge Democrats, however, contemptuously refused to be party to
every arrangement of the kind. The insurrectionary element, gathering to
itself the excitable and disaffected spirits of every class, had now
gained the command of this party, and no longer attempted to conceal its
revolutionary intentions. At the head of this element, exercising a vast
influence over all its movements, and embodying in himself, more than
any other man (except, perhaps, Mr. Yancey), the fierceness of its
spirit, stood Mr. Toombs, of Georgia. He was now invited to speak in
Montgomery. As a man of large political experience, some statesmanship,
and master of a grave and sonorous eloquence, it was expected that he
would influence a class of men who had hitherto held themselves
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