the Union was to be governed otherwise than in the
direct and immediate interest of slavery. Slavery was the basis of their
political system, and they knew that it could be better served by the
American Union's continued existence than by the construction of
a Southern Confederacy, provided the former should do all that
slaveholders might require it to do.

The second Southern party, and the smallest of them all, was composed
of the minions of the Nullifiers, and of their immediate followers, men
whose especial object it was to destroy the Union, and who hated the
subservient portion of the Northern people far more bitterly than they
hated Republicans, or even Abolitionists. They would have preferred
abolition and disunion to the triumph of slavery and the preservation of
the Union. It was not that they loved slavery less, but that they hated
the Union more. Even if the country should submit to the South, the
leaders of this faction knew that they would not be the Southrons to
whom should be intrusted the powers and the business of government. Few
of them were of much account even in their own States, and generally
they could have been set down as chiefs of the opposition to everything
that was reasonable. A remarkable proof of the little hold which this
class of men had on even the most mad of the Southern States, when at
the height of their fury, was afforded by the refusal of South Carolina
to elect Mr. Rhett Governor, her Legislature conferring that post on Mr.
Pickens, a moderate man when compared with Mr. Rhett, and who, there
is reason for believing, would have prevented a resort to Secession
altogether, could he have done so without sacrificing what he held to be
his honor.

The third Southern party consisted of men who desired the continuance
of the Union, but who wished that some "concessions" should be made, or
"compromises" effected, in order to satisfy men, one portion of whom
were resolved upon having everything, while the other portion were
resolute in their purpose to destroy everything that then existed of a
national character. This third party was mostly composed of those
timid men whose votes count for much at ordinary periods, but who in
extraordinary times are worse than worthless, being in fact incumbrances
on bolder men. They loved the Union, because they loved peace, and were
opposed to violence of all kinds; but their Unionism was much like
Bailie Macwheeble's conscience, which was described as