n Members in the speakership contest, aroused my resentment,
so that in the campaign of 1860 I was ready to meet the threats of
secession with those of open war.

It was unfortunate that the south at this time was largely represented
in Congress by men of the most violent opinions. Such men as Keitt,
Hindman, Barksdale, and Rust, were offensive in their conduct and
language. They were of that class in the south who believed that
the people of the north were tradesmen, hucksters, and the like,
and therefore were cowards; that one southern man was equal in a
fight to four northern men; that slavery was a patent of nobility,
and that the owner of slaves was a lord and master. It is true
that among the southern Members there were gentlemen of a character
quite different. Such men as Letcher, Aiken and Bocock entertained
no such opinions, but were courteous and friendly. But even these
shared in the opinions of their people that, as slavery was recognized
by the constitution, as an institution existing in many of the
states, it should not be excluded from the common territory of the
Union, except by the vote of the people of a territory when assuming
the dignity and power of a state. It would appear that as in 1860
the exclusion of slavery from Kansas was definitely settled by the
people of that state, and that as the only region open to this
controversy was New Mexico, from which slavery was excluded by
natural conditions, there was no reason or ground for an attempt
to disrupt the Union. In fact, this pretense for secession was
abandoned by South Carolina, and the only ground taken for attempting
it was the election of Mr. Lincoln as President of the United
States. If this was conceded to be a just cause for secession,
our government would become a rope of sand; it would be worse than
that of any South American republic, because our country is more
populous, and sections of it would have greater strength of attack
and defense. This pretense for secession would not have been
concurred in by any of the states north of South Carolina, but for
the previous agitation of slavery, which had welded nearly all the
slaveholding states into a compact confederacy. This was done,
not for fear of Lincoln, but to protect the institution of slavery,
threatened by the growing sentiment of mankind. Upon this question
I had been conservative, but I can see now that this contest was
irrepressible, and that I would soon have been i