rgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and
Texas. They agreed on a common program, and telegraphed to their homes
that Secession was advisable at the January conventions and that a
common convention was to be held at Montgomery, Ala., in mid-February,
for the organization of the Southern Confederacy. Meantime, all United
States officials were to resign, and the Federal forts, arsenals and
custom-houses were to be seized.

A last formal presentation of the Southern ultimatum was made by Toombs
in the Senate. It was the familiar demand--slavery in the territories;
slavery under Federal protection everywhere except in the free States;
fugitives to be returned; offenders against State laws to be surrendered
to justice in those States; inter-State invasion and insurrection to be
prohibited and punished by Congress. No partial concessions would
answer: this, or nothing! "Nothing be it then!" was the answer of the
Republicans: and Toombs, Davis, and their associates bade a stern and
sad farewell to their fellow-congressmen and went home to organize the
Confederacy. Congress took up fresh plans for reconciliation and
reunion.

Mississippi, through its convention, seceded January 9, 1861. Florida
followed, January 10, and Alabama, January 11. Then, in the great
"keystone State" of Georgia, came deliberation and momentous debate.
Against immediate Secession, the policy of patience, of conference with
the other Southern States including the new "independent republics," and
a united remonstrance to the North, of which the rejection would justify
Secession,--this policy was embodied in a resolution presented by
Herschel V. Johnson and supported by all the eloquence and
persuasiveness of Stephens. Against him was the strong personal
influence of Howell Cobb, and the argument--which Stephens says was
decisive,--"we can make better terms out of the Union than in it." The
test vote was 164 to 133 for immediate Secession. On the motion of
Stephens the action was made unanimous. This accession of Georgia marked
the triumph of the Secessionists' cause; and most fitly, in a speech on
the evening of the same day, Stephens declared the fundamental idea of
that cause. Jefferson, he said, and the leading statesmen of his day,
"believed slavery wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically
... Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the
assumption of the equality of races. This was an error.