the country, and became known by the universal stigma of
"The Scarlet Letter." In the light of after events it was both a
revelation and a prophecy:

[Sidenote] Quoted in Appendix to "Globe" for 1859-60, p. 313.

MONTGOMERY, June 15, 1858.

DEAR SIR: Your kind favor of the 15th is received. I heartily
agree with you that [no] general movement can be made that will
clean out the Augean stable. If the Democracy were overthrown, it
would result in giving place to a greater and hungrier swarm of
flies.

The remedy of the South is not in such a process. It is in a
diligent organization of her true men for prompt resistance to the
next aggression. It must come in the nature of things. No national
party can save us; no sectional party can ever do it. But if we
could do as our fathers did--organize "committees of safety" all
over the Cotton States (it is only in them that we can hope for
any effective movement)--we shall fire the Southern heart,
instruct the Southern mind, give courage to each other, and at
the proper moment, by one organized concerted action, we can
precipitate the Cotton States into a revolution.

The idea has been shadowed forth in the South by Mr. Ruffin; has
been taken up and recommended in the "Advertiser" (published at
Montgomery, Alabama), under the name of "League of United
Southerners," who, keeping up their old party relations on all
other questions, will hold the Southern issue paramount, and will
influence parties, legislatures, and statesmen. I have no time to
enlarge, but to suggest merely.

In haste, yours, etc.,

WM. L. YANCEY

To James Slaughter, Esq.

The writer of this "Scarlet Letter" had long been known to the country
as a prominent politician of Alabama, affiliated with the Democratic
party, having once represented a district of that State in Congress,
and of late years the most active, pronounced, and conspicuous
disunionist in the South. In so far as this publication concerned
himself, it was no surprise to the public; but the project of an
organized conspiracy had never before been broached with such
matter-of-fact confidence.[1]

An almost universal condemnation by the public press reassured the
startled country that the author of this revolutionary epistle was one
of the confirmed "fire-eaters" who were known and admitted to exist
in the South, but whose numbers, it