y of State; Howell Cobb, of Georgia, Secretary of
the Treasury; John B. Floyd, of Virginia, Secretary of War; Isaac
Toucey, of Connecticut, Secretary of the Navy; Jacob Thompson, of
Mississippi, Secretary of the Interior; Joseph Holt, of Kentucky,
Postmaster-General; and Jeremiah S. Black, of Pennsylvania,
Attorney-General. It was in and about this Cabinet that the central
cabal formed itself. Even if we could know in detail the successive
steps that led to the establishment of this intercourse, which so
quickly became "both semi-official and confidential," it could add
nothing to the force of the principal fact that the conspiracy was in
its earliest stages efficient in perverting the resources and
instrumentalities of the Government of the United States to its
destruction. That a United States Senator, a Secretary of War, an
Assistant Secretary of State, and no doubt sundry minor functionaries,
were already then, from six to eight weeks before any pretense of
secession, with, "malice aforethought" organizing armed resistance to
the Constitution and laws they had sworn to support, stands forth in
the following correspondence too plainly to be misunderstood. As a
fitting preface to this correspondence, a few short paragraphs may be
quoted from the private diary of the Secretary of War, from which
longer and more important extracts appear in a subsequent chapter.
Those at present quoted are designed more especially to show the names
of the persons composing the primary group of this central cabal, and
the time and place of their early consultations and activity.

EXTRACTS FROM FLOYD'S DIARY.[1]

November 8, 1860 ... I had a long conversation to-day with General
Lane, the candidate for Vice-President on the ticket with
Mr. Breckinridge. He was grave and extremely earnest; said that
resistance to the anti-slavery feeling of the North was hopeless, and
that nothing was left to the South but "resistance or dishonor"; that
if the South failed to act with promptness and decision in vindication
of her rights, she would have to make up her mind to give up first her
honor and then her slaves. He thought disunion inevitable, and said
when the hour came that his services could be useful, he would offer
them unhesitatingly to the South. I called to see the President this
evening, but found him at the State Department engaged upon his
message, and did not see him. Miss Lane returned last evening from
Philadelphia, where she had bee