verned by a fixed
majority in Congress hostile to our institutions."

This campaign declamation, used throughout the whole South with great
skill and success, to "fire the Southern heart," was wholly defective
as a serious argument.

As to the alleged destruction of equality, the North proposed to deny
to the slave-States no single right claimed by the free-States. The
talk about "provinces of a consolidated despotism to be governed by a
fixed majority" was, in itself an absurd contradiction in terms, which
repudiated the fundamental idea of republican government. The
acknowledgment that any danger from anti-slavery "measures" was only
in the future, negatived its validity as a present grievance.
Hostility to "our institutions" was expressly disavowed by full
constitutional recognition of slavery under State authority. The
charge of "sectionalism" came with a bad grace from a State whose
newspapers boasted that none but the Breckinridge ticket was tolerated
within her borders, and whose elsewhere obsolete "institution" of
choosing Presidential electors by the Legislature instead of by the
people, combined with such a dwarfed and crippled public sentiment,
made it practically impossible for a single vote to be cast for either
Lincoln or Douglas or Bell--a condition mathematically four times as
"sectional" as that of any State of the North.

Finally, the avowed determination to secede because a Presidential
election was about to be legally gained by one of the three opposing
parties, after she had freely and fully joined in the contest, was an
indulgence of caprice utterly incompatible with any form of government
whatever.

There is no need here to enter upon a discussion of the many causes
which, had given to the public opinion of South Carolina so radical
and determined a tone in favor of disunion. Maintaining persistence,
and gradually gathering strength almost continuously since the
nullification furor of 1832, it had become something more than a
sentiment among its devotees: it had grown into a species of cult or
party religion, for the existence of which no better reason can be
assigned than that it sprang from a blind hero-worship locally
accorded to John C. Calhoun, one of the prominent figures of American
political history. As representative in Congress, Secretary of War
under President Monroe, Vice-President of the United States under
President John Quincy Adams, for many years United States Senator from
S