drawn from premises which they could not admit.

It was Yancey of Alabama, chief among fire-eaters, who, in the
afternoon of the same day, warmed the cockles of the Southern heart.
Gifted with all the graces of Southern orators, he made an eloquent
plea for Southern rights. Protection was what the South demanded:
protection in their constitutional rights and in their sacred rights
of property. The proposition contained in the minority report would
ruin the South. "You acknowledged that slavery did not exist by the
law of nature or by the law of God--that it only existed by State law;
that it was wrong, but that you were not to blame. That was your
position, and it was wrong. If you had taken the position directly
that slavery was right, and therefore ought to be ... you would have
triumphed, and anti-slavery would now have been dead in your midst....
I say it in no disrespect, but it is a logical argument that your
admission that slavery is wrong has been the cause of all this
discord."[829]

These words brought Senator Pugh to his feet. Wrought to a dangerous
pitch of excitement, he thanked God that a bold and honest man from
the South had at last spoken, and had told the whole of the Southern
demands. The South demanded now nothing less than that Northern
Democrats should declare slavery to be right. "Gentlemen of the
South," he exclaimed, "you mistake us--you mistake us--we will not do
it."[830] The convention adjourned before Pugh had finished; but in
the evening he told the Southern delegates plainly that Northern
Democrats were not children at the bidding of the South. If the
gentlemen from the South could stay only on the terms they proposed,
they must go. For once the hall was awed into quiet, for Senator Pugh
stood close to Douglas and the fate of the party hung in the
balance.[831]

Sunday intervened, but the situation remained unchanged. Gloom settled
down upon the further deliberations of the convention. On Monday, the
minority report (the Douglas platform) was adopted by a vote of 165 to
138. Thereupon the chairman of the Alabama delegation protested and
announced the formal withdrawal of his State from the convention. The
crisis had arrived. Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida,
Texas, and Arkansas followed in succession, with valedictories which
seemed directed less to the convention than to the Union. Indeed, more
than one face blanched at the probable significance of this secession.
South