ddressing a jury, for he displayed
all the adroitness in handling his subject, and in appealing to the
prejudices of his hearers, that we see in successful special pleaders.
But he overshot his mark. To nine out of ten of his audience, his words
and similes, though correct, and sometimes beautiful, were as
unintelligible as the dead languages. He advocated immediate,
unconditional secession; and I thought from the applause which met his
remarks, whenever he seemed to make himself understood, that the large
majority of those present were of the same way of thinking.

He was succeeded by a heavy-browed, middle-aged man, slightly bent, and
with hair a little turned to gray, but still hale, athletic, and in the
prime and vigor of manhood. His pantaloons and waistcoat were of the
common homespun, and he used, now and then, a word of the country
dialect, but as a stump-speaker he was infinitely superior to the more
polished orator who had preceded him.

He, too, advocated secession, as a right and a duty--separation, now and
forever, from the dirt-eating, money-loving Yankees, who, he was ashamed
to say, had the same ancestry, and worshipped the same God, as himself.
He took the bold ground that slavery is a curse to both the black and
the white, but that it was forced upon this generation before its birth,
by these same greedy, grasping Yankees, who would sell not only the
bones and sinews of their fellow men, but--worse than that--their own
souls, for gold. It was forced upon them without their consent, and now
that it had become interwoven with all their social life, and was a
necessity of their very existence, the hypocritical Yankees would take
it from them, because, forsooth, it is a sin and a wrong--as if _they_
had to bear its responsibility, or the South could not settle its own
affairs with its MAKER!

"Slavery is now," he continued, "indispensable to us. Without it,
cotton, rice, and sugar will cease to grow, and the South will starve.
What if it works abuses? What if the black, at times, is overburdened,
and his wife and daughters debauched? Man is not perfect anywhere--there
are wrongs in every society. It is for each one to give his account, in
such matters, to his God. But in this are we worse than they? Are there
not abuses in society at the North? Are not their laborers overworked?
While sin here hides itself under cover of the night, does it not there
stalk abroad at noon-day? If the wives and daughters of