Jenkins reported the resolutions. They recited, first, that Georgia
held the American Union secondary in importance to the rights and
principles it was bound to perpetuate. That as the thirteen original
colonies found union impossible without compromise, the thirty-one of
this day will yield somewhat in the conflict of opinion and policy, to
preserve the Union. That Georgia had maturely considered the action of
Congress (embracing the compromise measures) and--while she does not
wholly approve it--will abide by it as a permanent adjustment of this
sectional controversy. That the State would in future resist, even to
the disruption of the Union, any act prohibiting slavery in the
Territories, or a refusal to admit a slave State. The fifth plank
declared for a faithful execution of the Fugitive-slave bill.

Upon this platform the Union men selected Howell Cobb as their candidate
for Governor. The Southern Rights men selected Charles J. McDonald.
This party claimed that the South was degraded by the compromise
measures. Their platform was based upon the Virginia and Kentucky
resolution. It asserted the right of secession and maintained the
constitutionality and necessity of intervention by Congress in favor of
admitting slavery into the Territories. The distinct doctrine of the
compromise measures was non-intervention.

Howell Cobb was a born leader of men. Personally he was the most popular
man in the State. Entering public life at an early age he had been a
congressman at twenty-eight. He had been leader of the Southern party,
and was chosen Speaker, as we have seen, in 1849, when only thirty-four
years old. He had been known as a strong friend of the Union, and some
of the extreme States' Rights men called him a "consolidationist."

In his letter accepting the nomination for Governor, he alluded to the
long-cherished doctrine of non-intervention. The Wilmot Proviso had been
withdrawn and the Union saved. The people had been awarded the right to
determine for themselves in the Territories whether or not slavery was
to be a part of their social system.

No man was so tireless or conspicuous in this campaign as Mr. Toombs.
Although expressing a desire that someone else should go to Congress
from his district, he accepted a renomination to assert his principles.
He did not, however, confine his work to his district. He traveled from
one end of the State to the other. He recognized that party organization
in Georgia had b