t of my ability. When that time comes, freemen of Georgia, redeem
your pledges! I am ready to redeem mine. Your honor is involved, your
faith is plighted. I know you feel a stain as a wound. Your peace, your
social system, your friends are involved. Never permit this Federal
Government to pass into the traitors' hands of the black Republican
party. It has already declared war against you and your institutions. It
every day commits acts of war against you; it has already compelled you
to arm for your defense. Listen to no vain babbling; to no treacherous
jargon about 'overt acts'; they have already been committed. Defend
yourselves! The enemy is at your door; wait not to meet him at your
hearthstone; meet him at the door-sill, and drive him from the Temple of
Liberty, or pull down its pillars and involve him in a common ruin."

CHAPTER XVI.

THE CHARLESTON CONVENTION.

It was an unfortunate time for the meeting of the Democratic National
Convention. The hope that the party which had so often brought harmony
from discord could unite upon the soil of an extreme Southern State was
destined to be broken. The body met in Charleston on April 23, 1860. The
place was worthy of the assemblage. For the first time in the party
history, its convention had met south of Cincinnati or Baltimore.
Redolent with the beauties of spring and the tint of historic interest,
Charleston, with its memories of Moultrie, inspired feelings of
patriotic pride. If it suggested the obstruction of Calhoun, it recalled
the Revolutionary glory of Marion and Rutledge, and the bold challenge
of Hayne to Webster, that if there be one State in the Union which could
challenge comparison with any other for a uniform, ardent, and zealous
devotion to the Union, that State was South Carolina.

It was a memorable meeting. The convention was presided over by Caleb
Cushing of Massachusetts, the devoted friend of Daniel Webster, and
Attorney-General under Franklin Pierce. In its ranks were Henry B. Payne
of Ohio, Benjamin F. Butler of Massachusetts, and James A. Bayard of
Delaware. These men were towers of strength in the North. They were the
men to whom Robert Toombs had appealed in the Senate, when he turned
from his fiery imprecation and, lowering his great voice, declared, with
tenderness and pride, "I have no word of invocation to those who stand
to-day in the ranks of Northern Democracy, but to remember and emulate
their past history. From the beginni