n long before determined on by the Cotton Lords
of the Cotton States.

"MONTGOMERY, June 15, 1858.

"DEAR SIR:--Your kind favor of the 13th is received.

"I hardly agree with you that a general movement can be made that will
clean out the Augean Stable. If the Democracy were overthrown it would
result in giving place to a greedier and hungrier swarm of flies.

"The remedy of the South is not in such a process. It is in a diligent
organization of her true men for prompt resistance to the next
aggression. It must come in the nature of things. No National Party
can save us. No Sectional Party can ever do it. But if we could do as
our fathers did--organize 'Committees of Safety' all over the Cotton
States (and it is only in them that we can hope for any effective
movement), we shall fire the Southern heart, instruct the Southern mind,
give courage to each other, and at the proper moment, by one organized,
concerted action, we can precipitate the Cotton States into a
revolution.

"The idea has been shadowed forth in the South by Mr. Ruffin; has been
taken up and recommended in the Advertiser under the name of 'League of
United Southerners,' who, keeping up their old relations on all other
questions, will hold the Southern issues paramount, and influence
parties, legislatures and statesmen. I have no time to enlarge, but to
suggest merely.

"In haste, yours, etc.
"W. L. YANCEY.

"To JAMES S. SLAUGHTER."

At Jackson, Mississippi, in the fall of the same year (1858) just after
the great Debate between Douglas and Lincoln had closed, Jefferson Davis
had already raised the standard of Revolution, Secession and Disunion,
during the course of a speech, in which he said: "If an Abolitionist be
chosen President of the United States, you will have presented to you
the question of whether you will permit the Government to pass into the
hands of your avowed and implacable enemies? Without pausing for an
answer, I will state my own position to be, that such a result would be
a species of revolution by which the purposes of the Government would be
destroyed, and the observance of its mere forms entitled to no respect.
In that event, in such a manner as should be most expedient, I should
deem it your duty to provide for your safety, outside of the Union with
those who have already shown the will, and would have acquired the power
to deprive you of your birthright, and