f past differences," said Toombs,
"careless of the future, I am ready to unite with any portion or all of
my countrymen in defense of the integrity of the Republic." So it was
that the convention met, and adopted what is known in our political
history as "The Georgia Platform." This platform said that Georgia held
the American Union secondary in importance to the rights and principles
it was bound to perpetuate; that, as the Thirteen Colonies found union
impossible without compromise, the thirty-one of that day would yield
somewhat in the conflict of opinion and policy, to preserve the Union;
that Georgia had maturely considered the action of Congress in adopting
the compromise measures, and, while she did not wholly approve that
action, would 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 into the Union.

Thus the Union was saved in 1850 by the very man who had been charged
with trying to break it up. The eyes of the whole South were turned to
Georgia during that campaign; and when the people, under the leadership
of Toombs, Stephens, and Howell Cobb, voted to save the Union, the tide
of disunion was turned everywhere. The Georgia platform was made the
platform of the constitutional Union party in the Southern States. In
Mississippi, Henry S. Foote, the Union candidate, defeated Jefferson
Davis for governor. The action of Georgia strengthened the Union
sentiment in all parts of the country.

For a while the situation was secure and satisfactory; but, in the
nature of things, this could not last. The politicians were busy while
the people were asleep. The Know-nothing party sprang up in a night,
and divided the people again; and in Congress the slavery discussion was
renewed with extreme bitterness over the bills to admit the Territories
of Kansas and Nebraska as States. This controversy was even more
exciting than that which resulted in the Compromise Laws of 1850.
Following close upon this agitation came John Brown's raid into
Virginia, and his attack on Harpers Ferry. In ordinary times this raid
would have been regarded with contempt by the Southern people. It was
a ridiculous affair,--the act of a man who had worked himself up into
a frenzy of folly. If the people themselves had not been influenced by
passion cunningly played on by the