frame of mind, which in that moment of crisis, either did not
read the Southern newspapers, or reading them and finding that
the whole South was netted over by a systematically organized
secession propaganda made no attempt to gauge its strength,
scoffed at it all as buncombe! Even later historians have done
the same thing. In too many cases they have assumed that because
the compromise was followed by an apparent collapse of the
secession propaganda, the propaganda all along was without
reality. We know today that the propaganda did not collapse. For
strategic reasons it changed its policy. But it went on steadily
growing and gaining ground until it triumphed in 1861. Webster,
not his foolish opponents, gauged its strength correctly in 1850.

The clew to what actually happened in 1850 lies in the course of
such an ardent Southerner as, for example, Langdon Cheeves. Early
in the year, he was a leading secessionist, but at the close of
the year a leading anti-secessionist. His change of front, forced
upon him by his own thinking about the situation was a bitter
disappointment to himself. What animated him was a deep desire to
take the whole South out of the Union. When, at the opening of
the year, the North seemed unwilling to compromise, he, and many
another, thought their time had come. At the first Nashville
Convention he advised a general secession, assuming that
Virginia, "our premier state," would lead the movement and when
Virginia later in the year swung over from secession to
anti-secession, Cheeves reluctantly changed his policy. The
compromise had not altered his views--broadly speaking it had not
satisfied the Lower South--but it had done something still more
eventful, it had so affected the Upper South that a united
secession became for a while impossible. Therefore, Cheeves and