in the face of any such contradiction I reassert the statement. The
shot-gun was not resorted to. Masked men did not ride over the country
at night intimidating voters; but there was a firm feeling that a class
existed in every State with a sort of divine right to control public
affairs. If they could not get this control by one means they must by
another. The end justified the means. The coercion, if mild, was
complete.

There were two political parties, it is true, in all the States, both
strong in numbers and respectability, but both equally loyal to the
institution which stood paramount in Southern eyes to all other
institutions in state or nation. The slave-owners were the minority,
but governed both parties. Had politics ever divided the slave-holders
and the non-slave-holders, the majority would have been obliged to
yield, or internecine war would have been the consequence. I do not
know that the Southern people were to blame for this condition of
affairs. There was a time when slavery was not profitable, and the
discussion of the merits of the institution was confined almost
exclusively to the territory where it existed. The States of Virginia
and Kentucky came near abolishing slavery by their own acts, one State
defeating the measure by a tie vote and the other only lacking one. But
when the institution became profitable, all talk of its abolition ceased
where it existed; and naturally, as human nature is constituted,
arguments were adduced in its support. The cotton-gin probably had much
to do with the justification of slavery.

The winter of 1860-1 will be remembered by middle-aged people of to-day
as one of great excitement. South Carolina promptly seceded after the
result of the Presidential election was known. Other Southern States
proposed to follow. In some of them the Union sentiment was so strong