Stephens. Curiously enough all three were Georgians, and this
might indeed be called the day of Georgia in the history of the
South.
A different type of man, however, and one significant of a
divergent point of view, had long endeavored to shake the
leadership of the Georgian group. Rhett in South Carolina,
Jefferson Davis in Mississippi, and above all Yancey in Alabama,
together with the interests and sentiment which they represented,
were almost ready to contest the orthodoxy of the policy of
"nothing doing." To consolidate the interests behind them, to
arouse and fire the sentiment on which they relied, was now the
confessed purpose of these determined men. So little attention
has hitherto been given to motive in American politics that the
modern student still lacks a clear-cut and intelligent perception
of these various factions. In spite of this fact, however, these
men may safely be regarded as being distinctly more intellectual,
and as having distinctly deeper natures, than the men who came
together under the leadership of Toombs and Cobb, and who had the
true provincial enthusiasm for politics as the great American
sport.
The factions of both Toombs and Yancey were intensely Southern
and, whenever a crisis might come, neither meant to hesitate an
instant over striking hard for the South.
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