Well might Yancey and his followers receive with a shout of joy
the "Freeport Doctrine," as Douglas's supreme evasion was called.
Should Southerners trust any longer the man who had evolved from
the principle of let-'em-alone to the principle of
double-dealing? However, the Southerners were far from
controlling the situation. Though the events of 1858 had created
discord in the Democratic party, they had not consolidated the
South. Men like Toombs and Stephens were still hopeful of
keeping the States together in the old bond of political evasion.
The Democratic machine, damaged though it was, had not yet lost
its hold on the moderate South, and while that continued to be
the case, there was still power in it.
CHAPTER IV. THE CRISIS
The Southern moderates in 1859 form one of those political
groups, numerous enough in history, who at a crisis arrest our
imagination because of the irony of their situation.
Unsuspecting, these men went their way, during the last summer of
the old regime, busy with the ordinary affairs of state, absorbed
in their opposition to the Southern radicals, never dreaming of
the doom that was secretly moving toward them through the plans
of John Brown. In the soft brilliancy of the Southern summer
when the roses were in bloom, many grave gentlemen walked slowly
up and down together under the oaks of their plantation avenues,
in the grateful dusk, talking eagerly of how the scales trembled
in Southern politics between Toombs and Yancey, and questioning
whether the extremists could ride down the moderate South and
reopen the slave trade.
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