"Cobb called
on me Saturday night," he writes. "He is exceedingly bitter
against Douglas. I joked him a good deal, and told him he had
better not fight, or he would certainly be whipped; that is, in
driving Douglas out of the Democratic party. He said that if
Douglas ever was restored to the confidence of the Democracy of
Georgia, it would be over his dead body politically. This shows
his excitement, that is all. I laughed at him, and told him he
would run his feelings and his policy into the ground." The
anger of Cobb, who was himself a confessed candidate for the
Democratic nomination, was imperiling the Democratic national
machine which Toombs was still struggling so resolutely to hold
together. Indeed, as late as the autumn of 1859 the machine
still held together.
Then came the man of destiny, the bolt from the blue, the end of
the chapter. A marvelous fanatic--a sort of reincarnation of the
grimmest of the Covenanters--by one daring act shattered the
machine and made impossible any further coalition on the
principle of "nothing doing." This man of destiny was John
Brown, whose attack on Harper's Ferry took place October 16th,
and whose execution by the authorities of Virginia on the charges
of murder and treason occurred on the 2nd of December.
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