Georgia had on the 19th of January, after much dragooning, passed the Ordinance of Secession, and on the 28th, Mr.Alfred Iverson, the colleague of Mr.Toombs, communicated the fact to the Senate in a highly inflammatory speech.

He proclaimed that Georgia was the sixth State to secede, that a seventh was about to follow, and that "a confederacy of their own would soon be established." Provision would be made "for the admission of other States," and Mr.Iverson assured the Senate that within a few months "all the slave-holding States of the late confederacy of the United States will be united together in a bond of union far more homogenous, and therefore more stable, than the one now being dissolved." His boasting was unrestrained, but his conception of the contest which he and his associates were inviting was pitiably inadequate.

"Your conquest," said he, addressing the Union senators, "will cost you a hundred thousand lives and a hundred millions of dollars." The conclusion of Mr.Iverson's harangue disclosed his fear that after all Georgia might prefer the old Union.

"For myself," said he, "unless my opinions greatly change, I shall never consent to the reconstruction of the Federal Union.

The Rubicon is passed, and with my consent shall never be recrossed." But these bold declarations were materially qualified by Mr.Iverson when he reflected on the powerful minority of Union men in Georgia, and the general feeling in that State against a conflict with the National Government.