This fact elicited less notice at the time than it calls forth in retrospect.

Those senators held in their hands in the beginning, the fate of the secession movement.
If they had advised the Southern States that it was wiser and better to abide in the Union, and at least to wait for some overt act of wrong against the slave States, the whole movement would have collapsed.

But they evidently felt that this would be a shrinking and cowardly policy after the numerous manifestoes they had issued.
South Carolina had taken the fatal step, and to fail in sustaining her would be to co-operate in crushing her.

While these motives and aims are intelligible, it seems utterly incredible that not one of the senators gave a specification of the wrongs which led the South to her rash step.

Mr.Toombs recounted the concessions on which the South would agree to remain; but these were new provisions and new conditions, never intended by the framers of the Federal Constitution; and they were abhorrent to the civilization of the nineteenth century.
Mr.Toombs, Mr.Jefferson Davis, and Mr.Benjamin were the three ablest senators who spoke in favor of secession.