It was in flat contradiction of the general faith in the personal fealty of their slaves, so constantly boasted by the Southern men,--a faith abundantly justified by the subsequent fact that four years of war passed without a single attempt to servile insurrection.

At the time of the John Brown disturbance the South resented the imputation of fear, made upon it by the North.

If now the danger was especially imminent, Southern leaders were solely to blame.

They would not accept the honorable assurance of the Republican party and of the President-elect that no interference with slavery in the States was designed.

They insisted in all their public addresses that Mr.Lincoln was determined to uproot slavery everywhere, and they might well fear that these repeated declarations had been heard and might be accepted by their slaves.
The omission by individual senators to present the grievances which justified secession is perhaps less notable then the same omission by the conventions which ordained secession in the several States.
South Carolina presented, as a special outrage, the enactment of personal-liberty bills in the free States, and yet, from the foundation of the Federal Government, she had probably never lost a slave in consequence of these enactments.