"
But calmness, kindness, and courtesy were alike thrown away in both
Houses upon the implacable Southern leaders. As the last day of that
memorable session, which closed in the failure of all peaceful measures
to restore the Union, slowly dawned--with but a few hours lacking of the
time when Mr. Lincoln would be inaugurated President of the United
States--Mr. Wigfall thought proper, in the United States Senate, to
sneer at him as "an ex-rail-splitter, an ex-grocery keeper, an
ex-flatboat captain, and an ex-Abolition lecturer"--and proceeded
to scold and rant at the North with furious volubility.
"Then, briefly," said he, "a Party has come into power that represents
the antagonism to my own Section of the Country. It represents two
million men who hate us, and who, by their votes for such a man as they
have elected, have committed an overt act of hostility. That they have
done."
"You have won the Presidency," said he, to the Republicans, "and you are
now in the situation of the man who had won the elephant at a raffle.
You do not know what to do with the beast now that you have it; and
one-half of you to-day would give your right arms if you had been
defeated. But you succeeded, and you have to deal with facts. Our
objection to living in this Union, and therefore the difficulty of
reconstructing it, is not your Personal Liberty bills, not the
Territorial question, but that you utterly and wholly misapprehend
the Form of Government.
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