[Sidenote] O.J.  Victor, “American Conspiracies,” p. 520.

    SELMA, NEAR WINCHESTER, Va., Sept. 30, 1856.

MY DEAR SIR:  I have a letter from Wise, of the 27th, full of spirit.  He says the Governors of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Louisiana have already agreed to rendezvous at Raleigh, and others will—­this in your most private ear.  He says, further, that he had officially requested you to exchange with Virginia, on fair terms of difference, percussion for flint muskets.  I don’t know the usage or power of the department In such cases, but if it can be done, even by liberal construction, I hope you will accede.  Was there not an appropriation at the last session for converting flint into percussion arms?  If so, would it not furnish good reason for extending such facilities to the States?  Virginia probably has more arms than the other Southern States, and would divide, in case of need.  In a letter yesterday to a committee in South Carolina, I give it as my judgment, in the event of Fremont’s election, the South should not pause, but proceed at once to “immediate, absolute, and eternal separation.”  So I am a candidate for the first halter.

    Wise says his accounts from Philadelphia are cheering for old Buck
    in Pennsylvania.  I hope they be not delusive. Vale et Salute
    [sic].

    J.M.  MASON.

    Colonel Davis.

In these letters we have an exact counterpart of the later and successful efforts of these identical conspirators, conjointly with others, to initiate rebellion.  When the Senatorial campaign of 1858 between Lincoln and Douglas was at its height, there was printed in the public journals of the Southern States the following extraordinary letter, which at once challenged the attention of the whole reading public of the country, and became known by the universal stigma of “The Scarlet Letter.”  In the light of after events it was both a revelation and a prophecy: 

  [Sidenote] Quoted in Appendix to “Globe” for 1859-60, p. 313.

    MONTGOMERY, June 15, 1858.

DEAR SIR:  Your kind favor of the 15th is received.  I heartily agree with you that [no] general movement can be made that will clean out the Augean stable.  If the Democracy were overthrown, it would result in giving place to a greater and hungrier swarm of flies.

The remedy of the South is not in such a process.  It is in a diligent organization of her true men for prompt resistance to the next aggression.  It must come in the nature of things.  No national party can save us; no sectional party can ever do it.  But if we could do as our fathers did—­organize “committees of safety” all over the Cotton States (it is only in them that we can hope for any effective movement)—­we shall fire the Southern heart, instruct the Southern mind, give courage to each other, and at the proper moment, by one organized