Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 21.djvu/166

 158 Southern Historical Society Papers.

wrong in deprecating the predominence of militaryism over the civil authority. The South should have been converted into a camp.

Mr. Yancey died prior to the close of the war, and it was thought, from the effects of a blow on the head from an ink stand hurled at him by Ben Hill, of Georgia, in the Confederate Senate chamber in retaliation for something Yancey had uttered in a speech. He lived long enough to realize that secession was a failure, and this was gall and wormwood to him.

I have remarked the prevalent belief among the Southern people, that secession would not be followed by war, and that Mr. Yancey shared such belief. But for the Confederates firing on Fort Sumter, in April, 1861, the probability is there would never have been a war, and but for the war, the Southern people would have sickened of secession, undone all the secession work, and returned to the Union, as the prodigal returned to his father's house. As to the firing on Fort Sumter, ex-United States Senator Jere Clemens stated in a pub- lic letter, that he was in the office of the Secretary of War, in Mont- gomery, two days before fire was opened on Fort Sumter, when Mr. Gilchrist, of Lowndes county, Alabama, a very hot-headed seces- sionist, came into the office and censured General L. P. Walker, the Secretary of War, for not having precipitated a war, declaring the people were already beginning to repent of secession, and would be back in the Union at the end of a year, unless the breach was made wider by an act of war, and urged him to order fire to be opened on Fort Sumter without delay. Whether this statement be true or false, the firing on Fort Sumter appeared at the time to have been without any adequate provocation, and to have been the outcome of a hasty and ill-advised resolution. It opened the war. It fired the heart of the North, as it never was fired before, enthusiastic patriotism flashed forth with amazing spontaneity men, who had opposed the election of Mr. Lincoln men, who were opposed to the coercion of the seceding States were indignant at the firing on the flag of the United States and eager for putting down the rebellion by force of arms. The South begun the war by opening fire on Fort Sumter at a time when she should have used every effort within her power to postpone the appeal to the sword. That was the deliberate and matured opinion of Mr. Yancey, notwithstanding he was regarded as a hot- spur, void of rationality and prudence. The late Colonel A. G. Horn, who was secretary of the Alabama State Convention which