On the night of January 5th, 1861, the leading conspirators, Jefferson Davis, with Senators Toombs, Iverson, Slidell, Benjamin, Wigfall, and others, held a meeting, at which it was resolved that the South should secede, but that all the seceding senators and representatives should retain their seats as long as possible, in order to inflict injury to the last on the Government which they had officially pledged themselves to protect. At the suggestion probably of Mr. Benjamin, all who retired were careful to draw not only their pay, but also to spoil the Egyptians by taking all the stationery, documents, and “mileage,” or allowance for travelling expenses, on which they could lay their hands. Only two of all the Slave State representatives remained true--Mr. Bouligny from New Orleans, and Andrew J. Hamilton from Texas. When President Lincoln came to Washington, it was indeed to enter a house divided against itself, tottering to its fall, its inner chambers a mass of ruin. The seven States which had seceded sent delegates, which met at Montgomery, Alabama, February 4th, 1861, and organised a government and constitution similar to that of the United States, under which Jefferson Davis was President, and Alexander H. Stephens Vice-President. No one had threatened the new Southern Government, and at this stage the North would have suffered it to withdraw in peace from the Union, so great was the dread of a civil war. But the South did not want peace. Every Southern newspaper, every rebel orator, was now furiously demanding of the North the most humiliating concessions, and threatening bloodshed as the alternative. While President Lincoln, in his Inaugural Address, spoke with the most Christian forbearance of the South, Jefferson Davis, in his, assumed all the horrors of civil war as a foregone conclusion. He said, that if they were permitted to secede quietly, all would be well. If forced to fight, they could and would maintain their position by the sword, and would avail themselves to the utmost of the liberties of war. He expected that the North would be the theatre of war, but no Northern city ever felt the rebel sword, while there was not one in the South which did not suffer terribly from the effects of war. Never in history was the awful curse _Væ victis_ so freely invoked by those who were destined to be conquered.