It was a characteristic example of his keen political foresight and also of the wonderfully persuasive eloquence that set his hearers on fire. No orator ever combined more perfectly closeness of reasoning with the fire of earnestness and an irresistible personal magnetism. The capitol, old Estelle Hall, every public place in the city, rang with the mellow tones of his voice; his debates with Hilliard were attended by throngs never equaled in the State before or since; and the mention of his name at this day arouses in the memory of old residents a sense of ecstasy produced by no other. No better idea of his manner can be given than by quoting once more from his biography, this time from a letter of General H. D. Clayton, describing a subsequent impromptu debate with his great friend and opponent, Hilliard: “Mr. Hilliard, being loudly called, took his stand, and made the graceful speech he always does.... Then broke forth the deafening, enthusiastic cry, ‘Yancey, Yancey.’ He came like a man conscious of right should always come.... As with modesty becoming a maiden of sixteen, he requested to be permitted to occupy the stand, ‘To the stand,’ shouted an hundred voices.... Bowing low he began--Here I must pause. I should despise my own presumption should I undertake further description of what followed. First went the _Confederation_ newspaper, once in existence, now a dream, a shadow of things that were, gone glimmering like a schoolboy’s tale. At every blow some foe fell, broken in every bone. For just two hours this work of destruction proceeded amidst deafening shouts from the throats of what is admitted on all sides to have been at least two-thirds of the crowded house, called to put Yancey down.” [Illustration: FIRST PAGE OF THE PERMANENT CONSTITUTION OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES AS REPORTED BY THE COMMITTEE. THIS IS IN THE HANDWRITING OF GEN. THOS. R. R. COBB, WHO WAS A MEMBER OF THE COMMITTEE. TAKEN FROM THE ORIGINAL, WHICH IS IN THE POSSESSION OF MR. A. L. HULL, ATHENS, GA.] In the debates and speeches of those days the men and the measures of the last decade before the war are preserved with a vividness that seems almost magical. Estelle Hall echoes with fierce discussions of the great Compromise of 1850. What a vista of history opens before the mind as the streets resound to the tramp of Colonel Buford’s men on their vain errand to Kansas! And what a sobering sense of reality it brings to read his card in the papers! “I wish to raise three hundred industrious, sober, discreet, reliable men, capable of bearing arms; not prone to use them wickedly or unnecessarily, but willing to protect their section in every real emergency.”