The talk of the evening could run in but one channel. Our nerves were keyed up to the highest tension, and the day’s events had gone deep into mind and heart. Two or three visitors dropped in, and both sides of the Great Controversy were brought forward, temperately, but with force born of conviction. If I go somewhat into the details of the conversation, it is because I would make clear the truth that each party in the struggle we feared might be imminent, believed honestly that justice and right were at the foundation of his faith. I wrote down the substance of the memorable discussion, as I recorded and published other incidents of the ever-to-be-remembered era, while the history of it was still in the making. I am, then, sure that I give the story correctly. John Miller opened the ball by “hoping that the North was now convinced that the South was in earnest in maintaining her rights.” I liked my Scotch brother-in-law, and we bandied jests safely and often. But it irked me that we should have a Secessionist in a loyal family, and I retorted flippantly, lest I should betray the underlying feeling: “There has been no madness equal to Secession since the swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea. The choking in the waves will come later.” “Let wise men stand from under!” he retorted, smiling good-humoredly. “As to the choking, that may not be such an easy job as you think.” A visitor took up the word, and seriously: “The dissatisfaction of the South is no new thing. It is as old as the Constitution itself. John Randolph said of it: ‘I saw what Washington did not see. Two other men in Virginia saw it—the _poison under its wings_.’ Grayson, another far-sighted statesman, prophesied just what has come to pass. He said of the consolidation policy taught in the Constitution: ‘It will, in operation, be found unequal, grievous, and oppressive.’ He foresaw that the manufacturer of the North would dominate the agriculturist of the South; that there would be burdensome taxation without adequate representation; in short, that there would be numberless encroachments of the North upon the prerogatives of the Southern slaveholder.” “He said nothing of the manifest injustice in a republic, of the election of a candidate by the votes of a petty faction, dominant for the time, because the other party split and ran several men?” This was said by a young man who had not spoken until then. My father replied: “Suppose Breckenridge had been elected? Would that have been the triumph of a faction?” “Circumstances alter cases,” said my brother Horace, dryly. Everybody laughed, except the man who had quoted Grayson and Randolph. “It is not easy for the Mother of Presidents to submit to the rule of those whom, as Job says, they would have scorned to put with their cattle,” he said, with temper. I saw the blue fire in my husband’s eyes before he spoke; but his voice was even and full; every sentence was studiedly calm.