“Nothing is more plain than that,” said the General. “And yet, were he or his people fibered of any decency, they would not, as an element of assault on me, seek to make tatters of poor Peg. I can not see how they bring themselves to that; for myself, I would not give hand to so vile a ploy for all the world.” “They would plunge you in for Peg's defence,” I said, recalling Noah's explanation. “They hope to set the women of the land upon you as he who gives countenance to one flagrant of her sins. That is their precious intrigue; they, with their lies of Peg, would shake your power with private home-loving folk whose firesides are clean and who base themselves on chastity. There you have the whole crow-colored scheme of them, with the black impulse which turns them against Peg.” “If they shake me with the people,” said the General, “they should call it the thirteenth labor of Hercules.” “They should have punishment for all that,” cried I. “Sir, they shall be punished,” retorted the General. “And as for Calhoun, he most of all shall suffer. Mark you this: That man shall never be president. More, he may yet win Gilderoy's elevation at a rope's end.” This last in wrathful whisper like a warning of death. There was spreading reason to talk on Calhoun and his policies. South Carolina, ever arrogant, was moving to snap rebellious thumb and finger in the National face. The legislature of that insolent commonwealth had done its treason part; Nullification and its counterpart, Secession, were already agreed on; men were being enrolled and arms collected, while medals found Charleston coinage bearing the words, “John C. Calhoun, First President of the Southern Confederacy.” And the restless spirit to animate it all was no other than Calhoun himself. He was then among his henchmen of the Palmettoes, directing even the very phrases wherewith to deck their traitorous fulminations. So much the General knew, not alone from what Peg read daily in the papers, but by the weeded word of ones whom, safe and prudent, we dispatched to find the truth. And yet, in the last, I was sure Calhoun would never mean rebellion and a severance of his state from the common bonds. On such terms he could not succeed the General for the presidency, which was his invincible ambition. What Calhoun hoped was, by a deafening din of threat on his people's part of secession and rebellion, and every whatnot of stark treason besides, to browbeat the General to his will of Nullification; and thus by the one stroke to so fix himself in the van of victorious sentiment that no one might stay his march of White House conquest. And in good truth, thus argued the General.