As Senator Toombs had declared: "The question of slavery moves not the people of Georgia one-half so much as the fact that you insult their rights as a community. Abolitionists are right when they say that there are thousands and tens of thousands of people in Georgia who do not own slaves. A very large portion of the people of Georgia own none of them. In the mountains there are but a few of them; but no part of our people is more loyal to race and country than our bold and hardy mountain population, and every flash of the electric wire brings me cheering news from our mountain-tops and our valleys that these sons of Georgia are excelled by none of their countrymen in loyalty to their rights, the honor and glory of the commonwealth. They say, and well say, this is our question: we want no negro equality; no negro citizenship; we want no mongrel race to degrade our own, and, as one man, they would meet you upon the border with the sword in one hand and the torch in the other. They will tell you, 'When we choose to abolish this thing (slavery), it must be done under our direction, according to our will. Our own, our native land shall determine this question, and not the Abolitionists of the North.' That is the spirit of our freemen." The spirit of the people was plainly manifested by the zeal and ardor of Thomas R. R. Cobb. He was a young man who went into the secession movement with lofty enthusiasm. He had all the ardor and religious fervor of a crusader. He had never held public office, and had taken no hand in politics until the time came for Georgia to secede. He was the younger brother of Howell Cobb. He declared that what Mr. Stephens said was the determining sentiment of the hour, that "Georgia could make better terms out of the Union than in it." The greater part of the people was fired with this fervor, which they felt to be patriotic. Gray-bearded men vied with the hot blood of youth, and a venerable citizen of Augusta, illuminating his residence from dome to cellar, blazoned with candles this device upon his gateway--"Georgia, right or wrong--Georgia!" Never was a movement so general, so spontaneous. Those who charged the leaders of that day with precipitating their States into revolution upon a wild dream of power, did not know the spirit and the temper of the people who composed that movement. Northern men who had moved South and engaged in business, as a general thing, stood shoulder to shoulder with their Southern brethren, and went out with the companies that first responded to the call to war. The South sacrificed much, in a material point of view, in going into civil conflict. In the decade between 1850 and 1860, the wealth of the South had increased three billions of dollars, and Georgia alone had shown a growth measured by two hundred millions. Her aggregate wealth at the time she passed the Ordinance of Secession was six hundred and seventy-two millions, double what it is to-day.