The combination was perfect. The heart of the Rebellion was in South Carolina, a State whose free population was about equal to that of the city of Brooklyn, and whose annual productions were exceeded by those of Essex County, in the State of Massachusetts. Around this centre was congregated as base a set of politicians as ever disgraced human nature. A conspiracy was formed to compel a first-class power, representing thirty millions of people, to submit to the dictation of about three hundred thousand of its citizens. The conspirators did not dream of failure. They were sure, as they thought, of the Gulf States and of the Border States, of the whole Slave Power, in fact. They also felt sure of that large minority in the Free States which had formerly acted with them, and obeyed their most humiliating behests. They therefore entered the Congress of the nation with a confident front, knowing that President Buchanan and the majority of his Cabinet were practically on their side. Before Mr. Lincoln could be inaugurated they imagined they could accomplish all their designs, and make the Government of the United States a Pro-Slavery power in the eyes of all the nations of the world. Mr. Calhoun's paradoxes had heretofore been indorsed only by majorities in the national legislature and by the Supreme Court. What a victory it would be, if, by threatening rebellion, they could induce the people of the United States to incorporate those paradoxes into the fundamental law of the nation, dominant over both Congress and the Court! All their previous "compromises" had been merely legislative compromises, which, as their cause advanced, they had themselves annulled. They now seized the occasion, when the "people" had risen against them, to compel the people to sanction their most extreme demands. They determined to convert defeat, sustained at the polls, into a victory which would have far transcended any victory they might have gained by electing their candidate, Breckinridge, as President.