The more I study the abolitionists whom I distinguish as root-and-branch, the more completely self-deceived as to facts, the wilder and more emotional I find them to be. I have just mentioned some of their misrepresentations; and in later chapters I shall dwell upon their cardinal mistake as to the place of the negro in the human scale. I have not sufficient space for more of these things. I will give just one example of their wildness. They put in circulation that Toombs had said he expected some day to call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill monument,--a slander which they persisted in renewing after he had solemnly and publicly denied it.[40] In their excited imaginations they were sure that the south was cherishing a scheme by which, under the help of the court that made the Dred Scott decision, slavery was to be established and protected by law everywhere in the north. The only parallel I can think of to this utterly groundless panic is that of some poor souls in the Confederate ranks in front of Richmond in 1862, who, when they learned that Jackson had got in the enemy's rear, expressed lively fears that he was going to drive McClellan's army over them. And the fire-eaters,--how they got important facts wrong! They habitually said that the northern masses were too untruthful and dishonest for us of the south to stay in the partnership without disgrace and loss of self-respect. I heard of one who was wont gravely to assert that prostitutes and ice were all that the south was dependent upon the north for; and these were only luxuries which it was better to do without. Perhaps the height of falsification by the hotspurs was the assertion, made everywhere again and again, that northerners were such cowards that, even if they were spurred into a war in defence of the union, any one average southerner would prove an overmatch for any five of them.