It is impossible to estimate the influence of this lurking fallacy. Not merely were multitudes of well-meaning, but unreasoning men, who were confident of the success of their party, brought to acquiesce in a proposition utterly false in its base, but the whole conservative element in society was placed in a position from which it would be thrown by defeat into a most dangerous reaction. Thus consciously or unconsciously all parties were using every effort in their power to prepare the popular mind for the question of secession. But the period was not without its traits of patriotism. In October strong efforts were made in the States of Alabama and Georgia to unite the three parties in the South on one of the three candidates; thus securing a President to the South, and the certainty of the Union. The Breckinridge Democrats, however, contemptuously refused to be party to every arrangement of the kind. The insurrectionary element, gathering to itself the excitable and disaffected spirits of every class, had now gained the command of this party, and no longer attempted to conceal its revolutionary intentions. At the head of this element, exercising a vast influence over all its movements, and embodying in himself, more than any other man (except, perhaps, Mr. Yancey), the fierceness of its spirit, stood Mr. Toombs, of Georgia. He was now invited to speak in Montgomery. As a man of large political experience, some statesmanship, and master of a grave and sonorous eloquence, it was expected that he would influence a class of men who had hitherto held themselves studiously aloof from the insurrectionary ranks--that calm, conservative class, which is recognized by all as the basis of every society which has acquired, or having acquired, hopes to retain, stability of government and security of morals. The sentiments of the speaker were too well known to admit of any doubts as to the probable character of his address. He appeared as the undisguised advocate of secession. No form of appeal or argument was neglected which could have had weight with a people peculiarly susceptible to the influence of oratory. Setting aside the question of the approaching election, to which he scarcely alluded, the orator strove only to show that it was an imperative social necessity that the South should have a vast and constantly increasing slave territory; that in the path of this necessity the only obstacle was the Federal Union, and that the time for its destruction had now come. These were the representative arguments of his party before the election, and he did not speak to an unsympathizing audience. For when toward the close, raising his voice until it broke almost in a scream, he exclaimed, 'Let the night which decides the election of Mr. Lincoln be ushered in by the booming of the hostile cannon of the South,' the hall rang again and again with the shouts of his excited hearers. But _nemo repente turpissimus semper fuit_. These were not the sentiments of all.