A typical community of the first-named class was South Carolina. Her people had to a remarkable degree been rendered state-conscious partly by their geographical neighbors, and partly by their long and illustrious history, which had been interwoven with great European interests during the colonial era and with great national interests under the Republic. It is possible also that the Huguenots, though few in numbers, had exercised upon the State a subtle and pervasive influence through their intellectual power and their Latin sense for institutions. In South Carolina, too, a wealthy leisure class with a passion for affairs had cultivated enthusiastically that fine art which is the pride of all aristocratic societies, the service of the State as a profession high and exclusive, free from vulgar taint. In South Carolina all things conspired to uphold and strengthen the sense of the State as an object of veneration, as something over and above the mere social order, as the sacred embodiment of the ideals of the community. Thus it is fair to say that what has animated the heroic little countries of the Old World--Switzerland and Serbia and ever-glorious Belgium--with their passion to remain themselves, animated South Carolina in 1861. Just as Serbia was willing to fight to the death rather than merge her identity in the mosaic of the Austrian Empire, so this little American community saw nothing of happiness in any future that did not secure its virtual independence. Typical of the newer order in the South was the community that formed the President of the Confederacy. In the history of Mississippi previous to the war there are six great names--Jacob Thompson, John A. Quitman, Henry S. Foote, Robert J. Walker, Sergeant S. Prentiss, and Jefferson Davis. Not one of them was born in the State. Thompson was born in North Carolina; Quitman in New York; Foote in Virginia; Walker in Pennsylvania; Prentiss in Maine; Davis in Kentucky. In 1861 the State was but forty-four years old, younger than its most illustrious sons--if the paradox may be permitted. How could they think of it as an entity existing in itself, antedating not only themselves but their traditions, circumscribing them with its all-embracing, indisputable reality? These men spoke the language of state rights. It is true that in politics, combating the North, they used the political philosophy taught them by South Carolina. But it was a mental weapon in political debate; it was not for them an emotional fact.