For his part, the General never wore a loftier look. He scribbled a quick line and gave it to the Chairman.
“The President offers a toast.” Then solemnly, as one who feels its import:
'“The Federal Union: It must be Preserved.'”
The General's glance was on Calhoun, as pointed as a sword. His eye was fierce with a sort of gray fury like the eye of some fighting eagle. Calhoun for a moment gave him look for look; then his glance fell, his face whitened, he would seem to shrink and sear and wither before the man of fire. It was as though he saw the future's danger, or felt some gallows prophecy thereof. In the end he sat like one under a blackness of shadow.
The General it was who broke the spell. Pushing back, he arose, and bowing to the Chairman who still sat with that toast of menace in his hand he began moving towards the door. His head was lifted, and he bore himself as should one who flings a gauntlet to the world. Openly, obviously, defiantly, he set his heel on Secession's head in the midst of Secession's champions.
Pausing, the General swept those present, letting his look of challenge rest on each one in his turn. It was as though he questioned them: “Where, now, is your courage?”
There was none to retort to him. Folk scented peril on him as cattle smell in the wind the unborn storm.
“The Federal Union. It must be preserved.” The General, as though to call a last attention, repeated his toast. Then, with burning eye laid full upon Calhoun, and thinking, doubtless, on Overton and Crockett and Houston and Dale and Coffee and those riflemen in hunting shirts and leggings, and on the ships and Scott and Castle Pinckney, he added: “And it shall be preserved.”
It was the moment pregnant and mighty; the moment when one man foiled a plot to stampede history itself, and calmed and turned and drove the herd of events in a right national direction for the Union and to fields of quiet peace. Treason's heart and Treason's hand were palsied with a toast of seven words, when now the words came wedded with the grim, relentless courage that would die or make them true.
The galleries about the big room were filled with women looking on, Peg among the others. When the General and I were again at the White House, late as stood the hour, we found Peg waiting. I never saw a being more given over to fire than was our Peg.