The Southern leader was obviously careworn and unhappy. Socola found his heart unconsciously going out to him in sympathy.
Assuming carefully his attitude of foreign detached interest, the young man sought to draw him out.
"You have given up all hope of adjustment and reunion with the North?" he asked.
"No," was the thoughtful reply, "not until the first blood is spilled."
"Your people must see, Senator, that secession will imperil the existence of their three thousand millions of dollars invested in slaves?"
"Certainly they see it," was the quick answer. "Slavery can never survive the first shot of war, no matter which side wins. If the North wins, we must free them, or else maintain a standing army on our borders for all time. It would be unthinkable. Rivers are bad boundaries. We could have no others. Fools have said and will continue to say that we are fighting to establish a slave empire. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are seeking to find that peace and tranquillity outside the Union we have not been able to enjoy for the past forty years inside. If the Southern States enact a Constitution of their own, they will merely reaffirm the Constitution of their fathers with no essential change. The North is leading a revolution, not the South.
"Not one man in twenty down here owns a slave. The South would never fight to maintain Slavery. We know that it is doomed. We simply demand as the sons of the men who created this Republic, equal rights under its laws. If we fight, it will be for our independence as freemen that we may maintain those rights."
"I must confess, sir," Socola replied with carefully modulated voice, "that I fail to see as a student from without, why, if Slavery is doomed and your leaders realize that fact, a compromise without bloodshed would not be possible?"
"If Slavery were the only issue, it would be possible—although as a proud and sensitive people we propose to be the judge of the time when we see fit to emancipate our slaves. Abolition fanatics, whose fathers sold their slaves to us, can't dictate to the South on such a moral issue."
"I see—your pride is involved."