“Let wise men stand from under!” he retorted, smiling good-humoredly. “As to the choking, that may not be such an easy job as you think.”
A visitor took up the word, and seriously:
“The dissatisfaction of the South is no new thing. It is as old as the Constitution itself. John Randolph said of it: ‘I saw what Washington did not see. Two other men in Virginia saw it—the poison under its wings.’ Grayson, another far-sighted statesman, prophesied just what has come to pass. He said of the consolidation policy taught in the Constitution: ‘It will, in operation, be found unequal, grievous, and oppressive.’ He foresaw that the manufacturer of the North would dominate the agriculturist of the South; that there would be burdensome taxation without adequate representation; in short, that there would be numberless encroachments of the North upon the prerogatives of the Southern slaveholder.”
“He said nothing of the manifest injustice in a republic, of the election of a candidate by the votes of a petty faction, dominant for the time, because the other party split and ran several men?”
This was said by a young man who had not spoken until then.
My father replied: “Suppose Breckenridge had been elected? Would that have been the triumph of a faction?”
“Circumstances alter cases,” said my brother Horace, dryly.
Everybody laughed, except the man who had quoted Grayson and Randolph.
“It is not easy for the Mother of Presidents to submit to the rule of those whom, as Job says, they would have scorned to put with their cattle,” he said, with temper.
I saw the blue fire in my husband’s eyes before he spoke; but his voice was even and full; every sentence was studiedly calm.