"You would think, then, Wendell Phillips, for instance, more consistent in his political opinions than Mr. Seward?"
"Certainly. I can understand his position. 'Slavery,' he says, 'is wrong. The Constitution protects slavery; therefore I will have nothing to do with the Constitution, and cannot become a citizen.' This is logical and consistent. I can respect such a position as that."
Here Mr. Toombs—ejecting, as perhaps the writer ought not to relate, a competent mass of tobacco-saliva into the blazing coal—paused somewhat reflectively, perhaps unpleasantly revolving certain possible indirect influences of the position he had characterized.
"Upon which side, Sir, do you think there is usually the most misunderstanding,—on the part of the North concerning the South? or on the part of the South concerning the North?"
"Oh, by all odds," he replied, instantly, "we understand you best. We send fifty thousand travellers, more or less, North every summer to your watering-places. Hot down in Mobile,"—his style taking somewhat unpleasantly the intonation as well as the negligence of the bar-room,—"can't live in Mobile in the summer. Then your papers circulate more among us than ours among you. Our daughters are educated at Northern boarding-schools, our sons at Northern colleges: both my colleague and myself were educated at Northern colleges. For these reasons, by all odds, we have a better opportunity for understanding you than you have for understanding us."
"In case of general secession and war," the writer ventured next to inquire, "would there probably, in your opinion, be danger of a slave insurrection?"
"None at all. Certainly far less than of 'Bread or Blood' riots at the
North."
The writer was surprised to find, notwithstanding Mr. Toombs's eulogy of Southern opportunities, his understanding of the North so imperfect, and still more surprised at the political and social principles involved in the spirit of what followed.
"Your poor population can hold ward-meetings, and can vote. But we know better how to take care of ours. They are in the fields, and under the eye of their overseers. There can be little danger of an insurrection under our system."
The subject and the manner of the man, in spite of his better qualities, were becoming painful, and the writer ventured only one more remark.