The news brought by the steamer from America is exciting. The political storm rages fiercely in the South, taking a reckless direction for secession, and produces a financial panic which cannot pass away without effecting a widespread ruin. The successful Republican party at the Presidential election are striving to appease and propitiate, but having, during the canvass, taken the “irrepressible conflict” ground, and having had the aid of the Garrisonian Radicals, who denounce the Constitution as a "League with hell," it seems natural that the South should regard their defeat as involving a destruction of their property and rights. If I could perceive among the leading men in the agitation of the South any staid, judicious statesmen, I should think the Union lost. I see only such uniformly violent, effervescing, and unsuccessful ranters as Yancey, Rhett, Keitt, Toombs, and I conclude that the local movements will yet be settled by the ballast near the keelson of the ship.
SOURCE: George Mifflin Dallas, Diary of George Mifflin Dallas, While United States Minister to Russia 1837 to 1839, and to England 1856 to 1861, Volume 3, p. 420-1
