communication with the older Eastern States; and when President Davis came in 1861 over the same road, he traveled in a private car made in its own shops at Montgomery.
Business was the dominant interest during the first two decades of the city's existence, and may have seemed to visitors like Governor Gilmer to exclude all other thoughts; yet beneath the surface there smouldered the Southern devotion to politics. The town was scarcely two years old when the Missouri question gave rise to an ardent discussion of State rights, which found frequent occasion for renewal in subsequent years; and at the public dinner prepared in celebration of the Fourth of July, 1826, there were two toasts whose sentiment seems strangely significant in the light of after events. They were:
"The Union of the States—The golden chain of our
liberties; dissolved into its minute links, the fabric falls
into ruin."
"States Rights—The ark of our safety; every attempt to violate them should be regarded as highly obnoxious to the holy spirit of the Constitution."
Nor was their zest for politics a mere fondness
for empty debate or idle personalities.
It was an innate love for public affairs, a desire
