204 CONFEDERATE PORTRAITS
of Judge Douglas. He spoke like a madman and acted like a fanatic," writes Stephens.^^ Yet, during much of the time, his counsel was for restraint, deliberation, and endurance as long as endurance was possible. With calm foresight he deprecated any contemptuous assertion that the people of either section of the Union would be found cowardly when the crisis came: *' Sir, if there shall ever be civil war in this country, when honest men shall set about cutting each other's throats, those who are least to be depended on in a fight will be the people who set them at it." ^^ So late as December, i860, he earned the ill wnll of the violent party in his own State by opposing immediate secession. He thought that definite action should be fixed for March 4, yet even as to this he adds the admirable words : " I certainly would yield that point to correct and honest men who were with me in prin- ciple, but who were more hopeful of redress from the aggressors than I am, especially if any such active meas- ures should be taken by the wrongdoers as promised to give us redress in the Union." ^^ It is only when he has been forced to abandon all hope that he commits him- self in final and characteristically decisive language : "I will tell you, upon the faith of a true man, that all further looking to the North for security for your constitutional rights ought to be abandoned. . . . Secession by the 4th day of March next should be thundered from the ballot- box by the unanimous voice of Georgia on the 2d day of January next." ^^
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